My ten (in the order I thought of them):
Run Lola Run
Point Break
LA Confidential
Three Kings
Boogie Nights
The Sweet Hereafter
Goodfellas
Big Night
My Cousin Vinny
Apollo 13
Honorable Mention: Hoop Dreams, Dazed and Confused, Groundhog Day, Boyz in the Hood, Gods and Monsters, American History X.
So hard to pick “the best” – I was really torn between movies that I personally like (Thunderheart, anyone? I know there’s something wrong with me because I can watch that movie over and over with no irony at all), and movies that aren’t quite my taste but I can see objectively that they are fantastic film-making (Chungking Express, which only makes me dizzy, and not in a good way). Also, there are films that hold up so well as to be timeless – Boogie Nights, is as good now, if not better, as the day it was released, but then there are others, like Boyz in the Hood, that seem more dated, but part of the reason for that is that it had such an influence on media that it set the tone for so much of what came after and now it’s more like “eh, I’ve seen everything in it done better, elsewhere.”
Some of the films got stuck on my honorable mentions list (Gods and Monsters, American History X) because they are stellar performances, and it’s hard to compare to films that are more massive, I guess, in their “all around” quality (direction, writing, etc)
The Sweet Hereafter is the only film on my list that I have only seen once - it was so heartbreaking I’m never going to watch it again.
