In keeping with the great and grand tradition of listing my top five _____(fill in the blank). I have decided to share my top five movies. Why here, why now, what has brought this on, you ask? The recent release of “The Watchmen” has had me thinking about my top five’s of a lot of things.

The Watchmen, the graphic novel, is in my top five books. With the release of the movie so widely publicized, due to the lawsuit between Fox and Warner Bros. and the venom spitting of Alan Moore (original author of the graphic novel, who insists he will not see the movie, will not accept money from the production and will not have his name appear in the screen credits). It seemed inevitable that I would spend $9 and several hours of my time seeing this movie.

See it I did, admittedly it’s been the better part of six months since I most recently read The Watchmen so as the movie began I was a little lost, I spent the better part of the first hour trying to remember what would happen next. When I finally forced myself to stop predicting and just enjoy I found the film a little boring. Don’t get me wrong, the action sequences are great, I could envision all the POW’s WHACKS’ and CRUNCHES’ as Rorschach dealt out beating after beating in flashbacks and real time action, but in between all those beatings the plot just moved a little too slow.

Here begins my dilemma, the movie included almost everything from the graphic novel. Some details were left out (including two sub plot lines 1.The Black Freighter & 2.Roscharch’s psych evaluation), but the vast majority of it all was in there and movies tend to stagnate if the plot slows down too much, which it did. On the flip side, as a fan of the graphic novel, all the detail and slow moving plot was ok because it was true to the original. See my, dilemma?

It was the climax of the movie that ended up tilting the scales from ‘liked this movie’ to ‘loved this movie.’ In the end of the graphic novel, without spoiling anything, all the building conflict is resolved by the intercession of one man and some ‘other dimensional beings.’ In the end of the movie all the conflict is resolved by the intercession of one man and a character that was developed throughout the course of the movie. Well, I liked the ending of the movie better, it seemed… more realistic, if that is possible in a movie where Nixon is running for his 5^th term in office. I digress, what does “The Watchmen” have to do with my top five movies? Well here is my list.

In no particular order:

The Watchmen

Donnie Darko

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

The Fountian

Land of the Dead

What are your top five?