Top 10 Lists I Got Wrong: CCC Issue #93

 

Top 10 Lists I Got Wrong: CCC Issue #93

 

Today marks a special anniversary. It is exactly ten years down to the minute since I posted this: Welcome to Clayton's Critical Countdown! (CCC)

Back in September I celebrated ten years of doing my annual Halloween horror movie marathon, Clayton’s Creepy Cinema, and now this movie blog has officially been up and running for a whole decade, too! To commemorate the day, I’m doing a special top 10 list that has been in the works for the past few months. Well, technically it’s been in the works since my very first top ten list. If you’re a long-time reader you may have noticed my blog used to be called Clayton’s Critical Countdown, but I changed it to Clayton’s Cinema Countdown. The reason for the “countdown” part is because it used to be primarily made up of top five and top ten lists for everything to do with movies and TV, but after a couple years of this I started getting tired of just doing countdown lists and wanted to branch out into other ways of writing about movies. I rebranded to cinema countdown because I’m not a critic, I just love movies and I love writing about them, however I feel inspired to do so, but I kept the countdown part.

You might have also noticed I’ve been creeping closer and closer to list #100—rest assured, I have something special planned for that, too, when I eventually get there—but for now I’m doing another retrospective and taking a “critical” look at my own work. I’m going to look back at all my previous countdown lists and determine which ones I messed up on the worst. With time comes change, and my opinions on some movies and cinema topics have changed quite a bit in the past ten years. Peering into the past through a present day lens, I’m going to reflect on which lists I didn’t get right, which ones don’t hold up today, and some of my other blunders from the past ten years of countdowns.

 

Honourable Mentions:

I can’t possibly list all the lists I think have problems, otherwise I’d be listing half of my entire blog! But, I will touch on a trio of lists that I still consider defunct despite not making the top ten.

Issue #20: Top 10 Unnecessary Remakes

I was trying to draw attention to remakes I felt were particularly unnecessary, not just bad remakes. Reflecting on it, though, I think remakes are almost always unnecessary, so really this list could have been much longer than just a top 10. I don’t know if I could make a top 10 necessary remakes list, but I stand by the majority of the films I included on that list.

Issue #60: Top 10 Movies of 2016

The reason this list was so “wrong” was because I hadn’t seen so many of the best 2016 movies by the end of that year. I felt the year had been bad for new movies, but when I look back on it now, I realize I just missed most of the best ones. Sing Street not only ended up being my favourite movie of 2016, it remains my favourite movie of the 2010s, and one of my favourite movies of all-time. I look back on my top 10 lists for each year that I made them and snicker at how innocently ignorant they seem to me now, but I also think they show my progression as a film fan, as well as where my love for certain genres and types of movies has never faltered.

Issue #32: Top 10 Transformers Movie Moments

This list wasn’t really wrong, but I made it for the wrong reasons by my current personal standards. I wrote it just because a new Transformers movie was coming out, so I scraped together ten ideas for parts of the first three live-action Transformers movies that I didn’t hate, and my dislike for the movies comes through pretty strong in that list despite my positive look at them. I don’t actually hate the Transformers movies as much as my hyperbolic words seem to indicate (well, the second one, maybe) but it probably could’ve just been a top five list and I could’ve left out a few of those silly “best” moments, such as when Revenge of the Fallen was over. I don’t make lists purely to coincide with something new anymore— I only do them if I’m particularly inspired to write them, and that list was very clearly uninspired.

 

10. Issue #38: Marvel Movies Ranked

This one is on here for a pretty obvious reason. When I wrote that list there were only ten MCU films, so I didn’t even have any honourable mentions, but now I wouldn’t even bother to try ranking my top 10 favourites. First off all, everything post-Avengers: Endgame is not part of what has been branded “The Infinity Saga” which incorporates the first 23 films, and the shows on Disney+ all factor into the MCU now, too, so it’s really become a mess. As of writing this, I’ve only genuinely enjoyed three of the “Multiverse Saga” films so far, and I haven’t even been compelled to watch them all, nor will I likely ever see some of them because I just don’t see the point.

