This is my third Top 10 list ranking various things, and there are more to come, but I thought I’d shake up the format a little. As some of you may know, I started writing Top 10 lists because ranking is the big thing on the internet right now and I feel there are things out there that nobody’s ranking that deserve their time in the sun. Having said all that, let’s forget it and throw it out the window. That’s next time, I’ll rank something fun like Top 10 Inanimate Objects To Destroy or Top 10 Foods To Drop On People From A Tall Building. So look forward to that. In fact, if there’s something you’d like me to rank, like the post and comment below and I’ll see if I can do something with it. But yeah, forget all of that. Right now, we’re gonna try and be really sincere. This is my sincere version of all those movie ranking articles, without a theme or structure. We’re gonna see if a man who likes movies too much can find ten favorites to recommend. Wish me luck! It’s movie time!

Honorable Mentions: About Time, American Fiction, Booksmart, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Glass Onion, Good Will Hunting, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Knives Out, Logan Lucky, Mission: Impossible – Fallout, Paddington 2, Palm Springs, Planes Trains and Automobiles, Role Models, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, The Suicide Squad, The Third Man, The Truman Show, We Bought A Zoo, We’re the Millers
Sure, one could say that it defeats the purpose of a Top 10 list to include 21 runner-ups at the offset. It betrays an inherently indecisive nature in the mind of the writer. Well, as the writer, I’d like to say I am also ashamed. Alas, I love movies so much, and I feel I would betray myself not to even mention the wide variety of films I enjoy. All of these are, in my opinion, fun romps worth a watch. Also, I’m simply immortalizing one moment in time, this will change. If you’d asked me 15 years ago I would’ve said Nanny McPhee and Stuart Little were up there too. And in a way, they still are. Anyway. Those are some recommendations for you. Here’s ten more.

10. Everything Everywhere All At Once
This is the most recent release on this list, though not the one I’ve seen for the first time recently. I didn’t want recency bias to sway my inclusion of this film. There are a couple exceedingly weird bits that throw me off (One of the Directors cameoing as an IRS manager who loves BDSM which in the grand scheme of the film really does not need to be there and just makes him look like an incredibly weird creep. Whereas the buttplug fight scene is ridiculous and I think it’s funny, so I don’t much care.) and the pacing gets weird by the end when it feels like we’ve seen three different endings, but that is the point. Those bits that are entirely unnecessary doesn’t ruin an overall wonderful movie about how life is pointless and nothing means anything and therefore everything means everything and life has the meaning you ascribe to it day to day. I’ve reviewed it on here a few times now, and I don’t feel any of them did it justice. It’s such a weird, wonderful film that does so much all at once. It pays homage to nineteen different genres of cinema, gives five incredible actors the chance to put forth dozens of incredible performances, and combines the insane nonsensical scientific comedy of Douglas Adams with wacky gross-out beats, inventive action sequences, and a very personal story about a whole family trying to work through their collective trauma and reconnect. It shouldn’t all fit together, but it does because it’s so incredibly sprawling, but it always comes back to that core story. You can have everything bagel jokes and Ratatouille parodies with Randy Newman songs and hot dog fingers and fanny pack fight scenes and an entire visual sprawling multiverse because that’s additional dressing that serves the emotional story. In an entire multiverse of better Evelyns and less complicated lives and insane nonsense, why go back to the one where your dad hates you and you don’t understand your daughter and your husband wants a divorce and you’re being audited? Because that’s the one universe that’s real and true and matters the most to you. Blah blah joke about maybe this movie not being on my list in a different universe yadda yadda it’s incredible and I still can’t believe it exists, let alone that it won several deserved Academy Awards. The massive success of this movie is a big win for weird people everywhere.

9. Inside Llewyn Davis
This is the most depressing movie on this list. If I wanted to include a Coen Brothers movie, I could’ve picked something less grim and more visually insane and exciting. Like I love The Big Lebowski but there’s a weird grimy sheen to everything and people are cruel to the Dude seemingly for no reason, and I love how cartoony and weird The Hudsucker Proxy is but… actually I have nothing against that one, that and Hail, Caesar could easily be on here. I also enjoy A Serious Man as a very tragic, depressing comedy. This one speaks to me purely because it’s so beautiful and sad. Everyone is cruel to Llewyn in this, but deservedly so, as he is an incredibly self-destructive person and difficult to watch at times. He had success with his friend and former partner because their voices matched beautifully, much like Simon and Garfunkel, but on his own his voice is too melodically sad to achieve notoriety or success. And we watch as he travels around through a series of depressing, cold adventures, wandering homelessly through the night, trying to be better than the sum of his parts, unable to give up on his dream that is actively killing him. It’s not at its core a fun movie, but it’s so atmospheric and beautiful and Oscar Isaac is incredible to watch. There’s also phenomenal music throughout, and a delightful cat. The music is all very much of an era, of the 60’s folk music scene, and each song represents a different aspect. What a wonderful and fully interesting film. It’s very much the outlier on this list and I’m not sure it belongs or not, but I feel it deserves to be here at least for now. I really like it. It’s much like the movie Prisoners in that the subject matter is so incredibly depressing, but I enjoy it quite a bit. It is a very darkly funny movie though. And esoteric and metaphorical in a way some would find pretentious but I find delightful. Surprise surprise, the Coen Brothers make incredible movies.

