REVIEW: Dracula 3000 (2004)

“Come in, Review Command Central…come in…we have an unidentified object on the horizon. It seems to be just floating in dead space, doing absolutely nothing at all. It looks like…a DVD case, and it is glowing a strange, radioactive green, like something that came from the lowest depths of a sewer. Oh, God, it’s coming closer! It’s about to crash into us! Oh, God, save us from this unholy fate! What has my life become! The DVD is overlapping the ship! It’s devouring us whoAAAAAAGGGGHHHHH!!!”

Director: Darryl Roodt

Starring: Casper Van Diem, Erika Eleniak

IMDb

Hmm, I just found the above tape recording on this abandoned spaceship I conveniently started wandering around in. And here’s the DVD! “Dracula 3000”…sounds absolutely horrendous in every way possible! I think I’ll review it. Hell, I’ve had worse reasons to review things.

We start off with about three minutes of credits. I know I haven’t told you anything else about the rest of the movie yet, but seriously, once you read the rest of the review, it will make sense why this is so ridiculous. I’m really not sure it’s a good idea to advertise who made this movie, guys. It’s really not going to do their resumes very much good. Do you really want the people who very charitably donated their time to making this to be homeless on the streets?

Well, either way, the opening of the movie dispels all pretensions of this being good, as it starts out with a ship about to self-destruct. The movie even knows it’s not going to have anything worthwhile – so it’s just skipping all the bullshit and starting right out with a self-destructing ship with its sole member, some old guy who will serve as our exposition machine throughout the film, dying off. That’s a point in the movie’s favor actually. If they just rolled the credits now, this would be by far the best Dracula movie I’ve ever reviewed on this site. Which isn’t saying a lot, but shut up.

Then we skip to 50 years later, because that’s not pointless, is it? Oh, you mean it is? You mean it doesn’t matter what time any of this takes place because it’s all arbitrary made up nonsense? Huh, well I guess I was wrong when I rhetorically asked myself that question. We get this guy named Van Helsing with a wimpy voice talking about his crew and how stupid and incompetent they all are. I know that sounds like my usual sarcasm, but no, I’m dead serious. He says the navigator never has any idea where they’re going, the scientist is only half as smart as he thinks he is, and is still the smartest person BY FAR on the whole ship, and the hired gun is basically dumb as a rock with no redeeming value outside of recon missions.

There has never been a good movie that introduced its characters like this. Never.

So, yeah, you heard right – apparently these people have absolutely no idea what they are doing, no clue how to run a ship and are just kind of aimlessly drifting through space, like useless space debris. Except I think space debris is actually more intelligent than these idiots. Who even gave them this ship? They basically just admit in the first five minutes of the movie that they’re completely incompetent in every way possible! You’d have to be high to think these people deserve to pilot a goddamn space ship! They should be back on whatever planet they came from serving fast food. Or, hey, here’s a thought – maybe they’re so worthless that the space federation just wanted to get rid of them as fast as possible. That makes more sense.

So, being geniuses and all, they naturally send over the weakest, smallest female they have to check out this abandoned ship they find, because finding an abandoned ship is literally the oldest sci fi cliché in the world. She’s jumpy and gets scared of everything, and is the most likely to get killed or captured if there is anyone there. Why didn’t they just send someone with more nerve? I couldn’t tell you.

It turns out he's faking the choking on the "poisonous" air...but I really wish it was real, just to illustrate how stupid the crew is. Oh well. I still have my imagination.

They make jokes about how she basically doesn’t get paid anything and her job generally sucks. I just love the logic Captain Van Helsing uses – “you have complaints and grievances? We don’t care, get your ass on the ship.” Like any good team, the women on the ship are subject to constant sexual harassment from the males, with no sign of any stop to it. I’m so glad years and years of scientific development has made our species so much more tolerant and intelligent as individuals. Personally I think the future needs an equivalent of Rosie the Riveter to set things straight here.

Oh and there’s also Coolio as 187, a stoner who apparently does nothing but get high all the time:

This one image, even out of context, shows everything wrong with the movie in one frame.