Looking back on list 38, though, for the movies that are on there I wouldn’t change the rankings all that much. The first Iron Man is still my overall favourite, the first Guardians of the Galaxy is still in my overall top 5, and the first Avengers still ranks high for me, as well. The first Thor might be lower than The Incredible Hulk, just because Thor: Ragnarok is the best solo Thor movie so far and there have been no other solo Hulk films since 2008, but also I think I have more fond memories of The Incredible Hulk despite it not really aligning with future MCU films as well as Thor does. Maybe one day I’ll rank all of the Infinity Saga films…

 

9. Issue #67: Top 10 Low Budget Horror Films

I left out a number of significant examples on that list. One of the most recent (in 2017) was Hush, which I had seen and forgotten about when I did my research, so I didn’t note that it was made on a budget of only a million bucks, and if you look at director Mike Flanagan’s body of work as it stands in 2023, he has almost single-handedly kept original horror content going on Netflix, but Hush still stands out as one of his best original horror films. Another low budget horror classic I completely forgot about was Phantasm. Here is an excerpt from my RE-Review in 2022: 

Don Coscarelli, who wrote the script, produced, photographed, directed, and edited the film, made it for dirt cheap, estimating the budget to be only around 300,000 bucks. It was a big oversight for me not to include it in my Top 10 Low Budget Horror Movies list…

Another one I missed was Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. I hadn’t seen it back then, so didn’t realize just how scary it was, and it had been made for only $110,000.

My most egregious omission of all, though, was leaving off one of the best horror films in cinematic history: the original Psycho directed by Alfred Hitchcock! It was made on a budget far lower than I had realized: about $800,000—which, for comparison, is more than three million dollars less than his previous directorial effort, North by Northwest. All of these movies are better than Cabin Fever which I put at number ten. That one should’ve been on an honourable mentions list at best.

I wouldn’t change the top three spots, but one movie some readers thought I had missed completely was Paranormal Activity. It is often cited as one of the most successful low-budget horror films, having been produced for only 15,000 dollars. But, the post-production cost is estimated to have been over $200,000, and the real reason I didn’t include it is because I do not like it. I think it’s a stupid, boring, and completely un-scary found footage flick. Some people feel that way about Blair Witch Project, and they’re as entitled to that opinion as I am about Paranormal Activity.

 

8. Issue #27 & #46: Top 10 Best and Top 10 Worst Superhero Movies

The main reason I consider these lists obsolete is because they would be so dramatically different if I wrote them today. We’ve had multiple new superhero movies every year since 2014, and while many of them wouldn’t crack the top ten, a few definitely would. Some of my placements on that original list, though, are highly questionable. The original X-Men at number ten? Even back then that was wrong. X-2 is better, and then X-Men: Days of Future Past (which was just about to come out and was the reason I wrote the list) ended up being one of the best X-Men movies and arguably one of the best overall superhero movies ever. That’s the other problem, though: there are now too many to make simply a top ten. Another weird placement: Watchmen at number nine. I’ve seen it all the way through once, and I haven’t been compelled to watch it again, especially after reading the graphic novel, which was much better. I think I was just trying too hard to make the list have variety and not be too comparable to other lists about the same topic. The Crow is a cool movie and definitely not a conventional superhero flick, but top ten of all-time? Not a chance. As for the worst ones, all of the movies I included deserve to be there to varying degrees, but again, there are just too many now to fit in one list.

 

7. Issue #22: Top 10 Giant Monster Movies

I made this list for two reasons: one, because Godzilla 2014 was about to come out and I wanted to write about anything I could think of to do with monsters and Godzilla, and two, because the first Cinemassacre top ten video I ever watched was Top Ten Giant Movie Monsters. I didn’t want to just copy that list so I focused on monster movies instead of movie monsters, but I struggled to find ten of the best overall movies. I put The Giant Claw in there at #10 (also partially because that Cinemassacre list put The Giant Claw as the #1 giant movie monster, mainly as a joke) but I wouldn’t seriously consider it one of the best ever, even taking the movie’s so-bad-it’s-good status into account. Clash of the Titans and Jason and the Argonauts are both pretty good, even though I really think of them more as fantasy-adventure films than true giant monster movies, but then I put The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms above both, simply because that movie is considered such a classic. I don’t actually love that movie. I would probably rank it near the bottom or put it in honourable mentions. I avoided filling the list with Godzilla and Gamera sequels because that seemed too easy, but, realistically, many of those sequels are better than some of the movies I put on that list.

