Ryan Night’s Top 100 Movies: 60-51

We’ve reached the halfway point of the top 100 best movies list. Let’s all give ourselves a big round of applause. Clap clap. Clap. Clap. Good for us. Let’s continue.

For 100-91, click here.
For 90-81, click here.
For 80-71, click here.
For 70-61, click here.
For 50-41, click here.
For 40-31, click here.
For 30-21, click here.
For 20-11, click here.
For 10-1, click here.

60. Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure
Two local idiots are destined to save humanity by inventing the uniting philosophy of love and oneness embodied in the motto “Be Excellent to Each Other”, but in order to do so they first have to graduate high school. Because, obviously, saving the world is tremendously important, the future sends George Carlin back in time to give them a time machine they can use to cheat on their history paper. They travel around time and meet Billy the Kid, Socrates, Napoleon, etc. This is an amazing movie on so many levels, and it’s a huge influence on me. Its sequel is not on this list, but it’s worth watching, too, as it explores the afterlife. Highly, highly recommend.

59. Gattaca
This movie predicts the world of CRISPR style genetic modification before CRISPR was real and it shows the challenges CRISPR will present in terms of social class and free will. Ethan Hawke plays a guy who wants to be an astronaut but his genetics aren’t suited to be approved for that kind of job, so he makes a deal with Jude Law (someone with astronaut genetics, but who is disabled via an accident) to use Jude Law’s identity for a chance to go into space. He has to prove himself to overcome his genetic limitations. It’s a movie about determination, willpower and free will. Basically, how does a regular human compete with genetically modified superhumans and what are the troubling repercussions of genetic modification that defines a person’s destiny at birth?

58. Rules of Attraction
As I understand it, there’s a forgettable romantic comedy with a similar name called Laws of Attraction. This is not that. This is a relatively dark movie based off the book of the same name by Bret Easton Ellis. It’s a sort of pseudo-sequel to American Psycho and stars Patrick Bateman’s younger brother Sean, a New England trust fund kid during his college years. The basic theme of this movie is that people can’t know one another, that their private desires and the private selves which are hidden motivate people but, like a poker hand, are never revealed, nor can they be. Like Magnolia, below, this movie has an interesting structure that follows ~6 main characters who go to a New England university and is full of hopeless love triangles, gritty realities of love, and the general grimey veneer of hopelessness that pervades modern life. It’s very… Gen X, and it’s a great movie.

57. Magnolia
Paul Thomas Anderson is really hit or miss for me. For example, I love this movie, and There Will Be Blood (which is much higher on this best movies list), but I found Punch Drunk Love and The Master to be unwatchable. Magnolia is great, though. Structurally it’s very interesting because it’s about the interweaving lives of six or so main characters that intersect in satisfying and surprising ways. It’s a very down to Earth, ground-level meditation on creating empathy for characters who, at first glance, seem shallow and misguided. In a way, it’s a meditation on the overall complexity of humanity, and the further along the movie goes, the more you get a sense of why people do the strange things they do and act the way they act. I read once that the primary function of fiction in society is to build empathy by exercising the mental muscles of perspective and imagination (I believe I heard that from Steven Pinker, but I could be mistaken) . This movie sets out explicitly to do that. Also, regarding that idea (that fiction builds empathy), there’s a lot to be said about the devaluation of fiction in society vs. hard skills (STEM) as it relates to our decaying social fabric.

