My Favorite Movies

Visioneers immediately drops you into a world of absolute ridiculousness, augmented by sterile design and deliberate deadpan acting. At first, it's hilarious. Then, shit gets real. Before you know it, Visioneers is more than a hilarious absurdist comedy, it's a deeply affecting and brilliant film. Weird enough to be totally immersive, consistent in its unique and shifty tone, Visioneers drives it home to the very last frame. Simply put, it's the best movie I've seen in the last couple years.

The most meta movie I've ever seen. Genius, pure genius.

Stylistically confused, visually overcrowded, and unbelievably entertaining. It's like an episode of Tim and Eric, except made 30 years before Tim and Eric, in Japan, with cooler film techniques. The most absurd movie I've seen in a long fucking time.

A rare gem of comedy that infests its many one-liners directly into your brain, and yet still gets funnier every single time you watch it. Also a rare gem of a comedy that features the dude from SVU talking about fucking fridges.

My favorite John Carpenter movie... terrifying, tense, suspenseful, and the ending is fucking great. This movie was crafted with incredible care for all effects and visuals. The snowy wasteland comes off as harsh and lonely, in the worst ways, and I think that's what Carpenter would want. Kurt Russel is really at the top of his game, and watching the scientists play off of each other only increases the suspense and horror. This movie is a classic.

The colors are so wonderfully brought out by Kurosawas painters brush. The visuals match dramatic Shakespeare caliber story with contrasting and breathtaking visual landscapes. The script is moving, and an outstanding re-thinking of King Lear. The music is simple and in the style of Kurosawa, but evokes such powerful emotion. This movie is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.

This Halloween, I ended up settling for an odd lineup of movies to get me in the holiday season. I hadn't viewed David Fincher's crime classic in a few years, and decided that the tone fit the bill for a good Halloween movie. The story settles us in AnyCity, U.S.A., modern times, an appropriately vague setting that brings us into the movie, but leaves us puzzled and intrigued by the ambiguity. It also aids to the whole sense that this place is the fucking pits and we don't blame Somerset for wanting to get out. Oh yeah, Somerset; Morgan Freeman. He's training Mills, Brad Pitt, as his replacement, before they both get swept up in this whole mess. Se7en really gets you in a lot of ways, the first of which is its smoothness. It slips in all of these setups like that really good looking guy at the bar who studies The Game for the art of the pickup artist and manages to bang everyone at the club twice before they know what's going on. Somerset and Mills end up playing perfectly off of each other as their rival tension builds into a core disagreement in morals and life outlook. Supplements to the core plot weave in and out of the exposition. Sometimes they're give aways that tie together in the end, and sometimes they're something else that adds an unsettling edge to an already unsettling film ("Christ, what was his fucking name?") I guess the point of all this is that the people involved know their fucking shit. Freeman and Pitt are at the top of their respective games, and their dynamic is unbeatable. Paltrow is just so damn adorable that you can't help but eat her up at first, and feel like you owe her an obligation when she starts having troubles. Spacey is as chilling as they often come in the vein of serial killers with next to no screen time. And Fincher meanwhile sits behind the camera, tightly sweeping in and out of rooms at the perfect speed, giving us detail after detail in the design of the film, setting up an environment so real yet so imaginary that it chills us in its relatability and opens it up for us to question its distance from us. The breaks in tone come in discreetly and unintrusively... a rushed killing here or a spotty line of dialogue there, and then they tiptoe back out of the room, as if they were too scared to disturb the near-masterpiece filling the space. It's these tiny little imperfections that keep Se7en from being a perfect film. But let it stand that Se7en remains a movie as crazy as its premise, executed tightly in every sense of the word and chilling to the bone, and it can honestly be trumpeted as a success.

Its weird to me that the Red Balloon came out of no where and totally took me by surprise. I went from never having heard of the charming short by Albert Lamorisse to being absolutely in love with it. The film, clocking in at just over a half-hour, falls the adventures of a young boy who finds a balloon, which just happens to be red believe it or not, and forms a connection with it. I'm hesitant to refer to the balloon as "magical" for fear of making the film seem like a purely whimsical adventure. There's no great explanation, no great witchcraft, and no outlandish exposition. The film focuses on one charming thing, a balloon that has a mind of its own, and runs with it to outstanding results. The balloon and its young boy companion go on a number of adventures, culminating in a showdown with some neighborhood bullys, which bring the film to its phenomonally beautiful and wonderful finale; and the whole thing is pulled off with almost no dialogue. Listing the traits of the film might as well be as good as listing why it works. There's no sloppy backstory to get in the way of a good time, no words to sully the meaning. The film does an outstanding job of embodying the spirit of the children it portrays and aims to please, with a strict look at authority figures and a free spirit that is present in every scene. The balloon wanders around the city in a way that leaves the audience completely baffled as to how it was done, and the effects are not transparent in the least. And if I may save the greatest bit for last, the Red Balloon is breahtakingly gorgeous. The colors are vibrant, almost surreal in their extreme tones, and on screen, it seems like every shade is fighting the other for dominance. The result is like looking at a rainbow painted over the city of Paris. The Red Balloon is probably the greatest "childrens" film of all time. It conforms to no boundaries, refuses to complicate itself, and remains a classic of innocence and beauty to this day.

