Movie Review: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

So I watched this movie two Friday movie nights ago, but then, you know, life, and now I'm finally getting around to it. Fun!

The Perks of Being a Wallflower tells the story of a group of friends, but really, just three friends. We first meet Charlie as he's about to embark on his freshman year of high school. He's nervous, because all kids are nervous, but also because he's kind of a loner with no friends. And he has some hinted-at psychological issues that has his parents and siblings occasionally addressing him like he might combust.

In his shop class, he meets Patrick, an outgoing senior, and Patrick introduces him to Sam, Patrick's best friend/stepsister. The three hang out at a football game, and then a dance, and then a party, where Charlie inadvertently eats some pot brownies and opens up to Sam: his best and only friend killed himself the previous summer. Patrick and Sam and their group of misfit friends adopt Charlie into their circle.

Interspersed with happy events from the present are hints at dark moments from each of their paths. Patrick is open about his sexuality, but his boyfriend Brad, a big-shot football player, is not. Brad professes his love of Patrick in private, but when his teammates tease Patrick at school, he says nothing. Sam spent her own freshman year sleeping around with upperclassmen, a result of the sexual abuse she suffered as a child from her father's boss. And in addition to his dead friend, Charlie has even more skeletons in his closet.

Still, things go swimmingly for awhile. Until Charlie realizes he has the hots for Sam right around the same time as another girl in their group, Mary Elizabeth, decides she has the hots for Charlie. One Sadie Hawkins Dance later, he has a girlfriend he doesn't really like and the way he ends the relationship is epic. On the outs with his new and only friends, Charlie begins to deteriorate.

It goes on from there. The movie is a clever pairing of happy-go-lucky coming of age high school story (Speeding through a tunnel! The power of music! First kisses!) with the darkness of reality. We all have our secrets - the outcasts, no matter how outgoing, as well as the perceived "popular" kids (see: Brad; Charlie's sister in an abusive relationship). The final message, though, is one of perseverance and overcoming even the darkest of days, and unlike a lot of teen movies, getting in a petty fight with your friends is NOT the darkest of days.

I wish I had read the book, and I probably still will at some point, but the fact that the book's author directed the film strikes me as a good sign that it's pretty loyal to the story. I didn't recognize many of the actors (I know Charlie was the kid in the Percy Jackson movies and Patrick was the boy in We Need to Talk About Kevin but I haven't seen any of those), and those I did recognize were very different from than their traditional roles. As Sam, Emma Watson was very much not Hermoine Granger; Paul Rudd was almost unrecognizable from his goofy self as Charlie's supportive English teacher. And since the last things I've seen Dylan McDermott in were the first two seasons of American Horror Story, I'm just glad I got through this without an image of him doing something that burns into my brain (pleasuring himself, breastfeeding, you know, the norm).

I still don't know what I just watched...

Before a couple weeks ago, I had never heard of Flowers in the Attic. Apparently, it was THE seminal naughty book that girls hid from adults for the '80s and early '90s, but that was a bit before my time.

It seems like most generations have one of those books. To show you how my own pop culture brain works, it always makes me think of the "Library Cop" episode of Seinfeld, where middle-school-aged Jerry sneakily takes out, and then doesn't return for decades, the sexy Tropic of Cancer. I was took young for that, too. In fact, I can't think of what my generation's forbidden titillation was. I remember Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret being a little risque, but that was because it talked about puberty and periods. Not exactly what every hormonal preteen rushes to read about (at least not for fun).

So, I didn't know Flowers in the Attic, but I don't live under a rock and I read and saw countless things leading up to Lifetime's film version that aired last week. And not just blurbs in Entertainment Weekly, but people I know eagerly anticipating it. I saw the descriptions of the general plot and knew it was sexy and forbidden to those tweens a couple decades ago, but other than that, I just tuned in out of curiosity.

Oh. My. God.

What did I just watch? I have no idea, but frankly, I'm shocked the Foxworth family has lasted this long considering all its inbreeding. I've never thought about incest in my life as much as I did this past week. Yeeeeeeeech.

To the other under-rock-dwellers who missed the Flowers in the Attic phenomenon, it is the story of the Dollanganger family: perfect Dad, perfect Mom and four perfect kids. Did I mention they're perfect? Because they are, indeed, quite perfect.

Until Dad dies in a car accident. Then Mom's true identity as a trophy wife becomes extremely evident to her and oldest daughter Cathy, as she has no money and no skills to get a job. Also, the parents have been charging all that perfect stuff they had so they are actually homeless and possessionless, too. But they're still pretty, thank goodness.

So Mom packs up the kids and heads to her parents house. Nevermind that her parents disowned her when she married Dad and that the kids, until now, didn't even know they HAD grandparents. Oh yeah, and their last name is actually Foxworth. Mom hadn't mentioned that yet? MY BAD.

At the Foxworth estate, Grandpa, who was especially pissed about Mom's marriage, is dying and Mom thinks her only way to survival is to win him back so he puts her back in the will, something he does on the condition that she never had children with her husband. So she and mentally unstable Grandma hide the kids in the attic for, oh, I dunno, a few years.

Grandma's crazy and abusive in all senses of the word - physically, verbally, emotionally. She's also harboring some deep-seeded jealousy over her daughter's close relationship with her father. Was something going on there? I have no idea, but I wouldn't be surprised. Mom becomes even worse. If you don't want to have the end ruined for you, stop now because I'm going to keep going.

