Casey’s Criteria: The 10 Movies I’ll Defend Forever

Movie lists are usually traps.

Put Citizen Kane too low and somebody gets offended. Leave The Godfather off entirely and somebody starts questioning your judgment. Admit that one of your favorite movies involves ninjas, cheerleaders or Sylvester Stallone firing an explosive arrow and suddenly everyone becomes a film professor.

So this is not a list of the ten “greatest” movies ever made.

These are my ten.

The Casey’s Criteria list.

Some are masterpieces. Some are ridiculous. A few are both. What they have in common is that I can put them on again and again and still find something in them that works.

Starting at number ten:

10. American Ninja (1985)

If you were a little boy in the 1980s, there was a pretty good chance you wanted to be a ninja.

I certainly did.

Plastic throwing stars. Questionable attempts at flips. Karate moves that probably looked considerably better in my head than they did to anyone watching. Ninjas were everywhere, and American Ninja captured that obsession perfectly.

It is an almost pure specimen of 1980s American macho fantasy: one quiet guy, impossible fighting skills, an army of disposable bad guys and absolutely no need to ask whether any of this makes sense.

That is part of the charm.

American Ninja understands exactly what kind of movie it is, and for a kid in the '80s, it was basically a training film for the person you hoped you might someday become.

9. Xtro (1982)

There are polished science-fiction movies, and then there are movies that feel like something crawled out from behind your refrigerator at three in the morning.

Xtro belongs firmly in the second category.

It may be one of the creepiest science-fiction films ever made. There is something deeply wrong about nearly everything happening on screen, and I mean that as a compliment.

The practical effects are bizarre, physical and unsettling in a way CGI often struggles to reproduce. You aren't simply watching something strange. You feel like you shouldn't be watching it at all.

It is cinematic nightmare fuel.

And somehow that makes it gold.

8. The Cheerleaders (1973)

Yes, there is an obvious objection here.

You can reasonably argue that The Cheerleaders isn't terribly far removed from soft-core porn.

Fair enough.

But there is also a playfulness about it that makes the movie better than it really has any right to be. The cast commits to the whole thing with a strange confidence. It's naughty without becoming grim, ridiculous without becoming completely cynical.

And, yes, there are tiny skirts.

But what makes the movie work is attitude. It possesses that loose, slightly dangerous early-1970s energy when movies could feel as though somebody simply gathered a cast, crossed a few boundaries and decided to see what happened.

You probably couldn't make it today.

That is part of the appeal.

7. Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985)

I know.

The first Rambo is the more serious movie.

It has more to say about Vietnam, trauma and the way America treated returning veterans.

But the second one has bigger muscles and bigger explosions.

Sometimes that wins.

Rambo: First Blood Part II takes everything about the character and turns the dial until it breaks off. Stallone becomes less a man than a force of nature. Bullets fly. Things explode. Rambo emerges from mud looking like vengeance itself.

Subtle?

Absolutely not.

Fun?

Absolutely.

6. They Live (1988)

This movie has somehow become more relevant with age.

Advertising controls you. Wealth controls you. Language is manipulated. People obediently accept instructions they don't even realize they're receiving.

And the only way to see reality is by putting on a pair of very cool sunglasses.

John Carpenter wrapped Orwellian paranoia, economic inequality and alien conspiracy inside what looks like a goofy action movie. Underneath it is a remarkably angry film about class and manipulation.

We are all puppets.

In They Live, the people pulling the strings just happen to be aliens.

It also contains what may be the greatest unnecessarily long fistfight ever filmed. Two men beat each other nearly senseless because one of them won't put on the sunglasses.

Cinema.

5. Let the Right One In (2008)

The original Swedish version.

This one is frequently described as a story about a bullied child finding an unlikely protector.

That's true.

But it is much darker than that.

The revenge against the bullies feels satisfying for about five minutes, until you start thinking about what this relationship actually means.

Eli doesn't age.

Oskar will.

And once you understand that, the entire movie changes.

The elderly man helping Eli at the beginning suddenly stops looking like just an old accomplice. You begin wondering whether he was once another Oskar—a lonely little boy who met a mysterious child and thought he had found someone who would stay with him forever.

Perhaps Oskar isn't escaping his miserable childhood.

Perhaps we are watching the beginning of his entire life.

And perhaps, decades later, he will simply be another worn-out old man who has become disposable.

That's what makes the movie frightening.

The vampire isn't the scariest part.

Time is.

4. Arthur (1981)

This one hits close to home.

Arthur is short, rich, irresponsible, constantly drinking and having the time of his life.

Naturally, I relate…at least with being short and having the time of my life.

Dudley Moore somehow makes a character who could have been unbearable completely lovable. Arthur isn't just drunk. He's delighted by practically everything. He floats through the movie laughing at his own jokes, talking to strangers and treating adulthood as a mildly inconvenient rumor.

And underneath all that silliness is a genuinely sweet story about a man who has everything except the freedom to decide what he actually wants.

The movie works because Arthur is such good company.

You don't simply watch him.

You want to spend the evening with him.

3. An American Werewolf in London (1981)

“Jack, you little meatball.”

You simply cannot write a better dead best friend.

Jack keeps returning in progressively worse stages of decomposition while somehow remaining one of the funniest characters in the movie.

But An American Werewolf in London isn't really a horror movie to me.

It's a tragedy disguised as one.

David falls in love. For a brief period, there is the possibility of an entirely different life waiting for him. Then something ancient and violent takes control of his body and destroys it.

That's closer to tragic romance than monster movie.

And the transformation effects?

More than forty years later, I still don't think they have been surpassed.

You can see the body changing. Stretching. Breaking. Becoming something else.

It hurts just watching it.

2. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)

The title gives you three characters.

The trick is that you have to love all three.

Tuco may be the ultimate survivor. He is greedy, treacherous, funny, desperate and almost impossible to kill. Call him a rat if you want.

Rats survive.

Angel Eyes is terrifying for a completely different reason. He accepts a job, and you know he's going to see it through. There is an awful professionalism about him.

And then there is Blondie—the “Good.”

Except he isn't exactly good.

He's calculating. He cheats. He kills. He drags Tuco through the desert and leaves him hanging when convenient.

Yet he's still the one you root for.

That's what makes the movie so much richer than a simple hero-versus-villain Western. Everybody occupies some shade of moral gray.

And somehow these three men circling one another in search of buried gold becomes enormous—funny, cruel, beautiful and almost mythological.

1. Metropolis (1927)

Nearly a century later, Metropolis still looks like the future.

That alone is astonishing.

But the reason it sits at number one is not simply the imagery.

It is everything underneath it.

The wealthy live above.

The workers live below.

Machines consume human beings. Technology promises progress while reinforcing inequality. Powerful people become fascinated with replacing workers with something more controllable.

And then a human being is literally copied by a machine.

Watch that in the age of artificial intelligence.

Suddenly a silent movie from 1927 doesn't feel quite so old.

The symbolism can be almost absurdly heavy, but I love that about it. Metropolis isn't interested in whispering its ideas. It builds skyscrapers around them.

Class. Labor. Technology. Power. Automation. Inequality. The fear that the people controlling the machines may understand their value better than they understand the people operating them.

We are still arguing about all of it.

And then there's Maria.

Yes, Maria is hot.

Some critical standards are timeless.

That is Casey's Criteria.

Ten movies separated by ninjas, vampires, aliens, werewolves, cowboys, cheerleaders, drunken millionaires and approximately 98 years of filmmaking.

I wouldn't argue that they're the ten greatest movies ever made.

I would argue something much more important:

They're the ten I want to watch again.