This film is so narrowly short of perfect that I cannot bring myself to give it anything less than five stars. Ok, it's stylized, and what's up with Mrs. Fitz? But few films parallel American Beauty in it's incredible consistency of tone, humor, and deep thought. It's a bit of a caricature, but that's the perfect style. Not a single performance is off, and Kevin Spacey slips into this role with ease that might suggest he isn't absolutely brilliant in it, but oh, he is. Mendes directs with heart, pulling us into the characters and adding the perfect visual touch to the story. Everything, even the tiny quirks and imperfections, work brilliantly within the story. It may feel like a comic book, but what the fuck is wrong with comic books?

One of the first and almost definitely the best slasher movies ever made. Without much violence, without a lot of cheap tricks, this movie ends up frightening in a deep, deep way, all due to John Carpenter's immense film making skill and dedication.

ncredible all around, and the humor is delivered with subtlety for some disturbing deep laughs. The movie speeds through the ending in a way that's fitting but still over the top in it's propostorousness, but still, it's Patrick Bateman, come on.

Wes Anderson's best movie undoubtedly, featuring outstanding performances from a stellar cast. It's written with a sharp wit and heartbreaking insight into the complexity of an over-the-top family, the members of which relate us to feelings of despondence in almost every age group. This movie is extraordinary.

To me, Barry Lyndon is a lot of things. First and foremost, it is the ultimate, end-all-be-all of period pieces. Kubrick's 18th century epic is designed to look like an oil painting, flat and vivid with naturalistic lighting, and I've never seen a time piece as absolutely brilliant and realized as Barry Lyndon. But Barry Lyndon is also an intense character piece, relateable largely in my mind to 2007s wower There Will Be Blood. Plainview and Lyndon would find themselves hating each other for their intense similarities and feelings of competition if they were thrust into the same country and time period. Lyndon sprawls the midlife of Redmond Barry, in two parts, the first having to do with how he became Barry Lyndon and the second documenting the tragedy and downfall of his life. Kubrick isn't trying to deliver us the typical cinematic excitement we might expect from what we know about the film. There's little to no action, and the action that is there in the presence of light army skirmishes and fist fights are presented in a sort of way that aims not to excite us but bring out the full spectrum of emotions associated. The film is completely slow and completely calculated, every shot set up with expert precision and executed with a patience, using slow zooms, slow pans, slow character movement, and solid delivery. It really is one of the most remarkably beautiful films I've ever seen, and although it's quite an undertaking to absorb it all, it proves worthwhile in the end. Lyndon, played by Ryan O'Neal, is a warped protagonist, marked by greed, lust, delusion, and a sense of honor that is both skewed and out of place in the world he has gotten himself into. And lest I not mention, Barry Lyndon is hilarious, marked with a completely unusual sense of humor drier than a desert. My only major problem with the film is it's narration, which does contribute to the film's humor a bit, but in the end feels like a crutch, used cheaply to try to give a bridge between the film's sequences that really doesn't feel necessary. Save the narration, Barry Lyndon is a wondrously beautiful, completely witty, and totally involving film.

This, this is what it is all about. An ensemble cast of brilliant actors (yes, even Marky Mark who is starting to show signs of talent early in his career), a top-notch director who knows what he is doing, a fantastic line of characters and a brilliant visual style. Boogie Nights is to Anderson as GoodFellas is to Scorsese. The film succeeds on so many levels. Anderson lets us flow from room to room frequently in brilliant one shots that show us the evolution of the porn world, but even better, the characters of this family. Historically the movie paints an absolutely vivid portrait, but the emotion erupts as we watch these people transform, fuck up, and try to realize dreams that may have become impossible for them because of the choices they have made. The only uncomfortably unbelievable moments comes at Buck's key moment in the end, but it's easily forgivable in the shadow of greatness that is Boogie Nights.

More expansive, more beautiful, more intricate, and more insane than El Topo, this is Jodorowsky's masterpiece. The scope is larger than what he has attempted, and the production is gorgeous and elaborate. He writes and films deeply philosophical, involved movies that are insanely fun to watch, whether you know what is happening or not. Every moment is an insane blessing.

