REVIEW: The Ring 2 (2005)

Oh man, oh man, I only have a few hours to review The Ring 2 and pass my misery onto the rest of the world, or else my face will turn into a dried up prune and my brain will go defunct! Just like…what happens when one normally watches The Ring 2...

Director: Hideo Nakata

Starring: Naomi Watts, David Dorfman

IMDb

I really can’t put into words how boring this movie is. But hey, I might as well try!

The movie starts off with some stupid high school kids getting ready for a hot night of sex when the guy asks the girl if she wants to see something scary. If the punchline is him unzipping his pants, I’m turning the movie off right now and converting to Catholicism.

No, actually it’s the Ring tape – apparently Samara was really hard at work in the three years since the first one, at making her very own video store chain, all around the USA now!

We see that he tricks the girl into watching the tape so he can get off the hook from Samara’s curse. But as will be a common theme in this movie, Samara cheats and kills him anyway when the girl only watches part of the videotape, closing her eyes for the rest of it. It’s not like it really matters, anyway. The first movie had plenty of people dying even after they showed other people the stupid tape. It’s an arbitrary, silly rule that just seems to be made up for Samara to kill people. What is even the point? Does she just get off on oddly specific murdering rules? I really want to see a ghost movie from Asia where the killer doesn’t have some bullshit excuse or guideline on what and how to kill people – that would be very refreshing.

Anyway, we then return to the main characters of the first movie, Rachel and Aidan. While I’m all for sequels actually featuring the same main characters as the originals, whoever cared about these two reappearing in another film? They’re bland as can be. It’s fine if you want to tell a continuing story, but for Satan’s sake, could you at least try to make it an interesting one? Or at least, not one that makes me wish I was in a coma?

"Honey. watch out, you're getting in the way of me neglecting you."

Rachel, being a super cool journalist, tracks down the girl who survived her idiot boyfriend’s Ring tape fiasco, and wastes a lot of time at a police station for basically two seconds of exposition where she learns that – DUN DUN DUNNNNNN – the horror is starting over again! Why did we need a five minute scene of her aimlessly putzing around at a police station to establish that this will in fact be a continuation of the horrors of the first film? I think it’s pretty self-explanatory, guys...

"Oh, I'm glad there weren't any guards around or anything. That would have made this completely impossible! And why did I wait that long and waste so much time when clearly I could've just snuck back here in the first place? I...I don't know..."

After that, Rachel manages to track down the tape in the dead kid’s house, and she goes and has her own personal bonfire with it. And just in case you’re completely retarded: this is not the end of the movie. If you think her burning this tape will end their troubles, or do anything beyond just punching holes in the “why don’t they just destroy the tape?” arguments that would have popped up...well, you’re in for a sour, rude awakening with the rest of the movie. As I said before, Samara just breaks every single rule the movie tries to tell us in set in stone. What a load of horse snot.

"I burned the tape! I'm so glad the rest of the movie just doesn't exi---oh shit, the DVD player tells me I still have an hour and a half left of the movie. Wow, this red herring totally failed."

Back at home, Aidan has some freaky nightmares about Samara and the tape and everything. Rachel assures him that she definitely will not just leave him alone while going out and almost dying again. So maybe her parenting is a step up in this one. But that just means she’s at the level of “drunk and slightly incoherent” mom instead of “holy shit, she just did THAT to her child” mom...don’t worry Rachel, you’ll have your own show on MTV sooner or later. It’ll probably be called “Whoops, I Left My Kid Alone to Go Ghost Hunting.”

After that, they go to a fair where she just lets Aidan run off in the middle of a bunch of perfect strangers, who could potentially be crazy serial killers or rapists, but it’s OK. He just goes in the bathroom and takes pictures in the mirror.

Glad your kid is weird and just goes off to take pictures in bathroom mirrors, instead of getting into vans with strangers - seriously, WTF is the logic in telling your young son "oh yeah, just go off without me, it doesn't matter"? Are you high?

In a truly Insidious-esque twist, we see that the camera just makes ghosts appear in the picture with you now, rather than the last movie’s silly ‘blurred face’ crap...apparently this is a signal that Aidan has contracted hypothermia mysteriously, so they get out of the house and go stay with Rachel’s reporter friend Max, who is filling the ‘generic horror movie guy’ quota of the movie. You know the guy who is inoffensive, bland and milquetoast as hell? The guy who, in every horror movie, is the best friend with a possible romantic interest in the main girl, but who would never dream of actually taking advantage of the situation in any way? The guy whose only role is to be the voice of reason and talk in a really wimpy, whiny sort of tone all the time? That’s Max.

In the bathtub, we see some crazy stuff happen as I think Max will want to re-look at his water bill for the month...hope he’s not too mad:

Just think of all the money wasted on this effect. Think of all the green backed dollars and shiny coins that got sucked deep into the funnel of corporate pandering in order to create this scene, in this soulless movie.

Then Rachel decides the best idea is to strangle Max just because she thinks he’s Samara for a second…it’s funny to me that THIS is the big reason that everyone finally starts doubting Rachel’s parenting ability. Let’s count the horrible things she’s already done before this:

1. Leaving the killer videotape for Aidan to watch on his own and thus put his life in danger?

2. Leaving him alone while she goes off on a journey that she could very well DIE on?

3. Letting him wander around a strange new town fair alone where anything could happen to him?

Yeah, like I said in the other review – just take Aidan away from this crazy broad and put him in a home where he’ll actually be SAFE. Christ, these movies give the Poltergeist series a run for their money in terms of bad parenting.

But nevertheless, at least they’re finally starting to suspect Rachel is a horrible parent, even if it is for the wrong reasons. They take Aidan to the hospital, even though Rachel says she doesn’t want to...WHY?! Why would you not take him to a goddamn hospital, you bimbo? What possible reason could you have? Are you just mentally deficient? Is that it? Are you just the worst shit-eating, loathsome, scum of the Earth parent to ever exist?!

Jesus. I’m reaching my limits here. Let’s just get the rest of the movie over with.

There are a lot of boring, dull, trite scenes where Rachel goes around to the old Morgan house from the first movie to research stuff. It’s a complete waste of time, and I’d rather watch paint dry. Why does every 2000s supernatural horror film have to have these slow-paced, uninteresting ‘research’ montages? It’s totally bullshit. There are ways to do these kinds of scenes right, but The Ring 2 doesn’t, and neither does any other subpar excuse for a horror film around this time. It’s lazy filmmaking and all it’s really doing is taking up precious film reel that could have been used instead to educate people, or at least to make an actual good movie. Sigh.

