quote:

Forge
Upwardly Mobile Participant
Posted 23 September 2009 05:53 PM Hide Post
1: Inglourious Basterds. The more I talk to moviegoers about this one, the more I feel ghettoised in my own little republic of loyalty to Tarantino. So many people have been rubbed up the wrong way by Quentin's postmodernist historical revisionism, but it pushes all the right buttons for me. As a sidenote, if I had my way I'd have burned the film stock of Mike Myers' film cameo, but you can't have everything.

2: . No film starring DiCaprio as Howard Hughes has the right to be this good, but the diminutive Scorsese pulled it off. Leo suppresses as much of his irksome boyishness as possible, and executes the role with aplomb if not perfection. Really, the mixture of slickness and hard-bitten conviction in this biopic surprises me to this day.

3: The Exorcist III. As third entries go, this is remarkable. William Peter Blatty had expressed reservations about Friedkin's adaptation of his novel in the 1970s, and here he got to try his hand at his own material. The end result is so much better than could have been expected. Genuine scares and a curious, engrossing plot make this undeservedly neglected film one to discover for intrepid horror fans.

4: Tenebre. This is the kind of sanguinary Italian horror flick which reminds one why Italian fright movies were so feted by gorehounds in the last century. Here, you get the best of both worlds, with laughable scenarios and twists playing out alongside some very effective, if ephemeral scares. It all comes to nothing in the end, in that it's impossible to take seriously, but as guilty pleasures go this is textbook.

5: Best of the Best. Here we have Eric Roberts at a crossroads in his career, when he hadn't yet realised his true place in the Hollywood universe. In the 1980s, there was no irony in his performances, just ridiculous earnestness, and that naive zeal works in his favour in this martial arts powerhouse of a movie. All manner of schlocky, homoerotic storylines and fight set-pieces feature here, and so much more entertainingly than any of Steven Seagal's po-faced pictures. Anyone in seek of a good laugh need look no further. Twenty years later, Eric Roberts took a page out of William Shatner's book and embraced self parody, which he used to great effect in the role of Maroni in The Dark Knight.

6: Final Destination 3. One likes to leave teen horror films behind after a certain age, but the propulsive extremes of certain choice movies just pulls you back into the fold. Here's a premier one, all about DEATH, and I cannot praise enough the inventive, complexly orchestrated symphonies of death found herein. The rollercoaster set piece at the opening puts the ra ra ra into bravura, and the sunbed scene will put you off artificial UV rays for life. Yes, it's exploitative and has philosophical ideas about death far above its tawdry station, but scarcely have so many fun ways for fate to dispatch the mortal been packed into one movie. Recommended, which I can't say for The Final Destination 3D.

7. Star Wreck: In The Pirkinning. Any Trekkie who endured Galaxy Quest with a good-humoured smile will find more of the same here. It doesn't have the production values of JJ Abrams' reboot, but it has a better sense of humour and is far less reverential towards its source material. And famously, it was released free online in a viral campaign and never saw the international box office. It is one of those rare films that take one parody of one series and runs with it successfully. If you can actually speak Klingon, however, you might be too much of a purist to enjoy this tribute to the Star Trek universe.

8: The Eiger Sanction. Cult film of the highest order. Clint Eastwood's amazing feat of climbing the Totem Pole in Monument Valley is the grandiose highlight here, but there are so many other pleasures to be found within. The flamboyantly gay assassin who acts as a secondary villain was singled out as a great character at the time, but less positively the film's outlook on the fairer sex received some stern criticism. Me, I find it gripping to watch a film with gender politics so vastly under-developed, but I'm more interested in other facets in the flick. The climbing sequences, Clint's hero's avowed passion for art, the labyrinthine plot which stands no close examination, and the parallels with all the Roger Moore Bond films which this movie easily betters. Rarely does one find Clint in a film as cultish as this, and it shares qualities with the superior but equally bizarre High Plains Drifter. Give me either of those films over Mystic River any day of the week.

9: Doomsday. Hit schlockers Dog Soldiers and The Descent got little (if any) attention from filmgoers in the States. A shame, but that's how it goes. Neil Marshal, director of the aforementioned, went down the trashier route with Doomsday. And this is how you do trashy. The heady extremes of editing, music, bloodletting, and set design herein prove that a pulpy sensibility needn't preclude you from fashioning a damn good time for your audience. If John Carpenter hadn't lost his touch, this is the kind of film he'd be making today.

10: Spider-Man 3. The best of the trilogy, and a movie I never in my wildest dreams expected to like. Here, Raimi embraces the comic book spirit (if not aesthetic) and shows a flagrant disregard for anyone's expectations of realism in cinema. The CGI excesses in this one are so removed from the real world that you can either chose to go along with it, or get off at the first stop. Once I realised what Raimi was doing, and understood that he'd confronted all the failings of the first two films and created something altogether more exciting and fantastical, I had a blast. Lamentably, this most profitable of films will only encourage lesser filmmakers to follow suit in style and concept, but you only need watch the Transformers 2 trailer to know it's one to miss.

And I must make an honorary mention for Around the World In 80 Babes. I haven't seen it, though I appreciate the fondness for the novel and 1950s film version which the pun-tastic moniker so clearly expresses.