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Robert - 6.13.01 

 

So Matt tells me we should each do an article on our 20 favorite movies.  I loved the idea cause as a "favorite" film, nobody can argue that you made the wrong choice.  We've also been stalling on writing our staff biographies, but I found that you can learn a lot about us by the films we love and why.  I know this isn't like your traditional X-E article, but I hope you enjoy reading about a handful of the movies I really love, and if you learn a bit more about me, or decide to watch one based on the reviews, then all the better.  

#20: JAWS (1975)

"The thing about a shark, it's got lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll's eyes. When it comes at you it doesn't seem to be livin'... until he bites you, and those black eyes roll over white." -Quint

It's simply one of the scariest monster movies of all time.  I still can't swim far from shore at the beach without wondering if there's a great white nearby ready to chomp me in half  (And believe me, these California Bay Area beaches have 'em!).  Once I saw a documentary about sharks at the Monterey Bay Aquarium hosted by Jaws author Peter Benchley. He went on about how unfair it was that sharks got a bad rap as monsters and measures need to be taken to protect them. Too late, buddy, the damage is done. The thought of being in a cage with a great white swimming at me is more chilling than anything I can imagine. And the shark cage scenes in this film do not disappoint (In fact, some of them were filmed with a midget to make the shark look even more gigantic). The sequels are all shit, but the 1975 film still holds up well.  Robert Shaw's standout performance as Quint is a thing of beauty, and it's still the best thing Steven Spielberg has ever done.

#19: AKIRA (1988)

I've never been a giant fan of Anime (which I think translates from Japanese as Big-Eyed Tentacle Fucking Cartoons), but there's something so amazing about Akira that I can barely describe.  Forget that it's one of the best animated films ever made, it's simply one of the best movies.  There's not many cartoons that can transcend their medium and make you forget you're even watching one.  The motorcycle chases alone are worth the price of admission, but the fight scenes and a handful of others are among the most thrilling ever captured in a movie.  Not too long after I saw this film, I was having a yard sale with my roommates and was talked into smoking weed with a process called "sink loads".  This insane process involved lowering an empty bleach bottle with hole cut in the bottom into a bucket of water, while you burned a sticky bud in a bowl where the lid would be. As the smoke builds up, you keep pushing the bottle deeper into the water until you've got about 20 hits worth of pot in a very small space of air. After inhaling this unholy smoke, I instantly became psychic and could swear that I was just like Akira, reading every single persons mind at the yard sale. I had to hide upstairs with a pillow over my head to keep their thoughts out of my skull.  On July 19, a special edition DVD of the film will be released with a GOB of extra stuff for $29.90, that I'm chomping at the bit to get.   

#18: USED CARS (1980)

This 1980 film is a big guilty pleasure for me.  It's one of Kurt Russell's first adult comedies and he does a great job as Rudy Russo, who owns a crappy car lot, and has to compete against Jack Warden's nicer lot down the street.  They end up getting an edge by creating pirate broadcasts of super cheezy commercials that feature blowing up their competition cars, and screaming, "THAT'S TOO FUCKING HIGH!"   The cast is rich with TV character actors like Al "Grandpa Munster" Lewis, and even Lenny & Squiggy make an appearance.  One of my favorite underused character actors, Gerrit Graham, is great as Russell's partner. (You might remember Graham from the cult hit Terrorvision and as the title character in C.H.U.D. 2: Bud The Chud).  And there's gratuitous titty shots, so you can't go wrong with that.  

#17: TOMBSTONE (1993)

And while we're on the subject of Kurt Russell.  Damned if Tombstone doesn't feature the coolest Wyatt Earp ever.  Russell is a great western badass in this 1993 flick, but the standout performance belongs to Val Kilmer, who's Doc Holliday is easily his greatest screen role.  The dialogue is outstanding throughout with lines like this.

WYATT: You die first, get it? Your friends might get me in a rush, but not before I make your head into a canoe, you understand me?

COWBOY: Why, it's the drunk piano player. You're so drunk, you can't hit nothin'. In fact, you're probably seeing double.
DOC: I have two guns, one for each of ya.

WYATT: You gonna do somethin'? Or are you just gonna stand there and bleed?

