Tin Cage Lining

Favoritest Movies of 1977

2012-02-15T01:14:00.000-06:00

So, not yet age two, or close enough, and Han Solo activates the hyperdrive and I get turned into a nerd for life. All the top-ever movies will get their own write up, so this is not Star Wars' moment in the sun. But, it's the first movie I saw in the theater, and there's nothing else to talk about in 1977.

Oh shit.

Alright, let's talk about you. Let's say that you're actually a more original, more intelligent and more creative movie than Star Wars. Let's imagine a world, not far off, (ours) where you may have deserved "Best Picture". You have two or three moments where you actually are self aware and creative enough to see how movies can go beyond their narrative conventions, and be an intellectually interactive experiential medium. I get that, probably only, because I was comparing you to Star Wars. Just as Star Wars ripoffs, for the most part thought they could spray paint junk, and blow it up in slow motion, and say anything without it even being intelligible (if you just thought ""the prequel trilogy", get over it! See a new movie or three...). The movies you influenced mister Annie Hall, did not even notice your narrative originality, and instead acted like every guy with blue balls and an Arriflex SHOULD make a movie about just how hard his spoiled brat life is. Sure, if Lucas made a Kurosawa film into a Douglas Trumball looking Flash Gordon serial in England, then all you did was make a '60's French movie in New York in the '70's. And, after that the only movie that seemed to learn any actual positive lessons from you was the second Austin Powers movie.

I don't think you won Best Picture. I think you were in the right place to benefit from jealousy, like Chicago, A Beautiful Mind, and The Hurt Locker. You've been an ongoing life lesson that I was just reminded of the other night. Taste is fickle. There is so little separating the popular from the pariah, that often it's just the movement of the flock.

The other night we were watching a movie that took dramatic license with the life of William Shakespeare, with spectacular performances and production values told an all but completely impossible, but no less intriguing fiction in Elizabethan times. Which one were we watching?

Romantic or Tragic?

Entertaining, or Challenging?

Satisfying or Piquing?

Lauded or Scorned?

The story goes that Lucas and Spielberg swapped points on Close Encounters and Star Wars, both thinking the other had the bigger hit. So, if they don't know what's good, why do so many others act like experts? The question might require more thought than that. I've no idea what, if anything is actually "good", I just know what I like, in relation to whatever I'm comparing it to...

Star Wars
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown
The Hobbit
The Spy Who Loved Me
Oh, God!
Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo
The Amazing Spider-Man
A Bridge Too Far
Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
The War in Space
Kentucky Fried Movie
Annie Hall
MacArthur
Smokey and the Bandit
High Anxiety
The Gauntlet
Cross of Iron
Saturday Night Fever
Airport '77
Pete's Dragon
The Island of Dr. Moreau
Exorcist II: The Heretic
Orca
Wizards

Favoritest Movies of 1978

2012-02-11T18:12:00.000-06:00

We join the 1978 list results already in progress: A man who looks like Alec Baldwin enters that room full of movies ,like in the old Netflix commercials.

"Listen up movies of 1978! The good news is -- you're tired. The bad news is you've got, all you got, the rest of civilization to languish on cable, home video and on-demand to be watchable movies again, starting tonight. Starting with tonight's viewings. Oh, have I got your attention now? Good. 'Cause we're adding a little something to this years favoritism contest. As you all know, first prize is being a good and loved movie. Anyone want to see second prize? Second prize's being a television pilot. Third prize is you're tired. You get the picture? You're laughing now? You got scripts. The script monkeys, carefully selected pigtailed macaques, worked tirelessly and cluelessly in a sweatshop near the Jewelry District. So be interesting, be movies."

Okay, there's more than two good movies from '78, but, a TV pilot being one of the better ones, makes the year look bad. I'm sure I've committed some sin by not praising Animal House. It's proof of quality is just how high it made it on this list. I'm just not a partier.

It's not going far, so this is our last chance to talk about a movie that did make the next round; Message from Space. But, a movie that is going to probably place in the All-Time Top 10, owes a lot to it. I mean, almost everything after leaving Jabba's palace, and the closer you get to the ending, the closer you get to Jedi. This is one of the more engaging and better executed Star Wars try-to-be's. I've tried to see as many as one can, though the line between ripoff, and greenlit because of the success of is subject to controversy, and hurt feelings. You hear, read all sorts of stories, and the bigger the movie the more it has. Message from Space is an anime come to life, and Return of the Jedi, is Message from Space come to life. Science fiction led me to discover a lot of anime and still does to this day. I've also always wondered how many other major movies have had secret anime influence, since seeing shades of Gall Force in Terminator 2. Why, is that some Space Battleship Yamato in Das Boot? I suspect they'll never admit it.

Superman: The Movie
Battlestar Galactica
Force 10 from Navarone
Grease
Coma
The Cat from Outer Space
Message from Space
National Lampoon's Animal House
Jaws 2
The Lord of the Rings
Death on the Nile
Harper Valley PTA
The Deer Hunter
Drunken Master
The Amazing Captain Nemo
Watership Down
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
The Bad News Bears Go to Japan
The Cheap Detective
Capricorn One
Return from Witch Mountain
Dawn of the Dead
Revenge of the Pink Panther
Attack of the Killer Tomatoes
Eyes of Laura Mars
The Boys from Brazil
The Swarm
Damien: Omen II
Heaven Can Wait
Corvette Summer
Every Which Way But Loose

Favoritest Movies of 1979

2012-02-11T01:17:00.001-06:00

The top 4 all share something in common, we owned them on CED videodisc. Our Realistic CED-1 felt like my own personal home entertainment system in our basement.

Rainbows!

My dad dove into this format with all sorts of optimism and excitement, but then stuck it in the basement. At the time, he was also put drop ceiling in the basement, but I think he lost interest in home theater with getting cable TV not much more than a year after getting this. I've read that the needle on CED players needed to be changed every 500 hours of use. Ours beat the snot out of that, heck the Bugs Bunny Road Runner Movie saw at least 200 hours of play. I'd occasionally watch TV off of the antenna down there, King Kong ('76), The Martian Chronicles, and V, and The Muppet Show just about every weeknight. I forget if Laverne & Shirley preceded or followed The Muppet Show, but it was something my 7 year old self had no interest in. I'd like to think my tastes have changed in the last 30 years, but 1979 just hasn't weathered the way most other years have.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture
The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie
The Black Hole
The Muppet Movie
Alien
Moonraker
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century
Lupin the Third: The Castle of Cagliostro
Time After Time
The First Great Train Robbery
Mad Max
Apocalypse Now
The China Syndrome
The Lathe of Heaven
Monty Python's Life of Brian
Escape from Alcatraz
The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again
The Concorde ... Airport '79
Dracula
The Shape of Things to Come
Zulu Dawn
Rocky II
Hair
Caligula
The Black Stallion
Love at First Bite
Beyond the Poseidon Adventure
C.H.O.M.P.S.
Meatballs
Butch and Sundance: The Early Days
Kramer vs. Kramer
More American Graffiti
The Jerk

Wait, we had all of the ones she mentioned by name... Maybe they DIDN'T want me watching TV! Thank you Youtube, you've explained my childhood.

Favoritest 50 Movies of the '80's!!!

2012-01-30T19:56:00.004-06:00

Completely breaking format, I can't in good conscience put a poster on top of a list where only five non-genre movies even make this list. Big deal that Empire is my favorite movie of the '80's. That tells me nothing. That embodies, nothing. Recognizing that the '80's was to me, at the time the golden age of sci-fi movies, and one thing educated me, and opened my world to so much more than just watching Entertainment Tonight or waiting to see what would be the 'cool' movie accepted by the masses would be. Every issue of Starlog was like a Con before I'd ever go to a convention, like a RSS feed before the internet. Through Starlog, I fell in love with Blade Runner before having ever seen the movie. To be fair, because of the below photo in an issue of Starlog, I also fell in love with this series:

Galactica 1980 !

I looked forward to this series. I couldn't wait to see it. I apparently missed it. Actually, I had seen an episode, but had no idea that what I saw was Galactic 1980, I still have no idea that invisible Vipers and softball games are Battlestar Galactica! So, seeing this picture and dreaming of the day when I would behold this glorious show! See, She's in a WHITE Colonial Warrior uniform. Well, the only time Colonial Vipers were in white uniforms was when they were aboard the ship of lights! So, naturally, my infantile fanboy self just assumed that the plot would deepen with 1980, that Galactica would become more mystery filled and epic.

So, as for the movies, and the magazine that brought me so much enjoyment related to them;

Empire Strikes Back
Return of the Jedi
Dune
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Akira
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Heavy Metal
The Transformers: The Movie
Project A-ko
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
Blade Runner
2010
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
The Dark Crystal
Highlander
Aliens
Superman II
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
RoboCop
Tron
Back to the Future
The Final Countdown
Battle Beyond the Stars
Die Hard
Monty Python's The Meaning of Life
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
Ghostbusters
Gandahar
The NeverEnding Story
Predator
U2: Rattle and Hum
The Princess Bride
The Abyss
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Flash Gordon
G.I. Joe: The Movie
Tucker: The Man and His Dream
No Way Out
Top Gun
The Terminator
Starchaser: The Legend of Orin
Willow
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
Labyrinth
Koyaanisqatsi
Henry V
Gremlins
Venus Wars
Spaceballs
The Living Daylights

Favoritest Movies of 1980

2012-01-11T00:21:00.000-06:00

Wow. Hooray. My hero. What a big tough movie you are, imagine that Empire Strikes back could take on a whole year and come out on top... You'll probably win the decade as well, see you in the All Time round Empire! Well, let's see who came in second...

What? I feel the need to question myself here...
Q: Excuse me me, but how the Frakes in Riker's name does Flash Gordon end up with the second spot for 1980? It's no Raiders fiasco, but you may be out of your own mind, to the extent that you could end up talking to yourself, and typing while doing it!

A: Superman II was a childhood favorite, but if you watch Superman II once a year, just once a year from, say ages 7 to 17; you can feel yourself getting older. You start questioning just how nicely done some parts of it are, and how... (lengthy bull crap later) and where did the cellophane S come from?

Flash Gordon has gotten a boost, in just the past year or so, probably worth 7-8 places. Actually, ironically, right this second as I'm typing this, the wife and daughter are watching Flash Gordon in the other room! It has multigenerational appeal, even today! Why could that be? There's a clue on the poster... "filmed in Todd-AO" (My father used to rave about Todd-AO movies, and it was probably the second thing he thought off when thinking about Elizabeth Taylor). The Flash Gordon movie of my youth was a dull pan and scan on tv movie, but having seen it in HD. It's, well, beautiful.

More importantly, Flash is a movie that hits it's target. It is everything it wants to be. And movies that accomplish that are almost always well regarded, if not loved directly proportionally to the appeal of their goal. For instance, if you like crime movies, than Godfather, Scarface and Goodfella's are your classics. Hard Sci-Fi fan? 2001 and Blade Runner... Disney fare.. Lion King and Cinderella for the Classic Disney fare crowd. Sometimes movies mix appeal base, they're still perfect, but it's where you land on both appeal orientations. Flash Gordon is a movie that feels like it came out of an old MGM vault, like a victory lap made after Wizard of Oz. It's everything George Lucas claimed he wanted Star Wars to be, except "believable" looking. Flash trades realistic for retro deco.

The Empire Strikes Back
Flash Gordon
Superman II
Battle Beyond the Stars
The Final Countdown
Airplane!
Raise the Titanic
Kagemusha
Hangar 18
The Blues Brothers
Midnight Madness
Caddyshack
Oh, God! Book II
Altered States
The Shining
The Day Time Ended
The Return of the King
Private Benjamin
Stir Crazy
Somewhere in Time
Xanadu
Herbie Goes Bananas
Popeye
The Elephant Man
Galaxina
The Gods Must Be Crazy
Coal Miner's Daughter
The Watcher in the Woods
American Gigolo
Any Which Way You Can
Urban Cowboy
Ordinary People

Favoritest Movies of 1981

2012-01-08T19:15:00.003-06:00

WTF?

1981. We're talking about 19, EIGHTY, Freaking ONE! The year that practically birthed the decade no one can stop talking about! The first Space Shuttle launch, Ronald Regan becomes president. On television, Dynasty, Fall Guy, Hill Street Blues, heck just on Saturday morning cartoons we get Smurfs and Spider-man and his Amazing Friends.

Aside from all of that geekery, one movie dominates the box office, and goes on to get nine Academy Award nominations, winning five, and being robbed of best picture, sorry Best Picture by aspiring Olympic runners (Though Harrison Ford will run with Vangelis music in 1982 so Hah,) How bad was this robbery? Raiders of the Lost Ark has a Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer of 94% (All Critics) to Chariots of Fire's 87% (All Critics). AFI All time 100 list, Raiders is #60! Chariots doesn't even place. Their Heroes and Villians list; Indiana Jones is the #2 hero! Above James Bond and Rick from Casablanca! Sure, he's below Atticus Finch, but we all know Atticus wouldn't make it to the Chachapoyan Fertility Idol!

So how in Frakes name could I pick, like, favor a movie with a RTT score of 60%. I didn't know either. It was hard. Almost Empire vs. Jedi hard. Raiders is a far superior movie to Heavy Metal. It is one of the greatest achievements ever. Seriously. I wouldn't be surprised if that poster wasn't composed like the Mona Lisa just because the movie was honestly a rear kicking cultural masterpiece. But head to head, I chose Heavy Metal. We all want to see more movies like Raiders. That Star Wars scale of fun, adventure, tension, the pleasant sensation of having our brain beaten to putty while our eyes were lovingly effed out of existence and our ears floated in pure euphoria.

We'll never get that. We shouldn't want that, we wouldn't want to live in a universe that flat. If everything were perfect, we'd become bored with perfection, start noticing differences, and even artificially create standards of quality and differentiate the essentially homogeneous media. (Carnac the Magnificent says you're thinking: "That's what we do with movies today!")

I do want more movies like Heavy Metal, I wish we got a Heavy Metal movie every year. An annual Animated Sci-Fi anthology showcasing a variety of styles, and stories with a a broad yet central feel, showing just how big, and in some ways, hard to define nerdom is. We'd be better off having more movies like Heavy Metal, but sadly it's almost completely unique. Raiders gets the #2 spot, since, I'm always seeing movies wishing they were Raiders. Fine, I like them, some I even love... okay, I don't love any of them. I love Raiders, Captain America and I need a few more dates before we commit, and National Treasure and I have agreed to see other people, but remain the closest of friends, not ruling out benefits. The best part of cinematic polyamory; movies don't get jealous. Heavy Metal, will never take offense at my wish for a harem of Heavy Metal, it just might punish me with less than better episodes of Liquid Television.

Heavy Metal
Raiders of the Lost Ark
The Great Muppet Caper
Clash of the Titans
History of the World: Part I
Escape from New York
Time Bandits
Excalibur
Outland
For Your Eyes Only
Stripes
Condorman
An American Werewolf in London
Das Boot
The Legend of the Lone Ranger
Dragonslayer
Omen III: The Final Conflict
The Looney Looney Looney Bugs Bunny Movie
Scanners
Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior
Quest for Fire
Chariots of Fire
Gallipoli
Heartbeeps
Reds
Tarzan, the Ape Man
The Evil Dead
The Cannonball Run
Arthur
The Howling
Sharky's Machine
Body Heat
The Professional
On Golden Pond
American Pop
Tuck Everlasting
The Devil and Max Devlin
Bustin' Loose

Favoritest Movies of 1982

2012-01-08T05:41:00.001-06:00

The lists are getting shorter, the backlog of this project is nearing completion. The red letters denoting disliked movies says goodbye, it'll stick to hating newer movies. I'm actually pretty fond of a little more than the top 20 from this year, and the top 6 are all childhood favorites. There was a time when I'd say I didn't get to see E.T. as a child. Theatrically this is true, but I was also still a child when I said it. I only saw Wrath of Khan theatrically, in the same theater my father asked my mother to marry him in several years earlier. I was a bit emotionally attached to that room myself, as it was where I'd seen Empire for the first time.

I saw Tron, and most other movies on a big screen outdoors at the Union Electric Club, in Valley Park. It doesn't exist anymore. It was off of Vance Rd. After entering you'd see ball fields, a jet plane, a train caboose! That's the actual caboose pictured to the left. We'd park on a white gravel lot. There was a playground, bisected by a slightly elevated sidewalk going back to a large white, homely looking two story building. The Sidewalks had creatures, mostly bugs painted on them. When I was very small, I even found them a bit scary. The playground equipment was far from what we'd consider safe, this entire place was even then a relic of an earlier era, but I didn't know that at the time. We'd bring our own drinks and snacks. My parents and grandparents were just that cheap. We didn't pay to get in, it was for the UE employee's and retiree's and their families. There was a long area of picnic style tables, end to end. The floor was halved logs that had been laquered. It was open air, and lit by yellow light at night. The big attraction there was the bingo game that would go on, sometimes I believe during the movie. Movies, baseball, playground, bingo, snow cones, heat, bugs, peeling paint, playground fixtures made of wood and steel. It was in high ground, nothing but trees in sight.

I haven't thought of it in years. I didn't plan on going on so long about it. I had nothing to say when I say when I sat down to slap up this list. But, I guess digging up old memories was the original point of this exercise. Hundreds and hundreds of people enjoyed that place, I'd imagine most, if not all the ones who played bingo are long dead. And nothing remains of it. It's torn down. I found one plea online for information, pictures of the place, and that was placed in 1998. These lists, Facebook. We're all loading the internet like the Pharaoh's loaded up their pyramids. Not morbidly so, nor necessarily with mortality in mind, but as a communal, digital time capsule of not items, but experiences.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
The Dark Crystal
Blade Runner
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
Tron
The Secret of NIMH
Koyaanisqatsi
An Officer and a Gentleman
Conan the Barbarian
Airplane II: The Sequel
Gandhi
The Thing
Poltergeist
Pink Floyd The Wall
The Beastmaster
Fast Times at Ridgemont High
Tootsie
Android
The Shaolin Temple
Annie
Firefox
The Year of Living Dangerously
Bugs Bunny's 3rd Movie: 1001 Rabbit Tales
Timerider
Swamp Thing
Richard Pryor: Live on the Sunset Strip
Evil Under the Sun
The Last Unicorn
The World According to Garp
Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid
Rocky III
Personal Best
Night Shift
First Blood
Megaforce
Honkytonk Man
48 Hours
Porky's
Death Wish II
Fanny and Alexander

Favoritest Movies of 2011

2011-12-31T15:02:00.001-06:00

I was kinda hoping that this list, would be topped by a fitting farewell to Harry Potter. Harry Potter on my lists has been, sort of a Neville Longbottom. Not to any fault of the series, but to an abundance of nerdy, geeky, blockbustery cinematic goodness. I wouldn't call Potter's decade a golden age for genre movies; during the interim after the Archon Masquerade, but before the awards, music was playing, movie music, the genre's greatest hits. The golden age was from Jaws to Jedi. This is also why Prometheus has such a special anticipation. Ridley Scott hasn't done a Sci-Fi movie since the Golden Age, and both of his contributions to Sci-Fi back then, are still just as watchable, no, even more watchable today, if only because the average home theater today is really delivering a better experience than most of the few screen, dimly projected, an old lady's hair in your way, my arm is stuck to the seat,would someone close the door the sun is shining on the screen (Did NOT make that up!!!!) theaters we got to view Empire, and Khan in.

I haven't seen most of the movies that are topping the "critical" lists yet. Most of those lists though are made out of buzz, and fashion. Almost no one ever says what they like anymore. Well, I apparently liked X-Men: First Class quite a bit. I almost can't imagine how much I'd love this movie it it'd been about Jean, Scott, Warren and Hank. But, had they been in this movie, it wouldn't have been about Erik and Charles. That's the beauty of the X-Men comics, the good characters' powers and code names are completely irrelevant. Cyclops the guy who can shoot beams out of his eyes isn't important. Scott, the guy Jean chooses over Warren, and later Logan, is. Sounds a bit like Twilight... I'll gag later. But I don't think Bella ever becomes a God powered, nearly immortal entity that is wanted dead by galactic superpowers, nor has a clone who will make a demonic pact unleashing Hell on earth, or that their child will come back from the future to be a cybernetic bad-ass! On to the list!

Oh, at #14: That's this...

An animated anthology starring Nathan Fillion as Hal Jordan. NOT a Ryan Reynolds stripped naked except for underwear to fight the potty monster who can be defeated by what every rookie lantern is taught in basic training. Mad at me for spoiling it? No. Because you deserve a better Green Lantern movie than that. Oh, and If I hate the live action one so much, why is it at #37? Ahead of much better movies? I LOVE Green Lantern. I love the idea of it being a live action movie just that much. There were some... a few good, and enjoyable things of that movie. Pirates 4 is a fine movie, just disappointing to it's pedigree. And, Game of Shadows... I'll revisit it at some point. Good friends with good taste love this movie. But, for right now, Sherlock Neo and the Sundance Kid in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen just doesn't do it for me.

X-Men: First Class
Harry Potter the Deathly Hallows: Part II
Captain America: The First Avenger
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Thor
The Muppets
Paul
Conan the Barbarian
Too Big to Fail
Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol
All-Star Superman
Transformers: Dark of the Moon
Fright Night
Green Lantern: Emerald Knights
Source Code
Batman: Year One
Paranormal Activity 3
The Adventures of Tintin
Kung Fu Panda 2
The Adjustment Bureau
Dylan Dog: Dead of Night
Larry Crowne
Cowboys & Aliens
Bad Teacher
Rango
Thor: Tales of Asgard
Your Highness
The Three Musketeers
Fast Five
Arthur
Midnight in Paris
Sucker Punch
Super 8
No Strings Attached
Red Riding Hood
Final Destination 5
Green Lantern
Drive Angry
The Lincoln Lawyer
Mars Needs Moms!
Season of the Witch
The Green Hornet
Red State
The Smurfs
Pirates of the Caribbean: Stranger Tides
Atlas Shrugged: Part 1
Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
Bridesmaids
Immortals
The Tree of Life
Just Go with It
Margin Call
The Help
Cars 2
Battle: Los Angeles
The Eagle
Gnomeo and Juliet
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn: Part 1
Rio
Priest
Limitless
The Sunset Limited
I Am Number Four
Sanctum
Almighty Thor
Hall Pass

Favoritest Movies of 1983

2011-12-18T02:06:00.000-06:00

This is the first list for comparisons against a member of the OT. Maybe the second place movie should get its poster shown here...

