Sometimes in moviemaking technology needs to catch up to an idea. Transformers and Spider-man were always going to be blockbuster movie franchises, and I have no doubt there were movie execs in the 80′s wishing they could make both into live action movies but they didn’t, in the case of Transformers the best they probably could have come out with would have looked like Pete’s Dragon, and in Spider-man it probably would have came out looking like the live action 70′s show.

Both of these examples could be called remakes, or re-imagining (if you are anal), or reboots (a meaningless word in connection with movies borrowed unnecessarily from computers). And both of these were successful because they offered audiences something that couldn’t be accomplished by the originals. And that should be the primary question with any possible remake, “What can we do now that wasn’t done originally?” But the drive to cash in on an already established franchise seems to be too great these days and movies are in production that have no business being made.

7. The Thing

The original was low budget, the acting was passable but not spectacular, and the special effects were well done but low key. On the surface it doesn’t seem like there is any reason why this couldn’t be redone and at least polished off if not improved on.

Isolation

This is the biggest problem with modern horror movies now. So many of the great horror movies needed the feeling of isolation to make the movie tense and terrifying. The feeling of being trapped alone with no contact with the world is scary in itself without even adding in a shape-shifting alien. But trying to make a plausible set of circumstances where the protagonist is “off the grid” is getting harder all the time for horror movie makers. There is cell phone coverage on Mt. Everest. The International Arctic Research Center has a website, with links to a facebook page and a youtube page. The fear that you had in the first movie is in seeing the events from Kurt Russell’s eyes being cut off from the rest of the world and not knowing who was “The Thing”. And they are going to have to recreate that, but trust me, it is going to feel convoluted.

Special Effects

The original used very few special effects, and while not amazing they were effective and came at just the right moments to deliver great scares. The real fear in the story is in the plot and the way it unfolds like I stated above, and there is no real way to significantly improve on that. So if they can’t improve on that the obvious thing they will try to improve on is the quality and quantity of special effects, and did this movie really need more biting chests or heads spouting spider legs.

6. Dirty Dancing

I have never watched more than five minutes of this movie so I can not pretend to know what it was actually about. But in theory this seems like a movie that could be remade and be very successful actually, but there is a good reason why it shouldn’t be remade and why it will not recapture the public the way the original did.

Dancing isn’t that Dirty

It is hard for the modern mind to go back to a time where the very act of dancing to popular music was considered salacious and sinful. And a large part of the reason it is not anymore is because of the 80′s fascination with dance movies. Footloose and Flashdance were a few years before Dirty Dancing. Footloose was about a town so uptight it thought that the idea of Kevin Bacon having seizures to Kenny Loggins music was a sin. Flashdance presented Jennifer Beals as a feminist role model for being empowered enough by her sexuality to dance for others enjoyment. Dirty Dancing turned all that up to 11, the movie made women all hot and bothered because that dreamy Patrick Swayze was basically having sex with plain Jennifer Grey with their clothes on. I remember the way it was talked about and that was the most common description of the dancing in that movie, sex with your clothes on. Have you seen men and women dance to popular music today, it is all like that. Every couple on a dance floor right now shaking it to Kesha or Lady Gaga look like they are dry humping. The original movie caused women to get all hot and bothered because it showed something new, sexy, and taboo. To recreate that today with a movie the man would have to be fully naked and his enourmous penis would have to constantly be slapping into the actress while they danced, we are just desensitized to that point as a society.

This movie might can be remade, and remade successfully, but it is all but impossible to recreate the sensation it caused. It is strange to think of the 80′s as a more innocent time, but in this case that may be.

5. Red Dawn

This is one of those movies that most people remember as being very good and it really isn’t. The cast has some stars of the time in it Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen, but it wasn’t particularly well acted and there were times within the movie where it seemed to be going nowhere. Everything in this movie could be improved on actually, but remaking this is still a mistake and this movie is literally, very literally, impossible to remake.

“RED” Dawn

It was called that for a reason, it wasn’t just a catchy name, anyone who has even the briefest historical memory of the 20th century will recall red being the color of the communist enemy and most importantly connected the feared and hated Soviet Empire, you know the guys who were the enemies of every action movie in the 80′s. This movie is done and will be coming out, the enemy is of course not the USSR, it is North Korea, where the hell “Red” comes into that I have no damn idea.

North Korea: the world superpower

I understand that for a good action movie you have to suspend belief for a while, Jason Statham probably can’t really beat up 12 guys at once. But this is a bit much. The original worked because we actually believed that the Soviets could invade our country or bomb us back to the stone age, they always seemed like a legitimate threat to us. China might have worked here or maybe even India if you could have given us a good convoluted reason  they would want to attack us, because they have sheer numbers on their side. But seriously North Korea, yes they have been trying to work on an atomic bomb, but does anyone really take them seriously as a superpower and a threat to the American mainland.

4. Robocop

Ok, this could definitely be a very successful remake, let’s face it, the original was a horrible movie that we liked anyway.The parts of the movie that were pure action-movie were undone by lousy special effects. The parts of the movie that were suppose to be dramatic were undone by horrible dialogue and acting.  In fact, I actually would really like to see a good remake of this, but there is a few things they need to make sure they get right.

Robocop is part of the 80′s

The hardest thing to get around with a remake is that the Robocop is intricately linked with the 1980′s, it is not a defining movie of that generation necessarily, but when people think “Robocop” they think 80′s. Bringing Robocop to a new generation because we have the technology to do it doesn’t feel quite right. It seems like if we perfected cloning tomorrow, and then decide to bring back Abraham Lincoln to be President. “Robocop” was a movie set in a future that dealt with present themes of the 80′s. It is going to be hard to work around that, there is just something in the idea and look of “Robocop” that tells you something like this could only have been created in the 80′s.

Get it right this time

There were the two parts of “Robocop”,the story of a machine trying to bring law and order to the streets and take down the crime boss, and there was the story of a man trying to recover his humanity. The original didn’t really get this right and most people just remember it as an action movie. The casting of Peter Weller is important here, he was an actor not really know for action roles, the hope was probably that he could pull off that second part of the story, and all things considered he did ok, it was the rest of the cast and the written dialogue that really screwed this up. If they follow the formula laid out in recent success of Batman and Iron Man franchises and cast someone that can actually act they may have something here other than a mindless action movie.

3 Weird Science

I am actually surprised this movie has not been remade yet. I would guess that everytime a beautiful actress comes out of nowhere there are producers dreaming about putting her in the role of Kelly LeBrock and making a ton of money. The original was a very sexual movie that managed not to offend anyone. It seems like instant cash, but there are some problems with the idea today.

It is kind of creepy

Remember the movie, it is teenage boys (under 18) creating a fully grown woman (over 18). It is hard to imagine how that was not at least a little creepy at the time, but when you think about it now it seems a little creepy doesn’t it. Maybe we have had one to many scandals of teachers sleeping with their students. So what is the solution, make the guys adults (over 18), the concept is still kind of creepy but on a different level of creepy, now it is creepy and sad. Make all of them teenagers (under 18), now it is only creepy if adults will be watching this movie at any time. I think Chris Hansen would be parked outside writing down license plate numbers.

Computers

In the 80′s when the original was made computers were still very much a mystery, the average person had no idea what you could do with a computer. We were willing to believe that Matthew Broderick to start or avert a nuclear holocaust with a couple of keystrokes. The average person believed if you typed “nuclear holocaust” into a computer you could start Armageddon, when the truth is all you get is this. The difference is that we overestimated the power of a home computer in the 80′s, and now we know that a computer is nothing but a “fuck up” box. You can’t hook a camera or mp3 player to your computer without installing two different drivers and 3 different kinds of software and then you will find out that your camera/mp3 player isn’t even compatible with your computer. What drivers and versions of windows do you have to have to install Angelina Jolie?

2. Back To The Future

1. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

I am going to do these two together, because they essentially have the exact same issues with them. Both are amazing movies that have stood the test of time so far and remain as classics. Both movies have an amazing cast, with great dialogue, a cool interesting story, and both dealing with coming-of-age in unique ways. They were huge hits in their time and I know few people who dislike either of these movies. I honestly can not understand how you improve on either of these originals without changing them into entirely different movies altogether.

