There
... is ... another!
Yes.
Salty Chewbacca is back. My eighties movie challenge was tough, but exciting it
turned out. The Empire Strikes Back
defeated Raiders of the Lost Ark in the closest final yet to
earn the title of greatest eighties movie (not named Back to the Future) of all time. You could argue Raiders should have won (or The Princess Bride or Ghostbusters or The Goonies), but Empire
is truly deserving. It was such a fun (and difficult) tournament, that I
thought about never doing again. I didn’t think I could top it. Or have the
mental strength. But here I am!
And
what better theme to follow the eighties than, well, the decade that followed:
the nineties. Before I get to what made the list of 32, I should talk about
what didn’t and why. My eighties movies blog was all about fun and adventure,
so I figured I would do the opposite for my nineties movies blog: action and
violence! While searching for movies that fit this category, I started to
realize a pattern: most of the movies had first-time directors. So I started to
build the list around those. I also found that some movies were directed by
people who also had movies that made my eighties list. So I threw them in
there. To round out the list I figured I would include a few movies directed by
people who just missed making the list last time. It was starting to come
together!
So
now came the hard part: leaving movies out. For my eighties movie list I had
some guidelines. I liked those guidelines, so I decided to use them again. I
left out my favorite movie from the nineties, Before Sunrise. It wasn’t as hard a decision as leaving Back to the Future off my eighties list;
the director of Before Sunrise had
another movie that made more sense to be on the list. I already did basketball
movies, so no Hoop Dreams. I already
did Disney movies, so no Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, or The Lion King. The critically acclaimed
movies are always discussed, so no Schindler’s
List, The Silence of the Lambs, or Titanic. I thought it would be funny to snub Martin Scorsese again
like I did on my eighties list, so no Goodfellas.
My decision to lean towards action and violence meant I would have to leave off
some family movies that would have made the list otherwise, so no Anastasia, Babe, or Home Alone. At
this point I am guessing that everyone is going to hate my list ...
Trust
me, it’s going to be fun. There are some great movies on this list. Sure, I
left off Dead Alive, Mulan, and Tank Girl (sorry Rebecca!), but a John Cusack movie made the list
after somehow being excluded from my eighties movie list! It’s like he is
getting a shot at redemption ... which reminds me: how in the world did I leave
The Shawshank Redemption off this
list?
