47. 13 Conversations About One Thing (2001)
Hey, look! A film directed by a woman!
“Faith is the antithesis of proof” is just one of dozens of great lines in this motion picture featuring many (13?) diverse storylines that eventually overlap and merge. The movie is very unstylized: there are no special effects in the usual sense. Still, the different storylines are very well played out. Each and every storyline could have been a full movie in and of itself, but it’s the interweaving of all the story lines that make it one of my favorites. The symbolism of red ink/blood in each storyline is a classic example of symbolism used to enhance the characters’ feelings.
Why not rate this film higher? Did I mention it’s not stylized? While that’s not necessarily a bad thing, this film has a daytime-TV drama feel about it.

46. Suspicion (1941)
Hey, look! Another Hitchcock film!
Is Johnnie trying to murder his wife, or isn’t he? No one could make answering this question as fun as Hitchcock. Cary Grant plays “Johnnie” so well, I couldn’t decide if he was innocent or guilty up until the very end. So many things keep the viewer from figuring out the answer. For example, Johnnie seems like a nice enough gu, but why would he be purchasing poisonous powder? And what’s with his late father – did Johnnie kill him? Hmm…
There are some great camera shots in this film, notably the tracking shot when Johnnie brings a glass of milk up a long, spiral staircase to his wife. His wife, by the way, is played by Joan Fontaine – who also starred in “Rebecca” – and was the only person to ever win an Oscar for acting in a Hitchcock film.
Why not rate this film higher? It took a while to grow on me. I didn’t think it was that special the first time I watched it, notably because the first half of the film is s o s l o w.

45. Festen (The Celebration) (1998)
Hey, look! A foreign language film!
I don’t speak Dutch, but I still loved this film. I was first introduced to this film in a film studies class, in which we watched a portion of it as a Dogme 95 film. What’s a Dogme 95 film? …you may ask. Essentially, it’s a film that subscribes to certain rules about film making; rules that attempt to create a very realistic film. For example, no fake lighting can be used: the film can only contain sunlight or lights that are actually in the film itself. The same thing goes for music: only diegetic music – music that can be heard by the characters – may be used. Thus, it is okay to show a character playing a CD, but it would be wrong to dub in music while editing. Also, the camera must be handheld at all time.
Not only does this film succeed in it’s attempt to be a Dogme ’95, it does it very well. While watching the entire film, I couldn’t help but think that the Dogme rules made the film even better. The raw, realistic style of shooting the film fit in perfectly with the raw, realistic sotry featuring a family reunion.
Oh yeah, the story itself totally rocks, too. It’s the patriarch’s 60th birthday party, but his children have not grown up in the way he had hoped. And one of his kids has some very dirty secrets to reveal during dinner.
Why not rate this film higher? Like “Suspicion”, this film is in no hurry to get moving. It takes a while to draw you in, and the first half of the film shows us unnecessarily long scenes of the different family members getting ready for the party. Some of thes scenes are interesting, as they pertain to the main story that develops later, but some of these little forays into storytelling seem totally irrelevant.

50. The X-Men Trilogy (2000-2006)
In between all the Lord of the Rings, Spider-Man, Hulk and Fantastic Four crap, there stands this trilogy of very very entertaining sci-fi flicks. Unlike Lord of the Rings, you don’t have to be an expert on the source material to understand what’s going on. And, unlike Spider-Man, Hulk and Fantastic Four, this series seemed to realize that, while special effects are lots of fun, they are nothing without an intelligently written story. As absurd as this may sound when talking about a trilogy involving mutants, the characters are believable and the multiple stroy arcs all fit together and ensure that there’s never a dull moment. The characters are not defined by their abilities, like in so many other sci-fi pictures, but by their personalities, and, indeed, many characters seem to embody such qualities as intelligence, coolness, insecutiry, sexiness and wisdom. Conversely, unlike much sci-fi drivel, no character is defined in terms of ‘good’ or ‘evil’. There are differing ideologies, to be sure, but no one is totally pure and wholesome of motives, and no one is there simply to be ‘the bad guy’.
I saw all three of these movies at the theater and, each time, I found myself wishing for more. I wish I could say that about more movies.
Why not rate this film higher? One reason why I wanted each movie to last longer was because a few of the storylines are frustratingly underdeveloped. There are so many loose ends that the third film seems to have trouble tying them all together. Oh – and that third film, while certainly a respectably entry in the series, is notably the weakest of the three. The great charcterizations of the first two take a back seat to explosions and quick-fixes.