There. The Meaning of Life. Philosophers spent centuries trying to figure it out, proving that they weren't nearly as brilliant or as funny as Monty Python. Seriously, Meaning of Life isn't a satisfying post topper... Jedi though is year overkill. It's looking at a top 5 ever seat by the end of this.

Return of the Jedi dominated the entire year, especially if you were 8 years old. Last day of 2nd grade, we got to watch a movie, and the teachers said that they wanted to get Return of the Jedi, but it wasn't available, so we got to watch Star Wars. Best day of 2nd grade.

Return of the Jedi
Monty Python's The Meaning of Life
Nate and Hayes
Never Say Never Again
WarGames
Octopussy
Twilight Zone: The Movie
Daffy Duck's Fantastic Island
Sudden Impact
Blue Thunder
The Right Stuff
Fire and Ice
The Keep
National Lampoon's Vacation
Bill Cosby: Himself
Trading Places
Brainstorm
Superman III
The Big Chill
Rock and Rule
The Dead Zone
Risky Business
To Be or Not to Be
Hercules
Project A
Terms of Endearment
Mr. Mom
The Star Chamber
Strange Invaders
The Outsiders
Flashdance
Lone Wolf McQuade
Valley Girl
Silkwood
Videodrome
Spacehunter
All the Right Moves
Eddie and the Cruisers
Christine
The Man with Two Brains
Max Dugan Returns
Yor Hunter From The Future
D.C. Cab
Psycho II
Easy Money
Scarface
Staying Alive
A Christmas Story
Jaws 3-D

Favoritest Movies of 1984

2011-12-14T23:46:00.000-06:00

Wow, what a year. When you want to say; 'they don't make them like that anymore!' Point here, 1984. You will hate parts of this list. You'll disagree with big segments of it. You'll cry fowl, question my sanity... but you too will have a handful or two of all time favorites, or movies you just plain love from this year. I won't go into the winner, as the highest echelon of my favorite movies ever will each get a spotlight essay, and Dune practically has a reserved seat, spoiler, I also hate this movie, and think it has many many flaws. Either way; 27 years ago today, it came to theaters, and now wins it's year 100%!

Happy anniversary Dune!

Dune
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
2010
Ghostbusters
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
The Terminator
The NeverEnding Story
Gremlins
Beverly Hills Cop
The Natural
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai
Night of the Comet
Starman
The Karate Kid
The Last Starfighter
Greystoke - The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes
Amadeus
Police Academy
The Bounty
Top Secret!
Dreamscape
The Muppets Take Manhattan
Splash
Romancing the Stone
Runaway
A Nightmare on Elm Street
The Return of Godzilla (also known as "Godzilla 1985")
Cloak & Dagger
The Killing Fields
The Woman in Red
The Dungeonmaster
Tightrope
Footloose
The Warrior and the Sorceress
Sword of the Valiant
Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure
Tank
Supergirl
City Heat
1984
All of Me
The Philadelphia Experiment
Red Dawn
Cannonball Run II
This Is Spinal Tap
Firestarter
Moscow on the Hudson
Swing Shift
Micki + Maude
The River
Revenge of the Nerds
C.H.U.D.
Missing in Action
Sixteen Candles
The Cotton Club
Against All Odds
A Passage to India
Bolero
Bachelor Party
The Naked Face
Purple Rain
Making the Grade
The Brother from Another Planet
Just the Way You Are
Rhinestone
Children of the Corn

Favoritest Movies of 1985

2011-12-05T20:48:00.001-06:00

There's something unsatisfying about this. Yay, the popular movie won... Back to the Future isn't a geeky movie or a nerdy movie. It's the geek movie that your parents liked too. I was kinda rooting for Starchaser, but then things like honesty creep into the equation. As much as I do enjoy Starchaser, it's far from Back to the Future, and that can be said for pretty much every movie except Explorers in 1985. I'd do a gag about the perfect 1985 movie, but you're looking at it. A teen involved in some screwy science stuff, nearly a dozen on just my list.

The real shocker is second place, A View to a Kill. This is far from my favorite Bond movie, and I was shocked, even almost ashamed when I saw that it scored so high. But, there is a remnant of remembering the ad for it in the newspaper, wanting to see it in the theater, and not getting to. My first theatrical Bond would be The Living Daylights. A shock, a surprise, and somehow it fits. It's aged better than many movies on this list, plus, I really dig The Saint and John Steed running around for a bit.

Even though so many titles from these year seem almost scared because of the age we were, or the memories they're attached to, when they have to compete with each other, most of these movies become mortal. The Breakfast Club is a legendary movie, and seminal to our generation, but St. Elmo's fire wants that spot too.

Back to the Future
A View to a Kill
Explorers
Vampire Hunter D
Starchaser: The Legend of Orin
Brazil
Enemy Mine
Silverado
Ran
Legend
Pale Rider
Clue
Young Sherlock Holmes
Return to Oz
Commando
Ewoks: The Battle for Endor
The Breakfast Club
The Black Cauldron
The Goonies
Cocoon
Weird Science
The Quiet Earth
Red Sonja
St. Elmo's Fire
Ladyhawke
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome
The Dirty Dozen: Next Mission
King Solomon's Mines
Fletch
My Science Project
Pee-wee's Big Adventure
Real Genius
Transylvania 6-5000
Here Come the Littles
Fright Night
Jagged Edge
Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment
Rocky IV
Teen Wolf
Rambo: First Blood Part II
The Jewel of the Nile
Silver Bullet
Sesame Street Presents: Follow that Bird
European Vacation
Witness
Desperately Seeking Susan
Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins
The Care Bears Movie
Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend
Prizzi's Honor
Murphy's Romance
Out of Africa
Rainbow Brite and the Star Stealer
The Peanut Butter Solution
The Man with One Red Shoe
Mask
El caballero del dragÃ³n
A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge
Day of the Dead
Once Bitten
Creature
Santa Claus
Girls Just Want to Have Fun
Invasion U.S.A.
Summer Rental
Heaven Help Us
Death Wish 3
Turk 182!
The Falcon and the Snowman

Favoritest Movies of 1986

2011-11-29T20:51:00.001-06:00

At the outset of the 1986 pairings, I thought; 'If a good movie gets left behind this is the year they'll get left behind from.' One of those I know I'll hear arguments about, requires a confession; I just don't like Ferris Bueller's Day Off as much as you. It's a fun movie, it's good, it's memorable, it's quotable, and it's made for every person who's ever been content with a C+ on a report card, who 'just enough' was acceptable for. There's nothing wrong with that; it can keep the lights on and beer in the fridge, but I don't drink beer either, or less relevantly eat any ethnic food that I can think of. But, I analyzed Bueller on his own merits, and ignored that the cast contains Ben Stein, who is human tea tree oil to this lowly ant.

One of the hardest calls to make in the entire history of making these lists: Star Trek IV vs Project A-Ko. I couldn't let it go to a tie. Really the entire lineup of the top 4 were difficult pairings to decide, and I'd looked for poster images for each of them, I almost ruled against Transformers because it was on the blog wallpaper, but because I had no real internal debate that Transformers should top A-Ko, then logically I must like Transformers more than Star Trek IV... but their positions may change in the decade race. I can see now 1986 will be going with a major contingent into the finals, probably everything from Big Trouble in Little China up.

but not poster composition

Captain EO

For most of the pairings, a movie was on the list and competing that, when near completion, I had to eliminate, Captain EO. A long time ago, when compiling the titles, Looney Tunes presented a problem of length, and I'd decided not to include them. I haven't been including Pixar shorts, but EO at 17 minutes is a bit longer than most of these, it's far from long enough to be a "movie". I've included TV movies, direct to video movies, OVA, I've had the broadest consideration of what is a movie, but I can't go that short.
We can imagine that Captain EO was a glimpse of what we didn't get in 1986; Episode VII or I. Though a bit of it's look is less sophisticated than even Return of the Jedi, It's kinda doing a Ginger Rogers 'backwards and in heels' trick by looking like a Star Wars movie, in 3D. On top of that, the sci-fi update on the Thriller zombies were the prototypes of the Borg and their Queen. If Captain EO had been a feature, it would have been easily top-10 for the year. Even as it was, a shallow, brief, half music video, it was in the 70th percentile, but EPCOT is still my favorite of the parks. I wish the crap were taken off spaceship earth, and I wish the... I wish EPCOT would return to its nerdier, closer to original state.

It's a bit funny the way giving a tie to two movies works out; in last place, The Money Pit had a tie with Armed and Dangerous. Armed and Dangerous shared a tie vote with Club Paradise, which had a tie with Hoosiers, (Okay, I know what you just thought, but Club Paradise had Peter O'Toole in it!) which had a tie with SpaceCamp, which had a tie with The Great Mouse Detective, which had a tie with The Karate Kid, Part II, which had a tie with Big Trouble in Little China, which had a tie with Labyrinth.

Well here's the list with the most rewatchable top 5 probably of all the lists so far.

The Transformers: The Movie
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
Project A-ko
Highlander
Aliens
Labyrinth
Top Gun
Invaders from Mars
Laputa: Castle in the Sky
Big Trouble in Little China
Flight of the Navigator
The Karate Kid, Part II
Howard the Duck
Short Circuit
King Kong Lives
Crocodile Dundee
The Great Mouse Detective
SpaceCamp
Little Shop of Horrors
Ferris Bueller's Day Off
Heartbreak Ridge
Iron Eagle
The Fly
Black Moon Rising
An American Tail
The Big Easy
Lucas
The Golden Child
Raw Deal
Platoon
Hoosiers
Manhunter
The Delta Force
Ruthless People
Solarbabies
Gung Ho!
GoBots: Battle of the Rock Lords
F/X
Castaway
Critters
Pirates
Peggy Sue Got Married
¡Three Amigos!
Firewalker
Stand by Me
Club Paradise
The Manhattan Project
The Color of Money
9½ Weeks
Pretty in Pink
Cobra
The Mosquito Coast
Poltergeist II: The Other Side
Troll 2
The Morning After
Jumpin' Jack Flash
House
Armed and Dangerous
Murphhy's Law
Down and Out in Beverly Hills
No Mercy
Shanghai Surprise
The Money Pit

Legend: Onto the next Round! ( >/= .8) In the middle. I do NOT enjoy. (< / = .2)

Favoritest Movies of 1987

2011-11-26T20:22:00.001-06:00

This was the type of year that makes these lists so fun to do. There was no runaway winner, no obvious one at the outset, when the final scores appeared, less than 2% separates The 4th spot from the top spot, but Robo deserves to be there. This is one of those results that made me actually appreciate the movie more for discovering that it won. For every argument that The Princess Bride deserves it more, the same might be able to be said for No Way Out. I feel I cheated a certain movie to the bottom of the list, but there are scarcely few more movies that deserve the confines of Abaddon than Jaws: The Revenge. It's director Joseph Sergent also directed one of the movies that will appear, probably somewhere close to the top of the All-Time list, Colossus The Forbin Project, as will the original Jaws. The near perfection found in both of these makes this all the worse. Would this movie have been any dumber if the shark wore a Hawaiian shirt?

Anyway, I still recall us renting Robocop on VHS for the first time. Yup, that's how I first saw it.

RoboCop
The Princess Bride
No Way Out
Predator
G.I. Joe: The Movie
Spaceballs
The Living Daylights
Lethal Weapon
The Brave Little Toaster
Beverly Hills Cop II
*batteries not included
Empire of the Sun
The Untouchables
The Last Emperor
Masters of the Universe
Wings of Honneamise
The Monster Squad
Broadcast News
Dirty Dancing
Innerspace
Project A-Ko 2: Daitokuji zaibatsu no inbÃ´
Swimming to Cambodia
Gor
The Fourth Protocol
The Running Man
Evil Dead II
Harry and the Hendersons
Wings of Desire
The Chipmunk Adventure
Mannequin
The Lost Boys
Eddie Murphy Raw
Full Metal Jacket
Wall Street
Project X
The Big Easy
The Puppetoon Movie
3 Men and a Baby
Adventures in Babysitting
Good Morning, Vietnam
Superman IV: The Quest for Peace
The Witches of Eastwick
Time of the Apes
Dragnet
Ishtar
Some Kind of Wonderful
Stakeout
Summer School
Fatal Attraction
Hellraiser
The Secret of My Succe$s
Raising Arizona
A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors
Benji the Hunted
Blind Date
Outrageous Fortune
Cherry 2000
Overboard
Who's That Girl
Roxanne
Light of Day
Suspect
Leonard Part 6
La Bamba
Teen Wolf Too
Baby Boom
Throw Momma from the Train
Ernest Goes to Camp
Hello Again
Moonstruck
Prince of Darkness
Over the Top
Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise
Burglar
Tin Men
Like Father Like Son
The Principal
Jaws: The Revenge

Legend: Onto the next Round! ( >/= .8) In the middle. I do NOT enjoy. (< / = .2)

Favoritest Movies of 1988

2011-11-20T16:18:00.001-06:00

So, I was working on this list a few days ago, and looking up a movie I've always enjoyed The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, to honestly put it, it's been a few years since I've seen it, and I forgot who played the title role. He was familiar, on the tip of my tongue, and in something else... but I couldn't summon the memory. Nothing makes the brain more feeble or just plain lazy than Googling something rather than forcing the brain to actually recall the information. Why think? Wikipedia is right there in the search bar. Oh, of course, John Neville was Baron Munchausen! Well, I just couldn't put the face to name since he was wearing that prosthetic nose, and all that make-up... and now this morning, John Neville has just passed away. So, to John Neville, the world wasn't tired of you.

Akira
Gandahar (Light Years)
U2: Rattle and Hum
Die Hard
Tucker: The Man and His Dream
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Willow
Beetlejuice
Short Circuit 2
Working Girl
Without a Clue
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen
The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!
They Live
Rain Man
Dangerous Liaisons
My Neighbor Totoro
Grave of the Fireflies
Crocodile Dundee II
Alien Nation
Earth Girls Are Easy
Young Guns
Twins
A Fish Called Wanda
Biloxi Blues
The Land Before Time
The Dead Pool
Red Heat
Feds
Scrooged
The Blob
My Stepmother Is an Alien
Vibes
Daffy Duck's Quackbusters
High Spirits
The Big Blue
Coming to America
Big
Gorillas in the Mist
Caddyshack II
Bull Durham
Taffin
She's Having a Baby
The Presidio
Eight Men Out
The Accidental Tourist
Action Jackson
Stand and Deliver
Oliver & Company
Big Top Pee-wee
Married to the Mob
Young Einstein
D.O.A.
Tequila Sunrise
The New Adventures of Pippi Longstocking
Child's Play
Iron Eagle II
The Bear
The Last Temptation of Christ
The Great Outdoors
Cocktail
18 Again!
Midnight Run
Mystic Pizza
Bird
I'm Gonna Git You Sucka
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
License to Drive
Bat*21
Police Academy 5: Assignment: Miami Beach
Rambo III
Pound Puppies and the Legend of Big Paw
Bloodsport
Cocoon: The Return
A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master
Mac and Me
Fright Night Part 2
Funny Farm
Bright Lights, Big City
Big Business
Clean and Sober
Frantic
Mississippi Burning
Buster
Ernest Saves Christmas
Cop
Punchline
Hot to Trot

John Neville 1925 - 2011

Favoritest Movies of 1989

2011-11-14T09:44:00.001-06:00

Some years last months, 1989 was almost a decade by itself. The last few months of Junior High took forever, but ended with our group of friends back then all going to see Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade! Which is just about the happiest memory I can recount about a group of friends that, hanging out with any of them 1 on 1, was awesome, but social groups larger than 4 with only one gender represented tend to fall apart. Look at Voltron; 5 guys, forget it. 4 dudes and a chick, okay. Single gender rock bands with more than four members? There were 5 of us, and 40% of the group was named Mike, and everyone in the country had a Batman shirt.

So let me present the Perfect 1989 movie:

Little Kill & The Dead Dream... V Part II 

It'd star Kevin Costner as a Viet Nam vet, unjustly sent to prison where he died.  But now he's back! And partnered with a dog!  And Is going to an underwater research facility where all the excitement will happen!  Oh the quirky researchers in the underwater lab; Dan Aykroyd, and Keanu Reeves.  Tom Hanks voices the Dogs thoughts.  

Which, if you saw most of the movies on this list, is the movie that would form in your brain... as for the real movies of 1989;

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Henry V
The Abyss
Back to the Future Part II
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
Batman
Field of Dreams
Lethal Weapon 2
Fat Man and Little Boy
Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure
Kiki's Delivery Service
Major League
The Little Mermaid
Godzilla vs. Biollante
Arena
Always
The War of the Roses
UHF
The Fly II
Black Rain
Ghostbusters II
Glory
Road House
Tango & Cash
Babar: The Movie
Licence to Kill
Heathers
When Harry Met Sally...
Weekend at Bernie's
The Karate Kid, Part III
The Experts
Police Academy 6: City Under Siege
Great Balls of Fire!
Dead Poets Society
Chances Are
Hard to Kill
The Dream Team
She's Out of Control
Look Who's Talking
Driving Miss Daisy
Gross Anatomy
Say Anything...
Leviathan
Dream a Little Dream
Lean on Me
Cyborg
Parenthood
Turner & Hooch
Honey, I Shrunk the Kids
Skin Deep
Troop Beverly Hills
Blaze
Her Alibi
The 'Burbs
The Fabulous Baker Boys
Dead Calm
Best of the Best
Uncle Buck
How to Get Ahead in Advertising
K-9
Pink Cadillac
The Wizard
National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation
The Punisher
Do the Right Thing
Sex, lies, and videotape
Steel Magnolias
A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child
Night Game
Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan
Pet Sematary
Roger & Me
Worth Winning
All Dogs Go To Heaven
Deepstar Six
Kickboxer
Three Fugitives
Fletch Lives
Red Scorpion
Dead Bang
Lock Up
An Innocent Man
Sea of Love
Born on the Fourth of July
Casualties of War
The January Man

Favoritest 50 Movies of the '90's!!!

2011-10-26T17:34:00.002-05:00

They signed their names. When I sorted the numbers in Excel, I expected either Jurassic Park, or Phantom Menace, Hunt for Red October, or Galaxy Quest to grab the top spot. But instead of the dawn of CG's dominance in effects or the return of Star Wars, a goodbye took the top score out of the most like 180 movies of a decade. Although, from viewing one, I can't think of a bad thought I've ever had about this movie, maybe I'm just whitewashing my memory to justify the result.

Jurassic Park... (What, could have had the aviary? please self, you're a whore for Jurassic Park!)
Contact? Yes, The beach and the dad are a letdown to my inner 5 year old who wants to see aliens...
The American President... Okay, no complaints there either, although for awhile I think I enjoyed it more in (impending blasphamy... 3, 2, 1...) in Pan & Scan!! But that just shows how much my father watched the VHS of it [ A: Daily ;) ]. There were some times he'd rewind it, and play it again.
Episode I... No! I won't say one bad thing about Star Wars episode I. Only because I remember a time when there was more negative speech about that movie on the internet than porn, and The Matrix was the next big thing. But, I think I found forgiveness on this decade round for The Matrix.

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
Jurassic Park
Contact
The American President
Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
Starship Troopers
The Lion King
Titanic
The Hunt for Red October
Galaxy Quest
Aladdin
Stargate
Star Trek: First Contact
Hook
The Lost World: Jurassic Park
Mulan
Army of Darkness
Beauty and the Beast
Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles
Independence Day
The Thomas Crown Affair
Mallrats
The Fifth Element
The Rock
Bicentennial Man
Office Space
The Matrix
Pretty Woman
Clerks
The Mummy
True Lies
A Few Good Men
Armageddon
Shakespeare in Love
Schindler's List
Maverick
Dave
Batman: Mask of the Phantasm
Total Recall
Star Trek Generations
Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me
Pulp Fiction
Basic Instinct
Hamlet (Kenneth Branagh)
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
The Cutting Edge
Léon
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
Princess Mononoke
Tomorrow Never Dies

And I still don't have a cutoff for the ones that go to the "All Time" Round... although the 80th percentile is looking good.

Favoritest Movies of 1990

2011-10-14T15:36:00.000-05:00

1990 was around when my mother left. I don't remember when that was exactly, which seems odd because in the type of movies that take place in the only world the isipid Chelsea Handler can understand, the date of some major family trauma is etched in stone and Charlton Heston comes down from the higher echelon of your psyche with a cheap plastic cup bearing the date of the one, one offending day and a copy of the childhood home game.

Of course, when I watch movies that take plae in the only world palpable to Chelsea, I tend to think they're ridiculous fantasies because of all the concessions, contrivances, conveniences, and coincidences. I don't remember the date my mother left, but heck it was the second time she did. The first time being in fourth grade. I had enough going on with starting High School, which is when she promised she would leave after she had come back the first time back in fourth grade...

The benefit to my mother's abandonment of my father and I, aside from;

We went two summers in a row... Divorce is screwed up.

The side benefits were all the other overtures of bonding and distraction my father engaged in. Star Trek Conventions; every one within driving distance. The local sci-fi convention called Archon, renting movies on a weekly or better basis, going to the movies would become more and more regular until being a weekly habit as well, including going to the movies on Christmas, the first of which was Godfather Part III. We were looking forward to it for months! We had a Godfather movie marathon the week prior... (It's number 62, out of 109)

Trivial side note: Back then, I was saving the ads for movies from Entertainment Weekly. Full page movie ads were, the movie poster. Also back then, my father and I kept a list of movies we saw together on the front of the refrigerator, and would rank them at the end of the year.

Well, this was the last list of the '90's, 181 movies made it into the fave of the decade round; that's 16,290 matchups, of which this lot in blue below me is responsible for 3087 of, or 19%. So, I'll get to that...

