My Favorite Movies

Amelie will brighten up your day, no matter how bad it was. Wonderful, funny, and charming in ways that only the magic of the movies can make us feel.

Casablanca is the reason you go to movies: to see a wonderful story that absorbs and makes you forget you are watching a film. Will forever be remembered as the greatest achievement to ever come out of the Hollywood studio system.

My first 5-star review of 2008 goes to Christopher Nolan's masterpiece The Dark Knight. I can't think of anything original to say other than what's already been said: Believe the hype this time around!!
First off, Heath Ledger, you are a genius. From here on now, when I think of The Joker, I will no longer think of Jack Nicholson, but of your brilliant, menacing, and deepy disturbing portrayal. You easily have the most memorable performance of the year, and you deserve an Oscar win! RIP.
The Dark Knight isn't so much a comic book movie as it is a crime thriller along the vein of Heat. In that sense, it redefines both the rules of a crime movie and a summer comic book film, and it ranks with the very best of them. Best film of 2008! Best Batman movie ever! Best comic book movie ever! I wanna see it again!

A masterpiece of satire. Man builds machine, and it operates exactly the way it was supposed to, and targets mankind as it's enemy. While the end might be a bit depressing, the journey to that end is undoubtedly hilarious.

Perfect, ingenious storytelling. The perfect gangster picture and one of the best films ever made.

I really don't know where to begin praising this film. It never hits a false note, and the dialogue is witty, and wonderful. All I can really say is see this movie. It will make you feel good, yet it touches on very relevant topics.

Big, sprawling adventure! Kurosawa's genius can't be denied.

I take it all back! I did not embrace this film on first viewing, but upon my second, it's time for me to recognize its greatness. The film is essentially a character study, and Daniel Day Lewis' portrayal as Daniel Plainview is one of the best performances in movie history! To say that without him this movie would have been different is kind of ignorant. Of course it would have been. But then, without Anthony Hopkins, The Silence of the Lambs would have been different. Without Liam Neeson, Schindler's List would have been different. This movie just realies more on his performance because it is all about his character. I'm still grounded that this film has serious narrative flaws, but they are balanced out by Lewis, and the sheer technical perfection that is on display. Anyone that cannot see an aspect of themselves in Plainview is surely not human.

A dark, hard-boiled, profoundly honest re-imagining of the western genre as well as a brilliant meditation on the brutality and everlasting quality of violence. Moving, disturbing, and deeply poetic.