God, I'm glad Cabin in the Woods exists to show how stupid all of these kinds of scenes are. Maybe a couple of times, in the entirety of horror as a genre, has research scenes ever led to anything important to the plot. IT'S NOT SCARY, people! Learning the origins of things is not scary!

Rachel goes off on a quest to talk to Samara’s birth mother and figure out what the hell is going on. After another over-five-minute scene of wasted time trying to get in to see the mother, we finally get there – I think The Ring 2 thinks it’s conjuring up atmosphere, but this isn’t atmosphere, it’s just dragging out the inevitable, like a knife-wound left untreated while your paramedics go and get a grilled cheese sandwich from the bar next door. Painful, excruciatingly dragged out crap is what it is.

So apparently there’s some story about how Samara’s mother, Evelyn, once tried to drown Samara in the pond outside the mental institution, and that’s why Samara was given up for adoption…to the other family that tried to kill her. Evelyn tells Rachel that she did it because “Samara told her to.” Yup, she tried to kill her infant daughter because her infant daughter told her to; clearly this woman is a beacon of sanity in a forest of madness. Her advice to Rachel is to “listen to her child.” Hey, isn’t it a bit weird that Rachel would go to a child murderer and insane asylum inmate to get advice on parenting? Somehow it doesn’t surprise me though.

"I'm totally insane! But I'm a wise prophet on taking care of kids...please, yes, listen to what I have to say. It will tell you everything you need to know."

Oh, and NOTHING about this scene is ever brought up again. That “listen to your child” bullshit? Never referenced or mentioned in the film again! Hooray for pointlessness!

Back at home, Aidan is possessed by Samara now – did you know THAT was one of her powers? How about when he uses psychic powers to make his doctor kill herself? Did you know THAT was one of Samara’s powers? No? Well, that’s because this movie made that shit up without even bothering to try and connect it to the original movie’s story. Is it any surprise that a film so boring and lifeless has trouble even keeping its story straight? “Samara is an evil ghost with the power to kill people, but only if they watch a video tape...or if she just feels like possessing someone and murdering people for no reason...” What absolute ass.

Then Aidan goes to Max’s house again and somehow kills him. Rachel finds him in the car:

Did he even watch the tape at all? Did Aidan/Samara just force him to? I'm more inclined to believe the movie has just thrown all pretense of making sense to the wind.

Isn’t it kinda suspicious to the police in this town that people keep turning up with their faces like that? Even if half the murders happened in another town, they’re all obviously identical in what happened to them – even if nobody knows how it happened. So do the cops really just think it’s all a big coincidence? Geez, movie. I know small town cops aren’t always Sherlock Holmes, but c’mon.

Aidan acts strange and Rachel figures out that Samara is inside him, so she just drowns him in the bathtub again until Samara pops out like a jack in the box. Rachel revives Aidan and everything is cool, until Samara tries to come back through the TV – seriously, are they even trying with this shit now? The premise of “you have to watch the video to die” has become “Samara just does whatever she wants until she kills everyone.” Real gripping plot, movie.

Rachel gets sucked into the TV and ends up back in the well with Samara again. And we also see her do her best Dark Knight Rises re-enactment!

"RISE! RISE! RISE!" Maybe Samara can break her back and take over Gotham City afterwards. Makes about as much sense as anything else in this movie.

Despite all that crap the movie tried to shovel about Samara being sympathetic because people tried to kill her, we see Rachel just drop-kicks Samara in the face and condemns her to live forever in a dark hole with no light at all. After seeing what Rachel considers to be good parenting and just general good humanity, I question whether the ‘good guy’ really won in this movie at all. What else says ‘heroism’ like a little girl who was knocked around her whole life continuing to get shoved back down in the dirt for no other reason than the fact that she makes creepy insect sound effects when she moves and has too-long hair?

This movie is just wretched. It’s stupid, has questionable morals and, oh yeah, IT’S BORING AS HELL. There is nothing about this movie that I liked, or even found the least bit tolerable. It’s just a steaming pile of manure compost made up of the worst elements of post-2000 horror movies. Why even bother with horror movies at all anymore? I’ve already said everything there is to say, and this movie is the final nail in the godforsaken coffin. It’s just...God, this is so bad. It’s so completely insipid, and I’m as burnt out as you can get on reviewing movies like it.

That’s it, then – I’m done reviewing horror movies! I can’t do it anymore! From now on, I will only review romantic comedies!

Images in this review are copyright of their original owners. I do not own any of them.

REVIEW: The Ring (2002)

Oh no! I watched The Ring and now I only have seven days to do this review!

Director: Gore Verbinski

Starring: Naomi Watts, Martin Henderson

IMDb

Yup, that's just how it works now. Seeing the movie The Ring is pretty much the same as seeing the fictional video tape featured in the movie. Seeing as I usually do reviews in less than seven days, I guess that won’t be a problem though…

For those not “in the know,” The Ring is pretty much the forerunner to most modern horror movies anywhere. It’s the prototype for all the modern supernatural ghost stories we have, long-haired little girl ghosts with demonic faces and all. But unlike The Grudge, which is unequivocally horrendous, The Ring at least does try to have some good stuff in it. But is it enough for me not to review it? I don’t think so!

The movie kicks off with two girls talking about the evils of television, and how it kills your brain. Assuming that extends to movies as well, I really don’t think it’s that great of an idea to kick off a movie with the reasons why you should turn it off.

"Like, the corporations are out to get us, man."

They play pranks on each other and stuff, lots of red herrings, and talk about boys and evil video tapes that kill you. Apparently one of the two girls has just come back from a weekend vacation where she and her friends watched this tape that is rumored to kill people a week after they see it. Insert your own ‘The Ring 2’ joke here, or any bad movie for that matter. I’m just wondering what kind of movie studio would be so desperate as to use a marketing ploy like this. I mean, a movie that makes people die a week after they see it? That’s pretty hardcore. I’m sure they would find a great audience among the kinds of incessant whackjobs who watch crap like A Serbian Film, however. Or, if they were really desperate…

Oh, okay, I know Lion’s Gate wouldn’t go that far. They did release the SAW sequels, but I’m fairly sure their desire to bring in a profit would stop them from a stunt like this. But I digress. Just when you think nothing is going to happen and the movie will be nothing but boring teenage banter…

Yup, looks like she tried to French kiss a vacuum cleaner. Wonderful. We then switch over to our next main character Rachel, played by Naomi Watts. Her problem is, her son keeps drawing freaky pictures in class instead of letting the United States Education System pound its historically and politically biased dogma into his brain. And that just won’t do!

So apparently, this kid thinks his dead cousin magically turned into a giant when she died. Or maybe he just thinks she was always that size...stupid kid.

