Ranking the best movies is a time-honored tradition.
One key criteria to always keep in mind is that movies become meaningful depending on where the viewer is in their life cycle.
It's why, for me, movies from the 1980s and 1990s are likely to rate ahead of anything today.
I was an impressionable young kid who needed to be entertained and motivated by the stories I watched on the screen.
"Rudy" debuted in October 1993. It was my sophomore year of high school. I had just started to worry about colleges and started to feel the pressure of making a good career for myself.
The Hollywoodized story of Daniel "Rudy" Ruettiger, who willed himself into Notre Dame and got himself onto the football field with the mighty Fighting Irish, hit me hard.
I loved the story of defying the odds and the masterful music by Jerry Goldsmith made me want to leap out of my seat.
The song called "The Final Game," with its climax occuring when Ruettiger sacked Georgia Tech quarterback Rudy Allen, was on my workout CD — all 6 minutes, 13 seconds of it!
When I started collecting movie-related memorabilia, "Rudy" was on the top of my mind.
At one time, I owned four tickets to the actual game from 50 years ago this weekend — Nov. 8, 1975.
I got them all signed.
I found a parking pass from the game. I got it signed.
I bought the program from the game, I got it signed with Ruettiger also diagramming the sack that made him famous.
I even got a piece of old Notre Dame bench wood and got it signed.
My love for the move held up as I started to understand the real story didn't match the Hollywood version.
Not only were so many of the characters made up, but some of the best parts weren't even close to true.
Perhaps the greatest scene, when the Notre Dame players come into Dan Devine's office and say they won't play if Ruettiger doesn't dress, is complete fiction. In real life, Devine announced to the team that he was dressing before the game.
I also blocked out Joe Montana continually saying the crowd didn't chant "RU-DY," and the only players who carried him off the field were three of the team's pranksters.
I also heard about Ruettiger's reputation. He wasn't exactly portrayed to me by the many people who met him as who I thought he would be — someone who would be grateful for 32 years of relevance, thanks to the film.
The stories I heard were downright nasty.
But I still held on. Until this week, that is.
With the 50th anniversary of his famous tackle coming Saturday, I left Ruettiger a message on his cell phone to call me, as I wanted to do an interview.
"This is Rudy, whaddya want?" he started with.
Is that a way to speak to someone?
Instead of saying what most would say, "Sure, when can we do it," he said he had no time over the next 72 hours because things were so busy for him.
Ruettiger is indeed in South Bend, Indiana, this weekend — I found he is doing an hourlong autograph signing at an Embassy Suites hotel — but it's clear he doesn't have time for me.
I didn't give up easily, but he kept giving excuses like, "Aren't you more interested in Joe Montana's autograph?"
The call ended, not surprisingly, with him telling me to hold and then hanging up on me. He didn't call me back, and I am not going to call him back, either.
I don't have time for him anymore. I'm selling my stuff.
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Darren Rovell is the founder of cllct and one of the country's leading reporters on the collectibles market. He previously worked for ESPN, CNBC and The Action Network.