Top 10 Romance Movies

The romance, one of the great genres of cinema. Often thought to be just "chick flicks" or rom-coms, I find that romances can have as much to say about life and act as mirrors to ourselves as any other genre. Our romantic relationships are often the most important thing in our lives, so why shouldn't we take a more thoughtful look at romance as a serious genre? It shouldn't be something to be dismissed or taken lightly, though I'll be honest and say that I love a good rom-com too. Not because they're romantic necessarily, but because enjoyable light fluff is nice sometimes. And sometimes a Meg Ryan infusion can be good for your life. None of those movies show up here, but don't think it's because they weren't in consideration. Now, onto the list!

Honorable Mention for:

Three Times

I almost put Three Times on the list, but it would've really only been for the first section, which is simple and sweet and wonderfully romantic. The other two sections explore love and romance, but aren't really romantic, so I ended up cutting this movie from the list.

5 Centimeters per Second

A beautiful story of appreciating love's place in our growth as a person, and loving the part that plays in our hearts. It has a romantic heart, and would've made it onto this list if not for the ridiculously stiff competition.

Out of Sight

One of the great crime movies, but with a terrific romance driving it, something about making a list of "romance movies" kept me from putting Out of Sight on this list, despite liking it more than most of the movies on the list as a whole. I don't know, this is one of those weird instances when making genre lists that although something may technically qualify as a certain genre, I don't include it because it doesn't feel like a "romance movie" as much as it is a movie with a romance in it, if that makes sense.

10. Sing Street

John Carney’s Sing Street was one of the most unfairly overlooked movies of 2016. It’s the coming-of-age story of Conor (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo), a teenager in 1985 Dublin, Ireland. His family is falling apart, his parents constantly fight, economic times are tough, he’s being transferred to a new Catholic school full of bullies and harsh administration, and (as we all do at that age) he’s trying to figure out who he is as a person. Conor plays a bit of guitar and writes a bit of poetry, but he doesn’t really know who he is yet. What 15-year-old does? Into the mix, as usually happens in these stories, steps “the girl,” Raphina. Conor asks her to be in his band’s next video, to which she agrees. He then promptly walks away and up to Darren, the only friend he’s made at his new school, and says “We need to form a band.”

Conor ends up finding himself through the band and through music. It all started because he wanted to impress a pretty girl, but it took hold of him and became a much deeper experience than that eventually. And Raphina isn’t just a pretty face, and she isn’t a manic-pixie-dream-girl there only to spur Conor’s character development. Raphina is a fully well rounded character, played in a beautifully heart felt and vulnerable performance by Lucy Boynton. She has her own arc, her own insecurities and strengths and weaknesses. And Conor loves her through all of it. What begins as shallow infatuation with the pretty girl deepens as Conor becomes more himself and grows through his music. I’m not sure if this performance is the beginning of a career for Ferdia Walsh-Peelo, since he is a musician first, but it’s one of the great coming-of-age lead characters.

9. Groundhog Day


"I was in the Virgin Islands once. I met a girl. We ate lobster and drank pina coladas. At sunset we made love like sea otters. That was a pretty good day. Why couldn't I get that day over and over and over..."

Groundhog Day is a modern comedy classic, but one that I don't think gets enough credit for the things it does that no other movie does. What other studio comedy cares about the loneliness of its main character, doomed to repeat February 2nd for God knows how many years (writer Danny Rubin has said he envisioned Bill Murray's Phil repeating the day for about 10,000 years)? There's a sad, lonely heart at the center of this movie. But ultimately when Phil decides to be a better person, to help save people, do good things because it feels good, and try to win the heart of his producer Rita not just so he can sleep with her, but because he's come to see that she's the type of person he wants to be, she's innately good, every time he lives this day. He falls in love with her consciously or unconsciously he determines to make himself worthy of her.

Some people have had problems with this relationship over the years, as Phil has knowledge that Rita doesn't, and uses it to seduce her. But I don't share that this is even what happens. When Phil tries to seduce Rita the way he's seduced other women in this repetitious world, she rejects him. It's only through what I imagine are years of making himself change, internally, every day, that she is able to see him for who he is, even if it's just the next day to her. She isn't experiencing time the way that he is, but she senses the changed man inside from the previous man she knew. She isn't a victim of Phil's seduction. She's the object spurring him into being the best version of himself, and loves him for being that.

8. Annie Hall

Roger Ebert said that Annie Hall is "Just about everyone's favorite Woody Allen movie", and I guess that makes me like everyone because it is certainly my favorite. Turning a corner from his earlier farces (with which he'd had great success), Annie Hall adds a lot of depth and weight to Allen's still hilarious humor, making for THE romantic comedy of all time, even if it's too singular to Allen to be copied to death like rom-coms tend to be.

Miraculously winning Oscars for Best Picture, Director, Screenplay, and Actress (miraculous because this was the year of Star Wars, after all), I think Woody and the gang deserved it. It's hilarious from start to finish, whether Woody is evoking Groucho Marx ("I'd never be a member of a club who'd have someone like me as a member"), fearing for his life as Annie's crazy brother (played by an insanely young Christopher Walken) might kill them, or breaking the fourth wall and giving us in the audience little asides from the plot. My favorite is actually one with a hint of melancholy, where Alvy (Allen's character) tries to recreate different crazy antics he'd had with Annie with a new girl after he and Annie broke up, only to have the new girl not join in and he realizes just how special Annie was. That's what I remember from this movie, that sense of appreciating the time you've had with someone, even if you didn't end up together.

