It’s appropriate that this completely self-serving and subjective list of my favorite movies be a starting point for this website. Lists say a lot about a person. What this list says about me, exactly, I will leave to the judgment of all two of the site’s readers (pardon me for getting optimistic).
All I’ll say in self-examination is that I’m a brat born of the eighties and nineties, my primary love will always be twisted and violent romance movies, and I can only guess that I’m as tonally uneven and all-over-the-place as the films on this list.
I don’t necessarily consider all of the movies on this list to be the greatest ever made (that’s another list). These are the films that hit me at an early age, influenced me immeasurably, and that I still return to from time to time and find reasons to love all over again.
These films are my personal favorites. Every time I write something on this site that completely baffles you, just refer to this list and it should all make sense.
1. Edward Scissorhands (1990)
Edward Scissorhands is Tim Burton’s career-defining film. It’s a tragicomedy, fantasy, suburban satire, a sad Christmas film, and a beautifully sensitive tale about teenage alienation all rolled into one.
The simplicity and brilliance of Caroline Thompson’s screenplay resonate with just about any form of discrimination (sexism, racism, homophobia, etc.) that any “outcast” has ever experienced. Edward Scissorhands is a universal fable that is funny, beautiful, sad, astute, and, at heart, uncompromisingly real.
2. Wild At Heart (1990)
I honestly can’t choose between the three David Lynch films that I consider to be his best: Blue Velvet, Wild At Heart, and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. This is probably because Lynch doesn’t have a definitive masterpiece. The world of David Lynch and his career as a whole is all one big experience.
If I had to choose, however, I would choose Wild At Heart because it’s the greatest ride Lynch ever created. The film is fast, funny, beautiful, violent, sexual, absurd, daring, tonally all over the place, and completely off-the-rails. It’s a million movies in one, and it’s the most colorful and fun film America’s weirdest director has ever helmed.
3. Natural Born Killers (1994)
Like David Lynch, it’s not easy to choose between one of my three favorite Oliver Stone films: Platoon, JFK, and Natural Born Killers. Narrowing it down to just one, however, I would have to choose Natural Born Killers. JFK may be his greatest accomplishment and Platoon may be his most heartfelt and earnest one, but Natural Born Killers is easily the most daring and intensely ambitious film he has ever created.
Natural Born Killers smacks its audience across the face repeatedly with extreme, sensationalized violence. It thrills them with the same carnage that it’s simultaneously vilifying. It’s the ultimate cinematic ora bora. Natural Born Killers eats itself with its own point, but… that’s kind of the point, isn’t it?
4. Blade Runner (1982)
Which version? Take your pick. The film always worked for me, though I’ll probably go with the most recent “definitive” Final Cut. Any cut will do, however, as they are all different variations of a perfectly paced, ingeniously atmospheric, and wholly entrancing film experience.
Blade Runner is the Citizen Kane for twenty-first-century filmmakers. I can forgive Ridley Scott for the many bumps in his eclectic career and still call him one of my favorite filmmakers largely because of Blade Runner.
5. Heathers (1989)
Heightening teenage social class wars through darkly absurd satire, Heathers is as offensive as it is astute, as childish as it is sophisticated. Director Michael Lehmann’s flawless handling of Daniel Waters’ calculatedly tonally imbalanced screenplay is as impressive as it is unprecedented.
Heathers, though heavily rooted in the eighties, is timeless. It’s just as funny, shocking, and astute today as it has ever been. The film is, to date, the ultimate cinematic summation of the high school experience for any time period or any place.
6. Brazil (1985)
Terry Gilliam’s Brazil is an absurdist social satire, a dystopian science fiction nightmare of Kafkaesque/Orwellian proportions, and one of the biggest-budget personal art projects of all time.
It is unrelenting, hilarious, beautiful, and bleak. Perhaps second only to Blade Runner, Brazil’s influence on modern-day science fiction films is just as indisputable, though perhaps not quite as recognized.
7. Something Wild (1986)
Director Jonathan Demme and screenwriter E. Max Frye’s Something Wild showcases what is, perhaps, the single greatest tonal shift in all of cinema history. Since this shift revolves around the entrance of the great Ray Liotta in his first major screen role, it is all the more memorable of a moment.
Something Wild starts off as a screwball comedy, then effortlessly turns into an intense thriller that examines the dark side of American life. Demme’s trademark blend of thrills, color, and humanity is on full display in the film. Melanie Griffith, Jeff Daniels, and Liotta all deliver some of the best performances of their careers under Demme’s flawless direction.
8. Raising Arizona (1987)
One of the few eighties comedies executed with truly sophisticated cinematic technique, Raising Arizona is the Coen Brothers at their best. If you try to make too much sense of the film’s surreal slapstick comedy, you’ll miss the point. If you don’t pay attention to its finer details, however, you’ll miss what’s so special about it.
As a young and infertile couple that kidnaps a baby, Holly Hunter is lovably insane and Nicolas Cage is in the absolute prime of the youthful/experimental/unabashedly brazen period of his career.
9. True Romance (1993)
Although he didn’t direct it, True Romance will always be the truest and purest thing that Quentin Tarantino has ever written for the screen. Never again will he be the lonely, penniless geek without a girlfriend who wrote it. Now, he’s Quentin Tarantino, a brand more than a filmmaker, albeit one who still manages to churn out some great products from time to time.
True Romance is not the most accomplished or mature thing Tarantino has ever written. In fact, it’s essentially an adolescent male fantasy brought to life without the influence of wisdom or experience. But that’s what’s so great about it! True Romance makes no apologies for its own comic book semi-reality. It is a movie with a young man’s heart. It is a joyous, carefree, confetti- and blood-soaked joyride. Only a filmmaker as accomplished, experimental, sincere, and wonderfully mad as Tony Scott could execute such a brilliantly and ingeniously immature work of art.
10. Robocop (1987)
Although it’s not normally identified as such, Paul Verhoeven’s Robocop is one of the best American satires ever made. It continues to be as relevant today as it has ever been. The film may be set in 2024, but the target is the time period in which it was made: the 1980s. Inhuman corporations rule the world of the film, more concerned with efficiency and profit than with ethics or humanity.
Robocop plays like the sci-fi b-picture that its premise and title suggest. Hyper-violent and excessive in every way, the film also maintains a silly and playful tone throughout its duration that is wholly self-aware. Verhoeven uses all of these qualities to create a thinly veiled mask, behind which is a film that is cerebral, astute, and undeniably thought-provoking.
Honorable Mentions: Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, The Grifters, L.A. Story, Apocalypse Now, JFK, Tree of Life, Taxi Driver, Platoon, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Road Warrior, Blow Out, The Thin Red Line, Ed Wood, A Clockwork Orange, There’s Something About Mary, Lost Highway, Carlito’s Way, Fight Club, 12 Monkeys, Night of the Hunter, Man On Fire, Point Break Silence of the Lambs, Alien, Aliens, The Terminator, Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Spring Breakers, Enter The Void, Mad Max: Fury Road, Ask Me Anything, Badlands, Do The Right Thing, Summer of Sam, Pierrot Le Fou, The Cable Guy, A Fish Called Wanda, War of the Roses, Total Recall, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Zoolander, 8 ½, Reservoir Dogs, Throw Momma From the Train, Pulp Fiction, Touch of Evil, Gone Girl, Magnolia, Sicario, Willow, The Doors, The Dead Girl, Mary and Max, Candy, Raising Cain, Dressed to Kill
