The Top 20: My Favorite Movies of All Time

Yesterday, I gave you all my personal Bottom 20 list, the worst movies out there for me. Today, I am focusing on the positive side: these are my very favorite movies. All of them are films that I can watch any time and get enjoyment from, films that I learn about the world from or about art from, and films that I hold dear to my heart. I wouldn't say all of them are necessarily the BEST out there - classics such as Casablanca, Citizen Kane and others do not feature here - these are just my favorites; the ones that have shaped me as a person. With no further ado, I present to you...the list!

20. Primal Fear

A legal thriller mixed in with some very deft twists and turns that make it one of the more unforgettable, go-for-the-throat thrillers of the 90s. Richard Gere is great and Edward Norton is just awesome in this, in one of his first roles ever. Primal Fear is a classic of mystery/thriller films.

19. The Hitcher

Just an all around winner of a movie, The Hitcher rocks some great Nevada desert settings, a killer, suspenseful plot and a great Rutger Hauer performance. It’s just a meat-and-potatoes good movie, and if you haven’t seen it, you should get on it now.

18. Rosemary’s Baby

Another essential horror film, Rosemary’s Baby is the tale of a young married woman pregnant with her first child. When she starts noticing strange things, she begins to suspect a plot against her and her baby. The reason this is so scary is because it could very well be all in her head. Maybe she is just being paranoid – for a lot of the film, it’s really not that clear. And once it is clear that there is something more going on, that fear is replaced by the even graver, more serious fear of a mother on the verge of losing her child. A true monument of fear.

17. Die Hard

This is another one that doesn’t get on the list for any one stand-out reason, but just for how good all its elements combined are. With Bruce Willis’s working-man charisma, the non-stop suspense and the well constructed action scenes that get more and more explosive as the film goes on, one Die Hard is worth ten thousand Transformers movies. Smart, fun, action packed to the core, Die Hard is a bona fide classic.

16. Halloween

John Carpenter’s 1978 classic is my personal pick for the scariest movie of all time. This film just shows us a nice suburban neighborhood in which hell breaks loose one night. Unlike the later films, this has no backstory for the killer and no real explanation for why he’s doing what he’s doing. He’s just on a rampage through this unsuspecting ‘burb and kills innocent people in horrible ways. The next time you turn this on, just imagine your own neighborhood in a similar scenario. Imagine a silent, unstoppable killer stalking your streets and picking off your friends one by one. Yeah. That’s why this movie is on the list. Essential horror.

15. LA Confidential

Just a killer crime movie. LA Confidential is actually based on a book written by the same guy who wrote Black Dahlia – which was also made into a movie, which made it onto my ‘worst movies ever’ list. Funny how this one is on my ‘best movies’ list. I guess it just goes to show you how much a good director can change things. LA Confidential is the story of three cops in the 50s and their involvement in a huge crime ring bust. I love it for how intense the pacing is and how good the characters are. Just an awesome, awesome movie.

14. Mulholland Dr.

Probably the darkest and most insane movie on this list, David Lynch’s Mulholland Dr. was the first film by him that I saw. Filled to the brim with ghastly imagery, nail biting suspense, and a plot that appears to get darker and darker with every turn, Mulholland Dr., like Eyes Wide Shut, is a great horror film, even despite not being a horror film at its core. At its core, this is a deeply twisted character study and a brilliant avant garde film that captivates me every time.

13. Eyes Wide Shut

Stanley Kubrick’s last film is one of his very best, and one of the most captivating experiences I have had with a movie as of late. Eyes Wide Shut is a great film for its surreal atmosphere and the creativity of its whacked out imagery. It is also a great horror film on one level and a great romance film on another: with bizarre, mysterious intrigue and lustful, achingly beautiful scenery, Kubrick crafted an unforgettable experience.