The Hunt for Red October
Pretty Woman
Dances with Wolves
Back to the Future Part III
Pump Up the Volume
Total Recall
Spaced Invaders
By Dawn's Early Light
Predator 2
Memphis Belle
Frankenstein Unbound
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Gremlins 2: The New Batch
RoboCop 2
DuckTales the Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp
Robot Jox
Die Hard 2
Treasure Island
Edward Scissorhands
White Hunter, Black Heart
La Femme Nikita
Dick Tracy
Ghost
Tremors
The Rescuers Down Under
A Dangerous Man: Lawrence after Arabia
Quigley Down Under
Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael
Marked for Death
Darkman
Men at Work
Young Guns II
Reversal of Fortune
Navy SEALs
Dreams
Narrow Margin
Hard to Kill
Kindergarten Cop
Vincent & Theo
Bird on a Wire
Jetsons: The Movie
The Bonfire of the Vanities
Hamlet
Quick Change
I Come in Peace
Postcards from the Edge
Days of Thunder
I Love You to Death
Joe Versus the Volcano
The Rookie
Captain America
The Guyver
My Blue Heaven
Air America
Taking Care of Business
Presumed Innocent
Short Time
Nuns on the Run
Repossessed
Blind Fury
Nightbreed
The Godfather Part III
Home Alone
Internal Affairs
Mr. Destiny
Green Card
The Neverending Story II: The Next Chapter
Loose Cannons
Pacific Heights
Arachnophobia
Fire Birds
Tales from the Darkside: The Movie
Mr. and Mrs. Bridge
Goodfellas
Rocky V
The Freshman
Ju Dou
Miller's Crossing
The Adventures of Ford Fairlane
The Russia House
Awakenings
Three Men and a Little Lady
Another 48 Hrs.
Look Who's Talking Too
Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!
Crash and Burn
Misery
Cyrano de Bergerac
Flatliners
Mermaids
Lord of the Flies
Cadillac Man
Child's Play 2
Henry & June
The Two Jakes
Blue Steel
The Krays
Jacob's Ladder
Stanley & Iris
Wild at Heart
Wild Orchid
The Witches
Miami Blues
Revenge
White Palace
Stella
King of New York
Problem Child
Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer

Legend: Onto the next Round! ( >/= .8) In the middle. I do NOT enjoy. (< / = .2)

Favoritest Movies of 1991

2011-10-10T23:05:00.001-05:00

It seems natural that the first (working backwards) original cast Trek would win the year, but I actually wanted a specific movie to loose. I really really wanted it to loose, but it was beat out by two movies that I apparently like even less... more on them at the bottom of the list...

If I'd done this list 20 years ago, 2nd place would probably be different, I don't know where Hook would have placed back then, but I remember having problems with the color temperature of the lighting being too indoor for it's outdoor location. Star Trek VI was an event saying goodbye to the original cast, Hook wasn't a goodbye in presentation, but I recall an on-set interview before Hook's release with Spielberg; "Maybe Hook is going to be the last big show I put on."¹ Hook would be the least 'dark' Spielberg movie for seventeen years... As I'm typing this, my daughter is reading over my shoulder and asks; "What's Hook?" Answer, a movie in need of a beautiful Blu-Ray release.

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
Hook
Beauty and the Beast
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
The Rocketeer
JFK
Defending Your Life
The Addams Family
Dead Again
Shattered
Once Upon a Time in China
Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead
City Slickers
The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear
Until the End of the World
Hot Shots!
Thelma & Louise
The Silence of the Lambs
For The Boys
Father of the Bride
The Doors
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of theOoze
Truth or Dare
Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey
Point Break
Class Action
The Hard Way
Bugsy
Doc Hollywood
Out for Justice
Return to the Blue Lagoon
Knight Rider 2000
Necessary Roughness
Soapdish
Cape Fear
Flight of the Intruder
Once A Thief
The Last Boy Scout
Backdraft
Billy Bathgate
L.A. Story
What About Bob?
The Fisher King
Grand Canyon
Hudson Hawk
Mobsters
An American Tail: Fievel Goes West
True Colors
Suburban Commando
Delirious
Guilty by Suspicion
Other People's Money
White Fang
Regarding Henry
Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare
King Ralph
Curly Sue
Timebomb
Pure Luck
Fried Green Tomatoes
F/X2
Stone Cold
The Perfect Weapon
Naked Lunch
Eve Of Destruction
The Doctor
Rover Dangerfield
Little Man Tate
Toy Soldiers
Life Stinks
Sleeping with the Enemy
The Prince of Tides
Oscar
Dying Young
Frankie and Johnny
Rush
The Marrying Man
Nothing But Trouble
Problem Child 2
Highlander II: The Quickening
My Girl
The Super

Highlander II is such a frakking failure of a movie, it even failed to make it to the bottom of the list! A Completely forgotten, and completely forgettable Joe Pesci movie made it to the bottom. Way to fail, at EVERYTHING Highlander II, but the bottom of this one is a bit of a cesspool. Oh, #77 there, that's the movie that gave us Eric Clapton's Tears in Heaven. I'm waiting for someone to compile in a book or blog or somewhere, a collection of songs everyone knows, that came to us via completely forgotten movies.

1] Also quoted in The films of Steven Spielberg By Douglas Brode

Legend: Onto the next Round! ( >/= .8) In the middle. I do NOT enjoy. (< / = .2)

Favoritest Movies of 1992

2011-10-08T17:19:00.000-05:00

The top few movies aside, this year in retrospect was boring. Boring to look back on. Most of the scores given were "0.5"; a tie between two movies, since most of these are movies I couldn't care to think about ever again. There's a lot of "caught it on cable" here. I can't believe I watched half of these. Worse still, is that nothing better was on at the time. Of the top 10, I only saw 5 of them in the theater, and only one of the top 10 was a "caught it on cable", The Player. That's one of those movies that keeps you having cable, finding one like that... What a line of crap. If not for cable, I would have rented The Player... Chaplin, that was on cable... should've rented it, no DVR's back then... Speaking of differences Aladdin 3D, make this happen Disney! Lion King worked pretty well, but this isn't on your list of 3D upgrades?

Aladdin (Tie)
Army of Darkness (Tie)
A Few Good Men
Basic Instinct
The Cutting Edge
Sneakers
A League of Their Own
Glengarry Glen Ross
Baraka
The Player
Hard Boiled
Chaplin
Medicine Man
Peter's Friends
Freejack
Bram Stoker's Dracula
Split Second
Lethal Weapon 3
The Lover
Fifty/Fifty
The Distinguished Gentleman
Memoirs of an Invisible Man
The Crying Game
Unforgiven
Death Becomes Her
Porco Rosso
Batman Returns
Shining Through
Aces: Iron Eagle III
Alien 3
Buffy The Vampire Slayer
Stay Tuned
School Ties
El Mariachi
Universal Soldier
Reservoir Dogs
Patriot Games
The Last of the Mohicans
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me
White Sands
Cool World,
The Muppet Christmas Carol
Far and Away
Hoffa
Wayne's World
Under Siege
Scent of a Woman
Innocent Blood
My Cousin Vinny
Rapid Fire
Nemesis
Kuffs
Passenger 57
Sleepwalkers
1492: Conquest of Paradise
Captain Ron
Rock-a-Doodle
Final Analysis
The Babe
The Lawnmower Man
Forever Young
K2: The Ultimate High
Leap of Faith
The Mighty Ducks
Malcolm X
Thunderheart
The Bodyguard
Toys
Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot
Christopher Columbus: The Discovery
Forbidden Love: The Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives
Newsies
Radio Flyer
The Hand That Rocks the Cradle
Unlawful Entry
Beethoven
Sidekicks
Hero
3 Ninjas
Man Trouble
Mr. Baseball
Consenting Adults
Singles
Single White Female
Sister Act
A River Runs Through It

Jennifer Eight

Of Mice and Men

Love Potion No. 9

The Mambo Kings

The Waterdance

White Men Can't Jump

Article 99

Passion Fish

American Me

Straight Talk

Home Alone 2: Lost in New York

Boomerang

Orlando

Mr. Saturday Night

Honey, I Blew Up the Kid

Class Act

Honeymoon in Vegas
HouseSitter
The Public Eye

Legend: Onto the next Round! ( >/= .8) In the middle. I do NOT enjoy. (< / = .2)

Favoritest Movies of 1993

2011-04-19T00:18:00.007-05:00

Oh 1993... What a boring list of movies to compare and contrast. What were you trying to be, a list of reasons to not watch movies on cable? There's at least a 100 squandered hours lying at the bottom of this list of movies that would have been better off being unseen mysteries. More tedious was the fact that I had the Jurassic Park poster ready to go. I'm trying to discover what my favorite movies are, not look at a pile and pick out the only one I've rewatched in the past decade. (okay that's an overstatement... I've watched Falling Down, Tombstone, Totoro, Dave, and a few minutes of Super Mario Brothers all in the last couple years.)

Not a video, just the only picture found on the web.

But Movies are entertainment. And in that category, 1993 produced a bigger winner than any of these movies, but first... a loser; Bigfoot style pizza. Gaming, and these monsters, especially Elicia''s attempt to emulate Pizza Hut's Bigfoot seen here were an amazing combination. I don't miss the pizza hut one so much since, well, If I were to list 18 different pizza places, Pizza Hut would come in 7th. That's not a bad thing but Pizza Hut just isn't the same unless you're walking into a big red hut with that aroma and table top version of Galaga to beg your parents for a quarter to go play. But, this list is about 1993, And I've gone off into the wee 80's. So, really the winner for 1993 should be;

Well, you're not a movie. I've spent to much money on you. I've regretted our break-up. You've killed so many hours, and caused so much fun and pain.

Oh how I should have listened to that old woman that wandered into my comic shop, Who, like the Soothsayer to Ceaser told me to get Magic. If only I'd looked it up on the internet. ;)

Jurassic Park
Schindler's List
The Fugitive
Batman: Mask of the Phantasm
Dave
The Firm
My Neighbor Totoro
Tombstone
Robin Hood: Men in Tights
Demolition Man
Falling Down
Much Ado About Nothing
Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story
Groundhog Day
Hot Shots! Part Deux
The Legend
True Romance
Addams Family Values
In the Line of Fire
Robot Wars: Robot Jox 2
The Three Musketeers
Grumpy Old Men
Coneheads
Three Colors: Blue
Being Human
Last Action Hero
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III
Mrs. Doubtfire
The Nightmare Before Christmas
Needful Things
Point of No Return
The Joy Luck Club
Rising Sun
Short Cuts
National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon 1
Fire in the Sky
Benny & Joon
Indecent Proposal
Cliffhanger
Fearless
Malice
Crime Story
Farewell My Concubine
Dazed and Confused
Sleepless in Seattle
Fatal Instinct
So I Married an Axe Murderer
Wayne's World 2
Hexed
Hard Target
Striking Distance
We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story
What's Eating Gilbert Grape
What's Love Got to Do With It
Sliver
The Crush
Nowhere to Run
Kalifornia
A Perfect World
Free Willy
Little Buddha
The Real McCoy
Faraway, So Close!
Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey
Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday
In the Name of the Father
Son in Law
For Love or Money
Robocop 3
Judgment Night
Weekend at Bernie's II
Body of Evidence
Undercover Blues
Life with Mikey
The Temp
Cool Runnings
Mad Dog and Glory
Sniper
Alive
Look Who's Talking Now
Born Yesterday
The Man Without a Face
Dennis the Menace
Mr. Nanny
Carnosaur
Carlito's Way
Sommersby
The Meteor Man
Untamed Heart
Amos & Andrew
Hocus Pocus
My Life
Made in America
Boxing Helena
Jack the Bear
Super Mario Bros.
The Good Son

Legend: Onto the next Round! ( >/= .8) In the middle. I do NOT enjoy. (< / = .2)

Favoritest Movies of 1994

2011-02-12T11:00:00.001-06:00

My father and I used to keep a list throughout the year of movies we saw in the theater on the refrigerator with ratings on them. He'd give me crap about seeing more movies than him. But, considering that essentially every weekend I was seeing a movie with him (we'd miss a few weekends in this period due to going to a Cardinal game, or a show at the Fox, or the St. Louis Symphony), I'd go to the movies fairly often with my girlfriend at the time, and once a week my friend Verne and I would ditch class to go see a movie at Crestwood Mall. Until we saw it... A movie that was, to us, just disgustingly unenjoyable. Our weekly skip to the movies was killed dead by Natural Born Killers. I was a little surprised to see it placed only third from the bottom on this list.

I was more surprised that Stargate is my favorite 1994 movie. I really had no idea what would come out on top. Maybe I haven't been clear about this before, but I've been using (a slightly modified) Condorcet method to rank each year of movies. But there were so many movies that I saw at the time and since, either on video or cable that I did enjoy; how did Stargate win? When I saw Stargate for the first time, at Keller 8 Cine; 1) I thought it was one of the most predictable movies I've ever seen, but 2) I really wanted to see a sequel. It was co-opting Erich von Däniken and the rest of the ancient astronaut mini industry of books you'd find in the metaphysical / new-age section of any Waldenbooks, without being tacky. I really wished for a second movie where they went to Atlantis. Other gods in addition to the Egyptians would have been nice to see as well. But, If I had made this list in 1994, not only would it have been a lot shorter. Stargate wouldn't have passed Forest Gump, Pulp Fiction, or Leon. It probably would have been just above the middle.


"Never underestimate your audience. They're generally sensitive, intelligent people who respond positively to quality entertainment." - STARGΛTE SG·1

So why so much love now for a truly ridiculous movie? Ridiculous I say? The premise is this; If you find an old safe, and have the first 6 numbers of a 7 number combination, how many experts does it take to open it? But, that's what Alfred Hitchcock would call a "Refrigerator Moment", so it's forgiven. Now, my wife and her brother dig on Stargate, but that's not enough alone. Star Trek The Next Generation is my favorite TV series ever, and that probably helped Generations to the second spot (tied with The Lion King). Heck, Generations isn't even that great, Why didn't Tolian Sorin just get himself a shuttlecraft and one of those thruster suits Spock had in The Motion Picture and fly into the Nexus, save all the people on Veridian 3 the trouble of dying... by the way, if you kill an entire planetary civilization in a movie these days, you don't gewt a pass like Generations or New Hope, we need to see cities crumble and families crushed or engulfed in flame... Go Roland Emmerich on their sorry carbon based bottoms! Say, aside from 2012, didn't he make... Stargate? Stargate got to the top of this list with Ten seasons of clawing it's way into my heart. As much as I loved Richard Dead Anderson, and I still as of the writing of this, I need to watch all of Farscape. But, Ben Browder and Claudia Black joining the show, made SG·1 some serious family time TV viewing. It's a conceptual high tide, and I'm probably not the first person to enjoy the original film more, thanks to the series. So, it's on to the next round for twenty movies from the class of 1994, here's the list of how everyone stacked up in the end.

Stargate
(Tie) Star Trek Generations
(Tie) The Lion King
Interview with the Vampire
Pulp Fiction
Léon
Forrest Gump
Clerks
Maverick
The Crow
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
True Lies
The Shawshank Redemption
Radioland Murders
Street Fighter
Ed Wood
Love Affair
The Flintstones
The Hudsucker Proxy
Timecop
The Next Karate Kid
The Shadow
Speechless
The Paper
Quiz Show
The Mask
Reality Bites
Richie Rich
Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla
Major League II
Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult
Threesome
Three Colors: Red
Heavenly Creatures
Color of Night
Speed
The Ref
I.Q.
Bad Girls
Highlander III: The Final Dimension
Nobody's Fool
Sirens
The Madness of King George
Ace Ventura: Pet Detective
Backbeat
Mixed Nuts
Three Colors: White
Africa: The Serengeti
Lightning Jack
Greedy
Cobb
With Honors
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
Disclosure
Guarding Tess
Police Academy: Mission to Moscow
North
Clear and Present Danger
Legends of the Fall
Nell
Little Women
The Getaway
Blown Away
Dream Lover
The Scout
Four Weddings and a Funeral
No Escape
The Specialist
Shallow Grave
The Return of Jafar
City Slickers II: The Legend of Curly's Gold
On Deadly Ground
Renaissance Man
Wes Craven's New Nightmare
The Chase
I Love Trouble
Only You
Wyatt Earp
Terminal Velocity
Immortal Beloved
Double Dragon
Gunmen
Wolf
Black Beauty
The Santa Clause
The Cowboy Way
Intersection
Miracle on 34th Street
Exit to Eden
Lassie
The Jungle Book
The Client
Beverly Hills Cop III
Drop Zone
It Could Happen To You
The Puppet Masters
Junior
Muriel's Wedding
The Little Rascals
Angels in the Outfield
When a Man Loves a Woman
The Swan Princess
Baby's Day Out
Serial Mom
A Troll in Central Park
My Girl 2
PCU
Natural Born Killers
Dumb and Dumber
It's Pat

Legend: Onto the next Round! ( >/= .8) In the middle. I do NOT enjoy. (< / = .2)

"This page would look so much cooler if I were at the top" -- Pulp Fiction Movie poster, squatting here in it's own coolness protesting the movies loss.

Favoritest Movies of 1995

2011-02-04T05:27:00.000-06:00

We see twin movies in almost every year it seems, 1995 had Kevin Spacey interrogated by cops TWICE on this list, French Kiss, meet Forget Paris, and of course Rob Roy and Braveheart! But, there are SIX Cyberpunkish movies in this year; Russell Crowe became real, Keanu had an 80G storage capacity, and Sandra was able to begin boring me with everything she'll ever do in perpetuity, we got to see Angelina Jolie for the first time (no, I saw Cyborg 2!) and did I mention Strange Days? The only one to get to the next round was the anime.

I was the guy doing the layouts on our college paper that year, and there were two big benefits to that; an all expense paid trip to the collegiate journalists conference in Washington DC and demanding that I got to go to the press screening of Goldeneye. The sound was a bit screwed up, and when Brosnan fires that grapple gun at the start of the movie, it was physically shocking to everyone in attendance... just way too loud, just a few minutes later the sound was turned down to less than deafening, but I could have cared less. Bond was back, and back then a six year absence felt near enough to eternal.

But, the winner of the year. That movie poster hangs above my living room couch. It was one of, if not completely, my fathers favorite movie. We saw it at Ronnies 8 on a screen that we were making fun of for being only slightly larger than our 46" TV at home. I swear he didn't initially love it, but later he practically wore the VHS copy out. As for me, I still think Aaron Sorkin is the best dialogue writer in Hollywood; he has every other screenwriter asking each other how to spell erudite.

The American President
GoldenEye
Mallrats
Ghost in the Shell
The Usual Suspects
Ninja Scroll
Babe
Bad Boys
Se7en
Mortal Kombat
Nixon
The Quick and the Dead
Toy Story
Braveheart
Apollo 13
Judge Dredd
Grumpier Old Men
Die Hard with a Vengeance
The City of Lost Children
Desperado
Tank Girl
Batman Forever
Strange Days
Twelve Monkeys
The Brady Bunch Movie
Congo
Rob Roy
A Little Princess
Casper
Species
Assassins
The Indian in the Cupboard
Waterworld
Nine Months
The Prophecy
Sabrina
Outbreak
Circle of Friends
Shanghai Triad
Empire Records
Four Rooms
Clueless
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie
Crimson Tide
Hackers
Sense and Sensibility
Johnny Mnemonic
The Last Supper
Police Story 4: First Strike
Powder
First Knight
Jumanji
Nick of Time
Showgirls
Cutthroat Island
Screamers
Dracula: Dead and Loving It
Get Shorty
Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls
Virtuosity
Lord of Illusions
Othello
Dangerous Minds
Heat
Under Siege 2: Dark Territory
French Kiss
A Goofy Movie
Operation Dumbo Drop
The Bridges of Madison County
The Brothers McMullen
Billy Madison
Fair Game
Father of the Bride Part II
Something to Talk About
Forget Paris
Pocahontas
Sudden Death
Balto
Casino
Iron Eagle IV
Just Cause
While You Were Sleeping
Don Juan DeMarco
Money Train
To Die For
The Net
Murder in the First
Jury Duty
Never Talk to Strangers
Vampire in Brooklyn
The Scarlet Letter
Jade
Tommy Boy
Kids
The Basketball Diaries

Favoritest Movies of 1996

2011-01-26T00:05:00.000-06:00

What a waste of a year of movies. Take the bottom 60 titles on this list, I'll never watch any of them ever again. We will not see a year this bad until 2010, but being fair 1996 is worse. As I continue this trip back, I hope I don't come across another year that stinks as badly. BUT, maybe just maybe its the number of movies I saw. 106! That's the third highest count on my list following 1990 at 109 and 1994 at 112 movies seen. So... maybe just maybe the more movies one sees the more crap they see. That's a shame. I was really hoping the the more you saw, the more likely you are to find hidden nuggets to treasure and enjoy... Well, maybe there were... where's my optimists hat? Oh, here it is covered in dust caked on by age. Well look at you two...

There were two gems that I probably would not have seen at the time If I only saw the popular movies to see. The Phantom is one of the worst marketed... screw the rhetoric here, the poster says "SLAM EVIL" I have no idea what that means, but it feels lame to me. It looks like it's trying to appeal to eight year olds, not real ones, but the tertiary characters on Leave it to Beaver. I know we're a year before South Park here, but how could you not know that that poster and everything about the movie looks lame to... humans. Everywhere, everywhen. But, The Phantom is a good movie. It's a fun to watch, Indiana Jones movie but the guy is in a purple body suit. Best of all, on Blu-Ray this movie looks good, really really good. To me this is the gold standard for how an old catalog title should be treated. I've read some complaints about the video quality, but lets put things into perspective. The Phantom is a BD from Lionsgate of a 1996 movie that grossed 17 million dollars. And it looks almost brand new. If an old popcorn flick that's life was somewhere between flop and bomb can look this nice; no movie you care about has any excuse. The other nugget, was the first movie I saw by Peter Jackson. It's fun too, but Peter Jackson's done better. On to the list.

