(t5!) Heroes Of The Zeroes: Top 30 Movies
Same deal as before. Before I conclude the (t5!) Heroes Of The Zeroes Album list, let's interrupt with (t5!) best movies of the decade, just so we can build some sort of suspense for the number one album (even though, to some of you, it's crystal clear what it is).
But let me just say first and foremost that my selection of movies is not that eclectic, and therefore I'm compelled to say that you should take this list with a minuscule grain of salt. Movies are a lot more difficult to consume than music. The great thing about music is that it's the only medium that can be enjoyed either as foreground or background, and thus you can listen to a lot of it without your time getting truly squandered. On the other hand, movies need your undivided attention. You can't, for instance, watch movies while you're driving or at work. That's why it's way harder to become adventurous with movies because setting time aside for it is such a commitment. If I force myself to watch film and it turns out to be horrible, I would feel like I've lost two hours of my precious life afterward. This is the finest thirty out of the movies I've actually watched, and I properly admit that there are thirty more that would probably make this list if I've actually seen them. Case in point, I wish I would have seen Inglourious Basterds or Grizzly Man before I compiled this. It would've found itself in the top 30. Oh well.
However, even if I am able to watch movies all day and every day, my taste in movies is pretty shallow. Other taste makers look for typical film school barometers to vindicate their cinematic erections, such as atmosphere, imagery, cinematography, pacing, realism, etc. My big criterion? Rewatchability. If any of these thirty movies show up on TBS on a Sunday afternoon, you better believe I'm going to reserve a couple of hours for this, even if I've already seen it hundred times before. That's how I roll. That's why movies such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Spirited Away, or Pan's Labyrinth won't show up in this list. Although I admit they're all incredible, I just don't have the motivation to see it again.
So, here it is. Are you ready? You better be.
Reitman close-but-no-cigar Oscar-nominated works for Up In The Air and Juno are also enjoyable; I just plain liked this one more. I found Aaron Eckhart’s assholiness and shameless righteousness endearing, William H. Macy’s incompetence and aggravation familiar (he perfected this blundering character in Fargo, if you remember), and the lessons it brought applicable during this era filled with opinionated people (“I proved that you’re wrong, and if you’re wrong, I’m right”). It transformed corporate politics into something comical and playful, rather than a news item we choose not to watch on C-Span.
#29: Love Actually (Richard Curtis, 2003)
Admit it, you liked it too. A movie about love and happy endings is like a thick and comfortable Snuggie on a cold winter night. In a world of despair and heartbreaks, it’s delightful to get lost in a romantic comedy in which the main plots are Christmas and the adage that “love is all around”. And the fact that it’s jam-packed with charming actors and actresses—with British accents, no less—makes the stories an enjoyable watch, even if the story telling is broken.
#28: United 93 (Paul Greengrass, 2006)
We can probably thank Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center for making this better in comparison. No patriotic speeches, no grandiose musical scores. Sometimes you can obtain genuine emotion without trying too hard to fabricate it with cinematic embellishments. Moreover, it showed that a movie about the tragic events of this day doesn’t need to take a position. It doesn’t have to be left or right. It described what happened without going through why it happened or what should happen after.
#27: Crank (Mark Neveldine/Brian Taylor, 2006)
Crank is the purest action movie of the zeroes, coming out of the same ilk as favorites like Die Hard, Face/Off, and Con Air. It’s basically Speed, only you have an ain’t-nuthin’-to-fuck-with balding Brit Jason Statham instead of a bus and no Keanu Reeves to bog it down with (In addition, Chev Chelios is the best action hero name we’ve had, maybe since Castor Troy). Even if its filled with movie clichés and mediocre acting, it’s still 87 minutes of all action, all the time.
#26: City Of God (Fernando Meirelles, 2002)
You were assured that the fabulous story was fiction, but you know that the slums and lifestyle of these Brazilians are very real. The fact that murder, robbery, and drugs are rites of passage to become a man—kill someone and you get to run this town tonight—makes City of God a disturbing place to live in. It did a marvelous job at emphasizing the sadistic glee that the kids adopt because of their deranged living conditions. Wonderful filmmaking technique as well.