7. Adventureland

Movies like Adventureland are rare. They see their characters lovingly without idealizing them. They see a place and time so truly that we forget we are watching a period piece. They remember what it felt like to be young and in love. Remembering the friends you wished would go away when you were trying to talk to a girl, the awkward silences you’d endure before you figured out how to really talk to women, the feeling of what it's like to be accepted by the one person you hoped would accept you, and the myriad of memorable people that may only come into your life during the course of one crazy summer. Adventureland is the most wonderfully realized, delicately crafted, and emotionally affecting movie about young people that I've ever seen. It captures a moment in time that didn't even exist in my life, yet I connect to it so deeply I almost can't explain it.

There's not a single moment in the movie that rings false to me, and so many moments that transcend the maligned "young adult/teen" genre. Of course, this movie is not about "teens," it's about people just out of college realizing that their studies in Comparative Literature or Russian and Slavic Languages don't mean much in the real world. It's also about those fragile feelings of first love, real friendship, jealousy, and taking the wrong advice because you don't know any better yet. More than anything really, it's the story of first love. But because everything is so carefully constructed, capturing life, the feeling of real life, it's about much more than that simple description might allude to. Sure, it's not documentary-esque real life, it's idealized and nostalgic, but in the best way possible. And that's typically what the story of our own first love feels like to us. We've nostalgized it, even if we do remember some of our old awkwardness, we still tend to remember the past with rose colored glasses, and I think Adventureland evokes this beautifully.

6. The Princess Bride

The story of fairy tale love had to be here somewhere, so why not in one of the great fairy tales? I've written about this movie recently on my Live Action Fantasy movies list, so I won't drone on about it again except to say that the comically romantic fairy tale romance at the center is something I didn't appreciate as a younger person. Even now, Cary Elwes and Robin Wright are almost too pretty, too perfect, too charming. But somehow it works even as it's almost parodying fairy tale romances, it becomes a wonderful example of one. Much like the movie as a whole.

5. High Fidelity

High Fidelity is a movie that didn't immediately make an impact on me. As a 17-year-old, I walked away from the theater loving Jack Black's hilariously over-the-top know it all Barry, but not really connecting with John Cusack's self-loathing (yet occasionally arrogant) Rob, and his travails through the top 5 loves of his life, and why they didn't work out. A few years later, I watched the movie again and found it deeply affected me on an emotional level, now that I had some life experience with what Rob was talking about, and a deeper love of the pop-culture that Rob also cherishes. Now, as a 35-year-old with even more experiences, I find more than ever that I connect not just with Rob, but with Barry, Dick, Liz, and Laura. All the characters are amazingly well drawn (much of which comes from Nick Hornby's brilliant novel) and brilliantly played by the actors, with even Jack Black seeming like a real character, and not just Jack Black.

One of the things that I think works so wonderfully here is watching Cusack's Rob grow from a self-involved juvenile at the beginning of the movie, hurt by his girlfriend Laura leaving him for another man, to realizing how he failed as a boyfriend, how he's failed as a grown up, and how he can grow. Too often we just stay in that first period in our lives. We stay hurt, we let ourselves feel like victims of other people because it can be painful to think that we may have been the reason for the bad things that happened in our lives. And when Rob finally counts down the top 5 things he misses about Laura, we know that he's starting to take responsibility for his failings, and to learn from them to make a better life. We should all hope to do that.

4. Casablanca

A movie it took me a while to come around to, I only watched Casablanca for the first time maybe 10 years after I'd become a movie buff. And I don't think I can find a flaw in the world's most famous B-movie. Not intended as one of the big studio productions, Casablanca simply came together in the happiest of accidents and became one of the most beloved movies ever made. It took me a long time to see it, but as soon as it was over I wasn't asking myself what the big deal was, I was kicking myself for waiting so damn long to see one of the greatest movies ever made and the best movie of the 1940's.

I have to detail my personal favorite scene in the movie and the reason why Humphrey Bogart was one of our greatest stars. After seeing Ilsa again, and hearing "As Time Goes By" for the first time in years, Rick sits drinking alone after closing the bar. Sam comes in and starts playing piano, Rick gives his "of all the gin joints in the world, she walks into mine" speech, but then asks Sam what he's playing. Sam says it's something of his own, and Rick lashes out at him to "stop it! You know what I wanna hear. If she can stand to hear it, I can!" and the look of complete devastation on Bogie's face should've won him an Oscar. The only reason that Casablanca isn't higher on the list is that there isn't much actual romance in it. It's about love lost, self sacrifice, and other things, but the active romance in the movie is between "the girl" and her new guy, rather than our hero. That's what helps make the movie work, we can feel the love between Rick and Ilsa, even if the time has passed for their romance. But still, it didn't feel right to have it top this list, even if it is my favorite movie on this list.

3. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

The crowning achievement in Charlie Kaufman's catalog is the 2004 comic romance Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which teamed him again with French music video director Michel Gondry (who had previously directed Kaufman's script Human Nature, still unseen by me). It concerns the relationship of Joel and Clementine, characters extraordinarily brought to life by Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet. Kaufman started from the idea of erasing someone from your memory (who hasn't wanted to do that before?) and the impact that memories have on us as people. The way a loved one can get so associated with something that to remove it would be to remove a part of your own being. The impulsive Clem has had Joel erased from her memory by a company called Lacuna that provides such a service. As a way of getting back at her, Joel decides to erase her from his memory. Joel at one point asks Dr. Mierzwiak (the always brilliant Tom Wilkinson) if there's any chance of brain damage caused by the erasing. He answers "Well, technically speaking, the procedure is brain damage." There's an achingly sad moment when you realize that Joel doesn't remember the song "My Darling Clementine", even though it had deep meaning to him long before meeting Clem. It had become so associated with her in his mind that to remove her removes all traces of the song as well as his childhood favorite, Huckleberry Hound. For the majority of the movie we travel with Joel through the good and bad memories of the two years he spent with Clem. It's hysterical, heartbreaking, amazingly true to life while being totally surreal. The brilliant score by Jon Brion is worth mentioning. It plays more like an accompaniment to the action onscreen, instead of trying to underline it, or try and inform the audience how to react emotionally.