Psycho

Does anyone remember the Psycho remake of 1998? Of course you do and you probably cringed when I mentioned it, remembering possibly as one of the worst movies you ever saw even. I have seen it mentioned like that. But here is the thing, it really wasn’t that bad of a movie, it had a good director (Gus Van Sant), a good cast (Vince Vaughn, Anne Heche, William H Macy, Julianne Moore), and a good story. The problem was it was the exact same story as the 1960 version, they didn’t change anything or try to update it in any way. Most people had either seen the original or were very familiar with it, enough so they didn’t like seeing it again, only with different actors and in color. Psycho (1960) is a classic, and as a general rule, classics should never be remade, Back to the Future and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off are both classics, and if you tell the same story we will not like it, and if you change it up to much we won’t like it, it is sort of a damned if you do,  damned if you don’t thing.

They Define A Generation

Both movies define the 80′s. If we went and dug up time capsules from the 80′s you would probably find things related to both these movies in half of them. If you built a museum in tribute to the 80′s there would be displays to both of these movies there. In many ways they represent the best the 80′s have to offer the world, they present the style, language, and culture of the 80′s in its best light, yes it is style comical, but you can almost understand how it was cool, from plutonium fueled Deloreans to kids skipping school and having an adventure without cell phones and facebook. These movies are rare exotic animals and their habitat is the 80′s, if you take them out of that habitat they are going to die, no matter how much you care for them.

Keeping them in their Era

There was the thought I had that they could remake these movies and keep them in their own time. But that is kind of weird. Imagine making a Back to the Future move in 2012 or 13 paying homage to the 1980′s and then that 1980′s era movie paying homage to the 1960′s, suddenly I feel like we are making Inception again and going down more and more levels. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off would be odd too, or at least not what it was suppose to be, instead of a movie about characters growing up, it would then be a movie about kids growing up in another era, and it would be hard for that movie not to parody that era to the point where the parody becomes the story more than the coming-of-age part.

you can click on the movie posters to be taken to either the imdb page or an article with the remake in it. In fairness to my research it seems that a Back to the Future and Weird Science remake is unlikely, and with Ferris Bueller the talk is more of a sequel, which would have the same problems if you ask me.

My post on my favorite movies was well received so I thought I would do another list. I gave it some thought and came up with doing a list of my favorite directors. I have long felt that people follow actors and actresses when deciding movies to watch. I do too, but only to a small extent, the person connected to a movie that can make it or break for me is the director. The body of a directors work will usually show unifying themes that give you a feeling of comfort with their work.

So my original idea was to sit down and do a list of my favorite directors with a bit of my critical analysis of each. But then I read something in Jason’s blog that got me to thinking. I had noticed that there was division of nerd’s. There the movie nerds who can name the actors, directors, and sometimes producers and writers of a movie. These kind of nerds will spend hours talking about movies and debating themes and such. They will sometimes dress up in the costume of their favorite movie character. The other type of nerd is the sports nerd. They can name the players on their favorite teams, the coaches, and sometimes the assistant coaches and owners. They will spend hours debating which team can win on any given Sunday(or Saturday) and comparing stats of each player. They will sometimes dress up in the costume of their favorite player.

Now one of these types of nerds is completely socially acceptable and is viewed at totally normal, the other type of nerd though is viewed as a social outcast and at least a little strange.And if you can’t figure out which is which, then just picture someone dressing up in a stormtrooper costume and then someone dressing up in a Tom Brady costume, and see which you think is more ridiculous. But then ask yourself why, there is nothing intrinsically superior, or even different about one from another. But we make one ok, and the other is a loser.

So now comes my idea, what if we combined these two nerds? Directors are kind of like quarterbacks of the movie world aren’t they? Their directing careers represent one really long game, each movie they put out is like a pass. Each good movie could represent a completed pass and each bad and incomplete. Now to do this and measure this I would have to agree on a ref, for my experiment it is Rotten Tomatoes, because I prefer them to a the other meta-sites and it is my experiment. So any movie that has a “fresh” score on Rotten Tomatoes is a completion, that is a score of 60 or more. For touchdowns and interceptions I decided to make movies with a score of 90 or more a touchdown, and a movie with less than 25 an interception. No particular reason for those numbers, the arbitrary line had to be drawn somewhere. Since all Rotten Tomatoes scores are out of 100, I decided to give each director 1/10 of their cumulative completion score as yards gained.

Now I ran into a few problems, older movies (i.e. before internet) had a skewed rating because of a lack of online reviews, but Rotten Tomatoes also tracks user and audience scores and those are almost always high enough to get an accurate rating. So Rotten Tomatoes is the ref deciding whether or not the pass is a completion, but sometimes we have to go to the instant replay and check to see if the call is right. I did try to have a standard here too. I ran across movies with Rotten Tomato scores of 95 or more, but had an audience rating of around 70, I ruled those as completions, but not touchdowns. The standard rule is a Tomato score of 90 or more and an audience score of 85 or more gets a touchdown. There are a few exceptions to this rule, but generally I tried to stick to it. But there are a few judgment calls here that I made that someone else might would not, all I can say to that is, fuck you it is my list. There is no list of directors I am using, I combed different list of top directors and just started compiling the numbers on directors, I stuck with directors that still work today

Ordered first to last by director rating (compiled with this calculator). The numbers in parenthesis are Rotten Tomatoes scores.

32. Uwe Boll

 

Attempts	Completions	Yards	Touchdowns	Interception	Rating
5	0	0	0	5	0

Touchdowns: None

Interceptions: In the Name of the King (4), Blood Rayne (4), Postal (8), Alone in the Dark (1), House of the Dead (4)

Analysis: Had more passes, but they were such small time they weren’t rated at all. Essentially he has dropped back in the pocket 5 times and been picked off each time. Shouldn’t even be a back up, everyone reading this could do a better job than Uwe Boll, unless of course Uwe Boll is reading this.

31. Rob Zombie

Attempts	Completions	Yards	Touchdowns	Interception	Rating
4	0	0	0	3	0

Touchdowns: None

Interceptions: Halloween (24), Halloween (20), House of 1000 Corpses (17)

Analysis: Despite a loyal fan base, Rob hasn’t yet put up the kind of stats everyone expected. But his scary style of play usually isn’t a critic favorite.

30. M. Night Shyamalan

Attempts	Completions	Yards	Touchdowns	Interception	Rating
8	3	22.7	0	3	6.25

Touchdowns: None

Interceptions: The Last Airbender (6), The Happening (18), Lady in the Water (24)

Analysis: Things started out good for Shyamalan, but then defenses started to figure him out, they are looking for his fancy trick plays now, and while they may still get fooled, they did at least know something was coming.

29. Ron Howard

Attempts	Completions	Yards	Touchdowns	Interception	Rating
20	11	91.2	0	3	27.33

Touchdowns: None

Interceptions: The Dilemma (21), The Da Vinci Code (25), Grand Theft Auto (25)

Analysis: Suprisingly bad, does get close to greatness every now and then, but then undoes all that credibility with a bad followup.It is shocking how bad his numbers are given how big his name is, in fairness though he has came close to touchdowns a few times.

28. Zach Snyder

Attempts	Completions	Yards	Touchdowns	Interception	Rating
5	3	19.8	0	1	28.99

Touchdowns: None

Interceptions: Sucker Punch (22)

Analysis: Things were going so good for Snyder. His first three passes were great, but his last two have been an incompletion and most recently an interception. He is still young he could get his game back on track, the next pass looks like a big one, Man of Steel.

27. Kevin Smith

Attempts	Completions	Yards	Touchdowns	Interception	Rating
9	6	42.7	0	1	37.82

Touchdowns: None

Interceptions: Cop Out (19)

Analysis: Was a strong player that seems to have gotten away from what he does best. But was surprised at the low scores, I could have swore I saw a touchdown from him.