8. The Mask of Zorro
This is the film I’ve watched most recently, and one I feel will only ascend over time. I love this movie. It comes from a different realm of pulp storytelling than The Princess Bride, (Which I also love, will that be on the list? Only time will tell.) but is very similar in ways I don’t often see referenced. It’s a kind of movie that we don’t see anymore, which frustrates me, it’s incredibly fun and swashbuckling and there are two evil menacing villains and lovable side characters. There are wonderful swordfights and intimate, sexy scenes with the two leads. For a time, Jerry Bruckheimer tried to replicate the success of this era of Hollywood, which was already long gone when this was released, with the Pirates of the Caribbean movies and National Treasure to varying degrees of success. I think this is far better than a Pirates movie, though I also only like the first one a bit, they’re very long. This is brisk fun. You get three incredibly attractive lead performances, I never knew Anthony Hopkins was so attractive and charismatic, I’ve only seen him play creepy serial killers or doddering God/Professor types. But he’s so good in this, just watch the bit where he pulls out a spoon. And the charisma between the two leads, the sexual chemistry at play, makes the movie so wonderful and charming. It’s a shame that they had to kill Anthony Hopkins’s character before him and Antonio Banderas could release the scintillating sexual tension that was present throughout every training scene in the cave. I watched this movie at exactly the right time, it reignited the childish joy within me that I always hope to find when I watch these kinds of movies. I just stared at the screen awestruck with how wonderful and fun the whole movie was. I love Zorro. He’s such a cool hero, I love his costume and Antonio Banderas’s charisma, I haven’t had that much fun watching a movie in a while or since. Well, except for Madame Web, for very different reasons. I love Zorro. When I’m done writing this I’ll watch it again. And the second one is very fun too, not nearly as bad as people have decided it is.

7. The Nice Guys
This list displays the vast variety of genres of movie that I enjoy. Crazy action movies, contemplative wandering odysseys, animated adventures, storybook conspiracy mysteries, swashbuckling escapades, and awkward comedies. But they’re all roughly tied together through oblique and very dark senses of humor, which this has through and through. This is a 70’s era gritty detective story written and directed by Shane Black, whose films are very varied in quality. Others will be put off by the plot involving the porn industry and the automotive industry being involved in intentional pollution, due to its raunchy and convoluted nature, but it’s just a fun time, this movie. Ryan Gosling is getting a lot of love and credit due to Barbie and the people who actually saw The Fall Guy (Pretty fun) but this is still in my opinion, his best movie and performance. And I’ve seen many of his movies, I’m a big fan. There’s a fumbling charisma to him in this as the world’s worst private detective and father, and the way he plays off of Russell Crowe is so good. There’s not much I can say that will describe how great this is without just saying all the plot elements. It’s not for everyone, but if it’s for you, it’s really for you, especially if you watch hundreds of movies and know a lot of different actors and are delighted when seeing appearances from Keith David or Matt Bomer. I did also enjoy Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Shane Black’s movie with Robert Downey JR and Val Kilmer, though I feel it’s not as funny and it’s far meaner and more lecherous, possibly because the main characters are far more disillusioned from their modern sensibilities. If you know yourself as a moviegoer, you’ll know right away if you want to see this or not, but I’d give it a shot. It’s a very funny and weird movie.