2. Notorious

An underappreciated masterpiece, Notorious features Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, and Claude Rains all in top form. Bergman plays Alicia Huberman, the daughter of a convicted Nazi spy who is recruited by U.S. government agent Devlin (Grant) to turn spy against a group of German’s working out of Rio de Janeiro just after WWII. Devlin convinces Alicia to infiltrate the group through one of her father’s former friends Alexander Sebastian (Rains), whom he wants her to seduce. It becomes a harder mission after Devlin falls in love with Alicia, and she with him. Sebastian is also in love with Alicia, which makes it even harder on our two lovers, because Alicia did her job so well. Oh yeah, and there’s some bit about Sebastian enriching uranium for nuclear weapons.

This basic plot was stolen by Robert Towne in his screenplay for Mission Impossible 2, but it was done with far less success. Cary Grant gives his greatest performance as Devlin, who is emotionally eaten up by forcing the love of his life into another mans arms. Bergman is as good as she ever was as the woman being pushed away, and Claude Rains was deservedly nominated for an Oscar for his role. Notorious also features one of Hitchcock's endings, as Devlin steps up to save the woman he loves, making for Hitch's most romantic movie as well.

1. Before Sunrise/Sunset

Before Sunrise is where we see young American Jesse, riding the train through Europe when a German couple begin arguing and he finds himself watching them, while also catching the eye of a pretty blond girl trying to read her book. After the arguing couple leave the car, Jesse strikes up a conversation with the girl, Celine, who is on her way home to Paris. Just as the conversation is starting though, the train arrives at Jesse’s stop in Vienna. He convinces Celine to get off the train with him and wander the city all night before he has to leave home for New York in the morning. So they walk through the city, talking, philosophizing about nearly everything under the sun. Jesse pretends to be more coolly jaded than he is, trying to hide the hopeless romantic underneath. Celine is outwardly, initially, quirky and fun and lighthearted, but soon comes out that she is opinionated, her intelligence razor sharp, though she too has the heart of a romantic. They connect deeply, and it’s exhilarating to see them fall slowly in love over the course of the night that changes both of their lives. In the morning they agree that it’s crazy to give up their lives for each other, even though they’re obviously head over heels for one another, because they just met. So they agree to meet back in Vienna in six months, and if they show up, they know that what they had was real. They part and we watch as they smile to themselves as they bask in the glow of that glorious night.

After the open-ended beauty of the ending of Before Sunrise, when I heard they were making a sequel, I was angry, as the ambiguity of the ending to the first movie would be ruined by catching up to the characters again. Part of the genius of it is that you got to make up your own mind about whether you thought the characters got back together in six months.

At the beginning of Before Sunset (my favorite of the trilogy, if I had to pick) we see Jesse having this exact conversation with a group of journalists in a bookshop in Paris. We realize that he’s written a book about that night, “fictionalized” it, and he’s telling the reporters that the ending of the book is meant to be made up by you. If you’re a romantic, you think of course they got together. If you’re a rationalist, you hope they did, but it’s understandable that they probably didn’t. If you’re cynical, you think there’s no way they made such a big leap for a person they’d only known for 10 hours or so. I was the romantic that wanted them to have gotten back together. Of course, I first saw the movie when I was about their age, early 20’s, idealistic and in love with the idea of being in love. But we don’t see Celine around. What happened? We soon find out as Celine shows up to the bookstore and the movie goes on a real time journey of 90 minutes before Jesse again has to catch a plane back to New York.

I didn't include the third part in the trilogy, 2013's Before Midnight, because I don't find it romantic. It's an important entry into the lives of these characters, but since it deals mostly with their middle aged malaise and crises of choices in their life. It's a good movie, real, often uncomfortably so, but it's not the romance that the first two entries are.

Top 10 Courtroom Movies

One of the most time honored genres in all of cinema is the courtroom movie. Typically called courtroom dramas, but some of my favorite are comedies, so I'm not sticking strictly to dramas. For as much as we tend to dislike lawyers in everyday life, we sure do love them on screen. There's something inherently dramatic about a man standing up to the system and winning, or catching the bad guy in the system of law and bringing him down. But there are tons of different angles that a law movie can take, and I hope that's highlighted here. I didn't pick these movies to be diverse, I'm just picking my favorites, but I think they turned out to show a great diversity within what could seem a confining, though beloved, genre.

Honorable Mentions: 12 Angry Men

Although often thought of as one of, if not THE, courtroom movie, 12 Angry Men just doesn't quite move me like it seems to do others. Something about the slow turning of the jurors over the course of the movie, as well as the coincidental knowledge of some of the men, just rings hollow and contrived to me. And it felt that way when first reading the play in high school, before I was aware of the movie. Sidney Lumet is one of my favorite filmmakers, but this wasn't high enough in my ratings to make it onto the list.

...And Justice for All

Not just memorable for Al Pacino's great work, but also for showing the case load that many lawyers have. Although we know they're overworked, in seemingly every other law movie, it seems the case at the center of the movie is the only case the main character has to deal with. Here we see Pacino struggle at managing his case load and sometimes the consequences are paid by his clients (in heartbreaking ways). It's a good, not great, movie, but I like that it shows this aspect of the life of an attorney in a way that seemingly no other movies show.

Michael Clayton

I also want to shine a spotlight on movies like Michael Clayton that aren't directly "courtroom movies" but are tangentially related to uncovering the truth surrounding a legal case. I initially had Michael Clayton on the list, but then realized it doesn't have many (any?) significant moments actually in a courtroom.