26. Tony Scott

Attempts	Completions	Yards	Touchdowns	Interception	Rating
16	8	54.3	1	1	52.68

Touchdowns: True Romance (91)

Interceptions: Domino (19)

Analysis: Very Erratic, each time he drops back to pass you hold your breath and hope for the best.

25. Michael Bay

Attempts	Completions	Yards	Touchdowns	Interception	Rating
9	6	25	0	0	70.13

Touchdowns: None

Interceptions: None

Analysis: A very polarizing quarterback, you have to go to the tape to review every pass, the refs always call them incomplete, but on review it can clearly be seen to be a catch. Hated by some, loved by others, but it is hard to deny he is effective, at least most the time.

24. Ridley Scott

Attempts	Completions	Yards	Touchdowns	Interception	Rating
19	10	80.9	2	1	76.84

Touchdowns: Alien (96), Blade Runner (92)

Interceptions: A Good Year (25)

Analysis: A once great quarterback who is obviously in the twilight of his career. It is arguable that he has lost touch with that youthful talent that made him popular, but you still can’t deny his two great touchdowns.

23. Gus Van Sant

Attempts	Completions	Yards	Touchdowns	Interception	Rating
11	8	64	2	1	88.63

Touchdowns: Good Will Hunting (97), Milk (92)

Interceptions: Even Cowgirls Get the Blue (24)

Analysis: An early interception is virtually wiped out by two touchdowns. Has never gotten anywhere near the credit he deserves, despite being a very efficient quarterback.

22. Michael Mann

Attempts	Completions	Yards	Touchdowns	Interception	Rating
10	8	68.9	1	1	89.12

Touchdowns: The Insider (96)

Interceptions: The Keep (11)

Analysis: Has a distinct style, but is usually pleasing to the fans. Not a big name, but those who know the game know never to underestimate him.

21. Steven Soderbergh

Attempts	Completions	Yards	Touchdowns	Interception	Rating
20	15	118.8	0	0	89.33

Touchdowns: None

Interceptions: None

Analysis: Has been in the game for a while now, but has not tasted the sweetness of a touchdown or the bitterness of an interception. He has been close to both though. You get the feeling with him that sooner or later he will get there, or totally blow it.

20. Danny Boyle

Attempts	Completions	Yards	Touchdowns	Interception	Rating
9	7	59.6	1	1	91.71

Touchdowns: Slumdog Millionaire (94)

Interceptions: The Beach (19)

Analysis: Has really started to develop a reputation over the last few years, he dips into every playing style a bit, and always brings something new to it. Even with the interception he could be on his way to being a top ten guy.

19. Spike Lee

Attempts	Completions	Yards	Touchdowns	Interception	Rating
17	11	91	2	1	93.01

Touchdowns: Do the Right Thing (96), Malcolm X (91)

Interceptions: She Hate Me (19)

Analysis: Came out very strong, but at this point I think we all know his best days are behind him. He once seemed to be playing for a reason, now it seems he is just playing for the paycheck.

18. Wes Anderson

Attempts	Completions	Yards	Touchdowns	Interception	Rating
7	7	46.1	0	0	94.1

Touchdowns: None

Interceptions: None

Analysis: Is still playing a perfect game and all he needs is that touchdown to shoot up the ratings. Is amazingly consistent. It is a shame most people have no idea who he is.

17. David Cronenberg

Attempts	Completions	Yards	Touchdowns	Interception	Rating
14	13	104.5	0	0	97.76

Touchdowns: None

Interceptions: None

Analysis: There were a few calls that were really close that could have given him a few touchdowns and changed his place drastically. Career started strong then fell to mediocrity, lately he has been making strong plays again. He may be a comeback story in the making.

16. Paul Thomas Anderson

Attempts	Completions	Yards	Touchdowns	Interception	Rating
5	5	42.6	0	0	102.1

Touchdowns: None

Interceptions: None

Analysis: Has thrown some strange and questionable passes that could have easily led to interceptions, but either through luck or talent have been completions. He seems to be showing there can be little difference between madness and genius.

15. Tim Burton

Attempts	Completions	Yards	Touchdowns	Interception	Rating
14	10	82.1	1	0	109.8

Touchdowns: Edward Scissorhands (91)

Interceptions: None

Analysis: Has perhaps the most distinctive style of playing today. Is usually on target with his bold passes. When he misses the mark it usually looks a lot worse than it actually is, if you really look closely you will see that he only just barely missed greatness with those passes. And a few of his other completions are very close to being touchdowns.

14. Robert Zemekis

Attempts	Completions	Yards	Touchdowns	Interception	Rating
14	10	78.8	4	0	124.6

Touchdowns: Back to the Future (97), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (98), Forrest Gump (71/93), Cast Away (90/80)

Interceptions: None

Analysis: 40% of his completions are touchdowns, but his last couple of passes have been incompletions or near incompletions. But his four touchdowns will let people forgive a lot in him.

13. Bryan Singer

Attempts	Completions	Yards	Touchdowns	Interception	Rating
7	5	39.6	1	0	124.7

Touchdowns: The Usual Suspects (89/95)

Interceptions: None

Analysis: The early part of his career was either Touchdown or incompletion, he has fallen into a good average pass since then, preferring to play it safe.

12. Ang Lee

Attempts	Completions	Yards	Touchdowns	Interception	Rating
7	5	42.7	1	0	126.6

Touchdowns: Sense and Sensibility (98)

Interceptions: None

Analysis: Gets his name out there a lot, and while he might not be as good as he gets credit for, has absolutely had his moments. Give the man credit though for always being willing to try out new plays.

11. Clint Eastwood

Attempts	Completions	Yards	Touchdowns	Interception	Rating
29	21	177.7	4	0	127.5

Touchdowns: Letters from Iwo Jima (91), Million Dollar Baby (92), Unforgiven (96), The Outlaw Josey Wales (97)

Interceptions: None

Analysis: A long a productive career, he has had touchdowns at every stage of it. Has been willing to give everything a shot which probably accounts for most his incompletions, but still has proved to be a solid foundation for him. He has been at it a while, but you still get the feeling there are more touchdowns coming from him.

10. Guilermo Del Toro

Attempts	Completions	Yards	Touchdowns	Interception	Rating
7	5	44.4	2	0	127.6

Touchdowns: Pan’s Labyrinth (95), The Devil’s Backbone (91)

Interceptions: None

Analysis: Even when he misses, it isn’t by much. Still fairly new and people are getting to like his style of play. The biggest problem with his game is he can’t decide if he wants to play in America or Spain.

9. Frank Darabont

Attempts	Completions	Yards	Touchdowns	Interception	Rating
4	3	24.2	1	0	129.3

Touchdowns: The Shawshank Redemption (89/98)

Interceptions: None

Analysis: He just doesn’t throw it very much, if he threw it more the numbers might be even better. But he does have one legendary toss that counts for a lot, especially with me. 3 of his 4 movies hinge on the career of Stephen King.

8. Sam Raimi

Attempts	Completions	Yards	Touchdowns	Interception	Rating
12	9	77.4	2	0	131

Touchdowns: The Evil Dead 2 (98), Spider-Man 2 (93)

Interceptions: None

Analysis: Defined by two series that make up fully half his career(Evil Dead & Spider-Man), but there are worse things to be defined by since they did lead to both his touchdowns, and all three of his incompletions were not in either.

7. David Fincher

Attempts	Completions	Yards	Touchdowns	Interception	Rating
8	7	57	1	0	135.9

Touchdowns: The Social Network (96)

Interceptions: None

Analysis: His numbers seem low to have such a high rating, but he has only missed one pass and one touchdown and no interceptions. That is good since he has not exactly had a cautious career. Recently he has tried to revamp his image, early on known for being dark and gritty, now he is trying to be more commercially friendly. A change like that can be risky, but he doesn’t seem to have lost any credibility.

6. Sam Mendes

Attempts	Completions	Yards	Touchdowns	Interception	Rating
5	5	36.7	1	0	136.8

Touchdowns: American Beauty (88/90)

Interceptions: None

Analysis: A surprising quarterback, he doesn’t get much press because he so rarely throws it, but when he does it counts. Definitely a guy to watch, since everything he has put out so far is a completion, but don’t hold your breath till his next one, he can wait a while between passes.