6. Fantastic Mr. Fox
So I’m the biggest Wes Anderson fan I know, because oddly enough he wasn’t the favorite director of the semi-conservative sports obsessed town I grew up in, but I have met more cool people over time that like him too. This is the first of his movies I saw, and I distinctly remember something cracking open within my brain as I thought to myself “Huh. I didn’t know the world could be this fascinating.” I have nothing against movies like Monsters, Inc. or Finding Nemo or Shrek or Madagascar, they’re all fun enough, but I quickly learned I liked a very specific kind of movie, and I liked it a lot. The average Pixar movie could keep me entertained for a little while, but what I really wanted was a concept I thought was kick-ass with weird, rapid-fire dialogue and great character moments. I was a snobby moviegoer, even at age seven. I can see why people don’t like it, it’s too meticulous for some tastes and the character designs can be off-putting, but it also perfectly summarized how I saw the world, even back then. I only had movies and comics and TV shows to help me explain or interpret the way I felt or processed things, and I had some concept of existentialist depression and mid-life crises from watching Grey’s Anatomy with my mom. This just made it make a bit more sense to my tiny brain. It’s a phenomenal movie. It looks great, everyone plays it perfectly, the soundtrack makes my heart soar and I notice something new EVERY time I rewatch it. And I’ve seen it maybe 100 times.

5. The Grand Budapest Hotel
It took me a surprisingly long time to watch the rest of Wes’s films, I think it was back in 2020. They’re all pretty great. I don’t understand the internet’s consensus that his recent films are worse because he’s just doing the same things visually and narratively. It’s just not true, and even if it were, nobody makes movies that look like his. I concede that Isle of Dogs isn’t his best, but I enjoyed the last two, and I’m rambling. I’ve discussed his recent output in length in prior posts. Though I love The French Dispatch, this is still the best film he’s made in the last decade, and it is now ten years old. Visually it looks almost as storybooky and stop motiony as Mr. Fox does. I like the vast majority of his films equally, but this particular one rises above them because, unlike his last two movies and the Netflix shorts in particular, it uses his love of stories wrapped in stories to tell a story about the impact of stories and human connection. The main issue with Asteroid City and French Dispatch, if there is one, is that Ed Norton and Bill Murray’s characters are less developed and somewhat inconsequential to the stories being told, but Jude Law’s character is not meant to be more than he is. If you haven’t seen it, it’s the Wes Anderson movie with the most intrigue, adventure, and fun. It might have the best story, too. And his upcoming film, The Phoenician Scheme, sounds like it’ll be its own big adventurous bundle of fun.

4. The Incredibles
It is the first movie I ever saw, (Some naysayers claim it was Mike Myer’s The Cat In The Hat, but I refuse to believe that.) and it’s been almost 20 years since it was released, and I still love it. Like many movies I’ve seen too many times, especially the next one, I can quote various scenes and music beats without even knowing it. I could act out this movie. Michael Giacchino’s score is etched into my brain. When I was a kid, I of course loved and identified with Dash. I looked a lot like him, I acted quite a bit like him too. Now I find myself sympathizing much more with Dash’s teacher and Edna Mode, though I look quite a bit more like Mr. Incredible when he’s out of shape, if he had a beard and long hair. Also I have freeze powers like Frozone. I haven’t rewatched it in quite a while, though I can basically close my eyes and watch it that way. It is still one of the best superhero movies, and it’s stayed with me as I’ve grown because it’s one of those kids movies that doesn’t talk down to kids. It’s a movie that appeals to everyone and happens to be animated. I can’t love it enough.
Edit: I’m rewatching it now. What a film, man. It is definitely one of the darkest kids movies, Syndrome is a despicable villain systematically killing supers and the main reason superheroes get outlawed is because Mr. Incredible stops a man from committing suicide. Everything kicks off because of a very realistic midlife crisis and Mr. Incredible’s inability to enjoy his ordinary life. People say he regresses in the second movie and doesn’t retain his lesson, I say he’s bummed because he got a taste of life where he knew how to be a good dad and his whole family could be superheroes together and it went away immediately so he could only watch his wife be super rather than enjoy being super with her. Also the aesthetic of this universe is excellent.