JOHNNY RINGO:  My fight's not with you, Holliday.
DOC: I beg to differ, sir. We started a game we never got to finish. "Play For Blood" -- remember?
JOHNNY RINGO: Oh that. That was just foolin' about.
DOC:  I wasn't.

This was being produced at the same time as Kevin Costner's Wyatt Earp, but it came out a few months earlier, beating it to the punch by a few months.  It might goof up some of the historical facts, but it's far more entertaining than Costner's plodding snore festival.  I so love this film that I named my son "Wyatt" from it, and even snuck in "Russell" as his middle name (telling my wife it was after my Great Grandpa, not Kurt of course...heh heh). 

#16: DO THE RIGHT THING (1989)

Mookie: You know, fuck you and fuck Frank Sinatra.
Pino: Fuck you too and fuck Michael Jackson.

This movie showed that Spike Lee had the potential to be one of the all time great filmmakers, however with subsequent trash released since then, it appears he shot his wad. But what a great wad it is. Do The Right Thing has everything going right for it. I especially love how Lee shows how hot it is on this fateful day. From the DJ (played by Sam Jackson) telling folks with Jheri Curl to watch out or their hair will turn into a helmet, to the kids playing with a fire hydrant and flooding a man's car with it, to an ice cube drizzling over Rosie Perez's perfect breasts, it all builds to a blazing climax that really taps in to a lot of the inner-city rage years before Rodney King even bought his Hyundai. My love of hip-hop was born from this film, watching Perez dance to Public Enemy's "Fight The Power" while wearing boxing gloves in the opening sequence. It left me hungry for more. Which led me to listen to more PE, who's lyrics led me to check out Louis Farrakhan speaking in Oakland (I think I was one of 7 white guys out of about 8,000 people in attendance). Do The Right Thing reminds me of a time when hip hop was a legitimate form of expression, before it Puff Daddy and their ilk turned it into mumbling on top of hit songs from the 70s. The cast is amazing from top to bottom. With Ossie Davis, Robin Harris, Danny Aiello, and John Turturro as amazing standouts. John Savage, who plays Col. Lydecker on TV's Dark Angel has a small fun "blink and you'll miss it" as the guy who accidentally walks his bike over Buggin' Out's new shoes. 

#15: RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD (1985)

Burt: I thought you said that if we destroyed the brain, it would die.
Frank: It worked in the movie!
Burt Well it ain't working now Frank.
Freddy: You mean the movie lied?

I'm sure I'll get flamed for blasphemizing the Romero mythos like this, but I think Return of The Living Dead is the best zombie film ever made. In fact as the quote above suggests, ROTLD throws every traditional zombie out the window on it's ass. Instead of slow plodding brain dead sleepwalkers that can be killed with a shot to the head, you've got wisecracking turbocharged freaks that still flop around screaming for human brains, even after they're chopped into 100 pieces. These zombies are so clever, that when they run out of victims, they use the cops' radios to send for more officers. The movie's tag line, "The Dead Are Back, And They're Ready to Party" says is it all.  The punk rock characters and attitude in the film are a kick, as well, as the dialogue below shows. 

Trash: Do you ever wonder about all the different ways of dying? You know, violently? And wonder, like, what would be the most horrible way to die?
Spider: I try not too think about dying too much.
Trash: Mm. Well for me, the worst way would be for a bunch of old men to get around me, and start biting and eating me alive.
Spider: I see.
Trash: First, they would tear off my clothes...
Chuck: Hey, somebody get some light over here, Trash is taking off her clothes again.

And boy does Trash get naked. In fact, her screen-time nudity was so extended that they had to use a special flesh colored rubber patch to cover her naughty bits up to avoid an X-Rating. Sadly, the film is long out of print, and is quite a good find if you see it on video somewhere. Apparently the soundtrack (which is full of some great punk rock music) made the right pretty hard to resecure for re-releases (which is what kept Heavy Metal off of video for so many years). My favorite scene in the film features this scary-ass "Tar Zombie" that's been locked in a steel drum full of chemicals forever walking through a door screaming, "BRAINS....MORE BRAINS!", right before his head gets knocked off in one strong swing with a baseball bat. I still can't figure out how they did it.

ON TO PART TWO