LauraBelle's Top 10 Movies ... Today

I was asked recently on a job application to name my top 10 movies of all time. I always find that type of thing somewhat silly, as I think I would change that list every few few months. I came up with the list in five minutes, just based on things I could watch over and over again, and have. I've already changed half the list putting it down here. Regardless, I thought while the list was fresh in my mind, I'd explain just why these are my favorites ... tonight.

1. Windy City
This movie and its spot on my list isn't likely to change. It hasn't in 20 years or so. This is a movie about a young male writer who is challenged by his girlfriend and group of old college buddies to get on with his life. During this process he is challenged in every which way. This was the first movie I saw that backed up my feelings on fate. Everything happens for a reason. I saw the ending coming, but it made my bawl nonetheless. I watched this on a Saturday afternoon on the floor of my apartment with a pillow and blanket. It's just that type of flick.




2. Sixteen Candles
Could this movie have any more classic quotes? A young girl reaches her 16th birthday and finds she is being ignored by her family, as they're more involved with the wedding of her older sister. Instead, she puts up with two sets of visiting grandparents and a foreign exchange student. She tries to forget it all by going to the school dance and has to put up with the advances of a horny geek. It's one of those movies that just has quotes and funny bits climbing out of it, as do most John Hughes movies. My friend and I repeat the "No, he's not retarded!" line to each other at least monthly, and it always follows with a barrage of the other quotes. It's simply my favorite quotable movie. "You think you got problems? At least you're not named after a duck's dork."

No he's not retarded! Classic SIXTEEN CANDLES

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3. The Breakfast Club
And, of course, if I put Sixteen Candles on here, I also have to put Breakfast Club, yet another John Hughes classic. Five high schoolers that couldn't be more different spend their Saturday in detention. While they start out noticing nothing but each other's differences, by the time they are done, they find their similarities. There are of course more great bits and quotes in this one("Does Barry Manilow know you stole his wardrobe?"), but the best part of this flick, and the one that places it on this list, is the ending where the students write the essay that was asked of them collectively, and say they have realized they aren't that different, as in each one of them, there is a princess, an athlete, a brain, a criminal, and a basketcase.



4. It's a Wonderful Life
Who doesn't have this move in their top 10? It's a Christmas classic, and I never even saw it until I was an adult. Jimmy Stewart stars as a guy who looks back on his life as a failure, never having l lived up to his dreams of traveling overseas, being stuck back at home to run his father's failing Savings & Loan. It takes an angel to get him to see there are many great parts of his life that are quite wonderful and that have added to everyone else's wonderful life as well. My favorite part usually isn't everyone else's favorite part. Because I think of life as a being run by fate, I love when he comes back to join his new wife for their honeymoon night, and is taken to the house that they made a wish on as they grew rocks at the windows when they were younger. It wasn't love at first site necessarily, but they were meant to be, to have their wonderful life.



5. The Shining
To me this is the quintessential scary movie. It's not filled with blood and gore, but watching Jack Nicholson slowly going mad is just the best. He and his family take an easy job living in an old hotel that is empty for the winter. H plans to get some writing done. Yes, it's the second movie in my top 5 that features a writer. You can literally see the guy go mad as he's typing his novel and soon ends up typing pages and pages of All work and no play makes Jack a dully boy." It makes the shock not nearly as bad when he busts through that door with the axe. "Here's Johnny!"



6. Michael
Okay, so my 6th grade diary says I love Vinnie Barbarino. The reasons I watch John Travolta movies now have nothing to do with my 6th grade crush. He's simply a great actor, whether he's living in a bubble, acting cool while singing about his date on the beach, driving a cab, or being a heavyset woman. In Michael, he plays archangel Michael, and while magazine writers drive him across the midwest, what they don't realize is he is carrying out one last mission while grounded here on earth. It's yet another movie that expresses my view on things happening for a reason. While it seemed he was just a nut, Michael knew what he was doing all the time. It also has one of the best soundtracks. Besides the personality of Michael reminds me of my son, Michael, who would also want to stop and see the world's largest frying pan.



7. Little Darlings
Why this movie was rated R, so that younger teenage girls couldn't see it, I'll never know. I'm sure it had to do wit the subject matter, but it took a serious matter, treated it light-heartedly, and showed in the end how wrong that was. Kristy McNichol and Tatum O'Neal star as teenage girls at camp who make a bet over who will lose their virginity first. When McNichol loses hers first with Matt Dillon (by junior year of high school I had replaced Travolta), she learns it was way more personal than she thought it was going to be. It was no joke. She chose to lose the bet, rather than divulge the details to her friends. This movie, along with the book Forever by Judy Blame kept my hormones in check. Throughout the early 80s, I so wanted to be Kristy McNichol. And even as an adult when I seen this film, I still swoon over Dillon.



8. Goodfellas
I can't help it. Ever since this movie, when I think of Mafia, I think of Goodfellas, Joe Pesci, Ray Liotta, and Robert DeNiro. Liotta stars as a young guy moving up in the ranks of the Mafia, and when he gets himself in too much trouble with the law by selling drugs, he rats out the guys that were like family to him, later entering into a witness protection program. A true story, I always found it mesmerizing. That this group of guys could so carelessly kill each other and others. It was their culture, and they didn't seem to think much of it. This is another with a great soundtrack, and possibly one of the best. Listening to Layla you can literally see the guy hanging in the refrigerated truck. Classic.



9. Karate Kid
This is the movie my husband and I saw on our first real date. After this, we went out for pizza. It's yet another movie for good quotes which have become universal at some point in martial arts ("Wax on; wax off.") A young guy is tired of being terrorized by the karate toughs at his new school, and enlists the help of an older man, Mr. Miyagi, to help him learn to defend himself. He not only learns about self defense from this old man, he also learns about life, and finds his first true friend. 22 years after my first day when I saw this film, I earned by own black belt. And amazingly enough, the things I learned about life and martial arts from this movie, still hold up.



10. Back to the Future
I'm finding it particularly hard to come up with a movie for this last position. I'm sure within a week I'll figure out a movie that I want to exchange this one for. Yet, it's definitely one of my favorite movies of all time. What makes it even more special now than when I first saw it over 20 years ago is that it's now my son's favorite movie. This would be number one on his list, and just today he was mentioning it. It's another movie filled with memorable quotes, and at least every other day I say to my son, "Think, McFly." It's timeless and timely at the same time, as Michael J. Fox leaves 1985 and travels back in time in a DeLorean to 1955, risking his future as his mother falls in love with him instead of his father. It's full of pieces of modern 1985 that you have to live through to understand. My son didn't didn't understand for a long time why we didn't see Deloreans on the road around here. The soundtrack, led by Huey Lewis, isn't so bad either.