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.

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!

Announcement: Hiatus, Future Plans and Previews for May '13!

Hello, audience, and thanks for reading more of my Cinema Freaks blog these past months after I came back from my last hiatus. Unfortunately for you all, it is time again that I take leave of doing my ‘big’ reviews (the ones with the pictures in them) for a few weeks while I cool off, so as to not get burned out again, and also graduate from college and move back to my hometown. I feel this is akin to a ‘season’ in terms of TV shows, and this one has now come to an end with I Know Who Killed Me. I really am happy with these latest few reviews, and I hope you all have enjoyed them as well.

But all is not lost, for on the hiatus I will be working on my top 20 favorite and least favorite movies of all time, just because I feel like it! Maybe you’ll agree with me, maybe you won’t…maybe you won’t read them at all. I don’t know. Rest assured, there is still more to come and more for the pickier among you to bitch wildly about.

In the interest of generating what little hype I can for this following summer, allow me to give you a brief sneak peek into the films I will be looking at in May:

...and even more! Excited yet? Well, come May 2013, Cinema Freaks will return with Dracula 3000! Until then, keep watching movies and stay classy, folks.

REVIEW: I Know Who Killed Me (2007)

Well, well, we’ve finally reached the film I’ve been putting off reviewing for so long: I Know Who Killed Me, one of the worst films of the 2000s according to the critics. Hell, it won just about every Razzie the year it came out. This is one of the few times I'm going to just straight up agree with the critics, no qualms at all - this really is objectively one of the worst films of the decade. It’s got an unwieldy, clumsy sounding title, it stars professional screw-up, former child star and rehab-clinic regular Lindsay Lohan, and it’s an ungodly piece of cinematic terrorism. That should be enough to justify this review’s existence! Yup. It is. Let’s get on with it, then.

Director: Chris Sivertson

Starring: Lindsay Lohan, Julia Ormond

IMDb

We start off with what I like to call “positive, deep female character development”:

Yeah, if all you want in a movie is cheap stripping scenes that aren’t even really hot at all, you’ll be in paradise with this movie. But more on that later.

For now, we have some pretentious story being read by the world’s most generic high school student, Aubrey (played by the best actress ever, Lindsay Lohan). She’s writing about a girl who thinks she’s two separate people? If this weren’t an annoyingly contrived and asinine set-up for this movie’s very poorly written plot, I’d say this is incredibly half-assed. But then again, people tell me I nitpick sometimes.

We then see that Aubrey is so dedicated to her mediocre writing that she even quits piano lessons to focus more on her writing. Because doing both is just unheard of, and it’s really like she’s so jam packed in her schedule that she couldn’t find time after the lessons are over. Or maybe the movie is just really shitty, I dunno.

We also see some other exciting things, like how Aubrey has a boyfriend who thinks it’s a cool idea to tell her he loves her in the middle of science class, because that’s such a good place to do it, right? After that, to complete the butt-clenching awkwardness this movie has to offer, the teacher asks him to locate the female genitalia on their biology microscopes, and he points out the male genitalia instead. Yeah, that’s right; he told her he loves her in the middle of a science lesson on genitalia. Where’s Freud when you need him?

Touching your girlfriend's leg in science class while learning about genitalia; oh yeah, true love! This movie's up there with Cyrano de Bergerac and Casablanca!

At a football game later, we see that high school kids indeed play football, and afterwards, Aubrey goes missing while going to see her stupid boyfriend – although the crap-and-a-half editing will make this plot point as confusing as possible, not really making it clear at first what’s happened. Which is a pretty common theme in this movie, sadly. Her friends who we will never see again stand in one place, call her name three times and then deduce that because she didn’t answer, she must be missing.

"HEY AUBREY! ARE YOU IN EARSHOT? NO? OKAY, MUST BE MISSING THEN!"

Truly they should be the stars of the new Sherlock Holmes TV series that comes out next. They already had one with Watson as an Asian woman, so hey, why not? But I digress.

If you think all of this bland nonsense is exactly that, bland nonsense; well, you’d be right. Fortunately the film has other ways to suck right around the corner. Rather abruptly, the movie switches to some pained screaming and torture scenes, with Aubrey tied up on a table and getting her fingers cut off. This is the other big theme in the movie: fingers getting cut off!  Yeah, if the stripping scenes didn’t do it for you, at least you have the finger cutting scenes to get you going. But again, that will come more into play later on.

