The Top Five Movies of 2008

Colin Boyd — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 08:03:16 +0000

(This is a reader's choice Top Five...)

5 - Milk

4 - Iron Man

3 - Slumdog Millionaire

2 - Wall-E

1 - The Dark Knight

We have our own thoughts on the best movies of the year, but because we encourage/discourage you from seeing certain films and you're not lemmings, we decided to let your voice be heard, albeit as a collective.

So we took votes for The Top Five Movies of 2008, and probably three of the choices are no real surprise. How did we determine where they'd fall? Simple: For every first place vote, a movie received five points, for every fifth place vote, one point. The Dark Knight won easily, in large part because it received so many solo votes. People would send in e-mails that just said Dark Knight and had no other choices. Otherwise, it was a pretty tight race.

The Top Five Worst Video Game Movies

Colin Boyd — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 07:23:05 +0000

5 - Double Dragon

4 - Bloodrayne

3 - Alone in the Dark

2 - Wing Commander

1 - Super Mario Bros.

Robert Patrick, clearly shameless, in Double Dragon

There have been a whole lot of really, really bad video game movies, at least if you're talking percentages. It's still not as big a commodity as comic book movies, but even comic book movies weren't prevalent until they started making good ones on a consistent basis. Seriously, when Tomb Raider is one of your genre's defining moments, you have a lot of work left to do.

But narrowing the worst of the video game movies down to five takes some diligence, probably more than was shown when the films were being made. You can, of course, go the easy route and list a bunch of Uwe Boll movies. We have two, and that gets the point across. One reason these movies are dreadful more often than not is that studios don't use a lot of resources on them. Look at the writers and directors; not a lot of Oscar nominations in that pool.

Double Dragon is a perfect example of those limited resources. For one thing, the movie came out about five years after the popularity of the game, and there's no real story, because the game had no real story, at least not by today's standards. Plus, it has Vanna White as a news anchor. Who would ever believe that?

Bloodrayne and Alone in the Dark are our Uwe Boll contributions. He's generally regarded as the world's worst director. Even Brian Robbins and Raja Gosnell roll their eyes at his movies. I think that these two flicks could be better in the hands of someone competent. They probably wouldn't be great, but they'd rise to the level of the second Resident Evil movie, maybe.

I remember seeing Wing Commander and not knowing it was based on a video game. Then when I found out it was a game, I had a hard time rationalizing how it ever became popular enough to get a movie spin-off. Also, Freddie Prinze, Jr. That's all I have to say, isn't it?

But Super Mario Bros. is clearly the worst pick, in my book, and in fact, it's one of the worst movies ever made. Amazingly, the video box actually contains the quote, "Hilarious and exciting...a cross between Indiana Jones, Blade Runner, and Star Wars." I have a hunch that's the studio's handiwork. Either that, or the blurbster responsible has never seen Indiana Jones, Blade Runner, or Star Wars.

There are some elements of the other four films that are at least OK, whether it's the costumes, or a funny scene, or even a cool stunt or two. I'm not asking for much. But Super Mario is a total failure. It was in 1993, and it hasn't improved since. To quote Bob Hoskins, who played Mario Mario: "The worst thing I ever did? Super Mario Bros."

Movie Review - 'A Previous Engagement'

Colin Boyd — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 07:54:36 +0000

A Previous Engagement

Starring Juliet Stevenson, Daniel Stern, and Tcheky Karyo
Directed by Joan Carr-Wiggin
Not Rated

Behold, the power of cheese!

There's a reason I've never read a romance novel, and I doubt I have to spell it out for you. But I will anyway.

The bottom line is that romances in literature tend to shake the firmament. They're either instant all-timers that you can never walk away from (Nights in Rodanthe), or they're tragedies where love is lost forever (Nights in Rodanthe). They don't deal with reality very well.

Movies about star-crossed lovers don't inspire much confidence, either. They don't have any degree of plausibility to them: People meet while walking dogs on the beach and three days later they're madly in love. Doesn't happen. Because that's not what love is. Love can't be that.

Now, that's not to say that people can't feel some innate attraction almost immediately and then it develops into love, but movies spare us the developments, which are a hell of a lot more interesting than the beginning and the end, and I can only imagine that books with Fabio grooming horses on the cover might do the same thing.

In the face of all this venom aimed at the goldmine of romantic tripe that lures in housewife after housewife, you might understandably ask, "Don't some people take Star Trek too seriously?" Yes, they do. And we laugh at them.

A Previous Engagement feels exactly like my perception of romance novels. A woman trapped in a dead-end marriage (Juliet Stevenson) remembers the summer when she fell in love with a revolutionary on the Isle of Malta, naturally. Alex (Tcheky Karyo) was French, of course, and though their love could not exist in their pasts, they both looked forward to a future together. That's right: They vowed to meet again 25 years after the fact. And if there's one thing the lust of a summer infatuation teaches us, it's how unimportant looks are a quarter-century later. Yeah.

Beyond the looks, though, there are the changes that happen to everybody. You can't even control those things that change who you are, let alone some French revolutionary you met in Malta back in the dangerous early 1980s.

To mask to obnoxious story, writer-director Joan Carr-Wiggin has weighed A Previous Engagement down with page after page of regrettable dialogue. But alas, poor writing can only hide worse writing for so long.

Nothing in this movie could ever happen, and if there's not even a starting point for a romantic fantasy, how the hell could you ever dream of the idiotic conclusion?

Bad movies are fairly commonplace. A lot of times, they're just misguided or the pieces don't match the idea. In this case, there was no hope from jump. The idea is schmaltzy, the characters derivative and bland, the dialogue unreasonably artificial, and the payoff tired and ineffective.