 

6. Issue #17 & #18: Top 10 Best Dinosaur Movies and Top 10 Worst Dinosaur Movies 

I worked with what I had in terms of what I knew about dinosaur movies in 2014, but with my contemporary dinosaur movie knowledge I would definitely kick out Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend, Caveman, and Carnosaur from the top ten. I gave When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth an honourable mention because I had not seen it at that point, and I think I would still keep it there, because it isn’t quite as good as One Million Years B.C. but it is one of the best for its era. I also gave the original Land Before Time an honourable mention, but I would now consider putting the fifth movie in the top 10. I still found it entertaining even as an adult, and it has a bit more substance than the original, but what would probably be most fair is to just give the whole franchise an honourable mention and leave it at that. One last tidbit on honourable mentions: I put Godzilla in there because obviously the original is a classic monster movie, but Big G isn’t a true dinosaur in the same sense as all the others in that list—and yet, I included a Godzilla movie in the top ten worst (I think just to fill out ten spots with variety), so I would change that and include 1954’s Godzilla in the top ten best.

When I wrote the top ten best list I felt that filling two more spots with The Lost World: Jurassic Park and Jurassic Park III would be too easy, but I don’t feel the same now, especially after having experienced three Jurassic World movies (which would all get a dishonourable mention in the top 10 worst). I would give JP III an honourable mention and put Lost World: Jurassic Park in the top ten best. Also, to be honest, I have not seen Carnosaur 3, Super Mario Bros. (live action) or Land Before Time XIII all the way through, so I don’t know if they would remain in the top ten worst if I saw them today, but Tammy and the T-Rex would definitely be in the top five worst, no question. I think I redeemed myself from these lists when I created the extensive and elaborately-researched six-part series “The Complete Cinematic History of” for half a dozen popular dinosaurs and followed it up with a top ten list of the best dinosaurs in film and the best dinosaurs from the Jurassic Park franchise.

 

5. Issue #12: Top 10 Best Worst Movies

I don’t think I got list #12 that wrong at the time, but if I were to do it over again today it would look quite different. I would remove Judge Dredd, The Giant Claw, and Sharktopus, for starters, because those ones haven’t endured as true favourite best-worst movies for me, and I would also remove Killer Klowns from Outer Space because now I think that movie is actually a good 80’s sci-fi/horror/comedy. I really only made that list just so I could focus on Leprechaun, Zaat, Troll 2, and The Room, but I would remove Leprechaun, because its entertainment value is mostly legitimate. I have different standards now for what counts as a best-worst movie—it has to be made poorly to a certain degree while also be entertaining for mainly unintentional reasons. I would also now have to add so many more movies, like Thankskilling, Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, Roar, Frogs, Old, and Leprechaun 4: In Space, just to name a few. In fact, I don’t think I could make just a top ten, it would have to be bigger.

 

4. Issue #31: Top 10 High School Films

When I made that list I was still discovering the coming-of-age-comedy/drama subgenre was one of my favourite subgenres, and since making it I’ve discovered so many more great ones that a few which originally made the top ten would have to go. Sixteen Candles is great but I think it would be pushed out to the honourable mentions. For high school horror Carrie can stay but Scream can go—just because Carrie is more focused on how high school influences the horror, and Scream’s high schoolers feel more like college kids, which is probably one of the reasons Scream 2 switched to a college setting. American Graffiti can go. I didn’t like it that much when I first saw it and haven’t had a desire to re-watch it in all these years. Mean Girls should be higher than #6, Juno can go down to the bottom or even into honourable mentions, because make room for Fast Times at Ridgemont High, The Edge of Seventeen, Clueless, Lady Bird, and Sing Street! OK, technically Sing Street is set in an Irish state school, but close enough. I’m also giving shout outs to Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Me & Earl & the Dying Girl, Dead Poet’s Society, Easy A, Chronicle, and Booksmart.

