88. SE7EN
89. American History X
90. Reservoir Dogs
91. Elephant Man
92. The Usual Suspects
93. A Christmas Story
94. Idiocracy
95. Fight Club
96. Freaks
97. Green Pastures
98. Lifeboat
99. The Gods Must Be Crazy
100. Team America
101. Ghostbusters
102. Spongebob Squarepants Movie
103. The Incredibles
104. 40 Year Old Virgin
105. The Long Riders
I could go on and on!
The folks at Sordid D'Zine inform me that issue one is now complete and you can get the complete whole thing here.
Tomorrow: ART!
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8 comments:
Most interesting list, indeed. And I was almost convinced you hated everything.
There's a number on this list that wouldn't be on my list but QUITE A FEW that would.
Cool! Thanks for sharing.
88. SE7EN
Yeah, I really enjoyed this film. Pretty much everything about it was top-notch.
90. Reservoir Dogs
Not a bad film, at all.
91. Elephant Man
A treasure of a movie. Humanity at its finest, all around.
95. Fight Club
Generally, I HATE movies that feature a character who (GASP!) isn't really there. But this one worked. Pretty good stuff, actually.
103. The Incredibles
One of the best cartoons of recent times. I think it was the whole family thang that made it work so well. And the voices were great. Have you noticed how so many voices in modern cartoons are BLAND?!! What's up with that? Cartoon character are supposed to have unusual and distinctive voices. These had that, mainly. Especially the villain. When I found out who the voice for the villain was, I was floored.
The more I look at your list, though, the more I don't think I could make a list of 100 really good films ("good" being defined by me, that is).
With very few exceptions, I like all the movies in your list too. I always bring up What Ever Happened to Baby Jane to friends whenever I see a woman in her 70s dress way too young (pigtails, too much makeup, baby-doll dress, etc.) and they've usually never heard of it. It's great, and it's pretty freaky too.
Batman used to have these one note super villains like Calendar Man, who would commit different calendar themed crimes, and he had different outfits to match. They made a movie with Kevin Kline in it once called Calendar Man with the same premise, and I'm surprised DC didn't sue. But Batman had a lot of those, because he's a detective, see, and he has to hunt down clues, and this seemed to work best when the bad guys had some single obsession, like calendars or clocks.
My favorite is the Big Gang. There was Big Head, who had an enormous head and big brains; Big Wig, who had a collection of apparently lethal hair pieces; Big Cheese, who likewise had a selection of dangerous cheeses; BIg Deal--cards; Big Bertha--she was just BIG. And they stole big things, like the biggest book in the world, and the biggest drum in the world. The superhero they fought was of course really really small--the Atom.
So in SE7EN, I don't think I'm giving anything away here, but the villain is basically 7 Deadly Sin Man, who of course, commits crimes with a 7 deadly sin theme. He's a total DC super villain, but the whole thing is so morose and serious that it's hard to really enjoy the fun of this. Sort of like what they've done with the Batman movies lately (though Heath Ledger WAS pretty awesome).
Aside from all this, Brad Pitt isn't really an actor but a male model, and though he tries very hard, he tends to be utterly unconvincing in most cases, especially when he has to seriously emote.
SPOILER ALERT
So in the end he makes these very sincere, typically unconvincing exclamations of "Gaaddd! Gaaad!" Which sound less like's he's just opened a box with his wife's severed head in it and more like he's just eaten a bad salad.
And the severed head (sent by courier no less) is of course, 7 Deadly Sin man's final gambit, meant to convince Brad Pitt to shoot 7 Deadly Sin Man, and by gaad it works.
And check out The Gaads Must Be Crazy again. There's an underlying quaintness and preciousness to the whole thing, which--heaven forbid--I won't call racist. Instead I'll call it: really really eurocentric and condescending. But I'm sure I only see it that way because of my red diaper baby bleeding heart.
Idiocracy, though, a fine choice. Not enough people saw that one.
Actually Jed, the Kevin Kline movie was "January Man", and the premise wasn't calendar-based murders (although they thought so at first) but rather musical-note based murders, and the tune for the notes was "Calendar Girl." Dorky, but different.
Idiocracy ruled. I read a long interview with Mike Judge where he laid out how the movie got shafted by the producers. Frustrating, to say the least.
Ok, now I remember. January Man. I can't say that that's LESS dorky than "Calendar Man".
Uh, rant to follow:
9 times out of ten, when there's a serial killer in the story, it's just lazy writing, and that calendar girl thing is a typically ludicrous example of what lengths people will go to breath novelty into an overused concept that has now unfortunately become a genre.
The principal dilemma that writers face when writing a serial killer story is motivation (with January Man, as I recall, they didn't even bother). Usually they default to just-plain-crazy, but since most people haven't a clue what real mental illness is, and since most writers are too lazy to do any actual research, the killers craziness defies logic, or the trumped up reasons why the person is crazy are pretty thin. For some reason the default there is an abusive maternal influence. Why not?
The whole business tends to make people much more afraid of people with mental illnesses than they have any reason to be. Also see: every other episode of CSI, and that manic depressive guy on 6 Feet Under.
The only time you see mental illness portrayed positively is when the person can perform some kind of magic trick, like A Beautiful Mind, or Rain Man, but again they get most of the details wrong.
Anyway, aside from a shaky start (the whole pimp thing), and that it petered out towards the end, Idiocracy ruled.
jed's posts are totally cool.
One of my friends (Wayne Sallee) is notorious for writing serial killer stories. In one of his stories, he had a prospective killer who was frustrated because all of the holidays were already taken by other serial killers. And he doesn't know what to do...and then the Girl Scout shows up selling cookies.
Thank you Mr. Hemlockman. (For anyone who wonders, this is my morning. I went to bed at 8pm. My sleeping habits are not unlike the elderly.)
So what was the punchline? What holiday did he choose?
I'm going to go make my wife's lunch now.
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