Titanic is a sweeping masterpiece of breathtaking beauty, and one of the greatest romance movies ever made. It gets it right; not one hundred percent, but nearly there. See, the first thing it does is decide not to treat its romance as some sort of secondary shot to a larger message about life. The focus of Titanic is first and foremost the relationship between Jack and Rose, and everything else, including the sinking ship, is secondary. But Titanic doesn't take it too far either. It correctly captures a sort of passion that seems familiar but unobtainable, ideal but unbelievable, and at the end of the film, completely right. It's the stereotypical class-transcending romance between the Steerage Class Jack and the First Class Rose, then the ship sinks, then the movie ends. In between James Cameron shows us a world designed more impeccably than possibly any other world ever portrayed before on cinema. The dedication and real quality of the ship and its disaster is painstakingly portrayed in both scale and detail. Even those who like to hate on Titanic for their own ironic or cynicistic purposes can't deny that the movie is breathtakingly gorgeous from start to finish, and Cameron clearly has a grip on the world he's portraying. He inhabits the world with some fine characters too: Billy Zane plays a wonderfully snobbish prick, and Kate Winslet puts a bit of fire into the youthful and ambitious Rose. Leonardo won't really get on his game for a few years, and he's decent in Titanic, but still rough around the edges, and a little too pre-pubescent middle school excited for me. The movie isn't a five star and it isn't perfect; the script, while at points being wonderful and at points being just hokey enough, strays into eye-rolling territory at times, and the device of randomly listening in on historical conversations about the Titanic is used to an almost see-through point. When the credits roll on Titanic though, you know something incredible has just happened.

No Country For Old Men may just be the best movie of 2007, and at least so far, it's really easy to call it that. The Coen brothers have made a picture so incredible in every way: its visuals, sounds, acting, story, and emotions. Javier Bardem has made quite the break through into U.S. mainstream acting, and this role is just fantastic for him. He is the ultimate badass, the perfect hitman, he wears the role like a glove. Not to say that there's one stale performance, cause there isn't, but Bardem and Jones are the ones who end up shining when all is said and done. There's no music in the film at all for all intensive purposes, and the tension at points will have your heart racing until you think it's ready to explode. Coupled with the incredibly vast and totally flawless shots of the Texas wastelands and small towns, it makes the movie extremely dark, extremely frightening, and so very very real. Some people have trouble with the extremely cynical or narcissistic way No Country feels, but these people are fools. The movie gives you such an incredible emotion you might not be able to describe, and instills in you an extraordinary movement that you can't settle, and that's what a truly powerful film should do.

P.T. Anderson is bringing it all in his new adaptation of Upton Sinclaire's "Oil!" There Will Be Blood is an intense and riveting study of character like few things I've ever seen before, and I can't start without saying it wouldn't be possible if not for Daniel Day-Lewis. He's perfect, absolutely perfect, in the most wonderful and heavenly way imaginable. Every line is nailed, every step is perfect, and his entire body moves with a motivation more advanced than pretty much any actor in Hollywood can muster these days. It is without a doubt the best performance of the decade so far. But let's not chock it all up to him. P.T. Anderson's script takes us in and out of Daniel Plainview as his life slides into a territory completely unknown to us. For much of the movie we're torn between admiration and disgust, and there's a great balance of emotion in the pages, brought to life on screen. It doesn't hurt either that the way Anderson shoots the sweeping emptiness of the California desert is breathtaking and explosive. Anderson employs less of the rolling shots he usually favors, but he still puts them to work with style, and his well placed technique helps isolate us and immerse us when need be. I could go on about Paul Dano, whose performance is underrated because it's stuck in the shadow of Day-Lewis, but it's hard to discuss performance in the face of the on screen monster of Plainview. The movie suffers briefly from its slight propostorousness at times, when the tone isn't broken but jumped over a little, and I couldn't help but escape the film for a few seconds. No matter, There Will Be Blood is one of the finest examples of expressing theme through character I've ever seen, and a film in which every character is solid as a rock. I drink your milkshake; I drink your milkshake.

Romero's original masterpiece... a unique, creative, atmospheric, and scary zombie movie. This is really one of the greatest horror movies ever made, not only because of it's influence, but because of its well developed characters and its low budget, skillful scares.

It's been a great fucking year for movies, and speaking as someone who holds his own five star reviews in regards much higher than anyone should, that makes things difficult for me. But regardless, I can't deny what I know. No Country was a perfect film through and through, intense and engaging. There Will Be Blood was a character study unlike anything I've ever seen before, and feature the best performance of the decade. And Diving Bell and the Butterfly is the most inventive and emotional movie experience I have seen in a long long time. The story is a sad one. Prominent french magazine editor has a stroke which shuts down his brain stem, giving him what we can call "locked-in syndrome," a condition in which he is fully aware but can only move his left eyelid. The synopsis gives you the impression that perhaps this story will be told in sequential order, but much to the film's regard, it isn't. We're thrust into Jean-Do's locked in head immediately. Surrounded by confusion, haze, and a slur of sensations, we're as perplexed as he is. Julian Schnabel has done a brilliant thing. In the film, we spend almost all of our time looking through the eye of Jean-Do. We become locked in with him, trapped in the body, forced to sit through the reading of the alphabet as he blinks out his book, forced to feel the feelings of isolation and frustration as we cannot reach out and touch anyone, or respond at all. It is one of the most immersive films I've ever seen, and it doesn't hurt that the cinematography is handled perfectly. Tilts, blurs, and swirling colors remind us we're in the head of a confused and shut in man, while surreal swirls and moves awaked our brains for rich flashback sequences. Diving Bell and the Butterfly will awaken your senses to full force, by stimulating them while forcing them not to speak out, if that makes any sense. If it doesn't, you haven't seen the movie, and that is something that cannot be forgiven.