 

3. Issue #39: Top 10 Terminator Movie Moments

I used to say I was a fan of the Terminator franchise, but I don’t say that anymore, because I only love two of the movies, The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgement Day, and with every new entry the number of movies in the franchise I actually like decreases. Ever since I was a kid I didn’t like Terminator 3 as much as the second or first one, but I used to like it for the special effects, many of which still hold up pretty well today. But, as I came to learn as I got older, special effects do not make up for a weak story, and T3 annoys me not just for its convoluted plot and recycled ideas, but also for having annoying characters and cringe-worthy humour. If I were to redo that list today, I would not have given any moments from T3 a spot in the top ten Terminator movie moments. What really makes me shake my head at the 2015 Clayton is putting the precinct assault from the first movie as an honourable mention! How embarrassing. To think, I called myself a Terminator fan and left out what is obviously one of the top three moments from all the Terminator movies.

I think I was just trying to make a list with more variety (again) and not fill it with moments from only the first two movies, but I wouldn’t care about creating a diverse list anymore, I would prioritize keeping it real. The crane chase from T3 could get an honourable mention—I do think that’s the best bit of action from that movie—but I would also give an honourable mention to the moto-terminators chasing Kyle Reese and Marcus in Terminator: Salvation, because even though I don’t think it lives up to the first two in some of the same ways as T3, I also enjoy it more for its more serious take on the post-apocalyptic world and its more earnest attempts to reference the previous movies. I wouldn’t put any of the moments from Terminator Genisys or Terminator Dark Fate anywhere on the list, because those were the movies that made me reconsider calling myself a “fan” of the franchise. As it stands today, four movies out of the six are movies I don’t feel compelled to re-watch any time soon.

 

2. Issue #86: Top 10 Best (and Worst) Killer Animal Movies

I made one of my biggest mistakes of all on that list. It can’t be identified now, but shortly after I published it, I realized I had missed an entire spot. I don’t know how, but when I made my top 10 best killer animal movies, I only had 9 spots filled, and I completely missed one! It went from Roar at #10 to Rogue at #8, and there was just…nothing at nine. I realized my mistake and quickly fixed it, inserting the intended film to round out the top 10, Deep Blue Sea, and hoping not too many readers noticed. I don’t even know how that happened, and so far I’ve only done that the one time. The rest of the list is fine, but that rare mistake still haunts me.

 

1. Issue #84: Top 10 Anticipated Movies of 2020

The reason I’m putting this list at the number one spot on the list of the top 10 lists I messed up on (I’m officially sick of typing “list” now) is because it turned out to be the most inaccurate one I’ve ever written, even though it wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t anyone’s fault, really. It was just a simple sequence of events that led to the world shutting down in a way it never had before. When 2019 ended and I wrote about my top ten movies of the decade I had high hopes for what was to come in the first year of the new decade, but after only a couple months in, the future started looking a bit bleak, and that bleakness didn’t seem real at first. The whole coronavirus thing started out as mild dinner table conversation, then started popping up in the news headlines, then governments stepped in, and before I knew it I was laid off work and told to stay home and not interact with anyone outside of my social bubble. This included not going to the movie theater, which promptly closed and remained closed for over a year. Not being able to go to the movies was one of the hardest things about the pandemic, for me.

Looking back on that list is surreal, because it’s a real time capsule of what I thought the year was going to be like, in a way no other list I’ve written has been. I thought I would see Monster Hunter for some laughs, some new cool horror movies, the new long-awaited adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune, a new Christopher Nolan movie, and best of all, the rematch of Godzilla vs. Kong that I had wanted to see since I was a kid. Instead, what I got to see before theaters closed was Bad Boys For Life (the only movie in that top ten list that I did get to see on the big screen in 2020), 1917 (which had come out in 2019), and The Invisible Man remake, and that was it. Most of the movies on that list I wouldn’t see until the following year.

The very next list I wrote after that one was Top 10 Movies & Shows Watched in Quarantine (So Far) and quarantine ended up lasting so long I didn’t even bother to make a follow-up list as originally intended. In fact, after the strangeness of 2020, I stopped making top ten lists for the best movies of the year or my most anticipated for the next year, because it just doesn’t feel the same anymore. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. I don’t doubt that we could have a repeat of 2020 someday—I certainly hope we don’t, but I’m going to keep previews of upcoming movies vaguer from now on. Cinematic anticipation just isn’t what it used to be. 