SPOILER ALERT

Mom's visits to the kids go from daily to weekly to "hey, we haven't seen Mom in six months!" She shows up one day and announces she married some guy and they honeymooned in Europe. She brings fancy gifts, and then runs back to her money and luxurious life. Meanwhile, Cathy and oldest brother Chris have gone through puberty and start having sex because, um, they're bored and horny? Oh and it's in their blood because - surprise! - the reason Grandpa disapproved of Mom is because her husband (aka Dad) was actually her half-uncle! Fun!

The two youngest kids stop growing because they don't get fresh air, sunlight, or exercise, and then one of them dies. Turns out Mom has been trying to poison them so she can have her fresh life with her new hubby. Even though Grandpa died months ago and nothing is stopping her from letting her kids back into her life.

Eventually, Cathy and Chris devise a way to escape with their remaining sister and start a life. Together. Because they're in love. And siblings. Still. I double-checked.

And that's it. That's the plot of this beloved novel. I mean...I don't even know. I get teenagers with their hormones and changing bodies wanting to read sexy stuff, but incestuous sex? And the book apparently involves a rape between the siblings, too. Gah! The book also happens to be the first in a series that involves the pair getting married and having (adopted, thank God) children of their own.

A lot of times, it takes me awhile to determine whether I liked a book or movie. I'll read or watch it, then kind of think about it over the next few days before I come to the conclusion, "You know what? I kind of hated/loved that." The more I thought about the movie (which people herald as pretty true to the book), the more icky I felt and the weirder I found the whole Flowers in the Attic phenomenon to be. Maybe you had to be there?

Amusing Side Note: Upon watching the movie, I tweeted, "How was Flowers in the Attic a phenomenon? I mean, incest is fun and all, but what the hell? I need a shower and two hours of my life back." (I know, I'm hilarious, right?) Anyway, within about 30 seconds, I got a notification that Mason Dye favorited one of my tweets. Who the hell is Mason Dye? I thought. Apparently, he played Chris in the movie. Well played, Mason Dye. Well played.

Movie Review: On the Waterfront

Finally, it's what you've been waiting 60 years for: my review of On the Waterfront. As a refresher, this is part of my Greatest Movies of All Time? personal challenge, where I made a list of the hundreds of greatest movies made using a combination of American Film Institute lists and Academy Award results. A lot of them, especially the classics, I had never gotten around to seeing and this was my excuse to do so. Plus, there's my OCD and if something comes in a list form, so help me, God, I'm there.

On the Waterfront was ranked No. 3, behind Casablanca and Gone with the Wind.

Basically, the plot follows Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando), a dockworker on the waterfront run by mobster Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb). In a previous life, Malloy had been a prizefighter, but at the urging of his brother Charley (Rod Steiger), who also happens to be Friendly's right-hand man, he threw the fight and pretty much threw away his career.

As the movie begins, Malloy is drawing out fellow dockworker Joey Doyle, thinking that Friendly's goons would put a scare in the soon-to-be informant. Instead, they kill him. Malloy's not super happy that he was used as a pawn to kill someone, but such is life on the docks. He soon befriends/dates Joey's sister Edie (Eva Marie Saint), who makes it her goal to figure out what happened to her brother, with the help of the local priest, Father Barry (Karl Malden). Father Barry tries to get the dockworkers to stand up to Friendly and work with the police, but the one guy he convinces soon has a case of whiskey dropped on his head. Those slippery ropes!

Edie and Father Barry set their sights on Malloy as someone to testify and his conscience starts tormenting him. Which makes Friendly's men, including Charley, torment him.

The movie is an entertaining one regardless of context, but when viewed in the era of organized crime and sketchy unions (the story is based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper series about a real Mob-run waterfront in New York). The acting is obviously stellar, too, with Brando at his best.

But you don't need me to tell you that. Here are its bonafides, which is what led to its inclusion on the GMoAT? list:

• Won the Academy Award for Best Picture
• Brando won the Academy Award for Best Actor
• Saint won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress
• Ranked No. 8 in the AFI list of 100 Greatest Movies in 1998 (and No. 19 10 years later)
• Ranked No. 36 in the AFI list of the Most Inspiring Movies
• Had the No. 3 Most Memorable Quote, according to AFI, for Malloy's "You don't understand! I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am" speech.

Movie Review: The Usual Suspects

No, this movie isn't one of the Greatest of All Time, but it's a classic (in a way) that I've never seen and it was on TV - Sundance, no less, which means F-words and all - and when you're on modified bed rest, you'll watch anything. Like seriously, anything. Do you want to know who my favorite Family Feud host of the past 10 years is? Because thanks to the Game Show Network, I actually have one.

Anyway, yes, this was the first time I had ever seen this movie.

For those in a similar predicament, here's the set-up (pay attention because there will be a test). An explosion on a boat that looks to be a drug deal gone bad leaves just two survivors - a Hungarian gangster with burns on most of his body blubbering about a mysterious criminal mastermind named Keyser Soze and a small-time thief with cerebral palsy (Kevin Spacey). While the Hungarian gives whatever hospital bed testimony he can, including working with a sketch artist, the thief, Verbal Kint, gives testimony to a couple of cops. Most of the movie is a flashback to his tale.

It begins six weeks earlier, when Kint and four other lifetime criminals are put in a lineup for a weapons charge. While in holding, they devise a plan themselves, targeting a ring of crooked cops who transport smugglers throughout New York City. After that goes swimmingly, they attempt to launder the loot with a "fence," who tells them about another job stealing jewels and/or money from a jeweler. Instead they wind up stealing drugs, and they learn that the job came from a lawyer named Kobayashi. The whole thing was a setup by Kobayashi and his client, Keyser Soze, and he (Kobayashi) blackmails each criminal into attacking the aforementioned ship to break up a drug deal between Hungarians and Argentinian gangsters.