11. The Seventh Seal

I’m a newbie to Ingmar Bergman’s oeuvre, but when I saw The Seventh Seal last year, it was definitely an eye opening experience. For one, the film talks about death – how much larger of a theme can you even have? – and two, it talks about it in such an all encompassing, larger than life, down to Earth way that I doubt you will ever find any other film like it. It is an epic tale of medieval crusaders who grapple with death and their very finite mortality – being in the Middle Ages, it’s not like most of these people will live very long either, so the drama is higher. The Seventh Seal is a breathtaking, life affirming experience, and you should go see it.

10. Scott Pilgrim VS the World

This will probably be the most surprising choice on this list, but I really think this is one of the most important movies of the last few years. In every generation, there are a few films and books that just define it entirely – they show what was culturally important, what people talked about, what was wrong with the generation, and more. Scott Pilgrim is like that for the last half of the 2000s and the early 2010s – you know, the “hipster generation.” With a very funny script and batshit insane directing choices, this basically tells the story of Scott Pilgrim, a Canadian guy who falls in love with a girl named Ramona and has to fight her “evil exes” in order to win her heart. With references to everything people our age (early 20s, late teens) like, from music to gaming to dating, this comes out as a very deft, subtle satire of our culture of hipsters, gamers, anime fans and everything in between. But it does so in a respectful way that allows us to look at ourselves critically without getting too spiteful or malignant. In addition to being important and intelligently written, it's also stylistically gorgeous, gut-bustingly funny and a hell of a lot of fun. One of my new favorites.

9. Taxi Driver

A portrait of a man’s life in grimy 1970s-era New York, Taxi Driver is my favorite Robert DeNiro performance as well as my favorite Scorsese movie. This is just so fascinating to me because of the character Travis Bickle, who has got to be one of my favorite movie characters ever. An unstable and mentally wired creep, the film just sort of tells the story of his life, and it appears by all accounts that he’s going downhill…until he meets Jodie Foster’s character, a 12-year old prostitute, and decides he wants to save her. Taxi Driver is a film about fate, exploring it as a coin toss. By all logical trains of thought, Travis Bickle was a man headed for a blowup, teetering on the edge of complete disaster. But instead, he saved a girl and became a hero at the drop of a dime. It’s a brilliant character study and one of my favorite movies of all time.

8. The Sandlot

I think this is probably the only movie on this list that I’ve known about since before I turned 10 years old. I loved The Sandlot back then, and I love it even more now. The mark of a good movie for me is if it can take something mundane or ordinary and turn it into a big epic, which this does. It’s just about baseball, yeah, but at the same time, it’s about a kid moving to a new place, finding friends and discovering what becomes a lifelong passion. Everything in this film is treated with a huge larger than life sense of adventure, and having great characters and a funny, fast paced script doesn’t hurt either. I love baseball, I love these characters and I love The Sandlot.

7. The Big Lebowski

Simply the funniest movie I’ve ever seen. Every second of this is packed with jokes, references to previous jokes and simply witty, wry moments. Frankly, this goes way above and beyond what the usual comedy formula is with incredibly intelligent writing and surprising complexity, at that. There is so much going on here that I notice new things every time, and the characters and acting are so good they are impeccable. I can’t decide whether John Goodman as Walter or Jeff Bridges as The Dude is funnier. Fortunately, such a choice is unnecessary: they’re both amazing. Nothing else to say about this one; just a great comedy from the masters of bizarre, off-kilter films, and one I can watch any time and enjoy wholeheartedly.

6. Thank You For Smoking

Not quite as laugh out loud funny as The Big Lebowski, but I’m putting Thank You For Smoking higher on my list because I feel it is a rarity in movies: it is completely objective. It has no slant, no bias. This movie talks about censorship and the smoking industry and how people are persuaded by advertisements and the media. It takes a very level headed, mature viewpoint and respectfully lambasts and makes fun of both sides of the argument. The script is very, very good, and the film is so clever that it actually fits in some genuine character development and drama into what is otherwise a deeply satirical, witty movie. Aaron Eckhart is just a gem in this as seemingly amoral lobbyist Nick Naylor, as is Cameron Bright as Joey Naylor, his son. On the surface this is just about smoking, but really this is more universal: it’s about arguing, morality, right and wrong and, ultimately, parenting. It makes its points almost seamlessly in the context of the film, and people who don’t pay attention at first will grossly misread what this is actually about. Frankly, I still don’t think I’m quite done discovering what this film has to offer, and I’ve seen it a bunch of times now. Thank You For Smoking is a treasure.