Does that even look like it belongs in the same movie as the rest of this shit?! Seriously, did they just spend all the money they had getting Coolio to sign on for this movie? Great job, guys; you got a mediocre actor and now you have no cash left for the vampire effects. How do you think getting him to sign on for this went?

Movie Studio Exec: "Coolio, we can’t find anyone to play the black vampire in our Dracula in space movie. We tried every other person we can think of, went through hundreds of auditions, and you are the only appropriate person we can think of to play a crazy vampire. Will you do it?"

Coolio: "Hmm. Depends. What kind of a script is it? Is it worthy of my artistic talents? I did write Gangsta’s Paradise, you know."

Movie Studio Exec: "You get to wear fake teeth, mug to the camera and jump around like an insane asylum inmate on crack, while half-singing some of your dialogue."

Coolio: "…"

Movie Studio Exec: "…there are also racial stereotypes involved. You will be able to assert how much of a gangster you are."

Coolio: "Excuse me. It's gangsta. Not gangster."

Movie Studio Exec: "What?"

Coolio: *disapproving glare*

Yeah, that sounds about right.

So basically these characters constantly bicker with one another and never display any kind of competence. I can’t even tell you how stupid most of the dialogue in this is. Oh, so the stoner character talks about nothing but drugs all the time? The big dumb guy only thinks about getting laid? I’m sorry, but didn’t we have an important space mission going on here? These people are about as business-minded as the crackheads that live under the bridge. They make the crew of Aliens look like serious entrepreneurs in an important meeting to decide the fate of the company. There’s cajolery and good fun, and then there’s completely slacking off like morons. But what am I to expect from the ship that’s probably the class clown of the intergalactic space ship community?

So they wander around aimlessly, exchanging dumb dialogue and bickering with one another over pointless shit, because that’s what every bad screenwriter falls back on when they have no other character development to put in. They find the dead captain of the ship, who is now just a perfectly preserved, not bad-smelling at all skeleton with a cross in his hand. Apparently the future world in this movie has “outlawed” crucifixes now – huh, I guess the separation of church and state is taken much more seriously in the future.

Maybe it's an ancient artifact. WITCHCRAFT! RUN! PRAY TO YOUR GODS!

But here’s the thing – apparently nobody ever taught these people religious history, because they all think the crucifix is a big plus sign. One of the characters even says “maybe he really likes math!” Seriously, movie? They don’t have any kind of history or cultural relativeness to fall back on in this future? They haven’t even the faintest clue what a crucifix is? How dumb are these people? I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, though, seeing as we live in a world now where people barely even know the Bill of Rights or who fought who in the Revolutionary War.

Suddenly I’m very sad for humanity. A moment of silence then, for our lost intelligence.

Anyway, Coolio and the muscle of the crew, Humvee, find a bunch of coffins in the loading area and start to break them open, finding nothing but sand. Coolio cuts his hand and, surprise, this leads to more uninspired bickering. Isn’t that just great? Fortunately, Coolio gets bitten by Dracula after this, when the others leave, and frankly, I think I figured out why he was chosen for this movie: it was actually a diabolical plot by the record industry to make him immortal and sell more albums. Unfortunately, they did not foresee his decline in popularity as the years went on. And so, we just got this goofy-ass performance:

Jesus Christ, he's making Peewee Herman look subtle.

Seriously, he’s out of his mind in this. It’s like they just told him to imitate Ed from Fright Night and try to outdo him in over the top wackiness. It’s totally un-subtle. Hmph. I prefer my Z-grade vampire movies to have Shakespearean level acting. Anything less is just unacceptable.

Okay, now he's just off his meds. This is the kind of performance that, if done at childrens' birthday parties, gets people thrown in jail.

So he runs around, does goofy shit, half-sings a lot of his dialogue like a crazy person, until Vice Captain Aurora shoots him a bunch of times. The bullets don’t hurt him, obviously, and then he gets Mina as his first victim. Aurora runs away, but runs into another guy, Count Orlok, who mostly just looks like a D&D player who got lost on his way to the bathroom:

"I am the game master."