Some of the guys take some convincing; one winds up dead before the attack. The real question is what happened on the ship and who is Keyser Soze? Kint gives a brief back history: Soze was a Turkish criminal mastermind. When his Hungarian rivals tried to pressure him by breaking into his house, raping his wife and threatening his family's lives, he responded by killing his family himself, along with all but one of the Hungarians. After that, he became more of a myth than a reality, a legend that some criminals and cops questioned even existed.

I love a good twist, not to mention a good caper, so this movie was right up my alley. Plus, the cast was fantastic - Spacey's crew of criminals include Gabriel Byrne, Benicio del Toro, Kevin Pollack and Stephen Baldwin, while the investigating cops include Chazz Palminteri, Dan Hedaya and Giancarlo Esposito. But I think what gave me the most enjoyment came after the movie ended, when I checked out its trivia section on IMDB. (Note: If you've never seen this movie before and don't want the end ruined for you, you might not want to click on that link.) Apparently, the director worked very hard to make every single actor think that HE was Keyser Soze, to the point that at least one actor got into a screaming match with the director at the premier because he was so sure it was him. That's just impressive.

Other notables: Kevin Spacey won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor (strange, since I thought of him as the main actor, but what do I know?). Either way, not a bad way to spend an afternoon on bed rest.

Movie Review: Baby Mama

Clearly, I'm keeping with my "highest-quality movies of all time" theme going here by watching and reviewing Baby Mama. I often get this confused with Casablanca myself.

In all honesty, sometimes, you need brain candy. Especially when you've been couped up for a week on modified bed rest, watching people do such fascinating things like laundry and emptying the dishwasher and walking their dog with a level of jealousy previously reserved only for taste-testers in the Cadbury chocolate factory (all of my talent is going to WASTE!). And so rather than move on to the No. 3 Greatest Movie of All Time, On the Waterfront, I watched Baby Mama. Do not judge me.

In case you couldn't guess from the cover or the title or your previous knowledge of Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, Baby Mama is about a career-driven woman who waits too long to have children, discovers she's infertile, and hires a white trash surrogate to help her out. Fey's Kate is an executive with a Whole Foods/Trader Joe-style organic food store (with her hippie boss hilariously played by a ponytailed Steve Martin) and while her professional life is going splendidly, she never got around to marrying or trying to have kids. Now 37, she tries in vitro fertilization only to find that her T-shaped uterus is not the ideal gestational home for a baby.

That leads her to hiring a surrogate from a company run by the most fertile should-be-post-menopausal woman in Sigourney Weaver. The company presents her with Poehler's Angie, who moves in with Kate after she becomes pregnant and breaks up with her common law husband (played by Dax Shepard). The two have the typical bitter battles you would expect between an upper-class yuppie and her white trash baby mama. Kate needs to come out of her perfectly constructed shell. Angie needs to grow up and come clean about a lie she lives with for most of the movie. How could things possibly work out in the end?!?! Don't worry; they do.

The movie was exactly what I thought it would be and that's good. Oscar-bait movies are all fine and good but they take a level of mental effort that I just don't have on a late Sunday afternoon. This. This is what I wanted and needed.

And no, just because this and Juno are both in my DVR at the moment does NOT mean that I am some baby-movie-obsessed junkie. If my DVR is an indication of my life, I'm also a meth cooking Mexican serial killer while also reigning as one of the top home-chefs in America.

Movie Review: Gone with the Wind

Gone with the Wind is kind of like Casablanca with me. I know it's considered one of the biggest classic movies in the history of movies, but other than the fact that it has something to do with the Civil War and includes the line, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn," I really knew nothing about it. Unlike Casablanca, I was less than thrilled.

For other modern-day movie morons, I'll give you as brief a rundown as possible with a 4-hour-plus movie. (Seriously. Four hours. Plus. Especially if you actually sit through the 75 musical interludes.) When we first meet Scarlett O'Hara, she's the prettiest and most sought-after young thing in her Georgia town. The oldest daughter in her rich, plantation-owning family, she has pretty much every guy she meets wrapped around her finger. Well, every guy except the guy she loves: Ashley Wilkes, the son of another rich plantation owner in town. She dolls herself up for a party at the Wilkes' place, hoping to lure Ashley  into her clutches, until she realizes that the whole point of the party is to announce Ashley's engagement to his cousin, Melanie Hamilton. (Apparently, marrying cousins is big in the Wilkes family. Ashley's sister wants to marry Melanie's brother, too. It's possible this whole thing takes place in Shelbyville.)

Scarlett declares her love to Ashley but he really does love Melanie. So she does the next best thing: marries Melanie's brother Charles out of spite, to make Ashley jealous while also keeping the whole Wilkes family close by. About five seconds later, the Civil War begins, Melanie & Ashley and Scarlett & Charles marry within a couple days and a couple days after THAT, the boys are off to fight.

It doesn't take long for Charles to become a non-violent war casualty, dying of pneumonia and leaving Scarlett a very young and not very mournful widow. She decides to move to Atlanta to stay with Melanie to "help with the war efforts," which really means "know as soon as possible what's going on with Ashley and then try to steal him from her." The two women devote their time to helping care for injured soldiers, etc. When Ashley gets a few days' leave around Christmas to visit, he spends his time doting on Melanie, trying to ignore Scarlett and also getting Melanie pregnant. Before he leaves, he asks Scarlett to take care of Melanie.