49. Rebecca (1940)
My list is very Hitchcock-heavy (pun intended). So let’s start off with one right here at #49: Rebecca. Often cited as a “chick flick” in the Hitchcock canon, this black-and-white picture is the only Hitchcock film to win the Oscar for Best Picture.
The film begins in a humorous tone, and gets steadily more serious as details of the characters’ lives are revealed. It is, basically, the sotry of a young wife finding herself living very much in the shadow of her husband’s former (and now deceased) first wife. While the husband, Max, seems to love his new bride, it is the housekeeper that seems to have trouble accepting the new lady of the house. In between this triable of characters are plot twists, symbolism, and slases of humor typical of a Hitchock offering.
Fun game:Try to figure out the name of Joan Fontaine’s character.
Why not rate this film higher? Like I said, it’s a “chick flick” or, as much of a “chick flick” as Hitchcock ever made, and I am no chick. Also, time has been unkind to certain aspects of the dialogue and story; it’s a little bit dated. Oh, and it’s also a little too long, in my haughty opinion.

48. Ingen Numsil (2003)
During the first few minutes this film shows us just how vital the camel is to the well being of the family. So, it’s somewhat of a problem when one of the newborn camels is rejected by its mother. The remainder of the film is spent showing us the different ways in which the family tries to get the mother to accept its calf. The different approaches progressively get more extreme and time consuming. Some of the family’s efforts are comical, but most were quite frustrating.
The final fifteen minutes or so is the best portion of the film. And, if you’re gonna have a “best portion of the film”, it’s a good idea to put it at the end. I don’t want to give away the denouement, but suffice it to say the infant camel is only marginally hanging on to its new life by this point and the situation has become desperate. The fact that camels can cry was a revelation to me. Coupled with the somber music (the only soundtrack in the whole film!), the conclusion was quite emotional.
This film has to be one of the best examples I’ve seen of the style of cinematography perfectly matching the story being told. The slow, plodding intro gives us a glipmpse into the family’s pace of life. The bleak, minimal soundtrack and sparse editing match up nicely with the barren landscape upon which the story is told. The shots are often hand-held, giving it a more documentary feel, again befitting the life of the characters’. Indeed, the documentary feel is best exemplified by the fact that on a couple of occasions, non-actors in the background actually look right at the camera (typically a no-no). To give the viewer more of a “this is our family” feel, like so many home-made videos, the camera is, a couple of times, struggling to get the best shot of the action. A good example is during the camel’s birth: while shooting the scene, family members run right in front of the camera and the cinematographer is forced to dodge and weave around them in an effort to get the footage.
If you do see it, know that the film fades back in. Twice. And you’ll be glad you stayed for those two “footnotes”.
Why not rate the film higher? Well, as I’ve said, it’s a little on the slow side. A little too slow for my liking. And while it is a moving, passionate, story, it is just a smiple story. Not that that’s a bad thing, but it does lessen the impact on further viewings.

I love making lists, and one list I always wanted to make was a list of my all-time favorite films. I actually made such a list about 8 years ago, but for some stupid reason I divided the list by short films, animated films, comedies, dramas and silent films. This, plus the fact that my wife and I have watched about 500 motion pictures in the eight years since, has made me realize that I should make a new list.

So I did.

I didn’t show many people the list, because I was afraid of offending some people who may have a stricter conscience. But then I remembered, “the taking of offense is what rests in the bosom of the stupid ones” (Ecclesiastes 7:9). What strikes me as funny, anyways, is why someone who is – of feels they will be – offended would continue reading. So here’s the deal, if you are the kind of person who gets offended, then you are, by default, stupid. So stop reading this right now and go do whatever it is stupid people do.

I’m rather happy with my list. I have seen similar lists from other people and many of them seem skewed in a certain way; some lists have only major studio blockbusters, while other lists were are made by people who purposely exclude any popular motion picture. Some are heavily weighted towards drama, as if sci-fi and comedy are not worthy of being highly esteemed. Still other lists contain only movies from the last ten or twenty years.

In creating my list, I made sure not exclude anything simply because of its genre, age or length. Unfortunately, the list is still weighted towards films made during my lifetime, but I attribute that, not to a disdain for older films, but merely to the fact that I’ve seen newer films. I have every reason believe that if I were to see as many films from, say, the 1940s as I’ve seen from the 1990s, then there would be many more films from that decade on the list. As it is, there are multiple films from each decade since the 1940s.

To create the list, I sorted my list of feature length motion pictures I have seen by rank. I rank every motion picture I see on a scale of 0 – 10. On my list of over 1,100 motion pictures, there were only 22 that I assigned a perfect “10”. Those, of course, made the list. I then looked at the pictures I had assigned a “9”, and selected my favorites from those. I then looked at my list of short films I have seen, and selected my favorites from that list. This gave me a list of 63 pictures. I then had the difficult task of paring the list down to 50. The thirteen motion pictures that got chopped are (alphabetically): The Day the Earth Stood Still, Dumbo, Ed Wood, East of Eden, Falling Down, Gandhi, Monsters, Inc., The Ox-box Incident, Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, Roger and Me, The Shawshank Redemption, Superman (parts I and II), and Top Secret. Sorry, guys, you’re all excellent films in my opinion, but you just didn’t hold up against 50 others…

Oh – and one other thing, I took some liberties in lumping together series films. If my list contained multiple motion pictures from the same series, I listed them as one single entry. If I thought the series didn’t hold up well enough, then I just listed the film(s) from the series that were worthy. Thus, my list contains the X-Men trilogy as a single entry, but it contains only the original Back to the Future picture.

