Best casts

This list has been the toughest for me because how do you choose "best cast"? Is it the greatest collection of talent? Is it the greatest collection of performances? Hopefully it's a mixture of the two, as you have collected great talent who then give great performances, but that's not always how it works out. Sometimes a cast of nobody's, or even non professional actors, give great performances, while all-star casts deliver a flop of work. So that was my dilemma coming into the creation of this list. I decided to honor a bit of all of it. Let me know what you think!

I'd like to make an honorable mention to all Robert Altman movies. I am not much of an Altman fan as a storyteller, but his casts were impeccable pretty much every single time out. Can't pick just one cast, he always had great ones.

And I was going to include Big Night, my favorite movie, but I write about it so much that I wanted to highlight other films. So just consider it an honorary #1 on this list.

10. Movie 43

One of the greatest collections of talent comes in the form of one of the worst movies ever made. It's not a bad idea, necessarily, because Movie 43 is an anthology film. 14 short comedy films put together for feature run time. It's like an episode of SNL. It's like a baaaaaad episode of SNL. Many of the shorts aren't terrible as sketch ideas, but the execution of those ideas is awful. It's obvious many of the cast didn't really want to be in it, and from behind the scenes stories they were often guilted into shooting just a couple of days so that they'd stop getting hassled. The results show on screen. Still, with a cast highlighting Oscar winners like Halle Berry, Kate Winslet, and Emma Stone, as well as talents like Hugh Jackman, Chris Pratt, Richard Gere, Terrence Howard, Dennis Quaid, Naomi Watts, Kristen Bell, and many more, it should be on this list.

9. Out of Sight

One of the first movies that came to mind when making my initial shortlist for this topic was Steven Soderbergh's remake of Ocean's 11. But then I started looking and saw that the superior movie in Soderbergh's catalog is the great Out of Sight, which boasts a cast including George Clooney, Jennifer Lopez, Don Cheadle, Viola Davis, Steve Zahn, Albert Brooks, Nancy Allen, Luis Guzman, and Catherine Keener. It's not just a great movie, but has an astounding cast even if you only look at their names and not their terrific work in the movie.

8. Nine lives
Rodrigo Garcia's Nine Lives is another anthology movie, but unlike Movie 43, it's not terrible. It's made up of nine short films, all filmed in one shot, all focused on a short moment in one woman's life. The movie is filled to the brim with great actresses doing great work, my favorite being Robin Wright, who stars in the section "Diana", where she runs into her old flame, Damien (Jason Isaacs), and all this past pain and love comes up to intrude on their seemingly perfectly happy lives. It's an extraordinary piece of storytelling and acting, and it's not the only one, as the other stories are filled up with great actors like Sissy Spacek, Glenn Close, Holly Hunter, Kathy Bates, Dakota Fanning, Amy Brenneman, Ian McShane, Amanda Seyfried, Joe Mantegna and others. A great cast and a movie definitely worth checking out.

7. Crash
Ah, Crash. It's become a joke. It's become a whipping boy for every "the academy fucked up again" story writer. I saw it when it came out because it had some really good actors in it and I loved it. It wasn't universally loved, but it was well received and didn't become hated until it beat the more beloved Brokeback Mountain at the Oscars. But even for those who dislike the movie it's hard to argue against the cast. Matt Dillon does the best work of his career, Terrence Howard gives a really thoughtful and sensitive performance, Thandie Newton finally delivered on the promise she'd shown before, even Ryan Phillipe is good. And there are so many little roles here and there by actors like Keith David and Tony Danza that are really good and add to the overall tapestry of characters on display. And I hadn't even mentioned Don Cheadle, Michael Peña, Larenz Tate, Sandra Bullock (who didn't do anything better until Gravity), Ludacris, Brendan Fraser,

6. The Thin Red Line
Terrence Malick assembled his greatest cast in The Thin Red Line. Now, I feel like it's the least of his movies, but it's the best of his casts. Sean Penn, John Cusack, Nick Nolte, and Elias Koteas all do really good work in the meandering pseudo-philosophical movie, and they're surrounded by a ridiculous amount of terrific actors like John Travolta, Woody Harrelson, Jim Caviezel, George Clooney, John C. Reilly, Adrien Brody, and Jared Leto. The problem becomes that some of them aren't great in the movie (Travolta) or their presence is distracting. Clooney, in a blink and you'll miss it cameo, was supposed to have a much larger role, and when Malick informed him of how little his part became in the final cut, he asked Malick to cut him out completely so that his presence wouldn't be a distraction for the audience. Brody's character was supposed to be the main character, according to the script, but with Malick's approach of shooting an ungodly amount of footage and then finding the movie in the editing room, his work was cut out almost completely. But still, as uneven as some of the work is, the collection of talent is nearly unmatched.

5. Pulp Fiction
A terrific cast all the way around, featuring the best work of almost everyone's career, Pulp Fiction had to end up on this list. Samuel L. Jackson, John Travolta, and Bruce Willis are the leads of the movie, and are all tremendous in their different ways. They are all doing some of their best work. Ving Rhames, Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Eric Stoltz, Maria de Medeiros, Amanda Plummer, Rosanna Arquette, and of course the two standouts of the supporting cast, Christopher Walken and the justly Oscar nominated Uma Thurman are all up to the standards set by the leads. Of course it's Quentin Tarantino's directorial style and writing that lifts the movie up into the stratosphere, but this cast is a big reason it is so good in the first place.

4. JFK
Although I'm not as crazy about the film as some other people, JFK is a terrific movie with an astounding cast. Even with the occasionally wooden Kevin Costner in the lead role, when your supporting cast is filled out with names like Donald Sutherland, Tommy Lee Jones, Joe Pesci, Kevin Bacon, Sissy Spacek, Gary Oldman, Jack Lemmon, John Candy, Walter Matthau, Vincent D'Onofrio, and others, how much more do you need to say? This is simply one of the greatest casts ever assembled. And while it doesn't have as powerful of work as writer/director Oliver Stone got in other movies (like Tom Berenger in Platoon or Tom Cruise in Born on the Fourth of July), as an overall ensemble of actors, Stone never bested it.

3. The Departed
Martin Scorsese's best cast isn't in service of his best movie, but it's one of his most compulsively watchable. Leonardo DiCaprio takes his piercing blue eyes and tells his characters story looking shiftily from underneath his furrowed brow. Matt Damon grounds his Boston bravado in everyday believability in one of his best performances (and I think VERY highly of Damon as an actor, so that's saying something). Mark Wahlberg and Alec Baldwin go totally over-the-top, but sell it so well that it still fits the overall film. Vera Farmiga is intelligent and mysteriously sexy and loving and strong and all kinds of other things in her best work. Sadly, the great movie tough guy Ray Winstone is hidden under an inconsistent accent and so loses some of his power. And Jack Nicholson gives into all his work instincts. It's still a good performance because Nicholson is one of our greatest actors, but his performance is the weak link in this otherwise impeccably acted movie.