5. Stranger than Fiction

One of the funniest, most clever and best written romantic comedies of the last decade, Stranger than Fiction is just a great experience. I love the weird, offbeat directing (pretty similar to what Scott Pilgrim would do a few years later), I love the great characters, and I love the oddball storyline. It’s about a tax man, Harold Crick (portrayed brilliantly by Will Ferrell of all people), who begins to hear a woman narrating his life, who says offhand he’s going to die soon. On his adventure to figure out what’s happening to him, he ends up discovering there’s a lot more to life than just his boring job. This movie is basically a longer version of the old adage “live every day like it’s your last,” but for all that, it’s very well put together and the story is charming, funny and deeply likable. I also dig the complex and deeply funny deconstruction of how narrations in movies usually work. Most movies that have a narrator over top just have the characters going about their lives unaware of the narration, but in this film, by some accident of the universe, Harold Crick hears his narrator and responds to her, shouting up at the sky at her in the middle of a crowded street. It’s a great plot point. One of the smartest movies of its genre that I’ve ever seen, and one of my favorite feel-good movies ever.

4. Lost in Translation

Sofia Coppola’s crowning achievement, Lost in Translation is something I think is very much akin to 1920s-era American literature: stuff like Fitzgerald, or Hemingway, or even some of Faulkner’s works, in which not a lot happens on a plot level, but the film remains fascinating and engaging through the characters and their interactions. This movie could easily have been very, very dull, but the directing is amazingly good, the disparate, cluttered Tokyo setting works like a charm, the acting is first-rate and most of all, the characters are some of the greatest ever put to film, in my opinion. I am just totally into this movie every time I turn it on, as it has the basics for any good movie done incredibly well. Above all, there is something poetic in it – the simple, random chance meeting of two lost souls in a big city they’re only visiting, and how they affect each other’s lives. It’s a beautiful and affecting picture of two people and their relationship. Humane, enlightening, uplifting.

3. Se7en

This is simply a flawless film. It has pretty much everything I like in it, from complex characters to a seedy, noir-esque setting and a story that shows a tragic Shakespearean arc of a man whose flaws end up in disaster. Everything about Se7en is tragic and poetic. Both Brad Pitt as Detective Mills and Morgan Freeman as Detective Somerset are impeccably textured, well done characters and are acted really well on top of that. They both have their own things going on, and both of them are so realistic you’d swear they were based on actual people. The film chronicles their investigation of a strange serial killer case as Somerset is about to retire and Mills is just getting started.

Se7en has this dark majesty about it, this idea that while the world is a sewer, and while a lot of terrible things may happen, it’s still worth trying to save. This movie wades through the mire of the dark by saying that you should hold to idealistic values and you should try to be the best you can be, even if the world is never going to repay you for it, even if things don’t turn out all that well in the end. The way this pieces everything together and unifies its themes by the end is just great. David Fincher’s best work and probably my favorite film of the 90s except for…

2. Pulp Fiction

This simply is. Pulp Fiction is an icon of movies simply because of how stylized and idiosyncratic it is – nobody ever saw anything like this before its debut in the 90s, and even though Tarantino wears his influences on his sleeves, taking cues from crime movies as well as boxing movies and tons of other stuff that was at least 30 years old when this came out, the way he blends everything together in Pulp Fiction is just ace.

The directing is good, but really what makes this so great is the script and the acting. Every character in this has hilarious lines and memorable quotes, and the script moves along like a fire-blazing chariot from the heavens, traipsing through seemingly nonsensical scenes and making them all count, simply by virtue of how entertaining they are. This is simply a movie that revels in the joy of storytelling, weaving together a ton of goofy, roguish characters and turning everything up to 11. It’s funny, dramatic, heart-wrenchingly tense and everything in between, and the insane thing is that the styles all blend together as one amalgam mostly known as ‘Tarantino style.’