The jarring transition between the normal school night stuff and this is actually pretty good, but unfortunately this is just the beginning of a long, looooong train of unnecessary, gratuitous gore without any real purpose.

We then cut to a lady driving on the road, who discovers Aubrey bloodied and disfigured in a ditch – insert your own Lindsay Lohan in real life joke here; I’m above that. She’s taken to a hospital and is missing an arm and a leg – in maybe the only genuine moment in the film, she sees what’s happened to her and the effect is fairly disheartening. It’s probably the only moment that actually elicits sympathy for Lohan’s character. A notion that will be ruined by the bland writing and haphazard attempts at being deep to follow…

A tragic, affecting scene that I can empathize with. The movie realized this mistake and thus never did it ever again.

She claims she’s not Aubrey at all, and that she’s actually Dakota, a down-on-her-luck stripper who has truly lived the tough side of life. Or, what this movie THINKS is the tough side of life, but is really just a cobbled together pastiche of clichés that white suburban people think hard living is like. We get some flashbacks, and really, it’s just so trite. There’s no subtlety or depth here, and the character is about as believable as a multi-million dollar actress playing a downtrodden character from a bad neighborhood could ever be. Seriously, movie; just get real. Lindsay Lohan may have been a strung out, disgusting junkie at the time, but, in reality, she was being a strung out, disgusting junkie IN A REALLY NICE PENTHOUSE.

And the circle is complete: it is now impossible to care about her character in this film, after seeing this. Thank you and you're welcome.

And we come now to the most egregious, banal, talking-down-at-audience “symbolism” ever – literally everything in this movie is bathed in blue lighting for no reason. At first, for like the opening five or six minutes, it wasn’t too intrusive, but around the time this torture scene starts up, it just gets really stupid, and it’s ALL THE TIME. The blue coloring is supposed to represent Aubrey, and later on we’ll get a lot of red lighting for Dakota’s scenes. The lighting is supposed to symbolize which character is which, and show the contrast between their personalities, and honestly I can’t think of a way the director could have created something LESS intellectual and smart. I mean, c’mon, do we really need blue lighting for everything? Even for the tools the goddamn serial killer is using?

Did he just buy those at WalMart? Did he get a discount in the ‘everything blue’ section of the handyman’s construction aisle? Seriously movie, just because you’re trying to be all deep symbolism and character meaning doesn’t mean you have to stop making logical sense. You’re still operating in some form of the real world. It’s not like this is a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory knock-off. Sometimes, blue doesn’t have to be a metaphoric symbol for something else – sometimes it can just be the goddamned color blue.

Sigh. So at the hospital, Dakota talks to some cops who are unnecessarily hostile towards her and seem to not care at all about her well-being; just about questioning her because, well, that’s what the FBI does! Get with the program, man. They go back and forth, recounting some boring flashbacks, and I guess this could have been a decent mystery, but mostly it’s phoned in, the characters are unlikable and just spend a lot of time shouting at one another, and the whole thing is a lead-up to the movie’s first love: stripping scenes.

I know I should think this is really hot and everything, but come on: it’s grungy-looking and dirty as hell, the editing is like a rejected Rob Zombie music video and the music sucks. This isn’t sexy; it’s practically in need of a good bottle of Clorox, it looks so grimy. The way the film looks and the atmosphere being set up are like being on the inside of a porta-potty at a KISS concert in 95 degree weather. And the scene just drags on and on for like six or seven minutes or some shit. The story literally just stops in its tracks, in the middle of a flashback trying to explain something, to show the stripping scenes. Yeah. We get it. She has a tough life and needed to take a demeaning job to make money. For a movie trying to show us how bad this chick has it, it’s sure glorifying the exact undesirable position the main character only took as an easy way to get cash!

Real good message there, movie. Being a stripper sucks, life is hard, but just look at those tits and the way she moves that ass! Go to hell, movie; you’re a goddamned dirty hypocrite!

After that bullshit, we see Dakota fitted for a robotic arm and leg that will allow her to at least be a little bit normal again, and to go back to “home,” or Aubrey’s house, as they still think she’s just Aubrey with some mental trauma. Her boyfriend comes over and they go upstairs and find out how good sex is when one person only has one leg:

I swear if you cut out the stripping/sex scenes and the gore scenes, you wouldn't even have a movie anymore.