2. Cloud Atlas
A great cast all acting across many timelines, roles, and sometimes even genders gives us one of the best casts you could imagine. While my favorite of the cast is Doona Bae, Tom Hanks, Susan Sarandon, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Hugo Weaving, Jim Sturgess, Ben Whishaw, James D'Arcy, Keith David, and Hugh Grant all give performances that ground this time hopping movie in emotional realities that fit each and every one of their characters and stories. It's a movie that must be experienced to truly appreciate. I liked how Roger Ebert said it, which was "Even as I was watching "Cloud Atlas" the first time, I knew I would need to see it again. Now that I've seen it the second time, I know I'd like to see it a third time". It's one of the great movies, and with a collection of top actors doing amazing work (including one of the rare Tom Hanks villain roles, in which he's deliciously evil), Cloud Atlas has to be this high on the list.

1. The Godfather
The best mix of great ensemble talent, all giving great performances is here in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather. Al Pacino and Marlon Brando highlight the cast, of course, but I think Diane Keaton's sensitive work as Kay gets overlooked. She's really wonderful in the movie. John Cazale, James Caan, and Robert Duvall are tremendous as the other "sons" of Brando's Vito. Cazale is the softer souled Fredo, Caan the hot headed Sonny, and Duvall the even tempered, intelligent Tom Hagen, the adopted son of the family. All fit their roles perfectly. Duvall, in particular, shines as Tom. Although Caan's role of Sonny is the flashy one, the scene in which Duvall tells Brando of Sonny's death is heartbreaking and perfect work from each actor.

Brando does some of the greatest work of his considerable career as Vito, giving the role the intelligence and gravitas that it requires, but also the sensitivity in needs. Pacino's Michael shares his father's brain, but has a character arc towards the cold hearted Michael we see in the second film. Pacino has the most to play in his character, as Michael changes the most of anyone, and I still think it's probably only second to his work in Dog Day Afternoon as the best work from my favorite actor.

All of that said, the smaller roles being filled out by actors like Sterling Hayden as the police chief, Al Lettieri as the drug dealing Sollozzo, Talia Shire as the victimized Connie, Richard S. Castellano as Peter Clemenza, Lenny Montana as Luca Brasi, and Abe Vigoda as Tessio. It's a perfectly cast movie in each and every role. It's what puts this movie as the #1 on my list because of the amazing talent in each role, but mostly because there's not a single line reading or character that isn't perfect.

Top 25 of the 1990's

25. Lessons of Darkness (1992) directed by Werner Herzog

Lessons of Darkness is only about 50 minutes long, and one of the best science fiction films I've seen. Herzog filmed in the aftermath of the Iraq invasion of Kuwait in the early 90's, showing bombed out buildings, oil fields aflame, broken people, and more remnants of the destruction of war. No special effects. How Herzog frames the story, however, is that of an expedition onto a foreign planet, and seeing the destruction that a war has brought to this strange land. Many of the images are barely recognizable as our planet. Others you don't want to recognize as something we've done to each other and ourselves. Herzog narrates in that odd, beautiful Bavarian accent of his, but the narration is minimal. Mostly he uses classical music pieces from Wagner, Schubert, Verdi and others. It's a really extraordinarily transportational experience, as Herzog takes us to another land and an often breathtaking and heartbreaking journey. Another filmmaker could've easily made this movie feel exploitative of the war, but Herzog makes it allegorical. He shows us ourselves by trying to show us something else. He plays on our emotions and our imaginations, making the movie even more impactful than it would've been as a straight documentary about the war. I found myself speechless and slightly disturbed by the movie, in a good way. It's quietly operatic, contemplative without being boring or too heady. It's a simple movie. Extraordinary in every way. One of Herzog's best, and that's really saying something.

24. Dances with Wolves (1990) directed by Kevin Costner

Unfortunately, Dances with Wolves' reputation (especially among movie buffs) has been damaged over the years because it beat Goodfellas for the Best Picture and Best Director Oscars. While I personally would've also given both of those awards to Scorsese, that doesn't mean that Dances with Wolves isn't a worthy choice. Although at its core it is still the "white man, savior of the Native people" storyline, it's done with more care and nuance than others of that kind (Avatar, The Last Samurai, etc.). We hear a lot of the Native's language (Lakota and Pawnee), and the movie takes great pains to show us the slowly evolving relationship between Kevin Costner's Lt. Dunbar and the Sioux, led by Graham Greene's Kicking Bird. We see them exchanging words, slowly learning each others language, and forging bonds that help both of them as the white man is encroaching on the Native's lands and lives. A big beautiful epic, it's the kind of movie (especially alongside Costner's terrific Open Range) that makes you wish the filmmaker would make more westerns.

23. L.A. Confidential (1997) directed by Curtis Hanson

L.A. Confidential is a tribute to all the great noir movies of the 1940's and 50's, while also being a prime example of the genre itself. Adapted from the great James Ellroy novel, this movie has an amazing collection of great actors in it. Led by our lead trio of Guy Pearce, Kevin Spacey, and Russell Crowe we go down a rabbit hole of sex, drugs, corruption, violence, and the beginning age of paparazzi. It's a seedy and somehow still beautiful town, populated with great characters played by the likes of David Straithairn, James Cromwell, and Kim Basinger in a role that she won an Oscar for, even if she's probably the weak link in the cast (which says more about the cast than it does about her, by the way). It's a big, convoluted web of deceit and destruction, but that's what the noir genre always gave us. It should've been the big winner at that years Oscars, but got overshadowed by the juggernaut of Titanic. But I think time has been kind to the movie because it's been 20 years and it's the movie from 1997 that ends up on this list. 

22. Close-Up (1990) directed by Abbas Kiarostami

Close-Up is a fascinating and brilliant look at a real life case in which a man claimed to be a famous Iranian director, impressed a family, only to have them find out that he wasn't that filmmaker and his subsequent trial for fraud. That may not sound like the most compelling movie, but Kiarostami's genius use of documentary and recreation footage (where the people played themselves), helps give everything an intrigue and strange atmosphere that kept me riveted. The story concerns Hossain Sabzian, a poor print shop worker who is obsessed with the movies, and is intentionally mistaken for famed Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf while on a bus one day. The woman who mistakes him, Mrs. Ahankhah, does so because he claims to be the filmmaker. But when she introduces him to her family, including her sons who also are passionate about film, the little lie takes on more weight, and Sabzian goes along with it, as this is seemingly the first time anyone has really listened to him. It makes him feel important instead of poor and worthless. He is listened to, seen, and respected. We can all sympathize with that feeling, I think.