5. Steven Speilberg

Attempts	Completions	Yards	Touchdowns	Interception	Rating
24	21	178.7	4	0	137.2

Touchdowns: Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (94), Saving Private Ryan (91), Schindler’s List (97), E.T. (98)

Interceptions: None

Analysis: A true legend, it feels like he has been playing my whole life, which he actually has now that I think about it. Lately his passes have been pretty pedestrian, but they are still getting the job done. And you know sooner or later he will throw another touchdown.

T-4. Martin Scorsese

Attempts	Completions	Yards	Touchdowns	Interception	Rating
21	20	158.3	5	0	137.6

Touchdowns: The Departed (93), Goodfellas (97), The King of Comedy (92), Raging Bull (98), Taxi Driver (98)

Interceptions: None

Analysis: His only incompletion was in 1972, and he has since then thrown 5 touchdowns, and a few other very close ones. Yet another legend of the game, he is going into his fifth decade of delivering quality play and you get the feeling he could do this forever.

T-4. The Coen Brothers

Attempts	Completions	Yards	Touchdowns	Interception	Rating
15	13	112.9	6	0	137.6

Touchdowns: True Grit (96), No Country for Old Men (95), Fargo (94), Barton Fink (90), Miller’s Crossing (90), Blood Simple (95)

Interceptions: None

Analysis: The reigning touchdown champion, what else can you say. Their passes are always a little strange, sometimes funny, sometimes scary, always tense. You never really know what they are going to do next, which is the fun of watching them.

3. Peter Jackson

Attempts	Completions	Yards	Touchdowns	Interception	Rating
8	7	61.4	3	0	138.2

Touchdowns: The Fellowship of the Ring (92), The Two Towers (96), The Return of the King (94)

Interceptions: None

Analysis: It feels kind of unfair that all his touchdowns came on a single series, but you can’t deny how awesome of a series it was. The fact that his last pass was his first incompletion and a near interception is troubling though.

T-2. Quentin Tarantino

Attempts	Completions	Yards	Touchdowns	Interception	Rating
7	7	59.8	2	0	141.8

Touchdowns: Pulp Fiction (94), Reservoir Dogs (96)

Interceptions: None

Analysis: So far a perfect 7 for all his passes, his two touchdowns came with his first two passes. He can be a bit of a loudmouth, but he always backs it up with his play. His play can feel fresh and repetitive at the same time.

T-2. Christopher Nolan

Attempts	Completions	Yards	Touchdowns	Interception	Rating
7	7	59.8	2	0	141.8

Touchdowns: The Dark Knight (94), Memento (93)

Interceptions: None

Analysis: What is scary about Nolan is that he keeps getting better, he has a few other passes that are close to touchdowns, and his last two passes were a touchdown and another near touchdown. You get the feeling that we haven’t even seen all he is capable of yet. Looks like he might be a legend in the making.

1. James Cameron

Attempts	Completions	Yards	Touchdowns	Interception	Rating
7	7	62.4	2	0	143.3

Touchdowns: Terminator 2: Judgment Day (98), Aliens (100)

Interceptions: None

Analysis: Cameron gets the slight edge with slightly more yardage over Nolan and Tarantino. He is an easy guy to overlook, it has taken him almost 3 decades to put out 7 passes, but when he throws it counts, it really counts.

So what does these number tell us? Not a damn thing, a few years back Chad Pennington famously had the highest career passer rating, at no point in his career has Chad Pennington ever been the best quarterback in football. The rating is just a measure of efficiency and people debate its merits all the time. I compiled the list because I thought it would be fun, and because I thought it would be a different way of looking at directors.

I have been meaning to revisit this for the last few weeks. If you recall I predicted that Green Lantern and Green Hornet would bomb this year, well I don’t guess I actually used the “B” word, but I did say they would be disappointing. And to make my divination skills a bit more impressive I said, “I see this movie opening big and then crashing fast” in relation to Green Lantern. Green Lantern’s opening weekend was $53 million, its second weekend was $18 million.

Both movies have been commercial and critical flops, The Rotten Tomato score for Green Lantern was 26%, for Green Hornet 44%.  Green Hornet didn’t even crack $100 million, it made about $98 million. Which is actually more than other recent Seth Rogen pictures like say Pineapple Express ($87 Million) and way more than Zack and Miri Make a Porno ($31 Million), but Pineapple Express cost $27 million to make and Zack and Miri cost $24 Million, so those made a profit, where as Green Hornet cost $120 million.

And unless Green Lantern gets some kind of strange big boost it is even more of a disaster, yes it has broken $100 million, it is at about $113 million right now. Which might would make you say that isn’t a bomb, but when you spend $200 million making a movie and only get $113 back, that would be a bomb. I am sure it will make a few more bucks, but it isn’t going to get near that $200 million mark, and remember that is just to break even. I think the Green Lantern fail is actually quite epic and worse than even I thought it would be.

The comic book movies this year:

Thor ($180 Million and going)

X-Men First Class ($144 Million and going)

Green Lantern ($113 Million and creeping along)

Captain America ($72 Million)

But to really get a good idea of Green Lantern’s failure comparing it to those movies isn’t really fair,all those movies had smaller budget and didn’t really have any stars. Neither had an A-list star in the lead role, the closest was Natalie Portman is a co-starring role, which is a big deal, but not exactly the same. The closest movie to compare this too is Iron Man 2, or maybe Iron Man 1, Robert Downey Jr was a bonafide star by the time of Iron Man 2, but it was an already established movie so the comparison might be a tad unfair. But we have to make the comparison somewhere, Iron Man cost $140 million to make and brought in $318 million at the box office, Iron Man 2 performed a little worse costing $200 million to make and brought in $312 million.

Before moving on I have to mention Captain America, it has made $72 million dollars in its opening weekend and has a fairly positive rotten tomato score of 74%. It has made 63% of Green Lantern’s entire take in one single week, that is impressive, and made more impressive by it costing $60 million dollars less to make and going against the Harry Potter juggernaut in theaters. It is already halfway to breaking even in one week.

Now why did these movies do so badly? I have read a few articles about it, as usual everyone is just guessing. Strangely enough my theory is not really coming up that much, even though it did predict these two bombs. But to be fair I think there is another point on Green Hornet at least, the marketing for Green Hornet was abysmal, almost non existent. It felt like Sony gave up on the movie before it even hit theaters. But I still believe some of the blame is in confusing moviegoers who didn’t know if they would be going to watch an action movie or a comedy, or maybe even some deformed bastard child of the two.

With Green Lantern the thoughts seem to be that it overused special effects, that it had a bad/overused plot, or lacked a big name villain.  And I will grant that all of these might have merit, but it is like they are ignoring the elephant in the room, men don’t like Ryan Reynolds. He is a chick actor, Richard Gere, Robert Redford, Hugh Grant, take your pick. I don’t have anything against any of those guys, but when I see them I think “female friendly movie”, and I don’t want that mixed in with my action hero kicking ass. And before you women get all bent out of shape, I don’t think you want Jason Statham showing up in the next Julia Roberts movie to punch anyone in the face. I stand firmly by my theory here, men didn’t want to see the movie because it had Ryan Reynolds in it, and women didn’t want to see it because it was a comic book superhero. I know that is a broad generalization, but I don’t think that makes it any less true.

But most importantly, Ha! I was right. And for my next projected bombs, if they go ahead with the planned remakes of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Back to the Future,epic mega-bombs.

My box office number come from boxofficemojo.com and here is a quick link to a list of comic book adaptation movies.

