Top Fives

Last night at work, in an effort to stave off the boredom of a Saturday close I looked through the top 50 films on imdb by votes, and counted up how many I'd seen and compared my score (38) to my co-workers. Laura scored a respectable 31, the GM an amazing 39, (if only I'd seen Lord of The Rings I'd have beat him) and Sadie scored 7, I know right :-0 shocking!


But looking at the list there were obvious biases toward recent releases, all of the LOTR films were included, as well as Toy Story 3 and Inception. All good movies but not 'Top 50 films' in my opinion. This is a natural result of the fact that people on imdb vote on new movies more than the classics. Although a few B&W films and even a silent Chaplin picture made it.


This led to a discussion about personal favourites, and the difference between 'best films' and 'favourite movies'. It's the difference between the 'Film' that wins the Oscar and the 'Movie' that you can watch a dozen times or at any time.


That's the trouble with 'best' lists of creative works, there are too many ways to judge, by votes, by how much money it made, critical response, and you'll never please everyone anyway. Something will be left off or included that offends someone. That's why I'm not going to go there. I won't list a 'Definative Top 5' It's so hard to choose just five. Maybe a 'Top 5 by genre', still very hard. What I'll do is give you MY top 5 by genre. It won't please everyone. So please go and write your own.

Action
Speed
Die Hard
Bad Boys
Fightclub
The Dark Knight


Sci-Fi
Back to the Future
The Matrix
Aliens
Star Trek (re-boot)
Mad Max


Horror
Night of the Living Dead
Jaws
Battle Royale
Silence of the Lambs
Psycho


Comedy
Shaun of the Dead
Home Alone
Groundhog Day
50 First Dates
Liar Liar


Drama
The Shawshank Redemption
Trainspotting
Juno
Cast Away
Rain Man


Documentary
Bowling for Columbine
Supersize Me
Life After People
Trekkies
Exit Through the Giftshop




I know there are omissions, even this list was hard to pare down. I even had to leave out High Fidelity (the related thing for today) and several other worthy films. Just to be clear these are my favourite 'Movie' picks not my best 'Film' choices.

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