Now, onto the list:

10. The Insider

Michael Mann's biopic of the take down of big tobacco in the courts contains some of the best performances in the careers of Al Pacino, Russell Crowe, and Christopher Plummer. And as always in a Mann movie, the cast is perfect from top to bottom, there's great work from character actors like Bruce McGill, Diane Venora, Philip Baker Hall, Stephen Tobolowsky, and many others. And Mann really digs into some of the minutiae of the law system that held up prosecuting big tobacco for so long, as the companies tried to hold former employees to the non-disclosure agreements they'd previously signed, even as they were now no longer employees. It's a fascinating movie, one of Mann's best, and a great look at the intersection between big legal cases, media, and public health.

9. The People vs. Larry Flynt

Woody Harrelson is one of our most underrated actors, and The People vs. Larry Flynt is his best work on screen. Playing relentless rebel Larry Flynt, Harrelson is funny, charming, repulsive, tragic, and infinitely watchable. He leads us through the (literal) trials and tribulations the Hustler Magazine founder went up against in his life and makes every bit of it entertaining. Aided in the movie by supporting work from Edward Norton and a surprisingly amazing performance from Courtney Love, this is also one of the best movies in the storied career of director Milos Forman (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Amadeus). The law part of the movie is mostly concerned with what Flynt was concerned with, which is that the First Amendment right of Freedom of Speech should be applied even to things you don't want to hear. Maybe stuff that offends you. Flynt's cases set the precedent of political cartoons, commentary, and such qualifying as free speech. As Flynt says after his court victory "If they'll protect a scumbag like me, then they'll protect all of you!" Profound, ridiculous, tasteless, and funny. This is a surprisingly wonderful movie.

8. A Few Good Men

The first time the name Aaron Sorkin became known to most people was from his play that was turned into the movie A Few Good Men. As all Sorkin scripts are, this movie is filled with great monologues and dialog exchanges. The script crackles not quite with the same energy that Sorkin would bring to later works, when he had honed his craft some more, but still within the confines of a courtroom movie, Sorkin's dialog elevates this movie above its conventions. Sure, the terrific cast of actors who all do good work (with only Demi Moore seeming out of her element, although she's trying) surely helps elevate the movie also. Assured direction from Rob Reiner keeps things moving towards an inevitable conclusion. The movie feels almost preordained, but part of the joy is in watching it all play out anyway. Although not nearly as powerful as another military court movie that will show up later on the list, A Few Good Men touches on a lot of the difficulties in the military, including codes of conduct, written and unwritten rules, and not talking about things that happened even if it would save your case.

7. Rashomon

Undoubtedly the least "courtroom"-y movie on the list, Rashomon is about the inability to find objective truth. What supposedly happens is that a man and his wife are attacked by a bandit, who kills the husband and rapes the wife. Rashomon is made up of 4 versions of the story, told by the captured bandit, the wife, a woodcutter who observed the incident, and (through a psychic medium) the murdered husband himself. None of the accounts exactly match with each other, with each story coming to show the storyteller in the best light. For example, the bandit's story shows him challenged by the husband (trying to impress his wife), an intense and deadly sword fight, and then the wife being so impressed by his virulent masculinity that she gives herself to him. The other stories contradict this, but also contradict each other in various ways. We're left to try and piece together the likely truth, but the point is that true objective truth is unknowable because each and every one of us views the world through our own completely subjective prism. A pretty heady concept, and one not explored often enough in these kinds of movies, I think, as everyone is always looking for "THE TRUTH" without realizing that it is unknowable.

6. The Verdict

One of Paul Newman's best performances comes in this great Sidney Lumet movie, with a script by David Mamet. Newman was at that stage in his career, at the age of 57, where he could truly do no wrong. He never gave bad performances, but he sometimes seemed to coast on his good looks and charm. Not here. We see the lines in his face. We see the toll that life has taken on this man. I think we took Newman for granted sometimes, his abilities as an actor and not just a star, and this may be his best work. He plays a down on his luck attorney given an open and shut medical malpractice suit that takes on a life of its own. Although given the option to settle for a huge sum of money, Newman opts to go to trial against the big bad guys. Newman is an alcoholic, and the case gives him a new lease on life...kind of. He needs this case to give himself a sense of himself. Who is he at this point in his life? What has he become? What does he want to become? What can he live with himself as? The Verdict is more a story about a man's journey than it is a dive into the legal system. Lumet, Mamet, and Newman make the journey well worth our time, all giving some of their best work.

5. A Civil Action

"They'll see the truth"
"The truth? I thought we were talking about a court of law. C'mon, you've been around long enough to know that a courtroom isn't a place to look for the truth. You're lucky to find anything around here that even resembles the truth. You disagree? Since when?"
"8 kids are dead, Jerry."
"Jan, that suit fits you better than that sentimentality. That's not how you made all that money all these years, is it? You wanna know when this case stopped being about dead children? The minute you filed a complaint, the minute it entered the justice system."


Like The Insider, a great look at how the big businesses in the world can shit on the every day people and get away with it for so long. John Travolta stars as real life lawyer Jan Schlictman, who took on big chemical companies for poisoning the water in a small Massachusetts town. Travolta loses everything as he fights the big companies, his money, home, law partners, everything. And the bad thing is, spoiler alert, he loses the case too. That the EPA later took up the case and beat the companies into many millions of dollars in cleanup and restitution costs is little solace for us as the movie's credits begin to roll. Written and directed by Steve Zaillian (who also made the even greater Searching for Bobby Fischer), shot by the legendary Conrad L. Hall, it's got a tremendous cast, not just Travolta doing some of the best work of his career, but also Robert Duvall, John Lithgow, Tony Shalhoub, William H. Macy, Kathy Bates, and more. Impeccable from top to bottom, I was floored when I researched this list and found that this movie only has a 60% on RottenTomatoes. I don't know why. This movie may not strike any new ground, but it's a gorgeously filmed, wonderfully written, and perfectly acted movie. And, like The Verdict, it takes on the idea of settling vs. going to trial. Everyone wants Travolta to settle so that they can get their money. Travolta even tells one of the sick mothers that justice will come from the pockets of the big companies. These two movies show different sides of the coin of going to trial versus settling for large sums of money.