This is really supposed to be our Dracula for the movie? Count Chocula was scarier. Gary Oldman in Bram Stoker’s Dracula evoked more drama. Even the prissy vampires in Underworld were cooler, and THAT is saying a lot! This guy needs to go back to Party City and get better makeup.

Anyway, he bites her and next thing we know, she’s coming in to the rest of the crew acting like everything is okay. Is she a vampire? Will she murder the rest of her crewmates? Will Batman get out of this pinch okay? Will Lassie get Old Man Thompson out of the well in time for supper? Find out all the answers and more after these messages!

Huh…that was something…and I’m pretty sure most of those questions have very little to do with the movie.  Either way, I'm not answering the last few. Too bad. Anyway, they suspect Aurora of being a vampire, and so they tie her up to the chair she’s sitting in and make her stay there as a captive. I’m fairly sure the director just wanted to exercise his bondage fetish, as if she really was a vampire, she wouldn’t have let them tie her up…but we’ll go with it, and the movie is almost over anyway.

Coolio comes back and tries to fool Humvee into letting him in, by giving him the whole “we’re both black and we said we’d stick together” speech. How has racial equality actually gone BACKWARDS in the future? Well, at least Humvee won’t actually fall for it…oh, who am I kidding; would you be even the least bit surprised if I told you he did fall for it, and in less than a minute, too?

"Bros for life!!!"

Sigh…and I was just starting to have some hope in humanity again. Thanks, Dracula 3000. Thanks a lot. I guess we should just let North Korea and Syria blow up the world now – honestly if this is the kind of future we’re in for, it might be the best move.

So Coolio and Humvee fight, and it’s all pretty stupid, but then Van Helsing comes in and shoots at Coolio some more, wasting all of his bullets. Even when Coolio gets up after being shot the first time, Van Helsing just tries again. Are you stupid? Bullets don’t kill him, you Neanderthal! Luckily Humvee stabs him with a pool cue and kills him. Note also that they didn’t have enough money to do any ‘turning to dust’ effects…lame.

You already had sand in previous scenes, guys. You could have at least jump-cutted Coolio out of the scene and put sand there...sure it would have been stupid, but what ISN'T in this movie? C'mon.

They untie Aurora when she reveals she can’t be a vampire, because she’s – dun dun dun – A ROBOT, sent to monitor how incompetent they are and get them in trouble for it like they deserve! Humvee says they should just leave her tied up, because otherwise she’s just going to get them in trouble. Well what do you think is going to happen then, dipshit? Leaving her tied up is just the stupidest idea possible.

Up in the computer room, Van Helsing and the wheelchair-bound scientist guy research ways to kill vampires. The computer passes through several phrases like ‘stakes’ and ‘sunlight,’ but for some reason, the characters just ignore those right now. They do notice that Van Helsing shares his name with the famous vampire hunter from the 1800s, and yeah, that IS a pretty big coincidence, huh? Of all the ships that could have come across a vampire, it has to be the one with a Van Helsing descendent on it. What a coinky-dink.

And when Van Helsing meets up with Orlok and fights him, Orlok says that it’s destiny that they’ve met up. Yes, truly this movie is the rightful sequel to the Dracula storyline – a generic looking white guy in his 30s and the pimply D&D-playing Dracula fighting in the middle of the rejected Jason X sets. Such heart-wrenching drama!

Oh yeah, showdown of the century, man! D&D Dracula versus Lame-O Van Hellsing! Bring it on! Who's got the popcorn?

Meanwhile, Aurora tries to get Humvee to come help save Van Helsing, but he doesn’t believe her and thinks she’s just trying to lure him into a trap. So, he’ll open a door to someone he KNOWS is a vampire, because they were friends, but when someone he knows isn’t a vampire tells him to open a door, he gets suspicious? Something about that doesn’t add up. Even though he said he wouldn’t leave, the next scene shows him leaving, simply because he’s annoyed by the scientist computer wheelchair man’s whining. What a great character. What a great movie, right?

To add insult (and comedy) to injury, Orlok kills off Van Helsing, who was supposed to be our main character, and turns him into a vampire. Van Helsing gets unceremoniously killed off by Aurora, and Orlok gets his arm ripped off in a door, and that’s the last we see of either of them. Wow. How utterly underwhelming. Oh and somewhere in the middle of all this, Orlok goes and turns Mr. Wheelchair Scientist into a vampire, making the world’s first handicapped vampire!