Independence Day
Star Trek: First Contact
The Rock
Hamlet
The Phantom
Mars Attacks!
The English Patient
Mission: Impossible
My Fellow Americans
Jerry Maguire
From Dusk Till Dawn
Muppet Treasure Island
Dragonheart
Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie
The Frighteners
Space Jam
Romeo + Juliet
Scream
The Long Kiss Goodnight
The Truth About Cats & Dogs
Escape from L.A., aka John Carpenter's Escape from L.A.
Ransom
Up Close & Personal
The Arrival
That Thing You Do!
The Ghost and the Darkness
Broken Arrow
Rumble in the Bronx
Swingers
Spy Hard
Tin Cup
Police Story 4: First Strike
Executive Decision
Jingle All the Way
A Time to Kill
Twister
Last Man Standing
The Craft
Bound
The People vs. Larry Flynt
Courage Under Fire
Happy Gilmore
Evita
Eraser
Multiplicity
Beautiful Girls
101 Dalmatians
The First Wives Club
The Crow: City of Angels
The Nutty Professor
Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood
Maximum Risk
Looking for Richard
Mulholland Falls
Dear God
Bed of Roses
Barb Wire
Daylight
Flipper
Phenomenon
Chain Reaction
Michael Collins
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
One Fine Day
Down Periscope
The Island of Dr. Moreau
Fargo
In Love and War
Michael
Dunston Checks In
Mary Reilly
Alaska
Bulletproof
Striptease
The Mirror Has Two Faces
Larger than Life
Extreme Measures
Ghosts of Mississippi
Sgt. Bilko
City Hall
She's the One
Mother
The Portrait of a Lady
The Adventures of Pinocchio
All Dogs Go to Heaven 2
Sleepers
The Preacher's Wife
The Associate
Diabolique
Jack
Eddie
Mr. Wrong
Heaven's Prisoners
Kingpin
Beavis and Butt-Head Do America
Kazaam
The Crucible
The Fan
The Pillow Book
Thinner
The Stupids
Black Sheep
Joe's Apartment
Fear
The Cable Guy
Big Bully

#1 movie buff on GetGlue

2011-01-21T08:53:00.000-06:00

All glory (if you can call it that) is fleeting. But this morning, I saw that I'm GetGlue's top ranking movie buff. probably won't be tommorow, and I'm still not sure what the point of the freaking site is. But it's nice to get some... I've no idea what.

Favoritest Movies of 1997

2011-01-17T18:50:00.000-06:00

Creating these lists is like taking a personality test. We know who we are, but we can still learn from self examination. To that end, I was a little shocked when I sorted the results, and Contact came away on top. I saw Titanic 17 times in the theater, no exageration. My father and I would go to the movies every week in these years of the nineties and for the end of 97 and first few months of 1998 it was Titanic. I remember us standing, looking at the movies at the box office of Des Peres 14, probably in February of '98, and couldn't see a reason to not see Titanic. Eventually, my father and I one weekend, Titanic was on such a small screen, and was so scratchy and dirty it just couldn't hit VHS soon enough. Thinking back on a thought that honestly didn't occur to me the whole time looking at all of these movies; I didn't buy Titanic on Laser Disc, I did buy Contact.

This might be a good moment to say that These are not "best" lists. I'm going to be making a page explaining how these lists are made, but the simple explanation is I look at two titles, and ask myself which one do I [presently] enjoy more? With such a question there's no way to filter out guilty pleasures. 1997 required making 4,278 title to title comparisons. Spice World came to a rank of .7258 compared to Good Will Hunting getting a .6398. I know Spice World isn't "good", it's pop stars running around in mini skirts. I just don't know a definition of 'good'. I think "good" when syntactically modifying the noun 'movie' means that is of a quality approaching Oscar worthiness. I'll contemplate that further the next time we take the family to an Annie Hall Celebration with the kids doing some Diane Keaton cosplay, or when I stand in front of the Wii to play Lego Chariots of Fire.

Here's the list...

Contact
Titanic
The Lost World: Jurassic Park
Starship Troopers
The Devil's Advocate
Tomorrow Never Dies
The Fifth Element
Gattaca
Evangelion: Death and Rebirth
The Saint
L.A. Confidential
Men in Black
Hercules
Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery
Grosse Pointe Blank
Air Force One
MouseHunt
Cube
Clockwatchers
Private Parts
Out to Sea
The Game
Perfect Blue
Kull the Conqueror
A Life Less Ordinary
Spice World
Boogie Nights
Fools Rush In
Face/Off
Flubber
Wag the Dog
Good Will Hunting
The End of Evangelion
Romy and Michele's High School Reunion
Scream 2
Absolute Power
The Postman
In & Out
Event Horizon
Alien Resurrection
George of the Jungle
Murder at 1600
Chasing Amy
Jackie Brown
Addicted to Love
Mortal Kombat: Annihilation
Dante's Peak
Anaconda
As Good as It Gets
Mimic
The Full Monty
Picture Perfect
Seven Years in Tibet
Volcano
My Best Friend's Wedding
Spawn
The Relic
Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie
Conspiracy Theory
Liar Liar
Batman & Robin
The Edge
Fierce Creatures
Warriors of Virtue
Anastasia
Con Air
I Know What You Did Last Summer
Selena
Kundun
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
The Peacemaker
Home Alone 3
The Jackal
Breakdown
Donnie Brasco
Red Corner
Kiss the Girls
Turbulence
Metro
U Turn
Vegas Vacation
Playing God
Speed 2: Cruise Control
The Devil's Own
Bean
The Apostle
Steel
Air Bud
Good Burger
City of Industry
Gone Fishin'
One Night Stand
Fathers' Day

Special Honorable Mention:

Picture Perfect! At 52nd on my list, this movie did something for me I will eternally be grateful for. On the soundtrack, was the song "Say What You Want" by Texas. I enjoyed the song quite a bit, so I bought the album, not the movie soundtrack, but Texas White on Blonde.

If I were to do these lists for musical album, it just might win... yeah, over Achtung Baby (doubtful there...) or more definitely The Joshua Tree. Thank you for my (probably) 2nd favorite album of all time.*

Favoritest Movies of 2010 (So far!)

2010-12-31T05:01:00.000-06:00

My wife didn't think much of Tron. Okay, she derided it in it's entirety. Why would I be fond of a sequel that was so derivative of the original, that it was little more than an almost an exact rehash of the original plus jets?
Here is the plot outlines of both movies: Spoilers in italics

Our protagonist sneaks into a place in the middle of the night and sits in front of a laser and goes into the computer world. He is given a disc, and put into the games. The first game his opponent falls through the floor, subsequently this is followed by a Light Cycle scene which ends with going off the grid. Here we regroup, consume sustenance, and share exposition establishing on how to resolve the plot. We'll wind up on a vessel sailing on a beam of light, towards a larger perpendicular beam of light, through canyons and encounter the enemy battleship. There will be a final confrontation of good and bad guys, a big explosion and traveling home up that big beam of light to a sunny and happy ending.

This describes both Tron movies. If I deleted a few dozen words, it'd be almost every Final Fantasy game from the '80's and '90's. The less words you use to describe any story the more it sounds like another.

Tron is about a guy needing... a piece of paper. While for the whole time I've known my friend Matt, a fellow fan of the original movie we've used "Greetings program!" as a greeting. Yes, we are huge dorks. But, in all the times I've ever been looking for a piece of paper, I've never felt or even thought of Flynn.

Tron Legacy is a father and son movie. "You're messing with my Zen thing man." No movie, that I've ever seen, has put all the internal contradictions of being a parent into one line so efficiently just so it can get to megalomaniacs trying to do their Ming the Merciless impersonations, only to have the heroes escape (with a shot riffing the departure in Jaws) and do a cover rendition of the Falcon escaping the Death Star; kicked off with the female character saying "Here they come!"

If a movie is going to be a hack rip off, it tries to hide it more. This movie was nostalgia squared, cubed... Hell, nostalgia ad infinitum! When I look at my kids, I see little derivative copies of us. And this movie, better than any other of these ill thought out movies, born out of our childhoods, gave us (nerds at least) one to share with our kids. I love that my kids love the Transformers movies, I loved Transformers and still do. But I look at these movies of the past few years, and while the Blu-rays of them make my TV look prettier, and remind my how loud my sound system can get... I'd rather watch Springer and Arcee push that launcher into place against Devastator. Well, maybe Dark of the Moon will top the post this time next year! This year was about Tron... other than that, it was kind of meh.

Now, there are a number of movies I'm really looking forward to seeing that I haven't yet; The Social Network, Tangled, Megamind, The Other Guys and plenty more.

Tron: Legacy
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I
Superman/Batman: Apocalypse
Salt
Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths
Toy Story 3
Iron Man 2
The Sorcerer's Apprentice
Inception
Kick-Ass
Hot Tub Time Machine
The A-Team
Despicable Me
Batman: Under The Red Hood
Predators
Planet Hulk
Clash of the Titans
The Special Relationship
Killers
Knight and Day
Sherlock Holmes (Asylum)
True Grit
The Spy Next Door
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
Valentine's Day
The Wolfman
Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief
The Last Airbender
Resident Evil: Afterlife
Skyline
Océans
The Losers
Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore
Centurion
The Karate Kid
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
Dante's Inferno
How to Train Your Dragon
The Expendables
Letters to Juliet
Jonah Hex
Paranormal Activity
Date Night
Alice in Wonderland
Furry Vengeance
Diary of a Wimpy Kid
Cop Out
The Twilight Saga: Eclipse
Vampires Suck
When in Rome
The Runaways
Repo Men
Dinoshark
The Bounty Hunter
The Crazies
Grown Ups
Legion
Tooth Fairy
Altitude
Sex and the City 2
A Nightmare on Elm Street
The Book of Eli
Robin Hood
Shutter Island
Black Swan
Dear John

Oh heck, one more nice visual never hurt anyone...

Favoritest Movies of 1998

2010-12-29T04:07:00.155-06:00

My father and I used to go to a movie every weekend. I remember, having just seen Shakespeare in Love at the AMC in Crestwood Mall (The mall is defunct, but the movie theater is still there, and pretty much unchanged since the year I'm writing about) and we were walking to The Pasta House to have dinner, debating which movie would be more deserving of an Oscar win, Saving Private Ryan or Love. But, I find out, my father really couldn't care all that much about William Shakespeare. However, on January 17th, 1980, my father gave me...

Now, I only know the date because he wrote it inside the book, with no other words except "For Paul" and "From Dad". This book comes up in our post movie conversation since, he gave me such a volume when I'm only four yours old. He replies that it seemed like the type of thing I would like.


I read every word.

Only in hindsight is it apparent that my father, for all of our problems did occasionally pay attention. Heck, by the time I was six, I was fairly regularly afforded copies of Starlog magazine. As I do these lists, I can't hide my affection for genre films, they're to me, the reason for movies. I'd rather see feats of, and playgrounds for the imagination than an engaging portrayal of typical peoples doing typical things, but I don't think anyone likes boring movies.

TIE: Shakespeare in Love
TIE: Mulan
Armageddon
The Man in the Iron Mask
Meet Joe Black
Saving Private Ryan
The Prince of Egypt
Star Trek: Insurrection
Dark City
Soldier
Lethal Weapon 4
The Big Lebowski
Lost in Space
Rush Hour
The Mask of Zorro
Dangerous Beauty
The Truman Show
Great Expectations
City of Angels
The Avengers
What Dreams May Come
Mighty Joe Young
There's Something About Mary
Godzilla
Wild Things
Deep Impact
Vampires
Sliding Doors
The Big Hit
Blade
The X-Files
Six Days Seven Nights
Elizabeth
Bulworth
Small Soldiers
Fallen
Everest
The Faculty
The Rugrats Movie
A Bug's Life
Antz
Primary Colors
Les Miserables
Deep Rising
Phantoms
Tarzan and the Lost City
A Civil Action
Pleasantville
Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
Ring (Ringu)
The Negotiator
Rounders
A Perfect Murder
Enemy of the State
Can't Hardly Wait
The Newton Boys
Sphere
Out of Sight
You've Got Mail
Species II
Urban Legend
The Wedding Singer
Practical Magic
Dr. Dolittle
Ronin
The Object of My Affection
Psycho
Babe: Pig in the City
Ever After
Krippendorf's Tribe
Hard Rain
The Horse Whisperer
Stepmom
Knock Off
The Waterboy
I Still Know What You Did Last Summer
Blues Brothers 2000
The Siege
The Last Days of Disco
BASEketball
Madeline
Snake Eyes
Major League: Back to the Minors
Mercury Rising
Gods and Monsters
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
A Night at the Roxbury
The Replacement Killers
Bride of Chucky
54
Jack Frost
Apt Pupil
U.S. Marshals
Rushmore
My Giant
Pi

Looking back, I remember thinking 1999 was such a good year for movies. After doing 1999's list, I was wondering why I felt that way at the time. Looking over 1998, it could have been a lot better of a year. Next back, 1997...

Titanic vs Contact vs Starship Troopers!

and 91 other movies...

Wow, that reads cheesy.

Favoritest Movies of 1999

2010-12-14T20:03:00.000-06:00

We used to make Top 5 or Top 10 lists talking about the "Best" movies of the year. I can't figure out what "Best" means anymore. I've heard to many critics say things along the line of 'while not my favorite, it's one of the best..." Well, if it wasn't your favorite, it must have done something wrong. And then I see the poster above. I was not a foregone conclusion that this would be my favorite movie of 1999. But in every match up, it would win or split points with its competition. I saw it 21 times in the theater. I'd pop it in the VCR every Sunday when I worked at Comics Universe. For all of its flaws, it's still got a bit of that Star Wars magic: rewatchability. A tiny bit. Okay the 1983, 1980, and 1977 lists are a race for second place at this point.

Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
Princess Mononoke
Galaxy Quest
The Thomas Crown Affair
The Mummy
Bicentennial Man
The Matrix
Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me
Office Space
The Iron Giant
Pokemon: The First Movie
Sleepy Hollow
Tarzan
The Thirteenth Floor
Fight Club
Deep Blue Sea
The 13th Warrior
Entrapment
She's All That
The World Is Not Enough
Muppets From Space
Pushing Tin
The Boondock Saints
Godzilla 2000: Millennium
Cruel Intentions
South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut
Toy Story 2
The Insider
October Sky
Payback
Three Kings
The Talented Mr. Ripley
My Favorite Martian
The Muse
Run Lola Run
Election
The Green Mile
The General's Daughter
Trekkies
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Lake Placid
Liberty Heights
Mystery, Alaska
Mystery Men
Runaway Bride
The Haunting
Fantasia 2000
Three To Tango
Eyes Wide Shut
Notting Hill
Wing Commander
Stuart Little
Virus
Wild Wild West
American Pie
Analyze This
Dogma
Anna and the King
American Beauty
The Corruptor
The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc
Blast from the Past
Inspector Gadget
End Of Days
Any Given Sunday
Magnolia
Big Daddy
Stigmata
Anywhere But Here
The Astronaut's Wife
Girl, Interrupted
The Mod Squad
The Omega Code
Being John Malkovich
The Sixth Sense
Go
Black Mask
House on Haunted Hill
Boys Don't Cry
Jawbreaker
Romance
Brokedown Palace
Man on the Moon
Open Your Eyes
The Blair Witch Project
8MM
Baby Geniuses

Anticipation of Movies in 2011

2010-12-03T03:37:00.001-06:00

As I do with my Favoritest movies of the year, I decided to rank; "How much am I looking forward to each of these movies?" Or, asking; which movie am I looking forward to more? And the numbers rolled out thusly...

Cowboys & Aliens	100%
Harry Potter and...	94%
Thor	85%
Green Lantern	84%
Transformers: Dark...	84%
Captain America:...	84%
Rise of the Apes	81%
Sherlock Holmes 2	79%
The Muppets	77%
Pirates of the...	73%
Sucker Punch	66%
X-Men: First Class	66%
Conan	63%
Immortals	61%
Super 8	60%
Rango	47%
Fright Night	42%
The Three Musketeers	37%
The Thing	37%
Kung Fu Panda 2	37%
Priest	35%
Cars 2	35%
Battle: Los Angeles	34%
Mars Needs Moms!	29%
The Green Hornet	24%
The Twilight Saga:...	23%
The Adjustment Bureau	21%
I Am Number Four	15%
Red Riding Hood	13%
Diary of a Wimpy...	6%
The Dark Fields	5%
The Eagle	3%

Favoritest 40 Movies of the '0 Decade!!!

2010-04-23T15:15:00.005-05:00

It bows to no one (Yet...). The first "My favorite movies ever" list, where I had listed 250 movies I really liked off the top of my head, and figured this out on a large paper graph at the kitchen table, in pencil... Fellowship of the ring was a movie of special notice. Here, it strides a decade like no other movie. Avatar and Wall-E are movies that gave me the kind of movies I've always wanted to see. I've always been a Sci-Fi guy, but, before Fellowship, I wouldn't really like calling Star Wars Sci-Fantasy. After the Mines of Moria, I would allow myself to enjoy fantasy without the name Jim Henson somehow attached to it.

Second place was just a "Nooooooo" out of first.

Eleven of the top forty are based on comic books, and one filmmaker made the top 40 with every outing of the decade... Okay, more than one did, but I was thinking of someone who's made more than one movie that decade.

The decade is also a different field of comparison than the individual year is, so a movie like Black Pearl may come out stronger to pull ahead than Master and Commander does, when faced with movies like Iron Man and Minority Report.

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
WALL-E
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
Avatar
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Star Trek
Watchmen
X2: X-Men United
Transformers
Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones
Thirteen Days
"300
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Casino Royale
The Incredibles
The Man From Earth
Spider-Man 2
Minority Report
Gladiator
Howl's Moving Castle
Spirited Away
Superman Returns
Iron Man
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
Stardust
Star Wars: The Clone Wars
Hellboy II: The Golden Army
Serenity
Titan A.E.
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
Spider-Man
Ponyo
Ah! My Goddess: The Movie
The Chronicles of Riddick
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
Die Another Day
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
Hellboy

How do movies get to advance to the All-time list? Don't know yet. Got other decades to do. Time to go back to the '90's!!!

Favoritest Movies of 2009

2010-04-16T17:38:00.003-05:00

I almost forgot I had this blog thing here. I don't twitter, lurk on message boards, and check Facebook maybe once a month. Maybe. Actually I think I forgot to this month. Maybe there's a way to tie my Blogger blog to Facebook. I'll see if there is when I care. At some point, this blog became a refuse dump for my favorite movies lists...

The Goal; Determine my hundred or so favorite movies of all time, but by evaluating every movie I've ever seen. This is done year by year, then decade by decade... you know what, that'll make a post in and of itself.

As for 2009, It was a good year considering that all the good movies were really from other years thanks to the writers strike awhile back, so here's the list!

Avatar
Star Trek
Watchmen
Sherlock Holmes
Monsters vs. Aliens
Green Lantern: First Flight
G.I. Joe The Rise of Cobra
Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince
Angels and Demons
Inglorius Basterds
Terminator Salvation
2012
Night at the Museum 2 Battle of the Smitshonian
Astro Boy
Underworld: Rise of the Lycans
Up
Pandorum
Land of the Lost
Earth
Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs
Battle For Terra
Wonder Woman
Dragonball Evolution
The Men Who Stare at Goats
The Twilight Saga: New Moon
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
The Girlfriend Experience
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
Gamer
Princess of Mars
Knowing
District 9
Race to Witch Mountain
Echelon Conspiracy
Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
Caprica
Planet 51
Coraline
State of Play
The Hangover
"9
Delgo
Aliens in the Attic
The Final Destination
Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li
Whiteout
Shorts
G-Force
Space Buddies
Dance Flick
Year One
Paul Blart: Mall Cop
Bride Wars
The Princess and the Frog
Adventureland

Wy O wy SyFy ?

2009-03-16T14:34:00.002-05:00

I'm sorry, but I can't stand it.

The Sci-Fi Channel is changing their name to SyFy.

So, I wrote Sci-Fi channel in regards to their name change...

==============================================================
Hy! Longtyme vyewer, fyrst tyme complayner.

I remember pinning a flyer, of an alien watching TV with a dog, to my wall almost 19 years ago, anxious, eager and psyched about the promise and prospect of the very idea of a network dedicated to Science Fiction. I realize that across almost every bit of the basic cable landscape, stations have sacrificed their specialized uniquity in effort to broaden their audience. For some time now, it has been clear to fans, that Sci-Fi wants to become just another TNT, USA, G4, SPIKE, MTV, TBS, etc. We understand that programming like Galactica is much more expensive than Soth Park and The Daily Show to produce, hence why Comedy Central is one of the few stalwart specialty stations left.

Good luck becoming generic, but, this isn't false posturing of we'll stop watching the network, but this is the truth...

As you become generic, and programming becomes more and more on-demand, I won't need, or want SyFy. I'll have Netflix.

Thank you, and thank you for have been a wonderful network.

You're already missed.

===========================================================================

I had more to say, but it's much better said, when their own NEWS SITE runs this:

Forrest J. Ackerman has a message for you from beyond the grave

Ouch, and that kick to the groin was from YOURSELF! We've NOTHING more to say.

Once again, Thanks Forry!

Forry Farewell
by dreadcentral

Movie: Watchmen

2009-03-06T16:59:00.007-06:00

I was aware of Watchmen as it was coming out, and was curious, but I didn't read it. I'd just gotten into comics heavily that year, so I read it about a year or so later, so still It was 20 years ago. I've reread it once or twice, which, says a LOT, and I liked it, a lot, maybe not Dark Knight Returns, but I don't have a favorite Graphic Novel. I just don't. There's really not a lot of them. I love comics as much as movies, but comics don't come with "Beginning, Middle, End." all that often. So, Dark Knight, Watchmen, Kingdom Come, Marvels, V for Vendetta, Crisis on Infinite Earth, the Dark Phoenix Saga... Well, the Dark Phoenix was part of an ongoing series... I would have loved LOVED to see that one on the big screen, but NOOOOOOoooooooooooooo. Oh well maybe someday. Thinking of Dark Phoenix, and Crisis, especially Crisis... Watchmen was unfilmable? Crisis is much worse, if Unfilmable means that it'd cost a billion dollars to shoot. Here, here's what Crisis would look like as a movie...
That'd cost a couple bucks. Really, Watchmen should shame DC/WB into making a Justice League movie, I'd imagine that at least some exec looks at Watchmen, and sees that if a 3 hr R-rated movie with characters outside the pop-culture mainstream can do a 55 mil opening, then a JLA movie is like printing money. The problem is they'd probably screw it up. JLA would need to be as good of a movie as Watchmen. Oh, yea, I'm blogging about Watchmen.
I can't get it out of my head, I might have a greater liking of Bob Dylan than I did a week ago. I think, think, I may like the movie more than the Graphic Novel.
Yea.
Yea, I do.
This is up there with Blade Runner, and The Hunt For Red October. I hope. Seriously hope this isn't my favorite movie of the year, but it's Watchmen's year now. The rest of the year could be shit, and it'll be fantastic, I love this thing that much. This thing is now the best/greatest Super-hero movie ever made. Thank you for being the complete opposite of Dark Knight. But, the Dark Knight wasn't a comic book movie, not like Watchmen... Watchmen one of few comic-book movies to be like this. Dark Knight, like most comic book movies that we've lapped up are more like Street Fighter: Legend of Chun Li than they are Watchmen. Oh, sorry, forgot to blog about Street Fighter....