 

SPECIAL EXTRA INCLUSION:

There is one other list I messed up on that gets its own special spot on this list—not an honourable mention or the number one spot, but an S-tier mess up that I have christened the fabled lost list. For a while, there were not one, but two CCC Issue thirty-fours. There used to be a list called CCC Issue #34: Top 10 Overrated Movies, but it does not exist anymore, for two major reasons. The first reason: it drove me nuts that I had miscounted and somehow created two issues for the same release number. I couldn’t go back and re-number every subsequent issue because I realized the error somewhere around issue #80. Certain issues were special to me because of the number of their release—I had saved my top directors for issue #50, for instance, they couldn’t just suddenly change spots on the timeline. The other reason I deleted that list in particular is because I thought it was kind of dumb, and had it still existed I would’ve put it at number one on this list. Half the movies on that list I don’t feel are overrated anymore, and the other half I don’t think are overrated enough to be there, but I also think it was just a bad idea for a top ten list. If the idea were to be taken seriously, there’s no way I could narrow down all the overrated movies in the history of cinema to just ten, and it’s too subjective in a pointlessly negative way. The list was a product of its time and I’m glad it’s not on my blog anymore.  

So, that’s another CCC retrospective to commemorate ten years of my blog! But, as a not-so-little-bonus-add-on, I’m going to explore some of the lists that almost happened!

 

BONUS CCC LIST ISSUE #93.5

Top 10 Lists That Never Happened

Now that I’ve thoroughly looked back on my top ten lists from the past ten years, it’s time to pull back the curtain on the creation process of these lists and open up about some of the ones that have not made it onto the world wide web!

I had a lot of ideas for lists when I first started up my blog, but as time went on I became less and less interested in ranking things just for the sake of ranking them and more interested in making fun, unique lists, as well as exploring films in a deeper way. As a result, many lists that I had outlined ideas for fell to the way side or never progressed past the drafting stage—things like top 10 space films, top 10 unwanted 80’s remakes, or top 10 films with superior extended cuts. You get the idea. I deleted very few list outlines or ideas, though, so I have multiple folders of lists in various unfinished states. Some are nearly complete, others are nothing more than a title and a couple slots filled with movies.

The lists that are near completion are not going to be released. They’ve remained unfinished and unpublished for a reason—not always the same reasons, but at the end of the day, I’m only going to put the writing out there that I feel good about. That being said, I’m enjoying this reflective process, so let’s brush the cobwebs off the old hard drive and see what’s there!

 

I know I’m already cheating by combining these two different lists into one issue, but I’m actually going to split this one into two top ten lists: top 10 unrealized list ideas, and top 10 lists I created and worked on but never finished and/or never released. I’ll keep both of these bonus lists as brief as I can and only elaborate where strictly necessary.

 

Bonus List A: Top 10 lists that never, EVER happened:

 

10. Top 10 Movies Adapted From Books

The more I thought about this list the more it seemed impossible to make.

 

9. Another Top 10 Movies & Shows Watched in Quarantine

I already mentioned this one, and there’s not much more to say.

 

 

8. Top 5 Movies Featuring Songs by The Black Keys

I saw The Black Keys live in 2019 and was looking for an excuse to write a list about them, but the only two examples I could think of were “Your Touch” from Zombieland and “Howlin’ for You” from Limitless.

 

7. Top 10 Pizzas in Movies and TV shows

This was an idea I came up with while drinking with my cousin and his roommate at Easter earlier this year. It could have included any of the pizzas from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies, the one Walter White throws on the roof in Breaking Bad, or the Pizza Hut sponsorship moment from Wayne’s World, but it was just a silly idea for a list that I never fully intended to write. Although now that I think about, there’s Mystic Pizza, and Pizza the Hutt from Spaceballs, and the dehydrated pizza from Back to the Future Part II, and…

 

6. Top 10 BBC Nature Documentaries

I got close to writing this one, but the problem I kept facing was every year it seemed BBC made a new masterpiece of nature documentation and it threw off my ranking! Eventually I just abandoned the idea because there’s no way I could narrow it down to just ten. From two sets of Planet Earth and Blue Planet and Frozen Planet shows, to Life, Galapagos, Nature’s Great Events, Madagascar, Africa, The Secret Life of Mammals, and The Hunt, and that’s leaving out a number of other great ones, plus if you count the Walking With… series as well, there’s way too much there to sort out.

