My Favorite Movies

This is the movie that made me want to move to Los Angeles and make movies. Which I did. So this movie literally changed my life. That's a pretty good movie, I'd say.

Absolutely one of the best film noir movies ever made. Each scene is rich with snappy dialogue and true suspense. Not a single character comes off as flat or stale, and thanks to its sheer grittiness, it holds up as well as it did 65 years ago. This is one of the movies I could watch again and again and never get tired of it.

Operatic, iconic and cool as hell. This is the western at its pulpy, gritty best. Sergio Leone is a master at creating vast, empty landscapes and then creating men big enough, grotesque enough and tough enough to live in it.

Yes, Heath Ledger was brilliant - and he was. But if Aaron Eckhart had died tragically, we'd all be talking about how brilliant he was. If Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, even William Fichtner had died, we'd be talking about them. Truly a movie that works on every single level. It's a comic book movie, an action movie, suspense in the truest sense. When the biggest criticisms I can give, if pressed are, "In that one scene, that one moment was a bit much," we're talking an amazing movie.

One part comedy, one part film noir, one part tragedy and one part documentary. This film holds up even better on repeat viewings. The Coen Brothers transform the Midwest into a barren, desolate landscape in which simple people become cartoon characters who are nonetheless more human in their isolation. This is far and away one of the best films of the '90s.