Movie: Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li.
This movie cements the Jean Claude Van Dame version as a classic of modern cinema. I swear this was some, unproduced generic action flick script, and they opened it up in Final Draft, named the female lead Chun-Li, named the villian Bison, and dropped in a description of one bounty hunter dressing like Vega oh, and named Michael Clarke Duncan Balrog.

I'll admit most comic book born adaptions have given more effort than this piece.

Favoritest Movies of 2000

2009-01-12T07:05:00.004-06:00

While doing the spreadsheet for this year, I was sure Gladiator might win the top slot, I couldn't tell. I like a lot of these movies for very different reasons. Heck, at one point I was wondering just how high Rocky and Bullwinkle were going to be. Wouldn't they look odd at the top spot. But, no this works. I've actually rewatched Thirteen Days more than Gladiator. While I'm not fond of how Kevin Costner's character feels the need to be the chorus of the obvious, a narrator with legs walking through the plot, and you could argue that the movie would be better without his character at all. None of that has anything to do with Costner either, he's just not playing John or Robert. For faults with the movie, it's THE "Major Motion Picture" of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Battlefield Earth isn't red either. I realised while doing the list, I like this movie in a sense. It's not good. It's the ultimate of bad, the textbook case, but, it's fun to make fun of. Battlefield Earth is so bad, it's a shared crappiness, a benchmark, and a collective whipping boy.

The Dune movie here, is the Sci-Fi mini-series. I'm still wrestleing with how TV movies and straight to DVD play out in this. the majority of these movies I see on DVD and not in the theater. While I did see 7 of the top 10 here theatrically, for instance, the Anime titles rarely even come out in a theater in St. Louis. So, later years may be adjusted with the animated Dr. Strange, Iron Man and Superman Doomsday movies. Crap, Stitch the movie might wrangle to vie for the all time list!

Thirteen Days
Gladiator
Ah! My Goddess: The Movie
X-Men
Titan A.E.
The Road to El Dorado
Finding Forrester
Frank Herbert's Dune
Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle
Godzilla vs. Megaguirus
Pitch Black
What Women Want
Shanghai Noon
Scream 3
Escaflowne: The Movie
Pokemon The Movie 2000
Meet the Parents
Quills
The Perfect Storm
Pollock
Final Destination
Unbreakable
Dungeons & Dragons
U-571
Frequency
Almost Famous
The Whole Nine Yards
The Art of War
Shaft (2000)
Charlie's Angels
High Fidelity
Chicken Run
The Patriot
Gone in 60 Seconds
Coyote Ugly
Dinosaur (Walt Disney)
Bedazzled
The Next Best Thing
Erin Brockovich
Rugrats in Paris: The Movie
How the Grinch Stole Christmas!
Digimon: The Movie
Boiler Room
Mission: Impossible II
Snatch
The Million Dollar Hotel
Traffic
The Family Man
Battlefield Earth
Scary Movie
The Emperor's New Groove
Return to Me
Cast Away
Nurse Betty
Requiem for a Dream
American Psycho
Me, Myself, and Irene
What Lies Beneath
Cruel Intentions 2

One small factor that may have helped Thirteen Days slip by Gladiator. I this poster hanging over my DVD collection.

Favoritest Movies of 2001

2009-01-11T04:43:00.010-06:00

If I was only listing first place, I wouldn't have even needed to do a spreadsheet for this year. Some movies, in their own year, are an automatic 100th percentile. Like Star Wars for '77 and Jaws in '75, 2001 ended with a movie that says "You shall not pass!". Coming in 62nd place is a movie my friends and I walked out of. I don't walk out of movies. It was the first and only (willingly Reel breakages don't count). Problem is, the list isn't 62 movies long, it's 66.

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
Atlantis: The Lost Empire
Spirited Away
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
The Mummy Returns
Monsters, Inc.
Iron Monkey
Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back
Cowboy Bebop: Knockin' on Heavens Door
The Affair of the Necklace
Rush Hour 2
Just Visiting
Swordfish
Jurassic Park III
The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra
Spy Kids
Kate & Leopold
Spy Game
Shaolin Soccer
A.I. Artificial Intelligence
Amélie
The One
Moulin Rouge!
Evolution
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
Josie and the Pussycats
Black Hawk Down
From Hell
Cats & Dogs
Planet of the Apes
Shrek
Bandits
Pokémon 3: The Movie
A Beautiful Mind
Rat Race
Super Troopers
Ocean's Eleven starring George Clooney
K-PAX
Donnie Darko
Hannibal
Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
Pearl Harbor
Driven
Metropolis
The Tailor of Panama
A Knight's Tale
Legally Blonde
Ghosts of Mars
Monkeybone
Behind Enemy Lines
Blow
Osmosis Jones
The Royal Tenenbaums
Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius
The Fast and the Furious
Zoolander
CQ
Left Behind: The Movie
Scary Movie 2
The Mexican
3000 Miles to Graceland
Memento
Rock Star
Vanilla Sky
Shallow Hal

Redboxed: Mamma Mia and Babylon A.D.

2009-01-09T14:06:00.001-06:00

I rented. We watched. I apologized to my family. I still have great affection for Vin Deisel and Abba. No real, lasting harm done.

(Holly)Wooden Logos: G.I. Joe

2009-01-08T03:51:00.001-06:00

Why, why in James T. Kirk's name would you spend money, time, meetings and everything else to develop this?

Instead of using this.

The top one means shit to me. It's a cow-pie, it's some generic store-brand knock of... it's a toy from the dollar store!

The bottom one says "Yo Joe!" So Paramount, if you're not Scrooge McDucking your way through the piles of Joe Money you may feel is due you come August. This is going to be one of the reasons why.

But, before you blame Paramount;

This;

Gets upgraded to this;

Favoritest Movies of 2002

2009-01-05T02:24:00.005-06:00

Too many four way ties are going to make me look really indecisive. 2002 is ruled by Weakness and the words; "In Space"

Weakness:
The (in some ways) weaker installments of the two mega trilogies, allows for a tie with the LAST good Disney movie ever. Weaker than Atlantis in many respects, the pair was a non-musical sci-fi stride that I wished had some more gas in it. If you'd asked me in '02, it maybe MAYBE would have made the top 10 that year. Hell, I didn't even want to see it in the theater. I saw Treasure Planet, 2 years later. I know there's technically a couple Disney flick after that before they go CG, but I'll take this one as the end of the line. As for Minority Report, Damn, I remember thinking the film might never happen, when they were trying to squeeze Matt Damon into it, I think as the character that Colin Farell plays, it's an awesome, but weaker Blade Runner. A WEAK Blade Runner, can still kick your ass!
As for "In Space"... Could a Jason movie ever score so high without the words "In Space" in the plot description?

TIE: Minority Report
TIE: Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones
TIE: The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
TIE: Treasure Planet
Die Another Day
Lilo & Stitch
Spider-Man
Kung Pow: Enter the Fist
Millennium Actress
Eight Legged Freaks
Jason X
Catch Me If You Can
Austin Powers in Goldmember
The Count of Monte Cristo
XXX
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Maid in Manhattan
Hero (Jet Li)
The Time Machine
Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla
Ghost Ship
Reign of Fire
Scooby-Doo
Gangs of New York
Spy Kids 2: Island Of Lost Dreams
The Scorpion King
My Big Fat Greek Wedding
Pokemon 4Ever
Ice Age
The Tuxedo
Bubba Ho-tep
Dragonfly
Road to Perdition
Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever
Men in Black II
Resident Evil
Auto Focus
K-19: The Widowmaker
Panic Room
Solaris
The Powerpuff Girls Movie
Blade II
The Sum of All Fears
The Mothman Prophecies
Star Trek Nemesis
The Ring
8 Mile
Red Dragon
Better Luck Tomorrow
Chicago
Signs
The Master of Disguise
Bowling for Columbine*
Death to Smoochy

*Where these Micheal Moore movies have been landing, are in no way a political statement, and I'm not going to comment on that. They're soooo low because; while I'm sure at least a handful, if not more, guys have gotten laid for having the DVD of a Micheal Moore movie sitting on their shelf, I'm equally sure that no one has ever, oh, said, "Hey, I hate to cut this short but, I was really looking forward to going home, kicking back and watching Bowling for Columbine! It's my Wednesday afternoon thing, I like to squeeze it in before Wheel comes on!" That's NEVER been said.

Best Lists are BS! My Favoritest Flicks of 2008 (So Far!)

2008-12-31T16:09:00.003-06:00

Ah-hem, Now on to my "BEST" of the year Bullshit! So I was just reading Massawyrm's "Best of 2008" List on AICN. And the BEST movie of the year on his list is Frost/ Nixon. And that does look to be a kick ass movie, and I can't wait to see it. But... Unlike all these other BEST of whatever year lists, Massawyrm mentions, that his favorite movie of the year is Kung-Fu Panda! Because its fun. Wait, you think Wall-E and Dark Knight and Slumdog millionare are better movies than a movie you like MORE? I suspect all these other listeers are doing the same thing. Why would your favorite movie not be the best one of the year. If Frost-Nixon, is BETTER than Kung-Fu Panda, why don't you enjoy it more? Now, I know we all enjoy some movies that are complete piles of crap. One friend of mine KNOWS Little Nicky is a pile of Crap, and knows that to HIM, it's good! A Best list is from the author's point of view. Such as with my list below, I feel Mongol is a BETTER movie than Wanted, but not by much, I know I like Wanted a little more than Mongol, and Wanted did end up with a higher score than Mongol. Let me try to boil this down some.... If you don't LIKE a movie, it won't make your BEST list. If you LOVE a movie you're likely to argue that it's the best anyway! I do think 2008 is a "One Droid to Rule them all." kind of year. Wall-E is the BEST movie of the year to me, it's also my favorite of the year. Generally you're going to like what you think is good, and not like what you think is bad... Aw Fuck, just pop in the Criterion Armageddon DVD and listen to Ben Affleck go on about "Best"... So, as of 2008, so far, I still need to see Momma Mia, and Eagle Eye, the Best Picture nomoniee's, then I need to HATE any movie on that list Not ending in a hyphenated "E". Just kidding. I grew out of that... I think. Kinda. I broke down in 2008 and finnially watched Annie Hall. I liked it. It's good. But it wasn't better than Star Wars. When I redo my all time list, Wall-E may even threaten Colossus: The Forbin Project. But I've yet to see a movie that beats The Original Trilogy.

But, this is just '08, and with all the movies I've yet to see, I am sure of one thing, the number one slot safely belongs to the droid that gives me bits of;

I am Legend: He's the Last man on Earth...
Fight Club: He's a lone iconoclast causing people to question their day to day monotony
Titanic: two young lovers on the best ship in the world.
Star Wars / Droids with Ben Burtian personality!
Silent Running: The droid design
2001 /2010 / Colossus / Macross Plus: Auto, welcom to the pantheon. Dr. Charles Forbin is in the chamber of Hell reserved for Dr. Frankenstein and his ilk since Colossus didn't have an off switch.
Phantom of the Opera: Well not in theme, but you do open with Michael Crawford singing!

You're probably a nice number more, you little scamp, so here's your list, it should be your year, next year belongs to a different set of robots... or Captain Kirk, and if not either, I'm going to be pissed. Oh, only one red title so far... why? My hate for Semi-pro is so far from the special Hell deserved by the Happening, relatively, I like every movie but the Happening. Fuck there's the BEST of 2008 list EVERY MOVIE EXCEPT THE HAPPENING! You all get Oscars, leave M Night alone in his seat...

WALL-E
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Iron Man
Star Wars: The Clone Wars
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
Hellboy II: The Golden Army
Quantum of Solace
Kung Fu Panda
Wanted
Mongol
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
The Incredible Hulk
Hancock
Journey to the Center of the Earth
The Spiderwick Chronicles
Cloverfield
Get Smart
Speed Racer
The Day the Earth Stood Still
The Forbidden Kingdom
Tropic Thunder
The Dark Knight
Step Brothers
10,000 B.C.
W.
The Spirit
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
The Love Guru
Space Chimps
Jumper
Meet the Spartans
Semi-Pro
The Happening

The Happening did make $64.5 Million. Maybe he should get the Oscar. I may have bitched that Dark Knight was overrated, but it was good enough to make bank! The Happening should have had the same fate as Extreme Movie, or at most Delgo! It's people staring at TREES! For two FUCKING HOURS, People run from and react to TREES. We all know "Spielberg does the same thing!" No. He does give us bits of seeing a shark or Dinosaur or UFO or Tom Cruise, BUT We're sitting there, looking at those people thinking, YEA, I'd feel that way seeing a shark or dinosaur or UFO or Tom Cruise.... NOT TREES! I'd say M Night needs to be Go-4'd but, if we're so STUPID as to give 64 MILLION to his movies. We might deserve him...

Andrew Stanton makes a movie about robot on robot love, and his movie gets branded as a tree huggin liberal by Fox news, but the Happening, a movie from Fox, about Tree's killing humans in retilation for human development makes 64 million. Fuck.

Favoritest Movies of 2003

2008-12-31T04:18:00.008-06:00

I've seen so many movies from this year, Finding Nemo doesn't make the cut to advance to the All-time list, and Matrix revolutions isn't sitting at the bottom! Even Hulk and Matrix 2 manage to stay out of the red, In second place; with nineteen words and two colons between their titles, one compared to... scratch that one WAS Star Wars on water and the other is Star Trek. There must have been something about boats that year. What an awesome pair, and a number of other good movies too, but the TOP spot, was a movie that for some reason, didn't make the list of even having been seen when I first compiled it, then, I'm working on 2002 and I see Two Towers, and think, wait, No! If Two Towers even exists in 2002, then 2003 BELONGED to only one movie, and it bows to NO ONE.

Return of the King
TIE: Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
TIE: Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
X2: X-Men United
Underworld
Zatoichi (The Blind Swordsman)
Lost in Translation
The Corporation
Fog of War
Big Fish
Kill Bill Vol. 1
Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas
City of God
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
Basic
Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S.
Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life
The Core
Bulletproof Monk
Kaena: The Prophecy
Runaway Jury
Timeline
Frank Herbert's Children of Dune
Finding Nemo
Looney Tunes: Back in Action
Bend It Like Beckham
The Last Samurai
The Medallion
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
Freddy vs. Jason
Tokyo Godfathers
Peter Pan
Scary Movie 3
The Triplets of Belleville
Final Destination 2
Spy Kids 3D: Game Over
The Italian Job
Wonderful Days
Once Upon a Time in Mexico
The Recruit
Phone Booth
Shanghai Knights
The Haunted Mansion
Down with Love
S.W.A.T.
School of Rock
Daredevil
Mystic River
Matchstick Men
Shattered Glass
The Matrix Reloaded
Hulk
Seabiscuit
Anger Management
The Dreamers
Freaky Friday
Ju-on: The Grudge
Paycheck
28 Days Later
American Splendor
Bruce Almighty
Cold Mountain
Rugrats Go Wild!
Old School
Elf
Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle
The Matrix Revolutions
The Cooler
Bad Boys II
Gigli
Thirteen
The Cat in the Hat
Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd
Cabin Fever
Dreamcatcher

Movie: The Spirit

2008-12-30T14:38:00.004-06:00

Everything I was about to say just flew out of my ass when I went to grab a poster of this movie. Look at that thing! The red title and the color scheme are from "300"! The other posters look like Sin City. Impawards has the posters, look at all three movies. The Movie Blog was pretty hard on this movie's marketing, and it becomes only more and more clear as to why.

Anyway, I love Frank Miller, well his work and career at least, I only wish I knew him personally, I've never met him, but I've listened to him speak at conventions several times.

I almost don't want to put my thoughts down. Something did go wrong here, and I'm gonna buy the fattest special edition this movie has to offer to figure out why. Lets move on...

Frank, we've been reading that you're going to do Buck Rogers. Are you going to do Buck in this Sin-City look? Part of me says please don't, but I must admit, I'm curious to see it. It might be fresh. But please... editing... This thing was cut like a power point presentation, it felt like someone was holding my head while reading a book! Oh, and sound. Nothing technical was up to the visuals, and a movie can't just ride on one engine.

Please, hit Buck Rogers out of the park. We're rooting for you!

Movie: The Day the Earth Stood Still

2008-12-25T20:18:00.008-06:00

Okay, Peter Jackson remade King Kong, Tim Burton re-imagined Planet of the Apes and Someone monkeyed around to call this movie Day the Earth Stood Still.

Why is Keanu called Klatuu? He's a MUCH different character (More like Neo, only doing things with his superpowers instead of being a useless lump for two money and time wasting sequels) So, like a `90's Godzilla, he's Klatuu in name only.
Was Prof Barnhart relevant? He's in one scene.
And, I know I was one among many who hated the very idea of Gort being absent from the movie, but... Gort did not belong in this movie. His intro effects scream of being a late stage change in the production. If Klatuu's actual form would only frighten us, why does Gort have the meaty hands of a human, is that all the more alien you guys look? I doubt it. Lots of movies should sometimes cave to the fanboys, but now mistakes are being made by doing this (Gambit in Wolverine's origin of all places.).
I've been saying Gort this whole time, this pile calls him; G.O.R.T.... It stands for something... (behold my wikiknowledge) Genetically Organized Robotic Technology! Seriously, donate a buck a year to Wikipedia, they're a great resource for all this useless knowledge that keeps us from mass suicide do to culture-wide boredom.
BUT, In the theater, GORT in the silo thingy... Awesome visual. See I said something nice, but onto flaying this movie.
The President she works for must be the biggest dick and the dumbest loser in the universe. Aliens land, and he sends the Secretary of Defense. WAIT. You may be thinking, that was the same situation as in Transformers, but it isn't. In Transfomers a helicopter lands at a military base, shoots the hell out of the place, and then in short order goes after Air-Force One. That's safely in the hands of the SECDEF. But Klatuu, he asks to talk, even after having been shot. He ASKS TO TALK, and one of the dumbest character in the history of film says no. Way to kill the human race bitch!
She has the silliest line of the year. After multiple montages of mass evacuations and stock market crashes, the works. Kathy Bates says; "We don't want to start a panic."

I could go on and on... I'm bored bitching up this shit-fest, and I'll probably on my end of year list, say it's better than the Dark Knight... shit the commandments.. Sorry Dark Knight, can you forgive me Dark Knight? I'll say three Hail Rachel Dawes and pray the Utility Belt before I go to bed.

A few last thoughts on a movie I've been excessively hard on; If we throw out the names of the characters, it bears about as much resemblence to the original movie as E.T. did. The title does fit, and there are some good visuals of Gort.

I'd love this movie, but my wife thinks I hated it. I needed a Tums afterward. I really would love to be able to get past your wretched title, and the meaningless few minutes... minutes of crap and name service... that A) are the only things connecting it to the original, and B) made this movie crap, aside from Jr. I'm not going to bitch about Jaden Smith, he's 10 I'd rather bitch about what the adults were responsible for, like writing the most obnoxious kid since a problem child movie. I wanted Keanu to kick him off that little bridge. It was for the most part... kinda decent until I thought about it. This one just bugged me, especially with so many characters being really boneheaded, all the while it has some weird corporate assigned identity of being a remake of a movie that it's so barely connected to.

So, mostly I'm pissed at the wasted opportunity here. Remaking The Day the Earth Stood still could have been something very special. Whatever this movie was in the heads of the filmmakers, could have been too! But the amalgamation of those two ideas will befuddle me for a long time.

Redboxed: Step Brothers and Forgetting Sarah Marshall

2008-12-22T17:28:00.005-06:00

Why did I rent two comedies? Is Judd Apatow the producer of EVERY comedy in Hollywood, are they just the ones that get released... I just don't get it, but I'm not that into comedy movies. I can't watch them, usually EVER again since it's very rare that I'll find it funny again. Some things work for me, and I can laugh over and over, and some don't. Most movies don't. Especially romantic comedies. I usually HATE romantic comedy. They're almost always the exact same movie.
Anyway, I'm not trying to bash on comedy here, they're... movies I don't OWN. Renting and comedy were made for each other, they're too bland for a big screen experience, and not rewatchable enough to own. Lets see, Do I even own any comedy? Does Arsenic and Old Lace count? The H2G2 TV series, and Happy Tree Friends... Action comedies like Rush Hour don't count either. Anyway, I'm bored, rambling and don't even care.
Step-Brothers: It's a comedy, and I laughed a lot. Kudo's for the Wookie masks and Heavy Metal poster.
Forgetting Sarah Marshall: I LOVE YOU! You were terreffic, written by human beings, instead of assembled from 10 year old color coded pages and assembled by chimpanzees*.
Oh, since I saw that Cujofn knows of this blogs exestence... If you saw this movie, wasn't the main character Jace? Well, Jace with my affection for the Muppets. So, yea! Thatnk you people who made Sarah Marshall!

*Tangent: Not in either of these movies, but something I saw recently, I honestly forget what it was, it was on TV, and it wasn't old... It had wierd cell phone related dialouge. The guy had a little modern phone, but was talking about it like it was... special. Not iPhone special. No, the dialouge was in the vein of 'It's 1995 and I have a cell phone!' special. I know scripts sit around, many times for years, but that needed a re-write... BADLY.

Favoritest Movies of 2004

2008-12-18T19:41:00.007-06:00

2008 has been dominated by talk of Christian Bale as a winged force for good in a near perfect movie, and that perfectly describes a movie I do love so dearly. 2004 gives us the longest list yet... As usual, the blue means they're in the running for "Favorites of the decade", a semi final before favorite ever, and Red means 'I guess I just don't like you very much.' Blue movies score in the 80th percentile in their year... At the time I had a lot of love for Spider-man 2, but Spider-man doesn't age as well and some movies with better sequels. The big personal surprises is how much I do like Ella Enchanted, Anne Hathaway, Cary Elwes... gobs of effects, it makes fun of fairy tales, F*ck it even has Eric Idle and Queen and Elton John covers. 49% on Rotten tomatoes can kiss my... Oh well.

