We don't turn 350 every month, and reaching that not insignificant milestone has got us looking back over our previous issues to select the best (and worst!) films we have featured on our cover. Before making our choices, though, we decided to set a few ground rules. No director would be allowed to have more than one film in our countdowns (not even you, Sir Christopher!); we turfed out year/decade-in-review editions; and we omitted films that didn't debut within our 27-year life span. Got that? Fab. All we need now are 350 candles and a whopping big cake…
JACKIE BROWN
ISSUE 15, APRIL 1998
was only 15 issues old when Quentin Tarantino's classy and mature adap of Elmore Leonard's took over our cover, with blaxploitation icon Pam Grier striking a distinctly Bond-ish pose as its resourceful flight-attendant heroine. And while our team had just as much love for Tarantino's next opus, (issue 82, November 2003), in the end our ‘one film per director’ rule meant we absolutely, positively could accept no substitutes. All these years later, it still tickles us how Michael Keaton's Ray Nicolette was able to flit between this film and Steven Soderbergh's contemporaneous Leonard yarn .