The Fifth Element is fucking good. Fucking really good. People try to give it shit... try to throw around how it was a dissapointment after the Professional, and Luc Besson let us down, and blah blah blah. Wrongo. Besson came back with one of the most visually imaginative, sharp witted, and entertaining science fiction movies ever made. It's not particularly deep, which is perhaps its major downfall. In the end it resorts to a cliched romance and a love-saves-all sort of sickening mentality, which is a bit contrasting to Leon I will admit. The two films do have one thing in common though: stellar performances by Gary Oldman. He's pitch perfect as the menacing villain, and Bruce Willis is his perfect action counterpart. We march forward through this futiristic world, full of creations so bizarre and outlandish that we sometimes wish we were on drugs, on a mission to rescuse some stones and combine them with some femme fatale type fifth element and save the world... or something. It's pretty straight forward but fairly secondary to the action/humor unfolding at every second. Whenever something isn't blowing up or kicking ass, its making stylized and well timed jokes. The movie especially heats up when we meet Ruby Rod, Chris Tucker in probably his best performance ever as the most flamboyant heterosexual in the history of the universe. If his stupidity doesn't ignite a flame in your humorous bits, nothing will. In the end, those who try to give the Fifth Element shit are taking themselves a little too seriously. It's a brilliant action movie, and one of the most entertaining romps you'll probably be privileged enough to sit through.

Pure, unadulterated, glorious, utterly ridiculous fun. This is a true dude movie; one in which there is no period of time longer than 5 minutes where something awesome doesn't happen. One in which the leading man is fucking badass, the villain is goofy and nefarious, and the leading lady is hot (and willing to fuck in the middle of a gun fight). There's just really nothing bad about Shoot 'Em Up. I mean, of course the plot is retarded, but it's the perfect level of retarded, one at which it's humorously interesting and still just stupid. The movie does find lackings in its cheesy special effects, but really that's the only detractor from the pure awesome that is Shoot 'Em Up. It's without a doubt one of the best action movies of the decade, and you owe it to yourself to watch it right now, it's a whole mess of awesome.

There is a man. A certain man. And for the poor you can be sure that he'll do all he can. I could do the whole song, but it'd just be stupid. Let's get to the point: Kane has a hefty burden on its shoulders, since it is regarded as one of if not the greatest American film of all time. Knowing that fact, it has to match up to pretty high standards when a person sees it later in their life, after all the hype has been established. I didn't think there was anyway it could match its notoriety. However by the time the film was finished, I had fallen completely in love with it. How Orson Welles, in his directing debut, managed to create this technically, visually, and emotionally rich piece, and do it perfectly, baffles my mind. Charles Foster Kane is a prominant newspaper owner througout the turn of and the early 20th century. We start the movie after his death, and investigate his life along with a news reel reporter, through the aid of flashbacks. Welles instills in the film a series of recurring images, one of my personal favorite parts of Kane. Visual tricks that repeat themselves throughout the movie, giving us linking points and markers that intrigue us, mystify us, and compel us. The investigation of Kane's life is one that aims to uncover how a man who started as benevolent and innocent as Kane can be so corrupted to the end of his life. How a man who had everything never managed to find love. Those who dismiss Kane as a movie of technical prowess with no emotion are fools. Kane is one of the deepest characters in the history of cinema, and he remains an enigma to this day, a representation of how we cannot put labels on everything, or identify the failures systematically in every piece of life. Welles puts a touch on everything in the film, from wonderfully tracked shots and zooms to the brilliant use of emphatic lighting. Kane is a complete masterpiece and a triumph of film.

Snatch is one of the greatest crime capers/heist movies/gangster flicks ever. Its fast, its funny, its wonderfully pulled off. Ritchie writes the film with a quick wit, and has basically crafted a script in which every single line stands out on its own. He handles the huge cast of characters with finesse, making us familiar enough with each one so that we don't get confused by the quick name tossing and point of view shifts. The plots intertwine perfectly, and the movie is never boring, ever, at all, for one second. Ritchie had a lot more to manage here than he did in Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, and he proved that he has the ability to juggle a huge cast and a seemingly unpitchable storyline to near perfection. He does get cocky sometimes; his fast paced cutting and freeze frames reach excess towards the movie's climax, but its a minor distraction. Snatch is glorious, Snatch is classic, Snatch is gold.

