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

Worst Movies of 2011

1. Rio

2. Scream 4
3. Battle: Los Angeles
4. Season of the Witch
5. Sucker Punch
6. Transformers: Dark of the Moon
7. Cedar Rapids
8. No Strings Attached
9. Cars 2
10. Priest

Live Bands

This list is more for my own record keeping purposes, but it goes along with my previous post. These are the bands that I have seen live in concert. The first list are the bands I saw willingly. These are bands I like. I've ranked them in the order I enjoyed the concert.

1. Ludo (x3)
2. Bowling for Soup
3. Mury (x2)
4. Sum 41
5. The Offspring
6. Madina Lake (x2)
7. Without a Face
8. Social Distortion
9. Single File
10. The Airborne Toxic Event
11. Unwritten Law
12. Green Day
13. Blink-182 (x2)
14. Linkin Park
15. The Higher
16. Billy Talent
17. Jimmy Eat World
18. The Starting Line (x2)
19. Say Anything
20. Madison Lights
21. The Used
22. Alkaline Trio (x2)
23. The Graduate (x2)
24. Just Surrender
25. My Chemical Romance (x3)
26. The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus
27. Tommy and the High Pilots (x2)
28. There for Tomorrow
29. 30 Seconds to Mars (x2)
30. Victim Effect (x2)

This second list is for the curious folks who like to know what bands opened for the bands above that I was forced to listen to in order to get to the good stuff. These bands range from mediocre to terrible. In no particular order:

Manchester Orchestra
The Architects
Stamps
Sparks the Rescue
MuteMath
Neon Trees (x2)
Amber Alert
Escape the Fate
King Niko
Drive By
Coheed and Cambria
Chiodos
Eye Alaska
Schoolyard Heroes
Street Dogs
Allred (x2)
Blackhounds
Franz Ferdinand
Taking Back Sunday
Chester French
Broke City (x2)
Billy Boy on Poison
Cursive
The Dear & Departed
Oh, Be Clever

Best Picture Nominees 2010

Since the Academy Awards had decided to raise its nomination count to include ten movies, it seems like the perfect chance to rank them according to quality!

1. Up
2. Up In The Air
3. Inglourious Basterds
4. District 9
5. The Blind Side
6.An Education
7. Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire
8. The Hurt Locker
9. A Serious Man
10. Avatar

And, in case you were wondering since they are not all on my top of the year list, all but the last two deserve the nomination.

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

Sundance Film Festival 2010

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