In order to kill some time at work, I decided to take a peak at Entertainment Weekly\'s top 100 magazine in which they rated the top 100 movies, albums, TV shows, etc. EW started off on a very wrong foot by having the American version of The Office as far back as somewhere in the 80\'s for best TV shows all-time. Why? This is one of the best written shows of ever and ruled NBC Thursdays for at least 6 years, and that\'s not even mentioning that it has probably the greatest TV character of all-time with Michael Scott. That\'s like ranking the \'91 Bulls in the 80\'s of the greatest basketball teams of all-time even though they had the best player to ever play the game. I mean, they ranked The Office behind effing Homeland? Please wait as I watch video of Derek Jeter breaking his ankle to cheer myself up.
I was also pretty upset that Breaking Bad wasn\'t ranked #1, but that\'s more of a personal preference. I\'m sure it will jump up to the top of the board after the series ends with Walt and Jesse driving into the sunset while listening to \'Holiday Road\' as Skylar\'s dead carcass rots in the back seat, ultimately leaving Flynn to take over as the new drug lord in New Mexico along with the baby. Let\'s just all pretend this is the way Breaking Bad actually ends, because when it returns one month from today, we all know either Walt or Jesse is going to die, and my ending is more like Jordan ending his career with that game winning shot in the \'98 Finals rather than his debacle of a comeback with the Wizards. That\'s the last Jordan simile of this article. I swear.
Any ways, I got to the movie section and saw that Citizen Kane was #1 on the list. Ok, that\'s fair. I saw that movie in my 12th grade english class and thought it was good. Not the best of all-time in my opinion, but it\'s old, and I understand people tend to favor older movies as being better. I can live with that at #1.
#2? The Godfather. Sadly, this movie is really overrated. Italian people like my friend Steve\'s dad tend to love this movie because they love their heritage and like to protect this painfully long movie as the best ever. And oh, I get it. Don\'t attack me saying I don\'t get the underlying meaning of The Godfather. I get it, and it\'s very clever. Whatever.
Then I look at #3 on the list, and I already realize that Shawshank Redemption has not been mentioned up to this point. I quickly glance over the entire first page and realize it\'s not in the top 9, and this is when I begin to frantically flip through the pages like a maniac. It wasn\'t there. Shawshank Redemption didn\'t make Entertainment Weekly\'s top 100 greatest movies of all-time list? It\'s like everything I had been told up to this point of my life was a lie. Eff Entertainment Weekly. This is when I began getting mad at random patrons and kicking stability balls over at my job like when James Stewart goes ballistic on his kids when he realizes he lost the check in It\'s a Wonderful Life. I should have ran out of work and fallen in a freezing river: maybe then and angel would have put Shawshank on the list.
It\'s not even like this is my favorite movie, either. Good Will Hunting (by far my favorite movie ever) didn\'t make the list, and if you think this is a long article, wait until I write one on why that should have made the top 100. When I realized that wasn\'t on the list, I didn\'t look quite as much like George Stewart as I did the Hulk after being woken up by the feeling of somebody writing on my forehead with permanent marker while having my covers ripped off of me.
But how in the hell do you leave Shawshank Redemption out of the top 100...let alone the top 5! Were the interns at EW arguing over whether it should be #1 or #2 and then just completely forgot about it? Were they sidetracked by putting Dazed and Confused as the 80th greatest movie of all-time? (I love Dazed and Confused. But the 80th greatest movie of ALL-TIME? Please.) Let\'s lay Shawshank out on the \"Great Movie Checklist\" that I just made up 10 minutes ago:
1) DOES IT HAVE A GOOD CAST? And I don\'t mean does it have big names (which it does, any way). Movies can have big name actors/actresses and not be a good movie. Take Mars Attacks! for instance. This movie has Jack Nicholson, a former James Bond, Danny Devito, Martin Short, Natalie Portman, Michael J. Fox and his pet horse wife Sarah Jessica Parker, Jack Black, Christina Applegate, and Uncle Eddie from the Vacation series. And you know what? That movie still sucks. It\'s really bad even with a Dream Team cast.