I love when the teacher tells Rachel that her son clearly has problems and she just sort of waves it off. She says her son has been missing his cousin who died three days ago, and this is how he’s dealing with it. Because drawing pictures of dead people in class? TOTALLY DEALING WITH IT! At the end of the conversation, the teacher says Watts’ son actually drew the pictures a week ago, even though his cousin died three days ago. Creepy! Cue the “dun dun dun” music. Personally, I think the teacher should be more worried about Rachel's psychotic lesbian tendencies...

If you get the reference, I'll give you a cookie.

In the car, Rachel’s son Aidan says that the cousin – the girl from the opening – told him she was going to die, before the fact. Well if that’s the case, then why the hell was she acting so carefree and normal in the first scene, on the night she died? Did she just forget? Or was she just trying to scare her cousin? Personally, I really wonder what that mental thought process was like. What could she have been thinking?

“Oh shit! I’m gonna die in seven days because I watched a videotape! Hey, cousin, come here…listen, I’m going to be dead soon! I’m not explaining anything else because that would be antithetical to my goal of being as vague and ominous as possible and scaring a little boy who loves me! Hey, best friend, want to go party, talk about boys and joke around? Yeah? Cool. Okay, time to die now!”

Man I hate teenagers…

After that, the funeral happens, where Rachel talks to some teenagers and figures out that the other kids who watched the tape are also dying. So she does some poking around and goes to the cabin where they stayed, and finds the video tape almost immediately. Gee, that’s so implausible I can almost feel it in my teeth. What, she knew it was the right tape because it was the only blank one on the shelf? What if it had just been some homemade porn tape the guy at the counter made? Well either way it’s irrelevant, because by the laws of bad movies, it does turn out to be the correct tape. She watches it and…

So the ladder must represent man's eternal folly of making weak-ass, half-thought supernatural thrillers.

…wow, this is the worst Ingmar Bergman movie I’ve ever seen!

And then, you all know what happens next: she gets the phone call that starts it all, with a whisper that says she only has seven days to live. I personally feel sorry for whoever it is making those calls. It must get boring just having to call people over and over saying the same things…like the worst call center job in the world. But Rachel doesn’t have any sympathy as her countdown immediately begins!

Yeah, the funniest thing about this is that – spoiler alert! – most of their days are completely wasted. They barely even do anything until the very last two days! What an incompetent bunch of morons. But far be it from me to skip over large portions of this movie; no, no…I’ll go through all of it. First we see that apparently, a side effect of the killer video is that it makes pictures of peoples’ faces look kind of blurry and weird:

Man, Instagram wasn't so good in its early days...

Yeah, that’s right – this is a real side effect of the killer videotape. What do you think Satan was thinking when he conjured up that one? “This videotape, the spawn of all evil, will kill anyone who watches it in seven days…oh, and also it will make pictures come out kind of bad…it’s not a lame side effect! It’s, uhhh, just to screw over anyone who wanted to take pictures during their last seven days for their loved ones to remember them by! Bwuhahaha!”

Somehow I don’t think those two punishments quite even out.

Oh, and there's also Noah, Rachel’s old boyfriend, who is probably the coolest character in the movie, for now anyway. He at least knows what he’s doing, which is better than most of these movies ever get. He says he wants to watch the video, and at first, Rachel says no…but after the tiniest bit of prodding, she thinks it’s cool to show a person the videotape that KILLS YOU after you watch it. What a bitch.

He doesn’t think much of it either, and the two spend a lot of time trying to figure out what’s up with that freak-ay tape. To be fair, these scenes aren’t too bad, so I won’t really fault them that much. I will, however, fault a lot of the characters for the next few scenes…Rachel wakes up one morning to find that Aidan has watched the tape! Oh no! Maybe she shouldn’t have kept it in a place where her young son could easily get to it and put it into the VCR? Somebody call Child Protection Services on this broad.

"I really am the worst mother of the year! Oh well. At least he hasn't touched the bottle of Jack I keep on the kitchen table while I'm sleeping, or the gun I put under his bed for safekeeping..."

Then we get the big reveal that Noah is actually Aidan’s father. In the car while waiting for Rachel, Noah says he wouldn’t be good father material and so doesn’t come around that much. Great. Because of your insecurities, a little boy grows up without a father. You despicable piece of scum. How about next time actually taking responsibility for your actions, buddy? You asshole. It’s a shame because this guy was actually fairly likable for the genre’s standards, but after this? I just think he’s a pussy. Oh well.

I also love how one of the days this movie chronicles takes up more time with Rachel and Noah arguing in the hallway of his apartment building than it does them actually trying to accomplish shit. Do I even have to say why this is stupid? Oh no, guys, by all means. Continue your argument. It’s not like you have a kid together who’s dying or anything! Romantic banter is always equally important to life-threatening paranormal doom, right? Even Bonnie and Clyde would say these two are being ridiculous.

Somewhere along their research, Rachel finds out that the woman in the tape in one scene is actually Anna Morgan, a resident of some island with a lighthouse that is also featured in the tape. Apparently a long time ago, the horses on the island went insane after Anna Morgan brought home a foster daughter, Samara – who is the girl in the tape, if you’re the two or three people who don’t know that by now. So Rachel goes on a boat, finds a horse, and this happens:

GERONIMOOOOOOOOOO!

Yeah. You just saw that. A goddamned horse went ballistic and threw itself over the side of a boat in this horror movie. Tell me which Grudge sequel has anything that ridiculously cool, and…well, I still won’t watch it, but you see my point!

She gets to the island and meets Brian Cox, who plays Richard Morgan, the lone standing survivor of the Morgan family. He’s a depressed old man who is about as sad about his horses dying as he is his family dying. After some more poking around and researching, they figure out that Samara was locked in an attic for years because Richard blamed her for Anna’s death and insanity. Somehow while locked in the attic, she gained supernatural powers and made a video tape that kills people in seven days after viewing.

Uh, okay. I rarely ever do this. But we need a break for a moment, while I try to process exactly what this complete gibberish insanity is trying to convey here.

…I’m sorry, but I really don’t see the connection there! Even if you’re trying to say she already had the powers before Anna adopted her, it still doesn’t make sense! So she had the supernatural power of making evil videotapes? How does she make the phone calls happen every time? What happens if somebody watches the tape and they don’t have a phone? Movie, I know you’re based off a Japanese film, which basically means you can do away with making any kind of sense, but come on! A little bit of effort would be nice!

Then they go to the cabin again and tear up the floors. The TV falls down the hole and knocks Rachel clean into the open well conveniently still there – not like they would have demolished that when they built the cabin, right? – and seriously, Rachel is that clumsy? It’s like something out of a Tom and Jerry cartoon.

Personally I think the staticy TV had its best day in Poltergeist, and that came out 20 years before this!