#25: Sin City (Robert Rodriguez, 2005)
Film noir doesn’t get more perverted than the stories from Basin City, where every quarrel is settled one on one, often leading to a bullet to someone’s head. As big as the list of celebrities are in Sin City, the real star of the show is how they are “drawn” by Robert Rodriguez’ green screen, technology-heavy filmmaking. They’ve been doing comic book movies for a while, but to create one that actually looks like an animated comic book…I can’t fathom that it took them this long to perfect it.
#24: Superbad (Greg Mottolla, 2007)
Apatow does teen sex comedy, employing Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s autobiographical script as the narrative. Everyone has that one high school night that they remember for the rest of their lives, Superbad encapsulated it on film. And the stars, who were underdogs before this, are adorable: Jonah Hill when he wasn’t morbidly obese yet, Michael Cera when he hasn’t driven the indie kid character to the ground just yet, and McLovin. If only they had these three when Freaks and Geeks was casting, it would have lasted longer than one season.
#23: Zoolander (Ben Stiller, 2001)
A long-overdue film about the gritty world of male models, revealing them as more than being really, really, ridiculously good looking people. That damn Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson, that pairing is so hot right now! Zoolander is the most quotable movie of the decade, especially among my group of friends, who are like brothers to me. And when I say brother, I don't mean, like, an actual brother, but I mean it like the way black people use it. Which is more meaningful I think.
#22: The Bourne Identity (Doug Liman, 2002)
The three Bourne stories made up the most action packed trilogy of the zeroes, but I lean towards the first one due to the narrative’s comprehensibility. An even distribution of excitement, cinematography and editing, and it shows Damon as a bad-ass action hero that can rival Bond and Batman. Speaking of bad-ass, how bad-ass was the scene with Clive Owen in the field? I just wished they had better Bourne girls than Julia Stiles and that Run Lola Run girl.
#21: Lost In Translation (Sofia Coppola, 2003)
Cinematography isn’t one of the things I look for in a favorite film; at the end of the day, I still need to be entertained. However, Lost In Translation was shot so beautifully that I seriously considered a trip to Japan right after I watched it. Plus, Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson’s awkward love affair entertained me, even if they are depicted as xenophobic ugly Americans (“Ha! People who are different than us are hilarious! They switch their r’s and l’s! Brilliant!”)
#20: Ocean’s Eleven (Steven Soderbergh, 2001)
Don’t you just want to rob a Las Vegas casino right after watching this movie? The best robbery sequence I have ever seen on film; it was exciting from start to finish. Ocean’s Eleven was like the ’85 Boston Celtics of movies: The Celtics worked because McHale, Parish, Walton, and Dennis Johnson was willing to play second banana to Bird; Ocean’s Eleven worked because of everyone’s understanding that Clooney and Pitt’s cool was at an untouchable level—even A-listers like Matt Damon and Don Cheadle were willing to take a back seat.
#19: Collateral (Michael Mann, 2004)
Tom Cruise as a silver fox, custom-fit suited, terrifying, stone-cold murdering machine is my favorite role of his. It also helped that director Michael Mann used the glow of downtown Los Angeles late-night lights to electrify Cruise’s killings. Collateral is first proof of how intense he can be as a movie villain; then his role as a bald megalomaniac in Tropic Thunder confirmed it. A classic case of a person being so overrated that he somehow became underrated.
#18: 50 First Dates (Peter Segal, 2004)
Sandler comedies can range from ridiculously funny (Billy Madison) to just ridiculously bad (Little Nicky). 50 First Dates is still a “standard” Adam Sandler movie—it’s still ridiculous, it’s still predictable, it still has Rob Schneider—but this one is the most clever story they ever penned. Drew Barrymore may not be the hottest Sandler leading lady, she may not be the best actress, she may not even be the funniest, but she has the most chemistry with him.