Pulp Fiction is so good that Tarantino has spent his career up to now just trying to make something anywhere near as good, but as enjoyable as some of his work is, this was simply his magic moment – his shining star. Not putting this as one of my favorite movies of all time would just be a lie, as Pulp Fiction is iconoclastic, unforgettable and deeply, maniacally enjoyable.

And my number 1 choice is...

1. City of God

For a long time, I had a tough time pinpointing why City of God was my absolute favorite film. The first time I saw it, back in 2008, I was just blown away, and no other film had quite the effect on me that this one had. Just everything about it was spellbinding – the rough, raw directing style, the witty and down to Earth way it looks at brutal life conditions, the very well written characters, the multi-faceted story which remains constantly interesting even when it goes off in different directions every ten minutes or so…objectively, yes, this is a great film. But was it enough for it to be my favorite film of all time?

Well, all of those things factored into it. But I think the real reason goes a bit deeper. For one, this is a ‘based on a true story’ film that actually has something to say and has a reason for boasting that. And unlike a lot of films, it doesn’t get all depressive and preachy about the state of South American slums, where the entire movie is based. It simply tells the story of these kids in a slum and how they grow up in the middle of a violent gang war, and the result is something that feels much more mature and well-rounded than the majority of films ever get close to. Main character Rocket (Alexandre Rodrigues)’s journey to becoming a photographer is funny, interesting and dramatic – as he points out, he is putting his life on the line to get these pictures of this gang war.

There’s just no bullshit in it; it’s got no pretensions and just shows a great real life story in a larger than life way. The way the script is paced is brilliant: the story moves through several different peoples’ lives in this crappy slum and just shows the way this drama unfolded. It takes a mundane, depressing reality and turns it into something profound in its honesty, in its brevity. There’s always something going on and the film is easy to get into even when the story jumps around from character to character so much that it seems like it’s going to come off the rails. But City of God never loses focus, and each story just adds to the colorful palette of stories.

Further, it’s just a joy of cinematic creation – there are so many memorable shots and moments in this film, and they’re put together so well that it really becomes a work of art. Being that the movie is about a young photographer, it makes sense that the mise en scene is so memorable and evocative. What else would it be? Every scene in this film just glows, and the whole thing is the most stunning film experience I’ve ever had. As a writer and storyteller myself, the way City of God tells these stories and just has so much fun doing it, even when the stories get depressing or dark, is just really admirable and worthy of respect for me. Storytelling is the bedrock of our civilization, and City of God shows exactly why it is such an important art. There is not a moment of this film where I am not completely captivated and enthralled. City of God is my favorite movie of all time.

And that's my Top 20 list, my favorite movies of all time. I look forward to seeing even more movies that will hopefully make the list in the future, and I hope you all enjoyed these lists.

All images copyright of their original owners.

Project Hellraiser: Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992)

Project Hellraiser Log: How can mankind create such films? I watch this film and feel myself slowly drifting off into the land of sleep, countless times! The hooks of its chains dig into me and force me to keep my eyes open. No, I can’t sleep; they won’t ever let me again! The movie is sinister and terrible. I have no choice but to go on and do…well, what I usually do…

Director: Anthony Hickox

Starring: Terry Farrell, Doug Bradley

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104409/

I mean seriously, how is this movie THIS BORING? I can’t even describe how boring it is except to say that I couldn’t remember what happened in it right after I finished watching it. Hellraiser III is a miracle of bland characters, nonexistent story and phoned in directing so perfectly unmemorable that it will be like you never watched the movie at all, and isn't that the ONLY way to watch a movie? After all, that way it will seem BRAND NEW again when you watch it a second time, and brand new after that when you watch it a third time!

Wait...no, that's actually really stupid.

The movie begins with some asshole discovering the big pillar of Cenobite faces that rose from the ground at the end of the last movie. It’s still not explained and never truly is, so let’s just skip it.