Hahahaha…ha…ha…ahh, where do I even start? The lighting is all blue, which begs the question: why would you have that much blue lighting in your room? I’ve heard of having a favorite color, but I’m fairly sure this would seriously just make you go blind after a while. I wonder what the process of pitching this to her parents was like…”Hey, mom and dad, I really feel like getting rid of the regular lights in my bedroom and replacing them all with really bright, obnoxious blue lighting! Can I have $300 to go do that?” “Why do you need all blue lighting?” “GOD! YOU JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND MY DEEP AND COMPLEX NEEDS!”

Another silly thing in this scene is the mother downstairs scrubbing the kitchen tiles with a sponge. I just think this is so hilariously inept…you get the sex scene interspersed with the mother cleaning furiously – get those stains out, mom! If this was intended to be funny as hell, good job, 10/10, two thumbs up. If it was intended to build character and show the difference between Aubrey and Dakota…well, back to the drawing board again, guys. You may just have to stay sober this time.

While they’re lying next to each other afterwards, the boyfriend asks Dakota what it was like to get cut like she did. This prompts a flashback to Dakota’s stripping days, when she was doing her thing on stage and her hand started to hurt. She went backstage afterwards, took off her glove AAAAAAANNNNNDDD…

Yeah, finger falling off? Not too big a deal I guess…she doesn’t accept anyone’s invite to take her to the ER like any sane person, no matter how downtrodden, would. Instead she wraps her hand up in a big towel, pretends it’s just a cut, and goes home. On the bus, she meets a guy who imparts some brilliant words of wisdom to her. They are words so poignant, so intelligent and so meaningful that Jesus Christ, Buddha and Mahatma Gandhi would swoon if they heard them. Are you ready, viewers, to witness this intellectual gestalt? Brace yourselves…

Then we go back to the present day, and Dakota repeats the same words to her boyfriend, as if that answers the whole question. Alright, seriously, what is up with the pacing in this movie? I guess by that I’m trying to say that there is no pacing. They set up that whole flashback for ONE LINE. They really needed like a five minute flashback to show why the character says one line? You could’ve easily cut out that whole scene and the movie wouldn’t have suffered for it. And this isn’t the only time it happens, either; almost every flashback is like this. The movie stops the story cold, focuses on some stripper bullshit and we forget where we were before the flashback until we’re abruptly jerked right back. It’s like the director had permanent short-term memory loss.

After this, the movie sinks into boredom as we get pretty much nothing worth talking about for like twenty minutes. We see Dakota doing some horror movie cliché researching scenes on the other girl who was murdered – even going into her house for a pointless five minute scene in which we learn nothing. I’m beginning to think ‘pointless’ is just this movie’s thing…like this scene, in which our lord and messiah "people get cut" guy returns for a bizarre cameo in Dakota's dream:

I'm just surprised there's a color in the movie that isn't red or blue.

He talks a lot of nonsense about people getting cut in half, which is related to the upcoming plot twist that, shock and awe, she is Aubrey's twin sister who got separated from her at birth! Why we needed this insane gibberish in the movie to get that point across, I have no earthly idea.

We also get some even more dull scenes where she researches the random bleeding spells she has and the weird way her fingers and limbs started falling off…surprisingly, she has waited this long to look into it. Odd. I’d probably investigate THAT right away, but then again I am not Lindsay Lohan. And yeah, these finger-cutting scenes are just awful. They’re grotesque for no reason, add nothing to the film beyond unpleasantness and are just generally a pain to look at. I guess you could argue that they’re effective in that they’re really, really hard to look at, but even then, the rest of the movie doesn’t go for these kinds of gross-outs – just these isolated scenes. And there’s the main problem with the film – well, one of them anyway: it can’t appeal to the gore crowd because it’s full of a bunch of stupid, sappy bullshit the rest of the time, and it can’t appeal to fans of elegant, dark thrillers because of the abundance of finger cutting scenes. It just appeals to no one.

They follow up a touching mother-daughter scene with this...do I even have to say anything?

But either way, Dakota comes to the conclusion that only mentally lobotomized horror movie heroines would come to – she actually is related to Aubrey, who really was abducted by the killer, and the two share a psychic, stigmatic link that makes Dakota feel whatever pain Aubrey is in when the killer mutilates her. So whenever the killer cuts off one of Aubrey’s fingers, or a leg, the exact same thing happens to Dakota. That’s…so retarded I don’t even have words for it, but I’ll play along: this could have been an interesting idea, with way, way better writing. But the writing in this movie is about as good as a fifth grader’s school essay, so that’s out the window.