Henry Ford once said, “History is mostly bunk.” For those of you not familiar with the word “bunk” in this context, insert the word “bullshit”. And our Nazi loving car manufacturer and American hero of rugged individualism was on to something. He made this quote to illustrate that he didn’t care how history saw him, and for the most part that has worked out well for him. The average person had no idea about the quote of his that I used, and mostly when he is remembered or mentioned at all these days it is as the namesake of Ford motor company, or as that American hero of rugged individualism, and I have even heard people that actually think he invented the car and assembly line mass production. The nasty bits, like that whole anti-semitism thing is mostly forgotten. Make no mistake about it, Henry Ford was kind of an asshole. I am not trying to slam a dead, famous man’s memory here, I am not out to tear down an American hero. Henry Ford did some amazing things, largely responsible for making us the car making juggernauts of the world and is primarily responsible for what we have come to know as our work week. And he did some good too, like paying people a pretty decent wage in his era.  I want people to see the true history and true historical people who made it.

We have somewhere along the line collectively decided to forget the bits we don’t like and create myths out of real people and real events. Maybe to make us look better retroactively, maybe so our children can learn valuable moral lessons, I am not sure the reason, but we did it. And that is tragic, it robs history of its true value and beauty. There were real people with real flaws, not much different than you or me, and sometimes in spite of their short comings they were able to rise up and do great things.

Isn’t there value in looking realistically at a person like say Martin Luther King, Jr. Perhaps the most deeply admired person of the 20th, and one of my personal heroes. A man who stood up for what is right, even when it wasn’t what was popular. A man who felt the pain of all of his people and was willing to paint a target on his back to try and elevate them from second class citizens. And it is easy to look at him now with knowing that he was perhaps the major linchpin in the civil rights movement, that what he said would matter and ring for years to come, but he had no way of knowing this when he began, but he began all the same. That is amazing.

But there is this other completely overlooked side of Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. King had lots of faithful followers and he tried to take time to get to know many of them. And some of them he got to know really well, and I am using “know” in the biblical sense here people. Does that change any of the things he said? Does it make them mean any less? Does it diminish the risk he put upon himself for a good cause? I would answer “no”. He was a man, a man with flaws, in this case a flaw that many other great men had, but he still did great things. And shouldn’t people be made to realize that even with their shortcomings they can still do good things.

And this is to say nothing of the darker parts of history. The parts we choose to gloss over or forget all together because they make us feel icky, and they just don’t paint an accurate picture of who we are today, and are therefore unimportant.

If we could have come to grips with our own sadistic past in events such as the Trail of Tears, Wounded Knee, and well almost every dealing we ever had with the Indians (Well except for that one, single good moment we had with them that we celebrate every November). Not to mention the peculiar institution of slavery, and the years of repression and Klan lynchings that followed that, the massacres at Rosewood and Omaha. If we could have come to terms with all of this, might we have worked harder and more forcefully to stop this kind of “ethnic cleansing” in other parts of the world. How much sooner would we have went to war with the Nazis? Would we have completely ignored Rwanda? I don’t know, maybe it would change nothing. But usually when you come to terms with your own mistakes you are more willing to intervene when you see others making them.

Might HUAC and the whole era of McCarthyism been avoided if we had learned the lessons of the Salem Witch Trials? Could we have avoided the Vietnam War if we had learned that we were essentially the British during the Revolutionary War?

History is full of these kinds of questions, and they are fun, but they change nothing, these mistakes have already been made. Where this really becomes  important is when you wonder if we will learn the lessons we need to stop the next tragedy before it happens. Will we learn from 9/11, or will there be a CynicalOptimist somewhere in our future pointing out how the lessons from that tragedy were completely forgotten after something similar happens?

We need to stop using history to confirm our own worldview. We are doing a disservice not just to history but to ourselves. We do not need to continue to let history teach the lessons we want to learn, but maybe the lessons we need to learn. Take some time, learn a little about how we got to where we are in the grand scheme of things. All the information is out there and right at your fingertips this very second. You will be surprised, most of it is very entertaining as well as informative. In an age when people are willing to watch for hours people like Snooki, Jwoww, and The Situation talk and do things that are stupid and unimportant, maybe take some time to get to know people like Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton, and Madison, their names might not be as interesting but they were very interesting people that did very important things.

For most of the twentieth century and now into the twenty-first the government seems to be moving further and further into our personal lives and personal choices. As time goes by they stick their noses further into our business, for our own good, and I wonder how often anyone even thinks any more whether or not their noses belong there?

Maybe it is the time of day I watch tv and listen to the radio, or maybe it is what I watch and listen to, but lately I have noticed a significant increase in the number of highway safety ads. I remember highway safety ads my whole life, so they aren’t new, but lately (I would say the last 3 to 4 months) I have noticed them more and more, there seems to be at least one every hour of television that I watch. And they are different now too, the ones I remember in the past focused on how much safer you are wearing a seat belt, how much more likely you are to survive a car crash if you wear your seat belt, how driving at a safe speed will cut down on accident chances, how driving while drunk is a very bad thing that could cause an accident.

I liked those ads, okay well maybe like isn’t the right word, but I thought they were proper and useful, young drivers need to know these things, and seasoned veterans could use reminding every now and then too. Plus they had things that I really like in them, those, what do you call them, oh yeah, facts. I like it when I am told how much safer I am driving with a seat belt than without one. I know some of the math to come up with these numbers is very questionable, but still a good semi-solid number is a reassuring thing.

Now the particular aspect I want to focus on is seat belts, that is what I have been seeing a lot here lately is seat belt safety ads. But that is the thing, the ads have changed and they are not about seat belt safety anymore. Now every ad I see is about how you will get a ticket if you do not buckle up, that is it, there are no statistics in the commercials, no warnings about your safety, no good reasons to buckle up. At this point we are simply telling people, buckle up or you will get in trouble.

Why are we okay with this? These ads are paid for by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, this is a government agency, which means it is funded by your tax dollars. I am not one that usually likes just throwing that out there, but I think it is important in this case. We are paying an agency to tell us that we will get in trouble if we don’t follow the rules, basically this means we are paying our parents. Now let me say this, if you go to there site, it is a very good website. It has just what you would expect from a government agency that deals with safety. There are studies with all kinds of those number things I love so much in them. There is vehicle information so you can make the safest vehicle choice possible. There is the safest way to ride on any type of vehicle, cars, trucks, suvs, motorcycles, and for all passengers, babys, pregnant women, etc. It is a very good website, exactly what I would expect to see, and a website I am sure no one goes to because it lacks kittens doing cute things or hardcore pornography.

My direct problem with them is the advertising campaign. The job of a government agency is to provide us information. It is up to us to make a decision based on that information. There advertising contains no information, it is just trying to scare and bully you into doing what they want. They have no interest in trying to convince you to be safe, there goal seems to be “do what we tell you or else”.

And why is it that we even tolerate seat belt laws? This has bothered me for years, it has only been magnified by the current advertising that is directly touting these seat belt laws as a way to force you to be safe. And that is the purpose of the laws, when you get a seat belt ticket, you are being penalized for being unsafe. In theory, if you decide drive a car and not wear a seat belt you are making a personal choice, a personal choice that affects no one but yourself. You are not more likely to cause a crash by not wearing a seat belt, which is the case with speeding and drunk driving laws. So by not wearing your seat belt you are endangering no one but your self. If you get in a wreck you are more likely to sustain serious injury or death without your seat belt, but that is just for you, if you are not wearing your seat belt and the person you hit is, their likelihood of serious injury does not go up. It is just you, all you, and no one else but you. I understand the kid seat belt laws, they make perfect sense, a child is not responsible or capable of making a conscious informed decision about their safety, some parents might not buckle their kids up if we didn’t force them to. But in the case of grown ass adults, that choice is theirs, they know the risks, they have heard about the dangers, they had to take a safety course before they got their license. If after being presented with the facts they still choose not to buckle up, that is their choice to make and we should not penalize them for being stupid, if the worst comes to pass physics will punish them enough for being stupid without us wasting time and tax dollars.

Most people don’t even question these laws I think though, for most people it is fine, big brother is looking out for us, and besides most people wear their seat belt, because they would like the chance to survive a head on collision. So we don’t bat an eyelash when laws protecting us are made, even if they have no business being there in the first place. But these kinds of things should bother us, we have the right to be retarded assholes if we want to be, we have the right to make a personal choice, even if it is bad for us and makes absolutely no goddamn sense, and most importantly the government has  no right to tell us we have to do something, or can’t do something, if the only person who is being hurt here is ones self.