4. Paths of Glory

One that I didn't immediately think about as even being a courtroom movie is this masterpiece from Stanley Kubrick. Long time readers will know that I'm not the hugest Kubrick fan, but I do love a few of his movies (2001 and The Shining being the others). Kirk Douglas stars in this movie as a WWI French Colonel defending a group of men against a court martial for cowardice after they refused to go on a suicide mission attempting to take a German stronghold, a stupidly ordered attack only meant to show bravery by Generals angling for promotions. We see the politics and scheming behind the scenes of both the military and its system of law. Douglas does maybe the best work of his career as Colonel Dax, and his great working relationship with Kubrick on this movie was what led Douglas to bring Kubrick aboard Spartacus a few years later, where both men's controlling natures clashed. Still, what we have here is one of the great idealistic fights against the system. At once part of it, yet disgusted by it, Colonel Dax fights for what is right, even when it's a losing battle.

3. My Cousin Vinny

Joe Pesci's best work, yeah I said it, is here as the talented beginning attorney Vinny Gambini. This movie is standard courtroom stuff from beginning to end, lifted up by the energy and life the actors bring to it. Not just Pesci, although seriously Pesci is amazing in this movie with how effortlessly he carries it, but Marisa Tomei, who deservedly won an Oscar for her broad portrayal that didn't really hint at how she'd later become one of our best actresses. Also Ralph Macchio as Vinny's cousin that is on trial for a murder he didn't commit. Fred Gwynne playing my favorite judge character ever ("what is a yute?"), and a supporting cast littered with great character actors like Austin Pendleton, James Rebhorn, Bruce McGill, and Lane Smith as the prosecuting attorney. A terrific script and efficient direction, as well as a look into some of the technicalities of the law (many of which Vinny keeps unknowingly tripping over and paying the price for) really make this movie that could've been a cookie cutter comedy into something special.

2. Close-Up

Close-Up is a fascinating and brilliant look at a real life case in which a man claimed to be a famous Iranian filmmaker, impressed a family, only to have them find out that he wasn't that director and his subsequent trial for fraud. That may not sound like the most compelling movie, but writer/director Abbas Kiarostami's genius use of documentary and recreation footage (where the people played themselves, and footage of the trial is intercut with the recreation of events), 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 freely 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. The movie has a lot to say about the needs of humanity and how we don't often get what we emotionally need. It also says a lot about the nature of performance and what kind of performances we are all always giving, even when we're trying not to.

1. Miracle on 34th Street

My favorite holiday movie, but it wouldn't be on this list, much less this high, if I didn't think it was a great movie, period. It has everything you could want in a movie, a great script, characters, terrific actors like Natalie Wood and Maureen O'Hara, beautiful cinematography, and all that. It's a big classic studio movie, and one that I find myself affected by more and more as the years go by. A look at the struggle between logic and faith, between hope and reality, between optimism and pessimism, between believing in magic or not. One could easily see it as a retelling of the story of Jesus, with believers and non-believers, persecution, a trial, and all that. I don't see it that way, I see it as a simple tale, told simply and wonderfully. I have even always loved that the story comes about because everyone is acting in their own selfish interests. From the judge holding off on making a ruling so as to not anger potential voters to the post office workers sending the "Santy Claus letters" to the courthouse just so they'll stop taking up so much space in their building. It's a funny twist for a Christmas movie, but one that I love. That this is all wrapped around a court movie is really interesting to me, and one that feels pretty accurate to the law as well. It shows that although "courtroom movie" is a genre unto itself, you can insert pretty much any kind of movie within that framework. Drama, comedy, romance, satire, even a Christmas movie.

And Edmund Gwenn will always be Santa Claus to me.

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

The Coen Brothers’ newest movie, the anthology collection The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, is one of their best works. Being that I consider them among the greatest filmmakers we’ve ever had, that’s saying something. Anthology movies are always tough on me as a viewer, since inevitably some of the stories will be better than the others. You’ll always want to spend more time with some of the characters, but the group of stories that the Coen’s tell here has no weak spots. I was very much reminded while watching this movie of one of my favorite books to read, which is the collected western stories of Elmore Leonard.

Those stories are all tied together by Leonard’s writing style, and even when they don’t overlap in any way, they feel as part of the whole. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is tied together mostly by the theme of death. Each story contains death like a cloud hanging over the characters, and each story ends up with at least one character dead, even the two stories that only contain two characters. Sometimes the deaths are comical, in the twisted Coen tradition, mostly they’re not. Death is almost just part of the landscape of the west, whether it’s disease, murder, suicide, or even unknown causes. As always with the Coen’s, there’s humor here, but mostly contained to the first two stories. Taken as a whole or taken individually, these stories stick with you one way or another. The Coen's also use a framing device as though these stories are all part of a western collection of short stories in a book called The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, complete with painted stills taken from each story.


I’m just gonna cover each one, so that (like the Coen’s) I make sure each gets its due.

1. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

Tim Blake Nelson plays the title character of the piece here, one who sets us up to think that maybe he’ll be our narrator throughout the movie (he isn’t, the 6 stories are totally self contained) as he breaks the fourth wall, talking directly to us about himself and who he is. We first see him casually riding his horse Dan, singing the classic western song “Cool Water”, most often associated with Roy Rogers. This is the Coen’s take on the singing cowboy genre, obviously, except our hero here is a swift shooting son of a gun who kills damn near everyone who crosses his path, maybe unless they’re singing with him.

Nelson has such a wonderful command of the Coen’s flowery dialog and effortlessly sells his abilities as a white hatted singing cowboy, but also as the fastest and deadliest gun in the West. We see why the name Buster Scruggs is known by folks from all around. This sequence is also the lightest in atmosphere, despite being the most graphic in its violence. When the end of the chapter takes a flight of fancy, I went with it easily because the Coen’s had set up so much the ridiculous tone to a farcical level on par with their Raising Arizona, so the fantastical and ridiculous seemed to fit right in.

A 9/10 for this one from me.

2. Near Algodones

In this chapter, a young man (James Franco) comes into a small town bank and sticks up the teller (Coen regular Stephen Root) before the teller rebels and knocks Franco unconscious. Franco awakens to a rope around his neck and men asking him for his last words (and if they can have his horse after he’s dead). Things both do and don’t get better for Franco after this.

A kind of take on stories where things just can’t seem to go right for the hero, as it’s just one thing after another until the inevitable end for this poor unlucky bastard. It’s also evocative of the old Leone spaghetti westerns, as there seems to always be someone getting hanged in those movies. Franco is fine in the role, but this is the slightest of all the chapters even if it also has my favorite moment in the movie, with Franco’s delivery of the line “first time?” But I believe it's also the shortest, so it's not like it outstays its welcome.

A 6/10 for this one.

3. Meal Ticket

The saddest of the stories is this chapter about a man (Liam Neeson) who drives from town to town in a wagon that can transform into a stage, where we see the armless and legless “orator”, Harrison. Harrison recites, wonderfully and charismatically, classics such as Percy Shelley’s “Ozymandias”, sonnets from Shakespeare, the biblical story of Cain and Abel, and the Gettysburg Address. Neeson then collects donations from the ever dwindling crowds before they’re off to the next town.

Neeson is quite good in a mostly wordless performance, reminding what a talented actor he can be, how much screen presence he has. He may have taken on too many shitty action movies at this point in his career (although he does those well too) that sometimes we forget that he’s a terrific and powerful actor at his best. Harrison is played beautifully by Harry Melling, best known on screen as Harry Potter’s awful cousin Dudley Dursley. Here, Melling is the opposite of Dudley. He’s sad, talented, tragic, lonely, and effortlessly relatable as the invalid completely at the mercy of his caretaker. This is the saddest of the chapters, but also one of the best.

A 9/10 for this chapter.

4. All Gold Canyon

In this chapter, based on a Jack London short story, Tom Waits plays an old prospector searching rivers for gold and digging holes looking for a big pocket of gold, a pursuit he talks to himself as looking for “Mr. Pocket.” Another aspect of the western story tradition, the gold prospector, but it's never starred Tom Waits before. I actually wish this one was a little longer, as Waits is so infinitely and easily watchable that you just want more.

Waits is so perfect for the Coen’s it really makes you surprised when you realize this is the first time they’ve worked together. He’s funny and sad and endlessly fascinating to watch, just as always. And since most of All Gold Canyon is just Waits on screen, that works to perfection. We get to know his character; he’s hard working, good humored, and even though he’s a gold prospector, he’s not greedy or entitled. We even see him put back the eggs he takes from an owl nest after he sees the owl looking at him. He feels guilty for taking all the eggs and so puts them all back but one, which he takes for his meal. This section is the most easily lovable of any of the chapters and it’s nice that they put it here in the middle.

Another 9/10 on this section from me.

5. The Girl Who Got Rattled

Zoe Kazan stars in this chapter, the longest of the bunch, as a woman on a wagon train to Oregon, who loses her brother to cholera and must figure out what she’ll do now, since they were headed to Oregon for her brother to do business, she’s left with few prospects and no money, not even to pay the boy who’s driving her wagon for her. Bill Heck plays Mr. Knapp, a sympathetic cowboy co-leading the wagon train, who sincerely wants to help out Kazan in her time of need.

This is what the Coen's doing a sweet little romance looks like, I guess. I love it. This is my favorite of the chapters. And another shade of the western tackled, the wagon train. Kazan (back on a similar Oregon bound wagon trail as she was in Meeks Cutoff) is really engaging, and I loved the sweet and developing chemistry she has with the kindly cowboy that Bill Heck plays. Maybe because this is the longest of chapters, but it’s the one that most feels like it could’ve been expanded into its own feature. It’s perfect as it is, but I wouldn’t have complained about another hour of this. It has the most developed characters, the most intriguing storyline and the actors are all wonderful.

10/10, this is my favorite of the bunch.

6. The Mortal Remains

To close out the anthology, the Coen's take us into the stagecoach style western story, but here with an ominous and ultimately unsettling tone. Five people are in a stagecoach together, a random bunch: on one side a French gambler (Saul Rubinek), a fur trapper (Chelcie Ross), and an elderly proper lady (Tyne Daly). On the other side, a snappily dressed Englishman (Jonjo O’Neill) and an Irishman (Brendan Gleeson). The coach is going to Fort Morgan, and over the course of the journey we find out that the lady is reuniting with her husband, and O'Neill and Gleeson are bounty hunters delivering a body.