It's a bigger promise than Scarlett realizes when Melanie has a difficult pregnancy and gives birth right around the same time as Sherman's invasion of Atlanta. Scarlett and her simple-minded servant (slave?) are stuck delivering the baby and then trying to get to the O'Hara plantation - named Tara - in order to keep them safe and also to check on Scarlett's own sick mother. She calls the only person she can think of: Rhett Butler.

Until this point, Rhett has been kind of like that annoying fly that keeps showing up. We meet him at the Wilkes' party, where he annoys everyone by saying the North would win any war with the South. He overhears Scarlett's declarations of love to Ashley and then teases her about it. But he's an able-bodied man with lots of connections and he gets her a horse and carriage to take Melanie and her baby away. Along the trip, both Scarlett and Rhett grow up a little bit when they see their wounded soldiers march by, and Rhett is motivated to jump out of the carriage right then and sign up to fight. Why? I have no earthly idea. Scarlett continues the journey, learning along the way that the Wilkes plantation has been burned to the ground by those evil Yankees.

Tara is still standing, but barely. The barn is gone, the livestock is gone, all but two of the "servants" are gone, her mother is dead of typhoid, her two sisters are both sick with the same disease (although recovering) and the stress has driven her father to mental instability (something the actor - Thomas Mitchell - is pretty adept at, since he also played Uncle Billy in It's a Wonderful Life). Scarlett becomes the de facto head of the household, trying to keep everyone fed and afloat.

Then the war ends and the South lost. And the government puts a heavy tax on Tara that Scarlett can't afford. Her father is so overcome with rage that he starts chasing after a prospective buyer and dies falling off his horse. Scarlett finds Rhett in Atlanta and tries to flirt the money out of him, but he sees through her and refuses. She runs into Frank Kennedy, her sister's fiance, who is trying to run an antiques store and lumber mill in order to raise enough money for the wedding. Seeing how high his prospects are, Scarlett tells him her sister is marrying someone else and goads him into marrying her instead.

Scarlett's business acumen (she and Frank join forces with Ashley Wilkes) leads to a thriving lumber mill, but that doesn't stop her from almost being raped in the middle of the woods. Frank, Ashley and a gang of vigilantes goes out to get revenge - Rhett tries to save them but is too late as Frank dies and Ashley gets shot in the arm. So now Scarlett's a widow twice removed.

Rhett takes the opportunity of her husband dying, oh, 12 minutes before, to propose and convince her to marry him. She agrees and they travel around in the lap of luxury. But when they return home, Scarlett goes back into her Ashley-obsessed ways. She gives birth to her and Rhett's daughter, who Rhett adores, but the couple is distant and aiming for divorce. Also, there's a lot of drinking and marital rape, so that's fun.

I'm almost to the end so I'll stop there. I've spared you about 12 more character deaths. Moral of the story? Stay away from Scarlett O'Hara. Nothing good can come from this.

I had a problem getting into and enjoying this movie, which probably makes me a bad movie fan, but oh well. First of all, with the exception of the good-hearted Melanie, every character was despicable. Scarlett and Rhett were both selfish and conniving and manipulative and cold-blooded. Ashley (and Scarlett's parade of dead husbands) were clueless. I wasn't rooting for Scarlett to get Ashley or Rhett to get Scarlett; I wanted Melanie to win and Mamie to raise up the other servants and say, "Hey, you guys enslaved us for years and you can't buy me back with a red petticoat. I'm going north, suckas!" I had a hard time sympathizing with these Southern rich slave owners during the Civil War, too, their English acting accents be damned. Yes, it's sad that people died and their lives were difficult, but then...they were slave owners. They'd been making their slaves' lives pretty difficult for a few decades.

Anyway, Gone with the Wind was ranked No. 2 on my arguable Greatest Movie of All Time List. Here's why:

• Oscar winner for Best Picture in 1939 (also won for Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and a slew of cinematography awards that I didn't count but are worth mentioning).
• No. 4 ranking in the American Film Institute's 100 Years, 100 Greatest Movies list in 1998.
• Held on for a No. 6 ranking 10 years later.
• No. 43 in AFI's 100 Years, 100 Cheers.
• Had three of AFI's most memorable quotes, including No. 1:
• "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." (1)
• "After all, tomorrow is another day!" (31)
• "As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again!" (59)
• Oscar win for Best Actress for Vivian Leigh. (Hattie McDaniel became the first African-American to win Best Supporting Actress for playing Mamie, while Clark Gable (Rhett) and Olivia de Havilland (Melanie) were nominated for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress, respectively.)

Movie Review: Inglorious Basterds

I never really thought of myself as a Quentin Tarantino fan and still don't, for the most part. I appreciated Pulp Fiction as a good movie but wasn't really my thing and stuff like Kill Bill et al. just never appealed to me. Things changed with Django Unchained, a really good story with awesome acting that, despite its gratuitous violence, didn't really turn into a "Tarantino movie" until the very end when (SPOILER ALERT) an entire plantation's worth of people get their innards splattered against the wall.

Because of how much I liked that movie, I thought I'd give Tarantino's other recently critically acclaimed movie a shot. Plus, Christoph Waltz. I mean, c'mon.

Inglorious Basterds is the historically fictitious story of two separate plots to assassinate Adolf Hitler and a slew of other Nazi leaders at the exact same time. One of the plots comes from Shoshanna (Melanie Laurent), a young French Jewish woman whose family is shot by the vicious Nazi officer Hans Landa (Waltz) while trying to hide in a neighbor's floorboards. That scene tells you a lot about Shoshanna's fighting spirit and tragic tale but even more about Landa, equal parts brilliant and pure evil.

