A top list? Can't be done, so here goes in random order.
* Evil Dead saga -> pretty much one giantic movie from the start of the first, to the end of the third. The second is by far the best of them, and the third one isn't even a horror movie. Still, that just makes them different, yet all the same. The castle from the third is just like the cabin in the two first, only bigger and with more people, and so on.
* Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill Volume 1 -> Tarantiono at his very best. Annoyingly, Kill Bill Volume 2 is Tarantino at his very worst. Oh, well.
* From Dusk 'Til Dawn 1-3 -> Hated the first one the first time I watched it, but the second time I understood it more and enjoyed it a lot. I also hated having Bruce Campell and Tiffany Thiesen on the cover of the second when they died after ten minutes, but it's still a great movie. The third one is very different, yet still great.
* Tremors 1-4 -> Many hate all of them except the first, but I kinda love them. Stop worrying about the stupid shiekers, assblasters (they're called that) and so on, and rather enjoy them. It's great entertainment.
* Star Wars Episode 4-6 -> Sci-fi at it's second best. Perfection. (Ep 1-3 are sadly on the other end of the scala... I was a guy in my twenties when I saw the first one in the movie theatre, and almost started crying out loud with tears and everything. How could Georgie ruin it like that!)
* Indiana Jones 1-3 -> Who said archeology is boring?
* Alien Saga -> I don't count the fourth one as an Alien saga, but the three first are the third best sci-fi movies of all time.
* Hellraiser -> The third one is entertaining for all the wrong reasons, and the rest just stupid. But the first one is classic horror. It does to horror movies what Weis & Hickman did to fantasy novels.
* Wolf Man -> Black and white movie from 1933 starring Lon Chaney Jr, and still the best werewolf movie ever made. That says a bit.
* Bride of Frankenstein -> Boris Karloff is
the monster of Frankenstein, and this is the closest we've ever gotten to Mary Shelley's novel. Perfection. Even Robbie DeNiro doesn't come close to Boris Karloff.
* The Phantom Of The Opera -> Short to say, stars Lon Chaney Sr as the phantom, and was made long before they turned into a stupid musical. The phantom has never looked this good ever since.
* Wishmaster -> Forget the crappy last three, the first one is awesome. Short to say, it stars Robert Englund, aka Freddy Kruger. If anyone can pull off a horror movie, he can.
* Predator -> The second is just ok, but the first one is pure
Predator all the way. There's evil movie monsters, there's nice movie monsters, and there's Predator.
The list could go on as I remember them, including Critters, Gremlins, Bruce Lee movies, Donnie Darko, Dark City, Easy Rider, Death Race 2000, Halloween 1-2 (basically one movie), Halloween 4-5, Back to the future 1-2, Battle Royale, The Ring (japanese), Ju-on: The Grudge (japanese), Ong-Bak (thai "Bruce Lee"), Jaws, Cujo, Prey (quite new, about a family going to Africa and gets attacked by lions), the original Hills Have Eyes, The Last House On The Left, the original Amityville Horror and The Shining (definitely not the hybrid Amityville / Shining remake), and so on, so let's skip to the top five.
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5th place: A whole bunch of movies, which is why they drop down to fifth place. Even so, they certainly belong here. I'm talking of the entire collection by
David Lynch.
Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive, Blue Velvet, you name them. Agreed, some are less good than others like the dude on the lawnmover, but even so, his combined collection belongs here.
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3d place: The best sci-fi movie ever made, and arguably a mini-series. I have it all on two dvd's and watch them in one go, so they count. The third place goes to...
Frank Herbert's Children of Dune. This is how sci-fi are made. A run-down, dirty, broken world, amazing special effects, superb dialogue, great cast and all that. And the best part is it just doesn't feel like sci-fi at all. It feels
real.
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2d place: Strangely, a movie based on a game. Most movies based on games are junk, like Street Fighter, Super Mario, Resident Evil and so on. Even so, statistically there had to come a movie to rule them all. One movie so great, it proves forever that a movie based on a game can work. This movie is...
Silent Hill. I know, a lot of people hated it, and I understand it. It's a bad movie if you haven't played the game, but this is a movie mainly for the fans. The big dude with the sword? That's Pyramid Head, from the second game. The girl, Alessa? She's in the first game. The cop, Cybil? From the first game. Even the entire intro is from the first game. I didn't like the guy at first, but he was written into the movie long after the script was finished anyway. And even with him, he adds another dimension (hehe) to this masterpiece and ends up making it even better. A true classic, game or not. I've seen it more than ten times already, and I'm nowhere near done watching it.
And that, ladies, gentlemen and others, brings us up to the
1st place: A movie so awesome, so outstanding, it will last to the end of time. Sure, it has boring sequels, and yes, there's even a tv-series based on it. But forget all that junk, this is what it is about. If you watch only one movie a random year, this is the movie to watch. In fact, if you only get one CD a random year, the soundtrack is worth getting. I'm talking about...
THE CROW. It has it all. Great cast, great story, great setting, great music, great dialogue, great
everything in fact. It's sort of a horror movie with a zombie on a rampage, but on the other hand it's so much more than that. It would have been easy to resurrect Erik Draven (the main character, Brandon Lee), let him kill the bad guys and that's it. Fortunately, it's not that simple. First of all, when he does wake up again from the dead, he doesn't know why he's there. He doesn't even know he's immortal. He does, however, remember watching his girlfriend getting raped and killed, so naturally he feels a bit bad. Even when he starts killing the bad guys, he keeps remembering his girlfriend, so he's not happy at all through the entire movie (except maybe a bit when he's killing people). Then there's the young girl who knew him when he was alive. He's dead and all, but she's very much alive. Except now that both Erik and his girlfriend are dead, the girl is alone. Her mother is a prostitue and doesn't care about her, and her father could be pretty much anyone. I could sit all night talking about how great this movie is, so just watch it. Let's just say even if the main plot is a dead guy killing bad guys, it never gets over the top. It's not really gory (a few scenes, perhaps, but most of them doesn't even invole Erik), and are mainly there to illustrate how bad the bad guys really are.
One last thing, if you still don't get it. In one scene quite early, Erik trashes a pawnshop and burns it to the ground, just to get his engagement ring back. That's how much he cares about his girlfriend, dead or not. Sure people die, but even so, it's never violent just to be violent. It's far more a sad, tragic drama than a violent action movie. It's violent in the way Spider-man and Batman is violent, you know? (which are violent just to be violent and therefore a bad example, but you know what I mean.)