Sigh…we get some really dull scenes where Dakota finds out that it’s the piano teacher from the beginning behind it all. Really, the piano teacher did it? The piano teacher is your excuse for a Buffalo Bill-styled killer in this movie? Are you shitting me, or did we just get sucked into a South Park episode? South Park is usually way funnier than this, even at its worst, and I’m fairly sure there’s no shitting going on here, so I’m just going to go with the default option: the studio blew all its money on getting the gore effects, and forgot to hire a talented writer for the script.

Really, movie? Really? This guy would have been one of the random side killers that Hannibal Lecter killed off years ago in any of those movies. But here he's the main villain. Sad day.

And the motivation for him to mutilate and sadistically torture teenage girls? They dropped his piano lessons class. That’s it. That’s all we get…I’m really just at a loss for words at this point. Excuse me while I go violently strangle and murder the test dummies I keep in the back room for when I see movies like this, to let off some steam.

…

Still there? Cool.

Hey, now that I think of it, how did the police not suspect this guy? If the piano lessons are the common denominator between Aubrey and the other chick he killed, how did the FBI not immediately finger this guy for the killings?! I’m not even making a joke this time – I’ll just let this sink in. So two girls with a very obvious common denominator – their piano teacher – get killed/kidnapped, and the piano teacher isn’t questioned. WHAT PLANET IS THIS.

Good GOD, man - what are you even doing? All the Looney Tunes combined, Nicolas Cage and that plant lady from Troll 2 together couldn't beat this whackazoid in mugging to the camera! And yes, this is the image I am leaving you on.

Dakota kills him, I guess, and then goes outside and digs up the coffin where Aubrey got buried – of course the coffin is colored bright blue, ugh…and that’s just kind of how it ends. It doesn’t even really end. The camera just moves away from those two, focuses on some trees, and then the credits come up. I guess they just figured they’d tortured us too much already, and the only worse thing they could do at this point is physically send a madman to our houses and have him cut off our fingers.

This movie is horrible. It’s just a pain in the ass to watch and even a pain in the ass to think about. There’s literally nothing about it that comes off as well done – the acting is awful, the story squanders what little potential it had in a ton of unnecessary gore and stripping scenes and the directing is a confusing mess that can’t even tell the fairly basic story that well. Add to that the laughable pretension of trying to talk down to us with how obvious and blatant the symbolism of the red and blue lighting is – yeah, that’s got to be the worst attempt at complexity in a film I’ve ever seen in my life – and you’ve got a movie that makes a good alternative to brainwashing people for a sort of Clockwork Orange-esque youth correctional facility. Lord knows seeing this movie has already turned my brains to mush.

Frankly, I can’t think of a more wretched experience I’ve had lately. Just everything about this was botched beyond belief! If you really want to see this, if the plot just looks too irresistible, don’t bother renting it or even wasting the bandwidth to download it. Just follow these simple steps and you will get the effect of watching I Know Who Killed Me all the same:

1. Stand in front of a police car with the flashing red and blue lights on.

2. Cut your finger off.

And wallah! Now you can enjoy this movie with all its perks and wonders without ever actually having to pop in the DVD. Isn’t that great? I think it is. Well, I’ve said all I can say about this film, so I'm going to go off and do more productive things, like banging my head against a wall until I can forget everything I just saw and thought about. Let me know how those steps work out for you, guys!

The images in this review do not belong to me. They are copyright of their original owners. Please take them and never come back.

REVIEW: Evil Dead (2013)

SPOILERS ahead!

Remaking a movie like Evil Dead was never going to be easy, but Sam Raimi, Bruce Campbell and some other guys backed up relative newcomer Fede Alvarez in making this revision of the storied gore-horror classic from over 30 years ago. Honestly, I don’t think this is too bad. But I do have a few big problems with it, which I’m going to address thusly – you know, because that’s what I do, I guess…

Director: Fede Alvarez

Starring: Jane Levy, Shiloh Fernandez

IMDb

First off, holy shit, it’s been 33 years since the original Evil Dead came out. That really puts things into perspective. It shows us that horror is eternal, that what scared us back then can still scare us now, and the same for entertainment in general – the days of old aren’t really so far behind us like some people claim. While ‘retro’ has been the big thing in the last few years, this movie is of a more genuine stripe than whatever Exorcist rehashes are coming out these days, and there’s a certain feral energy about this film that works to pay tribute to the horror of old, rather than simply ripping it off (Midnight Meat Train) or parodying it in an asinine way (Raimi’s own Drag Me to Hell). There’s a thin line between shameless hackwork and a genuine attempt (even an imperfect one, which this film is) – and Evil Dead ‘13’s blood-soaked trail of horror decimates the line.