56. The Hudsucker Proxy
The second Coen Brothers movie on my best movies list, The Hudsucker Proxy is about a guy who moves to the big city and makes it. A guy who starts from the bottom and gets to the top. The only thing is he’s entirely beholden to forces beyond his control, that he’s unaware of, and he’s a relatively oblivious baffoon. The chairman of the board of a giant company has a plan to tank the company stock so he can buy it, and luckily for him a guy from the mailroom (Tim Robbins) proposes the company pivot to investing in a toy called the Hula-Hoop. The chairman, thinking this is the stupidest idea he’s ever heard, installs him as the new CEO, but unexpectedly the Hula-Hoop becomes a viral sensation. This is such a good movie. It’s moment-to-moment hilarious with a lot of throwbacks to old-time filmmaking choices like the dialog delivery of era-films like Some Like It Hot. The themes about corporate arrogance and upper class dismissiveness/blind spots, as well as the classic ‘money can’t buy happiness/power corrupts’ are on point, poignant and woven seamlessly into the script via clever situational comedy.

55. Hesher
Joseph Gordon Levitt stars alongside Natalie Portman and Rainn Wilson in this relatively unknown movie about, in a nutshell, grief. The main character is a boy who’s mother has died, and he’s deeply sad and grief stricken, as is his father, Rainn Wilson. During his sort of hazy fugue, he runs into Hesher, who is a chaotic, anarchistic street urchin. The mysterious Hesher sort of injects himself into the boy’s life as a surrogate older brother and the father, processing his grief with inability to care and passivity just sort of allows it to happen. Hesher, also grieving, is lashing out with anger and rebelliousness. The execution and acting in this movie are satisfying, it draws you in, as as a contemplation on grief and the different ways people deal with it, it’s quite successful. I really like this movie a lot. It’s relatable, very unique and definitely deserves a spot on my best movies list.

54. The Devil’s Advocate
Next up on the best movies list, Keanu Reeves stars in a movie where he becomes the devil’s lawyer. The devil, played by Al Pacino, offers a job to Keanu, a whip-smart, ambitious up and coming defense lawyer, in order to get a sick, perverse client who is obviously guilty off the hook for his crimes. Keanu makes a deal with the devil and, as expected, it turns out to lead to a great deal of destruction and sacrifice.

53. Brazil
Terry Gilliam’s Brazil is a movie about the dystopia of workaholism and class structure. It’s about a guy who punches in and out of his dull, day to day grind, dreaming of something more: romance, fulfillment and freedom. He decides to go for it and, stepping out of his station, he’s deemed insane, becomes a renegade and is ultimately severely punished for his actions. This movie combines a lot of the themes of 1984 with the surrealist, colorful, fantastical and somewhat, uh, confusing (in a good way) filmmaking style Terry Gilliam is known for.

52. Igby Goes Down
The invisible, trouble-making younger brother of a New York aristocratic family led by narcissistic parents runs away from boarding school to try to take control of his own destiny. Unfortunately for him, he’s subject to forces beyond his control — the powerful grip of his uncle and his uncle’s self-interest; the expectations of his parents; and the judgment of his older brother. He realizes no one in his circle actually loves or cares about him, but their attachment to him exists only in the context of their own self-interest. He longs for a purity of affection that is, perhaps, not real at all. This is a great movie and I really relate to it.

51. Eat Drink Man Woman
Finishing off this section of the best movies list, Eat Drink Man Woman was director Ang Lee’s debut movie in Taiwan, which is somewhat surprising because it’s a hardcore family drama and Ang Lee almost immediately pivoted to action movies for the remainder of his career. It’s about an old chef and his three daughters, and keeping the family together even though their lives are all drifting apart in wildly different directions. Not only is it a compelling family drama, it also contains some incredibly well-filmed cooking scenes and gives a fantastic, honest glimpse into the culture of modern China. Or, it was modern when I saw it, now it’s 20-years-ago China. Storytelling elements aside, and the story is really great, it gives a good look into China in terms of modernization & Westernization, the Eastern approach to family & humanizing the Chinese people beyond what we normally hear about China which is very government policy focused.

That does it for part five of the best movies list.
For 100-91, click here.
For 90-81, click here.
For 80-71, click here.
For 70-61, click here.
For 50-41, click here.
For 40-31, click here.
For 30-21, click here.
For 20-11, click here.
For 10-1, click here.