One last thing, this is just weird to me, don’t you find it a little perverse that when you pay a seat belt ticket you are helping to fund a program that tells you that if you don’t buckle up you will get a seat belt ticket?

1

Am I the only one who is amazed at the paradox that is The Shawshank Redemption. Think about it, for a movie to be noticed and remembered it is suppose to follow a formula, or at least parts of a formula. Almost every movie on my list, almost, and every big movie for, well just about forever, has done that. The Shawshank Redemption completely avoided almost everything that usually makes a movie successful, by all accounts this movie should have been a failure, but is arguably the greatest movie ever made.

There are no big names attached to this movie

The biggest name attached to this movie is Morgan Freeman. Now don’t get me wrong Morgan Freeman is bigger, and actually bigger these days then he was then, but he is not exactly an A list actor. Tim Robbins is a very good actor and during that time was enjoying quite a bit of success. But hardly either one of these actors are the same kind of audience draw as Kevin Costner, Clint Eastwood, John Wayne, James Stewart, Johnny Depp, Will Smith, Burt Reynolds, or,  well you get the idea. Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins do both manage to give what is probably the best performances of their careers, and they are both very talented actors so that is saying something.

The biggest name attached to this movie is almost completely forgotten, well forgotten in relation to this movie, or never known in relation to this movie. Most the time when I point out this movie is based on a Stephen King story I get two responses, surprise and disbelief. I have long suspected that his name was intentionally kept away from this movie because so many people have the misguided belief that he writes nothing but horror. Now in fairness to that idea, in the years up until then he name was attached to some very dark movies, so I do actually think it was probably a good idea to hide his name in the cast and not mention in any of the advertising. Not to mention it makes if fun for me to point it out to people and show them how badly they have misjudged Stephen King.

The director was a complete unknown at the time and now only a little better known, mostly to people like me who happen to follow these kinds of things. I really mean a complete unknown, up the that point he had directed a short film and a made-for-tv movie starring Tim Matheson.  Stephen King liked the short movie (which also was based on one of his stories), so when Darabont approached Stephen King to buy the movie rights, he approved. But do you see how improbable it was that this movie would be as good as it was.

One other thing I always liked to point out to people with the cast of this movie. The man who plays Captain Hadley, Clancy Brown, in case you still don’t remember, he is the head guard that beats a fan man to death for crying early on in the movie. That guy, that killed two people in the movie, he is the voice of Mr. Krabs.

An interesting little tidbit of trivia about this movie I think illustrates my point with all this quite well. Before Frank Darabont started making the movie he was approached by Rob Reiner who wanted to do it, he plan was to cast Tom Cruise to play Andy and Harrison Ford to play Red (In the story Red was white, really how many black Irish have you ever seen). Now just sit back close your eyes and picture that. Of course Tim Robbins was not Darabont’s first choice, the role was turned down by both Tom Hanks and Kevin Costner(who later said he really regretted that). But still here is a movie that was very nearly star studded, but in the end we didn’t get that and yet this movie is one of the greatest ever. Now that is to say nothing about how it would have been with big name stars, it is easy to laugh and say it would have sucked, but we don’t know, it might have been better. But who would risk changing that cast out.

There is no big budget with big special effects

The truth is what special effects there are in the movie are actually quite bad. But it seems like Darabont was betting no one would notice, and if they did, no one would care. I noticed, but I don’t care. Next time you watch the movie pat attention to something and you will notice too, if you haven’t.

Andy spends 19 years in jail, largely with the same people. During the course of the movie Andy and Red are kind of artificially aged, in other words, they are given some gray hair. They are not lined or anything like that, just a bit of gray hair, oh and Andy has to wear glasses because his eyesight is getting bad in his old age. Now the aging effects are pretty bad when you really think about it, Andy was around 30 when he went in and came out at about 50, give or take a few years. Red is about 35 or so and comes out when he is near 60. Think about that for a few minutes and tell whether or not they look remotely like they aged like that over the course of the movie. Frank Darabont gives you the impression that they have aged and for the purpose of telling the story that is all we needed, it is actually quite a brillant way to save major money on the budget. Look at the rest of the cast William Sadler, James Whitmore, Bob Gunton, they don’t look like they aged a day in 20 years there.

But it doesn’t matter, all Darabont needs to do is give you the impression that time is passing, so he adds a little gray to their hair, changes the posters in Andy’s cell, then we get the idea. But how many major movies of the last 20 or 30 years can you think of where they wouldn’t go overboard trying to beat it into your head how much time has passed. Darabont doesn’t want you to focus on that though, he just wants you to be aware that time is passing.

No Titties

There are no women in this movie, sure we have a Rita Hayworth poster and later a Raquel Welch one. And there is a brief flashback scene showing Andy’s wife, never clearly though, but that is it, there are no other women in this movie. I understand why there are no women, historical and realistic accuracy. But still, how often do you see that? I can’t think of another movie where an entire gender seems to be missing. They just made a movie about a guy stuck under a rock for days and that cast is over half female. I even watched that gay cowboy movie a few years ago and it not only had women in it, but it actually had the bare boobs of a Disney princess and a Dawson’s Creek girl. But not with The Shawkshank Redemption, there are no female prison guards, Andy doesn’t get a visit from his mom, Red doesn’t get a single conjugal visit from an old girlfriend.

Yes there are a few other cases of extras being female in the movie, namely when the guys are out of prison you do see women in the background, but there is no sex appeal, no Jessica Alba dancing on a stage, Megan Fox leaning over a car, no Angelina Jolie just doing anything. That alone isn’t amazing, but it is part of a formula for success, it is one of the things a movie maker can do to make a movie more successful, and possibly remembered, most people can barely recall the plot of Fast Times at Ridgemont High, but I know exactly what image popped into your head when I said the name of that movie.

Some movies don’t use sex appeal at all, Schindler’s List actually had nudity in it, but was about the least sexy movie ever made. But there is a different formula category for that movie.

Artsy, Fartsy

The Shawshank Redemption is a truly great story, told in chronological order, not through the eyes of a mental patient, or in some weird parallel universe, or from some convoluted perspective that only lets you get half the story. It is just a straight to the point, totally engrossing story. It pulls you along with a mixture of character development and plot twists. You go into the movie knowing Andy is innocent, and it doesn’t fool you half way through and it really turns out he is a murdering asshole. There is no deep subtext to this movie, it doesn’t make you contemplate your own life and existence, it just tells you a great story that lets you forget about the rest of the world for a while.

There are no camera tricks, no strange visuals. Frank Darabont does not film the movie 99% in black and white, or use some strange color distorter on the lens. This movie is simplicity at its best, that is not to say it isn’t unique, actually as I am trying to point out, it is unique for being simple and straightfoward. Darabont took a great story, wrote a great script for it, casted very good actors, and pointed a camera at them for a few weeks, that is it. He doesn’t give the movie any greater importance than to just tell a story, which to me is a noble enough cause.

We live in a time where hundreds of millions are spent on movies about extinction animatronic amusement park rides, giant blue hippies, or midgets with jewelry. Movies like that make millions upon millions of dollars and are loved my the masses, including myself. Where almost any movie with a Will Smith, Johnny Depp, Sandra Bullock, or Julia Roberts is guaranteed to make $100 million dollars at least no matter if it is Independence Day or Wild Wild West. Where a crap movie, with crap acting, and a mildly attractive star can go on to worldwide fame and be remember forever if said mildly attractive star uncrosses her legs and shows you her beaver for 1.5 seconds. Where you can be called a genius for filming a movie where the beginning is really the middle, and the middle is really the end, and the end is really the beginning. I have no doubt that sooner or later someone will make a movies starring a cat and a dog that will genius because what the movie is really about is the political police state we live in today, just cleverly hidden within a movie about a cat and a dog. Laugh at that if you want to, but then you have to go read Animal Farm.