Although he admits to taking some money from the family, that he asked for and they gave, he doesn't see himself as a criminal. He didn't intend to rob the family or anything, I think he was simply a little bit off in the head maybe, and lonely, and in need of the kind of attention he got from the Ahankhah's. Kiarostami was a master at getting believable and intricate performances from any actor, professional or not. This movie didn't need to be based on a true story for it to work. The "actors" carry the story and its themes perfectly, and it's an emotionally affecting movie in many ways. Close-Up has a lot to say about the needs of humanity and how we don't often get what we emotionally need. It says a lot about the nature of performance and what kind of performance we are all always giving, even when we're trying not to. It's a movie that will stick in my mind and will be there a long time. And I'm thankful for that.

21. The Big Lebowski (1998) directed by The Coen Brothers

Although Fargo is generally thought to be the Coen Brothers' masterpiece of the 90's, cult hit The Big Lebowski has long been the one that I prefer. I've probably watched it as much as the rest of the Coen's movies combined. Jeff Bridges, Steve Buscemi, and especially John Goodman keep me coming back to this bowling noir movie. Not quite a parody of the old detective noir genre, but more a twisted modern take on it, the movie works even when it doesn't make you laugh. But The Dude, Walter, and Donnie always have me cracking up, and then there's John Turturro's Jesus, Peter Stormare and the nihilists, Philip Seymour Hoffman's awkward Brandt, and of course Sam Elliot's The Stranger narrating the whole thing and occasionally losing his way. The Dude abides, man.

20. Hoop Dreams (1994) directed by Steve James

A wonderfully human look at the lives of two up and coming basketball stars in inner city Chicago in the late 80's early 90's. Hoop Dreams started as a 30-minute project looking at how 8th graders were recruited by suburban schools to play basketball, the project grew and grew until it became something totally different, the best documentary I've ever seen. A look at how the business of basketball, and of trying to find the next Michael Jordan, can chew up and spit out unsuspecting families and people, Hoop Dreams has a right to be angrier than it is. Director Steve James instead encompasses all the human emotions, even taking us into the life of one of the young men's mother as she works her way through nursing school to help provide for her family. It's a tough life for these kids, made tougher by the fact that neither was the next Michael Jordan (as most young men aren't). It may look like a doc about basketball, but really it's about life in America.

19. Malcolm X (1992) directed by Spike Lee

Spike Lee has said that Denzel Washington became Malcolm X during filming of the great biopic of the controversial leader. He said Denzel would often go off script for minutes at a time with an assurance and fire that were not his own. Once he would finish a speech and Spike would call cut, he'd ask Denzel where those words came from and Denzel would say "that was Malcolm." And I believe it. As much as we know the faces and voices of movie stars like Denzel, and he changes neither of them for this performance, I never once questioned that I was watching Malcolm, not Denzel, on screen. It's a scorching performance, and Spike doesn't let Denzel down, as the movie is a masterpiece as well. A huge epic biopic of one of the most prominent and complex leaders of our times, Lee also doesn't sugar coat or deify Malcolm. We see him be unnecessarily cruel to a white woman that wants to help him, simply because she's white. And Lee also shows us Malcolm growing when he visits Mecca and sees Muslims of all shapes, sizes, and colors worshipping in beautiful harmony together. He changes, he develops, he grows. Those are things not often seen in the biopic genre, and it's why Malcolm X may be the greatest of biopics.

18. Schindler's List (1993) directed by Steven Spielberg

I've put Ralph Fiennes' performance as Amon Goeth as one of the great villains in cinema history, but probably should've put Liam Neeson's Oskar Schindler as one of the great heroes as well (he was one of the last cuts I made to that list). Schindler isn't a perfect man, but he does great things to save more than a thousand people from slaughter at the hands of the Nazis. This movie is beautiful from an aesthetic perspective, the cinematography from regular Spielberg collaborator Janusz Kaminski (though this was the first time they worked together) is astounding, and it's John Williams' most beautiful score. The acting is top notch all around, and although the subject matter is the awful, the movie is about finding hope in the most hopeless of situations, so as a whole you don't come out depressed or oppressed by the movie. As Stanley Kubrick said, "the holocaust is about 6 million people who died. Schindler's List is about 1,100 who didn't." That doesn't mean that Spielberg turns away from the horror, just that he's not wallowing in it. It's ultimately and uplifting and inspiring movie. One of the best films from one of our best filmmakers.

17. Swingers (1996) directed by Doug Liman

Swingers is an important movie for me in that I saw it as a young teenager, and it was one of the first low budget non-Hollywood type of movies I ever loved. It's funny to think of it now as non-Hollywood, since so many of the people involved went on to big careers, but at the time it was just a $200k movie that no studio wanted to make with the movie's writer starring with a bunch of his friends and being directed by a guy, Doug Liman, who'd only made one movie before.

Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn play Mike and Trent, a couple of struggling actors who occasionally get auditions, but mostly just hang out, going to clubs all around LA with their friends Rob (Office Space's Ron Livingston), Charles (Alex Desert), and Sue (named after the Johnny Cash song "A Boy Named Sue", played by Patrick Van Horn), and cruising for chicks along the way. Mike's trying to get over his breakup with a longtime girlfriend, and Trent repeatedly and hilariously tries to get Mikey to follow his advice for how to pick up girls (whether he actually likes them or not is irrelevant). Against this aimless backdrop, Liman shoots a lot of handheld (and apparently often without filming permits) shots, giving the comedy a great homemade and gritty quality that is really endearing.

Swingers launched both Vaughn and Favreau to much bigger things, both in front of and behind the camera, but I'm not sure either ever did anything better. Liman would go on to direct Mr. and Mrs. Smith, The Bourne Identity, Edge of Tomorrow, and the underrated Go, but he never bettered this movie either. Whether it's Trent's "You're like a big bear" speech, Mike's incessant calling of a girl whose number he got earlier in the night, or even Favreau's little look when Trent says "Hey Mikey, it's been 2 days, you should call that Nikki girl", the humor comes in many ways, all perfectly delivered by the wonderful cast.

16. The Beatles Anthology (1995) directed by Geoff Wonfor and Bob Smeaton

A thorough celebration of the life and times of the greatest band we've ever known, The Beatles Anthology is my favorite documentary. At 10+ hours, time has never flown faster than when I was watching this. The filmmakers used bits of interviews, photos, performances, and sometimes songs to illustrate where the band was and what they were thinking and creating at any given time in their history. Going from their births to the end, I couldn't ask for more from this doc as a look into the group that has inspired me the most as a creative person, and been the best of the soundtrack of my life. This movie encapsulates all of that and more.

