Best Movies of 2017

1. Coco 
2. It Comes At Night
3. Okja
4. Wonder Woman 
5. Logan 
6. Hidden Figures
7. Baby Driver 
8. War for the Planet of the Apes
9. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri  
10. Spider-Man: Homecoming

Best Picture Nominees 2018

A typical mix of great movies, good movies, and not-so-good ones.

1. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
2. Darkest Hour
3. Get Out
4. The Shape of Water
5. Phantom Thread
6. The Post
7. Lady Bird
8. Dunkirk
9. Call Me by Your Name

Best Picture Nominees 2017

A decent year. A couple clunkers, a couple mediocre, but we've seen worse. A very strong top 4.

1. Hell or High Water
2. Hidden Figures
3. Manchester by the Sea
4. Arrival
5. Hacksaw Ridge
6. La La Land
7. Fences
8. Lion
9. Moonlight

Best Picture Nominees 2016

Wow. Great year. Every movie nominated was great and deserving. A rarity.

1. Mad Max: Fury Road
2. The Martian
3. Spotlight
4. Room
5. The Revenant
6. The Big Short
7. Brooklyn
8. Bridge of Spies

Best Picture Nominees 2015

Not so terrible this year. Not a list of my favorite movies, but I only hated one.

1. The Grand Budapest Hotel
2. The Imitation Game
3. Boyhood
4. Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
5. Whiplash
6. Selma
7. American Sniper
8. The Theory of Everything

Best Picture Nominees 2014

So-so year this year. I liked most of these movies but didn't love them.

1. Her
2. Philomena
3. Gravity
4. Nebraska
5. Captain Phillips
6. The Wolf of Wall Street
7. 12 Years a Slave
8. American Hustle
9. Dallas Buyers Club

Best Picture Nominees 2013

Much better crop than last year, as you can probably tell from my personal best of the year list. The wrong winner, but when is that not the case?

1. Silver Linings Playbook
2. Les Miserables
3. Lincoln
4. Django Unchained
5. Argo
6. Life of Pi
7. Beasts of the Southern Wild
8. Zero Dark Thirty
9. Amour

Best Picture Nominees 2012

Not a great year. I was not a fan of a lot of these movies. I only think the top three are deserving.

1. The Help
2. Moneyball
3. The Descendants
4. Midnight in Paris
5. The Artist
6. Hugo
7. Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
8. War Horse
9. The Tree of Life

X-Men

While we're on a superhero kick, let's rank the X-Men films. One of the greatest series ever made. Very few missteps here. Really, you could randomly list the first four movies in any order and I wouldn't be upset. X-Men: The Last Stand is the only terrible movie here.

1. X-Men: First Class (2011)
2. X2 (2003)
3. X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)
4. Logan (2017)
5. X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)
6. X-Men: Apocalypse (2016)
7. X-Men (2000)
8. Deadpool (2016)
9. The Wolverine (2013)
10. X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)

Spider-Man

Since that pesky web-slinger doesn't seem to be going away anytime soon, I thought it'd be fun to start ranking his feature film outings.

1. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
2. Spider-Man: Far from Home (2019)
3. Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
4. Spider-Man (2002)
5. Spider-Man 2 (2004)
6. The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)
7. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014)
8. Spider-Man 3 (2007)

Marvel Movies

Well, it's been long enough. I figure it's time to rank the movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). I do not tend to agree with popular opinion, so I expect this will be quite controversial.

1. Iron Man 3 (2013)
2. Avengers: Endgame (2019)
3. Iron Man (2008)
4. Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)
5. Captain America: Civil War (2016)
6. Thor: Ragnarok (2017)
7. Spider-Man: Far from Home (2019)
8. Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
9. Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
10. Black Panther (2018)
11. Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
12. Doctor Strange (2016)
13. Captain Marvel (2019)
14. Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)
15. Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018)
16. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017)
17. Ant-Man (2015)
18. Marvel's The Avengers (2012)
19. The Incredible Hulk (2008)
20. Iron Man 2 (2010)
21. Thor: The Dark World (2013)
22. Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)
23. Thor (2011)

Best Courtroom Movies

Nothings better than a good courtroom movie, so I don't know why it took me so long to make this list. These are movies where the main plot and majority of the action are all predicated on the trial in question.

1. My Cousin Vinny (1992)
2. Paradise Lost: The Childhood Murders at Hollywood Hills (1996)
3. Miracle on 34th Street (1947)
4. 12 Angry Men (1957)
5. A Time to Kill (1996)
6. Murder on a Sunday Morning (2001)
7. Adam's Rib (1949)
8. Absence of Malice (1981)
9. The Reader (2008)
10. The Verdict (1982)

Best Picture Nominees 2011

A pretty good crop this year. I don't have any big complaints except for Toy Story 3D. It wasn't even the best animated movie this year.