 

5. Top 10 MCU Action Sequences

This one could have been do-able up to a certain point, but now? Well, I guess I could’ve listed a whole bunch of honourable mentions, but defining “action sequence” is tough. There are great one-on-one fights like in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, great team fights like in The Avengers, and great battles like in Avengers: Endgame. Then, there are chases like in Iron Man, and space battles like in Guardians of the Galaxy, and mystical conflicts like in Doctor Strange, and the list goes on and on. Some of the action sequences I would have included on that original version of the list though would have been Hulk vs. Hulkbuster from Age of Ultron, the forest fight from The Avengers, and Tony’s cave escape from Iron Man, but now that there is so much MCU action stored in my brain, the rest is all a muddled mess of CGI wreckage.

 

4. Top 10 Movie Santa’s

I was really committed to making this list in December a few years back, but I just couldn’t figure out if there were actually ten truly great Santa’s in cinema, so I gave up on pursuing it. The obvious ones were the Santa’s from Rudolph, Elf, The Santa Clause, and Miracle on 34^th Street, but all the other examples I could think of didn’t seem worthy of “best” and I never even had enough to make it a top five.

 

3. Top 10 Movies I Used to Like (But Don’t Now)

I thought up this list around when I wrote CCC Issue #34: top 10 movies I liked that the critics didn’t, but for whatever reason it never came together. I knew I wanted to include Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace and Godzilla 1998, but there weren’t any others that I was inspired enough to write about.

 

2. Top 10 TV Shows

After tackling my favourite cartoons I wanted to tackle my favourite other kinds of TV shows, and I had considered doing it as my 50^th list, but I couldn’t decide on how to narrow it down in a way I found satisfactory. I tried to split it into two lists: favourite TV shows of the 20^th century and favourites of the 21^st century, but that didn’t work, so then I tried to separate sitcoms from everything else, then I narrowed it down to top 10 TV sitcoms of the 21^st century (that had a nice ring to it) and still I couldn’t produce a list of shows that felt right. My top 10 list of television shows of the 21^st century (minus sitcoms and cartoons) went through many incomplete iterations, and I never could settle on a ranking, but shows that were on every version of the list included House M.D., Breaking Bad, and Mythbusters.

 

1. Top 10 Horror Films of Each Decade

I thought it would be great to narrow down the best horror films of each decade from the 1930’s up to the 2000’s and make a few lists breaking them all down, but any time I tried to decide on just ten I always ended up leaving out too many to fit into honourable mentions. The lists became too unwieldly, and even though I probably could have figured out a way to do them, I’m glad I didn’t because I think they would’ve been too reductive and I would have inevitably got many of them wrong.

 

Bonus List B: Top 10 Uncompleted Lists

 

10. Top 5/Top 10 Specific Directors 

These ones are pretty self-explanatory. I thought about saving them up for a special list, but I ended up just doing a list of my favourite directors, and that ended up turning into two lists, anyway. I had outlined my top 10 Steven Spielberg movies, top 5 Stanley Kubrick movies, and top 5 Alfred Hitchcock movies, but the problem with all three was I hadn’t seen all of their movies (Hitchcock especially) so the lists never felt very authentic. 2001: A Space Odyssey was my #1 Kubrick film and I wrote a whole thing about it that I still have saved, but never did anything else with that list, and the Hitchcock list I never even started writing. This was my Spielberg list:

Honourable mention: Duel

10. Minority Report

9. Catch Me If You Can

8. Close Encounters of the Third Kind

7. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

6. Saving Private Ryan

5. Schindler’s List

4. E.T. the Extraterrestrial

3. Raiders of the Lost Ark

2. Jaws

1. Jurassic Park

 

9. Top 10 Movie Dream Sequences

I actually really liked this list, and I came close to writing it a couple of times, but I could never find a good new release to sync it up with, and it isn’t a topic that really ties in with anything because it’s too specific. I’ll share the rankings as they stand, and I wouldn’t really change anything on it.