Rachel gets stuck in a well with some dead bodies – always a fun time – and then Samara shows her how her mother put a bag over her head and dropped her in the well to begin with. Because, remember, any good horror movie always has to have a sympathetic killer! We can’t just have an evil, malignant force killing off our main characters! It has to be a sympathetic killer we can feel sorry for and know why they are so evil and bloodthirsty. Truly that is the way of good, scary horror movies. Doesn’t dilute the fear and terror at all. What’s really scary is backstories! And remember, for even more of an effect, go the Rob Zombie route and devote half of the goddamn movie to the killer’s backstory. The Ring doesn’t do that, but that’s only because it simply laid the building blocks for modern horror. It would be a few years before the formula was perfected.

But I digress…they get out, and go back home to find Aidan sprawled unconscious on the floor. Because any good parent leaves her child alone and unsupervised when they may not ever come back alive, right?

The floor is his babysitter now. The rug, his comfort. You are dead to him, parents...dead.

…no, I’m done being sarcastic. Will somebody just kill these parents already?! It’s bad enough that the father is a worthless dick-cheese who won’t help raise his son out of his own sense of insecurity, and now we have a mother that forgets to call a babysitter when she goes out on the off chance that she might DIE IN A WELL IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE. Please, just send these two to the electric chair.

But fortunately we don’t have to, as in the next scene, Noah gets killed when this happens:

Talk about interactive TV! I wish my TV could do that. Maybe in the future we’ll finally be able to get Scarlett Johansson or Megan Fox out of the screen and into our living rooms.

I’d also like to take a moment to, erm, “thank” this movie for pioneering one of horror’s biggest reference points after it was released – the creepy, zombie-ghost girl with long hair covering an evil looking dead face. This image has been done time and time again in numerous god-awful films such as The Grudge, One Missed Call and Shutter, among hundreds of others. I dunno, is this really what the Japanese find scary? Demonic little girls with too much white-face on? I guess I just don’t get it. But safe to say, even if it was a scary idea, it has been run into the ground SO DAMN MUCH that it would be ineffective either way. So thank you, The Ring…thank you so much.

I love the way Rachel actually doesn’t know what’s gonna happen when she turns Noah’s chair around…lady, haven’t you ever seen a horror movie? If you go into a room and someone is sitting there, not responding, with their back turned, do you think they’re just playing a joke? Oh, how innocent and free it must have been to live in a world where horror movie clichés are only a little bit dated, as opposed to 11 years later, when they’re just run into the ground.

"Maybe he really IS just sleeping! That must be why his chair is suspiciously and conveniently turned around like that, so I won't see his face yet..." Also, the guy's current girlfriend is shown going up the stairs after Rachel leaves. Rachel does not do anything to stop her or even lessen the blow of what the girl is about to see. Our hero, folks.

Anyway, she goes home, tries to destroy the tape, only to discover that they have to pass on the tape to someone else in order to get rid of the whole curse thing. There are some ominous cuts from the video aaaaaand…that’s pretty much how it ends. I wouldn’t even call it an end…more of a cliffhanger, really.

Well, I can’t say this is a terrible film, it’s got a few good moments here and there, and some nice atmosphere. But too much of it just falls into that annoying modern horror stereotype – it invented a good many of the stereotypes we see today, but then, I wish they were done better. It’s weird because these elements – the ghosts, the supernatural storylines, the backstories – could potentially be melded into something good. It’s not like these things are bad simply by their natures, so why can’t anyone string together a good film from them?

Oh, and I forgot, I’m gonna die in seven days because I watched the movie! Oh well. I’ll just keep pondering these questions and mix it up by flirting with people. No big deal.

The images in this review are not mine; they are copyright of their original owners.

REVIEW: Dracula 3000 (2004)

“Come in, Review Command Central…come in…we have an unidentified object on the horizon. It seems to be just floating in dead space, doing absolutely nothing at all. It looks like…a DVD case, and it is glowing a strange, radioactive green, like something that came from the lowest depths of a sewer. Oh, God, it’s coming closer! It’s about to crash into us! Oh, God, save us from this unholy fate! What has my life become! The DVD is overlapping the ship! It’s devouring us whoAAAAAAGGGGHHHHH!!!”

Director: Darryl Roodt

Starring: Casper Van Diem, Erika Eleniak

IMDb

Hmm, I just found the above tape recording on this abandoned spaceship I conveniently started wandering around in. And here’s the DVD! “Dracula 3000”…sounds absolutely horrendous in every way possible! I think I’ll review it. Hell, I’ve had worse reasons to review things.

We start off with about three minutes of credits. I know I haven’t told you anything else about the rest of the movie yet, but seriously, once you read the rest of the review, it will make sense why this is so ridiculous. I’m really not sure it’s a good idea to advertise who made this movie, guys. It’s really not going to do their resumes very much good. Do you really want the people who very charitably donated their time to making this to be homeless on the streets?

Well, either way, the opening of the movie dispels all pretensions of this being good, as it starts out with a ship about to self-destruct. The movie even knows it’s not going to have anything worthwhile – so it’s just skipping all the bullshit and starting right out with a self-destructing ship with its sole member, some old guy who will serve as our exposition machine throughout the film, dying off. That’s a point in the movie’s favor actually. If they just rolled the credits now, this would be by far the best Dracula movie I’ve ever reviewed on this site. Which isn’t saying a lot, but shut up.

Then we skip to 50 years later, because that’s not pointless, is it? Oh, you mean it is? You mean it doesn’t matter what time any of this takes place because it’s all arbitrary made up nonsense? Huh, well I guess I was wrong when I rhetorically asked myself that question. We get this guy named Van Helsing with a wimpy voice talking about his crew and how stupid and incompetent they all are. I know that sounds like my usual sarcasm, but no, I’m dead serious. He says the navigator never has any idea where they’re going, the scientist is only half as smart as he thinks he is, and is still the smartest person BY FAR on the whole ship, and the hired gun is basically dumb as a rock with no redeeming value outside of recon missions.

There has never been a good movie that introduced its characters like this. Never.

So, yeah, you heard right – apparently these people have absolutely no idea what they are doing, no clue how to run a ship and are just kind of aimlessly drifting through space, like useless space debris. Except I think space debris is actually more intelligent than these idiots. Who even gave them this ship? They basically just admit in the first five minutes of the movie that they’re completely incompetent in every way possible! You’d have to be high to think these people deserve to pilot a goddamn space ship! They should be back on whatever planet they came from serving fast food. Or, hey, here’s a thought – maybe they’re so worthless that the space federation just wanted to get rid of them as fast as possible. That makes more sense.