#17: The 40-Year Old Virgin (Judd Apatow, 2005)
It spawned the Steve Carell we love from all The Office episodes, it spawned the Seth Rogen-Paul Rudd bro-mance, which is electric every time they’re on-screen together, whatever movie they are in (in addition, who would’ve thought that the “Fake Plastic Trees” listening stepbrother from Clueless ended up becoming one of the measuring stick of cool in the zeroes?). Technically, Anchorman was the first relevant Apatow movie of the zeroes, but this was the film that kicked it all off, making him a filmmaker that is tied to this decade the same way John Hughes was tied to the eighties.
#16: The Royal Tenenbaums (Wes Anderson, 2001)
Anyone who says that this (or other Wes Anderson films) is one of the funniest films of the decade most likely has a very pretentious idea of what comedy means. They are, however, tremendously quirky. They are, at times, heartbreakingly tragic—The Royal Tenenbaums, especially. You wanted to hate Gene Hackman’s Royal while watching the movie, but you still feel sympathy for him. They have, also, irreproachable soundtracks. The Mark Mothersbaugh-compiled score and music accompaniment flawlessly captures the mood of the scenes.
#15: The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow, 2009)
It’s completely intense; an Iraq movie who refused to go through the tired politics and backstory of it all and, instead, just showed you the intensity that people are going through over there everyday. The Hurt Locker is like a first-person shooter war movie; thanks to Kathryn Bigelow’s directing insticts, we get to see what a warzone looks like through a soldier’s eye and, also, the feelings and emotions he goes through while in combat. Moreover, I want that bomb-disarming suit as my Halloween costume next year.
#14: Almost Famous (Cameron Crowe, 2000)
I am an enormous Cameron Crowe fan (and an equally enormous fan of his wife Nancy Wilson’s film scores) from “Say Anything” to “Jerry Maguire” to “Singles” to “Vanilla Sky”, and Almost Famous showed me why. His autobiographical film connected with me so startingly well. Anyone who has been a fanboy of something, whether it’d be music, writing, writing about music, or Kate Hudson-led groupies would see himself in Patrick Fugit’s Rolling Stones writer character.
#13: Wall-E (Andrew Stanton, 2008)
Pixar has given us so many enjoyable characters over the years: superhero suburban families, culinary rats, monsters employed to scare kids from closets, toys who come to life when we’re not looking. But Wall-E, a futuristic silent film star, a robotic Woody Allen, is probably the best character they’ve ever created. Imagine an animated robot conveying emotion without dialogue and normal, human facial expression. I would’ve been in-love with Eve too if I was a trash-compacting robot. She’s so sleek, so sexy.
#12: The Prestige (Christopher Nolan, 2006)
It’ll make you want to watch it again right after because (1) you were so confused in the end that you’d want to go through it once more for better understanding of what happened, and (2) the movie was terrifically awesome, plain and simple. It’s one of these movies that if you see it on cable TV, you're forced to sit through it all the way to the end no matter where in the movie you are. I like being confused by movies, but not so much that it breaks my brain (I’m looking at you, Mulholland Dr.); Nolan used just enough film trickery for my taste. It doesn’t matter if Bale and Jackman’s contest to outdo each other’s illusions yielded a loser or not, because no matter who wins, the audience comes out on top.
#11: Anchorman: The Legend Of Ron Burgundy (Adam McKay, 2004)
“60% of the time, it works every time.” Will Ferrell didn’t get an Oscar nod for this, neither did any of his brilliant supporting cast, like Paul Rudd, Steve Carell, and Christina Applegate. Nevertheless, we all need a laugh every now and then, and if a comedy as stupid as this can satisfy that need repeatedly (even when you already know all the lines by heart), then it earns the right to be called a great film. Every decade had their token “dumb” comedy that we turn to every time we need our side tickled—Airplane! for the 80’s and Wayne’s World for the 90’s, for instance; Anchorman is the token dumb movie of the zeroes.
#10: Shaun Of The Dead (Edgar Wright, 2004)
Movies like the Scary Movie try to parody the genre by…I don’t know, like what Naked Gun used to do to gumshoe movies. How funny would it be if the Scream guy were high and freestyling? How funny would it be if we start beating up the scary kid from The Ring? Shit like that, flat-out lampoon and flat-out not my cup of tea. Shaun Of The Dead attacked it from the “what would really happen if zombies attack two hilarious British guys?” angle, which is apparently the correct way to attack these things. Even the creators of Zombieland agrees.