Then we see our new main character Joey, who is very different from Kirsty as a main character, in that she’s about three times as annoying. Joey is a TV journalist who is hard up for stories and needs a good one to send her career on the right path because her manager seems to think he’s Billy Mays and shouts all the damn time. So in response, she shouts at everyone else in a loud, commanding voice, because being intimidating is DEFINITELY gonna get you some good interviews! Grade A journalism! Two thumbs up!

"I'm a crappy journalist who can't even emote the simplest lines into anything resembling the same ballpark as credibility! Hooray for incompetence!"

Oh, and her cameraman is Hulk Hogan:

"I was the stunt double from Mr. Nanny. I think this is a step up!"

…or Hulk Hogan’s stand-in, I guess…

Okay, so the story seems to be that Joey is in the emergency room hunting stories when they drag in a guy with bloody chains dangling out of him and a black haired goth-looking chick. The guy with the chains has a seizure from Hell as the chains whip out and start to attack everyone and electrocute him somehow – it’s never really explained, don’t worry; the movie isn’t getting any smarter on us magically. Joey of course thinks this is the coolest thing ever and wants to do a story about it!

Her first step is to go to this night club called The Boiler Room and just ask around if anyone has seen a pretty girl. What, does she expect the bartender to just point her in a random direction and go “there’s the only pretty girl in the entire bar”? I guess she did, because that’s what happens, and the black haired goth-chick from before tells her no dice. So Joey’s response is to go home and have a contrived flashback dream that serves no purpose at all, except a rather empty scare way later in the movie:

"If I open my mouth wide enough, people will take me seriously and really believe that I'm in battle in this bright, sunny, peaceful-looking field."

So then she gets woken up by a call from the goth chick, whose name is Teresa, and who wants to come over and talk now. Joey tells Teresa her entire backstory about how her dad died in the war, or something, because I guess telling random strangers intimate details about her past seems like the logical thing to do. The weird thing about this scene is that even though Teresa wanted to come over and talk about the stuff Joey wanted to know about, she still gets mad and starts screaming about how she doesn’t want to talk about that stuff. So why did she come over at all then? Because she’s a terribly written character.

"Don't judge me, I'm a pouty stripper with a heart of gold! I'm supposed to be the emotional connection in the movie so I'm gonna over-act times a million to try to get any measly little reaction out of you!" 

Oh, and the acting in this movie is awful, I mean awful. Nobody in this movie is any good. The chick playing Joey is just terribly bland and unconvincing, reciting every line like she’s reading it on a cue card. Is this really the best actress they could get? The Hulk Hogan lookalike who follows her around is somehow even less convincing. But on the other end of the spectrum, the girl playing Teresa over-emotes everything and acts like she’s on crack the entire time. I can’t even decide which one is worse!

Then we flash back to Mr. Discovers-The-Cenobites, the guy from the first scene who owns the bar, who is having sex with a random chick from said bar. He acts like a douchebag to her afterwards and she gets really surprised for some reason I’m not sure. Did she expect him to sweep her off her feet and marry her? “Oh no, the guy I slept with at a sleazy bar is treating me like crap? HOW UNEXPECTED!” Pfft. Then she gets eaten by the Pinhead statue and turned into a high school biology diorama:

There's a caption contest for you!

The Pinhead statue goes on a long rant about how Mr. Bar Owner Guy has to help him out because they’re both the same kind of evil. Mr. Bar Owner Guy tries to say he isn’t, but Pinhead says “The evil has been in you since you killed your parents…” Wait, what? He killed his parents? That’s an interesting plot thread…will it be elaborated on or even brought up ever again? Of course not! It’s just one throw-away line shoved into one of the last scenes this guy is in. This is just astronomically stupid! It’s like if I made a movie about a bunch of real estate brokers doing normal things except for one line where one of them says “I remember when I was a space traveler from the seventy-sixth dimension of Zaxar…” and then it’s never brought up again. HOW IS IT THIS HARD TO TELL A COHERENT STORY?!

So he kills Teresa – glad she was in the movie – and then Pinhead comes out and starts wreaking havoc on the whole bar, killing everyone inside:

Death by CDs! That'll teach you to pirate music.

