Whoa! A list? Where's the usual weird story or sentimental diatribe on humanity?

Eh, felt like doing a list. And I graduated from film and television at Tisch, you see, so I better put them credentials to use.

TOTALLY SUBJECTIVE. Well, okay, Black Dynamite (talked about below) is probably the funniest goddamn movie ever made, so there's that. And believe me, I'd like to make this a top 25, but...hm, you know what? This will be the first part! Part 2 will follow. Yeah.

So anyway, there's a few personal criteria. Most importantly, universality. One major component behind picking these films was that I feel they embody a universal feeling born of the time they were made. That's truly something you can only experience by watching, but it drove these particular picks.

Aiiiiiiiight, let's do this thing.

10. Friday Night Lights (2004)

Without trying to spoil anything, this is one of those films where despite knowing the outcome, I pray the ending is different. Not just in sense of attachment, but because these boys - forced to carry a town on their backs, trapped in a world of small town Americana that will consume generations to come - deserve much more. They'll be at their sons' football games, drunk in bars on the weekend, reliving their glory days on and on until the town swallows itself. We can only hope they're bold enough to break free of this imprisonment, circumstances allowing. Performances across the board are near pitch perfect, every character stressing the importance of their every movement; their lives depend on it. Because for many, this is all they're going to have. Friday Night Lights never loses that illusion, even in the midst of victory, charging on with a boldness that leaves you aching yet triumphant only in a moment's bubble. Which is what makes it a perfect sports film, because isn't that what athletics are, in the end?

Damnit. Why can't Peter Berg make movies like this again?

9. Spirited Away (2002)

First off, just look at the image above. How can you not adore that utter imagination? Indeed, the scene is just one of a dizzying odyssey through the fears of growing up and adjusting, born from Hayao Miyazaki's impressionistic mind. We don't see blatant lessons learned, but in a poetically quiet fashion, characters grow infinitely, intertwining with each other and maturing in their own personal ways. Every shot feels like an intimate fever dream - Chihiro's fright is ours. Her wonder is ours. This film is a shining example of how to build a world through a simple journey, yet imbibe it with so many complexities. Part of this greatness is Miyazaki's refusal to portray anyone as totally good or totally bad, a moral benefit of the doubt that makes the story even more exciting to watch unfold - and even sadder to leave.

Oh, and it's fun as hell. You can pick any of the spirits in this film, and they're equally as interesting and colorful as the others. That's what I call commitment.

8. The Hurt Locker (2009)

Many generations past had their defining, glorious war film. Saving Private Ryan, Sergeant York, Platoon, The Dirty Dozen. Most of them black in white in conflict. We have The Hurt Locker. And it is our defining, why? Because it goes where no war film has delved into, without compliment, with verve: the crippling addiction of war. Battlefields here are hazy drug dens, where lost souls can escape into the one thing they know how to do best, what they've been bred to do. Sergeant William James - a bravado performance by Jeremy Renner, back when he was like, killin' it at the acting game - gets to go home, unscathed, with multiple achievements under his belt. But he's already hooked. He'll be back, soon enough. Is it nature? Or have we done this to ourselves? There's an uncertainty permeating from both the existential dread in this film's theme, emboldening the action scenes and making every bomb diffuse, every gruelingly long shootout even more gripping. Everything is a field of death, even the quiet moments of peace. Thankfully, some can avoid being sucked into it. Others can't.

Oh, and watching Kathryn Bigelow win the Best Director Oscar for this - the first woman to do so - will never not be one of the most magnificent moments in the history of showbiz.

7. Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring (2003)

Many films have attempted to tell an entire life, in many different gimmicks. This one, I believe, truly grasps the mythic feeling behind the encompassing nature of the cycle of life. A young boy grows up in a monastery, learning from his teacher, until circumstances I won't spoil force a drastic path in his life. Almost cosmically, the boy's journey slowly metamorphoses into the teacher's journey. The film's taking place in only one setting further emphasizes a sort of centrality, where lives over decades swirl in the container of human conflict. Most of the times, we've placed ourselves there, but could it be because our lives are dictated by forces beyond our control? We'll always have certain flaws, but we'll learn from them too. By the film's end, spring has indeed begun again, the flowers are in bloom after a harsh and unforgiving winter. The water is unfrozen, and peace has returned. But it will be frozen again. However, nothing will truly be the same as it was. Oh, and SSFWS never milks its drama. So, yeah. Brimming with wisdom and poignance but never melodrama. That's no easy feat!

6. Black Dynamite

Someone telling a ridiculous story isn't inherently funny. Someone telling a ridiculous story with a completely serious look on their face, now that's hilarious. Essentially, this movie is that in film form. And by god, will you be laughing hysterically at every other scene. Nearly every form of comedy - slapstick, verbal, satirical. Everyone's in on the joke, but for entertainment's sake, they're trying their best not to be. THAT'S how you do parody. Not just referencing works and making jokes about them. But fully embracing the ridiculousness of a genre while upping both that and the seriousness up to 11, without ever breaking. Black Dynamite's almost flawlessly funny, stocking comedic element onto comedic element ever so precariously.

I don't want to try and push any of the jokes here, because I can't do them justice nor convey the perfect execution of them. Go watch it. Need further proof of this movie's genius? The film contains a character named Captain Kangaroo Pimp, and the climax involves BD dueling Richard Nixon with nunchucks in the Oval Office. Go watch it.

