20 Movies From a 10 Day Quarantine - Part 1: #20 - 11

I've always always been interested in creating ranked lists for movies, I've just never had an original topic I felt worth basing one around.

Best Tarantino movies?

Been done a million times.

Best landscapes as characters?

Heck, that's been done too (credit to the list-making geniuses of Filmspotting).

Thanks to a 10-day quarantine due to international travel, I finally have a list that can be uniquely, utterly mine.

From cult classics to Bond and beyond, here are the twenty movies I watched during my 10 day quarantine, ranked.

Part 1: #20-11

20. Rambo: Last Blood (2019)

Rambo, getting ready to rake some face

The first Rambo movie I've ever seen. During the end credits, they played clips from all the older Rambo flicks. It was the best part.

19. Happiest Season (2020)

While it had its moments, (mostly thanks to Dan Levy)  it's a movie full of one note characters with the exception of Kristen Stewart. She's our audience surrogate who is forced to hide her relationship from her girlfriend's family in the days leading up to Christmas. 

She's emotionally tortured the majority of the film, you will be too.

18. Snowden (2016)

"Are you a brass instrument masquerading as human?"

Engaging in parts but at 134 minutes, it's way, way too long. 

Director Oliver Stone approaches this story believing Edward Snowden is the American hero of our generation. While it is clearly dramatized in parts, Stone seems so enamored with the man behind the biopic it makes it difficult to distinguish fact versus fiction.

Joseph Gordon-Lovitt does a fine job portraying the CIA contractor turned whistleblower, even though he took his voice a few octaves too low for the part and sounds like a tuba.

17. From Russia with Love (1963)

I've only just begun to catch up on the classic Bond films and I've quickly learned the henchmen are my favorite part. Early on in From Russia with Love, we walk through a henchmen training ground. There are henchmen karate-ing, flame-throwing, hostage-taking and shooting, it's a henchmen haven!

Unfortunately it kind of slogs on after that. One of the most critically acclaimed Bond films happens to be my least favorite so far.

16. Cliffhanger (1993)

It's Die Hard on the Alps. At one point a bad guy rides Stallone like a sled down a mountain.

On-location filming and spectacular stunts - it holds the Guinness World Record for 'most expensive stunt' for a feat involving a stuntman cable crossing between two planes while flying at 15,000 feet (try that Tom Cruise!) - kept this one feeling fresh enough to recommend. 

15. The Elephant Man (1980)

The Elephant Man essentially created the Oscars category for 'Best Makeup and Hairstyling' 

As a David Lynch fan, this one has always been a blindspot in his filmography for me. 

Following Eraserhead, The Elephant Man is Lynch's second feature film and he opts for a more traditional narrative. It's fascinating to see what has carried over from his debut, like Eraserhead the horrors and sounds of industrial manufacturing create an unnerving background setting.

Anthony Hopkins is magnificent in this as the compassionate doctor who takes care of John 'The Elephant Man' Merrick. It's inarguably well crafted but left me wanting a bit more. I've been primed to be amazed and surprised by Lynch's stories and this one plays it right down the middle.

14. Happy Christmas (2014) 

Shot on a $70,000 budget, Happy Christmas is a different type of Christmas movie. Those familiar with the mumblecore genre will recognize the style used here immediately. 

Anna Kendrick, Melanie Lynskey, and Mark Webber perform their roles in a realistic, improvisational manner. By doing so they offer plenty to relate within ourselves and those we know and love around us.

Happy Christmas serves as a pleasant reminder that none of us are perfect, but all of us have our own ways of contributing to the happiness of our family, friends, and peers. 

13. They Live (1988)

All cops are bad and capitalism is inherently unfair. Boy, what a movie for 2020.

At one point, late WWE wrestler and star 'Rowdy' Roddy Piper walks into a bank with a shotgun and declares, "I came here to kick ass and chew bubblegum...and I'm all out of bubblegum."

'Nuff said.

12. Underwater (2020)

I absolutely loved the practical suits they designed for this movie

It's a blatant knockoff of Cameron's The Abyss, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. As I am currently under quarantine in Seattle I can relate to the experience this crew had. 

Trapped inside and only able to go out if it's an absolute emergency, but doing so would mean risking your own life and those around you.

Who invited TJ Miller? He is wildly out of place in this. Other than him, and the overall visual murkiness of the movie, this is a solid thriller. It's The Decent meets Deepwater Horizon, and like The Decent, Underwater works much better in the first half before the monsters are introduced. 

11. 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)

SPOILERS

A synopsis to fit our current COVID reality.

A trio quarantines in a bunker after an incident above ground contaminates the air. 

Our heroine (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) has to create homemade PPE to survive. At one point late in the film, she takes her mask off briefly but quickly realizes it's best to keep it on.

That is some Simpsons level of foresight right there.

10 Cloverfield Lane is a tense single-location potboiler that leaves plenty of clues for viewers to piece together along the way. This made for an engaging watch, with shared sympathies for those of us stuck quarantining in our homes.

20 Movies From a 10 Day Quarantine - Part 2: #10 - 1