#09: Kung Fu Hustle (Stephen Chow, 2004)
There are handful of terrific martial arts movies in the zeroes—Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Zhang Yimou’s Hero, the Rush Hour trilogy (well, kind of)—but none of them was more entertaining and more positively ridiculous than this. Kung Fu Hustle is what would happen if the cartoon characters of Looney Tunes decided to make a martial arts movie (which, I have to admit, is a way better result if they did a basketball movie like Space Jam).
#08: Kill Bill, Vol. 1 (Quentin Tarantino, 2003)
#07: Kill Bill, Vol. 2 (Quentin Tarantino, 2004)
I might as well group this into one entry because after Vol. 2 was released, I can never actually watch one without the other. The Kill Bill series runs like an ode to his inspirations: Hong Kong kung fu, Japanese samurai, spaghetti western, anime, etc. Replace Uma Thurman (performance of her life, btw) with Pam Grier on her prime, and we get a Blaxploitation classic. I’m going to say Kill Bill, Vol. 2 is a tad better because of David Carradine’s “Beatrix Kiddo-Superman comparison” monologue.
#06: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (Shane Black, 2005)
It’s supposed to be Robert Downey, Jr.’s big comeback, but Val Kilmer got all the memorable lines:
Harry: Still gay?
Gay Perry: Me? Me? No. I'm knee-deep in pussy. I just like the name so much, I can't get rid of it.
Perry: [Stuttering at first] What did you just do?
Harry: [Confused] I just put in one bullet, didn't I?
Perry: You put a live round in that gun?
Harry: Well yeah, there was like an 8% chance.
Perry: Eight? Who taught you math!
Perry: Jesus. Look up "idiot" in the dictionary. You know what you'll find?
Harry: A picture of me?
Perry: No! The definition of the word idiot, which you fucking are!
#05: The Incredibles (Brad Bird, 2004)
Marvel and DC Comics probably had hundreds of superheroes and thousands of superhero storyline, but not one of them (that I know of) covered a plot that involves a superhero getting sued because he foiled a suicide attempt. That’s what makes The Incredibles so appealing: it’s a superhero movie—an animated one, just in case you didn't notice—that is described with such genuineness, whether it’d be the fact that a superhero, like everyone else, gains weight as they grow older or a custome designer talking about the disadvantages of wearing a cape. It’s hands down my favorite Pixar movie, and I’m picking it out of a huge group of jewels.
#04: Memento (Christopher Nolan, 2001)
With most gimmick movies, you tune in just to see the storytelling trick and then you never want to see it again.
Despite its gimmickry, Memento amazingly stands up to multiple viewings, which is a testament to its brilliance. You also know that it’s a terrific script when you’re so invested in it even if it’s cut up in five-minute pieces and told backwards. I just feel sorry for Joey Pants; he’s just trying to help out a friend. Some would point out a few minor plot holes, but it’s still an excellent idea that is marvelously executed.
#03: Children Of Men (Alfonso Cuaron, 2006)
For a “not-so-distant future” movie to succeed, it has to tiptoe the line between “believable” and “improbable”, and Children Of Men has done that as skillfully as the tracing scenes. If the not-so-distant future were something close to this, I’d be quivering my pants off. The long tracking shots were impressive, but not ostentatious at all for the reason that I actually forget that I’ve been watching an action sequence for six minutes now without a camera stoppage.
#02: Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, 2004)
I like Charlie Kaufman movies (the ones I’ve watched anyway, such as Being John Malkovich and Adaptation), but none of his scripts before Eternal Sunshine were able to unite his creativity with a depth of emotion. It also revealed Jim Carrey being subtle, Kate Winslet at her best performance in a decade where she had many good ones, and a beautiful direction from my favorite music video director, Michel Gondry. If you haven’t seen this, don’t watch it while broken hearted, it will cut a little close to the bone.