1.  Inception (tie)
2. True Grit (tie)
3. Black Swan
4. The King's Speech
5. The Fighter
6. The Social Network
7. 127 Hours
8. The Kids Are All Right
9. Winter's Bone
10. Toy Story 3

Best Movies of 2011

1. Warrior
2. Take Shelter
3. Crazy, Stupid, Love.
4. Rise of the Planet of the Apes
5. TrollHunter
6. X-Men: First Class
7. Martha Marcy May Marlene
8. Attack the Block
9. Bridesmaids
10. Hanna

Best of the Oscar Shorts 2010

Here is a ranking of the 2010 Academy Award nominees for best dramatic short films (live and animated) in order of best to worst:

1. La Dama y la Muerte
2. Wallace and Gromit in 'A Matter of Loaf and Death'
3. The New Tenants
4. French Roast
5. Istället för Abrakadabra
6. Miracle Fish
7. Kavi
8. Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty
9. Logorama
10. The Door

Biggest Snub:
Partly Cloudy

Best Movies of 2010

1. True Grit
2. Tangled 3D
3. Inception
4. How to Train Your Dragon 3D
5. Black Swan
6. Countdown to Zero
7. Let Me In
8. The Ghost Writer
9. The King's Speech
10. The Square

Best Movies of the Decade - '00s

This was a heartbreaking work of staggering genius. We have reached the end of another decade and so many magazines and shows were putting together top ten lists for the decade and I decided, why not take a whack at it? It was not even anywhere remotely near easy. When I looked down at the bloody victors at my feet after I had so ruthlessly hacked away at the thousands of films that I have seen over the past ten years and the hundreds that deserved a spot on this list, there were so measly few remaining standing, but that number was still 35. I had to still deny 25 masterpieces eternal glory to reach the arbitrary number of "top ten". It was like killing babies. So I apologize to all the movies that didn't manage to make it to the final roundup. It was nothing personal.

Now, a word about how I made the list. I hate people who make lists and then choose their spots not by which movies they liked better than another, but rather which was the best of a genre, or some other capricious rule. For example, "I need to pick a Pixar movie on my list, which was the best?". If all ten of the best films of the decade happen to be made by Pixar, that is no reason to punish Pixar by canceling itself out of contention. It is very tempting to do, but categorically unfair. I started with a list that was nothing but a list of the films I liked best and narrowing it down using a bracket-like system until I had what I deemed the best. I was as surprised as anybody possibly could be.

So without further ado:

1. Children of Men (2006)
2. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
3. Hot Fuzz (2007)
4. There Will Be Blood (2007)
5. Finding Nemo (2003)
6. Letters From Iwo Jima (2006)
7. Crash (2005)
8. Brokeback Mountain (2005)
9. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
10. Frozen River (2008)

Best Prison Movies

This list doesn't really have a connection anywhere, except I've watched a bunch of movies (and TV shows) recently featuring prisons, and I'm currently reading a book set in a prison, so it's on my mind. These are the best movies with a substantial portion of screen time set inside a prison.

1. The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
2. My Cousin Vinny (1992)
3. American History X (1998)
4. The Green Mile (1999)
5. The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
6. Escape from Alcatraz (1979)
7. The Count of Monte Cristo (2002)
8. The Great Escape (1963)
9. Cool Hand Luke (1967)
10. Midnight Express (1978)

Best Pixar Movies

Now that they've made ten films, each a masterpiece in its own respect, I figured it's time to rank them. Plus, it's just not fair to compare other animated movies to films of this caliber. They need a list of their own. I'll try to keep it updated well into the future.

1. Toy Story (1995)
2. Finding Nemo (2003)
3. Toy Story 2 (1999)
4. The Incredibles (2004)
5. Coco (2017)
6. Up (2009)
7. WALL·E (2008)
8. Monsters University (2013)
9. Inside Out (2015)
10. Onward (2020)
11. Cars (2006)
12. Toy Story 4 (2019)
13. Ratatouille (2007)
14. Brave (2012)
15. Incredibles 2 (2018)
16. Finding Dory (2016)
17. Cars 3 (2017)
18. The Good Dinosaur (2015)
19. A Bug's Life (1998)
20. Monsters, Inc. (2001)
21. Toy Story 3 (2010)
22. Cars 2 (2011)

Ten Years Revisited!

Well, it's been a long ten years. Here's the movies I was into a decade ago:


1. The Cider House Rules
2. American Beauty
3. The Green Mile
4. The Iron Giant
5. Toy Story 2
6. Lola rennt
7. South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut
8. Galaxy Quest
9. The Blair Witch Project
10. Three Kings