15. Forrest Gump (1994) directed by Robert Zemeckis

Forrest Gump is one of the great fairy tales ever put on film. It's not a fairy tale like The Princess Bride or something that one would immediately recognize, but more a fairy tale like Rocky is a fairy tale. It's a fairy tale set in our real world, as it follows the adventures of the title character. Robert Zemeckis was always known for his technological innovations, like the SFX in Back to the Future, or the live-action/cartoon mixing of Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, but Forrest Gump is his best movie because there's such a seamless blend of the technology and the story and characters. We can identify with Forrest just wanting to be accepted and loved, and can also laugh at the ridiculous situations he gets himself in as well. And, of course, his love of Jenny. Who can't relate to a kind of devotion to your greatest love? And Forrest is just an interesting guy, wonderfully played in one of Tom Hanks's best performances. I love spending time with this character, and going through the wild ride of his life.

14. Defending Your Life (1991) directed by Albert Brooks

Daniel (Brooks) dies and is sent to Judgment City, where people from his part of the world are sent to find out whether they will be allowed to "move on", or whether they'll be reincarnated on Earth for another go round. They have to defend the power that fear has over us in all its guises, from not taking a job you want because it'll be scary, to chickening out on making a move on the girl you really like. Daniel is assigned an attorney, Bob Diamond (Rip Torn), and eventually meets another deceased person in the city, the fun and lovable Julia (Meryl Streep), also awaiting judgment. Daniel's told that he will have to defend 9 days of his life while in Judgement City. "Is that a lot?" he asks. It's not a lot or a little, he's told, it just is. But to a neurotic guy like Daniel, that sure seems like a lot. Julia is only defending 4 days, and when Daniel sneaks into her trial he sees things like her saving her family from their burning house and her prosecuting attorney crying and saying "I just wanted to see that again" after Brooks' prosecutor (Lee Grant) has been relentless in saying he doesn't deserve to move on.

The laughs come in all different ways here, some great one liners and set ups, but mostly I found them coming from the great characters Brooks sets up. He's his usual sarcastic neurotic self, but we feel some deep humanity in him as his life of second guessing himself may send him back to Earth just as he's met the love of his (after)life in Julia. And boy is Meryl Streep low key, warm, and altogether wonderful as Julia. It's not a flashy part like many of her Oscar grabbing roles, but it's a role that would've ruined the movie if it'd been cast with the wrong actress. Rip Torn is a hoot as the lawyer, bringing an unhinged hilarity to the movie. Defending Your Life is a wonderful look at a possible afterlife, with many associated questions arising from the world Brooks creates. It's a terrific love story between Brooks and Streep. And above all it's just a damn wonderful comedy.

13. Before Sunrise (1995) directed by Richard Linklater

Richard Linklater is one of the least celebrated truly great American filmmakers of our times. Thankfully that has started to change over the last couple of years, since his big critically and commercial hit Boyhood in 2014, but those of us that've been following Linklater since his first few features have known that he is one of our most sensitive, intelligent, and curious filmmakers. He started off with his indie hit Slacker, then made the great high school movie Dazed and Confused, and followed that up with this tiny little romantic masterpiece that sees Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy meet on a train through Europe, and impulsively get off and spend the night walking and talking around Vienna, slowly getting to know each other and falling in love. The trio would revisit these characters two more times, 9 years later in 2004's Before Sunset, and another 9 years later in 2013's Before Midnight. All three are terrific, for different reasons. Before Sunrise is the most romantic, and maybe my favorite of the trilogy.

12. The Shawshank Redemption (1994) directed by Frank Darabont

One of the most universally beloved movies ever made, seemingly everyone likes The Shawshank Redemption. It has long been the #1 movie on IMDb's fan voted Top 250 movies list, holding the spot for most of the past 15 years or so. Endless showings on TNT and TBS have made the movie so ubiquitous that I think people can easily forget just how powerful the movie is. The cast is uniformly excellent, it's beautifully shot by the great Roger Deakins, and will always be Frank Darabont's masterpiece as a film director. There's not a lot new to say about this movie, but I'll say that it thoroughly deserves its place on any Best Movies of the 1990's list.

11. Joe Versus the Volcano (1990) directed by John Patrick Shanley

A review of Joe Versus the Volcano is very difficult to write. It is at once epic and intimate, ambitious and silly, humorous and melancholy, ridiculous and thought provoking. It is a movie that has a passionate fanbase, but a movie that has divided critics and audiences since it was released in 1990. On IMDb it has a user rating of only 5.7/10, on RottenTomatoes a "rotten" critics score of just 58% (and an audience score of 54%), a thumbs down from Gene Siskel, New York Times film critic Vincent Canby wrote "Not since Howard the Duck has there been a big-budget comedy with feet as flat as those of Joe Versus the Volcano. Many gifted people contributed to it, but there's no disbelieving the grim evidence on the screen." Yet it had some staunch defenders like Roger Ebert who called it "new and fresh and not shy of taking chances" upon its original release. Obviously, since I’m putting it as my #11 movie of the decade, I’m on the side that Ebert is on. This movie is full of life and invention, warmth, whimsy and insanity, and even Tom Hanks has referred to it as something of a hidden gem in his filmography.

10. Taste of Cherry (1997) directed by Abbas Kiarostami

Abbas Kiarostami's Taste of Cherry is a fascinating and affecting movie. It has stayed in my brain since I first watched it, with its simplicity, empathy, and emotional power. The plot, that of a man trying to find people to assist him in his suicide, sounds depressing as hell, but it's really not. We never know why he wants to commit suicide, but Kiarostami subtly shows us the character's isolation. And feeling alone is why everyone who commits suicide does, they feel alone. If they weren't alone they'd have something to live for. It's an interesting take that this man wants help with his death, and I think that's the key to the movie. This man is reaching out for connection, looking for someone to help him, yet, naturally, when he finds connection is when there's some doubt to his plan. He picks up 3 passengers, of 3 ethnicities, throughout the movie, and when the third tries to convince him not to do it, he does so through connecting with our protagonist. And that's why when the camera fades to black as he's lying in the grave he's already dug, with us ignorant of whether or not he took the overdose of pills he planned on taking, I was filled with hope and positivity in this life affirming masterpiece.

9. Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993) directed by Steve Zaillian

A fascinating movie with a lot of brains and insight, while also working on the level of being one of the great family movies ever made, Searching for Bobby Fischer is a movie that I watch pretty much every time it's on TV, and it's on TV way more often than you might think. I just find it so challenging, yet so lovable. It's perfectly acted by everyone in the cast, subtly directed by ace screenwriter Steve Zaillian, and gorgeously shot by the legendary Conrad L. Hall (where, shamefully, the movie's only Oscar nomination came from). It's a fascinating look into a world most of us are probably not familiar with, but at once is very familiar, that of parents pushing their children to do things and be things that the children may not want to do or be. Chess prodigy Josh (Max Pomeranc), his competitive but loving father Fred (a never better Joe Mantegna), protective mother Bonnie (Joan Allen), and the dueling teachers in Josh's life, Vinnie (Laurence Fishburne) and Bruce (Ben Kingsley). It's an embarrassment of riches in the characters department. Through all the pushing and competition, Bonnie never loses sight of the goal, and just wants her son to be a good person, but Fred gets caught up in winning at almost all costs because "he's better at chess than I've ever been at anything", while Josh is not always capable of knowing when to take Bruce's often harsh advice and when to take the more nurturing but less fundamentally sound advice from Vinnie. To see Max Pomeranc's tremendous performance as he's being pushed and pulled in all these directions while only 7-years-old, is truly extraordinary. It's probably the best child performance I've ever seen in a movie. Thankfully, it's not wasted in a lesser movie, but into one of the best movies of the 1990's.

8. Out of Sight (1998) directed by Steven Soderbergh

I wanted to see Out of Sight when it came out because I thought Jennifer Lopez was hot. It was that simple for me. I knew it had "that guy from ER" in it (George Clooney), but whatever, it didn't matter. I had no knowledge of director Steven Soderbergh, nor screenwriter Scott Frank, nor writer Elmore Leonard, whose book inspired the movie. But I think I watched it 4 or 5 times when it came out on VHS (aw, remember those days? I'm glad they're dead too). I was enthralled with George Clooney's cool, Jennifer Lopez's hotness and actual acting ability, the sexy cinematography and editing, and the terrific crime story of deals and double crosses and interesting characters. The supporting cast populated with great actors like Don Cheadle, Albert Brooks, Steve Zahn, Denis Farina, and an uncredited cameo from Samuel L. Jackson, never hurts.

It was a renaissance of sorts for Soderbergh, who'd made a big splash with his debut Sex, Lies, and Videotape, but had hit a wall both creatively and commercially afterwards. It also sparked a great artistic working relationship with Clooney, as the two would make 5 more movies together. But they never topped this initial collaboration (though their terrific remake of Tarkovsky's Solaris gets better every time I watch it). Like Tarantino's Jackie Brown and Barry Levinson's Get Shorty, Out of Sight might not be completely faithful to the source novel, but it "gets" Elmore Leonard. It has the distinctive dialog, an unforced cool, and a leisurely paced narrative that Soderbergh mixes up by telling out of chronological order. It's famous "locked in the trunk" meeting between Clooney and Lopez is justifiably famous as it's off the sexiness charts, but the Don't Look Now evoking sex scene later in the movie is equally as sexy and proves that sexiness can easily exist without nudity. It's fun, funny, violent, sexy, and proof of how great the 90's were that it's only #8.

7. Beauty and the Beast (1991) directed by Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise

I know it's not the first movie I saw in the theaters, but Beauty and the Beast is the first one I have vivid memories of seeing. I was enthralled from the first second to the last. I had a huge crush on Belle, and knew all the songs by heart. Now, I'm older, more cynical, have a general distaste for musicals and still, I love this movie with all my heart. Belle is the best and most interesting of all the Disney heroines, smart, funny, kind, and fiercely intelligent. And the Beast is the most interesting of the Disney Princes, probably because he has his own fascinating personal journey. He goes from arrogance and self hatred to both learning to love himself and someone else. Meanwhile, the movie teaches us that we should be falling for the soul of a person, looks be damned. That's a pretty great lesson to be put on top of the impeccable animation, tremendous songs, and flawless voice cast. The new live-action remake that came out this year only made me wish I was watching this movie again instead.

6. Goodfellas (1990) directed by Martin Scorsese

Goodfellas is one of the breeziest 2 1/2 hours in movie history, but is one of the most profane and violent mainstream movies you're ever gonna see. Not talking about gore or blood necessarily, but violence in the way people speak and treat each other, in addition to the guns and bats and ice picks and whatever else that these gangsters use to dispatch of one another with.

In addition to the flawless acting from an amazing cast, Thelma Schoonmaker and Michael Ballhaus deserve infinite praise for their work on the editing and cinematography, respectively. Ballhaus’s roving camerawork helps us feel personally involved in these people’s lives, and Schoonmaker’s propulsive editing makes the movie feel alive with energy. The most obvious examples of Ballhaus’s great work is the famous tracking shot in the Copa, and the great camera work during a certain sequence of the movie scored to the piano section of “Layla”. Schoonmaker’s genius in particular shows during a bravura sequence where Henry spends a frantic, paranoid day where he believes an FBI helicopter is following him as he dashes all over town running guns, tries to organize some drug trafficking, and attempts to cook dinner for his family (“don’t let the sauce burn” he keeps repeating to his family).

That said, some people may be bothered by both the language (fuck is used an alleged 300 times in the movies 145 minutes) and the violence. These characters are not nice people, and the fact that they show no remorse for their actions may also disturb some. The movie is not overly graphic in terms of gore, but there is no shortage of violence depicted on screen. Still, it's to Scorsese and company's credit that I can't help but smile while watching all of that go down. It's a brilliant piece of filmmaking.

5. Dead Man Walking (1995) directed by Tim Robbins

THE most emotionally devastating movie I've ever seen, Dead Man Walking's genius is to get us to be destroyed by the execution of an awful human being. Sean Penn's extraordinary work as Matthew Poncelet (the best of his considerable career) and the tireless decency and love from Sister Helen Prejean (Susan Sarandon) force us to see that every life is precious, even those of people who've stolen that precious gift from others. Robbins being the writer/director and staunchly against the death penalty, there are certainly indications that the movie is anti-capital punishment, but it has the intelligence and heart to also understand what an execution can bring to the families of those who've been wronged. The final 30 minutes or so of this movie is the most destroying piece of cinema I've seen, as we see Matthew come to grips with the realization that he can't get out of his sentence, and Sister Helen's guides him through his final moments as she pleads with him to truly take responsibility for what he's done and have the possibility of redemption in God's eyes.

