Top 50 movies of the last 5 years: introduction

So like any pop-culture junkie, I always enjoy when a magazine like Rolling Stone or EW comes out with a new "Top___ Movies/Albums/Songs" list. They're always good for a few chuckles, some guffaws at the missing entries and begrudging resignation at the fact that the top item will always be the same (The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Citizn Kane and Seinfeld tend to be the veritable staples of these lists).

I figured being that this blog is read by so many people, some of which are hawkishly trying to get me to use their online dating sites, that it make sense to do my own list and so, over the next week or two, i'll be presenting my favorite 50 movies from the last five years. A few notes to begin with:

-I've seen approximately 500 movies (no joke) since mid-September 2000, the official start date of this list, so I figure widdling this down to 10% of those films is sufficiently narrow enough.

-In the case of sequels, where a sequel is an independent film, I treat it as a separate entity. When its clearly part of an overarching group of movies, I treated it as one entry. This saves me a few spots for additional films, but doesn't cover too much ground. In fact, only two movies and their sequels does this apply to (should be obvious).

-I'm not a professional movie critic and generally have pretty pedestrian tastes, so this is not a list of which films are "the best". This is pure personal preference. Also, I will list the movies by release date since the thought of actually putting them in some qualitative order sounds as appealing as watching a David Lynch/Spike Lee film festival to me.

-Finally, I wanted to note that one of my favorite movies ever, Almost Famous, just missed the cut since it was released in early September 2000. I was contemplating including "Untitled", its extended and in my opinion, superior brother, but I chose to stick to theatrical releases only, so no go. Which means no HBO movies either.

and with that, here goes nothing