Entertainment Weekly just came out with their List of the 100 best movies of the past 25 years (1983-2008). I have a love/hate relationship with EW and lists (mostly hate), but I'll be a sonuvabitch if I didn't open the rag and flip directly to that page to check out the damage (like an alcoholic at a dinner party who can't NOT notice what everyone else is drinking, lists are pop-culture's crack, you just can't say no).

So, screw it - (as with all lists, it is their utter subjectivity and relativity that makes them fun/ridiculous/stupid/alluring) - here are EW's Top 10:

1) Pulp Fiction (1994)
2) The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001-2003)
3) Titanic (1997)
4) Blue Velvet (1986)
5) Toy Story (1995)
6) Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)
7) Saving Private Ryan (1998)
8) The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
9) Die Hard (1988)
10) Moulin Rouge (2001)

To my surprise, I didn't have huge problems with their choices. Hannah and Die Hard seem to be reaching a bit, Titanic and Ryan are amazing technical achievements but I really don't care to see them again (blah, blah, blah) - but, more than anything, EW's list made me think about my own, personal celluloid faves.

(Interestingly, most All Time Lists out there don't even register a film made after 1982 until around #30 or so - with the usual suspects being Goodfellas or Toy Story or Pulp Fiction...It's kind of like, yeah, yeah, I know, I know - the ‘70s were awesome, the big studio classics were made over 50 years ago, I get it - but, hey, these past 25 years are yours and mine, right?! And, damn-straight, if they weren't too shabby...).

Without further ado, here is my List:

1) Pulp Fiction (1994): this choice reeks of cliché-ism, one could argue that Jackie Brown is actually Tarantino's best work, but, hell, Fiction simply Is. That. Good.
2) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004): best modern love story I've ever seen, Charlie Kaufman, Michael Gondry, Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet all do their best work to date
3) Fight Club (1999): overwhelms you with its thrilling, beautiful savagery, David Fincher, Brad Pitt, and Edward Norton form a holy trinity of cool, they put a choke-hold on the Gen-X zeitgist and don't let up for air

4) Do the Right Thing (1989): Public Enemy's Fight The Power, Mookie, Radio Raheem, Sweet Dick Willie - nuff said
5) The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001): no one thought it could be done, but Peter Jackson knocked it out of the park (3 X!)
6) Mulholland Drive (2001): Blue Velvet gets more love, MD stays in your mind forever
7) sex, lies, and videotape (1989): Steven Soderbergh's best film, still
8) Magnolia (1999): Boogie Nights and There Will Be Blood are monsters, but Magnolia is the one that cuts deepest and hardest
9) The Player (1992): the ‘70's maverick kills Hollywood with a smile, opening tracking shot is still a mind blower
10) Requiem for a Dream (2000): Darren Aronofsky's talent detonates in a tour de force of visual mastery that leaves you begging for mercy

*** Honorable mentions: Waking Life, The Usual Suspects, The Big Lebowski, Memento, Sideways, Half Nelson, Goodfellas, The 40 Year-Old Virgin, Boyz n the Hood, Platoon...

So, there it is...Go ahead, shoot me.

I deserve it (probably).

What's your List, then?!

by Matthew Sidney Long