Shawshank doesn\'t have a line-up of A-list stars like Mars Attacks! but is instead filled with actors who fit their roles to perfection. When it comes to picking somebody to play the intelligent yet humble Andy Dufresne, nobody could have played him better than Tim Robbins. Robbins literally plays Andy to perfection; he always had the same expression of...not too much emotion on his face throughout the film. Instead of playing Andy as the smart guy who always seems to know what he\'s doing, Robbins plays him so that not only all the characters in the movie have no idea that Andy knows what he\'s doing until the end, but even the audience has no idea. This is masterful. When it takes a third party 2 hours and 15 minutes to realize \"Holy shit, Andy was a genius all along!\" (and it\'s intended) you know you did something right (If people were thinking this during A Beautiful Mind, well uh, something went terribly wrong).
Morgan Freeman is the narrator of the film, and as everyone knows, there is no way you can go wrong with that selection. I\'m convinced the man\'s voice was actually physically altered by God so that he could narrate films. Not only does he narrate the film, but he does it from a second person point-of-view. I still remember my 7th grade english teacher telling my class that we would never see something written from a second person perspective. Well take that, Mr. Sinkinson! Any ways, the role of \'Red\' was scripted perfectly for Freeman: a somewhat satisfied black man whose accepted his life behind bars and is making the best of it.
Those are the two A-list stars in this movie, and they could not have been more perfectly suited for their roles. But wait, there\'s more! The evil warden played by Kevin Spacey. Just kidding, but this role really would have been great for him if the movie were made 20 years later; however, it\'s a good thing that it wasn\'t because we would have missed out on Bob Gunton\'s performance. Gunton, much like Robbins and Freeman, fits his role perfectly. Gunton does a terrific job of portraying what you would suspect a warden to look and act like from 1946 to 1965: a short white man who is corrupt and very religious. Today we call these people priests, bankers, and assholes.
The warden\'s sidekick, Captain Hadley, is played by Clancy Brown. Clancy is a tall ass dude who looks just like one of the Russian soldiers in the James Bond video game Goldeneye. His stature makes him seem very intimidating and a better enforcer for Warden Norton than Ray Lewis for his murderous gang the Baltimore Ravens.
To finish off the rest of the supporting cast: Tommy is played by Gil Bellows, who looked just like an Elvis wannabe and young hot-shot that you would expect the cautious Andy would want nothing to do with, so naturally he befriends him and helps him get his high school diploma; William Sadler plays Heywood, who kind of looks like a poor man\'s Woody Harrelson, which is perfect because I would expect a poor man\'s Woody Harrelson to be a bumbling, goofy looking idiot, which is what Heywood is; James Whitmore plays Brooks Hatlen, and all he had to do was act like a lonely and lovable old man, which was a piece of cake for Whitmore being short and wrinkly; and of course the gay rapist \"sister\" Bogs is played by Mark Rolston, who is naturally kind of creepy looking, so he suited that role pretty well.
There it is: your main eight characters. All played as closely to perfection as you can get. That\'s as good as the 8-man rotation on the \'96 Chicago Bu...crap. Forgot I promised no more MJ similes.
2) IS THERE A GOOD STORYLINE? Yes. Andy is in jail for being accused of murdering his wife and the man she was cheating with, and the audience believes this to be true until a little past halfway through the film. So for the first 90 minutes (ballpark), you think that this movie is about Andy doing good deeds in jail and making the best of his life in Shawshank prison and think that maybe it ends with Andy receiving parole and being released for being such a good guy. And then you get thrown a twist when you find out Andy\'s not actually guilty, and from there the entire storyline changes from Andy\'s time in prison to Andy trying to get out of prison only to be denied and trapped. Or so it appears...
