top 100 Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I had the audacity to put together a "Top 100 Horror Movies" list, mainly because I get numerous emails, tweets, and random requests for "a few good horror movies to rent." It's awesome that people turn to me for an opinion, and so I put a lot of time and thought (about two good hours) into this list right here at Horror Squad. It's been so popular that three separate people on the Twitter have called me a moron this week.

But then I realized that I was ignoring my other baby ... the one called Sci-Fi Squad. (And I further realized that I haven't been called a moron enough this week.) And since sci-fi runs a close second to horror in my favorite genre department, well, let's just say I've seen a whole freaking lot of science fiction films. Less than some, more than most, but a whole stinking lot. This list took a bit longer than the horror one, mainly because I didn't want to omit anything that was worthy, but also because I insist on including personal favorites like Species. Yes, the hot naked horny alien movie. I dig it. And here are the remaining 99 ... over at Sci-Fi Squad.

I eagerly await your incredulous gasps and challenges upon my sanity. One last time: Here's The Top 100 Horror Films of All Time, and The Top 100 Sci-Fi Films of All Time ... according to me, of course. Both crafted with love. And caffeine.

It's getting to the point where one could make a list of the "Top 100 Movie Lists Released in 2007," and still have some left over. Yet another one hit the net this weekend, "The Online Film Community's Top 100 Movies." Here's how the list was formed: over 50 movie website writers (you can see the list of participants on the site) were asked for an unranked list of their top 100 movies. The list could include any feature-length film, in any language, including documentaries. From there, the list of nominees was narrowed to 502 films. Then all the contributors were sent the nominee list, picked and ranked their top 100 choices, and those choices were "scored according to placement on each list as well as factoring in the amount of lists it appeared on." Got all that? The final collection they came up with skews a bit more modern, a bit more "genre film" heavy, and a lot more action-packed than most similar lists.

The major change here is that, for once, Citizen Kane is not the highest ranked film. The Godfather is in the number one spot here (don't worry Kaners, it's #2). No documentaries made the cut, and foreign films are in fairly short supply. The only two animated films on the list are Pixar -- Toy Story and The Incredibles. We all love the classics, but what sets this list apart is how many oft-neglected recent films made it. I would imagine that is due to the younger age of the average online writer. On the action side, it's great to see films like Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Heat, Aliens, and the glorious Die Hard make the grade. As far as comedies go, happy to see Back to the Future, The Big Lebowski, Groundhog Day, Ghostbusters and Ed Wood get some love. As for dramas, hooray for L.A. Confidential, Blue Velvet, Do the Right Thing, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I've got some grievances, of course. Fight Club a better movie than Goodfellas? Ridonkulous! Run Lola Run superior to Unforgiven? Unforgivable! But it's a really solid collection, and one I'd imagine will find more support from Cinematical readers than, say, the AFI's recent ranking.

You might have noticed that the much-touted AFI Top 100 list is missing something: female film directors. Few of the films have strong female leads, or were written by women. I suppose AFI would argue that they're not looking at the race or sex of filmmakers or stars, they just want to pick good American movies that everyone loves. But the Top 100 list does leave a lot to be desired if you're looking for diversity of any kind.

Enter the Alliance of Women Film Journalists, who decided they would make their own list of Top 100 films -- not 100 films directed by women, just the journalists' idea of what the all-time top 100 films might be. They wanted to see if for them, "great films" would have such a small representation of women. And unsurprisingly, the AFWJ list does include many more movies written and/or directed by women, as well as women in strong leads. The AFWJ Top 100 list, released on Monday, does overlap a little with AFI's list -- the inevitable Citizen Kane and Casablanca, for example. Howeer, AFWJ doesn't rank the films in order of goodness, but gives you an alphabetical list, which I prefer. In addition, AFWJ did not limit their choices to American films, although the AFI's definition of "American" has always seemed shaky to me. (A Clockwork Orange qualifies for the AFI list, but not Brazil? Weird.) Also, I am a little annoyed that AFI wants you to register with their site in order to download their top 100 list and the original ballot -- do a Web search and find it on a news site instead. The AWFJ list is viewable by anyone.