#01: The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, 2008)
I already went through The Dark Knight in detail last year (here, scroll to the very bottom). As far I’m concerned, that’s the best compliment I can give to this movie. In this blog, I only try to give analyses on music in the past (for reasons I mentioned above); The Dark Knight affected me so much that it inspired me to create an extended write-up on it. It’s an action movie where you’re more interested in the dialogue, it’s a comic book movie with so much depth, it’s a sequel so good, that there are times that you forget that an acceptable Batman Begins existed before it. Also, if you were counting, that’s rounds out to three Christopher Nolan movies in the list, making him the (t5!) Heroes Of The Zeroes Best Director.
But let me just say first and foremost that my selection of movies is not that eclectic, and therefore I'm compelled to say that you should take this list with a minuscule grain of salt. Movies are a lot more difficult to consume than music. The great thing about music is that it's the only medium that can be enjoyed either as foreground or background, and thus you can listen to a lot of it without your time getting truly squandered. On the other hand, movies need your undivided attention. You can't, for instance, watch movies while you're driving or at work. That's why it's way harder to become adventurous with movies because setting time aside for it is such a commitment. If I force myself to watch film and it turns out to be horrible, I would feel like I've lost two hours of my precious life afterward. This is the finest thirty out of the movies I've actually watched, and I properly admit that there are thirty more that would probably make this list if I've actually seen them. Case in point, I wish I would have seen Inglourious Basterds or Grizzly Man before I compiled this. It would've found itself in the top 30. Oh well.
However, even if I am able to watch movies all day and every day, my taste in movies is pretty shallow. Other taste makers look for typical film school barometers to vindicate their cinematic erections, such as atmosphere, imagery, cinematography, pacing, realism, etc. My big criterion? Rewatchability. If any of these thirty movies show up on TBS on a Sunday afternoon, you better believe I'm going to reserve a couple of hours for this, even if I've already seen it hundred times before. That's how I roll. That's why movies such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Spirited Away, or Pan's Labyrinth won't show up in this list. Although I admit they're all incredible, I just don't have the motivation to see it again.
So, here it is. Are you ready? You better be.
Reitman close-but-no-cigar Oscar-nominated works for Up In The Air and Juno are also enjoyable; I just plain liked this one more. I found Aaron Eckhart’s assholiness and shameless righteousness endearing, William H. Macy’s incompetence and aggravation familiar (he perfected this blundering character in Fargo, if you remember), and the lessons it brought applicable during this era filled with opinionated people (“I proved that you’re wrong, and if you’re wrong, I’m right”). It transformed corporate politics into something comical and playful, rather than a news item we choose not to watch on C-Span.
Admit it, you liked it too. A movie about love and happy endings is like a thick and comfortable Snuggie on a cold winter night. In a world of despair and heartbreaks, it’s delightful to get lost in a romantic comedy in which the main plots are Christmas and the adage that “love is all around”. And the fact that it’s jam-packed with charming actors and actresses—with British accents, no less—makes the stories an enjoyable watch, even if the story telling is broken.
We can probably thank Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center for making this better in comparison. No patriotic speeches, no grandiose musical scores. Sometimes you can obtain genuine emotion without trying too hard to fabricate it with cinematic embellishments. Moreover, it showed that a movie about the tragic events of this day doesn’t need to take a position. It doesn’t have to be left or right. It described what happened without going through why it happened or what should happen after.
Crank is the purest action movie of the zeroes, coming out of the same ilk as favorites like Die Hard, Face/Off, and Con Air. It’s basically Speed, only you have an ain’t-nuthin’-to-fuck-with balding Brit Jason Statham instead of a bus and no Keanu Reeves to bog it down with (In addition, Chev Chelios is the best action hero name we’ve had, maybe since Castor Troy). Even if its filled with movie clichés and mediocre acting, it’s still 87 minutes of all action, all the time.
You were assured that the fabulous story was fiction, but you know that the slums and lifestyle of these Brazilians are very real. The fact that murder, robbery, and drugs are rites of passage to become a man—kill someone and you get to run this town tonight—makes City of God a disturbing place to live in. It did a marvelous job at emphasizing the sadistic glee that the kids adopt because of their deranged living conditions. Wonderful filmmaking technique as well.
