top 50 movies (30-21)

No clever intro today because I'm a little late getting started. So onto the list...

30. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Milos Forman, 1975)
IMDB PLOT OUTLINE: Upon arrival at a mental institution, a brash rebel rallies the patients together to take on the oppressive Nurse Ratched, a woman more a dictator than a nurse.
PERFORMERS: Jack Nicholson, Louise Fletcher
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Brad Dourif (Billy Bibbit)
INTERESTING FACTS: Ken Kesey (the author) has claimed that he will never watch the film version because it's not told from the Chief's perspective the way the book is...One of only three films to win the Grand Slam of Academy Awards (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actor, Best Actress)...#33 on the American Film Institute's Top 100 Movies of All-Time
BEST SCENE: McMurphy doing play-by-play of the World Series.
BEST LINE: "They was giving me ten thousand watts a day, you know, and I'm hot to trot! The next woman takes me on's gonna light up like a pinball machine and pay off in silver dollars!"

29. Dead Poets Society (Peter Weir, 1989)
IMDB PLOT OUTLINE: English professor John Keating inspires his students to a love of poetry and to seize the day.
PERFORMERS: Robin Williams, Robert Sean Leonard
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Josh Charles (Knox Overstreet)
INTERESTING FACTS: Originally, Professor Keating was supposed to die of leukemia, but the director decided that the focus should be on the boys...It was the first major motion picture ever filmed in Delaware..."Carpe diem. Sieze the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary," is #95 on the American Film Institute's list of the 100 Greatest Movie Lines of All-Time
BEST SCENE: The boys standing on the desks.
BEST LINE: "We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race."

28. The 40-Year-Old Virgin (Judd Apatow, 2005)
IMDB PLOT OUTLINE: Goaded by his buddies, a nerdy guy who's never "done the deed" only finds the pressure mounting when he meets a single mother.
PERFORMERS: Steve Carell, Catherine Keener
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Seth Rogen (Cal)
INTERESTING FACTS: The chest hair scene was shot in one take, and Steve Carell's chest was really being waxed...Voted one of the 50 Greatest Comedies of All-Time by Premiere...During the "Aquarius" scene, Jay is doing the M.C. Hammer "Shuffle Dance"; the actor who played Jay (Romany Malco) played M.C. Hammer in the VH1 movie Too Legit: The M.C. Hammer Story
BEST SCENE: The chest hair scene.
BEST LINE: "Tell me, what's Curious George like in real life."

27. Swingers (Doug Liman, 1996)
IMDB PLOT OUTLINE: Wannabe actors become regulars in the stylish neo-lounge scene; Trent teaches his friend Mike the unwritten rules of the scene.
PERFORMERS: Vince Vaughn, Jon Favreau
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Ron Livingston (Rob)
INTERESTING FACTS: Favreau wrote the screenplay based on his personal experience moving to California and hanging out with his friends, Vaughn and Livingston (the men are basically playing themselves)...Vaughn's father and Favreau's grandmother play lucky gamblers at the casino...Trent, Mikey, Sue, Rob, and Charles are supposed to represent the members of the original Rat Pack: Sinatra, Martin, Lawford, Bishop, and Davis
BEST SCENE: Trent and Mikey in the casino.
BEST LINE: "Hey! What're you kicking me for? You want me to ask? All right, I'll ask! Ma'am, where do the high school girls hang out in this town?"

26. Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (Mel Stuart, 1971)
IMDB PLOT OUTLINE: A poor boy wins the oppurtunity to tour the most eccentric and wonderful candy factory of all.
PERFORMERS: Gene Wilder, Peter Ostrum
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Jack Albertson (Grandpa Joe)
INTERESTING FACTS: Ostrum (who played Charlie) never made another film; he went on to become a veterinarian...The movie quotes several Shakespeare plays, including Romeo & Juliet, The Merchant of Venice, and As You Like It...Sammy Davis, Jr. wanted to play Bill, the candy store owner, but producers thought it would be too kitschy; the song "Candyman" was later a staple of Davis's stage act
BEST SCENE: The opening scene in the factory.
BEST LINE: "The strawberries taste like strawberries. The snozzberries taste like snozzberries!"