Flawlessly acted, written, and directed, the movie is never sensational about such an inflammatory subject. It sees everything the way it is, gives everyone their time, and simply regards the process of execution. Leaving the audience to make up their own minds about what they think. Robbins sidesteps every opportunity to preach to the crowd. He's much too smart for that. He knows that simply showing the story (adapted from the non-fiction book of the same name by Sister Helen Prejean), and making sure to show everyone as a real person, we'll see that Matthew's death really doesn't bring back that poor teenage couple. All we're left with is another dead body.

4. Unforgiven (1992) directed by Clint Eastwood

Little Bill: You'd be William Munny out of Missouri. Killer of women and children.

Will Munny: That's right. I've killed women and children. I've killed just about everything that walks or crawled at one time or another. And I'm here to kill you, Little Bill.

My vote for Clint Eastwood's masterpiece as actor and filmmaker is the universally acclaimed western Unforgiven. The terrific characters set up in the original screenplay by David Webb Peoples people this movie with a lot of life, and Eastwood's flawless casting of great actors like Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman and Richard Harris, in addition to himself in the lead role, really helps bring the story alive. Ultimately though, it's the story of William Munny, who'd been cured of the evil ways of his youth by his now deceased wife, leaving him with two young children, and a lifetime of guilt and frustration. When the opportunity to make some money comes up, taking revenge on a couple of guys who attacked some whores in a brothel in Montana, he takes it. We follow him on his eventual descent back into the William Munny of legend, as the job becomes much bigger than taking down a couple of hoodlums, when Hackman's corrupt Sherrif Little Bill doesn't take kindly to Eastwood trying to cash in the reward for these fellas he's given leniency to.

It's a gorgeously shot, wonderfully acted, and terrifically written elegy of a movie. Eastwood's farewell to the western genre that'd made him a household name. Almost noirish in its moral ambiguity, Unforgiven also works as a straight ahead western adventure, even if you don't want to look deeper at the things he's saying with it. One of the best movies to ever win Best Picture at the Oscars, Unforgiven stakes its claim as possibly the greatest western ever made too.

3. Pulp Fiction (1994) directed by Quentin Tarantino

Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction hit the moviegoing public like a lightning bolt in 1994. It's unashamed use of violence and creatively foul language offended a good deal of the people who went to see it (there were actually a number of boos from the audience when it took home the Palme D'or, the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival). It also hit me like a lightning bolt when I first saw it at about the age of 12 or so. It was the first movie I'd remembered seeing told out of order (no, I hadn't seen Citizen Kane by 12, nor had I seen Tarantino's debut, Reservoir Dogs) and the stunning dialog really lodged a place in my young brain. Tarantino's skills as director also had quite an impact on me, building tension in some scenes, hilarious comedy in others, and his use of music struck a significant chord with me back in those days of not knowing just how much he was stealing from Scorsese (in style and approach more than content).

So many movies that hit you at a young age simply don't continue having the same sort of impact as you get older. Pulp Fiction, though, still thrills me and makes me laugh (it's one of the great dark comedies at its core), nearly as much as when I was 12. There's not really a whole lot more to write about one of the most written and talked about movies ever made. Not for everybody, but definitely for me!

2. Dark City (1998) directed by Alex Proyas

I vaguely remembered Dark City being advertised, but only knew one person who saw it in theaters and they told me it was just ok. So I was surprised when I saw at the end of the year that it landed at #1 on Roger Ebert's year end top ten list. That made me want to check it out and see what was up. I did, and just thought, "it was ok". But then I started thinking more about the philosophy behind it, and especially the images contained within it. I was caught by the incredible German expressionistic architecture, and the subconscious evocation of old school noir movies (subconscious to me, because I didn't know much about noir at the time) and the paintings of Edward Hopper. So I bought it on DVD, watched it again, and liked it a lot. Then a few weeks later watched it again, and loved it. A few months or a year or whatever later, I watched it again and decided it was one of my favorite movies.

In 2008, director Alex Proyas released his Director's Cut of the movie. I'm not normally a fan of Directors Cuts, but this one took one of my favorite movies and turned it into an all-time top 5 for me. The theatrical cut is like a sprint, the quick cutting and relentless pacing rushing towards the final confrontation. The DC adds in just a few scenes, but Proyas cuts them in in a way that lets the movie breathe and not exactly take its time, since it is still paced quite rapidly, but feel like it's not the sprint to the finish line that the original cut is. I listed it last year as one of the most beautiful movies ever made, because it can be viewed in slow motion and just taken as a moving painting and it still works. Roger Ebert said so eloquently in his original review (he's since written another one, when he added it to his list of "The Great Movies", as well as doing a commentary track for the DVD) and I can't top it, so I'll just close with this quote "If it is true, as the German director Werner Herzog believes, that we live in an age starved of new images, then Dark City is a film to nourish us. Not a story so much as an experience, it is a triumph of art direction, set design, cinematography, special effects--and imagination."

1. Big Night (1996) directed by Stanley Tucci and Campbell Scott

I've written about Big Night over and over again, because it's the movie I most connect to on an emotional level. It's a terrific comedy, a heartbreaking drama, and an actors showcase as the ensemble put together by Stanley Tucci and Campbell Scott, including the two of them, is simply extraordinary. I initially wrote that Big Night was about life, and I believe that more than ever now. It's about relationships, new and old, romantic and platonic and familial, beginning and ending. It's about trying to start your life, or a new life in the case of Tucci and Tony Shaloub's Italian brothers. It's also about food, that life giving nurturer that we disrespect so often. Tucci has said "I thought I loved food when I started making Big Night, but I loved it even more after. It was never my intention to make a food movie. The movie was about the relationship between art and commerce, the art being food." But no movie has ever loved food like Big Night. The cooking, the presenting, the eating, it's all here, it's all delicious looking, and it means so much. When Shaloub's character is disgusted by the "Italian food" served at the restaurant of Pascal (Ian Holm), he isn't just disgusted, he shouts "RAPE! RAPE! That's what that man serves every night, the rape of cuisine!"

It's a movie that is comforting to me. It's a movie that is moving to me. It's a movie that is endless in its humane depth of insight. It is my favorite movie and definitely the #1 movie of the 90's.

Top TV Shows

15. The Twilight Zone

A show that really shows off the power of the short story, The Twilight Zone had a different cast, premise, and theme every week. An anthology series doesn't always work, because audiences want to get involved with characters, they want to connect and come back and see what these people are doing again and again. The Twilight Zone, however, stimulated people's minds with its exploration of existential dread, horror, fantasy, and everything in between. As such, there are episodes that are good and those that are bad and most that are in between. But, I think this show deserves mention among the greats ever because of its ability to intrigue us, even if we're going back today and watching it 50+ years after it aired. It still works.

14. Saturday Night Live

SNL isn't as good today as it was back in my day.