Honourable Mentions: American Beauty – Day Dreamin’ Spacey, Rosemary’s Baby – Demon Rape, Friday the 13^th – Final Scare

 

10. Aliens – Chestburster?

9. The Big Lebowski – The Dude’s Fantasy

8. Dumbo – Marching Elephants

7. Carrie – one last scare

6. Terminator 2: Judgment Day – Impending Apocalypse

5. An American Werewolf in London – Nazi Monsters

4. The Sandlot - The Great Gambino

3. Inception – various

2. A Nightmare on Elm Street - various

1. The Wizard of Oz – entire movie

 

8. Top 5 Will Ferrell Movies

I grew up during the peak of Will Ferrell’s career and saw most of the great ones when they first came out. I tried to make a top ten but thought it would be better to just focus on the five absolute best films with him as the lead, so that meant movies like Austin Powers, Wedding Crashers, and The LEGO Movie were not applicable. I knew Anchorman, Step Brothers, and Elf would be on the list, but I wrestled with the other two spots. Blades of Glory? The Other Guys? Curious George? Stranger Than Fiction? I decided on Blades of Glory and The Other Guys, but I just never got around to writing about each one.  

 

7. Top 10 Cliff Hanger Movie Endings

I came up with so many good ones for this list—The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug inspired the idea, and it was included, but there was Empire Strikes Back, Back to the Future (Parts One and Two), and Kill Bill Vol. 1, too. The list hit a speedbump when I started thinking of cliff hanger endings in two ways: cliff hangers that were resolved with sequels, and cliff hangers that are just the ending without any follow-up. Inception, The Thing, and Prisoners are just three movies that aren’t fully resolved at the end, but it’s debatable as to whether or not those endings are cliff hangers or just ambiguous conclusions. I also couldn’t decide if I should focus on “good” cliff hangers or just all cliff hangers. All this indecision left me uninterested in pursuing the list further.

 

6. Top 10 Child Actor Performances

This fully outlined list included Linda Blair (The Exorcist), Henry Thomas (E.T.), and River Phoenix (Stand by Me), with the entire cast of The Sandlot at number one. It was one of those lists that never easily aligned with any new releases or any special occasions, and as I saw more movies it seemed more and more obsolete. What about Harvey Scrimshaw in The Witch, or Jacob Tremblay in Room, or Dafne Keen in Logan? Eventually, the deconstructed list went into the file called top 10 – incomplete – use later, only I never used it later or even finished a draft.

 

5. Top 10 Movies to Watch When You Don’t Feel Good

I conceived of this list idea when I was sick, of course, but I decided all the movies I would put on it were too personal and it wouldn’t make for a very relatable list for most readers. But, just for fun, here’s what I came up with:

10. Stand by Me

9. Lord of the Rings

8. The Edge

7. Clerks

6. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

5. The Naked Gun

4. Space Jam

3. The Sandlot

2. Sing Street

1. Osmosis Jones  

 

4. Top 10 Marvel Movie Trailers

At some point in 2017 I thought this would be a good idea for a list, and I outlined it, but then the trailer for Avengers: Infinity War came out, and then the trailer for Endgame came out, and since Endgame not a single MCU trailer has actually made me excited (with the one exception maybe being Spider-Man: No Way Home). Now that the trailers don’t generate the same hype, it doesn’t feel like a relevant list anymore, but what the heck, here are what I used to consider the ten best, and it isn’t just limited to the MCU:

10. Iron Man - trailer 1

9. Iron Man 3 - trailer 1

8. The Avengers - trailer 2

7. Captain America: Civil War - trailer 2

6. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 – trailer 2

5. Spider-Man 3 - trailer 1

4. Deadpool - trailers 1 and 2

3. Thor: Ragnarok – trailer 1

2. Logan - trailer 1

1. Avengers: Age of Ultron - trailer 1

 

3. Top 10 Most Unnecessary Sequels

Here’s how this list went:

10. Zoolander No. 2

9. 2010: The Year We Make Contact

8. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

7. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

6. Blues Brothers 2000

5. Fox and the Hound 2

4. Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2

3. The Sandlot 2

2. Ghost Rider 2: Spirit of Vengeance

1. Super Babies: Baby Geniuses 2

It’s a fun idea for a list, and it would’ve paired well with my top 10 unnecessary remakes list, but it became so dated so fast I didn’t think I could make it into something that would last. Even now I have no idea which sequels I would put on it because there are way too many!  