Film noir doesn’t get more perverted than the stories from Basin City, where every quarrel is settled one on one, often leading to a bullet to someone’s head. As big as the list of celebrities are in Sin City, the real star of the show is how they are “drawn” by Robert Rodriguez’ green screen, technology-heavy filmmaking. They’ve been doing comic book movies for a while, but to create one that actually looks like an animated comic book…I can’t fathom that it took them this long to perfect it.
Apatow does teen sex comedy, employing Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s autobiographical script as the narrative. Everyone has that one high school night that they remember for the rest of their lives, Superbad encapsulated it on film. And the stars, who were underdogs before this, are adorable: Jonah Hill when he wasn’t morbidly obese yet, Michael Cera when he hasn’t driven the indie kid character to the ground just yet, and McLovin. If only they had these three when Freaks and Geeks was casting, it would have lasted longer than one season.
A long-overdue film about the gritty world of male models, revealing them as more than being really, really, ridiculously good looking people. That damn Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson, that pairing is so hot right now! Zoolander is the most quotable movie of the decade, especially among my group of friends, who are like brothers to me. And when I say brother, I don't mean, like, an actual brother, but I mean it like the way black people use it. Which is more meaningful I think.
The three Bourne stories made up the most action packed trilogy of the zeroes, but I lean towards the first one due to the narrative’s comprehensibility. An even distribution of excitement, cinematography and editing, and it shows Damon as a bad-ass action hero that can rival Bond and Batman. Speaking of bad-ass, how bad-ass was the scene with Clive Owen in the field? I just wished they had better Bourne girls than Julia Stiles and that Run Lola Run girl.
Cinematography isn’t one of the things I look for in a favorite film; at the end of the day, I still need to be entertained. However, Lost In Translation was shot so beautifully that I seriously considered a trip to Japan right after I watched it. Plus, Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson’s awkward love affair entertained me, even if they are depicted as xenophobic ugly Americans (“Ha! People who are different than us are hilarious! They switch their r’s and l’s! Brilliant!”)
Don’t you just want to rob a Las Vegas casino right after watching this movie? The best robbery sequence I have ever seen on film; it was exciting from start to finish. Ocean’s Eleven was like the ’85 Boston Celtics of movies: The Celtics worked because McHale, Parish, Walton, and Dennis Johnson was willing to play second banana to Bird; Ocean’s Eleven worked because of everyone’s understanding that Clooney and Pitt’s cool was at an untouchable level—even A-listers like Matt Damon and Don Cheadle were willing to take a back seat.
Tom Cruise as a silver fox, custom-fit suited, terrifying, stone-cold murdering machine is my favorite role of his. It also helped that director Michael Mann used the glow of downtown Los Angeles late-night lights to electrify Cruise’s killings. Collateral is first proof of how intense he can be as a movie villain; then his role as a bald megalomaniac in Tropic Thunder confirmed it. A classic case of a person being so overrated that he somehow became underrated.
Sandler comedies can range from ridiculously funny (Billy Madison) to just ridiculously bad (Little Nicky). 50 First Dates is still a “standard” Adam Sandler movie—it’s still ridiculous, it’s still predictable, it still has Rob Schneider—but this one is the most clever story they ever penned. Drew Barrymore may not be the hottest Sandler leading lady, she may not be the best actress, she may not even be the funniest, but she has the most chemistry with him.
It spawned the Steve Carell we love from all The Office episodes, it spawned the Seth Rogen-Paul Rudd bro-mance, which is electric every time they’re on-screen together, whatever movie they are in (in addition, who would’ve thought that the “Fake Plastic Trees” listening stepbrother from Clueless ended up becoming one of the measuring stick of cool in the zeroes?). Technically, Anchorman was the first relevant Apatow movie of the zeroes, but this was the film that kicked it all off, making him a filmmaker that is tied to this decade the same way John Hughes was tied to the eighties.
Anyone who says that this (or other Wes Anderson films) is one of the funniest films of the decade most likely has a very pretentious idea of what comedy means. They are, however, tremendously quirky. They are, at times, heartbreakingly tragic—The Royal Tenenbaums, especially. You wanted to hate Gene Hackman’s Royal while watching the movie, but you still feel sympathy for him. They have, also, irreproachable soundtracks. The Mark Mothersbaugh-compiled score and music accompaniment flawlessly captures the mood of the scenes.
