ASNN

What, me pontificate?

First, my list of favorite all-time movies was not in any order. I hesitate to say any one movie is the best movie ever. Also, the main characteristic that makes each of those movies great is the depth of plot, character interaction, and emotion.

1. Amadeus was my first favorite movie. Since I took classical piano lessons for about 12 years, I could certainly relate to Mozart's plight (of being so brilliant). ;-)
   
   The best part of Amadeus is the relationships: Mozart to his father, Salieri to Mozart, Frau Mozart to Salieri... and how each of those were expressed in the movie through Mozart's amazing music. The next best part was how Shaffer depicted just how driven, neurotic, and consumptive Mozart was: in music, in alcohol, in women, and in life. The last point that I'll mention about Amadeus was the brilliant religious tones, both subtle (Mozart's vision of God being shaped by his father, yielding a fiery Requiem death mass) and not-so-subtle (Salieri declaring war on God and "His chosen").
   
   
2. Citizen Kane could have been made fifty years later and it still would have been visually stunning. As it was made in 1941, it was something from another world. The camerawork is jaw-dropping; Welles was known to carve out grooves in the floor to make the protagonist appear even larger and more overwhelming than he was. The use of lighting is phenomenal; few, if any, color films can capture the same drama simply by turning a light up or down. Welles, as an actor, is engrossing, especially considering the fact that this was his first major role.
   
   I haven't even mentioned the story itself. One of the first "epics", the movie follows (the somewhat-fictionalized version of William Randolph Hearst, or) Charles Foster Kane from birth to innocent childhood to cock-sure twenties... all the way through to his miserable, lonely demise. It is a dense two hours, but the story neither drags nor jumps around. Simply riveting.
   
   
3. Chariots of Fire is simply beautiful and inspiring. Watch this movie (based on a true story and, apparently, fairly honestly so) to see what the Christian idea of "taking every thought captive" really looks like.
   
   
4. 2001: A Space Odyssey is Stanley Kubrick at his best without all of that wacky Stanley Kubrick-ness (like teenage prostitution or psychotic PFCs or haunted hotels or masquerade sex parties or a bit of the ultraviolence... my, that man was weird). The "10+ hours of...apes" at the beginning tends to be a deterrent for lots of people, but it's important.
   
   2001 is an unexpectedly suspenseful film largely because of this one element: the whole movie happens from the protagonists' perspectives. We watch 40 minutes of apes because that's what the apes (our heroes) are watching and doing. We know no more than they do. Something weird is going on, it doesn't involve flashy spaceships with a musical penchant or probing of any sort, and we aren't quite sure what we're looking for. We spend 20 minutes approaching the monolith on the moon. We spend 40 minutes going through the Jupiter stargate. It's all because we are experiencing this, not watching it.
   
   The other reason 2001 is one of the best movies of all times is probably the more commonly-given answer: it is visually brilliant. There just aren't enough superlatives to describe Kubrick's ability to create a beautiful film, and 2001 is his piece de resistance. I find it one of the easiest movies to watch, if only because its beauty and continuity (everything rotates, for instance) is enough to make it great.

There were plenty of other movies that got close, but while picking the top four came fairly naturally, picking the fifth didn't. So that's that.