Wonderfully scripted, acted, and directed. The film utilizes captivating flashback techniques, and takes no shame in focusing for long times on aspects that may not be completely related to the plot. In this way, it helps capture the beauty of everything, emphasizing it's take on love. The romance is well established and played so wonderfully by the two lead actors, and the dialogue is just incredible. This is a terrific movie.

If you need to adapt a Shakespeare play, look no furthur that Kurosawa to do it for you. He really knows how to hit every single note, and bring all of the proper emotions into his own world, even contributing and editing it into a more perfect shape than it might have been originally. In Throne Of Blood, Kurosawa is playing. He's investigating what he can do with cuts and edits, he's seeing how far he can take us down the path the original play went before losing us, and he's seeing how much he can really haunt us with this tale that may seem dated and historical. He succeeds on absolutely every count. Kurosawa sweeps us through fog, makes castles dissapear and reappear, and shoots arrows through necks seamlessly as he does things with his camera that no director should've been able to do in the fifties. But it's not just about the technique, it's about the feeling of mystery and the supernatural that we're given, and we need that to enter the mind of Toshiro Mifune's character, as he becomes more and more disturbed by the world around him; the ghosts of the forest, the pressing evil of his wife, and the knowledgeof his own crimes. Speaking of Mifune, his blend of lunacy and theatrics work perfectly as he portrays the eccentric mutiner who rises to power out of blood and goes too far. I've seen few black and white movies as visually stunning as Throne of Blood, almost transcending the color spectrum with its vivid layout, and it's probably the closest you'll ever get with a Shakespeare adaptation. You'll be scared, you'll be affected, and you'll know that somehow, everything you feel is applicable.

I can't say it's flawless, but this is a ridiculously dark, ridiculously funny movie. Paranoid, delusional, hyper-violent, totally insensitive, and it pulls it off at every turn. The lead character is a subject you can't help but laugh at, even in all of his ridiculous rantings and self-indulgent speeches. The guerilla, faux-documentary style is completely fitting and pulled off extremely well. Although it's message is fairly straight forward, the movie still yields some hidden gems, and is pretty heartily entertaining all the way through.

The Matrix was and remains as one of the greatest sci-fi movies ever, and it's just kind of a fact. Everyone knows all about it, and everyone should have seen it, so it's not really worth it to give a detailed synopsis. The point is that everything seems to work, and not only that, everything seems to work even nearly ten years after the film premiered. The performances by all means should be awful, but somehow the Wachowski's match Keanu's terrible acting skills to their vision and make it work. Everyone seems to be running at a speed that would be dull and dry in any other film, but matches perfectly to the tone and style of the film, especially everyone's favorite Agent, Hugo Weaving. The art direction is completely wonderful. The Wachowski's have effectively made a real life comic book, with gorgeously still, somber, and dark backdrops to the shadow world they created that is the Matrix. The special effects remain fresh and believable, and we can't forget how innovative this movie was for not only bringing the sensibility of Hong Kong action cinema into modern Hollywood, but offering totally innovative looks at the gun fight and the fist fight. And when we get right down to it, the Matrix has all the qualities of a great sci fi movie: a plot rooted in our modern day condition, but twisted to offer a strange dystopian view of the world we live in. They may never do it again (...ugh, Speed Racer), but Andy and Larry/Lana really created a masterpiece.

Peter Jackson's slapstick gorefest is a one of a kind movie. Lionel Cosgrove is in for a surprise, when his mom is bitten by a monkey and turns into a zombie. But Lionel loves his mom, and as she starts to infect more and more of the neighborhood, Lionel tries to contain it to keep her reputation up. For starters, Dead Alive couldn't possibly be any more laden with New Zealand spirit, and that's one if its greatest charms, at least over here. And continuing on, we see in Dead Alive a kind of genius play that has never been done quite as well. The actors and the camera work so well together to manufacture the genuine old-school slapstick hilarity that emerges. Quick zoom ins, cheesy smiles, prat falls and solid line delivery. Straight, comedy, gold. Not only that, there's a genuine charm to the character as he tries so hard to care for his mother, care for the baby that resulted from his zombie coverup, and fight for the girl he loves. Granted, the emotion comes in extremely small doses, overshadowed by the next zombie sex scene or lawnmower masacre, but it's there. As the movie gets more and more propostorous until its triumphant conclusion, we're never really lost out of it, and it remains enjoyable and hilarious until the credits roll. Jackson; you are an absolute genius.

A crime classic in simple every sense of the word. Every character a badass, every scene a furthering of a tale involving control, immersion, and violence. There's not a sour turn in this movie, and though the end offers quite a bit of time to reflect while you're waiting for it to wrap up, it really delivers.