It’s completely intense; an Iraq movie who refused to go through the tired politics and backstory of it all and, instead, just showed you the intensity that people are going through over there everyday. The Hurt Locker is like a first-person shooter war movie; thanks to Kathryn Bigelow’s directing insticts, we get to see what a warzone looks like through a soldier’s eye and, also, the feelings and emotions he goes through while in combat. Moreover, I want that bomb-disarming suit as my Halloween costume next year.
I am an enormous Cameron Crowe fan (and an equally enormous fan of his wife Nancy Wilson’s film scores) from “Say Anything” to “Jerry Maguire” to “Singles” to “Vanilla Sky”, and Almost Famous showed me why. His autobiographical film connected with me so startingly well. Anyone who has been a fanboy of something, whether it’d be music, writing, writing about music, or Kate Hudson-led groupies would see himself in Patrick Fugit’s Rolling Stones writer character.
Pixar has given us so many enjoyable characters over the years: superhero suburban families, culinary rats, monsters employed to scare kids from closets, toys who come to life when we’re not looking. But Wall-E, a futuristic silent film star, a robotic Woody Allen, is probably the best character they’ve ever created. Imagine an animated robot conveying emotion without dialogue and normal, human facial expression. I would’ve been in-love with Eve too if I was a trash-compacting robot. She’s so sleek, so sexy.
It’ll make you want to watch it again right after because (1) you were so confused in the end that you’d want to go through it once more for better understanding of what happened, and (2) the movie was terrifically awesome, plain and simple. It’s one of these movies that if you see it on cable TV, you're forced to sit through it all the way to the end no matter where in the movie you are. I like being confused by movies, but not so much that it breaks my brain (I’m looking at you, Mulholland Dr.); Nolan used just enough film trickery for my taste. It doesn’t matter if Bale and Jackman’s contest to outdo each other’s illusions yielded a loser or not, because no matter who wins, the audience comes out on top.
“60% of the time, it works every time.” Will Ferrell didn’t get an Oscar nod for this, neither did any of his brilliant supporting cast, like Paul Rudd, Steve Carell, and Christina Applegate. Nevertheless, we all need a laugh every now and then, and if a comedy as stupid as this can satisfy that need repeatedly (even when you already know all the lines by heart), then it earns the right to be called a great film. Every decade had their token “dumb” comedy that we turn to every time we need our side tickled—Airplane! for the 80’s and Wayne’s World for the 90’s, for instance; Anchorman is the token dumb movie of the zeroes.
Movies like the Scary Movie try to parody the genre by…I don’t know, like what Naked Gun used to do to gumshoe movies. How funny would it be if the Scream guy were high and freestyling? How funny would it be if we start beating up the scary kid from The Ring? Shit like that, flat-out lampoon and flat-out not my cup of tea. Shaun Of The Dead attacked it from the “what would really happen if zombies attack two hilarious British guys?” angle, which is apparently the correct way to attack these things. Even the creators of Zombieland agrees.
There are handful of terrific martial arts movies in the zeroes—Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Zhang Yimou’s Hero, the Rush Hour trilogy (well, kind of)—but none of them was more entertaining and more positively ridiculous than this. Kung Fu Hustle is what would happen if the cartoon characters of Looney Tunes decided to make a martial arts movie (which, I have to admit, is a way better result if they did a basketball movie like Space Jam).
#07: Kill Bill, Vol. 2 (Quentin Tarantino, 2004)
I might as well group this into one entry because after Vol. 2 was released, I can never actually watch one without the other. The Kill Bill series runs like an ode to his inspirations: Hong Kong kung fu, Japanese samurai, spaghetti western, anime, etc. Replace Uma Thurman (performance of her life, btw) with Pam Grier on her prime, and we get a Blaxploitation classic. I’m going to say Kill Bill, Vol. 2 is a tad better because of David Carradine’s “Beatrix Kiddo-Superman comparison” monologue.
