Sunday, February 11, 2007

What? An Action Movie with Good Acting?

I have a very interesting system for rating the quality of movies. I have eight categories of criteria, each with a 5-point grading system, for a possible total score of 40. The criteria are plot; dialogue; characters; acting; music; scenery and costumes; humor; and cute boys. Bonus points can be assigned for good special effects and/ or action sequences, but many movies with these are severely lacking in plot, dialogue, characters and acting (although they usually have cute boys), which are more important, so they are not required. Here is a list of movies that score above 30 on my ranking system, in alphabetical order:

About a Boy (The novel is good, too.)
Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure
The Bourne Identity (What? An action movie with good acting?)
The Brothers Grimm (Matt Damon and Heath Ledger in the same movie? In boots? With accents?)
Casablanca (Actually, not really, but it's on every other movie list, so I put it on here just for fun. I've actually never seen the whole thing. I always fall asleep half-way through.)
A Christmas Story
Clueless *Best Jane Austen modernization
Elf
Elizabethtown
Gone With the Wind ("After all, tomorrow is another day!")
A Knight's Tale
Little Women
Napoleon Dynamite *Winner of the Rhonda Watts "Huh?" Award
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
Pride and Prejudice *Best musical score ever!
The Princess Bride
Roman Holiday
School of Rock
Scotland PA *Best Shakespeare modernization
Shaun of the Dead (Any movie that is self-described as, "a smash hit romantic comedy... with zombies," has to be good!)
Sixteen Candles ("What's cookin' hot stuff?")
Sliding Doors *Best sci-fi chick-flick (Gwenyth Paltrow in two alternate realities?)
Some Like It Hot *Best cross-dressing movie
Stuck On You *Best conjoined twins movie
The Taming of the Shrew
Vanity Fair (I have to admit, I kind of had a girl-crush on Reese Witherspoon after seeing this. She's such a talented actress that you hate her and love her at the same time.)
The Village *Best psychological thriller
Young Frankenstein *Best parody of a Mary Shelley novel
Zoolander *Best movie about male models

So that's my list. There are lots of other movies that I love that didn't make it on the list because this is just based on my ranking system. Maybe there's a movie on here you haven't seen before that you want to go rent now. So stop reading this and go!

2 comments:

Keith said...

Some very good pick, but how about posting the actual scores for each movie along with categorical breakdowns?

Or may just for the top 5.

Mega said...

Good picks. You should watch more Mel Brooks movies. They may fail in the "cute boys" category but may still be ranked based off the other criteria.