A few years after her escape, Shoshanna is living as Emmanuelle Mimieux, a cinema owner in Paris. She inadvertently catches the eye of Fredrick Zoller, whose recent heroics (the Nazi sniper killed hundreds of enemy soldiers while holed up by himself for three days in a bird's nest) are being turned into a Nazi propaganda film by Hitler's second-in-command Joseph Goebbels. In order to impress his new ladyfriend, Zoller convinces Goebbels to hold the film's premiere in her theater, much to her chagrin. But after she realizes that her theater will be full of Nazis, including Landa, she plots a way to burn the whole building down with them inside.

Meanwhile, the Basterds, a group of Jewish-American soldiers (with a couple of anti-Nazi Germans thrown in) headed by Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), also hear of the premiere. This group is dedicated to killing Nazis in the most Tarantino-esque ways possible. In one 10-minute stretch, we see scalpings, throat-cuttings, and a guy get bludgeoned to death with a baseball bat. Raine's plan for the premiere is similar to Shoshanna's - all of Germany's worst baddies in the same small space is too good to turn down.

I won't ruin the end, but suffice to say that my attempt to keep a tally of on-screen deaths was futile when I was no longer able to keep the numbers straight.

Like Django, the movie had a vigilante justice theme with the least sympathetic villains ever. (Seriously, Nazis? Slave owners? I'm curious who Tarantino has left in his Most Hated People Ever drawer.) But while we had our obvious heroes in Django and King Schultz, the heroes in Inglorious Basterds are a little different, if only because there were almost too many of them. The two different plots were hard to keep track of, and even more so considering more than half the movie was in subtitles. One scene that takes place in a German bar had such weird lighting that it was almost impossible to read the yellow words. I found myself so focused on not missing what they were saying that I completely forgot who was talking at all.

This makes me sound like a simple American and that's probably true. I don't love subtitles for this reason. I doubly don't love subtitles when watching at home (I'm sure it was easier to read this stuff on a big movie screen). Oh well.

In the end, Inglorious Basterds leaned more toward Pulp Fiction than Django Unchained in my Tarantino Spectrum. I could appreciate the quality of the film, the intricacies of the plot, and the fantastic acting of Christoph Waltz, who is seriously just awesome. But I wouldn't say I loved it and I can't say I'd want to see it again.

Greatest Movies of All Time? Inglorious Basterds ranked in at No. 267, spurred by its Best Picture nomination. (Waltz won for Best Supporting Actor, although that didn't come into consideration for the GMoAT list.)

Movie Review: Casablanca

I know, right? Like you need me telling you about Casablanca. The movie is older than your grandparents. Only dopes like me have gone this far in life without actually seeing it.

Well, LAY OFF, OK?!

Sorry. Anyway, yes, it did take me more than 28 years to see the movie that is universally beloved and wound up as No. 1 on my Greatest Movies of All Time? list. Not only that, but unlike a lot of "You've never seen THAT?" movies, I didn't even know what it was really about. I mean, I know Darth Vader is Luke and Leah's father, I know Rosebud is a sled, and until a few months ago, I knew a bloody Rocky would go all "yo, Adrian" from the middle of a boxing ring. But I didn't even know what Casablanca was about. I'm a terrible member of society.

For anyone else who has been living under a rock for the past 71 years, let me sum up. Casablanca is a town in French Moracco and during World War II (post-Paris invasion, pre-Pearl Harbor), served as kind of the docking station for people trying to escape Nazi-occupied France. Except a lot of people got as far as Casablanca before getting stalled due to a lack of transmit papers to get them to the U.S. or wherever.

Rick (Humphrey Bogart) is an American who owns Rick's Cafe Americain, part restaurant, part bar, part night club, part casino. At the beginning of the film, Rick comes into possession of a pair of transmit papers that will allow two people to escape the war zone. Around the same time, Major Strasser shows up looking for a Czechoslovakian revolutionary named Victor Laszlo, who has spent time in multiple concentration camps while devoting his life to fighting Nazis.

Laszlo also shows up, joined by his wife Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman). Ilsa just happens to be Rick's ex-girlfriend; the two had a fling and meant to escape together when the Nazis invaded Paris but she ditched him without explanation. Let's just say Rick's a little bitter.

The rest of the film is spent learning just what type of guy Rick is - is he the gruff loner he portends or does he have a heart of gold underneath? - as well as what, exactly, Ilsa's problem was all those years ago (hint: she has a pretty good excuse). What will become of Laszlo, not to mention Rick's secret transmit papers?

Casablanca was impressive for a lot of reasons but the one that stuck out to me was its scope. So many movies and TV shows from that time period are centered around white WASPy guys. And while Rick certainly fits that description, Ilsa's character is a complicated and intelligent person. Only three actors - Bogart, Dooley Wilson as Rick's trusty nightclub performer friend Sam, and Joy Page, the young Bulgarian wife trying to afford transmit papers for her and her husband - are American, and one is a woman and one is an African-American man. It really is  League of Nations.

Anyway, like I said before, you don't need me to tell you Casablanca was a good movie. FYI, To Kill a Mockingbird was a pretty OK book, too. So let me tell you how it was ranked No. 1 on the GMoAT? list.

• Oscar winner for Best Picture in 1944. (It also won for Best Director and Best Writing, although that didn't go into consideration.)
• No. 2 ranking in the American Film Institute's 100 Years, 100 Greatest Movies list in 1998.
• Held on for a No. 3 ranking 10 years later.
• No. 32 ranking in AFI's 100 Years, 100 Cheers (i.e. most inspiring movies).
• Counted for six of the AFI's most memorable quotes, by far the most quoted movie in the bunch (Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz tied for second with three). They are:
• "Here's looking at you, kid." (No. 5)
• "Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship." (20)
• "Play it, Sam. Play 'As Time Goes By.'" (28)
• "Round up the usual suspects." (32)
• "We'll always have Paris." (43)
• "Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine." (67)
• Oscar nomination for Best Actor for Humphrey Bogart.

