Top Five Movies

TopFiveMovies.com is the product of 4 years of alcohol-free college. Due to the lack of free-flowing beer and all-night parties on our reserved and quiet campus, most people were forced to find alternative entertainment. The contributors to this site chose to spend most of their time doing 3 things:

1. playing intramural sports and fighting amongst themselves,
2. playing board games and fighting amongst themselves,
3. and watching movies and fighting amongst themselves.

The content of this site was forged over countless hours of late night movies, and arguments that would range from casual conversation to physical altercation. The cafeteria and dorm hallways became battlegrounds where competing theories about plots, symbolism, actors, directors, and anything else remotely related to movies waged constant and fierce warfare.

The cast of characters that occupied these trivial trenches for 4 years guaranteed constant conflict:

Jagan Ranjan, a statesman and a gentleman. Remaining above the fray, he usually avoided petty arguments and never engaged in the obscenities that usually peppered the discussions. He was a student of the classics, shunning modern cinema.

Brian Sproul, a tragic hero in the true Greek sense. No one who witnessed the epic “12 Monkeys” struggle can doubt his passion, sincerity and integrity when it came to movies. However, as with all tragic heroes, his one flaw, temper, proved to be his downfall. What would start as a battle of wits with his chief antagonist, Kline, would usually end in uncontrollable rages in which mild property destruction was not uncommon.

Greg Kline was perhaps the figure who cast the biggest shadow. A cross between Machiavelli’s Prince and Napoleon Bonaparte, he was singularly successful at both winning arguments and infuriating those he beat. His chief strength in these movie wars was his complete lack of a soul. With a rapier-like wit, he would ruthlessly manipulate, distort, and humiliate in order to usher his opinions to acceptance. He also possessed a strange psychological power that tended to increase his influence far beyond that which would be normal for someone with a 5'8" 120 pound frame and little physical prowess. However, it is beyond question that Kline is a giant of his era, and any theory must go through his crucible in order to gain legitimacy.

Robert Woods was the most eclectic and mysterious of the group. Not one to seek out confrontation, he usually sided with Kline on most issues, but the allegiance was superficial. Woods possessed a much more subtle and complex mind than he projected, as was evidenced by his superior performance in creative writing. He seemingly possessed the intellect, but not the mental toughness to engage in confrontation on a daily basis.

Matthew Cooper's story can only be told with a tinge of sadness, for he left us too early. He was in the prime of his life, like so many young victims of our school’s re-education camp. However, he continues to be with us in spirit (actually through email, but I’m taking poetic license). Coop is a West Coast free spirit, with little need for such petty human conventions as eyebrows, and always ready to greet you with a casual "dude" and a wave of his middle finger. In the movie wars, he played the role of gadfly, a loner who chose his targets randomly with no discernable alliances or biases, attacking with a studied casualness designed to poke fun at his more intense opponents. Matt Cooper will continue to play his role to perfection on topfivemovies.com, 3,000 miles and 3 time zones be damned.

After college, we all went our separate ways into respectable career paths: law school, programming, customer service, finance, etc. But as we continue to climb further into adulthood, we wanted to put to use all those endless arguments and find an outlet for that energy we used to expend on movies in college. Thus was born topfivemovies.com. None of us are film school grads or aspiring movie critics, we are just a group of regular guys who like movies.

These are our thoughts.