Ross's fur trapper is the most memorable character, as he talks loudly, often, and in a way that's offensive to the proper conservative lady that Daly plays to perfection. But the journey takes a turn as it becomes obvious that we're not where we think we are. When the lady becomes upset, the Frenchman calls out to the stagecoach driver to stop, which he doesn't do, and the Englishman informs them that the coach never stops before its destination. Never. When the Frenchman pops his head outside, the world doesn't look right, it looks stormy and forbidding and definitely not the Colorado countryside. We come to realize that three such people as the Frenchman, lady, and fur trapper would not be in the same company going to the same place. The fur trapper even says he rarely sees people, so why is he on the coach in the first place? What we come to realize is that this is a ferry to the afterlife and the "bounty hunters" are simply the guides of these three disparate souls.

To end the story on this kind of note, literally the end of life at the end of a set of stories about death, is just so perfect as the finale. And when the coach stops at a hotel for the night, the three souls seem to be realizing what's going on. There's a certain gallows humor to the lady still insisting on being helped off the coach, because they're all seeming to understand what's going on now. But the final note of the symphony is note jokey, but somber, as it should be. It makes for a powerful ending for the story and even more so for the anthology as a whole.


An 8/10 on this.

Overall, the Coen's have delivered one of their best movies, one that I've already watched twice and will watch many more times over the years. I love westerns, and so do the Coen's. Thankfully, they make great ones. I hope this gets some love come awards season, as Netflix has released it briefly in theaters specifically for awards consideration. This movie deserves the love. And I didn't even talk about the gorgeous cinematography or music. Both are among my favorites in the Coen catalog (cinematography by the great Bruno Delbonnel, who has become like their secondary director of photography if Roger Deakins is unavailable, and music by Carter Burwell, as usual for the Coen's).


Overall, even though only one of the six stories got a 10/10 from me, I give the whole movie a 10/10 because the stories feel of a whole, they inform and elevate each other even as they stay separate. And I love the way the Coen's did the book tying things together by feeling like we're going between chapters of this short story collection. This, at least to my mind right now, is the only anthology movie I love wholeheartedly.

Top 10 Animated Fantasy Movies

Following on from the rich world of my live action fantasy list, I here present my top 10 animated fantasy films. But first, a couple of honorable mentions that just didn't quite make the list proper:

Mickey and the Beanstalk


Sleeping Beauty


Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

And now the list itself!

10. The Adventures of Prince Achmed

The oldest surviving animated feature film (there were apparently at least two made previously to this 1926 movie by Argentinian filmmaker Quirino Cristiani but neither has a surviving copy and are considered lost), this stop motion cardboard cutout fairy tale is a visual marvel, even now, more than 90 years after it was released. German director/animator Lotte Reiniger developed her silhouette animation technique much in the style of Asian Wayang shadow puppets, but rather than being manipulated in real time as Wayang puppets are, Reiniger animated hers frame by frame, as stop motion clay animators would do. Greatly based on One Thousand and One Nights, specifically "The Story of Prince Ahmed and the Fairy Paribanou", its story is pretty episodic, and often it doesn't even matter, just sit back and watch the amazing visuals. Reiniger's technique was later used to great effect in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 1, in the Story of the Three Brothers. Reiniger used the technique throughout her career and much of her work can be seen on YouTube. It all has that same entrancing quality that Prince Achmed has, so be prepared to go down a rabbit hole if you check it out. You'll thank me.

9. Song of the Sea

Like writer/director Tomm Moore's previous movie, 2009’s The Secret of Kells, Song of the Sea is a visually gorgeous movie to look at, is steeped in Irish folklore, has a terrific voice cast, and wonderful music as well. Both were nominated for Oscars for Best Animated Film, and I think Song of the Sea should’ve won (Kells, sadly, was up against tougher competition). It’s gentle, not full of the manic energy many filmmakers think a children’s movie needs, and ultimately tackles the deep themes of grieving, sibling rivalry, family love, and much more wrapped up in a wonderful adventure tale with lovingly created 2D animation.

What kept bringing me into this movie was the relative silence of it. I really just mean free of needless dialog. It’s not silent, it’s gorgeously scored by Bruno Coulais, collaborating with Irish band Kila, with multiple songs sung by the achingly beautiful voice of Lisa Hannigan, who plays the mother, Bronagh. She’s long been one of my favorite musical artists, from her days singing with Damien Rice, to when she truly blossomed into something special with her own albums Sea Sew (2008), Passenger (2011), and At Swim (2016). She’s got the voice of an angel, and perfectly fits what Tomm Moore is doing here. Her music is gentle, but never boring. It’s fascinating and feels handmade (indeed she even did a run of hand sewn album art for her first record). The 2D animation here is so perfectly crafted, so wonderful in conjunction with the music and story. 2D gives the movie the same handmade feeling of Hannigan’s music, it’s almost like you could reach out and touch this storybook being told to us.

8. Coraline

One that grows on me a lot each time I watch it, Henry Selick's dark fantasy Coraline is a wonderfully creepy and effective adaptation of Neil Gaiman's novella. It has the brilliant mix of humor and macabre that Selick pulled off with The Nightmare Before Christmas, but I found myself much more involved with this one, perhaps because of my distaste for the Tim Burton (who wrote and produced but didn't direct)-ness of the other movie as I get older. Here, Selick is both writer and director, and takes us on a crazy journey to an alternate universe where Coraline (Dakota Fanning) learns about appreciating the family and life she has rather than focus on the mundane things she hates about her life. The movie has a certain amount of the magical feeling I remember from childhood books like The Secret Garden, but it goes in a much different, darker, and weirder direction thanks to Selick.

