The Desert Island Videos

Sure, this is the favorite movie of late of nearly every late twenties-early thirties person in the country. But there is a good reason for that. It's superbly acted (Quentin Tarantino somehow gets actors to perform a million times better than he could ever do himself), sharply written, and directed with such relish that I wonder if Quentin wasn't just laughing his head off behind the camera every second of the shoot. Samuel Jackson turns in an acting performance that may never be topped by anyone again, and Q helped make John Travolta cool once more, however the good of that is starting to become questionable with Travolta's ever increasing overexposure.

Perhaps the movie I quote the most next to Pulp Fiction. Frances McDormand showed why she's quietly become one of the best actresses in Hollywood (Hey, she's friends with Susan Sarandon. Need I say more?) and William H. Macy turned in a spectacular performance that was overlooked only because he didn't have a line as catchy (and just as quickly annoying) as "Show me the money." The Cohen Brothers really nailed the landing on this movie.

Robert Zemeckis got his first Oscar with Forrest Gump, but this is his finest hour in my book. A brilliant combination of animation and live action, a very clever concept that cartoons are actors just like the rest of the people in Hollywood, and a good whodunit to go with it makes this movie a timeless laughfest in a class of its own. Zemeckis is arguably as good as Spielberg these days (check out the launch scenes in Contact if you need further proof), but I liked him more when he had a wicked sense of humor, like in this and Death Becomes Her. And I hope to God that talk of a Rabbit sequel is just talk. This movie cannot be topped.

I must thank my best friend Steve for hounding me to no end to rent this, as I wound up watching it twice before returning it. A fantastic effort from long time screenwriter, first time director Frank Darabont, and the best adaption of a Stephen King novel I've ever seen. Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins both turn in wonderful performances as prisoners both rightfully and wrongfully convicted. The escape sequence is more thrilling than half the action movies released in the last ten years.

For me, this is far and away the best crime movie of the '90s. You can keep Casino and Good Fellas. Watching Chazz Palminteri try to match wits with Kevin Spacey makes me squeal. Stephen Baldwin turns in what may be his best performance ever (yes, I know that doesn't mean anything), Kevin Pollak shows that some standup comedians can actually act, and try not to laugh whenever Benicio Del Toro's indecipherable Fenster is on the screen. The best twist in any movie I've seen in years as well.

Seems way out of place next to Pulp Fiction and Fargo, but Beast is the masterpiece Disney had been trying to make for decades. Finally, after creating female characters better known for their two inch waist sizes and saucer-like eyes than their smarts, they create Belle, a self confident bookworm who would rather be alone than date the town hunk, the handsome but incredibly arrogant Gaston. Composer Alan Menken turns in some more great songs (even if they're not the classics that The Little Mermaid had), and the animation is breathtaking. Beauty and the Beast was so good, it became the first animated movie nominated for Best Picture, and rightfully so.

James Cameron put his money, all $200 million of it, where his mouth is and delivers a staggering production with more heart than the last five Merchant Ivory movies combined. I'm not going to waste too much space on this movie, since everyone has seen it and half of us bought copies of it (I trust you all got the Widescreen edition?). But despite the backlash that's going around over this movie, Titanic is one for the ages.   Check out the full review

Hopelessly dated, sure, but pound for pound, you will not find another movie from the '80s with as many laughs as Sixteen Candles. This was John Hughes' directorial debut, and he not only turned in one of the most quotable movies of all time, but a really sweet story of young love. Most of the lead actors here have fallen off the radar, but the supporting players (John and Joan Cusack, Jami Gertz) wound up doing okay.

The Princess Bride (1987, Warner Bros.). This fairy tale adventure didn't fare too well at the box office, yet has rightfully found a massive cult following since its debut on video. Rob Reiner has made some great movies since The Princess Bride, but this still stands as his best movie in my book. The movie is a story within a story, where a sick child (Fred Savage) is visited by his grandfather (the wonderful Peter Falk), who reads him the story of The Princess Bride. That story, which centers around a young couple (Robin Wright and Cary Elwes, before he started playing bad guys in films), madly in love, torn apart and brought together, is filled with action, romance, and some of the sharpest, funniest, most quotable dialogue ever written. The actors within the story are spectacular: Mandy Patinkin as a drunken swordfighter trying to avenge the death of his father, Wallace Shawn as the shrill leader of the group who kidnaps Princess Buttercup (Wright, doing a spot on British accent), and Andre the Giant as the "hippopotanic landmass" Shawn uses to do the more physical work. The Princess Bride may look like a kids movie, but beneath the conventional story line lies something far better, an adult fairy tale that speaks to the kid in all of us but hits us on an older, wiser emotional level.

James Cameron Submission #2. Cameron had just started his legend two years earlier with The Terminator, a classic B movie slice of sci-fi, and then Fox had the balls to hand him the reigns to the Alien franchise, and in the process he took action movies to the next level. Made for what now seems like chump change ($20 million, one tenth of Titanic's budget), Cameron sends Alien's sole survivor Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) into deep space for 57 years, only to wake up and find everyone she knew has passed on. To make matters worse, the planet where she encountered the first alien has been colonized. I have never squirmed so much watching a movie as I did watching this. If you can, check out the laserdisc edition, which has extra footage showing Ripley's daughter and Newt's family.