 

2. Top 10 Teletoon Original Cartoons/Top 10 Cartoon Network Cartoons

When I started my blog I wrote a lot about cartoons, but I felt like I had said all I really needed to say about all the best cartoons of my youth, so I never finished these two more specific lists. The Teletoon list proved really tough because it’s hard to figure out which shows were originals and which ones were just broadcast on the network but originated from other network productions. Shows like 6Teen, Kid Paddle, Animal Crackers, Oliver’s Adventures, and What’s With Andy? were always going to be on the list, but it was difficult to sort it out and narrow it down to just ten.

Here’s the Cartoon Network list, including the intro I wrote for it and the honourable mentions:

All the way back in C.C.C list #10, I talked about cartoons that are enduring favourites, as well as favourites from my childhood. With such a plethora of excellent shows to choose from, I ended up leaving out a ton of them—so many, in fact, that it warrants two more lists devoted to cartoons! Here, I am looking at the best programming offered by Cartoon Network.

Honourable mentions: Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends and The Powerpuff Girls. Foster’s was something I used to watch, and though I did enjoy it, it doesn’t reach the level of awesome or classic that these other ten do. And as much as I would rather not admit, I did watch The Powerpuff Girls, and that too was an awesome show. Sorry Girls, yet again, not awesome enough to break into the top ten.

10. Courage the Cowardly Dog 

9. I Am Weasel

8. Adventure Time

7. Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy

6. Cow and Chicken

5. What a Cartoon!

4. Codename: Kids Next Door

3. Camp Lazlo

2. Johnny Bravo

1. Ed, Edd and Eddy

The only thing I would change now is move Adventure Time into honourable mentions and put in Dexter’s Laboratory. 

And now, finally, here is my number one uncompleted list, which is also about TV shows.

 

1. Top 5 Traumatic Childhood TV Memories

Why is this the top-ranking uncompleted list? It is because I finished writing about two of the five entries, and the number one spot on the list was something that went so deep to the core of my childhood that it took me nearly 1000 words just to describe it! I’ve decided I might isolate that number one entry and transform it into its own essay one day in the future, because my readers must know about one of the scariest things I ever saw on TV as a child. I won’t spoil what it is but I will share the rest of the list.

5. The Simpsons

I have no idea what episode this is from, but all I remember is someone crawling after Homer in an air vent with a vacuum cleaner, grabbing hold of him, and shoving the vacuum hose down his throat. I asked my cousin why he did this, and I think (but can’t be 100 % sure) she said it was because Homer ate the guy’s chocolate bar.

4. How the Grinch Stole Christmas

3. Paleo World: “Sea Monsters”

2. Goosebumps: “Werewolf Skin”

The Grinch’s facial expressions in the original TV special gave me nightmares, and the old film clips used in the docuseries Paleo World scared me enough that I buried my head in the couch cushions when they came on (I talked about this briefly in my review for The Land Unknown). Goosebumps creeped me out but never really scared me, except for the two-part episode “Werewolf Skin” which has a cliff hanger ending for part one with the main character being attacked by a werewolf through the barred-window of his bedroom. It’s funny to think back on these moments now because they are no longer frightening to me, but those memories of the emotions when I first saw them still remain, and that number one spot still haunts me to this day.

 

Well, that was fun! The reason I decided to share all these unfinished lists on this special anniversary is because I actually have a fairly big announcement to make…I plan on bringing the CCC list series to an end after issue #100. I’m not saying my whole blog will end at that point, but with this being list #93, I only have two more lists to go before I am down to the final five lists, and I have had a plan for what I want those last lists to be ever since I first started my movie blog. I have no timeline for when I will get there (I’ve only written about half a dozen in the past three years), but they will be about a topic that will span all five lists. I’ll give one hint: after I’m finally finished with my long-running Favourite Films Series, then you’ll see those final five CCC lists. Until then, keep counting away on Clayton’s Cinema Countdown!