...no, I have no idea WTF the filmmakers were smoking when they made this scene, or why there are no other deaths in the entire movie like it. It's just a strange aberration of nature.

Afterwards, Joey is walking outside when she’s attacked by the cenobite versions of all the people killed in the bar. Her cameraman Hulk-Hogan-lookalike has been transformed into a cenobite with a camera lens sticking out of one eye, and the DJ has been transformed into one that can shoot CDs like bullets – it’s really ridiculous and gimmicky, but…no, actually I have no ‘buts.’ It’s just ridiculous and gimmicky. I especially love the stupid little lines the Hogan lookalike says after he kills people, like when he kills the cops, he says “That’s a wrap.” And when he kills this other guy, he says “Ready for your close-up?” It’s like a 60 year old trying to be hip and write “witty” lines for the kids. Both funny AND embarrassing at the same time!

They get killed off and Joey is chased into a church by Pinhead himself. The priest in the church assures her that she must be delusional because there’s no such thing as demons…wait, really? A PRIEST says there are no such things as demons?! Isn’t that a bit counterproductive to their whole belief system? Oh well. Pinhead does a whole thing where he crucifies himself in mid-air with some nails out of his head, and the scene was pretty obviously just made for the trailer…

Joey finds some kind of portal to the past where the human version of Pinhead for some reason is telling her how to stop his evil side, although it’s not really clear why, as in the last movie he wasn’t portrayed anything like this. I expected it to be some kind of farce or trick, but SPOILERS, nope actually, not at all – it really is just his human form trying to suddenly foil his demonic form, without any kind of deeper subtext or explanation to it besides ‘WE NEED A CLICHÉ GOOD VS EVIL SUBPLOT IN THIS MOVIE.’ Go figure.

Pinhead ties Joey up in some bondage BDSM stuff and hangs her from the ceiling because….because. Then he meets up with his old human self and…this happens:

Okay, seriously, whoever commissioned this part needs to be locked up.

Personally, I liked Scott Pilgrim’s version better:

Joey escapes and decides to hide the puzzle box in the first random place she sees, which is the wet cement of a new construction site right nearby, because THAT isn’t stupid as hell. Seriously, why doesn't she just take it home and bury it in her attic or something? Oh, right, because then we couldn't have any more brilliant sequels, and the makers of the franchise couldn't rob the audiences of any more money. Excuse me for being so dense. 

God this movie sucked; it was just so…lacking in anything resembling life that I couldn’t even stand it. Hellraiser III was like the first two movies on Ritalin. It was completely tired and unexciting in every way possible. I’m serious; this shit was putting me to sleep for most of the runtime. Even Doug Bradley wasn’t as good this time, and he didn’t use his cool deep voice at all, instead opting for a more generic British-accented voice that sounds like a third rate James Bond villain or something. And if you don’t have Doug Bradley being awesome in a Hellraiser movie, then what do you have? Nothing, that’s what.

But at the end of the day, this was just a boring movie. It was forgettable and it didn’t leave any real impact on me at all. It was just a big old lump of nothing and while I gained nothing from watching it, I technically didn’t lose anything either. Some people think these sort of movies are the worst, but then again, some people haven’t seen Hellraiser IV: Bloodline…

Review: Scott Pilgrim vs The World (2010)

Director: Edgar Wright

Starring: Michael Cera, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Ellen Wong, Jason Schwartzman

Website: www.scottpilgrimthemovie.com/

"You're pretentious, this club sucks, I have beef. Let's fight."

-Scott Pilgrim

I am so out of loop with popular culture. What the hell is Scott Pilgrim? Who is he? I was first introduced to this franchise by seeing the commercial for the movie when I was watching The Big Bang Theory. It looked like an interesting enough plot – a kid has to fight his girlfriend’s seven evil exes to date her and keep her. I didn’t know if it’d be good, bad, whatever…but it piqued my interest. So I figured I would go see it in the theaters when it finally came out. And what’s my take?