The most worthless vampire in the whole world! The most pointless of all Satan's creations!

Seriously, what is the point? He can’t get out of the damn wheelchair even after he turns into a vampire! How is he going to reach anyone’s neck to bite them? Just rolling him down a ramp would kill him, frankly. In the movie’s constant quest to outmatch its own stupidity, Aurora stabs him violently to death and murders him easily. When Humvee asks how she knew he was a vampire, she says “I didn’t know.” So she’s just the kind of person who violently stabs people ON THE OFF CHANCE that they might be a vampire. Very nice. Charming.

The plan they come up with is to steer the ship toward the sun and kill Orlok that way. We don’t see Orlok again, because this movie is just that amazing and cares so much about its plot. Humvee and Aurora find out they only have 12 hours until the ship goes into the sun. Aurora says that she used to be a Pleasure Bot, and the two go off to have sex off screen.

Really, at this point they weren't even trying. I mean this ending is just...WOW. It's such an insane cop out! Really I'm convinced this whole thing was just a joke. And that's why I can't take it seriously enough to get mad. Not really.

And believe it or not…that’s the last we see of them. Not fighting off Orlok, not doing anything heroic, not even remembering their dead friends…just going off to have sex without a care in the world. Then we see the ship explode, and that’s the end!

Dracula 3000 didn't do so well on opening weekend...in fact, it "bombed." In the truest sense of the word...ha ha...okay, my humor is getting as bad as the movie's. I'd better stop.

Or rather, I can’t even say ‘end,’ because it’s not an end. The movie just tapers off like they ran out of money and ideas, which, frankly, they probably did. Dracula 3000 is just about as stupid as it sounds – vampires in space? Really? It’s barely even worth reviewing at all. The only reason I did was because I found it on this abandoned spaceship, like I said. I always review things I just find in creepy abandoned places. It’s not weird at all.

Hey, what’s that? Who are you? Why are you coming closer with that menacing set of teeth? What are youAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHHHH! NO! DON’T EAT MY HEAD! AGGGHHHH! IT'S DRACULA FROM THE FUTURE! HE'S FOUND ME! Have mercy on my soul!

Let this review be a warning: avoid Dracula 3000! Avoid it at all costs! Remember me as a critic of films!

If anyone would actually claim any of these images, I'd go ahead and just agree they were copyrighted to you. I guess they're copyrighted to the owners. But really, I'm guessing this lost more money than it made, so not a lot of incentive there, is there?

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.

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The Bottom 20: The Worst Movies I Have Ever Seen

Okay, so in lieu of actually reviewing stuff for the past two weeks, I've been compiling the worst and best movies I've ever seen. Keep in mind this is all subjective, and even more, that my list may change in the future! That's the beautiful thing about art and the human mind. You can change your likes and dislikes any time. In no way are you bound to what you put down on paper.

With that said, I thought I'd start off with the bad first again, since I want to leave you on a better impression with the good stuff next. These are the worst movies I've ever seen. Most of them are things I've reviewed, yeah, and the actual reviews will go more into depth. But as my reviews are often humorously exaggerated, I thought I'd give more of an impression on what I personally, seriously think are the worst movies out there. They're not the SyFy-level low budget crapfests like Bear or the Asylum version of 11/11/11 - those films are what they are, and it's simply not worth really hating them. These films are ones that I personally just think are the worst out there, artistically or for moral reasons.

With no further ado, let's get on with it!

20. I Know Who Killed Me

Purely a mess, this film, which won almost every Razzie the year it came out, is the definition of a cinematic train wreck. Nothing about it works and nothing about it is enjoyable. Stupid, wrongheaded and incredibly poorly written, I Know Who Killed Me is a dud.

19. Idle Hands

Where is the worth in this thing? It’s the bottom of the barrel for garbage stoner humor. Idle Hands is a film for wastoid, worthless burnout morons, and a clear sign that the 90s – that decade of charmingly likable stoner humor – was over. After this, there really was no going back.

