Entertainment Weekly‘s list of Top Ten Films of the past 25 years isn’t posted online — not yet, at least — but it’s in the issue currently on the stands, according to HE reader Dan Gaertner.

First of all, what does “top” mean? Most popular? Most influential? Most frequently rented from Netflix? If you need further proof that enlightened film culture is withering and dying on the vine, look no further. Pulp Fiction, Blue Velvet and The Silence of the Lambs, okay, but the rest…? This is worse than any list put together by the American Film Institute. The EW editors who put this list together have officially left the planet. They’re floating above us as we speak, breathing air that’s obviously lacking some basic ingredient.
Right off the top we’re going to have deep-six the Lord of the Rings trilogy, for obvious reasons. The last 25 minutes of Titanic is heart-melting and transcendent, but the problems with the rest of it should automatically exclude it from a list of this proportion. I love Toy Story is it but one of the top films of the last 25 fucking years? Neither Crimes and Misdemeanors or Husbands and Wives are as funny or heart-warming but are certainly better and more important than Hannah and Her Sisters in the Woody canon.
Saving Private Ryan is disqualified for the “cheat” fade that suggests that the old man at the Normandy cemetery is Tom Hanks on the landing craft. Die Hard is a beautifully well-oiled thriller and the best thing Joel Silver has ever produced, but again — it deserves to be on a list like this? Moulin Rouge gets the hook because the first 20 to 25 minutes of this Baz Luhrman film made my head feel as if it was going to explode.