So, being geniuses and all, they naturally send over the weakest, smallest female they have to check out this abandoned ship they find, because finding an abandoned ship is literally the oldest sci fi cliché in the world. She’s jumpy and gets scared of everything, and is the most likely to get killed or captured if there is anyone there. Why didn’t they just send someone with more nerve? I couldn’t tell you.

It turns out he's faking the choking on the "poisonous" air...but I really wish it was real, just to illustrate how stupid the crew is. Oh well. I still have my imagination.

They make jokes about how she basically doesn’t get paid anything and her job generally sucks. I just love the logic Captain Van Helsing uses – “you have complaints and grievances? We don’t care, get your ass on the ship.” Like any good team, the women on the ship are subject to constant sexual harassment from the males, with no sign of any stop to it. I’m so glad years and years of scientific development has made our species so much more tolerant and intelligent as individuals. Personally I think the future needs an equivalent of Rosie the Riveter to set things straight here.

Oh and there’s also Coolio as 187, a stoner who apparently does nothing but get high all the time:

This one image, even out of context, shows everything wrong with the movie in one frame.

Does that even look like it belongs in the same movie as the rest of this shit?! Seriously, did they just spend all the money they had getting Coolio to sign on for this movie? Great job, guys; you got a mediocre actor and now you have no cash left for the vampire effects. How do you think getting him to sign on for this went?

Movie Studio Exec: "Coolio, we can’t find anyone to play the black vampire in our Dracula in space movie. We tried every other person we can think of, went through hundreds of auditions, and you are the only appropriate person we can think of to play a crazy vampire. Will you do it?"

Coolio: "Hmm. Depends. What kind of a script is it? Is it worthy of my artistic talents? I did write Gangsta’s Paradise, you know."

Movie Studio Exec: "You get to wear fake teeth, mug to the camera and jump around like an insane asylum inmate on crack, while half-singing some of your dialogue."

Coolio: "…"

Movie Studio Exec: "…there are also racial stereotypes involved. You will be able to assert how much of a gangster you are."

Coolio: "Excuse me. It's gangsta. Not gangster."

Movie Studio Exec: "What?"

Coolio: *disapproving glare*

Yeah, that sounds about right.

So basically these characters constantly bicker with one another and never display any kind of competence. I can’t even tell you how stupid most of the dialogue in this is. Oh, so the stoner character talks about nothing but drugs all the time? The big dumb guy only thinks about getting laid? I’m sorry, but didn’t we have an important space mission going on here? These people are about as business-minded as the crackheads that live under the bridge. They make the crew of Aliens look like serious entrepreneurs in an important meeting to decide the fate of the company. There’s cajolery and good fun, and then there’s completely slacking off like morons. But what am I to expect from the ship that’s probably the class clown of the intergalactic space ship community?

So they wander around aimlessly, exchanging dumb dialogue and bickering with one another over pointless shit, because that’s what every bad screenwriter falls back on when they have no other character development to put in. They find the dead captain of the ship, who is now just a perfectly preserved, not bad-smelling at all skeleton with a cross in his hand. Apparently the future world in this movie has “outlawed” crucifixes now – huh, I guess the separation of church and state is taken much more seriously in the future.

Maybe it's an ancient artifact. WITCHCRAFT! RUN! PRAY TO YOUR GODS!

But here’s the thing – apparently nobody ever taught these people religious history, because they all think the crucifix is a big plus sign. One of the characters even says “maybe he really likes math!” Seriously, movie? They don’t have any kind of history or cultural relativeness to fall back on in this future? They haven’t even the faintest clue what a crucifix is? How dumb are these people? I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, though, seeing as we live in a world now where people barely even know the Bill of Rights or who fought who in the Revolutionary War.

Suddenly I’m very sad for humanity. A moment of silence then, for our lost intelligence.

Anyway, Coolio and the muscle of the crew, Humvee, find a bunch of coffins in the loading area and start to break them open, finding nothing but sand. Coolio cuts his hand and, surprise, this leads to more uninspired bickering. Isn’t that just great? Fortunately, Coolio gets bitten by Dracula after this, when the others leave, and frankly, I think I figured out why he was chosen for this movie: it was actually a diabolical plot by the record industry to make him immortal and sell more albums. Unfortunately, they did not foresee his decline in popularity as the years went on. And so, we just got this goofy-ass performance:

Jesus Christ, he's making Peewee Herman look subtle.

Seriously, he’s out of his mind in this. It’s like they just told him to imitate Ed from Fright Night and try to outdo him in over the top wackiness. It’s totally un-subtle. Hmph. I prefer my Z-grade vampire movies to have Shakespearean level acting. Anything less is just unacceptable.

Okay, now he's just off his meds. This is the kind of performance that, if done at childrens' birthday parties, gets people thrown in jail.

So he runs around, does goofy shit, half-sings a lot of his dialogue like a crazy person, until Vice Captain Aurora shoots him a bunch of times. The bullets don’t hurt him, obviously, and then he gets Mina as his first victim. Aurora runs away, but runs into another guy, Count Orlok, who mostly just looks like a D&D player who got lost on his way to the bathroom:

"I am the game master."

This is really supposed to be our Dracula for the movie? Count Chocula was scarier. Gary Oldman in Bram Stoker’s Dracula evoked more drama. Even the prissy vampires in Underworld were cooler, and THAT is saying a lot! This guy needs to go back to Party City and get better makeup.

Anyway, he bites her and next thing we know, she’s coming in to the rest of the crew acting like everything is okay. Is she a vampire? Will she murder the rest of her crewmates? Will Batman get out of this pinch okay? Will Lassie get Old Man Thompson out of the well in time for supper? Find out all the answers and more after these messages!

Huh…that was something…and I’m pretty sure most of those questions have very little to do with the movie.  Either way, I'm not answering the last few. Too bad. Anyway, they suspect Aurora of being a vampire, and so they tie her up to the chair she’s sitting in and make her stay there as a captive. I’m fairly sure the director just wanted to exercise his bondage fetish, as if she really was a vampire, she wouldn’t have let them tie her up…but we’ll go with it, and the movie is almost over anyway.

Coolio comes back and tries to fool Humvee into letting him in, by giving him the whole “we’re both black and we said we’d stick together” speech. How has racial equality actually gone BACKWARDS in the future? Well, at least Humvee won’t actually fall for it…oh, who am I kidding; would you be even the least bit surprised if I told you he did fall for it, and in less than a minute, too?

"Bros for life!!!"

Sigh…and I was just starting to have some hope in humanity again. Thanks, Dracula 3000. Thanks a lot. I guess we should just let North Korea and Syria blow up the world now – honestly if this is the kind of future we’re in for, it might be the best move.