Howl's Moving Castle
The Incredibles
Hellboy
Ella Enchanted
Spider-Man 2
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
Godzilla Final Wars
I, Robot
The Aviator
The Phantom of the Opera
Collateral
The Chronicles of Riddick
National Treasure
House of Flying Daggers
Team America: World Police
Alien vs. Predator
Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid
Hero (Jet-Li)
Kinsey
Welcome to Mooseport
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle
Steamboy
The Terminal
Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence
Jersey Girl
The Day After Tomorrow
The Girl Next Door
Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
Bride and Prejudice
Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed
Dawn of the Dead
Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed
Mindhunters
Shaun of the Dead
Night Watch
Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events
Saved!
Million Dollar Baby
Starsky & Hutch
Kill Bill Vol. 2
The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie
Troy
The Punisher (T Jane)
EuroTrip
Garfield: The Movie
50 First Dates
Laws of Attraction
Meet the Fockers
King Arthur
13 Going on 30
The Butterfly Effect
The Stepford Wives
Van Helsing
Blade: Trinity
Resident Evil: Apocalypse
Shrek 2
The Manchurian Candidate
Closer
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Shark Tale
Saw
The Grudge
Fahrenheit 9/11
The Village
Catwoman
The Whole Ten Yards
Alexander
Super Size Me
Unleashed (aka Danny the Dog)
What the #$*! Do We Know?!

The horrible part of 2004 was what passed for documentaries. I went to see Fahrenheit 9/11 in the theater. I even bought "Dude Where's my country." A chapter in that book really chapped my ass. Michael Moore, in one chapter rails against the Horatio Alger myth. For a guy who's worth, millions, one website has him worth 50 million, but they hate him... Anyway, even if he's worth 10%... he could by my family as slaves. I'm glad he's enjoyed that kind of success, and it makes him the last person in the world to say it can't happen.
Then we got that anti-McDonalds docu-mercial tripe. See, we all know fast food is bad for us. But, when you and your anti-meat girlfriend are picking on the burger place... it seems a little wrong. Both of these one viewing ever wonders though pale
.. PALE next to the WORST MOVIE EVER. Wait, it's NOT A MOVIE. It's... something, it has video and audio, and that's about it. It certainly isn't a documentary... What the Bleep advertises itself as some quantum physics documentary, and is an advertisement for some Ramtha religion. It shouldn't even be on this list. It disgraces everything it touches. You want to sell me on Ranthma, take it from the door to door guys; Offer a flyer, say "Would you like to know more about Ranthma?" and then go on your way. Misrepresenting your movie and me paying $5 at Blockbuster is WRONG!!! Put your message on Youtube, Voeh but don't make me pay FIVE DOLLARS expecting something that wasn't AN AD! What the BLEEP indeed, to paraphrase Kieth Olbermann; What the Bleep, 2004's WORST MOVIE IN THE WORLD!!!!"

Favoritest Movies of 2005

2008-12-16T02:53:00.007-06:00

I'm going to probably continue this series of posts until I run out of movies... On New Years Eve, 2004, I popped in the DVD of the original Transformers the movie, timed for Victor Caroli to say at the stroke of midnight "It is the year 2005..." But, I know everyone did that. If you think it "loserish", well... WTF am I supposed to do on New Years, my wife's usually asleep by 10, the kids are away at the grandparents... so eh, WTH.
As for the list, There was never any doubt. See, these list surprise even me. Happy Feet was a surprise. Each movie goes head to head with every other movie in a spreadsheet. point totals are turned into percentiles and voilà movies emerge at the top. Some years are a race for second or third. Colossus: The Forbin Project WILL top 1970, probably followed by Patton, but I won't get ahead of myself, since the past in retrospect is further ahead, the farther back you look. Anyway, this was a year with a Star Wars movie, and it wasn't 1999... that one will be interesting since... Um... I DO enjoy and love the Phantom Meanace, but 99 is a HEAVY year. I came up with 50 movies though for 2005, and Disney's botched H2G2 didn't bottom the list. Blue is coming to mean, will be in the running for All time fav... Red is, I don't like you.

Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith
TIE: Serenity
TIE: Good Night, and Good Luck.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Mr. & Mrs. Smith
Batman Begins
Kingdom of Heaven
Constantine
Syriana
March of the Penguins
Sin City
Memoirs of a Geisha
War of the Worlds
King Kong
Fantastic Four
Chicken Little
Corpse Bride
Walk the Line
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Kung Fu Hustle
The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3D
Lord of War
The Island
Mysterious Island
Aeon Flux
Madagascar
Sky High
MirrorMask
The Aristocrats
The 40-Year-Old Virgin
Flightplan
Fever Pitch
Stealth
Doom
Sahara
Rent
Zathura
Hoodwinked
Robots
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Wedding Crashers
The Ring Two
Saw II
The Dukes of Hazzard
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds
Son of the Mask
TIE: Monster-in-Law
TIE: A Sound of Thunder

See, I learned there are worse things then majorly raping Douglas Adams, and they were seriously devestating Ray Bradbury, mixing J-Lo with Jane Fonda, and other really bad movies.

The (More belated) Favoritest movies of 2006 list!

2008-12-13T14:47:00.008-06:00

Looking back on a year of movies where... screw that, cutting to the meat... FOUR way tie and one of them is HAPPY FEET. FUCKING HAPPY FEET!!! Well... In a word... Yes. Given the choice of who do I like more... Bond, V, Supes or those itty bitty cutesy oh so adorable penguins... I... I CAN'T choose just one of those movies!!! Maybe a different lineup will give them some space on an all time list. Happy Feet won't fare as well against the Lion King as Casino Royale will. But in 2006, I discover their were four deserving of the crown, and a Crown, I realised a lot of love for (Number 6, tied with Children of Men.) Making a list of the top of my head, I would have never listed that movie... But it was really kick ass, and very touching and comfortable... An all around great movie.

TIE Superman Returns
TIE Happy Feet
TIE Casino Royale
TIE V for Vendetta
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
TIE for 6th: The Queen
TIE for 6th Children of Men
TIE for 8th Underworld: Evolution
TIE for 8th Zoom
An Inconvenient Truth
The Departed
The Good Shepherd
Night at the Museum
Monster House
Snakes on a Plane
Mission: Impossible III
Curious George
Eragon
Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties
Cars
Pan's Labyrinth
Man of the Year
Ultraviolet
Final Destination 3
Over the Hedge
Borat
The Da Vinci Code
Scary Movie 4
Flyboys
Open Season
The Prestige
X-Men: The Last Stand
Silent Hill
Nacho Libre
Charlotte's Web (2006)
The Sentinel
United 93
Talladega Nights:
Stranger Than Fiction
World Trade Center
Lady in the Water
Saw III
Clerks II

The (belated) Favoritest movies of 2007 list...

2008-12-12T16:09:00.007-06:00

I meant to do this a long while ago, but, I'll be honest, I'd do these charts by hand, I just learned over the summer how to do them in a spreadsheet... and now I'm addicted to Excel.

This is not a BEST list... There are great movies that I never want to see again. Too many movies to give it a second viewing, so, like on this list, movies like that suffer. Juno, while a darn good film, is punished by the fact that channel flipping is more appealing than rewatching Juno. One of the things that motivates me to make more of these lists is that it could save me lots of money, since the things towards the top of these lists oddly line up with being DVD's I watch again and again, and 80% of my DVD collection is this pile of aluminum and polycarbonate discs that occupy cases that do little more than accumulate dust. By my guess, lists like this could prevent my from having another 200-300 DVD dustcatchers. Sure, there's some I never watch but love having; thinking of Master and Commander there, just for that mood of wanting it on tap. But, I'm never watching American Beauty in my life, ever again. At this moment, looking forward, if I had all of the infinate future of the univers before me, I'd never watch American Beauty ever again. If you just thought" It won best picture..." Look in the $5 bin of DVD's at Wal-Mart right now. You can find all sorts of Best Picture noms and winners. That award is almost so detached from the art form in some cases in recent years it's very revalance is questionable. Well, maybe Wall-E will win this year. As for 2007... I thought that the Oscar winning No Country for Old Men was my most hated movie.. nope, not it of Spiderman 3... I learned what movie I hated the most last night... and I hadn't thought about the movie between turing it off, and last night. Onto the list:

Stardust
300
Transformers
The Man From Earth
Meet the Robinsons
Charlie Wilson's War
Aliens Vs. Predator - Requiem
Balls of Fury
Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium
National Treasure: Book of Secrets
Enchanted
3:10 to Yuma (2007)
TMNT
The Golden Compass
TIE Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
TIE Hitman
Ghost Rider
Surf's Up
The Last Mimzy
Pathfinder: Legend of the Ghost Warrior
Michael Clayton
TIE Beowulf
TIE Resident Evil: Extinction
TIE Next
The Astronaut Farmer
The Mist
Dragon Wars
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
TIE 30 Days of Night
TIE Elizabeth: The Golden Age
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
TIE I Am Legend
TIE The Kingdom. From here down, I probably just don't like you... or just never need to see you EVER again.
Lions for Lambs
Underdog
Alvin and the Chipmunks
Juno
TIE Ratatouille
TIE Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
TIE Across the Universe
Knocked Up
The Simpsons Movie
Live Free or Die Hard
Fred Claus
Epic Movie
Blades of Glory
Spider-Man 3
Shrek the Third
TIE Rush Hour 3
TIE Bridge to Terabithia
The Brave One
No Country for Old Men
Superbad
28 Weeks Later

The top four movies that came up at the top of this list, I noticed, I'd place their poster art in this blog's banner... Well, I guess I proved to me what I like.

Redboxed: The Dark Knight

2008-12-10T14:31:00.003-06:00

Okay, okay, I know the 10 commandments...
I) There is no greater movie than The Dark Knight, thou shall not place any other movie before he.
II) Thou may only purchase officially licensed Dark Knight products, and may not have licensed products of any other movie.
III) Do not use the name The Dark Knight in vain.
IV) Keep The Dark Knight's theatrical opening days and DVD release dates holy.
V) Honor Batman Begins and purchase it on DVD or Blue Ray if you have not done so already.
VI) Thall shall not kill.
VII) Thall shall not view any other movie.
VIII) Thall shall not steal the Dark Knight.
IX) Thall shall not disparage The Dark Knight to others.
X) Thall WILL Covet the Dark Knight.

Okay, VI and VIII I definitely agree with, but I rented it, so... where is that... that's like paying to borrow. But, I'll try, TRY to heed The Dark Knight's mighty word. But, in the spirit of full disclosure, I'm still a Dark Knight skeptic. On my way to being a Dark Knight atheist. Was there a cup of cool-aide I missed? Right, heed the commandments.... okay, I will. But... I have some questions.

1) After Batman dives out the window for Racheal, how is it that the ever to this point meticulous Joker and his squad fail to notice the long bar closing two doors. It's in the hallway right there, like not 20 feet from him. For those that would argue the distance or visibility of the closet, I'll cede that point, but it still doesn't answer why they don't search every room on at least that level. The Joker has a Hans Gruber like control of that situation, and Harvey Dent is trapped...

2) If Batman has a plan to capture the Joker with the Deus Ex Machina phone gadget, why is he going to burn all that crap and surrender. It's all locked up shut down, but then he's more Bat-suits on tap...

3) Why didn't Gordon or Batman TELL Two-face that they wanted to save her, not his ass...

4) Where was the Leauge of Shadows in this movie? Where was the rest of Gotham?

I gave it a second chance. I'll wind up watching it again probaly with the rest of the family. So, I love how well this movie is shot, I do. Chicago looks BEAUTIFUL. The music's good, there's good dialouge. But I'm not converted. I've not a drop more love or even liking to give this overzealously overexalted movie. It's more GTA than Batman. I don't care for GTA at all.

Redboxed: Prince Caspian and Wanted

2008-12-08T18:11:00.011-06:00

I have zero aspirations of ever being a film critic. Blogging has killed criticism, and unfortunately left us with a droning homogenized mass herd of one note ideas... like the company created opinion of the Dark Knight. WB did the most amazing job creating this unquestioned love for a movie people hadn't seen! ... Ya, The Dark Knight DVD is looming, and I want to see it again. I want to hate it... I think. The Dark Knight is such an overrated pile of poo... Pile of Pooh. The Dark Knight takes bags of Pooh stuffies and rips their heads off poos in them and piles up the Poohs. I like Pooh. Is Pooh Disney? Are there multiple Pooh. Like, Pooh was written by someone else, and then Disney took hold of it... Like Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. I LOVE H2G2! But not their version. they destroyed it. I guess if you hadn't read the books or were familiar with it in any way prior it wasn't AS bad. Well, this bit of typing is a waste of time, since I don't really care to acknowledge whatever movie I'm supposed to be mentioning...

Oh, I did see a good movie!
Hello... I just may love you. A cornflower blue tie from Fight Club, CHECK, Red Stapler ala OfficeSpace, Check! Gun-fu mixing it up with a chosen one constituting a remake of The Matrix, You it's there. Add a bit of Star Wars and it's like a Best movies of 1999 Mix Tape. Well, okay the pinch of Star Wars isn't of the 1999 vintage, it may be of an earlier vintage.

You... You may prompt a best of the Year so far list...

Where did you rank?

Well, I did a spreadsheet comparing each movie to every other movie I've seen this year, and Currently....

Wanted comes in fourth place.

WALL-E
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Iron Man
Wanted
Star Wars: The Clone Wars
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
Hellboy II: The Golden Army
Quantum of Solace
Mongol
Kung Fu Panda
The Incredible Hulk
Hancock
Journey to the Center of the Earth
The Spiderwick Chronicles
Cloverfield
Get Smart
TIE: Speed Racer / Dark Knight
TIE Speed Racer / The Dark Knight
The Forbidden Kingdom
Tropic Thunder
W.
10,000 B.C.
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
The Love Guru
Meet the Spartans
Jumper
Semi-Pro
The Happening (This movie is guaranteed to be at the bottom, no matter how many movie I see... Ever. Battlefield Earth has company in movie Hell.)

Great Redbox Catch up and Quantum of Solace.

2008-12-03T01:59:00.004-06:00

Hadn't used this thing in awhile... Why? Eh, probably election coverage addiction. I'm over it. OMG, the election was exactly 28 days ago! I kid you not, I just kicked the Chris Matthews habit yesterday, deleted Hardball from the DVR... the season is OVER. Savage Dragon and Tina Fey WON, and I couldn't be happier. Plus we learned that all the candidates were Skrulls.

We did rent some movies in that time.
Scorpion King 2: I... (Sorry honey, I fell asleep)
Spiderwick Chronicles: Wow, a family fantasy that didn't suck.... Yea. Seriously I like you, you're faring well here.
Mongol: Terrific. SEQUEL!!!! MORE!!!
The Love Guru: Underrated. Seriously, I heard that this was the worst of the summer... Um... Nowhere close, since, I saw The Happening. This thing sucks BAD. Really. But Stephen Colbert is worth catching his parts on cable... They should have spent Love Guru money on a Tek Jansen movie.
Forbiden Kingdom: I'm sorry I don't remember seeing you. I know we did, but.... THIS IS WHY I STARTED THIS BLOG!
The Happening. Uwe Boll gets a bad rap. I never want to hear his name near the word "worst" ever again... Battlefield Earth had like one or two seconds of not sucking all the life out of your soul. I've never seen it, but I DOUBT Catwoman comes close. This is a real event. This MOVIE, is a miracle. Craps out, right out of the gate. It kills brain cells, space-time, personal integrety. Don't let this man anywhere NEAR Avatar the Last Airbender!!!!!
Kung Fu Panda: Good enough to wash The Happening out of your pants!
Kung Fu Panda Secrets of the Furious Five: A short that was worth the extra buck. Seriously. 20minutes, and it was worth the rent! Most of this list can't say that!
Like this NEXT piece of GARBAGE......
Fred Clause: The GOOD: I fell asleep. The rhetorically WORSE THAN DEATH: I woke up. One of the worst movies ever made. Period. If you loved Vince Vaughn in Swingers, then you'll want to bury your copy of Swingers in the back yard after this. I'm some new species of stupid for admitting to rent this. You could edit this and The Happening and the Love Guru all together, at random, and have a better movie than all three! BUT: Kevin Spacey, esp. in the Superman cape, keeps this garbage from being anywhere near The Happening.
BTW... Whe we watched the deleted scenes... there's a really.... REALLY long one, that would have had the movie make a skoosh more sense. Channel flipping would still have more of a plot.... Fuck... We've all seen Infomercials better than this!

Tommorow we're watching Prince Caspian.... My kids REFUSED to watch it. (I'm proud of them!)

Movie: Quantum of Solace
Casino Royal became my favorite bond movie, after a lifetime of loving Bond movies. Maybe I expected too much. You're good. Lots of good moments. I'll end up owning you, but never wanting you. You're less of a Bond than your predecessor. BUT.... Big BUT here... BUT, Tosca (the opera scene) RULED THE BONDIVERSE. It is one of the best scenes EVER in a Bond movie. And, it, to me, destroyed the movie. After this scene, is where the next movie MUST pick up. If it does, then this movie is redeemed. There's only one oil slick after the Tosca scene worth seeing. I know I sound hard on this movie, but when the kid down the street gets an A-... YEA! Great for them. When YOUR kid, the kid you LOVE with all your heart gets an A-... It's time to get to work on fixing what went wrong. We can still get this Bond into a hollowed out volcano base and keep the feel of the series. Quantum kicks Spectre's behind! To re-apply the quote of the year (from SNL) "FIX IT!"

Movie: Star Wars The Clone Wars

2008-08-17T19:56:00.012-05:00

You had me at "Wild Space."
Star Wars is a lifelong love, and to me, being taken back to the summer of '77 is to be taken back to a time when I couldn't reach anything, I was oft at peril to shit myself having newly acquired the skill of using a toilet, and was under constant pressure to engage in the activity of afternoon naps against my will. Sippie cups lacked widgets, and car seats were barely in use, much less luxuriously upholstered command chairs, with cup holders. Heck, most places I went in '77 I was in the front seat lap of an unbuckled passenger. My parents tried lies about Santa in winter and some Bunny in the spring, I had to ask for anything I wanted. Sure, I may have had a childlike sense of wonder and amazement about things, but that stemmed from ignorance. (I'll be ranting a great deal about ignorance here.)

A lifelong love doesn't need to take you back it needs to take the relationship forward. Sure, once in a while she can throw some pigtails in the hair and you can have a nostalgic night. But the whole relationship can't and should never be built on nostalgia. To those whose love of Star Wars is principally one of nostalgia, you got special editions, the old girl even had a boob job, so'd they be as firm as when you first met, and you whined bitched and complained. Well, she's finally taking this relationship forward in a mature and SERIOUS matter, a no holds bar animated series for all ages, like Avatar: The Last Airbender.

"It's directly for kids!!! That's not STAR WARS!!!!" Really. Go. Track down a VHS copy of From Star Wars to Jedi, a behind the scenes documentary from WAYYY Back in 1985. Or almost any interview with Mark Hamill. It's always been a kids franchise. The nature of kids properties has changed greatly, but, this is Star Wars, for OUR KIDS. Not US entirely. My son said of this movie as we were leaving the theater; "I want to watch this movie every day!"

The professional film critics seem to almost overwhelmingly hate it, for few given motivations, all with one common stripe; it's destination of television. That's compounded by it also being, Star Wars, and they've hated all of those until usually 3-5 years later. But, Clone Wars has the audacity to do something not done, that I can recall, launch a TV show in the movie theaters, weeks before the broadcast debut. Its an impostor in Movieland, and the critics are predictably trying to drive it out of town, less they become inundated with becoming Television critics. I'm sure it's bad enough that they have blogs and the rest of the web to compete with.

The Internet voices, have found Clone Wars unenjoyable. I'm sorry that they're not mature enough in this relationship to move forward. We appreciate that you're fans of how you felt sitting in your pumpkin seat. But, it's clear that you didn't LOVE Star Wars as much as you said you did. So much of this BACKLASH, is from prequel hating people who have never played the RPG, read any of the comic books*, or read any of the novels. Most of the blogosphericaly inclined were apparently wanting this to be a nostalgia fest. A movie not moving the relationship forward.

Harry Knowles said "From the beginning notes of “As Time Goes By” and the Warner Shield – it felt wrong." The Studio logo.... you begin damnation of a movie with the studio logo? Oh SHIT!!! Yes, bonus points can be scored with doing something nifty with a logo...The Matrix, Waterworld. These movies score some bonus points with logo alterations. Gee.. anything else Harry? Something about sloppy shots... "undoing all the awesome work that Genndy had done" Watch that toon much? So a crane shot traveling over the action as we scale a cliff, is so much cleaner in 2D? This makes the Genndimated series look lame in many regards. First off, Anakin doesn't have a ridiculous fighter customized to look like his pod racer, he's not the whiny piece of work that we continually suffered with and the Jedi lack powers that violate reason, more than even some of the worst offenses in comics.

What else is there, there's so much, I've been reediting this for a week or so... Not that anyone cares. The Jedi council forums are the only refuge for people who care for the BEST MOVIE of the YEAR... I kid, Recount is that, and Wall-E...

Oh... So, the near consensus on the net has been that Ahsoka Tano is Freakin Hannah Rock Damn Star Montana. Well, what are some character attributes of Hannah? She's a lying, ego driven, self obsessed, treacherous, two faced, manipulative young woman. Even though many of these charges against the little overexposed rock star character are exhibited and corrected within an episode, she is a character capable of these things manufactured to appeal to the fame obsessed vanity of tweenage girls. All other charges aside, she needs to feel the approval of millions of people and if she doesn't her frail ego will collapse. If Hannah Montana were force inclined and lived in the Star Wars galaxy, she'd be a Sith lord. She's worse that Palpatine! As a parent, I HATE most of the kids they throw on the screen. I wind up reminding my kids constantly how HORRIBLE these wastes of humanity are. That kids aren't supposed to behave like that, and that they're all horrible role models. Maybe I've seen to many Disney factory kids on TV, they're all self obsessed monsters. But, Ahsoka was a character I didn't mind my children seeing.