18. The Descent 2

Literally just thoughtless. There really was no plot to this thing for most of the runtime, and what plot there was just contradicted the first film and made absolutely no sense. I’d rather be in a coma than see this again, and frankly, seeing it is one of the most surefire ways to get in a coma in the first place. Hideous.

17. Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation

So awful that it almost becomes brilliant. Almost being the key word.

16. Poltergeist III

Just undeniably worthless. A few interesting trippy special effects near the end can’t save one of the worst horror movie scripts I’ve ever seen in my life. This movie made me angry with how inept and mean spirited it was towards its characters and the franchise as a whole.

15. Hellraiser: Hellseeker

I hate almost all of these movies, but Hellseeker had to be the worst of the ones I sat through. Slow, boring, confusing and obnoxious, Hellseeker is just a headache and a half. Your time could be better served driving nails through your own head. It would have about the same effect.

14. Deadgirl

I didn’t really hate this film, because it’s simply too silly and inept to truly hate, but the morals and message behind this are so despicable and so prominent in your face that not having Deadgirl on a ‘worst movies’ list would be a crime. This is a misogynistic, hateful piece of trash that falls on its own face so much that it becomes almost as humorous as it is pathetic.

13. Hannibal

This has got to be one of the most inept films I’ve ever seen, with no clear purpose or meaning to the script, confusing character action and a horrendously unbalanced, lopsided pacing. As a movie on its own, it’s terrible, but as a sequel to Silence of the Lambs, it’s an outright disgrace.

12. Romeo + Juliet

Shakespeare is rolling in his grave. Thanks a lot, Baz Luhrman…you bastard.

11. Hollow Man

Like Deadgirl, this is incredibly misogynistic and hate-filled, but unlike Deadgirl it is much more outright offensive and blatantly unlikable. Animal violence, violence against women…it’s just a catalogue of misery. This was just an excuse for the director to act out his sick fantasies.

10. Aeon Flux

Blah, blah, blah, the cartoon was probably better than this, I get it. But Aeon Flux as a movie is wholly unredeemable. A collection of confusing plot elements and annoying writing, this is just an insipid experience.

9. The Box

I’m fairly sure that, in some parallel universe, it is a jailable offense to even watch this film, so hackneyed and unenjoyable as it is. Pretentious, unpleasant and nonsensical, it's just a feat of amazement that this ever got off the cutting room floor. The fact that The Box exists is just an insult to mankind’s creative process as a whole. Director Richard Kelly also made Donnie Darko; that should tell you enough, but this movie is actually far, far worse.

8. Old Dogs

A comedy about as funny as it is charming: that is, straight zero on both counts, all across the board. This movie is literally the most soulless corporate pandering I think you can get in a movie without simply having the actors hold up signs that say ‘GIVE US MONEY’ at random points. I’m not opposed to low brow comedy, it can be pretty funny when done with a certain energy and relentless disregard for good taste…but Old Dogs is simply the sell out to end all sell outs. Perhaps the least funny movie I have ever seen.

7. Black Dahlia

Long, boring, terribly, TERRIBLY written and by the end of it, you will be chomping at the bit to go beat up Brian De Palma for unleashing this film on humanity. There are so many bad things in this movie, even my 3000+ word review couldn’t cover all of them. Despite having talented actors at his disposal, De Palma couldn’t make anything in this moronic script come off as even the slightest bit convincing.

6. The Uninvited

The Uninvited, a remake of the only average Tale of Two Sisters, is one of the most unexpectedly painful and horrible experiences I’ve ever had in a movie. Just riddled with poor writing and plot holes out the ass, this film is just unbearable, as the utter stupidity of it all will begin to weigh on you like a ton of bricks. The plot holes build on top of one another like a game of Jenga, and by the film’s enraging conclusion, you will wonder how anyone involved with this even has a job at all. I don’t even think beginning film school students could create something this thoughtless and jaw-droppingly horrible. It’s just a dumbfounding trip into the worst the human creative brain can offer.

