My Favorite Movies

This is my favorite movie. Visually beautiful and with a poetic script, it personifies the music that inspired the comic book. Brandon Lee is stellar as Eric Draven (and he has a great voice). This film is a work of art.

What can I say about the first perfect movie I have ever seen? Stands its ground as its own movie or, if you have eight hours a trilogy operatic in its scope. Beautiful in every way, was the forerunner of the new wave of fight-as-art theme in new movies.

Pretty much cinematic perfection. As good as the book, darkly funny and apt. This is a beautiful movie.

This movie gets inside your head and rattles you from the inside out. It moves a little slowly, but it's so insidiously creepy that it's easily worth it. One of the best horror movies out there. It's about an asbestos removal team that goes into an abandoned, condemned insane aslyum to clean it out, and one of the guys finds a set of reel-to-reel audio tapes in the basement of memory retrieval therapy sessions Mary Hobbes had with her psychologist decades before. What's even creepier though, is that one of the guys on the team has the same sort of memory repression problems. Pair that with each guy's past and the haunting, oppressive presence of the hospital itself and you have a recipe for some bad, tragic and scary stuff.

I care about every single character in this film: Phil, the crabby guy who has to work with the assclown that stole his girlfriend, Mike, the overqualified almost-lawyer who jumps at any opportunity to stimulate his mind, Hank, the irresponsible jackass that Phil's itching to fire, Jeff, the nyctophobic kid hired by his uncle that's just trying to not screw up and Gordo, the mentally fragile boss whose wife won't talk to him for reasons he can't understand. I love all five guys; you get to see the best and worst of them, thier pettiness, thier senses of humour, the group's cohesion, how long they've worked together and you become really invested in the crew so much so that it's harrowing if they even fight. The looming mental hospital adds another dimension of suffering and madness that brings out the worst in everyone: tempers, paranoia, fears, worries. There are a number of ways to interpret what ends up happening to the men in this film. At the end of it all though, each viewer needs to decide for themself who Simon is.

Simply put, this is my absolute favorite horror film, and I've seen a hell of a lot. If you missed this one, seek it out, see it, and tell me about it. You won't be sorry at all. Session 9 is utterly sublime.

I have yet to see a movie that plays with time as deliberately, inventively and effectively as this one.
This is a film you might not understand the first time around. It's really complex in its chronology and pretzel-logic, but they're all there to make you feel like Leonard. Everyone is great in this movie and it has a great score.

Who knew Bill Paxton would be such a master of horror? This movie creeps up on you and snaps without warning. The child actors are really talented and the movie is overall really eerie. This is a totally new dimension in gothic horror.

I wanted to stab myself with a fork for missing this at the film festival! A really simply scenario, this script was written around the budget that was envisioned for it. The ending completely FLOORED me. My jaw dropped. What a brilliant movie.

I don't even know what to say. I was crawling out of my skin to see this movie and now that I have, I'm almost speechless. Almost. I'm sure I'll think of something to say about this movie.

There was not a single point in this film in which I was not enraptured. From beginning to end, it's fascinating. Every character has great depth and dimensions. While it cannot be denied that Ledger's Joker stole every bleeding scene he's in, I was really drawn to Harvey Dent. Like Batman, he has kind of become a symbol of all that is good in Gotham and all the hope for what Gotham can be. But unlike Batman, he has not exactly chosen this mantle himself, and it gets away from him to the point where he himself cannot possibly be as pure and good as "Harvey Dent". I love that.

I also love how true it rings to the comics. I am a huge fan of Batman and I think those comics have some of the best stories and characters. In the film, I could recognize a lot of the elements I thought were so brilliant from the books. The Two-Face character design, the hero-villain dichotomy and the subtle sense of humour that comes through with everything The Joker does are all ripped straight from the pages of DC. Even the departures I liked: I was originally not too fond of the scarred and painted Joker character design, but it allowed the him new and unique ways to be crazy. And crazy he is. Very. The pencil magic trick alone is worth the price of admission. "Ta daaah! It's gawn!"

(The one departure from the comics that I really didn't like was the Joker's insistance that Batman unmask himself. In the comics, Arkham Asylum in particular, he cares nothing for what lies under the cowl for he, like Rachel, understands that the mask really is his real face.)

Another thing I really liked about this movie was the way it played Batman off against people who were his opposites, but for different reasons. I think that the Joker is the perfect nemesis for Batman: he is so colourful where Batman wears so much black, his voice is so high and manic where Batman's is so artificially gravelly, and he is so goofy where Batman is so austere. In any other movie (Tank Girl comes to mind), the lively one would be your hero and the dreary, menacing, humourless monolith would be the villain. I love the reversal. I like too how Harvey Dent and Batman have become symbols for Gotham's redemption (and it sure needs it after the Ra's Al Ghul debacle), operating on both sides of the law. They do work together, but they cultivate completely different images and represent completely different embodiments of justice. Strangely enough, they also work hard to reinforce each other's public image and repuation.

The recasting of Racehl Dawes might make the series of films look uneven, but it really will be better for it. Maggie Gyllenhaal may not be as easy on the eyes as Katie Holmes was (In my opinion), but she is a much better actress and crafts a much more interesting character. Where Miss Holmes merely served her purpose, Gyllanhaal creates a very human and very believable heroine. She adds so much to the figures in this movie, a collection of actors that makes you truly sorry that even at 2 and a half hours, there doesn't seem to be enough screen time for everybody.