Obviously that sentence is bullshit, the show has always had funny actors and sketches, even in its worst seasons. But that familiar refrain of "it's not as funny as it used to be" must've started around Season 2 and just continued on, because every cast has heard it. Bill Murray heard he wasn't as funny as Chevy Chase or Dan Akyroyd, Mike Myers heard he wasn't as funny as Eddie Murphy or Billy Crystal, Will Ferrell heard he wasn't as funny as Chris Farley or Adam Sandler, and Kristin Wiig heard she wasn't as funny as Amy Poehler or Tina Fey. The truth is that putting on an hour and a half long show, live!, every week is gonna produce great sketches and terrible sketches. That's just the nature of the beast. You have to accept the good with the bad, and know there's gonna be plenty of ugly as well. As Lorne Michaels has always said "the show doesn't go on because it's ready, it goes on because it's 11:30." Or as standup comedian and former show writer Hannibal Burress says, people tend to "over romanticize the Belushi era." But there have been too many amazing and timeless sketches over the years to even recount. There's no way you could put together even a top 25 SNL sketches list without leaving out a ton of incredible other sketches. And that ability to reach the highest highs is what puts the show here on my list.

13. I Love Lucy

I Love Lucy is a show that I first started watching when I was a child. It was funny then. I go back and watch it as an adult and it's funny now. Lucille Ball is deservedly praised for all of her work, Vivian Vance and William Frawley too (all won multiple awards for their work on the show). Desi Arnaz goes overlooked because he tended to underplay his work and let the others go big, but Ricky is as much the show's heart as Lucy is. Ricky is the straight man to all the craziness that Lucy injects into their lives, and Arnaz is brilliant in his way of showing us he loves Lucy, but gets frustrated by her as well. And I can appreciate today what kind of trailblazer this show was, especially with a female lead and creative force behind it, and an interracial central relationship. I Love Lucy was hilarious as well as door opening. As much as I love Friends, Big Bang Theory, or other shows, I Love Lucy is still the pinnacle of the traditional network sitcom, for me.

12. Breaking Bad

Walter White is one of the best characters we've ever seen on TV. And he grows and changes, not usually for the best, throughout the course of the show. He begins selling drugs just to make money so that his family has something when he's gone (as he's dying of cancer), but he grows over the seasons to become someone who sells drugs because it makes him feel good about himself. It gives him a sense of accomplishment, a sense of power that he's never felt, and the adrenaline rush of living in a world where he doesn't really belong. Like every show, it's not perfect. There are episodes that don't work quite as well, or don't add anything to the mix, and sometimes it's a slow burn of a show that I wished would ramp up. But, carried by the great cast and characters, led by Bryan Cranston's career defining central performance, Breaking Bad became a cultural phenomenon and one of the great shows TV has ever seen.

11. Scrubs

If Scrubs had ended after season 4 or 5, it would likely be much much higher on this list. It's brand of surreal cutaways and narration juxtaposed against medical situations (based on real life medical cases) makes for a wonderful journey as we follow John Dorian through his life as a doctor. But with behind the scenes troubles (constant threat of cancellation and eventually changing networks) that took their toll on the show, it went STEEPLY downhill following season 5. It became an unintended parody of itself. And that's too bad because it really spoiled those first few seasons that are about as good as a major network comedy can get. It has heart, it has laughs, it has a teensy bit of drama. It has one of the best ensemble casts in comedy. I just wish it didn't leave with a bad taste in my mouth.

10. South Park

I remember when South Park first came out. I remember reading in the newspaper (which is a very old fashioned saying now) about how this show about 4 foul mouthed elementary school kids in Colorado was ruining the youth of today and how it was the worst thing on TV because of its bad language and inappropriate storylines. Obviously 14-year-old me sought it out and had to see it immediately. It was the weirdest show I'd ever seen. It was amateurishly animated, crudely voiced, and absolutely hysterical. What's funny now is that those first few seasons got so much hatred and bad press for being the downfall of society and whatnot but if you go back and watch them now they are very very tame and hardly get a giggle out of me. South Park normalized itself by staying around so long and going so far out that it wasn't pushing the boundaries because it stopped caring about boundaries. It still has great episodes, even if the show isn't as good as it used to be. But seasons 4-8 are almost untouchable, 9-13 has many amazing episodes, and the other seasons are at least worth seeing even if they're not the highest highs the show has achieved.

9. The Sopranos

Tony Soprano is one of the most memorable characters in TV history. He's the one that most gets me to think about morality in fiction. We like Tony. We shouldn't like Tony. But James Gandolfini's performance is so charismatic and endlessly fascinating that we follow Tony through his family troubles, his mafia politics, his infidelity and murder, and his emotional breakdowns and even his humor. Tony is a funny character. And again, we like him. But why? It's not just because he's our main character, there are plenty of protagonists throughout fiction that we dislike. We may not look up to Tony, we don't admire him, but we do like him. And I think that's because The Sopranos got us to empathize with Tony. Tony is not at all like any of us, but we feel his feelings. We identify with his frustration with his spoiled kids and nagging wife. We understand his anger at his coworkers and employees. We relate to his need to process his emotions, and the way that feels like weakness sometimes. Tony is us. An extreme version of us, yes, but he represents just about all the emotions on the human spectrum (this set the stage for future takes on this type of man, like Mad Men's Don Draper). And although the mafia intrigue and machinations make for great drama and thrill, Tony is the center of this show, and is why it succeeds.

Oh, and that final episode that gets so much hate? It's absolutely brilliant. It doesn't matter what you think happened, the point is that Tony will always have to be on the lookout. He'll always be hunted. He won't ever be able to just sit and have dinner with his family without being on alert. It's a genius end to a genius show.

8. Futurama

What was often thought of as "Matt Groening's other show" is really one of the best sci-fi pieces of fiction ever created in any medium. Futurama tackles just about all the classic sci-fi concepts, and all the while has the zany Planet Express crew to take us on that journey. Now, like Scrubs, it went on too long. 7 seasons when it really should've been 4 or 5, but that's still not fair because those last two seasons aren't bad, they just aren't as good as what came before it. Also like Scrubs, one of the best things about Futurama is that it so deftly balances the laughs with the tears. Episodes like "Jurassic Bark" "Parasites Lost" "Time Keeps on Slippin'" and "The Devil's Hands are Idle Playthings" are hilarious and pull at your heartstrings as well. Futurama is as crazy and wacky as a show can get, and there's not that dramatic heft to every episode, nor does there need to be. But when they turn on the waterworks, it flows big time. And all of that from a show that boasts lead characters of Fry (an idiot), Leela (a one eyed mutant), Bender (an alcoholic robot), and Dr. Zoidberg (a crab-like doctor who I put as my #3 animated character ever).