3. The Princess Bride
It’s hard to meet someone who hasn’t seen this and doesn’t like it, though I don’t talk to that many people about it. If you have cool parents you saw this when you were a kid. I can understand not liking it and thinking it’s overrated and quippy. But this is one of those movies that has embedded itself into the source code of who I am as a human being. I’ve also read the book, which was written by the screenwriter of this, William Goldman, and also had a very convoluted secondary narrative that claimed the book was an abridged version of the classic novel written by S. Morgenstern that was read to William as a child when he was very sick by his heavily accented father, and William eventually edited the novel while facing impending divorce so his overweight son could enjoy it as well. Besides the divorce all of this is categorically false, William Goldman wrote the whole thing, he had two daughters, and this was simply additional color to make the story feel as if it had been passed down from generation to generation and was a genuine story of the time it was emulating. When I found this out as a 12 year old boy I was furious and wrote an entire editorial piece for my school newspaper. Now I just think it’s brilliant. There are movies I like less on rewatch and fall out of love with overtime as I’m able to see the gaps and the weird mistakes. The only thing about this movie that ever feels weird is Buttercup’s complete lack of agency in her own story that makes her seem somewhat unlikable at parts. The rest of this film is shrouded in deep layers of nostalgia. The dialogue is wonderful, the direction by Rob Reiner makes the whole thing feel slightly fake and cheesy in a way that serves the story, and I don’t know how they achieved that. The villains are wonderful, Inigo Montoya’s final revenge still gives me goosebumps. At the end of the day, no matter how many movies I’ve seen, no matter how many videos on stunt-work in Hollywood and how much I know about the making of this, none of the magic falls away. I completely forget that Peter Falk is wearing old man makeup and the Rodent of Unusual Size is a small man in a suit and Cary Elwes broke his foot before the swordfight. I forget that Cary Elwes was in multiple episodes of Psych and Robin Wright was in Forrest Gump and Fred Savage directed Party Down, I can only see the characters. I am always immersed in this wonderful story, just as Fred Savage was in 2018 when Deadpool brought him back to the bedroom set of this movie, duct-taped him to the bed, and told him a PG-13 version of Deadpool 2. Which is a great joke, by the way. Ah, what a good time.

2. Hot Fuzz
The issue with doing this as a Top 10 list is I’m not able to display my admiration for all of my favorite directors, especially as I’m constantly trying to watch more and broaden my horizons as a lover of films. Also I was mentally unable to see past including two Wes Anderson movies. So as a consequence of this, filmmakers like Taika Waititi, Rian Johnson, Yorgos Lanthimos, and Denis Villeneuve don’t quite make the cut. There are other directors on this list, specifically the director of this movie, who could easily have multiple films included. I am a huge fan of Edgar Wright and his visual style. I could’ve included Scott Pilgrim VS The World or The World’s End purely on the sheer quantity of visual jokes and background gags that are soaked into the fabric of the movies. Though when I watch Scott Pilgrim I can’t help but compare it to the books and now the excellent TV show. I could’ve included Baby Driver because it’s really fun and a great exercise in meticulous editing. But it’s not as fun as this. This is the second film in the unconnected Cornetto Trilogy of three movies with the same actors facing wacky genre scenarios in small towns, and which one you like the most is very much based on what flavor of movie you enjoy. I love a murder mystery. I love fun insane action. And I love weird British humor. This movie is so dense with jokes and cameos from actors I love, and the story is intricate and weird and great. I don’t know what more there is to say, I don’t want to spoil anything if you haven’t seen it, but it’s very very good. In another world Edgar Wright didn’t drop out of directing Ant-Man and I got to watch a Paul Rudd movie directed by one of the best directors currently working, and I bet that other me is really happy and watches it every day. But I’ll settle for this reality because this movie rocks.

1. I Love You, Man
I really struggled in writing this list and deciding which movies would make the cut and which wouldn’t. And I knew I needed to include a Paul Rudd movie. I wrestled with myself on it for a while. Should it be Role Models or I Love You, Man? I’ve talked about them both before, they were some of my earliest Ruddtrospectives. I ultimately decided on this one because while I love Role Models and how weird it is and how witty the dialogue is, there’s something truly beautiful about how incredibly awkward this movie is. It really makes you sit in the awkwardness throughout, because Peter Klaven (Paul Rudd) is maybe the most relatable character ever created. He cannot have a conversation without putting his foot in his mouth, no matter who he’s talking to. And this movie just feels very real. All of the characters feel like real people, real weirdos that you would encounter in your life that operate within a microcosm of awkwardness. It also includes an all-star lineup of actors that I specifically really enjoy the work of. Paul Rudd, Jason Segel, Rashida Jones, J.K. Simmons, Andy Samberg, Jane Curtin, Jon Favreau, Lou Ferrigno, Thomas Lennon, Matt Walsh, etc. It also features not one but two Vampire Weekend songs, references to the #3 film on this list, and a phenomenal soundtrack. But above all, it’s fun, and the jokes are so weird in a wonderful way. If any Paul Rudd movie were to be included, it would be this one, and it would inevitably be number one. Unless I’ve tricked you and there’s a secret film I really think is number one.

Bonus Legitimate #1: Kangaroo Jack
Not much to say, except this entire list was a farce leading up to this moment. If you knew me, you know what my favorite movie really is. Some day I’ll write a blog post about that movie even though it’s not at all relevant to anything I normally cover and nobody talks about it because it’s a ridiculous film, but hey. I make the rules. It’s my blog. And I say it’s the best movie ever made.