I…think my mind was just blown when I saw this. It was so crazy and so over the top that I had no idea what to make of it. Starring the apparently infamous Michael Cera, this weird little action/romance story is told in a highly strange and stylized fashion. When a new scene starts, they often pop up a little black comic-book-esque box by them with white text explaining some facts about them, often humorously. Scenes vary wildly in length, some lasting five minutes and others less than one. The movie likes to parody video games and use terminology and clichés from them to further the story – in one scene, the hero decides to stand up for himself and fight for himself over anyone else, and as he flaunts his newfound power, the words “Scott gained the power of self respect!” are narrated in a deep voice and flash on the screen in blinking neon.

See? I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like this. This movie is completely original. Well…except for the comic it’s based on, but shut up, I know what I’m talking about in this review!

Even the writing is completely off the wall. In the first few scenes, the titular Scott Pilgrim (Cera) has a conversation with his band (made up of a token regular guy named Stephen, a stoic, monotone redheaded chick named Kim and a guy named Young Neil, who is not in the band, but just lives at the house they play in) about inviting his new “fake high school girlfriend” Knives into the house while they play. They’re really concerned that she’ll break up their nerd-dom and not be able to handle it. The dialogue is so winding and so convoluted with things that would just be otherwise retarded or ridiculous. Like when Ramona says “I was just a little bi-curious,” the enemy character replies “Well, I’m just a little bi-FURIOUS!” That line is so horrible that I’d want to smack whoever wrote it. But in this movie, I’ll buy it. I really will.

I will now go through some of the exceptionally noteworthy scenes in this movie:

There’s one scene where Scott beats a Vegan opponent by making him drink milk, I think it was, that turns out to violate the ‘Vegan Police’ code, getting him stripped of his ‘Vegan powers.’ I couldn’t make this up, people. There’s the all-time special effects wonder of the world when Scott and his band face off against the dastardly and short-lived threat of the Kazayanagi brothers, resulting in a chaotic explosion of shining beast-like holograms, neon lights and multi-colored fire that will make your eyes bleed with how cool it is. And there’s one scene near the end when Scott has to fight his ‘negative self’ for some reason that nobody really cares about, because it’s awesome either way. It cuts away to Ramona and Knives outside when Scott walks out with his ‘negative-self’, joking and laughing like old friends. Scott says that his negative self is a really nice guy.

See? I love the comedy in this movie. It’s so innocuous and so dorky that it becomes absolutely side-splitting when it’s at its best. It’s just great, it really is.

The acting is good. People will bash on Michael Cera whenever they get the chance, but he does a really good job here. His delivery is hilarious and his facial expressions are always really funny with how naïve they are. I’m not familiar with a lot of his movies, but he does good here. I can tell you that. Mary Winstead as love interest Ramona is wonderful, as she is good looking and versatile – funny when the movie calls for it and also soft and vulnerable or cold as ice whenever needed, too. Kieran Culkin and Anna Kendrick bring up the backbone along with the delightful Alison Pil as Kim. And the seven exes are always over the top and fun, too.

So, detractors from the score? Well, I was amazed with how far up its own ass it could get when it really tries. That Vegan Police scene I mentioned above was about where the line was crossed, although it was already flirting with that when a girl’s hair highlights are literally punched out. These scenes are still enjoyable in their own way, but I can’t help but feel that the film kind of winds up in its own special effects and nerd-isms at times. But maybe that’s part of the appeal.

This film should in all respects suck a whole lot. But it works. It really works, in one of the most oddball fashions ever. All the film’s extravagances and eccentricities are done with a hefty sense of irony, but in the same way, even the irony is ironic, like they’re ribbing the kinds of snot-nosed indie films of this usual sort, in a good natured way. There’s also a ton of homage to video games and video game culture, as well as to anime and comic culture, too. It’s a delightful hodge-podge of influences that, combined with the film’s crazy exuberance, really makes an entertaining watch. The characters are delightful, the humor is spot on, the action is wondrous and the plot is a ton of fun. Scott Pilgrim is a winner. Revel in its supreme nerdery.