Second, let’s just get the good points out of the way first: The gore. That’s really about it. If you want nothing else but insane, disgusting gore attacked with the zeal of a mental patient on crack going after a dog on a leash. I mean this thing is PACKED. WITH. GORE. To the goddamn brim. Some of the stuff in this movie made me look away from the screen, and if you’ve kept up with this blog at all, you know I’ve seen some shit.

Not only is the gore rampant, but it also touches on the age-old mantra of gore in films that modern films seem to have forgotten in their quest for the bottom of the barrel – if your movie isn’t some kind of serious, real-life meditation on social problems, MAKE THE GORE ENTERTAINING. Make it over the top, make it goofy, make it extreme! While the gore in this film is brutal and extreme to the max, it’s also done in a very wry way – it’s so over the top that it becomes entertaining in its own twisted, perverse way. The pacing is quick and exciting, too, which aids the entertainment factor. Overall there’s a big feel of classic 70s and 80s splatter-horror about this, although done up in a slick, modern package, and the effect is that Evil Dead 2013 is a nicely done bridge between the old and the new.

BUT – and there is a but – the writing is pretty stock, and the acting sucks. Now, the acting in the original wasn’t exactly Shakespearean either, but the original didn’t focus on the acting as a big point of concern, so much as the actors’ bodies getting torn apart and destroyed in horrific ways. This movie tries to have more of a story behind it, rather than the occult mayhem hack-n-slash of the original, which is a fine idea…if you can get a good story.

This…well, it certainly tries, I guess. They’re trying to say that the five characters are going to this cabin to have a sort of drug intervention for Mia (Jane Levy), the sister of main character David (Shiloh Fernandez). In the first 30 minutes or so, there are some pretty decent moments where it almost seems like the things going on are all in Mia’s head – of course, everyone who knows anything about this movie KNOWS that isn’t true. But it’s a nice red herring and, if handled with more wit, could have blossomed into something really interesting.

However, the film just focuses too much on the characters’ drama between one another, and with the acting being so terrible, almost universally so, it really gets pretty stupid after a while. The focus on the whole brother-sister dramatic plot is just weak as hell, and the writing for that is about as sappy as it gets. Evil Dead was cooler when it was just about gore, gore and more gore. This movie just comes off like the awkward ‘tween’ years where Evil Dead tries to ‘branch out’ and find itself in new social circles…awkward…

And, really, even when you take out that bullshit, how stupid is the main character? It’s not uncommon for horror protagonists to make stupid decisions. But dude, seriously! If your sister was possessed a minute ago and then just starts talking to you out of nowhere like normal, RIGHT WHEN YOU’RE ABOUT TO FINALLY KILL HER…maybe she’s still possessed and is trying to trick you! Just a thought, pal. It wouldn’t be so bad if it happened like once, but it’s all the goddamned time in this movie, and after about five minutes of this kind of stupidity, it will make you want to hit your head against a wall. Repeatedly.

The reason the writing sucks is because these characters’ reactions to everything are so subdued. They see a possessed person vomiting black bile and cutting their own tongue in half? They barely raise an eyebrow. They see a loved one come back from the dead after being buried alive? Doesn’t even raise their pulse one bit. It’s lazy and comes off as more funny than anything, demeaning the gleeful evil of the rest of the movie. Also, one final nitpick – what is up with how invincible the characters are in this? They barely seem to feel a damn thing. If they were possessed, sure, but this all happens before they ever get possessed…they get arms cut off, they get stabbed repeatedly, get nails driven through multiple parts of their bodies; all kinds of shit, and they just keep stumbling on, only ever-so-slightly wounded. It’s a minor nitpick, as it doesn’t really hurt the movie, but that kind of silliness does become noticeable eventually.