I am not knocking any of that stuff, in fact look through my list again, it is loaded with these kinds of movies. I love that stuff, but here is my ultimate favorite, the best movie I have ever seen and it is just a movie about a guy wrongly convicted of a crime, his acceptance of his life behind bars and trying to make the most of it, and his final redemption. It is a beautiful movie, I will never get tired of watching, I will never tire of watching Andy “get them”.  The movie is never boring, the amazing script and acting just keep you glued to your seat the entire time. The movie is not loaded with over-the-top moments, but it does have plenty of memorable scenes. At times the story makes you want to laugh, at times cry, and at others cheer. It was a great book, but here is a very rare circumstance, the movie was better than the book. For me it is just the perfect movie, I wouldn’t change a thing in it.

2

Tyler Durden, my favorite fictional character and the namesake of one my children. When Tyler one day asks where his name came from I will pop Fight Club into the DVD player, or whatever the hell we are using to play movies then.

Why do I like Tyler Durden so much. Because he is charismatic, because he is cool, because he has confidence, but most of all because I think he is right.

“Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who’ve ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.”

“You’re not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You’re not your fucking khakis. You’re the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.”

“The things you own end up owning you.”

“We’re consumers. We are by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty, these things don’t concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy’s name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra.”

“Warning: If you are reading this then this warning is for you. Every word you read of this useless fine print is another second off your life. Don’t you have other things to do? Is your life so empty that you honestly can’t think of a better way to spend these moments? Or are you so impressed with authority that you give respect and credence to all that claim it? Do you read everything you’re supposed to read? Do you think every thing you’re supposed to think? Buy what you’re told to want? Get out of your apartment. Meet a member of the opposite sex. Stop the excessive shopping and masturbation. Quit your job. Start a fight. Prove you’re alive. If you don’t claim your humanity you will become a statistic. You have been warned”

Tyler points out the obviously strange things about the way we live, the things we never think about, but when pointed out seem so obvious. Now don’t get me wrong, Tyler is insane, absolutely nucking futs, but that doesn’t make his message less true, and even when behaving like the insane person he is, still he wants the world to be a better place and people to better themselves. When he threatens to shot a gas station clerk in the face he wants the man to realize how much of his life he has wasted working a job he hates to buy stuff he doesn’t need instead of making a few sacrifices to do what he wants with his life. Tyler’s motives are mostly noble, even if his methods aren’t. He wants people to better them self, and he wants to wipe out everything that sets people apart by class and give them all a fresh start.

This is a message you can find in other places, but David Fincher presents it in a more entertaining way than it has ever been before. Now he has to share the bulk of that with two other people. First and foremost is Chuck Palahniuk, the writer of the novel. Most the time the book is way better than the movie, but I have seen those rare circumstances where the movie is actually better than the book. But here is a very amazing case of not being able to pick one over the other. The book is amazing, but the movie is amazing too. You get a few more little tidbits and insight from the book, but the movie has Brad Pitt in it. That is the other person who own a huge amount of credit for making this so good.

Tyler Durden is just one of those roles you can’t imagine being played by anyone else. Like Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow, or Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter, Brad Pitt just captures Tyler Durden perfectly, there could never be anyone else that could play this role ever again. Try to imagine anyone else looking and acting cool while wearing a horrible suit, even when you can’t see him he is the perfect Tyler, eating chips while on the phone with Edward Norton. Brad Pitt is Tyler Durden, and Tyler Durden is Brad Pitt.

But we can’t forget the rest of the cast, Edward Norton and Helen Bonham Carter are equally amazing in their roles. Edward Norton as our narrator does a great job of embodying a man who is starting to grow tired of all the who process of working to fund an addiction to purchasing crap. Helen Bonham Carter as Marla Singer is not nearly as iconic as Tyler Durden, but she is in the same ball park, and she is the perfect muse to Tyler Durden, because she has embraced his way of thinking to an extent before every meeting him.

The thing that makes Chuck Palahniuk stories really great is captured perfectly in this movie, his books have a message and are always at least a little preachy, but in a good way. But the other thing about his books are they are quirky, the characters always have these strange things about them, choking on purpose, chronic masturbator, picking up women at a sex addicts help group, religious cult member who cleans up blood stains in mafia homes, a man being unknowingly drugged into becoming a woman. Fight Club’s quirks are some of the best ever and what makes the movie so memorable.

Splicing porn clips into family movies, going to recovery groups to cry and in turn be able to sleep, books written about the human body in a third person voice given to organs (“I am Jack’s raging bile duct.”), gathering together to fight for no reason or money at all, and my personal favorite making soap from the fat off of rich liposuctioned people and selling that soap back to them.

And don’t forget the strange convesations that pop up in his works, at one point you have a debate between Edward Norton and Brad Pitt on people they want to fight, you have the narrators strange introductions to the people of the movie, the discussion of soap and chemical burns, the conversation about dildoes in luggage at the airport. You got to love it all.

One last thing about the movie you have to mention is the all the little glimpses and flashes that show up in the movie, when you first watch them movie, they take you completely by surprise and you wonder if you saw what you thought you saw. When you watch the movie multiple times you start noticing little things you never saw before, pay close attention to the hotel introduction video that Edward Norton watches near the beginning of the movie, I didn’t pick up on that until I had watched the movie a dozen times.

Chuck Palahniuk’s books will never be a mainstay of Hollywood, most of them could in no way translate into a successful movie. But then again, like my number 3 True Romance, Fight Club was also not successful when it came out, it has only become successful in the years that have passed.

You know what is really funny about this movie though, Tyler Durden would hate it.

3

Growing up me and few buddies had this running joke about the movie Quigley Down Under. If you don’t remember the movie don’t feel bad, but in the joke for it me and my friends had we would put any actor in that movie, if you said Dennis Quaid we would say we loved him in Quigley Down Under. I could keep giving examples, but I think you get the idea. I think about this now in relation to this movie because sometimes this movie seems connectable to everyone because of the large and awesome cast. One more funny similarity for that time in my life, there was a movie called Short Cuts that came out that year that was praised for having such an immense cast of known actors in it. Now don’t get me wrong Short Cuts had a big and great cast in it, in main roles and cameos you had Tim Robbins, Julianne Moore, Robert Downey Jr and Frances MacDormand, plus tons of people who at the time were well known and some well remember for small roles they played (Love Lori Singer, not in Short Cuts, but in Tank Girl), but really it was True Romance that people should have been talking about because of their cast. Christian Slater, Patricia Arquette, Brad Pitt, Val Kilmer, Gary Oldman, Dennis Hopper, Christopher Walken, James Gandolfini, Tom Sizemore, and Chris Penn all in a movie written by Quentin Tarantino. I just don’t think there is any other movie out there that can boast this impressive of a cast. Alot of the cast were unknowns or just starting to get a little noticed, it is like the people casting this movie brought out some kind of crystal ball that let know which of the hopefuls were going to have great careers and made sure to give them some kind of role in the movie knowing that this movie would constantly be referenced as one of their starting out movies.  Brad Pitt, Gary Oldman, James Gandolfini and Tom Sizemore were all just starting to get noticed and all found their way into this movie. This is a movie where it is harder to find an actor in it whose career went bust, poor Michael Rappaport. In fact, I am pretty sure whoever later was doing the casting for the Soprano’s must have watched this movie right before casting James Gandolfini, because he is essentially playing Tony Soprano in this movie. I could go on and on about the cast of this movie, everyone is just excellent, including Michael Rappaport, in spite of his career going nowhere. What I love is the roles that some of these guys accepted. There is no logical reason for Val Kilmer in this movie, many of the people who watch the movie don’t even notice him in it, and he was a decently high profile actor at the time, and yet he played a knowingly small unrecognizable part in this movie and played it perfectly.

The story is simple which perfectly fits the movie, because this is movie that is brought to life by great characters and great dialogue. Which for me makes this the best Tarantino flick possible, it has the best parts of a Tarantino movie, but without the odd points of being out of order, using split screen, drawing out a simple story into 2 movies, or having the entire story told in flashbacks. Don’t get me wrong, I love all of Tarantino’s movies, but there is something great about the way True Romance distills what Tarantino does into a simple premise. I am sure if it had been directed by Tarantino it would have been different, but it was directed by Tony Scott, a guy mostly known for dramatic action.