In defense of Ziro the Hutt
The charges are, a homosexual, loudly adorned, Hutt that speaks basic (English to MANY of the websites...) First off. No Star Wars character speaks English. Not a one. They speak Basic. Basic, is the language that you watch Star Wars in. For me, it's English, for some it sounds like Spanish... It's alphabet is Aurebesh. We see it on monitors and displays... So, Ziro speaks Basic. We've never seen a Hutt on screen before a deep as possibly can be inside the core. We've seen them in the outer rim, where most residents speak Huttese. Now, with so FEW Hutts in this series, why do the residents of the Outer Rim, especially Tatooine, speak the Hutt language? Well, the Hutts run things out there. It's very wild west, and they... They're Gene Hackman in The Quick and the Dead. Wealthy in places where people will do anything for money, and immune to Jedi influence where Jedi are the closest hop to the law, Hutts have always had a prime position to run things out there. But, Coruscant is the wealthiest planet. There are to many people who can't be bought, and it's Jedi central. Ziro is trying to fit in by A) speaking Basic. WHEN IN ROME? and by... dressing the part. As for the flaming nature... Um... Hutts don't have girls and boys rooms to potty in, they have Hutt rooms, and Hutt parts. Hutts don't have to F-- themselves either, some actually choose to F-- other Hutts! So, Ziro, if ever sexually active with another Hutt, would be... well gay. So what? Captain Jack Harkness of torchwood would tap Ziro in a Corellian minute and Ziro would be begging for more! As far as ANY of this being "Unstarwarsy". Well, no one really bitched this storm up when Queen Jool first appeared in the Legacy comic series

Droid Slapstick.
There's a line in Armegeddon; "Have you even seen Star Wars?" Sit. Watch Episode IV. Droid slapstick has been with us since the beginning. Droids in this universe think in non-linear, irrational ways. That's why the oil bath will "feel" good to 3PO. R2 and 3PO call each other names. They arguue and bicker... and even Battle Droids would need these irrational, non-linear thought patterns to process the abstract concepts of vauge tactical commands. Besides, it's just classic Starwarsyness.

Well, the box office numbers reflect that so much of the buzz, when you talked to people who don't spend huge chunks of their time online, was the misgiving that this movie would be on TV anyway, that it was the first few episodes. I imagine LOST or 24 would have similar box office malaise if they ran their season premiers in a theater, with the understanding in the minds of the audience that it would be shown on television regardless.

So, congratulations to the critical masses who hated this movie! For all of the writing and love being claimed for Star Wars, most of you haven't picked up a book, comic, RPG... Anything that required the use of HANDS! This movie wasn't for you. Please, HATE Star Wars, you mindless DROIDS. We don't serve your kind here.

If you hated Clone Wars: I sentence you to this. Press play. It's the WORST THING EVER

*By the way, if you've never read a comic book, of anything in your adult life, you're wasting your life away. Go, buy Watchmen or Sandman, or Bone, The Walking Dead, and QUIT WASTING your life. READ. Then, go to a local planetarium. Watch a few episodes of The Universe on History Channel. Okay, now there's about 100,000,000,000 galaxies with about 500,000,000,000 planets each in them, and we're never getting to any of them any time soon. We can look at them and wonder. And Star Wars, while not "scientifically accurate" or probably anywhere close to realistic, is a wonderful way to let the mind play on the playground of just how big and fascinating of a universe we may well live in.

Movie: Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D

2008-08-12T00:38:00.002-05:00

So, my friend Robert calls me, wondering where my rant on this 'piece of shit' movie was... I misquote, he actually had much more colorful words and more creative phaseology, imagining what I would say than had I had anything at that point to say, but I NEEDED to do something else... and my family had... And I didn't call Robert back since I'd fallen asleep on the couch with my wife, right about time that absolutely all hope had flown out the window for the US Men's Gymnastics team grabbing gold had escaped reason. So, sorry Robert.

Huh. Oh, there's a poster... to the left... what do you say, AH Journey to the Center of the Earth in 3D!!!!! Yes, we had a pretty damn good time. So, Lemme rail on the sonnavabitch who was behind us, this numbfuck, was encouraging his cumstains of children to misbehave. It get's worse. Having a couple little cumstains that bring ruin to the world is nothing new in a movie theater... It's almost ALWAYS because the parents weren't clobbered by an English teacher when they were growing up so have no IDEA, no CONCEPT that the antonym to the word "YES"... Or that another option even exists.... No CONCEPT of the word..... "NO." Say it to your children often. Have fun saying it Say NO when you want it to be yes. Be driving, on the way TO MC DONALDS.... And when the tyke say... "Can we have McDonalds???" SAY NO! Mommy and I are still deciding on what we're having!!! But, it's not these two brats who were so exceptionally evil as to be noteworthy here.... BUT THE DAD WAS behaving worse than one of his children, just as bad as his favorite child. The father was behaving like a eight year old in PUBLIC! Jackass. So, when in public... Someone may rant about you. Not that anyone will know who you are... I could have made it up. Could have imagined it instead of watching the movie. Maybe. Maybe not.

Anyway,
I don't know if this is actually a movie. My reptilian brain still lingering some control, you know the more primitive part of your brain, the part you had in the 80's, that wants to play with a Rubiks cube, Love cartoons, wants to eat cereal while sitting on pillows, thinks a perfect day can be spent in jammies playing Zelda with your stuffed animals by your side and nothing but a bag of Oreo's to sustain you in between grilled Cheese for lunch and someone ordering Dominoes for dinner.

That part of the brain. Yea, that said this wasn't a movie, but a theme park attraction without the stupid pneumatic gimble. So.... I likey.

This movie was good. It deserves a treat, (This has been inserted as penance for the HELL at the bottom of the next post)

An Andyroonian Thought....

2008-08-08T10:00:00.002-05:00

Remember when Hershey's Syrup came in a can, and it'd sit in the refrigerator with those two triangular holes depressed into it at opposite ends of the top... sitting there, waiting. When your mother finally did make you a small cup of chocolate milk, it looked like your glass of milk was being given an oil change. Good times.

Heck, years and years after that, when we had a Sam's membership, RIGHT after they opened, Quick had to be opened with a can opener.

Enjoy the Olympics.

Movie: Hancock Summer movie season almost over...

2008-08-04T19:28:00.003-05:00

It's been a damn good summer of movies. I haven't hated a damn thing I saw in a theater. But, if I have to rank them, with my usual system, Each movie vs every other movie on the list, winner gets a point... If it's a tie, both movies get half a point...

Oh, yea, Hancock... Uh... Hancock... Guud... ugh! Seriously, it's good, but a bit of a letdown that almost every set piece was shown in the trailers. The trailers did nothing to ruin the movie, and kudos to that, but a we bit of post AVP syndrome. So a Hancock 2 might salve that over, but, if I don't get one, unlike AVP-R, I won't be heartbroken. Actually, given a choice between a Hancock 2 and a Res Evil 4 / Avp 3 double feature, I'll take the latter!

So the top 10 fo the Summer, that I've seen.... which oddly is 10 movies...

Wall-E. Perfect, and wonderful, may Pixar top this with John Carter of Mars!
(Tie) Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I remember trolling the shelves of bookstores and libraries for everything I could read about ancient astronaughts and UFO's when I was in the later parts of grade school. Oddly, of all of spielbergs alien movies, this one warms the heart of old, dead UFO nut in me the most.
(Tie) Hellboy II, Wow, you're pretty. Your world is amazing, the creatures awesome... The full package, and you'll probably get a number of spins on the DVD player, unlike some nut jobs on this list.
Iron Man. The new standard for super-hero movies. Give us the world of the comic, there's no reason to seel us short, create a universe between the titles! Keep it up and make mine MARVEL. (That goe's way back)
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor: I can't believe all the fucking ignorat stupid ass complaints about this movie. "Ble blu blah CG... Blu bea blea acting... Bluh bleia script. Ble bluhh bloorph I don't know how to POOP I'm so STUPID!" Some one commented on some site that a Yeti doing a field goal sign in 1940's China was too "Unbelievable" IT'S a FUCKING YETI!!!!!!!! Did you think they were real? It's a Goddamned movie SERIES about Mummy's COMING BACK TO LIFE!!!! And THE FIELD GOAL joke is a DEAL BREAKER? I'm sorry, I missed the Discovery special about how Yet's behave. They're on their way to Shangri-La. How do you know they don't have Yeti-Football, next to that POOL OF IMMORTALITY!!!! Someone said that they didn't like Indy 4 beacuse it was UFO's and the other Indy movies dealt with things that were "Real." I'm going to go make out with the tooth fairy, get drunk with the boogeyman and we're all going to have an orgy with the monsters under my bed, and let Santa Claus film it. There's a fucking REAL Indy movie for you, Indiana Jones and the North Pole! Pole smoking more like it. And would everyone stop complaining about CG. Pop in a few b list movies from the eighties, like Batman. You'll wish you had some quality CG effects. You know why you don't like CG... Before, when you didn't know how effects were done, you just stared in awe, now, you know they're done, somehow "With a computer." So... so you know movies aren't MAGIC. They're made, and Santa was never real either.
Incredible Hulk. "He looks fake".... Did you know it's partially because he's green. Green is a shit color on things, light doen't play on green... that's why green screens are GREEN!
The Dark Knight. Why so SERIOUSLY LOW on my list? Your ending. It was illogical and stupid. Pin it on the Jokers goons, show Joker in Arkham, and maybe have blown a boat, and this is at the top of the list, you'd have Wall-E sucking you all night, but Nooooooooooo. You had Gordon do something that's the first image in my head every time I think of the movie. That act, obliterates the Joker from my immediate associations with the movie. The moment itself is actually really cool, it's heartbreaking, I LOVE it when a movie can do that, but the REASON it's done is pure stupidity. Endings count; Empire Strikes Back, PotC Dead Man's Chest, The Usual Suspects... King Kong, Citizen Kane... even Casablanca. Change the ending of any of these and you risk ruining them. To paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen; I know the Empire Strikes Back, I saw Empire Strikes Back in the theater in it's initial run and sir, you are no The Empire Strikes Back!
Hancock. I apparently don't hate Dark Knight that much, cause I like this movie, but in a head to head match up it gets less points. You're a good movie, and yet so low on the list, DAMN it's been a GOOD summer of movies!!!!!!!!
Speed Racer Mach-6. You could have been at least above Dark knight. WHY a MACH-6.... Oh well.
Get Smart. Could have been enjoyed as much as a rental. Wait, rental cheaper, enjoyed MORE?

Well that's the list. Clone Wars is next. It's task is simple, top the list or die trying. Easy bar for a movie... Be at the Top of the list. With Star Wars, James Bond and Harry Potter incoming, the top five may take some hits. I'd say it's the best year IU've ever seen, but NEXT year with Monsters and Aliens, Watchmen and Star Trek... oh, and isn't there Transformers 2? Next year looks even better.

Sunday, I'll take the kids to Journey to the Center of the Earth in 3D!!!!!!

Movie: The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

2008-08-04T03:13:00.005-05:00

Wow. Wife and I made a day date of it, had Saint Louis Bread Company for breakfast, you may know them as Panera. She tried some new breakfast sandwich, and didn't like the cheese they stuck on it, other than that a good sandwich, but I don't know that first hand, she had it... Oh, the bacon wasn't crispy! Oh, then we saw Mummy. Good movie. Then, we walked through the mall for just a bit...
Chesterfield Mall kinda sucks. The only good / interesting things in the mall Is right off of that one arm with the movie theater. There you have the theater, the food court (needs.. NEEDS) a Mickey D's BADLY! Better yet, Burger King. I love Burger King! If I were Iron Man, I'd love Burger King too. Actually, If I were Iron Man, I'd have a Burger King, IN MY HOUSE. Anyway, down from that you also have the Starbucks kiosk, and a neat carousel. I've taken my kids on it a few times, so it's obviously not the carousel from Logan's run... Still, neat to have in the mall.
Then, came lunch... CHEEBURGER CHEEBURGER!
Oh, you wonderful place. The bacon was crispy, the cheese, wonderful, the sauces... can have to go lids! I'll be wanting to go here again. More specifically, since my wife and I both think, though not factually accurate, since everything fried there is fried in peanut oil, it'd like really hurt our son, so, it's a date place! Maybe. I hope it is. I know she liked it, but will she want to go back. The local Applebee's let us down the last time. O'Charley's, a one time fave, has been spotty at best, and Cheeburger made a great first impression.

Then we came back, watched Meet the Pres and George Stephanopoluos... then Mirrormask....

It was a good day.

Dark Knight note...

2008-08-03T18:08:00.004-05:00

My friend Matt and I, like a number of movie freaks have been watching the horse race of this thing.

But, at the risk of some embarrassment, It'll cross the 500 Million line on September 14.*

*Unless, it does 60 Million plus, in the next seven day period, which I have this irritating trend line saying it might.... But that trajectory would have it cross 500 in just 16 days from now, and movies, well just don't tend to do that. September 14th looks good though... the ugh, August 19th 500 mil mark is from a trend line that I think could be modeled better....

Legends of THE DARK KNIGHT

2008-07-19T04:48:00.011-05:00

Impawards is a fantastic site, One of the best on the web. That's where I usually find these movie posters. Anyway...

There's a lot of praise out there for The Dark Knight, BUT did you know...

The Dark Knight was the first to slice bread.
The Dark Knight shot Greedo first.
The Dark Knight is commonly mistaken for a burning bush.
The Dark Knight caused the Big Bang.
The Dark Knight fell on Issac Newton's head.
The Dark Knight was available on 8-track.
The pyramids of Egypt were built to honor The Dark Knight.
All the stars in the sky were named after The Dark Knight
The Oscars were invented and waiting for The Dark Knight to be made.
Thomas Edison saw The Dark Knight in one of Edgar Cacye's visions and invented motion pictures.
The Dark Knight destroyed Atlantean civilization.
Play The Dark Knight backwards and it will tell the future.
The Dark Knight invented Spam (the canned meat version) and won all fourteen World Wars.
The Dark Knight was the first to Rickroll.
The Dark Knight defeated the Dalek's
The Dark Knight can make a rock so big, it'd crush himself.
The Dark Knight fed a theater filled with 5000 people with only two buckets of popcorn and a box of Raisinets.
The Dark night beats paper, rock, and scissors.
The Dark Knight made the Mona Lisa smile.
God believes in The Dark Knight.
The real Chuck Norris is nothing compared to The Dark Knight.
One day, Aliens on the White House lawn will say "Take us to see The Dark Knight"
The Dark Knight wiped out the dinosaurs.
The Dark Knight could take your daughters virginity, and you still buy the guy a beer.
The Dark Knight can beat up everyones dad, at once.
Galaxies and Universes revolve around The Dark Knight.
Other movies are good at the mercy of The Dark knight.
You can't sell your soul, The Dark Knight owns it already.
The Dark Knight gets out the toughest stains.
Shakespeare plagiarized The Dark Knight.
The Dark Knight called our ancestors out of the trees.
The Dark Knight can kill a lion with only it's thumbs.
The Dark Knight is the ultimate aphrodisiac.
The Dark Knight performed the twelve tasks of Hercules, in only five tasks.
The Dark Knight is the tallest man alive.
The Dark Knight is behind you, look. Gone? He's that fast!
The Dark Knight put the sword in the stone.
The Dark Knight brought E.T. back to life.
The Joker is one card, The Dark Knight is the whole deck!
The Dark Knight would win the White House with 810 electoral votes!
The Dark Knight is the Queen of England!
The Dark Knight is so cool, and attracts such hot women, it's why we have seasons.
The Dark Knight can not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered!
The Dark Knight is the Kwisatz Haderach.
The Dark Knight destroyed the Death Star, twice.
The Dark Knight won the Millennium Falcon fair and square.
The Dark Knight can win at chess in one move.
The Dark Knight is the best James Bond.
The Dark Knight is the final Cylon.
The Dark Knight is Keyser Söze!
The Dark Knight can see dead people.
Charles Foster Kane called The Dark Knight "Rosebud".
The Dark Knight is the offer you can't refuse.
Superman doesn't have the stones to ask The Dark Knight to step outside.
Zod kneels before The Dark Knight.
Kyrptonite is Kryptonian for "The Dark Knight".
Darwin, on his death bed, confessed The Dark Knight.
The Dark Knight birthed John Wayne.
There was no such thing as gender, then the manliness of The Dark Knight turned half of us into men.
The Dark Knight invented sex.
The Dark Knight's Internet nickname is Chuck Norris.
The universe worries when The Dark Knight worries.
The Dark Knight wrote the Declaration of Independence.
The Dark Knight is the father of our country.
The Matrix is in The Dark Knight.
The Dark Knight watches the Watchmen.
The Dark Knight can hear you scream... IN SPACE!
As a child, The Dark Knight saw the Cloverfield monster, and asked his mom if he could keep it.
Where no man has gone before, The Dark Knight was already there.
The Guinness Book of World records contains only three words; "The Dark Knight".
DaVinci was obsessed with The Dark Knight code.
The Dark Knight is always there in 30 minutes or less.
The Dark Knight invented the Internet.
The Dark Knight invented Thomas Edison.
The Dark Knight can repair a Slinky!
The Dark Knight solved Rubik's Tesseract!
Santa Claus wants The Dark Knight to come every day of the year.
Mt. Everest aspires to climb The Dark Knight.
The weakness of Kryptonite is The Dark Knight.
Hulk can't smash The Dark Knight.
The Dark Knight redeemed Shawshank.
The Dark Knight caught every Pokemon.
The Dark Knight beats up the kids who beat up honor students.
The Dark Knight had the fish that ate the Darwin fish for dinner.
There is no secret government, The Dark Knight knows all about it.
Black holes got their fashion sense from The Dark Knight.
The Dark Knight is the road map to peace.
The Dark Knight does it live.
The Dark Knight knows the Colonel's Recipe.
Imagine what Scooby would do for a Dark Knight snack.
The Dark Knight bowled a 900.
The Dark Knight's caddy is Tiger Woods.
The best, has to make The Dark Knight of it.
The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, chases The Dark Knight.
The SDF-1 vs The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight wins.
Baby monsters fear The Dark Knight is under their bed.
The devil sold his soul to The Dark Knight.
The Dark Knight will win the Nobel Peace Prize.
Miss Universe will be renamed, Miss The Dark Knight.
The Dark Knight fathered Lois Lane's baby.

Movie: Hellboy II: The Golden Army

2008-07-13T16:48:00.003-05:00

The Fantastic Four franchise, if it were still alive, should die of shame, whispering "Hellboy" with its last pathetic breaths. Two fantastic four movies and, Hellboy gives me a monster emerging from a New York street. H2TGA give and gives and gives. I can't think of a "Live action" movie without the word "episode" in the title that has more delicious ingredients. An analogy a friend suggested; was a bucket of fried chicken, but just the skin. Not that there's no plot or character, but fuck, there is stuff that's good for you in ice-cream. And this is SOOOO Many scoops of ice cream, covered in everything but spaceships. Clockwork, steampunk looking tech, women who are beautiful in an interesting way...

Now we NEED
HELLBOY 3!

Movie : Wall-E

2008-07-02T00:12:00.006-05:00

I'm open to the possibility that I tainted myself with my own expectations this year. I expected Indiana Jones to be worlds of freakin fun, and it was. I expected Iron Man to put boot to ass in ways not nearly often enough done, and it planted that boot on a many ass indeed. And, I expected Wall-E to be the best Pixar movie ever.

I've been saying all summer, everyone's looking forward to Dark Knight, that the netfolk are just psyching themselves up for Dark Knight, and they're going to love it no matter what. Did I do this for Wall-E? Most years, having expectations leads to the opposite result, Transformers looked like a must see 'in honor of it's name' shit... It was golden.

This year, each movie I've gotten to see so far has landed right where it felt like it would... I haven't gotten to see the Love Guru, I heard it was shit. I didn't think it looked like it, but I'll believe them on this go 'round. I've had a bad feeling of Dark Knight, and that one looms large. I initially thought Hancock looked like a crap-flop, then I thought the most recent trailers looked promising, so I'd like to think it'll be a fun movie, but all I know is Hancock smells like money (and Bar-B-Que!)

F--, Will Smith could do a movie called Bar-B-Que, and as long as it opened on July 4th, it'd make 300 Million dollars! He'd be suburban dad trying to get home to his family for a July fourth cookout, when some giant smoldering beast has awoken from the Earth's mantle and looms large over downtown Dallas. (It's like Cloverfield, but you can see EVERYTHING in broad daylight) Somehow this everyman defeats through practical wit and wisdom a monster that the military has only kept at bay. The last line of the movie, when he's reunited back in untouched suburbia with his wife and family; "Aw babe, I forgot it, I'll have to run back to the store." I'm smelling a sequel cooking!!!!!

Anyway, I said Wall-E looked like Pixar's best movie ever...

So, what am I being when I say Wall-E is the best Pixar movie ever? Well... best, poo poo on that shit. If you have a Troy McCluresque weakness for fish, Wall-E is no Finding Nemo, Cars would probably be the movie James Spader's and Holly Hunter's characters in Crash would show their future children (I don't remember if the characters in that movie lived or what, it's been like 11 years since I saw Crash...) But, I love robots! Except Robots. I hated those robots. But, I love robots in movies so much, I've watched Silent Running multiple times! Yup, that much. Look at my Myspace page, I have an unyielding aesthetic affection for yellow and black safety stripes. Oh, Yellow tech grunge. When you have that yellow all rusted and dirty... like the lifters in Aliens, and .. gosh oh so many things, and it never feels like enough. Like this guy from the Ghost in the Shell line.

Oh man... and, obviously I LOVE space movies... Can't get enough good ones of those either... A scene I love in particular is (6:15 into the clip)

The "Good day, gentlemen. This is a prerecorded briefing made prior to your departure and which for security reasons of the highest importance has been known on board during the mission only by your HAL-9000 computer." That feeling of betrayal when you discover a secret being kept from you.

Wall-E features a singular red eye in the vain of HAL-9000 and Macross Plus's Sharon Apple.

F-- it. The most telling thing about Wall-E... My soda was still half full at the beginning of the credits... I FORGOT TO DRINK IT! My eyes were too busy drinking in his world.

Thank you Pixar. Thank you SOOOO MUCH.

P.S, My kids loved it too!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is FAR from the last time Wall-E will be mentioned on these pages.

Best of the year:
Top 3...
1.) Wall-E... (seemingly pushed by a small droid behind him)
2) TIE, between Mr. Stark, and Dr. Jones.

Michael Turner

2008-06-28T14:06:00.005-05:00

Carlin, Russert, Winston Fuck this has been a fatal summer... and now Michael Turner. 37 years old. Turner was one of the superstars that kept comics alive during the nineties after the crash. I loved this man's art, I loved the way it looked like he drew not with ink on paper, but with some smooth oily dark matter across celestial crystal. That, and (aside from his awesome displays of technology, machines, epic hyper detailed landscapes, rock faces, and beasts of every kind) his women. God did not craft woman to be as sexy as Michael Turner did, Turner was a god of sexy women.