Before I leave you, I want to drop one other fun fact learned from IMDB.com's Trivia page.  In the 1980s, someone sent the script to Casablanca to a bunch of studio executives under a different name (the original title - Everybody Comes to Rick's). A few people recognized the script, but the rest complained that it was "not good enough" to make a good movie, was "too dated," had "too much dialogue" and "not enough sex." I don't really know about what that says about the state of movies today, but I thought it was interesting.

Best Movies of All Time?

I'm nothing if I'm not obsessive-compulsive, so over the past few days, while contributing to the furthering of my intellect and that of society watching marathons of past Daily Shows and Colbert Reports, I've created a list - in order - of the Greatest Movies of All Time.

Why did I waste my time doing this? SHUT UP is why! I mean, because I realize that while I love movies, there are a lot of "classics" that everyone has seen that I've somehow missed. Like The Godfather trilogy. And every Star Wars movie. And, um, pretty much everything made before 1950, with the exception of Christmas movies. I wanted to make a list of those movies everyone knows and loves and respects and then dutifully check off each title as I watch them. Shocking, I know, coming from the woman who is currently re-reading the entire Stephen King anthology chronologically.

So how did I come up with my list? I took a few things into consideration - Academy Award Best Picture wins and nominations, Best Actor/Actress wins, and inclusion on a handful of different American Film Institute lists (namely, the 100 Greatest Films and the 10-Year Update of the 100 Greatest Films, the 100 Most Inspiring Films, the 100 Greatest Comedies - because I feel like comedies get a raw deal from the Academy - and films included in the 100 Greatest Quotes - because I figure any movie whose quote has stood the test of time has obviously left its mark on society). Then I weighted them: the more lists a film was included on, the higher it rose, with Best Picture winners getting top billing, followed by Best Picture nominees, the most recent version of the 100 Greatest Films, the older version, the Most Inspiring, Greatest Comedies and finally, Greatest Quotes. Best Actor/Actress winners were used as tiebreakers or to reorder titles within a selection.

I told you I need a hobby.

In addition, I also put sequels together because it seemed silly to that the third Lord of the Rings movie would be listed above the original, as it actually won Best Picture. And even though Rocky V is on no one's list of Greatest Movies of All Time, I can't not include the whole series, so my bad.

Anyway, I welcome discussion. What movies do you think should be included in the GOAT discussion? The AFI lists are imperfect in that they all came out in the mid-2000s, so what recent comedies or quotes or Best Movies would you add? Either way, I think I've got my work cut out for me.

Casablanca

Gone With the Wind

On the Waterfront

Rocky

Rocky II

Rocky III

Rocky IV

Rocky V

Rocky Balboa

Annie Hall

Lawrence of Arabia

Schindler’s List

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

The Bridge on the River Kwai

The Best Years of Our Lives

The Sound of Music

Ben-Hur

It Happened One Night

The Apartment

The Godfather

The Godfather Part II

The Godfather Part III

All About Eve

Midnight Cowboy

The Silence of the Lambs

In the Heat of the Night

Forrest Gump

West Side Story

The Deer Hunter

Unforgiven

Platoon

The French Connection

Dances with Wolves

Titanic

From Here to Eternity

Amadeus

All Quiet on the Western Front

An American in Paris

Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)

Patton

My Fair Lady

Gandhi

Mrs. Miniver

Braveheart

Rain Man

Driving Miss Daisy

A Beautiful Mind

Chariots of Fire

Grand Hotel

The Artist

The King’s Speech

Million Dollar Baby

Gladiator

American Beauty

Shakespeare in Love

Terms of Endearment

Kramer vs. Kramer

A Man for All Seasons

Marty

All the King’s Men

Hamlet

The Lost Weekend

Going My Way

The Great Ziegfeld

Argo

The Hurt Locker

Slumdog Millionaire

No Country for Old Men

The Departed

Crash

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King

Chicago

The English Patient

The Last Emperor

Out of Africa

Ordinary People

The Sting

Oliver!