I'm pretty late on this one, but not for some lack of dedication. I was there with everyone else on opening night at midnight, I was there two days later, and I was there two days ago. I plan on being there a couple more times before the movie dissapears from movie theatres, which granted will be a long time away with how its pulling in the box office records. My major hesitation in writing this one up is that, of the three times I've seen it, I've found more in every viewing. More I have a slight problem with, more that I'm in love with. This film has a level of detail in it thats phenomonal, and I guess thats a good place to start. The Dark Knight, as you all now know, is the best superhero movie ever made. And why is that? Because it transcends the genre without abandoning it. It forces the idea of the superhero to work within the idea of a real life problem, a real life city, a real life moral dilemma. The Dark Knight kicks in with considerable speed shortly after where Batman Begins left us. The city is being cleaned up, its on the rise, but things aren't necessarily good. Everyone is busting their asses more than ever doing what they need to do. Everyone is back and every performance is even more honed and intense than the last time around, except for maybe Bale's, but we'll get to that later. Enter the Joker, Batman's archvillain, the ultimate bad guy in the Batman world. And why? Because he represents everything Batman stands against, he is no rules in a society based on rules that Bruce Wayne defends every day. If you haven't heard or realized by now that Heath Ledger does an Oscar-worthy, legendary, and character-defining portrayal of the Joker, I don't understand where you've been. Bale meanwhile is almost trumped by Ledger... he lets himself slip a little this time around, but that doesn't mean he's bad. Sure, his cocky Bruce Wayne seems a carbon copy of Patrick Bateman, but Bale steals the show several times around. See, everyone is quick to jump on this movie for being about the Joker instead of Batman, but they're wrong. The Joker is the anti-Batman, his characterization and creation is in and of itself a build up of Batman, because one cannot exist without the other, and one's development boasts the other's as well. In the Joker's psychotic rise we see reflected the choices Batman is having to make, and how he builds himself up around it. Other complain about the inclusion of Dent's storyline, calling it unnecessary. Sorry folks, wrong again. Without Dent we lose the human edge of the tale, hes our bridge between Batman, the Joker, and the clueless spectators of the city, showing us how an idealist can fall and creating a tension for the outcome of the rest. It's not 100% perfect. Some fight scenes are dodgily choreographed, the banquet Joker scene ends at a laughably unclear climax, blah blah blah blah blah. They're all nitpicks, some of them important, but nitpicks none the less. The Dark Knight is uncomfortably dark, unbelievably exciting, and an absolutely brilliant achievement in all categories. It is everything I could've hoped for and more.

The majority of this film runs like a documentary. The actors master the material perfectly, and the tension felt is deep and sincere. This film is a character piece as well as a political movie, a film that makes you feel the pressure and the struggle of these characters as they do something as daring as people in their position could've done at that time. Compelling and skillfully directed, I have nothing but love for this movie.

One of the most intense movies I've ever seen. It never lets up from start to finish. The entire time I watched it for the first time, my mouth was open and I was gripping my chair. The cinematography is absolutely brilliant, and as director, Cuaron made some of the most outstanding innovations in immersive movie action that have been seen in a long time. He dedicated himself to this movie, and what he got was a group of powerfully talented actors giving their all in a movie that feels like a documentary, and the best one i've ever seen at that.

THE essential action flick. It picks up quickly, lets the one liners and bullets fly, has an outstanding villain, an awesome hero, great sidekicks, and minimal subplot to get in the way of the McClane ass kicking. One of the greatest action movies EVER.

This movie succeeds wildly in being both an entertaining comedy and a crazy zombie movie. I've never grown tired of Shaun, I never will, and it will always be a sensational cult comedy classic: great timing, great gore, great humor, great movie.

Don't say it's too campy... it was a 1970s zombie movie. Any camp this movie may have picked up came from age, not from production skills (well, ok, the blood was really fake, but that's it!). Romero's second Zombie film was outstandingly innovative just as the first, and had a similar claustrophobic feel, but with a larger element of greed and a greater illusion of safety. The movie slows down at point, and the final quarter is a little goofy, but this is a well made zombie movie through and through. Also, I love Tom Savini.

There's not one stale performance in the entire fucking movie, whether the character is on screen for 2 seconds or 2 hours. The movie rolls through the cycles of a traumatic mob life, from a wannabe gangster childhood, straight through the mafia center, into decay and failure as an elder. At the same time, Henry's status in the gang parallels the era of the mafia he's in, and we can slowly see the organized family become less and less powerful and honerable as time goes by. He says at the beginning the mob was about protecting people who couldn't do it themselves, but what was it at the end when Paulie and Jimmy turn down Henry and his wife? Scorsese rocks the movie with a tight and personal direction that is pretty much flawless. The ending comes a little abruptly for a movie that had no problem taking its time up to then, but it's hardly even a minor complaint in the face of this monumental gangster film.