I used to do caricatures for events like corporate picnics and High School all night lock-ins. The pay was wonderful, and it was kinda fun. And I've always said, High School parties were the easiest functions, you don't have to focus on drawing the teenage girl in front of you, just put her hair style on a Michael Turner girl. That's what all teenage girls want to believe they look litke to the world. I did it every time, fat, thin, pretty or fugly, draw the girl as a Micheal Turner Girl, and all her friends will squeal and say "Oooo It looks just like you!".

This sucks. And I really regret never having gotten to meet him.

A Michael Turner Gallery

MICHEAL TURNER
1971-2008

The Day The Earth Stood in Awe of Remake Audacity.

2008-06-24T14:08:00.009-05:00

I read this on Movie Blog, and Movies Online has more details, I'm just going to rant, a lot. We've know it's been in the works, and just the other night, Matt and I while killing eons on the phone, well Matt actually pointed out to me that Day was not on the imdb calender for December. In a moment of, "Whew, maybe they rethunk it.." I'd hope that the movie was dead.

I love the original. It was the first movie my son ever watched. He was maybe 6 months old, maybe not even... and he had woken up as babies do, and his favorite place to fall asleep was in this big bean bag chair with the TV on. He was very fond as an infant of Black and White movies. So I popped in DTESS to lull him to sleep. He watched the whole thing, and now at 6 it's still one of his favorite movies. That is the creamy decadent icing on my love of the original movie.

The problem with every remake, but to such a greater degree with this one, is one question; what do you second guess.

Keanu Reeves already answers part of that question.
Keanu has a lot of pluses: He LOOKS a FUCK OF A LOT like Michael Rennie, They raise the same eyebrow the same way.

Of course, Stephen Colbert has more than just a passing resemblance to Michael Rennie too. I love Keanu as an actor, he was awesome as John Constantine, a character to which he bore little physical resemblance. He was none, NONE of the reasons the Matrix sequels sucked. (Hell, off topic here, but the Wachowski brothers aren't entirely at fault. The Matrix Sequels sucked, cause you can't do just ONE movie any more. I doubt they thought they'd get a chance to do any more, so they put everything into the first one they could, and they ended with their character being a god. Oops. Try to do parts 2 & 3 after that. They could of killed their god hero, but he was the star. They were trapped in a franchise structure that begs for crap. Anyway...) Reeves, like Colbert, may look like and have a lot of similar physical qualities to Rennie, but neither are him.

Why cast an actor with such physical similarity and not a similar presence? The choice of John Cleese as Dr. Barnhart is certainly a choice of presence. It's a fine choice too, he's nothing like Sam Jaffe, and I hope that Cleese is allowed to play the role straight.
Jennifer Connelly, well at least your not gambling here. She could play a phone book and no one would complain, and a phone book, unfortunately has more depth than most female roles did in sci-fi back then. She's a fine choice, and far from a gamble.

The poster looks so, War of the Worlds, that the movie doesn't look like it's going to have the two most important visual elements have any loyalty at all to the source material. The ship, and GORT. Reeves could on his own strengths, save the role of Klaatu, I don't think he delivers a speech as well as some actors, but Micheal Douglas is a tad old to be Klaatu, as is Martin Sheen. But Gort is the center of the movie. He is cop, sent here to tell us to settle down...

BTW, why are we about to get our asses paddled without a cold war? What will Klaatu's speech be about in an age of arms reductions? Do they worry about proliferation to rouge states and commercialism of space flight? The combination of the two would be exactly why they were going to paddle our behinds to extinction in the first one.

Please. Remake it, but don't reimagine what doesn't need to be reimagined, and don't rethink better thoughts. Don't package a heartless brainless movie, into the title of a classic. We Sci-Fi fans have had few moments on the road to mainstream respectability. The Thing, and Day the Earth Stood Still, were our path to mainstream respect and acceptance. Star Wars, as much as I love it, moved Sci-Fi into the business of printing money. Even though A New Hope, was a pinnacle of quality and profitability, after Star Wars, quality couldn't make a dime. The next Sci-Fi movie to be worthy of a Best Picture nod, took decades for mainstream acceptance.

OMG! The Anti Geeky EVERYTHING conspiracy Killed EVERYONE! (Maybe, Maybe not, but look at this)

2008-06-24T13:14:00.004-05:00

Well, if you think that the word is going to choke to death on Gasoline. Here's what completely SUCKS, if they'd just build futuristic looking cars... geeky looking cars... Well...

Do auto makers just assume we'd rather DIE with boring looking cars. Yes, this guys Honda looks like, well, crap, but he did it himself. Every auto company could have nice looking professionally built versions of this by next year.

The big thing that rips my head open about seeing this, is the Why? WHY HAVEN'T auto makers done this. WHY?

A Smart Executive wouldn't talk to me, but A Stupid Executive commented; "Ooooo an aerodynamic looking car might look futuristic, Nerd might sleep happier, and I beat up NERDS!"

Do ALL non geeks think this way? I went to the bobblehead filled chambers of power of the Anti-Geek Council, with pennant covered walls and empty beer kegs, and a sign saying they were convening at Hooters.

So I went to Hooters, where three guys who never went to college run the GLOBAL anti-geek conspiracy:

Why can't we have futuristic looking cars, do you have something against things looking cool?

Head of Non-Geek council: "Shut up! And keep the computers running! We throw out a couple movies for you cave dwelling imbeciles. Now Go Away."

But, you could have made cars look this cool for the past 20 years, and we'd have polluted less, and have more money to spend on other things. You're basically killing us, by making sure that America doesn't look like it was built by ... geeks.

President of Rid the world of geeks: "Will all of you eat some of the wings? Who's paying anyway?"

Anti-Geek Conspiracy Chairman "By insuring this world doesn't look like it's run by grown men who buy toys, we... we..."

What? Sustain sexual viability to your wife? Have an easier time raising your sons to be bullies? There's NO EXCUSE.

And if I were to blame anything but an anti geek conspiracy, I'd start feeling paranoid.

This looks like a 70's vision of today...

2008-06-24T04:28:00.003-05:00

But, it's neat as hell...

A more astute blog Technabob, ran a story on it in September.

Damn, all it needs is a scantly clad Erin Grey with it.

Baskin Robbins would not do G.I. Joe like this!

2008-06-23T12:07:00.003-05:00

Oh yea, this really looks like G.I.Joe... Gets my shit on FIRE! This...

This... Is SPLINTER CELL.

If J.J. Abrahms, gave us a cantina full of aliens, and Phaser Sabers and mystical powers, We'd hate it! Not because we hate Star Wars, but because Star Wars is Not Star Trek.

Go. Go tonight to Baskin Robbins. Order a flavor. Now. Did they give you the flavor they wanted to give you, or the one you ASKED for?

Baskin Robbins doesn't tell you what flovor you're getting when you order something different. Starbucks doesn't say; "Sir, your coffee would taste better if you ordered this..." So, why do YOU do this.

We WANT a G.I. Joe movie. We enjoy Splinter Cell.
This does not look like G.I. Joe.

But, it could just be the poster.

Yes, I had a knee-jerk reaction to something early on Transformers, and that turned out scrumdiddlyumptious. So, maybe this post is just knocking on wood.

George Carlin

2008-06-23T02:11:00.003-05:00

1937 - 2008

This is too soon. There's a broad list of famous persons, when they die, you go, "oh, they're dead." and you're sad for a moment. Then there's your heroes. Your idols. The ones who lay psychological and intellectual rails in your mind. Peter Jennings, Carl Sagan, Gene Rodenberry, Jim Henson, and now George Carlin. I got nothing here. He was a master at the use of words, and when trying to write, they, the words feel gone as well.

During the writers strike, I needed some news, to replace the missing Daily Show. I hadn't taken news seriously since the death of Peter Jennings. I was on the phone with a friend, and that friend said; "George Carlin's on MSNBC."

I haven't willingly missed an episode of Countdown since.
Mr. Olbermann, Carlin's endorsement carried a great deal of weight. You owe him, at least one viewer.

EW's 100 best of the last 25 years, or 100 quick movie comments, or Listbitching!

2008-06-22T22:55:00.003-05:00

Entertainment Weekly, a magazine I used to subscribe to until one really, I mean REALLY bad phone call with a customer service rep went HORRIBLY wrong. I even hated the magazine for a few years, because of one bad customer rep. Anyway, I'm over that now, I just have the internet, and get far fewer magazines now than I used to. Anyway, these fine folks have made a list of the HUNDRED BEST movies in the past, well, in less than my lifetime. A list... Everyone loves lists. Should we bitch about exact placement... no, unless it's Really deserving it. Hmmm, forwards or backwards. There should be some suspense... Oh, the pictures, right. Oh well, yes EW says that the BEST movie of the past 25 years is...

1. Pulp Fiction (1994) Best. Debatable regardless of ANY title you could stick here. I can't think of a movie that deserves this ranking so much more than Pulp Fiction as to be obvious, but, damn, I LOVE this movie. I wouldn't say best though. Can we cheat and say that Jaws and Star Wars are a little younger, and fit them in?

2. The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001-03) Theatrical or extended? Fellowship and King rule in both versions, and Towers, weak in the theatrical, owns up in the extended version. I'm troubled by Rings though, I don't pop it in that much. The Alan Smithee version of Dune on DVD eclipsed you. BTW, Peter Berg, your Dune... Has to be deserving of a spot in the top 10 of this list. That's how high your bar is. The Alan Smithee version is my wife's Favorite movie ever and in my top 5 easily.

3. Titanic (1997) Saw it 14 times at the theater. After 9 viewings, you're there for the boat to break, but GOD, I love this one too. BTW, If you've never seen that version of the poster, it says up at the top, "From the Director of Aliens, T2, and True Lies." Over this Merchant Ivory looking poster. James Cameron, you were, for a number of weeks in 1998, King of the Fucking World.

4. Blue Velvet (1986) I need to see this. But his version of Dune is one of the worst movies I've ever seen.

5. Toy Story (1995) Woah. Why? It's here because it walked hand drawn animation to the gallows right. It's not the film per se' that's that great... It's good, but no, it has to be here for being the dawn of an age of movies... has to be.

6. Saving Private Ryan (1998) Damn, it'll be awesome if Damon is Captain America. BTW, DiCaprio, love ya, but his chin is slightly broader. This movie though... Should have been Captain Miller at the cemetery.

7. Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) Haven't seen you either. I spent my formative years of being a teen film nerd, avoiding Woody Allen. I blamed Annie Hall for winning an award that a small little movie deserved more.

8. The Silence of the Lambs (1991) No. This movie was over rated at the time, but this is retarted. put a zero behind it, it should be down at number 80...

9. Die Hard (1988) Okay, definitely list worthy, top 30 worthy, but you have to be here for starting an action movie fad that lasted over 10 years... You had so many rip offs.

10. Moulin Rouge (2001) Oh now come on! The fist 40 minutes or so are worthy, but then the movie losses it's umph cause it feels the need to service it's plot! A rare crime to be sure, but no, it should not round out the top 10.

11. This Is Spinal Tap (1984) But this top 10 goes to 11!

12. The Matrix (1999) We're still not speaking. Sure, it was an old crush, but we haven't spoken since the third one. It's socially awkward to invite onto a list like this... did it publicly disown its retarded brothers, It's Larry, they're the two Daryls. Has the Jaws rule applied to the damn thing finally? You know, Jaws must have applied. I guess they shot the sequels back to back since Roy Scheider bailed on the third Jaws.

13. GoodFellas (1990) It's good, but I never understood what was so great.

14. Crumb (1995) This list is feeling a little stupid.

15. Edward Scissorhands (1990) Yup, it is. This movies ending was a hard edgy anus cutting turd. The third act completely destroys this movie.

16. Boogie Nights (1997) There's a line in here that... ohhhh... Moving on.

17. Jerry Maguire (1996) Yea, ok. and...

18. Do the Right Thing (1989) um uh...

19. Casino Royale (2006) Ok, Fuck yes! Own up to SPECTRE! DO SPECTRE! And this will be the best age of BOND EVER!

20. The Lion King (1994) Hey, are these just American movies? If not, we're missing some Anime.

21. Schindler's List (1993) Feel Good? They said Crumb, is better than you...

22. Rushmore (1998) No wonder they said something... This movie was a fad. No one cares about it anymore, it was really over hyped at the time.

23. Memento (2001) But not as badly as this piece of wreckage. This list is now all but completely invalid. Memento is crap. Inventive storytelling, does nothing if the story has nothing interesting in it. It's a movie about drug dealers. It's a small story about mostly really horrible people.

24. A Room With a View (1986) I'll have to check this out sometime.

25. Shrek (2001) Fat Ogre winds up with a princess, but we can't have people thinking that the fat dude gets a hottie, no you fucktards, she HAS to be a fat bitch to to be with him. Pretty people go ONLY with the PRETTY FUCKING PEOPLE you little brats, take that moral from Shrek. If you're ugly, or fat, go live in the swamp! Good kids movie there.

26. Hoop Dreams (1994) Nope, haven't seen you either.

27. Aliens (1986) Completely awesome.

28. Wings of Desire (1988) Oh, F yea. City of Angels wasn't bad, but something went missing.

29. The Bourne Supremacy (2004) My friends insist I must see this series.

30. When Harry Met Sally... (1989) See, there's a good movie.

31. Brokeback Mountain (2005) Avoided due to Hulk being crap.

32. Fight Club (1999) Great movie, deserved better placement.

33. The Breakfast Club (1985) Also a masterpiece, did this get tossed around and done by 10's or something?

34. Fargo (1996) I really didn't care for this. Lemme guess, The Dude, is not worthy of the list, nor Hudsucker, but I'm guessing No Country is... That would be so lame.

35. The Incredibles (2004) Pixar's best movie. Ever. But Wall-E will probably kick it's ass.

36. Spider-Man 2 (2004) Enjoy the spot, one future lists, you'll be looking at Iron Man's contrails.

37. Pretty Woman (1990) I'm not ashamed to admit love here.

38. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) Nor am I ashamed to admit pointlessness. Actually, I'll be honest, I can't remember if I loved, hated or cared. Insert anything, yes, you're right. I agree with you completely on this movie. And I maight again.

39. The Sixth Sense (1999) This was shit. Complete boredom. No ambulance shot = Dead Bruce Willis. I knew it in the theater. Twist this.

40. Speed (1994) Mmmm skipping class to see movies at Crestwood mall.

41. Dazed and Confused (1993) Ok. Great soundtrack.

42. Clueless (1995) Really? It's good, I just thought more than , like, 50 good movies came out in the past 25 years. Guess I lost count.

43. Gladiator (2000) This picture rules. Between this, Master and Commander (where is it?) and 3:10 to Yuma... oh, and L.A. Confidential, Russel Crowe, just might be that damn good!

44. The Player (1992) "Can we talk about something other than Hollywood for a change? We're educated people." --Griffin Mill (Tim Robbins character) No, Griffin, we can't cause frankly, its a nihilistic universe of cold reality without our imagined treasures. Why bum ourselves out?

45. Rain Man (1988) See it at the right age, and you'll wind up craving Iko Iko too.

46. Children of Men (2006) Oooooo Damn fine pick, is it overrated...

47. Men in Black (1997) This one is. A bit... Top 50?

48. Scarface (1983) Top 1,000,000? Now that's overrated. Just because a movie has an awesome quote in a decent scene DOESN'T MEAN THE REST OF THE MOVIE IS ANY, ANY GOOD!

49. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000). I enjoyed you. You may sit right here.

50. The Piano (1993) Haven't seen you.

51. There Will Be Blood (2007) Hey, I've been wanting to rent you.

52. The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad (1988) Awesome. The first segment was especially therapeutic in 1995 with the non-stop coverage, I'd take breaks to see that scene.

53. The Truman Show (1998) Yes. 10 years ago, I'd have a much different position, but something about Ed Harris in this movie etched into my consciousness.

54. Fatal Attraction (1987) Last Emperor won best picture that year, where's it?

As I was typing this, I just read that George Carlin Died.

So, raise a glass, and say ; Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, Cocksucker, Motherfucker, Tits.

Anyway,

55. Risky Business (1983) Shit... (I'm in a bit of a mood, it's not shit.)

56. The Lives of Others (2006) Haven't seen it.

57. There’s Something About Mary (1998) Laughed so hard I practically fell out of my seat.

58. Ghostbusters (1984) Awesome movie! See, Sequels shouldn't be held against you!

59. L.A. Confidential (1997) Oh good this list isn't an idiot... well completely anyway.

60. Scream (1996) Fucking hilarious.

61. Beverly Hills Cop (1984) Not as funny as scream, but a crap load of fun, I like number 2 as well!

62. sex, lies and videotape (1989) Pretentious. This is a movie your film nerd friend forces you to watch. If you're a film nerd, and forced someone to watch it, this is the movie that friend named when bitching that you made them watch movies during an argument. No one says, "You made me watch The Usual Suspects!" Noo... "You made me watch Sex Lies and Videotape!!!!" Said all the time.

63. Big (1988) This is one of MANY of movies always remembered more fondly than it actually is.

64. No Country For Old Men (2007) This movie more so than any. Complete shit.

65. Dirty Dancing (1987) Nobody in 1987 would believe this, and now, no one doubts it! Last Emperor won best picture that year, where's it?

66. Natural Born Killers (1994) Why? It made it's point, but you could watch it do so? Ugh.

67. Donnie Brasco (1997) The list author owed Donnie Brasco money.

68. Witness (1985) Harrison Ford as not Indiana Solo, and the LEAST sexy boob shot ever on a hot chick! Sound juvenile? I was 10 when this came out.

69. All About My Mother (1999)

70. Broadcast News (1987) Last Emperor won best picture that year, where's it?

71. Unforgiven (1992) Praised for a body of awesome work... I need to see you again, I owned you on VHS, saw you opening weekend, but we've never connected since it won Best Picture.

72. Thelma & Louise (1991) Ok.

73. Office Space (1999) This is why lists can't be made too soon after the fact. Fuck, this was WAY better than American beauty.

74. Drugstore Cowboy (1989) Nope, haven't seen you.

75. Out of Africa (1985) Mmmm Hmmm.

76. The Departed (2006) Awesome.

77. Sid and Nancy (1986) Had not seen.

78. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) First one's better. This is prettier..

79. Waiting for Guffman (1996) Don't know it.

80. Michael Clayton (2007) Wonderful, it should have "negotiated" with No Country.

81. Moonstruck (1987) Last Emperor won best picture that year, where's it?

82. Lost in Translation (2003)Terrific, Loved it.

83. Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn (1987) Where's Bruce Campbell Vs The Army of Darkness, that's my fave of the series, it's extra Brucey!

84. Sideways (2004) On my DVD shelf and I've never seen it, I may watch it tonight.

85. The 40 Year-Old Virgin (2005) Yea, it's good. Maybe not list worthy, but awe shucks.

86. Y Tu Mamá También (2002) Whoa, Foreign films are allowed, and no Anime. SHIT ON THIS.

87. Swingers (1996) Yea, you're fine, but where's Akira, that should have been in the top 10!!!

88. Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997) Shagadellic Mojo baby, yea, but not one Miyazaki movie is on this list I guess. The BEST filmmaker EVER. Period. Five BEST Filmmakers ever, Kurosawa, Hitchcock, Lean, Spielberg, and Miyazaki. (Not to at all demean, Cameron, Lucas, Kubrick, Curtiz... could fill 20 guys easily even agree on a 20 way tie to be civil, but no FUCKING MIYAZAKI!!!!!

89. Breaking the Waves (1996) Never heard of you. And you're on a list WITHOUT ANIME!

90. Napoleon Dynamite (2004) Fuck you! I don't even WANT TO SEE THIS TRASH! SINCE IT'S ON A LIST WITHOUT ANIME!!!

91. Back to the Future (1985) Hi, I won't yell at you, old friend.

92. Menace II Society (1993) Didn't see.

93. Ed Wood (1994) PERFECT!

94. Full Metal Jacket (1987) Good stuff.

95. In the Mood for Love (2001) Don't know.

96. Far From Heaven (2002) Likewise.

97. Glory (1989)Good movie, I like it despite almost hating Civil War movies.

98. The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) Yea, good movie. Please be Captain America.

99. The Blair Witch Project (1999) Only movie I ever stood up in a theater and proclaimed on opening night as CRAP!

100. South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut (1999) Masterful. But recent seasons have been better than the movie. Canada on Strike for one...

What a BS list. No Anime. It had Animation. It had Foreign. But Foreign Animation... Ignorant fucks. So yea, wonderful list, stimulated thought, provoked an appreciation for anime, and what a year 1987 was! Thank you EW, for giving us shit to rap about.

Hulk Smashes Love Guru

2008-06-22T15:11:00.004-05:00

Hulk, and the Marvel plan has problems. Box Office Mojo has a showdown chart, and with the movies he's against on the list, well, it's soft opposition. At day 10, Iron Man was 80 Million past that. I've never made a habit of blogging about box office, but I've never been so enamored with the concept Marvel's rolling out. It's one of the best ideas in movie history. A living superhero universe on screen. The Marvel experience in the theaters, with the characters feeling less "adapted" and more accurate then we've ever had ANY Superheros before. Batman (every time) and Superman, X-Men and Spiderman were all sell-out adaptions. Iron Man has changed everything. This Hulk, the Incredible Hulk veers his franschise in that direction, but is Marvel packing the movie snow here too tight?

How Many Mighty Marvel Masterpieces fit into one summer?

Two to Three a year hasn't been that bad so far, but alot of the audience has been alacarte viewers, picking and choosing the Marvel Movie Mayhem. As we get closer to the Avengers, will the films become more intertwined? They'll surley have more of a spotlight on them, and that may create the impression that Marvel is doing more films than you have been, that you're trying to overkill something... I realise that we've had the 2.5movies per year formula for oh... 2002. 6 years, and the Mad Marvel Machine rolls on stronger and stronger.

Which brings us to the 50% occupied glass of the title of this article, Hulk smashed the Love Guru. This has to be clearly to the Hulks advantage. It's not Completely clear if Hulk of Panda won second place, and Get Smart did no damage. This is a little sad for Steve Carell, but I don't think his Box office is any commentary on him. I swear, people are coming around to the way I see comedy. Watch them at home, the laughs aren't any bigger on sixty feet of screen. To much mainstream comedy is obvious, lowbrow, gutteral or well, fart jokes. It's tiring.

So Congrats Hulk, for kicking the ass of Love Guru. Both Smart and Guru would have done better, NOT coming out in the same weekend, but Marvel, beware your own shadow. You're on the mainstream radar, like a frontrunning political candidate, so now, the media will want to KILL YOU!