7. Game of Thrones

One of those strange cases where the adaptation is better than the books (sorry book fans, I can't get into the novels, the shifting viewpoints robs the narrative momentum and makes the books feel like a collection of short stories rather than a cohesive book). Game of Thrones is the epic fantasy series I wished for when I was growing up. Something that wasn't "for kids", and had darkness, but wasn't cheap or silly either. I've always loved medieval set fantasy stories, even tried to write some when I was younger, but this is the new standard bearer for the genre on screen. Hugely budgeted, terrific SFX and sets and costumes, with a sprawling cast of characters who may or may not survive, the technical aspects of the show are top notch. But it's the constantly twisting narrative and the game-as-can-be cast that sells it, ultimately. One of my favorite aspects is that there isn't even a main character. Ned, the closest thing we had to one, is only in the first season. But with Daenerys, Tyrion, John Snow and everyone who surrounds them, we go on their journeys week by week as we delve into what has become the best fantasy series ever put on screen (yes, I'll even take it over Lord of the Rings). It's got all the political intrigue of House of Cards, all the bloody action of any cop show, plus dragons and ice zombies! What's not to love?

6. Doctor Who

I've always been a fan of science-fiction. It's the genre of ideas, of exploration, of expansion. There's literally nothing that sci-fi can't explore. While I've seen and enjoyed some of the original series of Doctor Who, what I'm including here is really the 2005-present series. Although it can occasionally look cheap, especially the SFX in the first season back, the show never hesitates to explore headier themes than most popular shows would do. The show takes on classic sci-fi concepts as well as creating ones of their own. And it does this with a revolving door of leading men. The revival series started with respected dramatic actor Christopher Eccelston as the Ninth Doctor, followed by David Tennant, Matt Smith, Peter Capaldi, and now by Jodie Whittaker as the first female Doctor. Everyone has "their" Doctor, either the one that's their favorite or was in the role when they started watching the show. They all have their strengths, but I think David Tennant is still my favorite, as he perfectly balanced the moral strength, dramatic heft, humor, and curiosity of The Doctor. The Doctor travels through all of space and time, he's hundreds of years old, he's seemingly seen it all. He's one of the great characters, leading one of the great shows.

5. Seinfeld

Although I called I Love Lucy "the pinnacle of the traditional network sitcom", that's because Seinfeld isn't a traditional sitcom. It's the show about nothing that managed to stay funny from Season 1 all the way through Season 9, leaving at the top of the ratings and the pop culture landscape. Going back now, since I was a kid and teenager through most of the show's run, it's amazing to look back and see how many classic episodes there are. It's even crazier that the B-stories are often just as memorable as the A-stories. I can't tell you how many times I've been watching a rerun and not even remembered that this A-story was in the same episode as that B-story, because you might think of it as "the episode where George gets the security guard a rocking chair" only to find out it's also the episode where Elaine dates "The Maestro" AND the episode where Kramer gets free coffee after spilling some on himself but ruining his lawyers plan by using a balm to clear up the burn. "Who told you to put the balm on? I didn't tell you to put the balm on!" Seinfeld is a show amazingly rich with characters and endless humor. By focusing on so much of the minutiae of life, Seinfeld ensured that it  stayed relevant many years after it ended. By being so specific, it became universal.

4. The X-Files

Another show that went on too long, but which reached insanely high highs during its peak. The X-Files was able to be a monster show, a police procedural, an action buddy comedy, a paranoid conspiracy thriller, and more. With the greatest lead duo characters in TV history, FBI Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, we are taken on an amazing journey through this world of worm monsters and alien abductions. Everything fringe became fodder for the show, which used it as a constant battle between the believable and unbelievable. Mulder implicitly believes all these crazy stories and mutant sightings and everything. Scully is a trained doctor who puts her faith in scientific explanations. It's then flipped by Scully being a practicing Catholic and Mulder being a religious skeptic. Add that to the fact that they're two good looking people who will naturally have some sexual tension and you've just got the two most watchable characters on TV.

3. The Wire

One of the only shows to ever evoke the feeling of a novel, a feeling that you would think is rampant in the extended form of a TV show, The Wire has all the complexity and characterizations you'll find in the best written fiction. Though it only ran 5 seasons, each season took on a different focal point of the Baltimore area that it takes place in. Season 1 took on drugs, Season 2 illegal importing and human trafficking, Season 3 looks at the political landscape and corruption, Season 4 looks at the school system, and Season 5 looks at media corruption. But all the seasons play into each other, especially the drug trade of Season 1, which threads its way through the entire series. And we follow this through the eyes of the Baltimore Police Department, mostly Detective Jimmy McNulty, but also a wide tapestry of other characters as well. The way the show spreads out, includes so many people and so many stories, that's really what sells it and makes it feel like a wonderful novel. Because of that there's no single episode to recommend, even rarely individual scenes, because everything works together. The show deepens itself and even sneaks up on you in its brilliance. When I first watched Season 1, I didn't even realize how much I cared about these characters until about 2/3 of the way through the season when a big thing happens and all of the sudden we start getting pay off from the tremendous build up. The Wire has to be taken as a whole to be appreciated, the same way you wouldn't take a single chapter out of a book.

2. Rick and Morty

Okay, I seriously thought about putting Rick and Morty #1 on this list. Since I first discovered it less than a year ago, I've watched the entire series (including this year's long awaited Season 3) more times than I can count. I am actually in the process of writing an episode by episode account of my thoughts about the show, so I won't write too much here. It's one of the most talked about and dissected shows TV has ever seen. It's intelligently written, with deep themes, complex characters, and plenty of dick and fart jokes.

1. The Simpsons

Yes, the Simpsons isn't as good today as it was 10 or 15 years ago, but there is such a depth of humor in this show that I had to put it number 1 on the list. It'll make you laugh, cry, and laugh again. It has the same heart that Matt Groening put into Futurama, but here it's mostly contained within the iconic Simpson family. Homer is a glorious idiot, but also a man who loves his family and the show is often at its best in the early years when it showed that Homer just wanted to be a good dad or husband. That's when the show really soared. But The Simpsons also has so many crazy and funny characters that it's overwhelming. Everyone has a favorite (Dr. Frink for yours truly, flavin!) but we all love them all. Even so, the core of the show is the title family, and the show is able to explore everything about the human experience either through Marge, Lisa, Bart, Maggie, or Homer. And over the course of nearly 30 years, 620 episodes and counting, and a movie, The Simpsons has seemingly covered all the ground there is to cover, even exploring science-fiction and horror through their annual Halloween Treehouse of Horror anthology episodes. A wonderful topper to this list of the best TV shows ever made.