5. CashBack

Another one that seems to think hating on women is cool. And all I have to say is, get bent, movie. This makes Jennifer’s Body look positively modest and chaste in comparison. A movie that teaches us that women’s bodies are only there for the whims of one nerdy, depraved art student who I CAN’T IMAGINE WHY got dumped by his girlfriend, CashBack is just appalling and should be shut up in an underground vault for all eternity, never to be released. Feeling sorry for any of the characters in this piss-pile is just impossible as all of them are about as likable as black fungus growing on your sandwich. The outright, blatant misogyny is just suffocating in how rotten its stench is, but the rest of the comedy is so boorish and sophomoric that not even fans of Old Dogs and Epic Movie would find it funny – they wouldn’t even crack a smile. One of the most offensive, tasteless things I have ever seen on film.

4. The Traveler

A festival of seemingly endless, tasteless gore, The Traveler is one of the more egregious and terrible examples of the worst trends in horror today. It substitutes realistic characters for horrible one-note jokes and screaming, raging assholes impossible to elicit any sympathy from, and tension and drama for gore and blood and guts. Movies like this are the reason why horror is in such a dire state nowadays, as there is simply nothing there to latch onto. The gore is unpleasant and far too realistic to be entertaining, and the story is boring and rote to extremes I didn’t know possible. There’s no creativity to be found and all this movie seems to want to do is show you seemingly non-stop scenes of these people getting murdered, without any reason to care, as every character is unlikable. This is just a hateful, spiteful film that gets worse and worse as it goes on, without even one iota of quality at all, and I was just at a loss for words at how this even got green lighted. Films like this will be the death of horror as a genre – the final nail in the coffin. Don’t support this, don’t rent it…just forget about it.

3. The Road

If you really like child abuse, little girls screaming in pain and non-stop scenes of nothing but undiluted misery and pain, The Road is for you. This movie is simply indefensible, with so many horrible things in it that it all just becomes white noise. The thing about torture and really grotesque, hardcore shit is that you need to build up drama and have something to really say beyond “hey, this is really hard to watch!” There needs to be some purpose, some commentary or some kind of underlying story that justifies the violence, because otherwise all you have is exploitative crap. With this film, all you get is more and more of the worst of humanity, without convincing enough writing to come across as realistic – oh, and the fact that there are ghosts and supernatural demons doesn’t help the 'realism' factor either. This has no idea what it wants to be, what it wants to say or who it’s appealing to.

2. American Psycho 2

American Psycho is possibly Christian Bale’s finest moment, a classic of modern cinema and has a lot of great social commentary on the bourgeois white-collar class of the 80s. This movie is none of those things, and completely ruins the first film in its first five minutes as it has Patrick Bateman killed off unceremoniously by a young girl. Mila Kunis wins my personal ‘worst actress ever’ award in this, but to be fair, nobody could have done well by the hack-work script. Most of this is ear-bleeding narration that literally becomes painful to listen to. You will really have to turn this off for a while to get a break from the constant self-indulgent prattle this movie tries to pass for a story. There really is no story, and the closest this movie gets to evoking anything but contempt and hatred is when you see a couple of college aged girls trying to sleep with their teacher, played by William Shatner, to get better grades. That won’t evoke contempt – just derisive, unbelieving laughter. I hope whoever greenlighted this film doesn’t sleep well at night anymore.

And my number 1 worst movie of all time is...

1. Rock n Roll Frankenstein

Words can’t even describe the pain that this movie inflicted on me, with its utter disregard for anything that would normally pass for an enjoyable film. I just...ugh...just, ugh; that's the best description. After I finished watching this movie, I turned to my friend and proclaimed it, instinctively, ‘the worst thing mankind has ever created.’ I remember standing in my kitchen afterwards and seriously thinking I would rather just stop reviewing movies instead of reviewing this one. People, there are certain limits a man has, and for me, it is when I see a movie about a bunch of guys that create a Frankenstein’s Monster-esque creature, give it a gay man’s penis, and then the monster is sexually confused because of it. That’s this whole movie. And I hate myself forever for just writing that…FOR THE SECOND TIME.

Christ. Just kill me now.

So that's my 'bottom 20' worst films ever list, for those of you who were interested. Stay tuned for the 'best' list tomorrow!