Tom Jones

Gigi

Around the World in 80 Days

The Greatest Show on Earth

Gentlemen’s Agreement

How Green Was My Valley

Rebecca

You Can’t Take it With You

The Life of Emile Zola

Cavalcade

Cimarron

The Broadway Melody

Wings

The Wizard of Oz

Star Wars

The Empire Strikes Back

Return of the Jedi

E.T. The Extra Terrestrial

Shane

Yankee Doodle Dandy

The Graduate

Dr. Strangelove, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

It’s a Wonderful Life

The Grapes of Wrath

To Kill a Mockingbird

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

High Noon

The Philadelphia Story

M*A*S*H

American Graffiti

Tootsie

Citizen Kane

Sunset Boulevard

Chinatown

Apocalypse Now

The Maltese Falcon

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

Bonnie and Clyde

A Streetcar Named Desire

Taxi Driver

Jaws

Network

Raging Bull

Double Indemnity

Raiders of the Lost Ark

Temple of Doom

The Last Crusade

A Clockwork Orange

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

Goodfellas

Pulp Fiction

Saving Private Ryan

The Shawshank Redemption

All the President’s Men

12 Angry Men

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner

Fargo

Mr. Deeds Goes to Town

The Sixth Sense

Apollo 13

The Pride of the Yankees

Field of Dreams

On Golden Pond

Dead Poets Society

Moonstruck

She Done Him Wrong

Auntie Mame
Nashville

Cabaret

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

The Last Picture Show

Doctor Zhivago

Stagecoach

Wuthering Heights

Giant

A Place in the Sun

Breaking Away

Miracle on 34th Street

Norma Rae

The Diary of Anne Frank

The Right Stuff

Lilies of the Field

Seabiscuit

The Color Purple

The Defiant Ones

Sergeant York

The Killing Fields

Sounder

Coal Miner’s Daughter

Dark Victory

Erin Brokovich

The Verdict

The Ten Commandments

Babe

Boys Town

Fiddler on the Roof

Working Girl

Captains Courageous

Places in the Heart

Madame Curie

Ray

Born Yesterday

The Thin Man

The Great Dictator

Ninotchka

Broadcast News

The Awful Truth

Father of the Bride (1950)

Love Story

Jerry Maguire

A Few Good Men

Funny Girl

Dog Day Afternoon

42nd Street 
As Good as it Gets

Coming Home

Lincoln

Silver Linings Playbook

Black Swan

The Blind Side

Milk

The Reader

There Will Be Blood

The Queen

Capote

Mystic River

The Hours

The Pianist

Shine

The Piano

Howards End

Scent of a Woman

My Left Foot

Children of a Lesser God

Kiss of the Spider Woman

Tender Mercies

The Goodbye Girl

A Touch of Class

The Lion in Winter

Darling

Mary Poppins

Judgement at Nuremberg

Elmer Gantry

Room at the Top

Separate Tables

The King and I

The Rose Tattoo

The Country Girl

Roman Holiday

The Heiress

Johnny Belinda

Mildred Pierce

Gaslight

The Song of Bernadette

Watch on the Rhine

Suspicion

Kitty Foyle

Goodbye, Mr. Chips

Jezebel

The Good Earth

The Story of Louis Pasteur

The Informer

The Private Life of Henry VIII

The Champ

Disraeli

The Divorcee

In Old Arizona

Seventh Heaven

Amour

Beasts of the Southern Wild

Django Unchained

Les Miserables (2012)

Life of Pi

Zero Dark Thirty

The Descendents

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

The Help

Hugo

Midnight in Paris

Moneyball

The Tree of Life

War Horse

The Fighter

Inception

The Kids are Alright

127 Hours

The Social Network

Toy Story

Toy Story 2

Toy Story 3

True Grit (2010)

Winter’s Bone

Avatar

District 9

An Education

Inglorious Basterds

Precious

A Single Man

Up

Up in the Air

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Frost/Nixon

Atonement

Juno

Michael Clayton

Babel

Letters from Iwo Jima

Little Miss Sunshine

Brokeback Mountain

Good Night and Good Luck

The Aviator

Finding Neverland

Sideways

Lost in Translation

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World

Gangs of New York

Gosford Park

In the Bedroom

Moulin Rouge! (2001)

Chocolat

Traffic

The Cider House Rules

The Green Mile

The Insider

Elizabeth

The Thin Red Line

The Full Monty

Good Will Hunting

LA Confidential

Secrets & Lies

The Postman

Sense and Sensibility

Four Weddings and a Funeral

Quiz Show

The Fugitive

In the Name of the Father

The Remains of the Day

The Crying Game

Beauty and the Beast

Bugsy

JFK

Prince of Tides

Awakenings

Ghost

Born on the Fourth of July

The Accidental Tourist

Dangerous Liaisons

Mississippi Burning

Fatal Attraction

Hope and Glory

Hannah and Her Sisters

The Mission

A Room with a View

Prizzi’s Honor

Witness

A Passage to India

A Soldier’s Story

The Big Chill

The Dresser

Missing

Atlantic City

Reds

The Elephant Man

Tess

All That Jazz

Heaven Can Wait

Midnight Express

An Unmarried Woman

Julia

The Turning Point

Bound for Glory

Barry Lyndon

The Conversation

Lenny

The Towering Inferno

Cries and Whispers

The Exorcist

Deliverance

Nicholas and Alexandra

Airport

Five Easy Pieces

Anne of the Thousand Days

Hello, Dolly!

Rachel, Rachel

Romeo and Juliet

Doctor Doolittle

Alfie

The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming

Sand Pebbles

Ship of Fools

A Thousand Clowns

Becket

Zorba the Greek

America, America

Cleopatra

How the West Was Won

The Longest Day

The Music Man

Mutiny on the Bounty (1962)

Fanny

The Guns of Navarone

The Hustler

The Alamo

Sons and Lovers

The Sundowners

Anatomy of a Murder

The Nun’s Story

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Peyton Place

Sayonara

Witness for the Prosecution

Friendly Persuasion

Love is a Many-Splendored Thing

Mister Roberts

Picnic

The Caine Mutiny

Seven Brides for Seven Brothers

Three Coins in the Fountain

Julius Caesar

The Robe

Ivanhoe

Moulin Rouge (1952)

The Quiet Man

Decision Before Dawn

Quo Vadis

King Solomon’s Mines

Battleground

A Letter to Three Wives

Twelve O’Clock High

The Red Shoes

The Snake Pit

The Bishop’s Wife

Crossfire

Great Expectations

Henry V

Razor’s Edge

The Yearling

Anchors Aweigh

The Bells of St. Mary’s

Spellbound

Since You Went Away

Wilson

For Whom the Bell Tolls

Heaven Can Wait

The Human Comedy

In Which We Serve

The More the Merrier

The Ox-Bow Incident

49th Parallel

Kings Row

The Magnificent Ambersons

The Pied Piper

Random Harvest

The Talk of the Town

Wake Island

Blossoms in the Dust

Here Comes Mr. Jordan

Hold Back the Dawn

The Little Foxes

One Foot in Heaven

All This, and Heaven Too

Foreign Correspondent

The Letter

The Long Voyage Home

Our Town

Love Affair

Of Mice and Men (1939)