Holy crap. The Joker. The monster that Goyer, the Nolan brother and most significantly Heath Ledger have created onscreen rivals Darth Vader and Hannibal Lecter for supremacy of American cinema's Rogues Gallery. If you've ever seen Ledger in movies or interviews, you know his voice is kind of laid-back, mellow and low. The Joker is about an octave higher and bounces with this inexplicable hyper playfulness usually reserved for over-caffeinated six-year olds who've eaten nothing but sugar for the past eight hours with severe emotional problems and ADHD. This buzzing sense of levity and play permeate the whole character and colour everything he does. Maybe I'm just really bent myself, but I actually found a lot of what The Joker did genuinely funny. Did anyone else notice that the vehicle he set ablaze to divert the police convoy was a fire engine?

I have no idea what inspired Ledger's body language and mannerisms for his character, but if I had to guess, I'd say that he was heavily influenced by inebriated martial artists, smarmy little kids, Ace Ventura, nervous park squirrels and Happy Noodle Boy. He is as frightening as he is adorable. Actually, the undeniable cuteness of the Joker's grin and comportment probably add to how disturbing his actions are. It's like, he'd just as soon NOT blow up a building if he hadn't stubbed his toe walking past it. I cannot say enough good things about this character. The Oscar buzz is justified. I don't think he will be nominated, but even a blind man at the back of the theatre can see what a art and inventiveness went into the crafting of the 2008 Joker. It is truly remarkable, and Heath Ledger is an artist of great skill.

The only thing I can think of that could possibly have made this movie any better would be the following ending: The Joker, badly bruised and defeated, is escorted into Arkham Asylum by a comically large number of armed guards. He is strapped into a straight jacked, put in a padded cell and a clip board is handed to a female psychiatrist who is given a brief introduction to her new patient. This psychiatrist is then identified as Dr. Harleen Quinzel.

Cut to black

Dooooode! Words can barely describe how much I loved this movie. All horror fans owe it to themselves to seek this movie out and see it - before anybody tells you anything about it! Seriously, every time I was surprised, it was an enormous, delicious pleasure, and every time I wasn't, I cursed the infernal trailer that ruined it. Shun them! Don't read reviews! In fact, why are you even reading this? Get out and see it.

Hmm. How do I tell you about this movie without telling you anything about the movie? It's ingenious the way this film plays with the conventions of the rural slasher genre. It puts the tropes in an entirely new context, explaining the maddeningly suicidal behaviour of the stock characters in a new way that makes so much sense. It's peppered with references to every single "five young doofuses get themselves butchered" movie ever made, in ways that are artful and, at times, wonderfully subtle. This movie is as ingenious as the design of Marty's bong. It may be my new favorite horror film, or at least in the top five. The ending had me in gleeful stitches for like fifteen solid minutes. It's probably the biggest and most spectacular shitstorm I've ever seen in the history of horror cinema.

I can't say enough good things about this movie. Check out some of the clips on the film's website and you'll understand. You just can't argue with Aaron Eckhart. The rest of the cast and the dialogue are hilarious too. Please just go see this movie.

This is one of the funniest movies I have ever seen. The characters feel so real you feel like you could just reach out and punch them in the face. The money laundering scene is particularly funny, as is the squabbling in the car over the results of the computer virus. It almost makes me want to work in a cubicle, just to get petty revenge.

You can tell that James Gunn has been watching monster movies all his life, and this picture is his chance to go "Me too!" He did a great job and his contribution to the genre is quite admirable: It's got aliens, it's got zombies, it's got slugs and Michael Rooker. And a smarmy mayor that you just know is going to get killed. Endless fun to witness.

Period peice horror doesn't get much better than this, nor does it get much gorier. Is delicious an appropriate word to describe a film about cannibalism?

I'm so glad a bunch of quaint witty British guys got to the zombie movies before the Wayans brothers did. This couldn't have been made in any other part of the world. This movie nails the humour just as well as it nails the horror, which is a rare thing. A real triumph for both genres.

This is how I like to see my horror movies. This movie is full of arresting imagery that really stays with you and haunts you days later. The horror comes from this film's subtlety and the fact that it doesn't care whether or not you understand it. The casting was excellent as well, except for Martin Henderson.

The Usual Suspects is so charming and sly it's impossible not to love. The personalities of the characters and the beautifully intangible Keyser Sose are what drive this movie. I love it when movies are cool without trying to be.

A muscle-for-hire, who aspires to won a restaurant, refuses to use guns and frets about injuring football players drives this plot. Christopher Walken as the villain who insists he's not the bad guy and Sean William Scott as the idiot savant who may or may not hold the key to a priceless treasure. All this, plus a great script and an Irish guy you can't understand. What's not to like?

This is not a very good movie, but that's still no reason not to like it. Here's my logic: I love Army of Darkness and I love Godsmack. This is the best of both worlds! This movie is so gleefully silly and energetic, it tugs you by the arm and pulls you into its little world, like a kindergartener anxious to tell you about the game they made up.

I love this movie. You need to watch it a couple of times to really wrap your mind around it, but it's so worth it. This is a sci-fi movie that is so grounded in reality that it almost seems like a documentary. Shane Carruth has a brain and a half.

This movie is a scream, if only for the fact that it's a film noir, but with high school students. And there are delicious little cues abound to remind you of this. Joseph-Gordon Levitt is really good in this, but it's hard to pick a favorite amid all the great performances. Gotta love Matt O'Leary. The convoluted plot was easier then I though to digest, but the quick-fire banter was the tough thing to follow. Very entertaining film.