To celebrate his 60th birthday, Magic Johnson created a bunch of Top 60 lists. His business and basketball inspirations. His favorite music groups. His favorite TV shows. You get the picture. One list was his 60 favorite movies of all-time. Now, anyone can name any 60 movies their favorite. It's up to the discretion of the person making the selections. But Magic is way off base here.
CLICK HERE for the entire list of 60 movies. (I've got a kid, I can't type them all out here)
Let's start with the first thirty movies. Really not a lot of beef here. I see why a black man born in 1959 might have a lot of these movies on his list. Obviously, love the selection of The Godfather at number one. Even though, I believe he stated these were in no particular order. A lot of "black movies" here, a lot of Eddie Murphy, a few really good Bond movies. I get it. It makes sense to me.
My real beef is with movies 30-60. I'm sure if I had to go 60 movies deep, I'd come up with some off-the-wall selections as well. But this is madness! It's really around 40 that this list falls off the rails. Sparkle at 42. Have you ever seen Sparkle? Have you even heard of Sparkle? It's a 2012 movie starring Whitney Houston. So I see where's he coming from, he's a big Whitney fan. But come on. It's not one of the 60 best movies ever.
51 is this year's version of Shaft. A movie in which Samuel L. Jackson, Richard Roundtree, and a third young man join forces to fight crime. Three generations of Shaft. He doesn't even have the 2000 version of Shaft on this list.
And finally, my biggest gripe with Magic's list. And I love Magic, I mean no offense to the man. I'm a Celtics fan, and even I can appreciate his greatness. XXX. Number 60. Vin Diesel's extreme sports version of James Bond. No. I will not allow this to be on anyone's list of favorite movies. It's an inexcusable selection. Everything else I'll let you have but give me this.