Tag: the burbs

A Rebuttal to a Rebuttal: Favorite Equals Best, or, Why Back To The Future is Better Than The Godfather

donkey


John,

I’ve been interested in movies for as long as I can remember.  The story I tell is that Jurassic Park started it all.  It certainly didn’t hurt, but movies had definitely been on my mind for way longer than that.  And my parents and grandparents were both movie buffs, so when the AFI released their ill-conceived 100 Best Movies of the First 100 Years of Movies, it was the talk of our family for an entire Thanksgiving dinner.  I was ten or twelve at the time.  By the time I was fifteen, I had seen 92 of the movies listed.
Continue reading A Rebuttal to a Rebuttal: Favorite Equals Best, or, Why Back To The Future is Better Than The Godfather

‘Wanna Hang Out?’, or, Airheads is Better Than Dog Day Afternoon

airheads2


There’s an odd video on YouTube where Quentin Tarantino lists his 20 favorite movies that have come out since he became a director in 1992.  The video was made in 2009—making it a 17th year anniversary celebration of him being a director.  The arbitrariness of this echoes The Simpsons’ 138th episode spectacular (although that was a joke).

His list is surprising—in good ways and bad.  I love that he lists The Matrix and also makes a point to disregard the sequels “that serve only to tarnish the mythology of a badass movie”.  And with Jan de Bont’s Speed, he adds a clever caveat that we “forget everything that happens after the bus stops.”  But then, for some reason, he names Woody Allen’s Anything Else—one of his least significant movies.  (It’s also kind of a bummer since Allen’s best movie, Deconstructing Harry, came out in ’97—well within Tarantino’s arbitrary 17-year timespan.)
Continue reading ‘Wanna Hang Out?’, or, Airheads is Better Than Dog Day Afternoon