Top 50 Independent Movies
I’m stealing this from Tom’s blog, to buy time while I put together this week’s DVD list.
Empire Magazine’s 50 Greatest Independent Films. I’ve seen 12 of them.
Bold the ones you’ve seen and liked.
Strike the ones you’ve seen and which you didn’t like or which are just plain overrated.
Italicize the ones you haven’t seen but want to.
Underline the ones you haven’t seen and don’t want to.
Don’t do anything to the ones you’ve never heard of.
After the break!
1. Reservoir Dogs
2. Donnie Darko
3. The Terminator
4. Clerks
5. Monty Python’s Life of Brian - I’ve only seen a couple pieces of it, but never the whole thing
6. Night of the Living Dead
7. Sex, Lies, and Videotape
8. The Usual Suspects
9. Sideways
10. Mean Streets
11. Bad Taste
12. Eraserhead
13. Memento -Great movie.
14. Stranger Than Paradise
15. Blood Simple
16. She’s Gotta Have It
17. City of God
18. Withnail and I
19. Lone Star
20. Slacker
21. Roger and Me
22. Nosferatu
23. The Evil Dead -That’s right. I’ve never seen it. ARMY OF DARKNESS is the only one I’ve ever seen in the series, and I thought that one was overrated.
24. Happiness
25. Drugstore Cowboy
26. Lost in Translation
27. Dark Star
28. In the Company of Men
29. Bad Lieutenant
30. Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song
31. Pink Flamingos
32. Two Lane Blacktop
33. Shallow Grave
34. The Blair Witch Project - Didn’t hate it. Won’t ever watch it again, but I enjoy experiments in storytelling
35. THX-1138
36. Buffalo ‘66
37. Being John Malkovich - Probably a bit overrated, but I enjoyed it.
38. Grosse Point Blank -I actually have the DVD. Got it on sale for five bucks once. Need to watch it.
39. The Passion of the Christ
40. The Descent
41. Dead Man’s Shoes
42. Swingers
43. Shadows
44. Amores Perros
45. Mad Max
46. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
47. Blood Feast
48. Cube
49. Run Lola Run
50. El Mariachi
November 15th, 2005 at 10:39 pm
A few semi-random comments:
Am I weird in thinking that, of the movies I’ve seen on this list, the two best are Monty Python’s Life of Brian and The Passion of the Christ?
Dark Star is a low-key ’70s sci-fi spoof; if you like black humor, you might want to give this movie a shot.
THX-1138 is overrated, but pretty good. The ending makes the movie, unlike (seemingly) most modern movies where the ending is the weakest part.
Was anyone else put off by the jarring (IMO) shift in tone at the climax of El Mariachi, similar to how the climactic showdown in The Great Mouse Detective seemed to come from a different, darker movie? (And that’s probably the only time El Mariachi and The Great Mouse Detective will be mentioned in the same sentence.)