Evil Dead 2013 is enjoyable, and I didn’t regret seeing it. The gore is great, the lighting and atmosphere is killer and everyone involved seems to be having fun. But the attempts at making it a more serious and mature film than the original don’t work because the writing isn’t good enough to sustain them. I think this is a great ‘turn your brain off and drink beer’ sort of movie to watch with friends, preferably around Halloween, but is it as good as the original? I wouldn’t say so. Recommended for Evil Dead fans, and for those of you who really dig modern horror movies.

Images copyright of their original owners.

REVIEW: The Host (2013)

Stephanie Meyer has become something of a talking point in society in general these days, mostly for those infamous Twilight films, which so many people love to hate. I have never seen those movies or read the books, and people can say what they will about them – personally, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t like them very much, and as such, I don’t see a reason to watch them; it’s too far out of my interest for me to give a solid opinion on it. But here we have the adaptation of her newest novel The Host, and while it’s not really very good, I did at least have fun watching it.

Director: Andrew Niccol

Starring: Saoirse Roman, Jake Abel, Max Irons

IMDb

This is a science fiction film about a sort of distant dystopian world where humans have mostly been taken over by little alien plasma bug things that have turned the Earth into a peaceful land, except one where people no longer have free will and their bodies are just hollow shells for these aliens. A small group of human rebels, as they always appear in movies – dirty clothes, living in caves, etc – are barely surviving out in the desert.

And it’s goofy. It’s so goofy. It’s tough to pinpoint exactly why, but I’m going with the acting as the main thing. I mean, the storytelling is fine and moves along at a pace that didn’t bore me, so that’s not it…must be the acting, which really is pretty hammy. I guess I’ll throw in the dialogue, too; I mean really a lot of the stuff these people have to say is awfully choppy and forced, even when the action is good. The main character Melanie (Saoirse Ronan) has been taken over by one of the ‘souls’ that invaded the planet, and the real Melanie talks in an inner-monologue inside her own mind. The effect is that it sounds like a very bored automated narrator in a PowerPoint project.

The corny back-and-forth romance triangle that pops up is about as ridiculous as it sounds in a movie like this…this really isn’t the type of thing that needs a love triangle, but I guess it appeals to the tweens coming to see the movie. Mostly it’s just groan-worthy and comes off as a time-waster rather than anything actually poignant. The acting just isn’t good enough to sustain the romance, and comes off more tacky and stilted than actually anything like what real kids this age would act like.

And, really, this kind of phoned-in character development is the biggest Achilles’ heel this movie has – the biggest thing preventing it from being more than a fluffy teen popcorn movie. The story is fine, the acting, while silly, wouldn’t be too bad otherwise, but really it’s the romance that drags everything down in the end. I never believed a second of it; was never convinced for a second that these people had any real connection going on. Romance can be so much more than simple ‘he likes me, he doesn’t’ crap, and with this movie’s plot and set-up, there was potential for a really investing romantic subplot. But the film just treats it as background noise, and none of the characters are ever really affected by it in any meaningful way. It’s just sort of there because it has to be, because the film is for tweens, and as such, the film’s integrity takes a big nosedive.

The real reason to watch this is just because the concept is pretty cool – it’s not your usual blow-em-up-enslave-humanity alien plot, and the cool neo-Western atmosphere is nice, even if they don’t use it quite to its full potential. The plot moves along quick and while it’s not anything too original, it keeps you fairly invested the whole way through and mostly does OK at keeping the tension up, even if it does sort of resolve itself way too easily and gets a bit sappy here and there.

So I guess what I’m saying is, it was certainly a movie. That much cannot be denied.

Did I like it?

Ehh. I didn’t hate it. I had fun riffing on its sillier moments and there were some cool parts here and there. Mostly what dragged it down was the rather cliché and trite romance plots, and with a little more thought and investment put into the romance, it could have been a much better movie. For sci fi movies, it ranks a bit below movies like In Time or Surrogates, which themselves are enjoyably B-level flicks. And it’s not as bad as Aeon Flux or Ecks VS Sever, so there is that!

But then again, that isn’t saying a whole lot. If you liked the book, well…ehh, from what I’ve heard you may be disappointed. On the other hand, critics who are seriously panning this are kind of off the mark, as there are far, far worse movies out there than this rather inoffensive and sometimes humorous one. See it at your own peril.

All images in this review are copyright of their original owners. I do not own any of them.