Over the next month or so, I’ll periodically make posts here discussing my fifty all-time favorite motion pictures. I’m gonna go in reverse order, starting at number fifty. I would love any comments regarding why you would or would not put these films on a similar (albeit hypothetical) list of your own.

One of the many things I keep track of is the current number one song. I started tracking this in 1991, way back when I had to look up the information in an actual paper version of Billboard magazine. Now, of course, I just check it out on line.
Some of my friends have commented that the songs that reach number one are generally lousy songs and the whole idea of tracking art based on popularity is a terrible thing to do. To an extent, I agree. But it is fun to see how songs that I like are doing on the charts, and, every once in a while, a song that I like actually ascends to the top spot. I think it also gives a nice snapshot of the music industry and pop culture at that particular time.
And that’s why I wanted to mention an interesting development in the Billboard charts and what it says about radio stations.
In the beginning, Billboard tracked songs based on their sales: both to individual customers and to juke box designers. Soon, the juke box portion was dropped and Billboard stuck exclusively with record store sales. For the most part, this was a good idea. But two problems developed. First, some songs became very popular but were never released as singles. Starting in the late 1960s, music acts would sometimes not release songs as singles, in an effort to keep the album “together”. Thus, songs like the Beatles’ “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”, Derek and the Dominoes “Layla” and Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” – which are among the most popular songs of that era – never appeared anywhere on Billboard’s 100 because they were never released as singles. The second problem was that, as CDs became more popular, the price of singles was no longer that much lower than a whole album. That is, people who liked only one or two songs of an album just figured they might as well buy the whole album since it was only a couple dollars more than the individual songs. Essentially, the idea of a single – which used to dominate record store – began to die.
In an effort to keep the charts relevant, Billboard decided to begin tracking radio airplay of songs. As singles became less and less popular, more weight was given to airplay than to actual purchases.
You probably know where this is heading. Radio stations, regardless of what they tell us, have no variety. They play a song over and over and over and over again. When they find an ‘artist’ they like, they play that ‘artist’s’ songs over and over again. Nowhere is this more evident than on the Billboard charts. First, take a look at how many songs went to #1 each year from 1984 and 1991:
Year…Number of #1 Hits
1984…19
1985…26
1986…30
1987…29
1988…32
1989…32
1990…25
1991…27
Look at that! Every year, there were at least 19 songs that became #1 hits, and in a few years there were more than thirty. Not one of these songs maintained the top spot for more than seven weeks. Some of these songs were hip-hop, others were rock, others were country. Once airplay began to be the deciding factor instead of the more democratic sales, look what happened:
Year…Number of #1 Hits
1992…12
1993…10
1994…9
1995…11
1996…8
1997…9
1998…15
1999…14
Starting in 1992 (the year airplay began to be factored in), there were only a handful of songs that went to number one each year; with some years having less than 10 new number one songs. Every year there were songs that stayed at #1 for more than 8 weeks, with some songs staying at #1 for 12, 14 and even 16 weeks (that’s four months without turnover)! Worse still, almost all of these songs were hip-hop/rap – often with an ‘artist’ replacing themselves in the top spot. For example, 4 of the 11 songs that went to #1 in 2004 were by Usher. And after an Outkast song spent 9 weeks at #1 in 2003, they were finally replaced by…Outkast . The variety had ceased to exist.
Needless to say, I was bummed. Checking out the charts each year was getting boring. Week after week, I would check the chart and rarely see a change. Would it ever get better?
Indeed, it did. Thanks to iTunes, the idea of a ‘single’ once again became popular. Suddenly, people were once again buying only single songs. By 2005, Billboard took notice and decided it was time to factor digital sales into the equation. Finally, the popularity of a song would once again be dominated – not by a handful of radio execs – but by the masses.
Was there a change? Yep. In 2006 there have been 18 songs that have gone to #1. That’s more #1s than any year since 1991 (and there are still two weeks left of the year – so there could still be more #1s). No song this year has spent more than seven weeks in the top spot. For the first time in years, I have actually heard of some of these songs and their performers.
So, here’s a tip of the cap to Billboard for redefining popularity to coincide with the times. Also, check out this page. I wrote a brief email to Fred Bronson (a column writer for Billboard’s charts) and he posted it, along with his response, on this page.