The Dave100 in 2010

They say that "Third time's a charm", so I guess we'll find out, as this is my third attempt at doing what I'm about to do... list my 100 favorite films of all time.  You'd think it would be just as easy to throw up a list online, give you 100 titles and say, "Here ya go", but you know me better than that... out of the thousands and thousands of movies that are out there, to pick out a single century's worth of films, list them as my personal best, well that takes not just effort but each one deserves more than just a mention in a list.

The first attempt at the list itself was August of 2007.  After an introduction, here's what was ranked that summer...
100. Primary Colors... 99) Airplane!... 98) Dogma... 97) Rocky III... 96) Black Dog... 95) Spaceballs... 94) Galaxy Quest... 93) Lethal Weapon... 92) The Rock...

Then I got into college football, got into Christmas, we bought a house and life continued as normal--busy.  Summer of 2008 rolled around, and I wrote a re-introduction to The Dave100, and continued with these: 
91) The 40-Year Old Virgin... 90) Pure Country... 89) Jerry Maguire... 88) Cars... 87) Philadelphia.... 86) The Breakfast Club... 85) Braveheart... 84) National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation... 83) Return of the Jedi ... 82) Breakdown... 81) Gung Ho...

Then I stopped.  First, I took a job with The Happiest Place in the Mall, and added with Starbucks, put me working about 55 hours per week.  I barely had time to blog anything else, much less movies.  Didn't see The Lovely Steph Leann for days at a time, tired alot, and of course, then came another season of college football.

And between last summer and this summer, I started looking at the list.  With the addition of HBO, Showtime, Starz and the like to our DirecTV (and now Dish Network) package, I was able to watch, and re-watch (and sometimes re-watch and re-watch and re-watch) some movies, and it helped me remember how great they are.  And sometimes, how they just don't hold up, telling me my memories of such films romanticize how good they were, when they actually aren't that great.  "Gung Ho" is a prime example of a movie that I've seen a dozen times, but when I thought about it, compared to other movies, it didn't hold up... so, it got dropped.  "The Negotiator" and even Pixar's "Cars" got the same treatment.
And because its now been a few years since I started, because of some of my rules, I am able to include movies that came out in 2007, whereas before, I couldn't.  What rules?  Simple...

First, the movie has to be at least 3 years old.  I've seen lots of stellar movies in the last few years, movies like "The Dark Knight", "Wall*E", "Up in the Air", "Up", "The Proposal" and "My Life in Ruins", movies that I really, really like, but they are still fairly new.  Either I haven't seen them enough to know if they'll stick with me, or they were released in the last year or so, and I can't make a good judgement on how well they will hold up. 

Case in point... "Sunshine Cleaning".  I loved this film when I first saw it, with my favorite actress Amy Adams, whom I'm in love with, and raved about it.  It was, and is, a great, great film.  I watched it recently on cable, over a year since I'd seen it the first time.  And?  It was good.  Not great.  I saw a few problems with it, I saw a few scenes that I didn't like as well, and though I'm sure I'll watch it again, if only for Amy Adams, whom I'm in love with, it wouldn't rank in my The Dave100 films. 

Secondly, have I seen it enough times to be familiar with it?  Can I describe it to someone in pretty good detail. 

Third, there are the intangibles... those things that about a movie that make it your own...  will I watch it when it comes on cable?  Now that I have something like 50 or more channels devoted to movies, be it premium cable or AMC, Turner Classic Movies and the like, will it catch my attention for a least a little bit?  Are there characters, scenes, lines that resonate with me?  Even if the movie isn't critically acclaimed, is it a movie I can have fun with, and can watch over and over? 

This is what The Dave100 is all about.  You may like my movie choices, you may love them, or you may tell me how incredibly bored you were with my selections (and my posts on them).  Or you can come up with a list of your own...  but, and I'm making no promises on how fast I can get it down, here are my favorite 100 movies of all time.