My 101 Favorite Movies of All-Time, 81-90

As previously stated: I like to make lists. I have no idea why. I have previously posted a list of my favorite TV programs (though I only listed the top 20) which you can find here. Every now and then, I'll look at one of these lists and monkey with it a bit (“That movie has to go ahead of this one!”), but mostly they stay the same.

One thing about these lists, though, even though I am posting them on my blog, I have never been so arrogant as to think anyone else will care what I think.

81. Independence Day

This was a fun movie and I have yet to see the sequel, not because of anything I read about it but because the first movie didn't need a sequel. It tells a good story and it ends! There are movie series I enjoy, some of them appear on this list, but there's something to be said of a movie that tells its story and then stops.

Check out the DVD and watch the deleted scenes. I know I'm in the minority here, but I think Randy Quaid's deleted scene death was better than how they did it in the finished product.

82. The Man From Snowy River

This was the first movie from down under that most of us remember, and is probably still the best in many people's minds. Though I prefer the sequel myself, I admit that the sequel wouldn't exist or make sense without this one. And while both have wonderful soundtracks, it's the score for the second movie that gives it a leg up on this one in my mind/ear.

It was Jim Craig (every bit as much as Indiana Jones) who got me inspired to learn how to use a bullwhip.

83. Night at the Museum – Battle for the Smithsonian

If you look below, you'll notice that I listed this movie and it's predecessor together. I love them both. Ben Stiller and the whole cast—and, especially, the specil effects people—do a fantastic job both times out. This movie does what a good sequel is supposed to do: expand on the premier.

If I'm honest, though, I have to admit that the main thing that pushes this movie ahead of the first one is the presence of Amy Adams.

84. Night at the Museum

This is a hilarious, eye-popping movie, but it accidentally makes the opposite point from what I think the producers, writers, etc. were hoping to make: museums really are boring for kids. Sometimes, they're boring for adults, too. I think for those of us who like museums, it's because in our imaginations we can see the exhibits coming to life. Maybe these movies awakened that in some people for whom it had been dormant.

The third movie in the series was OK, and actually bookended the series quite well, but I didn't like it well enough to put it on this list.

85. You Can’t Take It With You

An early Frank Capra-Jimmy Stewart outing (with Jean Arthur and Lionel Barrymore), this is more of a straight-up comedy than we might have usually expected from that teaming. Jean Arthur is the proud daughter of a family of kooks who catches the eye of rich kid Jimmy Stewart. She wants him to fall in love with her—and he certainly has no objections to that idea—but she's afraid of how he will react, and how his stuffy parents will react, if they ever meet her nutty relations.

Jimmy has one of the all-time great pick-up lines when he tells Jean, “When I look at you, you're just so beautiful I think I'm going to throw up.”

86. No Time for Sergeants

Andy Griffith burst onto the scene with his turn as country bumpkin Will Stockdale, new draftee into the Air Force. Think Gomer Pyle without the sophistication and savoir fare. Will is a hick, a hillbillie, and every other such term you can think of and he doesn't so much conquer the Air Force with his backwoods wisdom as make you wonder how the Air Force survived his tenure. Watch for a very young Don Knotts as the base's frustrated psychiatrist.

Andy had already made a name for himself on Broadway and in comedy clubs, but most of America had never heard of him until this movie.

87. Operation Petticoat

Cary Grant is the commander of a United States submarine in WWII that is beset by Murphy's Law at every turn. Mechanical difficulties, a pink paint job and, most worrisom of all, Tony Curtis as his X-O. When they end up having to ferry some stranded nurses, it's clear that there are some things naval regulations don't cover.

Gavin McLeod sure spent a lot of his screen career at sea, didn't he?

88. Unconquered

Gary Cooper and Paulette Goddard star in this adventure story set against the backdrop of the Revolutionary War. The beautiful Paulette is an indentured servant who catches the eye of a wealthy American Captain (Cooper) who buys her freedom. Unfortunately, the unscrupulous slaver (like there's another kind) doesn't tell Paulette and she gets sold to someone else.

This movie looks great restored for DVD, but it makes me wish I could see it on a big screen in a theater.

89. Rustler’s Rhapsody

What if you took a cowboy from the Roy Rogers-Hopalong Cassidy era and dropped him in the middle of a spaghetti western from the early 1970s? This hilarious movie does just that, with Tom Beringer as “Rex O'Herlihan, the Singing Cowboy” and Andy Griffith as the villainous Colonel. The cameo by Patrick Wayne seals this as one of the best spoofs ever made.

“Is your school marm an attractive but strangely asexual young woman?”

90. You Only Live Twice

This is, for my money, the second-best Bond movie ever. Good story, excellent casting, and the arial shot of the fight on the docks is astounding just for the choreography is must have taken to pull an enormous scene like that together. And who wouldn't want a Little Nellie for their own?

On the down side: no amount of make-up makes Sean Connery a convincing asian.




To continue on my list and see movies 91-101, click here.
To see the whole list (as much as I have published so far) click here.