Judd Apatow's outstanding script and keen eye for casting helped rocket Stevel Carell into the lime light and make this one of the funniest comedies of our generation. Apatow has been called the "John Hughes" of the new decade, but that's unfair; Apatow is much, much funnier. The 40 Year Old Virgin manages to push the limits of how many genuine laughs can be pushed into 2 hours. The characters are genuine and charming, and this pushes the laughs even harder. Let's not even go into the incredible improv ability of the stellar cast, which thrusts this vulgar comedy from funny to hilarious. This movie transcends generations and barriers and any way you look at it, it's just a great time.

A fantastically original and provocative documentary that really never lost my interest for a second, even on repeated viewings. It's put together incredibly well, and is compelling, informative, and hilarious without being incredibly sensationalized.

When Kurosawa does a modern film, he does it with all the same grace and beauty of his time pieces and epics. Ikiru is a gorgeous movie, built to emphasize the ups and downs of life around the character who is looking to experience both before his doomed ending. Shimura is absolutely solid. The film's first act inspires us to laugh more than be glum, but in the second act the true meaning of his life and the piece come through, to an optimistically heartbreaking conclusion.

Breathless is one of three films often considered the start of the French New Wave, that quirky little period of cinema history where film critics in France began to take the reigns of French cinema into their own hands by force, making cheap movies inspired by Hollywood and Italian Neorealism. As a genre setting film, Breathless really establishes itself. From the first few minutes, it leaves the audience disoriented and perplexed even to this day. Godard uses jump cuts with overlapping sound, smashing a clear sense of time. He clouds one of the most important parts of the film, the shooting of a police officer, with trick cutting and extreme close ups. He lets us wander off on long tracking shots with ambling dialogue and no clear point. Breathless is a movie that breaks as many rules as possible, sometimes just for the sake of breaking them, and in its quirky rebellious spirit, it captures us. Sometimes a film breaks ground in an odd enough way that you can't help but love its stubborn mindset. Because of the undertones in the film, we can more easily accept its loose plot and disorienting format. It doesn't hurt either that our leading character Michel is an exciting enigma, a mysterious criminal wandering around Paris like its his playground, hopelessly chasing an American girl that he can't get over for reasons slightly unclear to us. Part of the charm of the French New Wave is the ambiguity, the way that things sometimes aren't perfectly clear to us. Michel hangs around Paris when he's a wanted man as if he has no purpose, the American girl denies and rejects him on the turn of a hat, leading to a conclusion that comes out of left field and is bogged down with specious reasoning on the parts of the characters. Breathless is inventive, engaging, emotional, and more than deserving of its status as a classic.

As difficult to rate as it is to watch. In the end, this movie is a surrealist's wet dream... a mash-up of cult violence, sex, biblical allusion, and more story lines then one can shake a stick at. Somewhere in there, under all of the outrageousnous the music, the cinematography, and the writing all come together to form something beautiful... somewhere.

In the (belated) spirit of Christmas, perhaps it's time to review a classic. A movie I've been watching for probably the last 13 years of my life at least once a year, and a movie I consider to be a comedy classic often overlooked just because of how much of a staple it is. A Christmas Story isn't so much a flowing narrative as it is a series of charming vignettes taking us through the Americana family christmas, meaning here, it's all about the characters. Charm and humor are everything in this kind of movie, and they're all blowing full force throughout the entire family. They're outrageous and hilarious, and kudos have to be especially delivered to Darren McGaving for his creation of a staple character in American film. My families been shouting "NOT A FINGER" at each other for over a decade thanks to his handling of the material, the way he reads every line with a deep loathing and quick wit, and still comes out in the end as a father who cares, but not so much that he doesn't seem consistant. The biggest beef people tend to have with this movie is the heavy handed narration, and yes, the voiceover of the future Ralphie hangs over about a quarter of the movie with his insights and cheap outs. But really... lighten the fuck up. Voiceover can be a cheap trick when used ineffectively and it can be a hilarious aid when used in the right way. Future Ralphie's insights are integrated so effectively that they tend to aid us only in our understanding of the humor, and when I watch a Christmas Story I never feel like I'm being led on in plot by the heavyhanded narration or cheated out of some sort of development; I'm just hearing joke upon supplementary joke and I'm laughing too hard to care. Like it or not, A Christmas Story is an American classic for a reason, it's a deeply funny representation of an era past, a witty satire, a near perfect emulation of an early American family (they have their moments, but we still kinda feel like these kids are gonna have a few emotional problems), and a timeless representation of the Christmas spirit for children and adults alike. Oh, and those sons a bitchin Bumbuses.