So Coolio and Humvee fight, and it’s all pretty stupid, but then Van Helsing comes in and shoots at Coolio some more, wasting all of his bullets. Even when Coolio gets up after being shot the first time, Van Helsing just tries again. Are you stupid? Bullets don’t kill him, you Neanderthal! Luckily Humvee stabs him with a pool cue and kills him. Note also that they didn’t have enough money to do any ‘turning to dust’ effects…lame.

You already had sand in previous scenes, guys. You could have at least jump-cutted Coolio out of the scene and put sand there...sure it would have been stupid, but what ISN'T in this movie? C'mon.

They untie Aurora when she reveals she can’t be a vampire, because she’s – dun dun dun – A ROBOT, sent to monitor how incompetent they are and get them in trouble for it like they deserve! Humvee says they should just leave her tied up, because otherwise she’s just going to get them in trouble. Well what do you think is going to happen then, dipshit? Leaving her tied up is just the stupidest idea possible.

Up in the computer room, Van Helsing and the wheelchair-bound scientist guy research ways to kill vampires. The computer passes through several phrases like ‘stakes’ and ‘sunlight,’ but for some reason, the characters just ignore those right now. They do notice that Van Helsing shares his name with the famous vampire hunter from the 1800s, and yeah, that IS a pretty big coincidence, huh? Of all the ships that could have come across a vampire, it has to be the one with a Van Helsing descendent on it. What a coinky-dink.

And when Van Helsing meets up with Orlok and fights him, Orlok says that it’s destiny that they’ve met up. Yes, truly this movie is the rightful sequel to the Dracula storyline – a generic looking white guy in his 30s and the pimply D&D-playing Dracula fighting in the middle of the rejected Jason X sets. Such heart-wrenching drama!

Oh yeah, showdown of the century, man! D&D Dracula versus Lame-O Van Hellsing! Bring it on! Who's got the popcorn?

Meanwhile, Aurora tries to get Humvee to come help save Van Helsing, but he doesn’t believe her and thinks she’s just trying to lure him into a trap. So, he’ll open a door to someone he KNOWS is a vampire, because they were friends, but when someone he knows isn’t a vampire tells him to open a door, he gets suspicious? Something about that doesn’t add up. Even though he said he wouldn’t leave, the next scene shows him leaving, simply because he’s annoyed by the scientist computer wheelchair man’s whining. What a great character. What a great movie, right?

To add insult (and comedy) to injury, Orlok kills off Van Helsing, who was supposed to be our main character, and turns him into a vampire. Van Helsing gets unceremoniously killed off by Aurora, and Orlok gets his arm ripped off in a door, and that’s the last we see of either of them. Wow. How utterly underwhelming. Oh and somewhere in the middle of all this, Orlok goes and turns Mr. Wheelchair Scientist into a vampire, making the world’s first handicapped vampire!

The most worthless vampire in the whole world! The most pointless of all Satan's creations!

Seriously, what is the point? He can’t get out of the damn wheelchair even after he turns into a vampire! How is he going to reach anyone’s neck to bite them? Just rolling him down a ramp would kill him, frankly. In the movie’s constant quest to outmatch its own stupidity, Aurora stabs him violently to death and murders him easily. When Humvee asks how she knew he was a vampire, she says “I didn’t know.” So she’s just the kind of person who violently stabs people ON THE OFF CHANCE that they might be a vampire. Very nice. Charming.

The plan they come up with is to steer the ship toward the sun and kill Orlok that way. We don’t see Orlok again, because this movie is just that amazing and cares so much about its plot. Humvee and Aurora find out they only have 12 hours until the ship goes into the sun. Aurora says that she used to be a Pleasure Bot, and the two go off to have sex off screen.

Really, at this point they weren't even trying. I mean this ending is just...WOW. It's such an insane cop out! Really I'm convinced this whole thing was just a joke. And that's why I can't take it seriously enough to get mad. Not really.

And believe it or not…that’s the last we see of them. Not fighting off Orlok, not doing anything heroic, not even remembering their dead friends…just going off to have sex without a care in the world. Then we see the ship explode, and that’s the end!

Dracula 3000 didn't do so well on opening weekend...in fact, it "bombed." In the truest sense of the word...ha ha...okay, my humor is getting as bad as the movie's. I'd better stop.

Or rather, I can’t even say ‘end,’ because it’s not an end. The movie just tapers off like they ran out of money and ideas, which, frankly, they probably did. Dracula 3000 is just about as stupid as it sounds – vampires in space? Really? It’s barely even worth reviewing at all. The only reason I did was because I found it on this abandoned spaceship, like I said. I always review things I just find in creepy abandoned places. It’s not weird at all.

Hey, what’s that? Who are you? Why are you coming closer with that menacing set of teeth? What are youAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHHHH! NO! DON’T EAT MY HEAD! AGGGHHHH! IT'S DRACULA FROM THE FUTURE! HE'S FOUND ME! Have mercy on my soul!

Let this review be a warning: avoid Dracula 3000! Avoid it at all costs! Remember me as a critic of films!

If anyone would actually claim any of these images, I'd go ahead and just agree they were copyrighted to you. I guess they're copyrighted to the owners. But really, I'm guessing this lost more money than it made, so not a lot of incentive there, is there?

The Top 20: My Favorite Movies of All Time

Yesterday, I gave you all my personal Bottom 20 list, the worst movies out there for me. Today, I am focusing on the positive side: these are my very favorite movies. All of them are films that I can watch any time and get enjoyment from, films that I learn about the world from or about art from, and films that I hold dear to my heart. I wouldn't say all of them are necessarily the BEST out there - classics such as Casablanca, Citizen Kane and others do not feature here - these are just my favorites; the ones that have shaped me as a person. With no further ado, I present to you...the list!

20. Primal Fear

A legal thriller mixed in with some very deft twists and turns that make it one of the more unforgettable, go-for-the-throat thrillers of the 90s. Richard Gere is great and Edward Norton is just awesome in this, in one of his first roles ever. Primal Fear is a classic of mystery/thriller films.

19. The Hitcher

Just an all around winner of a movie, The Hitcher rocks some great Nevada desert settings, a killer, suspenseful plot and a great Rutger Hauer performance. It’s just a meat-and-potatoes good movie, and if you haven’t seen it, you should get on it now.

18. Rosemary’s Baby

Another essential horror film, Rosemary’s Baby is the tale of a young married woman pregnant with her first child. When she starts noticing strange things, she begins to suspect a plot against her and her baby. The reason this is so scary is because it could very well be all in her head. Maybe she is just being paranoid – for a lot of the film, it’s really not that clear. And once it is clear that there is something more going on, that fear is replaced by the even graver, more serious fear of a mother on the verge of losing her child. A true monument of fear.

