Tinseltown Gets Scrubbed Out

Ahh, don't you just love the movies?

I know I do.

From my earliest recollection of going to the movies with my family, and the Betamax tapes stacked up in the corner of our bedroom when I was a kid, to the new-fangled special-effects laden movies and pirated torrents of today, I've always seen the imagination and cinema of movies as my refuge from reality along with books.

That is why I love the movies.

To narrow down 10 of the top movies of all time would be, difficult, in every sense of the word. I've seen too many movies, and loved most of them, hated some, laughed with and cried from, and each of them cleaves a place for itself in my wildly imaginative psyche.

But, like most of those submitting entries for this TBR, one has to try. And so Scrubbed Out's Top 10 movies are:

10. The American President - I happen to have the biggest crush on Annette Bening, but, I love this movie because it gives us a glimpse of how love works, even for the most powerful man in the world and it's just funny seeing a president find time to date.

9. Indiana Jones / The Goonies - Hidden treasure, adventures, and good times with good friends. What's not to love? I used to imagine myself riding a horse with a Fedora on my head and using my whip to swing over a crevasse of snakes and alligators, and finding a hidden pirate ship with loads of gold bullions and jewels beneath our house. Now, I don't think of those things as often as before, but the thoughts do cross my mind. I wonder what's under my apartment? Hmmm.

8. The Count of Monte Cristo - Betrayal, revenge, intrigue. So much weaved into the storyline and I loved how Jim Caviezel played Edmund Dantes in this movie --cool and calculating. Don't you just love it when the good guy who goes through heck get his due in the end?

7. A Knight's Tale - For the witty dialogue and the rags to riches story of a squire-turned-knight. It's a perfect blend of comedy, action, drama, romance and good music. I like how seamless the movie transitioned into modern and medieval times with great and fun performances from the late Heath Ledger as William. See ending line of #8.

6. E.T. - A score for imagination. Who doesn't love what ET brought to our world? I mean, aside from Drew Barrymore.

5. Braveheart - I loved this movie so much the first time I saw it that I was trying to speak Irish for a week. But I eventually gave up, but watched the movie again, and again, and again.

4. Shakespeare In Love - Yes, this movie stars Gwyneth Paltrow, but I don't like her as much as Annette Bening, haha. I think the movie is beautifully made and rightfully won the Oscar for that year.

3. Love, Actually - Great great movie. And well, this movie holds more meaning than just the actual movie for me. But several love stories being told, intertwined beautifully into one story involving among other people, the Prime Minister of England, his secretary, two porn stars, divorcees, a widower and his housemaid, in a story you just have to see to love. Oh Keira Knightley is in this movie too! Hahaha.

2. Mr Holland's Opus - I love music -- and music with movies are a plus. Here Richard Dreyfuss plays a music teacher who has, as a goal in life, to compose the perfect symphony, and keeps putting it off to teach and make an impact on the lives of his students. He is a music teacher with a deaf son and goes to war against the educational system that cuts art programs in school. He ends up retiring without his symphony but realizes that his each student became the notes of his real legacy and in the end, a fitting tribute as his students render him his completed masterpiece.

1. Hook - You have to love Spielberg's imagination in this movie. That Peter Pan grows up and goes back to Neverland and to save his kids, he has to find that Peter Pan again. Now why couldn't I think of a storyline like that? More than just the story, the fun, and the general makeup of the movie, this is the last movie that I can recall that I watched with my mom, dad, brother and sister at the local movie house in Dumaguete. And THAT is why it tops my list.

Honorable mentions are the sports movies I love to watch: Tin Cup, The Mighty Ducks, Major League, The Replacements, Rad and all those wacky, funny, inspiring, heartbreaking sports movies, I can't get enough of them from.

I'm sure I've left out some movie I love somewhere, but as of now this is the top 10 list I'm going with.

Oooh, Underworld is coming up...