What we have in True Romance is a movie broken down into great scenes and great dialogue. Christian Slater trying and failing to pick up a girl in a bar talking about screwing Elvis and Kung Fu movies. Christian Slater going to a pimps house and finding out “It ain’t white boy day”. Christopher Walken delivering the coolest badass line in cinematic history, “I’m the Anti-Christ. You got me in a vendetta kind of mood. You tell the angels in heaven you never seen evil so singularly personified as you did in the face of the man who killed you.”, then having a pleasant conversation with Dennis Hopper about the origins of Sicilians, a very stoned Brad Pitt smoking weed out of a honey bear and giving directions to James Gandolfini. James Gandolfini and Patricia Arquette in a scene so violent I still cringe thinking about it.  Any scene with Christian Slater talking to his imaginary Elvis. And of course the final massive shoot out, it is amazing to see how many people go in and how few come out.

True Romance was a movie ahead of its time as demonstrated by its poor ticket sales and lack of any awards of any kind. Now though it is a bonafide cult classic and one of my favorite movies of all time and probably my all time favorite movie to quote.

5

Wanted was possibly the most surprising movie I have ever seen. I just mean that in no way did the previews do the movie justice. I really just thought I was in for another over the top action movie. Mindless script that would somehow try to make bending bullets seem possible. What I got instead was a self help motivational movie dressed up within an awesome action flick.

Wesley is every man at some point or time in their life. At some point you feel beaten down, you feel like you are everyone’s bitch, and you wouldn’t feel the least bit surprised if you googled yourself and came up with no hits. This is Wesley, working a shitty job for a shitty boss, with a shitty friend, and a shitty cheating girlfriend. He is medicated to allow him to cope with all the shittiness that is his life. Then one day he is buying his medication to cope with his shitty life, and turns around and is face to face with Angelina Jolie. You can’t tell me that doesn’t play into every male fantasy. After that his life changes, but the movie goes further than that, he embraces the change, given the opportunity to take a chance, he completely dives in and makes the most of it. He works harder than he has ever worked before and finds his place in the world and meaning in his life.

Yeah, I realize I just made it sound cheesy, but remember all of this is hidden in a movie that has bending bullets, a naked Angelina Jolie, flipping cars, rat bombs, and snipers from 5 miles away. That is what makes this movie so cool, the action is great, and you feel a bond with the protagonist. The best part to me is after his first encounter with his new life, when he finally has had enough at work, tells off his boss and busts a keyboard on his back stabbing best friends face. Cap that off with a few minutes later when Wesley walks into his cheating ex-girlfriends apartment, gets berated by her for a few minutes, then makes out with Angelina Jolie right in front of her.

Wesley’s is every man’s hero, he tells the world “Fuck you” and does what he wants to do.

4

An action movie with a message, this is becoming a theme for me I think.

“People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.

I continually go through different political cycles in my life, there are times when I pay attention a lot, and times where I try to pretend that there nothing going on out there. But mostly no matter how I feel about it all, I feel powerless always to make a change. This movie gives you the feeling that change can happen, that we the people have the power to not be bullied by the guys in charge. That they can’t have what they want, simply because that is the way they want it.

This movie is full of messages, and what I love here is that none of them are subtle. London of the movie is presented as a totalitarian system, the people let their government get away with what it wants because they are scared of the people that are different, they are willing to even overlook the things that push the boundaries of acceptability because they are too busy being entertained by mind numbing television, they are willing to sacrifice their civil liberties in order to feel safer and to keep those they disagree with from having any rights, if a person disagrees with the government they can disappear into a black bag, loud idiotic television personalities repeating the talking points of the party. All of these ideas are about as subtle as a blunt axe in the movie.

But yet while slapping us in the face with these ideas the movie does not pander to the lowest common denominator. The dialogue is great, it is very poetic and very powerful. V is a character who has a message that he wants to deliver, but he also doesn’t want to dumb down his message.

I love the cast, I have never been as high on Natalie Portman as the rest of the world has seemed to be, but I think she is a good actress and this is one of her best roles. Hugo Weaving is amazing here though, it amazes me that he able to make V so likable, passionate, and animated without ever showing his face.

I am always amazed at how popular this movie is and I think that is a testament to how good it is. A movie like this should have turned off a lot of people. It is an intelligent movie in a low brow genre. Fist fights, blood, and explosions in a movie with references to historical figures and lines from Shakespeare plays. It is a movie that shouldn’t work, but it does.

7

Welcome back Kevin Spacey for your second appearance on my list. This movie came out in the exact same year as Seven, but I have to confess I completely missed it and only got around to watching it a few years later. This whole movie is good, but why is it in my top ten, because it has the greatest ending ever. Ever! If you have made it to this point in time in history without seeing this movie or having the ending ruined for you, stop whatever you are doing right now and go watch this movie. Keyser Soze is one of the most popular and best fictional characters of all time while almost never actually being on screen throughout the film.

But even without that great ending this is still a very awesome film, the cast is amazing. Stephen Baldwin always comes to mind with the movie for me because he was bad in everything he was in before this movie and bad in everything he has been in after this movie. But one thing this movie has is Benicio Del Toro in the role that showed the world he was an amazing actor. Going into the movie Gabriel Byrne was the star, and he was great in the movie, but it was Kevin Spacey that is seen as the star of the movie now, and rightfully so. By having this and Seven come out in the same year, he had one of the best acting years imaginable.

This is another of those movies where it is forgotten that it came right out of left field, Bryan Singer had not had a hit movie yet, Kevin Spacey was a basic unknown playing small movie roles, and even Gabriel Byrne had never really been a huge commercial success. This movie didn’t exactly throw open doors for everyone involved, but I do think Spacey and Singer got good mileage out of it. Once again we have a movie that is responsible for one of my favorite lines of all time, “The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.” I love a good movie line. Still the reason this movie stays with me today and is that ending, it is just amazing, and it forces you to watch the movie again, because it changes the whole story.

6

Tim Burton makes my list with a movie that Johnny Depp is not in, that just seems weird. But for me this is a movie that came out at the right time in my life. I was still a new father in 2003 when this came out, I was building my future with the woman I was going to spend the rest of my life with and this movie just put things into perspective for me in a way. This is a movie with alot going on in it, and most of the important things going on with it are hid beneath the surface of a movie of far-fetched over-the-top stories. And there is meaning in that too. The idea of being so deeply in love with someone that you are willing to endure any hardship just for the chance to be with them. The idea that by doing what you can to make other people’s lives easier and better that you will also make your life richer and fuller. But being the new father I was at the time it was the relationship between the father and son that has always got me.

This is a movie that is easy to overlook as just being just a fun story with great characters, but there is much more going on here and that is why this movie has endured for me over the years, I feel like each time I watch it there is something new for me to latch on to.

An amazing cast with Ewan McGreggor who is awesome as always, Danny Devito in what might be his best role since he played The Penguin. Albert Finney had been out there for year doing his thing, but it was this movie that made me really notice him. Missi Pyle, who may not be the best actress in the world, but who I love in every movie she has been in. And of course there is Helen Bonham Carter, my favorite actress, always amazing and no less so in this movie. Sure she might have only caught the breaks she has in movies because of who she is sleeping with, but she has made the most of opportunities and might be the only actress who makes me want to watch a movie just because she is in it. No offense to actresses, but I usually only feel that way about actors, usually actresses I like end up disappointing me with a chick flick I can stomach every so often. The strange thing to me about this movie is it has one of my least favorite actors in it, Billy Crudup, I have liked many movies he has been in, but thought he was terrible in, absolutely horrendous. Watchmen, Almost Famous, Mission Impossible III, all movies I liked but thought he was dreadful in, the only time I can recall thinking he was good was in Public Enemies, and I didn’t really like that movie.

This movie always makes me ponder one question, “What is better, the truth, or a beautiful lie?”