7. My Neighbor Totoro

My Neighbor Totoro is one of the great animated movies that your average moviegoer hasn't seen. It was a wonderful gift given to us by Oscar-winning animation legend Hayao Miyazaki in 1988. It follows two young girls who move with their loving father into an old house near a forest in rural Japan, where they encounters mystical creatures, including Totoro, the King of the forest. What's wonderful about the movie is that it's just as engrossing when dealing with the magical Totoro and his friends as it is when we're simply watching the girls and their father clean up the house, or visit their sick mother in the hospital. It's a magnificent visual experience, something I have always loved Miyazaki for, with evocative renderings of the small village in which the family lives as well as the surrounding forest. In particular the animation on the sisters is brilliantly expressive, using the exaggerated tradition of anime to get us to recall the feelings of childhood. And like Song of the Sea, it's not afraid of having some silences. The silence makes us sit up and look closer, pay more attention, rather than lose interest. American animation needs to learn this lesson.

My Neighbor Totoro introduced Miyazaki to a much wider audience when it was released and has since become somewhat of a signature film for Studio Ghibli. The character of Totoro appears in the Studio Ghibli logo, and I've read that he is as known and beloved by the Japanese people as Mickey Mouse is to all of us in the US. It's not hard to understand why, once you've seen the movie. Totoro looks after the girls, finds them when they get lost, and uses his powers to speed up the growing of some trees the girls planted. I don't see how someone couldn't love Totoro.

6. The Toy Story Franchise

Okay, my list, my rules, and I'm including all the Toy Story movies. Now, I'm not a huge fan of the second, which I have found mostly unengaging every time I've watched it. Thematically, I think it also doesn't do anything that number three doesn't do better. Still, it felt weird to list 1 and 3 but not 2, so I'm just doing all of them. The fantasy of your toys coming to life when you're not around is such a universal one that it almost doesn't even register as being a fantasy anymore. But these movies are some of the great explorations of childhood attachments, the nostalgia of that, and the bittersweet feeling of growing up. I'm not sure where the next installment will go, but I have faith in Pixar and will be seeing it in theaters just like I've seen the first three.

5. The How to Train Your Dragon movies

Dreamworks animation has had a spotty career. It started out decently with Antz in 1998, which was overshadowed by Pixar's vastly superior A Bug's Life, they found huge success with the Shrek series, then again with Madagascar, again with Over the Hedge (which I actually liked), but didn't really hit a home run artistically, I think, until 2008's Kung Fu Panda. Then came '09's delightful Monsters vs. Aliens, and 2010 gives us their magnum opus, How to Train Your Dragon. It's a wonderful movie with astounding animation, terrific characters, and a good (if predictable) story. They create a world of Vikings and dragons and ships and battles, and imbue it with heart, artistry, and the kind of soul we're used to seeing from Pixar or Studio Ghibli.

The second movie came out and deepened the emotions, the back story, the mystery, and actually bettered the first movie. They've said they'll only do a trilogy, so the forthcoming third installment should tie everything up. I can't wait to see what they do with the final chapter. I'll say that although I love these movies, I like Toy Story 1 and 3 even more. However, How to Train Your Dragon just feels more "fantasy" to me, whatever that means, so I put it higher on the list. Maybe that's stupid, I don't care.

Even if I can't quite figure out why the Vikings have Scottish accents, I still love these movies.

4. Spirited Away

Spirited Away is one of the most wonderfully inventive movies ever made, with Miyazaki's imagination running wild in one of the best movies of the 2000's. As usual, there's the young female lead, 10-year-old heroine Chihiro, who falls into a magical world and ends up in a fantasy of mind boggling invention. After Chihiro's parents turn into pigs, Chihiro meets the mysterious Haku, who puts her on the run from the villainous Yubaba, then sends her to the four armed Kamajii, boiler master for Yubaba's bath house of the gods. Chihiro ends up working for the bath house, serving the various spirits who come to relax and wash there. And I think that only covers about the first 20 minutes or so of this 2 hour animation joyride.

Like many of Miyazaki's movies, Spirited Away is about the coming of age of the central female character. Chihiro begins the movie as meek and almost cowardly, she doesn't even want to accompany her parents into the dark tunnel leading to the amusement park that acts as the gateway to the bathhouse. But by the end, she is fighting to save the lives of her friends and defeat Yubaba's powerful spells and her hold on the citizens of this strange place. She begins on her journey from childhood into being a young woman, learning courage and purpose and the power of love.

3. Fantasia

A movie that I always wanted to see as a kid but was told I wouldn't like it, it was just animation with classical music and not a standard Disney story or anything. I thought that sounded great but I still wasn't able to see it until a few years ago, at the age of 32. It was even better than I could've imagined. It's like the best ballet you could ever dream up. The animation tied to the music so much that they become of a single piece. I could actually do without the introductions by the music conductor. Each section needs some sort of break between them, but I would've been fine with a fade to black, moment of blank screen, and fade up into a new section. Regardless, the movie is gorgeous to look at and, like The Wizard of Oz, a transportational viewing experience. Except the places we're taken in Fantasia are even more fantastical and amazing than Oz.

2. Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind

I watched Nausicaa not really knowing what to expect. It's not Hayao Miyazaki's most acclaimed movie (even if it's his third on this list!), and I watched it because I was on a Miyazaki quest and it was simply the next one I got my hands on. But what I got was among the best post-apocalyptic movies ever made. The world building in this movie (based on Miyazaki's manga of the same name) is really extraordinary, and serves as the best representation of all of Miyazaki's favorite themes: ecology, flight, and a strong young heroine. Nausicaa's impassioned adventure through the unforgiving and toxic landscape, looking for answers on how to make the world a better place, is also Miyazaki's greatest action/adventure story. Joe Hisaishi's score, when it doesn't sound like a Nintendo game, might be the most beautiful score I've heard to go with Miyazaki's best imagery. There's not enough I can say about this movie (it also inspired one of my favorite video games, the NES's Crystalis), I enjoy certain anime, but for me this is the big daddy of them all.

1. Beauty and the Beast

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.