And from the out-of-fucking-nowhere category comes Godfrey Reggio's Koyaanisqatsi. The film is the first in a trilogy of films, all scored by Philip Glass, which are comprised of solely images and music, with really nothing else guiding it. In face, Reggio talks scarcely about the themes present in Koyaanisqatsi, perhaps out of some fear of tainting the film with meaning, but it has meaning, and it's easy to see. It doesn't hurt Koyaanisqatsi's credit that it's absolutely breathtakingly beautiful. It was shot by cinematographer Ron Fricke, who would go on to direct several of his own films in a similar format to Koyaanisqatsi. As the movie zooms out on the opening image of a Hopi Indian wall painting, and the music (perhaps a bit too overbearing) swells in and lets us enter the universe, its the cinematic equivalent of the harnesses swinging down at the start of a roller coaster. After everything is secured, the film rockets out of the gate, swirling us through vast untouched landscapes, taking us through the clouds, letting in images of humanity (without invitation) after what seems like an endless viewing of sterility, and then immersing us in time-lapse and quick passing images of modern marvels and human life. It's incredibly easy to get lost in Koyaanisqatsi, and that isn't because it's devoid of any plot or characters. It's hypnotic in the way it is shot, in the way it is scored, and in the way it is pieced together. The duration of the film is a moving and completely humbling experience, one which asks no direct questions but demands the answers to so much. To go on and on about the thematic elements of the film would really serve no purpose; at the point when Koyaanisqatsi ends, they are apparent as they whisp away on the smoke of the final crashing rocket ship that envelops the screen. It is tragic and beautiful and it is a fantastic film.

Ocean's 11 was a sensation, and there's a pretty good god damned reason for it. In fact, the entire success of the film can probably be summed up in one word: charm. Ocean's 11 is perhaps the most charming film I've ever seen, and remains so after countless enthusiastic viewings in the theatre, and repeated reviewings on DVD. Every single bit of the film is infused with this unbelievable charm; if Ocean's 11 was at the club, it would dance better than everyone else and go home with the hottest person there. Soderbergh helms the project, and it's his direction which holds the entire project together and wheels it down the track of smoothness, with tight camera work and solid direction. Every single camera move, infusion of music, cut, fake security tape, or any other of the intricate details of the film are executed with a huge sense of style that keeps the pace rolling and the audience engaged. And then there's the casting, which managed to put togehter a team of actors whose ensemble performances becomes a tangible presence, and though I could say a few negative things about Don Cheadle's awful fake British accent, otherwise, the acting is top notch and stylistically on par with the rest of the movie. Then there's the script, which manages to keep an air of confusion about the plot that is necessary with any heist movie, while never taking a step too large as to leave the audience behind. Sure, it gets a little confusing in the final bit when you're trying to figure out how they got that first set of bags in the vault (there's actually no possible way they could've), but otherwise the script moves quickly and with ease through a heist plot which remains easy to understand while being incredbily intricate. It's the script which lacked in the two subpar sequels to the film, and Ocean's 11 really got it just right. It's a testament enough to the quality of the film that after nearly 8 years since its release, a movie that I first saw at the age of 12 remains as exciting and wonderful to me as the first time I sat down in the theatre to see it, and that says something to me. Ocean's 11 is a quality heist film through and through.

For some reason, I delayed for years in seeing 2001. I stalled when I was in middle school, turned off by what I was told was a ridiculously long and uneventful opening sequence. In high school I forgot, and in college I've been so consistently intrigued by so many movies that I've often found it acceptable to put the staples on the back burner. Finally, I got my ass in gear. What's left to say? Of course I loved it. Of course I was captivated by every second. Of course it deserves its reputation, and of course I'll now defend it as the greatest sci-fi movie I've seen to date, because it is. Kubrick did a lot of things that were pretty revolutionary at the time, from providing as realistic a portrayal of space as he possibly could, to mounting the kind of story that spans from the beginning of time to the uncertain future and straight through to the infinite... something that requires a sweet bit of time. Indeed 2001 may at first seem lengthy, but in reality, it's not. It's got the kind of pace most filmmakers would kill to be able to achieve: slow and steady, forcing you to revel in every moment, but without becoming a chore. The mythology of the story is established in such a captivating way that the reveals which illuminate the importance of past events come as surprising after the pleasure of just watching them unfold. The sets are incredible, the detail impeccable, the soundtrack phenomenal. 2001 is a movie that defines what space is for humanity. Infinite, ambiguous, and terrifying. Unreachable without the simplest tainting by the hands of man, extended even into the things we create and then depend on. And in the end, what is to be gained? Is it something we would've wished to attain in the first place? Or is it something that we should be striving for endlessly. For every question answered in reflection on 2001, there are more raised. I'll therefore make the simplest statement I can about 2001. By being one of the most deeply immersive science fiction movies I've ever seen, it manages to take its audience to all new places, and it's a thrill to be taken to them.