What are your top ten favorite movies?

When it comes to movies, I’m not exactly fond of picking favorites. I just don’t find myself wanting to go back and frequently rewatch a lot of movies. That being said, I’ll still try to come up with ten regardless of “favorite” status, and definitely won’t rank them.

The first couple movies are ones I haven’t watched in a very long time, and that’s because they just don’t hold up (in my opinion) and the last time I watched them was probably 20 years ago or more. Anyways, in no particular order:

• Surf Ninjas (1993) with Ernie Reyes Jr. and Rob Schneider. I had a VHS copy of this movie, and my younger brother and I loved watching it for some reason. We still occasionally quote it!
• McHale’s Navy (1997) with Tom Arnold, Tim Curry, and Bruce Campbell (among others). Similar situation to Surf Ninjas. We had a VHS copy of this movie, but I think I was the only one who really watched it a lot. My parents had given my brother and I an old VCR for the small TV we shared to play SNES games on, so whenever we weren’t playing video games, we would just put on movies while playing with LEGO’s.
• Gargoyles the Movie: The Heroes Awaken (1995) was another VHS my brother and I watched a lot. It also included a boardgame of sorts that you played by watching a part of the tape after the movie itself was over.
• Skipping ahead to the present for a movie. Bullet Train (2022) on Netflix. I probably could classify this one as a favorite movie. I watched it a handful of times just this year, a few times on my own and then I got some friends to watch it with me over a screenshare. Every time I watched it I noticed new little details that are kind of “blink and you miss it” but are little hints or nods to things. The soundtrack is also great, and we took some clips to put onto a soundboard for ourselves.
• A list of movies wouldn’t be complete without referencing Nick Cage. So, I’m tossing in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (2010). Similar to a lot of the early movies, I watched it once or twice just to watch it, but extra viewings were done as background noise.
• Let’s add some Hayao Miyazaki to finish things off, starting with Princess Mononoke (1997). To my knowledge this was my first Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli movie, and one of my first DVD’s. I watched it so much that there ended up being a ring lightly etched into it.
• Spirited Away (2001) was not one I immediately got into, because it has a different style of action from Princess Mononoke but several years later I did come back around to enjoying it more when my “literary and cinematic palette” became a little more refined.
• Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989) was another one of those late discoveries that ended up being watched several times and ultimately cemented itself into my memory. I probably didn’t get around to watching this until 2003? Hard to say, but that sounds about right, as I was in high school at the time.
• Howl’s Moving Castle (2004) would be right up there near the top (if I were actually ranking them) but probably because I read the book as well, and I greatly enjoyed both.
• Rounding out the list of ten will be Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro (1979). This was one that, when it was finally brought to DVD, I watched quite a few times. For an older movie, the English dub work is actually fairly good, which helps to enjoy it (I’m more okay with reading subtitles these days, but if there is solid dub work, I’ll watch it in English too.)

As I went through this trip down movie memory lane, I started to come up with more, but I’ll leave it at the ten because that’s all the prompt asked for, and I don’t want this post getting wildly lengthy.

Again, not a top ten favorite list, because I’m sure there are movies out there that are objectively better, but these are the ones that at the time I watched them I did end up watching repeatedly over the course of year (not daily, though).

Okay, maybe one more.

• Akira (1988, the year I was born) and it has an interesting history for me. I believe it was my older brother’s VHS copy, with English dubbing, that I watched so many times as a kid. I went back a few years ago to try and find a copy to watch, to relive some nostalgia, but I couldn’t find a version with the English dub I remembered. Turns out, there are two English dubbings. Given the fact I watched it on VHS, it was obviously the 1989 version and not the 2001 version. (Sorry Johnny Yong Bosch fans! No hate, the older version just holds a special nostalgia for me.)