Top 100 Movies of the Last 25 Years (1984-2009): Part 12

4. Goodfellas - While its no Godfather, Martin Scorsese takes up what Coppola started. To put it simply, Goodfellas is a gangster classic. Combining the Italian-American world of New York, with a pitch perfect drug-influenced storyline, and the style of many different decades to create what seems like The Godfather reincarnated, and that is the highest compliment any film can receive. The cast is incredible, especially Ray Liotta, Lorraine Bracco, Academy Award Winner Joe Pesci (for this role), and the great Robert DeNiro. While it failed to win Best Picture (a travesty, the Academy should be ashamed of), for me it not only remains the best movie of 1990, but one of the best movies of all time, and the third greatest gangster/mobster movie of all time (behind the first two Godfathers of course). Martin Scorsese is an incredible director, and Goodfellas perfectly captures what makes him so incredible...enough said.

3. Almost Famous - So it topped by best of the 2000's list, and while it still remains probably my favorite movie of all time, it missed the cut by two on this particular list. I know I have probably written just a little too much about this incredible movie, but I can't help it, I simply love it. I read an article recently that labeled Almost Famous as one of the most overrated movies of the last couple of decades, and I was appauled. To tell the truth, I thought it was underrated for so long, and as critics started to do their best of the decade lists, they realized just how great it was. It is the perfect passion project, and the heart and style that went into it is prevalent from the first frame till the very last one. Kate Hudson is perfection, Frances McDormand is hilarious, and the rest of this incredible cast shine so bright, you lose track of all the stars that are stuffed into its frames. It has an incredible screenplay, and if you want ot know more just go and look at my many articles written about the film. Simply one of the best...of all time.

2. Schindler's List - I thought about making this incredible movie number one, but I simply couldn't put it ahead of the real number one (as you shall see in a couple of days). Despite that, Schindler's List remains not only one of the greatest movies of the last twenty five years, but also remains one of the greatest of all time (just take a gander at AFI's top 100 movies of all time if you need further proof). Spielberg really took his Jewish roots seriously in this modern historical classic that tells the story of a Holocaust-era gentleman that saves many individuals from thier grueling fate of death in a horrible concentration camp. I had the unpleasant, yet important pleasure/devastating act of visiting Dachau, on a seventeen day, seven country tour of Europe back in 2000. It is the feeling that you get when you walk into that place that makes you remember why it is important to remember the horrific events that the world witnessed under the Nazi regime. For all of us Schindler's List is a quiet, yet powerful reminder of that painful history, that happens to be incredibly directed, impeccably acted, and powerfully written, which combines together to create one of the most moving and influential movies of all time.