If you couldn’t tell by now, movies are a big part of my life. Frequently people ask me, “What’s your favorite movie of all time?” or “What’s good right now?” or “What movie changed your life?” Those are all big questions, ones I hope to answer with this twice-monthly column. Sunday is my 24th birthday, so we’ll go back 24 years to when I was born. 1988 gets gypped a little, because only movies released in North America from April 8 to December 31 are eligible. Every year after that gets the whole calendar. Unfortunately, this means one of my favorite 1988 movies (Beetlejuice) is ineligible. But my other favorites all get a mention.
So the column works like this: For each year, I pick what I feel is the absolute best movie that year, judged on the following criteria: quality, innovation, personal significance and re-watchability. I’ll also list five honorable mentions following the same four points. First post goes up tomorrow. I hope we’ll learn a lot about each other as we continue.