25. The Sixth Sense (M. Night Shyamalan, 1999)
IMDB PLOT OUTLINE: A boy who communicates with spirits that don't know they're dead seeks the help of a disheartened child psychologist.
PERFORMERS: Bruce Willis, Haley Joel Osment
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Toni Collette (Lynn Sear)
INTERESTING FACTS: "I see dead people" was #44 on the American Film Institute's list of the 100 Greatest Movie Lines of All-Time...Liam Aiken (who plays the little boy in Stepmom and the kid in the Lemony Snicket movies) turned down the part of Cole...#89 on the American Film Institute's list of the 100 Greatest Movies of All-Time
BEST SCENE: Malcolm realizing that he is dead.
BEST LINE: "You ever feel the prickly things on the back of your neck?...And the tiny hairs on your arm, you know when they stand up? That's them. When they get mad... it gets cold."

24. 12 Angry Men (Sidney Lumet, 1957)
IMDB PLOT OUTLINE: A dissenting juror in a murder trial slowly manages to convince the others that the case is not as obviously clear as it seemed in court.
PERFORMERS: Henry Fonda, Lee J. Cobb
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Jack Warden (Juror #7)
INTERESTING FACTS: Jack Klugman is the only juror still alive today...John Fiedler, who played Juror #2, provided the voice for Piglet in several Winnie the Pooh movies (he is from Platteville, WI)...#87 on the American Film Institute's list of the 100 Greatest Movies of All-Time
BEST SCENE: The other 11 jurors turning their backs on #10 after his racist rant.
BEST LINE: "It's always difficult to keep personal prejudice out of a thing like this. And wherever you run into it, prejudice always obscures the truth. I don't really know what the truth is. I don't suppose anybody will ever really know. Nine of us now seem to feel that the defendant is innocent, but we're just gambling on probabilities - we may be wrong. We may be trying to let a guilty man go free, I don't know. Nobody really can. But we have a reasonable doubt, and that's something that's very valuable in our system. No jury can declare a man guilty unless it's SURE. We nine can't understand how you three are still so sure. Maybe you can tell us."

23. The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming, 1939)
IMDB PLOT OUTLINE: Dorothy Gale is swept away to a magical land in a tornado and embarks on a quest to see the Wizard who can help her return home.
PERFORMERS: Judy Garland
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Ray Bolger (the Scarecrow)
INTERESTING FACTS: Buddy Ebsen was cast as the Tinman, but was dropped because of a reaction to the aluminum powder make-up..."Over the Rainbow" was #1 on the American Film Institute's List of the 100 Greatest Movie Songs of All-Time..."Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore" (62) and "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain" (24) were both on the AFI's list of the 100 Greatest Movie Lines of All-Time
BEST SCENE: The Scarecrow's first scene.
BEST LINE: "I think I'll miss you most of all."

22. Field of Dreams (Phil Alden Robinson, 1989)
IMDB PLOT OUTLINE: An Iowa corn farmer, hearing voices, interprets them as a command to build a baseball diamond in his fields; he does, and the Chicago Black Sox come.
PERFORMERS: Kevin Costner, James Earl Jones
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Burt Lancaster (Moonlight Graham)
INTERESTING FACTS: In a review of the movie, W.P. Kinsella (the author of the novel) gave it four out of five stars for two reasons: Mark wasn't villainous enough, and he didn't think that Gaby Hoffman looked like she could be Kevin Costner and Amy Madigan's child...Matt Damon and Ben Affleck are among the thousands of extras in the Fenway Park scene...Archibald "Moonlight" Graham was a real baseball player that played one game for the New York Giants in 1905 before quitting to become a doctor
BEST SCENE: Ray and his dad "having a catch."
BEST LINE: "The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time."

21. Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999)
IMDB PLOT OUTLINE: An office employee and a soap salesman build a global organization to help vent male aggression.
PERFORMERS: Ed Norton, Brad Pitt
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Meat Loaf (Bob Paulson)
INTERESTING FACTS: Norton and Pitt really got drunk for the scene in which they hit golfballs, and the balls were sailing into the side of the catering truck...Norton's character is identified only as "The Narrator" in the credits..."The first rule of Fight Club is you don't talk about Fight Club" was #27 on the American Film Institute's 100 Greatest Movie Lines of All-Time
BEST SCENE: The Narrator beating himelf up at work.
BEST LINE: "Tomorrow will be the most beautiful day of Raymond K. Hessel's life. His breakfast will taste better than any meal you and I have ever tasted."

Later gators.