The best there is to offer (Part 1)

So I'm still here and going strong less than 24 hours later, who would have thought it! I decided that since I'm just setting off with this blog I would let everyone know about my favourite films (thereby immediately alienating anyone with different tastes to me, cheers to the 4 people who somehow stumbled onto this page and quickly left again) by giving a run down of my top 10 movies of all time. A nice simple task to get the ball rolling then... unsurprisingly this has not turned out to be the case with my cut down list hitting a stumbling block at 34, that's nearly 10 right? Damn!

Anyway I was determined to get it down to 10 so cruelly slashed away at some classics- sayonara Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs and Twelve Monkeys, adiós City of God, better luck next time Garden State and even the brilliance of Crash, Superbad, Inception, The Big Lebowski, American History X, Fight Club, Kick-Ass, Toy Story, In Bruges, trust me I could do this all day, were not enough to save them from the chop.

Which left me with the following 10 in particular order:

10. The Sixth Sense [1999]

I'll be honest, if I watched this film now it probably wouldn't make it into my top 10 so why does it merit it's place amongst the best? Especially with the fact that if I were to do a top 10 worst films ever, I'm sure M. Night Shyamalan would have a couple of entries. Timing is everything and this was one of the first films that truly stumped me. I did not work out what was going on right until the film told me and that very rarely happens to me. Add to that the storyline of a boy who can see the dead and it just scrapes itself into the top 10. Random fact... the colour red is used subliminally in the movie to relate to everything with connotations of being bad or evil).

9. Se7en [1995]

A story of a serial killer using the seven deadly sins to murder seemingly random people as detective Morgan Freeman and his rookie Brad Pitt fight to catch him before he can strike again- what's not to love about this? The film goes so much further than other odd-couple detective pairings with the relationship between them developing intensely alongside the plot. The killers methods add a dark depravity to the film not unlike some of the games from the Saw franchise giving Kevin Spacey lots to work with and boy does he pull off evil genius (dependant on your viewpoint) ever so well. Top that off with an excellent finish unlike many similar movies and David Fincher's Se7en is surely one of the best around.

8. Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels [1998]

Slight change of pace now with what can only be described as a gangster crime thriller with a strong sense of dark humour underbelly running throughout. Guy Ritchie produces another gem whereby four hapless Londoners get themselves in a spot of bother with the local mob boss which results in them having to pay off a half million pound debt and with only a week to do it in. What follows can only be described as chaotic as our four happy go lucky characters drag themselves into the crime world without ever really knowing what they are doing and leaving a wake of plot twists, cunning schemes and rip-off's that culminates towards the end with a whole lot of guns to the background music of Zorba the Greek. Not forgetting the scene with the much loved traffic warden leading me to say I could have summed up this film in one word... immense!

7. The Lion King [1994]

No list would be complete without just that little bit of Disney to brighten the day and this is where The Lion King wins hands down over other Disney films in my eyes. Surely a controversial statement for some there but not me! Aladdin and Robin Hood may run it close but The Lion King definitely has the whole package as far as Disney goes. Loveable characters, evil characters, lots of comedy and of course some classic songs to back it up. If you don't think 'hakuna matata' is one of the best of the Disney songs then please leave this blog, I'm not saying 'bear necessities' isn't right up there but add 'I just can't wait to be king' and your onto a winner. Now yes it could be argued that The Lion King absolutely ripped off Kimba the White Lion but still I love it all the same.

6. The Matrix [1999]

Granted the less said about the sequels the better (except the car chase in the second, that was class) but that is only because The Matrix was such an original movie in the first place that nothing was ever going to be able to top it. The sequels were destined to fail. I'm sure everyone knows the plot but just in case, Neo is the one who is destined to free humans from their machine captors who harvest the humans for their energy and imprison them in an artificial reality known as the Matrix. This movie brought us slow mo effects which is nearly enough in itself to place it in the top 10 but it made everyone bring up the reality 'am I real, are we real' debate, in school at least, for over a year and opened up a whole new perspective that I and others had rarely thought about before. Still waiting for the Wachowski Brothers to get back to their original best despite the very good V for Vendetta but they have some projects on the go so fingers crossed.

Well that's enough for now so I will leave you guessing at the rest until my next post...
[UPDATE: Click here for the second half]

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