Clare’s Top 5 Favorite Movies

Why compile a short list of your five favorite movies?

It’s a great conversation starter, because most people can think of at least a few movies that they love. Limiting it to 5 causes tension in a good way, because it forces you to think of why one movie would make the list but another one you liked wouldn’t make the list. And it doesn’t belabor the point.

Anyway, here’s my Top 5:

Moonstruck

(1987. Directed by Norman Jewison. Starring Cher, Nicholas Cage, Vincent Gardenia, Danny Aiello, John Mahoney, and Olympia Dukakis. Screenplay by John Patrick Shanley)

Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope

(1977. Written & Directed by George Lucas. Starring Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Sir Alec Guinness, Peter Cushing, and James Earl Jones as the voice of Darth Vader.

Gladiator

(2000. Directed by Ridley Scott. Starring Russell Crowe, Joaquin Phoenix, Connie Nielsen, Richard Harris, Derek Jacobi, and Oliver Reed.

Shadowlands

(1993. Written by William Nicholson. Directed by Richard Attenborough. Starring Anthony Hopkins, Debra Winger, Edward Hardwicke, John Wood, and Joseph Massello.

Prince of Egypt

(1998. Written by Philip LaZebnik and Nicholas Meyer. Starring Val Kilmer, Ralph Fiennes, Michelle Pfeiffer, Sandra Bullock, Jeff Goldblum, Danny Glover, Patrick Stewart, Helen Mirren, Steve Martin, Martin Short

This has been my list for a long time—since the early 2000s. An updated list would include another Russell Crowe movie, Master and Commander, 2015’s The Big Short, and, yes, I think I’ll add The Karate Kid, in all its 1980s glory, to this list. That’s eight movies, though, so it’s harder to remember.

In the first Season 2 episode of Splanchnics, in honor of the New Year, 2021, Hannah and I counted down our 21 Favorite Movies.

Fun facts:

William Nicholson, the writer of the screenplay for Shadowlands, is also credited as one of the screenwriters who contributed to the script of Gladiator.

Norman Jewison granted himself a cameo appearance in Moonstruck, as the deceased in the coffin at the funeral parlor in the opening scene.

James Frain’s first feature film role was as C.S. Lewis’s student Peter Whistler in Shadowlands. He later appeared in another film starring Anthony Hopkins: Titus, Julie Taymor’s 1999 screen adaptation of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus.

Update: Norman Jewison, director of Moonstruck, passed away on January 20, 2024.