The Adventures of Robin Hood

Alexander’s Ragtime Band

The Citadel

Four Daughters

Grand Illusion

Pygmalion

Test Pilot

Dead End

In Old Chicago

Lost Horizon

One Hundred Men and a Girl

Stage Door

A Star is Born

Anthony Adverse

Dodsworth

Libeled Lady

Romeo and Juliet

San Francisco

A Tale of Two Cities

Three Smart Girls

Alice Adams

Broadway Melody of 1936

Captain Blood

David Copperfield

The Lives of a Bengal Lancer

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Les Miserables (1935)

Naughty Marietta

Ruggles of Red Gap

Top Hat

The Barretts of Wimpole Street

Cleopatra

Flirtation Walk

The Gay Divorcee

Here Comes the Navy

The House of Rothschild

Imitation of Life

One Night of Love

Viva Villa!

The White Parade

A Farewell to Arms

I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang

Lady for a Day

Little Women

Smilin’ Through

State Fair

Arrowsmith

Bad Girl

Five Star Final

An Hour with You

Shanghei Express

The Smiling Lieutenant

East Lynne

The Front Page

Skippy

Trader Horn

The Big House

The Love Parade

The Alibi

The Hollywood Revue of 1929

The Patriot

The Racket
City Lights

2001: A Space Odyssey

Some Like it Hot
The African Queen

Singin’ in the Rain

The Gold Rush

Duck Soup

Modern Times

Bringing Up Baby

Sullivan’s Travels

Psycho

King Kong
Vertigo

The Searchers

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

Rear Window

North by Northwest

The Wild Bunch

Easy Rider

Spartacus

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

The General

A Night at the Opera

Harold and Maude

Frankenstein

The Jazz Singer

Cool Hand Luke

Airplane!

National Lampoon’s Animal House

When Harry Met Sally

Caddyshack

Sons of the Desert
Sunrise

Sophie’s Choice

The Miracle Worker

Philadelphia

Cat Ballou

Wall Street

Intolerance

Swing Time

Do the Right Thing

Blade Runner

The Birth of a Nation

The Third Man

Fantasia

Rebel Without a Cause

The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

Hoosiers

National Velvet

Glory

Pinocchio

Meet John Doe

Rudy

The Black Stallion

A Raisin in the Sun

Silkwood

The Day the Earth Stood Still

An Officer and a Gentleman

The Spirit of St. Louis

Gunga Din

Birdman of Alcatraz

Thelma and Louise

Serpico

What’s Love Got to Do With It?

Stand and Deliver

Hotel Rwanda

The Paper Chase

Fame

Searching for Bobby Fischer

The Karate Kid

Blazing Saddles

The Producers (1967)

Young Frankenstein

The Odd Couple

His Girl Friday

A Fish Called Wanda

Adam’s Rib

Being There

There’s Something About Mary

Ghostbusters

This is Spinal Tap

Arsenic and Old Lace

Raising Arizona

Groundhog Day

Harvey

It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

Big

My Man Godfrey

Manhattan

Shampoo

A Shot in the Dark

To Be or Not to Be

The Seven Year Itch

Arthur (1981)

The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek

The Lady Eve

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein

Diner

It’s a Gift

A Day at the Races

Topper

What’s Up, Doc?

Sherlock, Jr.

Beverly Hills Cop

Horse Feathers

Take the Money and Run

Mrs. Doubtfire

Bananas

Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House

Monkey Business

9 to 5

Victor/Victoria

The Palm Beach Story

Road to Morocco

The Freshman

Sleeper

The Navigator

Private Benjamin

Lost in America

Dinner at Eight

City Slickers

Fast Times at Ridgemont High

Beetlejuice

The Jerk

Woman of the Year

The Heartbreak Kid

Ball of Fire

Silver Streak

Bull Durham

Court Jester

The Nutty Professor (1963)

Good Morning, Vietnam

Sudden Impact

White Heat

Dr. No

To Have and Have Not

The Terminator

Terminator 2: Judgment Day

Now, Voyager

Dirty Harry

Animal Crackers

A League of Their Own

Scarface

Beyond the Forest

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Planet of the Apes

The Shining

Poltergeist

Marathon Man

Mommie Dearest

Little Caesar

Soylent Green

Dracula

Knute Rockne All American

Goldfinger

The Naughty Nineties

Top Gun

Dirty Dancing

The Iron Lady

Crazy Heart

The Last King of Scotland

Training Day

La Vie en Rose

Walk the Line

Monster

Monster’s Ball

Life is Beautiful

Leaving Las Vegas

Reversal of Fortune

Boys Don’t Cry

Dead Man Walking

Blue Sky

Misery

The Color of Money

The Accused

Trip to Bountiful

Harry and Tonto

Save the Tiger

Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore

Klute

Women in Love
True Grit (1969)

Charly

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Hud

Two Women

BUtterfield 8

Stalag 17

Cyrano de Bergerac

I Want to Live!

Three Faces of Eve

Anastasia

Come Back, Little Sheba

A Double Life

The Farmer’s Daughter

To Each His Own

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

A Free Soul

Dangerous

Morning Glory

The Sin of Madelon Claudet

Min and Bill

The Way of All Flesh

The Last Command

Coquette

Street Angel