1. Thief (1981)
We all have movies that we see at exactly the right time, and for me, Thief is one of those movies. There’s something I find uniquely engaging about this film, which features a diamond thief (James Caan) and his goal of creating the perfect life. Just when he thinks that’s in is grasp, it all comes apart, and the third act is all his vengeance, and destroying his own life to enact that revenge. I find the film fascinating, and I love all of the performances, particularly Caan and Tuesday Weld. It also has a banging soundtrack that was inexplicably nominated for a Razzie in their first year. Diamond Diary in particular sounds like driving all night and arriving at the coast just as the sun rises.
2. Heavy Metal (1981)
I’m surprised it’s taken me this long to bring up Heavy Metal, a movie that languished as something shown only on late-night HBO and Cinemax for years because the music rights couldn’t be resolved for a mainstream release. Truthfully, the stories probably aren’t as great as I want them to be, and there’s a lot of weird cartoon nudity throughout, but this is another one that comes with a lot of nostalgia for me. It’s also another movie with a soundtrack that is the main selling point. Say what you want about some of the stories, Captain Sternn is still very funny and B-17 remains both cool and terrifying. If nothing else, it’s important as mainstream adult animation.
3. Noises Off... (1992)
Comedy is hard, and comedy that is still funny years later is nearly impossible. I was shocked at just how funny Noises Off... is. It helps in large part that this is based on solid source material. What makes all of this work is the impeccable timing. There are essentially three performances of the play that the actors in the movie are performing. The first two are masterpieces of timing, working in clockwork perfection. The third is just a trainwreck, and no less funny. The cast is brilliant and play off each other wonderfully. And, best of all, this is still really, really funny all the way through. It’s not just fun to watch all of the pieces interact and all of the gears mesh. It’s fun because it’s silly and clever and smart and dumb.
4. Snatch (2000)
Guy Ritchie’s first movie was Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. The main reaction was that the movie was good, but the characters were impossible to understand. Snatch was Ritchie’s response, a film that included a Brad Pitt character so incomprehensible that he couldn’t even be subtitled. This is a premier heist movie without going into the details, but the details are where it really sings. This is in all ways a comedy noir with memorable characters, a cast list that feels like it required a pact with the devil to get lined up, and a huge body count despite all of the laughs. If you haven’t seen this one, you really owe it to yourself.
5. Legally Blonde (2001)
There are movies that seem to help define a generation, and if you’re not a part of that generation, they can be kind of hit or miss. Legally Blonde, which seems like fluff on the surface, is very much a hit. That same surface will tell you that this is Clueless with more of a brain, but that is a really unfair way to view this movie. This is a film in large part about female empowerment. Reese Witherspoon’s Elle Woods is a hero for the ages but all of the women in this movie are the supporting cast she both needs and deserves. What an absolute joy this movie is.
6. Jodorowsky’s Dune (2013)
My connection to the Frank Herbert series is something I have talked about before, so I won’t go into it now—you can find it on any Dune-themed posts on this blog. Jodorowsky’s Dune looks at what the Frank Herbert story might have looked like on film if Alejandro Jodorowsky had been able to create and complete his vision of the Dune-iverse. There are a few legendary film projects that never happened or were otherwise damaged or lost. Tim Burton’s Superman project and the missing footage from The Magnificent Ambersons are legendary, but so too is what Dune could have been, and this film is what we have left.
7. The Death of Stalin (2017)
Every year, I find a new movie or two that becomes something I look forward to watching every year. The Death of Stalin became a comfort movie for me pretty quickly. There’s a lot here that is awful to behold, as expected when it comes to a film that is about a brutal dictator and the regime that enabled him. But there is a great deal of comedy here as well, and the once again, the casting could not be better. Steve Buscemi never gets nearly enough credit for how versatile he really is. This is a movie that will make you laugh throughout, and some of those laughs are going to feel guilty because of how much terrible reality you are laughing at. Finally, as good as this is, it gets so much better the moment Jason Isaacs walks on screen.
8. Black Mirror: Bandersnatch (2018)
Most of the time when I suggest a film for this yearly list, it’s a film that I like a great deal and that I think is more than just a great movie. In the case of Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, this is not a movie that I love a great deal, but that I respect. The reason I think this film should be here is because of its genuine attempt at innovation. People have talked about “interactive media” since I was in the game industry and full-motion video became in vogue in the early ‘90s. Bandersnatch really tried to do it, and while it kind of fails, the failure is ambitious and, because of it, kind of beautiful.
9. No Time to Die (2021)
A couple of James Bond films have shown up on the list, but there should be one more that makes it here. No Time to Die almost certainly won’t be the last James Bond film, but it’s noteworthy in that it certainly could be the end of the franchise in one way of thinking. Daniel Craig was initially a controversial Bond choice, but he proved to be more than up to the role. In my opinion, his first, third, and fifth movies rank as some of the best James Bond committed to film. It’s the ending that makes this one important, and it’s worth putting on the list because of it
10. God’s Country (2022)
I don’t shy away from a hard watch, and God’s Country is a hard watch. This isn’t because of gore or fear, but purely because sometimes life is terrible and does terrible things, and our responses to that are equally terrible in the biblical sense. God’s Country is about bad choices leading to worse choices that lead to inevitable choices. There’s no joy in this; only grim reality. Thandiwe Newton, an actor generally overlooked for no good reason, has never been better than she is in this. You can expect that this is going to stay with you for a couple of weeks after the credits roll.