17. Die Hard

This is another one that doesn’t get on the list for any one stand-out reason, but just for how good all its elements combined are. With Bruce Willis’s working-man charisma, the non-stop suspense and the well constructed action scenes that get more and more explosive as the film goes on, one Die Hard is worth ten thousand Transformers movies. Smart, fun, action packed to the core, Die Hard is a bona fide classic.

16. Halloween

John Carpenter’s 1978 classic is my personal pick for the scariest movie of all time. This film just shows us a nice suburban neighborhood in which hell breaks loose one night. Unlike the later films, this has no backstory for the killer and no real explanation for why he’s doing what he’s doing. He’s just on a rampage through this unsuspecting ‘burb and kills innocent people in horrible ways. The next time you turn this on, just imagine your own neighborhood in a similar scenario. Imagine a silent, unstoppable killer stalking your streets and picking off your friends one by one. Yeah. That’s why this movie is on the list. Essential horror.

15. LA Confidential

Just a killer crime movie. LA Confidential is actually based on a book written by the same guy who wrote Black Dahlia – which was also made into a movie, which made it onto my ‘worst movies ever’ list. Funny how this one is on my ‘best movies’ list. I guess it just goes to show you how much a good director can change things. LA Confidential is the story of three cops in the 50s and their involvement in a huge crime ring bust. I love it for how intense the pacing is and how good the characters are. Just an awesome, awesome movie.

14. Mulholland Dr.

Probably the darkest and most insane movie on this list, David Lynch’s Mulholland Dr. was the first film by him that I saw. Filled to the brim with ghastly imagery, nail biting suspense, and a plot that appears to get darker and darker with every turn, Mulholland Dr., like Eyes Wide Shut, is a great horror film, even despite not being a horror film at its core. At its core, this is a deeply twisted character study and a brilliant avant garde film that captivates me every time.

13. Eyes Wide Shut

Stanley Kubrick’s last film is one of his very best, and one of the most captivating experiences I have had with a movie as of late. Eyes Wide Shut is a great film for its surreal atmosphere and the creativity of its whacked out imagery. It is also a great horror film on one level and a great romance film on another: with bizarre, mysterious intrigue and lustful, achingly beautiful scenery, Kubrick crafted an unforgettable experience.

11. The Seventh Seal

I’m a newbie to Ingmar Bergman’s oeuvre, but when I saw The Seventh Seal last year, it was definitely an eye opening experience. For one, the film talks about death – how much larger of a theme can you even have? – and two, it talks about it in such an all encompassing, larger than life, down to Earth way that I doubt you will ever find any other film like it. It is an epic tale of medieval crusaders who grapple with death and their very finite mortality – being in the Middle Ages, it’s not like most of these people will live very long either, so the drama is higher. The Seventh Seal is a breathtaking, life affirming experience, and you should go see it.

10. Scott Pilgrim VS the World

This will probably be the most surprising choice on this list, but I really think this is one of the most important movies of the last few years. In every generation, there are a few films and books that just define it entirely – they show what was culturally important, what people talked about, what was wrong with the generation, and more. Scott Pilgrim is like that for the last half of the 2000s and the early 2010s – you know, the “hipster generation.” With a very funny script and batshit insane directing choices, this basically tells the story of Scott Pilgrim, a Canadian guy who falls in love with a girl named Ramona and has to fight her “evil exes” in order to win her heart. With references to everything people our age (early 20s, late teens) like, from music to gaming to dating, this comes out as a very deft, subtle satire of our culture of hipsters, gamers, anime fans and everything in between. But it does so in a respectful way that allows us to look at ourselves critically without getting too spiteful or malignant. In addition to being important and intelligently written, it's also stylistically gorgeous, gut-bustingly funny and a hell of a lot of fun. One of my new favorites.

9. Taxi Driver

A portrait of a man’s life in grimy 1970s-era New York, Taxi Driver is my favorite Robert DeNiro performance as well as my favorite Scorsese movie. This is just so fascinating to me because of the character Travis Bickle, who has got to be one of my favorite movie characters ever. An unstable and mentally wired creep, the film just sort of tells the story of his life, and it appears by all accounts that he’s going downhill…until he meets Jodie Foster’s character, a 12-year old prostitute, and decides he wants to save her. Taxi Driver is a film about fate, exploring it as a coin toss. By all logical trains of thought, Travis Bickle was a man headed for a blowup, teetering on the edge of complete disaster. But instead, he saved a girl and became a hero at the drop of a dime. It’s a brilliant character study and one of my favorite movies of all time.

8. The Sandlot

I think this is probably the only movie on this list that I’ve known about since before I turned 10 years old. I loved The Sandlot back then, and I love it even more now. The mark of a good movie for me is if it can take something mundane or ordinary and turn it into a big epic, which this does. It’s just about baseball, yeah, but at the same time, it’s about a kid moving to a new place, finding friends and discovering what becomes a lifelong passion. Everything in this film is treated with a huge larger than life sense of adventure, and having great characters and a funny, fast paced script doesn’t hurt either. I love baseball, I love these characters and I love The Sandlot.

7. The Big Lebowski

Simply the funniest movie I’ve ever seen. Every second of this is packed with jokes, references to previous jokes and simply witty, wry moments. Frankly, this goes way above and beyond what the usual comedy formula is with incredibly intelligent writing and surprising complexity, at that. There is so much going on here that I notice new things every time, and the characters and acting are so good they are impeccable. I can’t decide whether John Goodman as Walter or Jeff Bridges as The Dude is funnier. Fortunately, such a choice is unnecessary: they’re both amazing. Nothing else to say about this one; just a great comedy from the masters of bizarre, off-kilter films, and one I can watch any time and enjoy wholeheartedly.

6. Thank You For Smoking

Not quite as laugh out loud funny as The Big Lebowski, but I’m putting Thank You For Smoking higher on my list because I feel it is a rarity in movies: it is completely objective. It has no slant, no bias. This movie talks about censorship and the smoking industry and how people are persuaded by advertisements and the media. It takes a very level headed, mature viewpoint and respectfully lambasts and makes fun of both sides of the argument. The script is very, very good, and the film is so clever that it actually fits in some genuine character development and drama into what is otherwise a deeply satirical, witty movie. Aaron Eckhart is just a gem in this as seemingly amoral lobbyist Nick Naylor, as is Cameron Bright as Joey Naylor, his son. On the surface this is just about smoking, but really this is more universal: it’s about arguing, morality, right and wrong and, ultimately, parenting. It makes its points almost seamlessly in the context of the film, and people who don’t pay attention at first will grossly misread what this is actually about. Frankly, I still don’t think I’m quite done discovering what this film has to offer, and I’ve seen it a bunch of times now. Thank You For Smoking is a treasure.

