By chance, I just saw 13th Floor this past weekend (I saw a preview when I rented 13th Warrior and it looked interesting). It seemed like it could have been a good movie if only the producers (and distributors?) had remembered one little thing: Don’t give away the surprise in the previews, idiots!!!
Oh well, that’s something for a future Pit rant.
Returning to the OT, Eat the Rich is a poorly-written, poorly-acted, immature and offensive piece of tripe, but one that had me laughing hysterically back when I was in high school. I don’t know if it would have the same effect on me now, though.
Sublight, have you seen the Ring sequels? I actually liked the second movie a bit better. It seemed a little more… Eventful? Fast-paced? I like my share of Japanese movies, but has Japan EVER produced a movie that wasn’t relatively slow-moving? Even comparatively manic movies like Space Travellers move at a fairly measured pace… But then, what can you expect from the culture that brought us Noh…
Claude LeLough’s ** Les Miserables ** which is NOT to be confused with Victor Hugo’s. An amazing French film that looked at people honestly and openly, showing what we could be at both extremes. Delightful references and similes to Hugo’s work but a work independant of it.
One of only three movies I stood and applauded at the end.
1985: The group, Women Against Pornography awarded one of its dubious "Pig Awards" to HUGGIES DIAPERS! The activists said that the diaper TV ads have "crossed the line between eye-catching and porn." The Coca-Cola Co. announced it was changing the secret formula for Coke. Negative public reaction forced the company to resume selling the original version, Rock Hudson and Yul Brynner died, Larry McMurtry published his novel "Lonesome Dove." "We Are the World" was recorded
Limbo or, for that matter, anything else John Sayles has directed. There’s not a loser in the bunch.
Two Family House, a great indie about following your heart in the face of personal and societal opposition.
The Journey of August King, with Jason Patric and Thandie Newton, about an early 19th century farmer who must decide whether to risk everything to help a runaway slave.
Shaolin Master Killer - One of the BEST HK Kung Fu films around. Sorta Karate Kid but with some cool ass training and great shaolin fighting
The Uninvited - 56 Ray Milan Ghost story that is 10 times more freakier than any of the recent ghost story films. The scene with the flowers in the room still gives me the willies
Pretty Maids all in a Row - Rock Hudson(?) plays a playboy guidence counselor seducing most of the girls in a dark comedy that has a perfectly yummy Angie Dickenson playing a teacher (very young). She gets seduced by this kid and does this nude laying on the bed scene…drool!
Second on Rock and Rule - Made by Filmation back in the earlier 80’s and has the musical stylings of Lou Reed, Cheap Trick, Blondie, Earth Wind and Fire, etc. Great animation, good story, and cool characters. If you can’t guess who Mok the Magic Man is supposed to be, you are a idiot. Still waiting for the DVD dammit
It’s actually “Doom Generation” and it was made by Greg Araki, who is completely weird. But his leading man was cute as hell, I have no idea what his name is.
And this movie was indeed too weird to describe. Plenty of sex and violence, but in a cartoony kinda way.
I loved these movies, especially The Sweet Hereafter. I only wish that Baltimore could have more than one theatre that plays indies.
I nominate Stealing Beauty, starring Liv Tyler. Absolutely incredible movie, great plot. It’s basically a coming-of-age tale, and it’s sweet and sad and beautiful. I own it on video and watch it at least once a month.
Ditto “Creator” – good SF without special effects. It’s a movie about cloning that isn’t dumb! It feels more like college grad school than any oher flick I’ve seen.
Also – “The Last of Sheila” – the best movie mystery ever. It gives you all the clues, but has wonderful twists. Cast includes James Coburn, Richard Benjamin Dyan Cannon, Raquel Welch, nd James ason. Written by Anthony Perkins (yep – Norman Bates) and Stephen Sondheim (the songwriter). It’s sort f half-brother to Sleuth, which it resembles .
I’ll give my big thumbs up to two mentioned here that stood out for me : Runaway Train (the closing shot is just mesmerizing), Dead Alive (just completely over the top).
Three more of mine that I don’t think have been mentioned yet :
Freaks : just what the name implies.
Repo Man : not that obscure, but released in the middle of standard Hollywood fare shows what the indies could really do.
Brewster McCloud : Bud Cort as a man who lives in the astrodome and builds a flying machine. The best part is watching Rene Aberjonois slowly turn into a bird throughout the whole proceedings.
Sort of. Ring was a bit odd in that there are two separate sets of sequels starting from it, each using the same characters but developing a completely different story line. The series following the books goes Ring, Spiral, Loop(which hasn’t been filmed yet, I think), and is more of a Sci-Fi story. The other series goes Ring, Ring 2, Ring 0 and is standard horror fare. I’ve seen the second parts of both series.