3) IS THERE A BIG TWIST? \"Yeah, you find out Andy isn\'t actually guilty. We already know this, Shark.\" You\'re right. Finding out Andy\'s innocent is a twist, but it\'s not even the biggest twist of the movie. In fact, in the grand scheme of things, this only ends up being a MINOR twist. When you have a big twist followed by an enormous twist, you know it\'s a good movie. Unless it\'s Vanilla Sky. Then it\'s a bad movie.
The biggest twist doesn\'t come until Andy is denied by Warden Norton for a chance at a new trial on his case due to the new evidence and is sent to solitary confinement for a month, which is extended to two months when Andy thinks he\'s finally getting out. And this isn\'t like solitary confinement today where you\'re in an air-conditioned room with glass windows. No, Andy was put into a sweatbox with one little sliver the size of Justin Beiber\'s vagin- i mean penis - to let light shine though. Imagine being trapped alone in a North Philly basement after a frat party just ended. Now imagine being trapped there for 2 months. That\'s what Andy had to go through. And when he finally gets out, it seems like he\'s going to kill himself. And how can you blame the guy? He has no chance of ever getting out of prison and is officially the warden\'s bitch.
This is when Andy sits down with Red and talks about his dream of living on a boat in the Pacific Ocean in Mexico and delivers his hope speech when he says, \"Remember Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.\" And the whole time you\'re thinking \"Holy shit, this guys going to kill himself!\" And then you find out he asked Heywood for a 6-foot length of rope! And then he doesn\'t come out of his cell the next morning! Why would you think this is the best movie ever?! You\'re insane! This movie ends on such a downer!
Except Andy\'s body isn\'t hanging from the ceiling. He\'s nowhere to be found until the warden rips off the poster in his room to find a tunnel that Andy\'s been carving with a small rock-hammer that he\'s been hiding right under the warden\'s nose in his bible for 19 years. Not only did this dude escape from Shawshank prison, but he was able to notify the police of Warden Norton\'s scams and the murder of Tommy by Captain Hadley. This is the biggest twist in a movie EVER, and you can\'t convince me otherwise. Andy goes from having everyone including the audience think that he\'s going to off himself right before fucking over the warden and his enforcer while escaping to Mexico with a shitload of money from the fake identity he created to cover up the warden\'s own scams! It\'s genius!
4) DOES THE MOVIE END ON A POSITIVE NOTE? Yes. This one is more optional; movies can end on down notes and still be good. Ending on a good note is more of a cherry-on-top type of bonus. Let me breakdown the last 20 minutes of the film for you: you think Andy is going to kill himself; Andy escapes from prison; Andy screws over the two people that made his life hell; Red misses Andy; Red unexpectedly gets parole; Red wants to kill himself like Brooks did when he was released; Red visits the place where Andy first boinked his wife because he promised Andy he would go there; Red finds the rock Andy told him about which is filled with a lot of money; Red breaks his parole and takes a bus down to where Andy is in Mexico; the movie ends with the camera panning out as Andy and Red hug. That\'s a great effing way to end a movie: the two protagonists sharing possibly the happiest moments of their lives in the real world far away from the prison where they thought they would spend the rest of their lives.
I didn\'t even crack jokes at how Andy has to crawl through 500 yards of human shit to escape the prison, or that there\'s no way Andy could have pinned the poster back down after crawling into the hole, or that Andy is significantly taller than the warden and couldn\'t have possibly fit in his shoes (I didn\'t say the movie\'s perfect, just the GOAT. The perfect movie will be directed by me in 2024 and will be called Basketball 2), and that\'s STILL a better explanation as to why Shawshank Redemption should be on the top 100 list than anyone at Entertainment Weekly can come up with for The Hurt Locker. And those idiots didn\'t even get the year on that movie right: it\'s 2008, not 2009, dummies. Shawshank Redemption is the greatest movie of all time. I rest my case.
Eat shit, Entertainment Weekly.
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