5. Stranger than Fiction

One of the funniest, most clever and best written romantic comedies of the last decade, Stranger than Fiction is just a great experience. I love the weird, offbeat directing (pretty similar to what Scott Pilgrim would do a few years later), I love the great characters, and I love the oddball storyline. It’s about a tax man, Harold Crick (portrayed brilliantly by Will Ferrell of all people), who begins to hear a woman narrating his life, who says offhand he’s going to die soon. On his adventure to figure out what’s happening to him, he ends up discovering there’s a lot more to life than just his boring job. This movie is basically a longer version of the old adage “live every day like it’s your last,” but for all that, it’s very well put together and the story is charming, funny and deeply likable. I also dig the complex and deeply funny deconstruction of how narrations in movies usually work. Most movies that have a narrator over top just have the characters going about their lives unaware of the narration, but in this film, by some accident of the universe, Harold Crick hears his narrator and responds to her, shouting up at the sky at her in the middle of a crowded street. It’s a great plot point. One of the smartest movies of its genre that I’ve ever seen, and one of my favorite feel-good movies ever.

4. Lost in Translation

Sofia Coppola’s crowning achievement, Lost in Translation is something I think is very much akin to 1920s-era American literature: stuff like Fitzgerald, or Hemingway, or even some of Faulkner’s works, in which not a lot happens on a plot level, but the film remains fascinating and engaging through the characters and their interactions. This movie could easily have been very, very dull, but the directing is amazingly good, the disparate, cluttered Tokyo setting works like a charm, the acting is first-rate and most of all, the characters are some of the greatest ever put to film, in my opinion. I am just totally into this movie every time I turn it on, as it has the basics for any good movie done incredibly well. Above all, there is something poetic in it – the simple, random chance meeting of two lost souls in a big city they’re only visiting, and how they affect each other’s lives. It’s a beautiful and affecting picture of two people and their relationship. Humane, enlightening, uplifting.

3. Se7en

This is simply a flawless film. It has pretty much everything I like in it, from complex characters to a seedy, noir-esque setting and a story that shows a tragic Shakespearean arc of a man whose flaws end up in disaster. Everything about Se7en is tragic and poetic. Both Brad Pitt as Detective Mills and Morgan Freeman as Detective Somerset are impeccably textured, well done characters and are acted really well on top of that. They both have their own things going on, and both of them are so realistic you’d swear they were based on actual people. The film chronicles their investigation of a strange serial killer case as Somerset is about to retire and Mills is just getting started.

Se7en has this dark majesty about it, this idea that while the world is a sewer, and while a lot of terrible things may happen, it’s still worth trying to save. This movie wades through the mire of the dark by saying that you should hold to idealistic values and you should try to be the best you can be, even if the world is never going to repay you for it, even if things don’t turn out all that well in the end. The way this pieces everything together and unifies its themes by the end is just great. David Fincher’s best work and probably my favorite film of the 90s except for…

2. Pulp Fiction

This simply is. Pulp Fiction is an icon of movies simply because of how stylized and idiosyncratic it is – nobody ever saw anything like this before its debut in the 90s, and even though Tarantino wears his influences on his sleeves, taking cues from crime movies as well as boxing movies and tons of other stuff that was at least 30 years old when this came out, the way he blends everything together in Pulp Fiction is just ace.

The directing is good, but really what makes this so great is the script and the acting. Every character in this has hilarious lines and memorable quotes, and the script moves along like a fire-blazing chariot from the heavens, traipsing through seemingly nonsensical scenes and making them all count, simply by virtue of how entertaining they are. This is simply a movie that revels in the joy of storytelling, weaving together a ton of goofy, roguish characters and turning everything up to 11. It’s funny, dramatic, heart-wrenchingly tense and everything in between, and the insane thing is that the styles all blend together as one amalgam mostly known as ‘Tarantino style.’

Pulp Fiction is so good that Tarantino has spent his career up to now just trying to make something anywhere near as good, but as enjoyable as some of his work is, this was simply his magic moment – his shining star. Not putting this as one of my favorite movies of all time would just be a lie, as Pulp Fiction is iconoclastic, unforgettable and deeply, maniacally enjoyable.

And my number 1 choice is...

1. City of God

For a long time, I had a tough time pinpointing why City of God was my absolute favorite film. The first time I saw it, back in 2008, I was just blown away, and no other film had quite the effect on me that this one had. Just everything about it was spellbinding – the rough, raw directing style, the witty and down to Earth way it looks at brutal life conditions, the very well written characters, the multi-faceted story which remains constantly interesting even when it goes off in different directions every ten minutes or so…objectively, yes, this is a great film. But was it enough for it to be my favorite film of all time?

Well, all of those things factored into it. But I think the real reason goes a bit deeper. For one, this is a ‘based on a true story’ film that actually has something to say and has a reason for boasting that. And unlike a lot of films, it doesn’t get all depressive and preachy about the state of South American slums, where the entire movie is based. It simply tells the story of these kids in a slum and how they grow up in the middle of a violent gang war, and the result is something that feels much more mature and well-rounded than the majority of films ever get close to. Main character Rocket (Alexandre Rodrigues)’s journey to becoming a photographer is funny, interesting and dramatic – as he points out, he is putting his life on the line to get these pictures of this gang war.

There’s just no bullshit in it; it’s got no pretensions and just shows a great real life story in a larger than life way. The way the script is paced is brilliant: the story moves through several different peoples’ lives in this crappy slum and just shows the way this drama unfolded. It takes a mundane, depressing reality and turns it into something profound in its honesty, in its brevity. There’s always something going on and the film is easy to get into even when the story jumps around from character to character so much that it seems like it’s going to come off the rails. But City of God never loses focus, and each story just adds to the colorful palette of stories.

Further, it’s just a joy of cinematic creation – there are so many memorable shots and moments in this film, and they’re put together so well that it really becomes a work of art. Being that the movie is about a young photographer, it makes sense that the mise en scene is so memorable and evocative. What else would it be? Every scene in this film just glows, and the whole thing is the most stunning film experience I’ve ever had. As a writer and storyteller myself, the way City of God tells these stories and just has so much fun doing it, even when the stories get depressing or dark, is just really admirable and worthy of respect for me. Storytelling is the bedrock of our civilization, and City of God shows exactly why it is such an important art. There is not a moment of this film where I am not completely captivated and enthralled. City of God is my favorite movie of all time.

And that's my Top 20 list, my favorite movies of all time. I look forward to seeing even more movies that will hopefully make the list in the future, and I hope you all enjoyed these lists.

All images copyright of their original owners.