5. Pan's Labyrinth

The line where wonderful fantasy and stark, real drama meet is ripe for storytelling. We can watch a beautiful contrast, celebrate idealism while examining its flaws, and blend the best of two forms of narrative. Pan's Labyrinth does so with aplomb, peppered in Guillermo Del Toro's signature, gorgeous mixture of beauty and horror. I love this movie cause it's got everything I like in a movie - evocative backdrops, tight story structure, and characters coming to grips with who they are and what world they live in - but that's underselling its genius. Set against the Spanish Civil War, Pan's Labyrinth weaves gracefully between the blood and grit of reality's cruelty, and the shine and immersion of the fantastical, in protagonist Ofelia's odyssey into a hidden world of magic. But the way it blends the best of both - war brings out nobility, dreams bring out pragmatics - creates a fairytale that seems almost tailor made for the world we live in today. We're never pushed to accept either side, which allows for anyone to glean their own experience from the story. Amazing! Maybe that's why this film's climax leaves me sobbing.

Some phenomenally spooky creature design doesn't help either. One of the film's most endearingly unsettling characters made Stephen King squirm, which should be enough to convince you.

4. Moonlight

Praising this film is akin to noting how wet the sea is, but you know - I don't think I can praise it enough. Empathetic to a saintly degree, director Barry Jenkins not only never spells anything out, but plasters his themes around subtly and with grace. Characters wander through a world of foggy lights, endless oceans, and isolating masculinity. My roommate calls Moonlight a visual poem; that's a pretty adept description. Jenkins stresses the importance and weight of identity, of who we are and want to be, in the endlessly expressive eyes and movements of the three actors playing protagonist Chiron in three parts of his life. Moreso impressive, considering Chiron lives in a world where his homosexuality must be suppressed in both movement and speech, lest he be tortured for it. Mahershala Ali creates what might be one of cinema's most unforgettably engrossing characters in the form of Juan, a drug dealer who is a caretaker at heart, trying to mold Chiron into a confident man while at war internally with who he is. Expect to see that sort of beautiful character layering throughout, because damn, every lead gets it. We need Moonlight. We need this portrait of a life so barely seen and given the spotlight. And we need this masterfully elegant, endlessly humanistic form of storytelling, across all types of art.

That final third is so cathartic, I just smile thinking about it.

3. Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

What makes this film so damn awesome? The groundbreaking way they handled a female protagonist in a big budget feature? The fact the villain employs a guy whose guitar is also a flamethrower? The incredible visual storytelling, harkening back gloriously to silent cinema, which uses the sheer power and detail of an image to guide the viewer through an explosively visceral, thrilling story? The actors' embracing this world to all of their being, both in physicality and cosmetics? The BEAUTIFUL coloring, turning a desert wasteland into a dreamlike world of violence and madness? The pulsing soundtrack, a tribal beat truly signifying a world gone primal and nutty? The now iconic production design, which feels kind of plausible yet in its own world? The bits of comedic gold sprinkled throughout (Immortan Joe's "MEDIOCRE!" is, in context, one of the best punchlines I've ever seen in a movie) that are organically stemmed from the characters, never forced? The directorial vision of a high thrill adrenaline ride that ultimately becomes an involving parable of hope?

Probably all of those. WHAT A LOVELY DAY!

2. Inside Llewyn Davis

The artist who never comprises for corporate success. An archetype we admire - but only if they're successful. If not, there's a damning pit of stubbornness and failure waiting. Inside Llewyn Davis captures that bleakness, and almost hilariously dark vortex, amongst a moody backdrop of 1960s Greenwich Village. The problem of Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac's entry into the pantheon of great modern actors) is not that he can't catch a break, but that he's unwillingly set the groundwork for his not being able to catch a break. We both laugh and yell at his refusal to sell out to "just existing". Watching him fail is somewhat earned, but then he's almost hilariously punished for it by the universe. For a pride most of us are guilty of? He's not a bad guy. He can just be an asshole, sometimes. He tries to keep saving the cat he accidentally let out of a friend's apartment, though he fails to see his other problems brewing and turn his attention to those problems. Sure, he's created most of his roadblocks, but he's trying. He bears his soul in his singing, maybe cause that's the only way he can express himself. He's at peace, cushioned by a brief respite from pain he can make through his art. Maybe one day he'll be willing to make a compromise that will make him successful. Or maybe he'll create more roadblocks. At least they stem from an honest soul, deep down. It's a painful, melancholy tale to watch, made even better by the underlying, zesty whimsy of the Coen Brothers to really bring you back to that time.

Oscar Isaac's wonderfully raw little singing voice does some pretty heavy lifting. If acting doesn't work out, I'd love to hear an album from him.

1. Cameraperson

I'm cheating here. Cameraperson isn't so much a film as it is an exhibition, a gorgeous kaleidoscope of humanity, all told in the most modest, non-pretentious way possible. The film - a global collection of director Kristen Johnson's leftover footage from the various documentaries she's done cinematography for - is helmed with an appreciation, a wondrous curiosity of life all over, eager as can be to embrace humans of all kinds. Never are we instructed what to think, but instead called over just to watch, like a friend showing you something cool from afar. In one such scene, Kristen is watching a brewing storm while documenting a midwestern community. There's a fork of lightning, and Kristen, not expecting it, simply gasps "Whoa!". Incredible; a world constantly reaching out to us, beckoning for our hand! Stories all over, told often in small rooms and houses, but we know this is simply a big world inside of a bigger world inside of a bigger world. There's no use trying to understand it all, but we can sit back, and revel in the simple miracle of every day life. To Kristen, and as I felt by the film's end, that yields even more extraordinary results.

This film makes me proud to be a member of the human race. How many other works of art can you say that about?