Yeah, as horror movies go, Ring was pretty slow-moving. Personally, the tension-building worked for me, but I can see how it might get boring.
To add to the OT: Complex World was a film I loved back when I was college (early 90’s). A gang of terrorist-wannabes decide to blow up a nightclub owned by the black-sheep son of an ultra-rightist congressman. Songs include “I Married a Tree” and “Why Do We Feed the Broads?”
Lots of Chinese and Japanese movies on the list…hmm…
Not that I’m gonna change that.
The Heroic Trio - extremely entertaining Super Hero/Fantasy movie from Hong Kong about 3 women (Wonder Woman, Invisible Woman, Thiefcatcher) fighting a demonic baby-snatcher. I really must rent this thing again…
The Last Days of Planet Earth - a really, REALLY bad mid-70s Japanese film based (loosly, I’d say) on Nostrodamus’ ‘prophesies’. So bad, you can’t help but be entertained.
And speaking of quirky Asian crime epics, how 'bout Takeshi ‘Beat’ Kitano’s ‘Sonatine’?
Yes! A friend and I picked this up at a video store based solely on the jacket, and loved it! It is a quirky, very individual film and yet it reminds me of something else I’ve never been able to identify.
My choices: Killing of a Chinese Bookie and Saint Jack. The former by John Cassavetes, the latter by Peter Bogdanovich, both starring Ben Gazzara in probably his two greatest performances. They’d make a great double feature.
I second Stealing Beauty, Nacho4Sara. It is a great movie. Also try French Twist, which is French and contains more than a few twists (wouldn’t have expected that!). Also see the trilogy Three Colors: Blue, White, and Red. They’re done by the now dead director Krzysztof Kieslowski. The stories in the three movies are for the most part unrelated, but watch for characters from the movies to appear in the back ground of the different movie. Besides that, in and of themselves, the three are wonderful dramas.
Here are some of my favorite movies that haven’t been mentioned yet.
Highway 61 by acclaimed canuck Bruce MacDonald. It’s a road movie with rock and roll and a dead body strapped to the roof of the car and people hunting chickens with handguns and then it gets weird. Memorable for having the best movie Satan of all time.
Zero Patience is another obscure Canadian film. I believe this one has the distinction of being the only musical comedy ever written about AIDS. Find this one if you can; you won’t believe your eyes (or ears). And you’ll be humming the songs for weeks.
In cheesy scifi, I heartily reccomend Circuitry Man. It’s a road movie. It’s an android movie. It’s a cyberpunk romantic comedy. What more could you ask for? Many people didn’t like this movie, but well I guess I just have worse taste than them.
Speaking of bad taste… there’s Bad Taste. I think this is the only Steve Jackson horror movie not mentioned yet. It’s disgusting and funny, maybe not so much as Meet the Feebles, but if you’re a Jackson fan you have to see it.
Um… looking over the above films that I’ve listed, you might get the impression that the only films I’m interested in are lowbrow comedies and B-Grade scifi. Embarassed as I am, there’s no time to go changing things now! Ever see Zeiram, a Japanese rubber-suit monster movie in 1/1 scale? The thing is, the special effects are good, with the exception of Zeiram itself. When Iria summomns her power armor, or freezes someone in a force cube, it looks really good. But when Zeiram walks, and you can tell that it’s a rubber suit lunging menacingly at you, well the movie loses something…
Many people have been mentioning Japanese and Chinese flicks. What about Korean ones? If you get the chance to see it, JSA: Joint Security Area is a great movie. There’s been an incident at the truce village of Panmonjum; two North Korean soldiers are dead, one South Korean soldier escapes across the bridge with a bullet in his leg. A Swiss team arrives to figure out exactly what happened. The more we learn about the story, the more incomprehensible the incident depicted at the beginning of the movie becomes. The mystery in this film is spellbinding. I watched the entire length of this movie with complete attention, trying to decipher the events leading up to the tragic confrontation between South and North.
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I have a slight nitpick with something that was said earlier:
Grave of the Fireflies was a Studio Ghibli pic, but it wasn’t directed by Miyazaki. Instead, it was directed by his mentor, Isao Takahata.
I agree, though. Most depressing movie I’ve ever seen too…
Dude ! I love that flick . . . Bill Pullman as a brilliant yet neurotic meth using PI. Ben Stiller as his annoyed and anal sidekick. That movie has some fantastic lines in it.
Someone may have mentioned this one already, but about the best worst film ever made has to be Better Off Dead, the jokes are so stupid that its very funny.
"french toast,
french fries,
french dressing . . . "
