Empire released its top 50 Indie Films recently, and even had the guts to rank them. Here’s my thoughts on what they chose. The ones I’ve seen are bolded.
- Reservoir Dogs – The only good Tarantino movie ever made.
- Donnie Darko – Creepy awesome good. Patrick Swayze rules.
- The Terminator – #3? Seriously?
- Clerks
- Monty Python’s Life of Brian – Thank goodness it was this Monty Python film that made it, and not The Holy Grail.
- Night of the Living Dead
- Sex, Lies, and Videotape
- The Usual Suspects
- Sideways – Somehow I think this one creeps up the list because its recent. But then again, I’ve never seen it.
- Mean Streets
- Bad Taste
- Eraserhead
- Memento
- Strange Than Paradise – Down By Law, Night on Earth, and Mystery Train are all better than Stranger Than Paradise.
- Blood Simple – I love the Cohen Brothers, but Blood Simple? What about the Hudsucker Proxy?
- She’s Gotta Have It – Do the Right Thing. End of story
- City of God
- Withnail and I – Uncomprehensible British crap.
- Lone Star
- Slacker – I know that there is the school of thought that sometimes it’s what the movie does (and this one blew the doors wide open for cheap indie films), not what the film is. I don’t subscribe to that school of thought. This movie was terrible. I don’t care how influential it was. It was poorly written, poorly acted, and poorly filmed. Put Dazed and Confused on the list, if you have to have a Richard Linkletter film on here.
- Roger and Me
- Nosferatu – They mean the original, not any remakes (although the Klaus Kinski one is great)
- The Evil Dead
- Happiness – Bad people doing bad things to each other. I didn’t like this one at first, but it grew on me.
- Drugstore Cowboy
- Lost in Translation – Can you believe I’ve never seen this movie?
- Dark Star
- In the Company of Men
- Bad Lieutenant – If you haven’t seen this movie, and don’t mind obscenity and violence, see it now. Make sure you get the version with the gansta rap version of a Led Zeppelin song. Seeing this film with Brent Joseph is one of my most favorite memories. On a side note, the Blockbuster-edited version of Bad Lt. is the reason I refuse to give them my business to this day.
- Sweet Sweetback Baadassss’ Song
- Pink Flamingos
- Two Lane Blacktop
- Shallow Grave – Christopher Eccelston is amazing in this movie.
- The Blair Witch Project
- THX-1138
- Buffalo ’66 – Welcome to Dullsville.
- Being John Malkovich – Never seen this one either, believe it or not.
- Grosse Point Blank
- The Passion of the Christ – Chickenshit Academy nominated this film for three Oscars: Cinematography, Music, and Makeup and it didn’t win any of them. I loved this movie. It deserved so much more.
- The Descent
- Dead Man’s Shoes
- Swingers
- Shadows
- Amores Perros – One of the most difficult to watch films I’ve ever seen, especially if you have any love for dogs.
- Mad Max
- The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
- Blood Feast
- Cube
- Run Lola Run
- El Mariachi– My peeve with this movie is that everyone talks about how little money it took to make it. I wonder how much money Quentin Tarantino spent on post-production after it had already been released when he discovered it?
I’ve only seen a few movies from that list (ranked in my fav order)
#1 Mad Max
#2 The Terminator
#3 Reservoir Dogs
#4 Life of Brian
#5 Night of the Living Dead
#6 Evil Dead
Why isn’t Killer Klowns From Outer Space on there? It not an Indie film?
Oh, and Crimewave is the best indie film ever, no question
Were you joking about Passion of Christ?
He wasn’t. He went to see it without me because I couldn’t take the violence. He came back a changed Kent.
I’m not joking at all. I thought it was a fantastic movie.
I never saw it, but Chelsey said it was the pits. I will side with Chelsey. Also how are some of these movies “indie” movies? Was there some sort of “Movies made for less than” distinction?
This is what Empire’s site says:
Big budgets, big names and a wide release are but three of the advantages enjoyed by studio films. An overriding concern to make money, interfering executives and lack of creative control are three more, rather less enjoyable, attributes. Because of this it’s more often independent cinema you must turn to for examples of truly brave and innovative filmmaking and, assembled herein, you will find Empire’s choice of the 50 greatest independent films: some of the boldest and most creative movies ever undertaken. Bearing in mind that to encompass all those that are independently financed would mean The Phantom Menace is an independent film, we’ve qualified all entries by ensuring they were made with what we consider to be an independent spirit. The final order then takes into account the quality of the film, the circumstances behind its production, the achievement of the filmmakers despite monetary and logistical constraints and its influence on subsequent projects.
You should see The Passion of the Christ. Its a great movie. A lot of people had trouble getting past the whole religion thing, though.