The Top Five!

The Sweaty Irishman and I were once again trading random Shawshank Redemption lines and going over the talking points of 3:10 to Yuma when an idea struck us. We thought, "Why not give back to society, why not be philanthropic?" So we decided to share, collectively as The Friendly Friends®, if all are willing and able, the best of everything!

We will unleash an avalanche of knowledge by listing the all-time greatest things, nicely condensed into a top five list. Of course, there may be some disagreement about each list amongst us, but who said this quest would be easy!

So, without further ado, and for the sake of the advancement of all that is good and right I Christen the TOP FIVE!

Okay. Note to self. The computer cannot withstand the force of a bottle of champagne to the hard drive.

For week one, we will pay tribute to that which gave us the inspiration. Hollywood! With this I present to you for your visual pleasure the TOP FIVE movies of all time according to Shamalama. From 5 to 1...

Number 5:
Children of Men
Depressing, yes. Dark, yes. But those qualities are what makes it great. It's a gritty take on the future and at the same time explores the things that make us who we are. It's got great action sequences that make you feel like you are in the scenes. Great movies like this are hard to explain, so I will let the movie do the talking. See it now.

Number 4:
Pulp Fiction
Who doesn't like Pulp Fiction? Bueller? Bueller? That's right no one. It's got everything, from 6 inch needles straight to the heart, to sodomizing, chopper-riding cops named Zed. From Bad-Ass Motherf**kers to Oak Men like Winston the Wolf. It's chock full o' greatness and deserves a place on my top five. Quentin gets the Oscar nod for best supporting actor.

Number 3:
American Beauty
Ok. Let me start by saying that typically I am not a big Kevin Spacey fan. That's how good this movie is: It transcends Spacey's wooden acting and still creates a modern masterpiece. Why is it good? I don't know--I just know that it is...

Number 2:
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
I admit. It took about 19 viewings of this movie to fully understand its complexities and I still catch things I missed the time before. It's a twisted brain-f**k of a movie and has the creepy, pantie-sniffing Bilbo Baggins along with the sometimes hot, sometimes weird, but always good Kate Winslet. Carey tones down his Fire Marshall Bill antics and acts, better even than the great performance from The Truman Show. You have to watch this a billion times.

and last, but most definitely not least, Number 1:
The Shawshank Redemption
This one got screwed-over big time. 7 Oscar nods and nothing. Nothing, for a movie that everyone knows and everyone has seen about 3 trillion times on TNT at 2:30 in the morning. It's the movie that perpetually runs on at least one station. All the lines are classics. The acting is immaculate as well as the story. It's a story about revenge and the good guy prevailing. It's not breaking new ground, however, it dominates the category. I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir, but if you think otherwise, lets step outside.

There you have it. My Top Five. Let the debate begin.