It’s supposed to be Robert Downey, Jr.’s big comeback, but Val Kilmer got all the memorable lines:
Harry: Still gay?
Gay Perry: Me? Me? No. I'm knee-deep in pussy. I just like the name so much, I can't get rid of it.
Perry: [Stuttering at first] What did you just do?
Harry: [Confused] I just put in one bullet, didn't I?
Perry: You put a live round in that gun?
Harry: Well yeah, there was like an 8% chance.
Perry: Eight? Who taught you math!
Perry: Jesus. Look up "idiot" in the dictionary. You know what you'll find?
Harry: A picture of me?
Perry: No! The definition of the word idiot, which you fucking are!
Marvel and DC Comics probably had hundreds of superheroes and thousands of superhero storyline, but not one of them (that I know of) covered a plot that involves a superhero getting sued because he foiled a suicide attempt. That’s what makes The Incredibles so appealing: it’s a superhero movie—an animated one, just in case you didn't notice—that is described with such genuineness, whether it’d be the fact that a superhero, like everyone else, gains weight as they grow older or a custome designer talking about the disadvantages of wearing a cape. It’s hands down my favorite Pixar movie, and I’m picking it out of a huge group of jewels.
With most gimmick movies, you tune in just to see the storytelling trick and then you never want to see it again.
Despite its gimmickry, Memento amazingly stands up to multiple viewings, which is a testament to its brilliance. You also know that it’s a terrific script when you’re so invested in it even if it’s cut up in five-minute pieces and told backwards. I just feel sorry for Joey Pants; he’s just trying to help out a friend. Some would point out a few minor plot holes, but it’s still an excellent idea that is marvelously executed.
For a “not-so-distant future” movie to succeed, it has to tiptoe the line between “believable” and “improbable”, and Children Of Men has done that as skillfully as the tracing scenes. If the not-so-distant future were something close to this, I’d be quivering my pants off. The long tracking shots were impressive, but not ostentatious at all for the reason that I actually forget that I’ve been watching an action sequence for six minutes now without a camera stoppage.
I like Charlie Kaufman movies (the ones I’ve watched anyway, such as Being John Malkovich and Adaptation), but none of his scripts before Eternal Sunshine were able to unite his creativity with a depth of emotion. It also revealed Jim Carrey being subtle, Kate Winslet at her best performance in a decade where she had many good ones, and a beautiful direction from my favorite music video director, Michel Gondry. If you haven’t seen this, don’t watch it while broken hearted, it will cut a little close to the bone.
I already went through The Dark Knight in detail last year (here, scroll to the very bottom). As far I’m concerned, that’s the best compliment I can give to this movie. In this blog, I only try to give analyses on music in the past (for reasons I mentioned above); The Dark Knight affected me so much that it inspired me to create an extended write-up on it. It’s an action movie where you’re more interested in the dialogue, it’s a comic book movie with so much depth, it’s a sequel so good, that there are times that you forget that an acceptable Batman Begins existed before it. Also, if you were counting, that’s rounds out to three Christopher Nolan movies in the list, making him the (t5!) Heroes Of The Zeroes Best Director.
Comments
Actually, another one that caused my eyes to bleed with what I can only imagine was pleasure was Meet the Spartans. It was so good it gave me a headache and a desire to never ever watch a film again because it was the Acme of movies (more in the disastrous Wile E Coyote Acme than the pinnacle sense.)
With all honesty, I like the list although there is a couple I'll have to check out. Some that I feel may deserve some further consideration are: Up (hilarious/touching), Super Troopers (come on, I personally know you've watched this one multiple times. Dooo It), Donnie Darko (Time Travel+ Evil Easter bunny=Success), Oldboy (I had to check when this one came out, but it's convoluted plotline mixed with brutal hammer fighting works very well), and Amelie (Tautou charms me and I find it very rewatchable).
I haven't seen Oldboy but right now, I'm going through all the Korean movies I haven't seen yet like Memories of Murder (which would probably make this list if I saw it before) and The Host.
Even you'd admit though that the second half of Super Troopers is like 300% worse than the first half of it. And looking back now, I think I only liked that movie while under the influence of something illegal, or under the influence of Adam.