The Top Five Ridley Scott Movies

Colin Boyd — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 07:02:45 +0000

5 - Gladiator

4 - Thelma and Louise

3 - Black Hawk Down

2 - Blade Runner

1 - Alien

Thanks to everyone who participated in our most recent Top Five list and let me start by asking a question: Who knew Ridley Scott made so many bad movies? Last week, I announced this list by adding, "Man, what a career" or some such nonsense. Turns out he's been wrong more than he's been right.

Seriously, he's made about 20 movies and well over half of them are not films you would've wanted to direct yourself. We have 1492: Conquest of Paradise, which I may have walked out of, G.I. Jane, Hannibal, A Good Year, I'll throw Legend on that heap (I know I walked out of that, and I was 13). But when he's on, there's no doubt about it. The top three films on our list were nominated almost unanimously, and I suspect that's because nearly all film fans can agree on two of them.

We didn't get as many Gladiator votes as I would've thought, and more Matchstick Men, though it's tough to knock a Best Picture winner that much (even though Gladiator is a bad Best Picture choice). But Gladiator is an important film for Scott personally, which is why I have it listed here. His career was failing miserably for about a decade when he made the epic action movie, and if not for that film, we probably wouldn't have had Black Hawk Down, Matchstick Men, American Gangster, or the new Body of Lies. So it's a milestone.

Thelma & Louise probably seems like a trifle, but somehow Scott managed to make it more than the unofficial introduction of Brad Pitt and a double-X chromosome version of Butch & Sundance. The chemistry between Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon is marvelous, and once again, it came along at a good time for Ridley, who was in danger of becoming the Nic Cage of directors in 1991.

Black Hawk Down isn't the best war movie ever and it doesn't have the most action, but it's gripping, features some great performances, and there hasn't been a movie about a recent American war that can really compare to it. It also lets Scott toy with effects and explosions, which he's always been good at.

If you were to make a list of the most underrated movies ever made, Blade Runner would probably be in the top 20. The theatrical version is good but messy; unfortunately, that's the version a lot of people know. Scott's director's cut, released many years later, is flawless. It's a completely new twist on classic film noir, the universe it creates is totally original, and holds up. You can't say that about too many science fiction films from the early 1980s. They teach this one in classrooms for a reason.

So why is Alien at the top of the list? If you think I need to answer that question, you haven't seen Alien. And if that's true, don't you have better things to do? Like watch Alien, perhaps?

The Top Five Jeff Bridges Performances

Colin Boyd — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 07:00:00 +0000

5 - The Contender

4 - Starman

3 - The Last Picture Show

2 - The Fisher King

1 - The Big Lebowski

I was heartened by the response to our most recent Top Five, because it tells me that people do pay attention to character actors. Jeff Bridges has been the star of many movies, but he's not a "movie star." He isn't John Travolta or Will Smith. But he has been very reliable for going on 40 years now, and I think we've got a pretty representative list, so thanks for remembering The Last Picture Show in your voting.

There were only a couple performances I felt really could've made this list that didn't, Fearless and Tron. But his also-rans are highlights on most other resumes: The Door in the Floor, Wild Bill, Fat City, Tucker: The Man and His Dream, Seabiscuit, The Fabulous Baker Boys, Iron Man, Arlington Road, Blown Away, The Vanishing, Jagged Edge, The Morning After, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, and The Iceman Cometh.

Our list begins with The Contender, in which he's playing a kind of fictionalized Bill Clinton. Now, he looks more like a Clinton-Bush hybrid. Bridges has always played comedy well, and this is one of the better examples, in a movie that's way too damn serious for its own good.

Starman is probably the least heralded title here, even though it's the only Oscar-nominated performance to ever come from a John Carpenter movie. The truth is, the movie doesn't hold up around his performance very well. It's clearly a one-man show, but in terms of his command performances, it might be fourth on that list.

The Last Picture Show is the role that signaled Bridges' true arrival in Hollywood at the age of 21. All of a sudden, he wasn't just Lloyd Bridges kid, anymore. I like the book more than the movie, but I thought Bridges and Oscar winner Cloris Leachman were quite good in the film, as was Ben Johnson, who beat Bridges for the Best Supporting Actor award that year.

But how Bridges missed getting a nomination for The Fisher King is beyond me. Robin Williams and Mercedes Reuhl received envelopes for their work, but in a Best Actor field that included Hannibal Lecter, Bugsy Malone, De Niro from Cape Fear, and regrettably, Nick Nolte from The Prince of Tides, there just wasn't enough room for both Bridges and Williams. I think the Academy would switch Fisher King nominees now if they could.

Personally, it's my favorite Bridges performance, though I understand why The Dude tops our list. He also didn't get nominated for Lebowski or Fearless, and you figure one of those should've been in the mix. He has four nominations to date, but he probably deserved at least two more.

Finally, there's The Dude. Why? Because he's The Dude.

For next week, we have a big ol' grab bag of movie passes and DVDs. Here's the way this works, as always. If you're a local - meaning, if you live in or around Phoenix - we'll hook you up with movie passes, either to The Express or to Clint Eastwood's The Changeling, starring Angelina Jolie.

As for the DVDs, we've got a bunch of one-offs, so if you're interested, let me know and I'll send you a list after you win.

To get in the running, you just need to help us with next week's Top Five List, which should be as good as this week's: The Top Five Ridley Scott Movies.

Talk about a career. Man, I can think of some hall-of-famers right off the top of my head.

Help us out and win. Shoot us an e-mail with your votes, and please include your mailing address, and you'll have until Thursday night October 9th at 10pm Pacific to get us your lists (Monday night the 6th if you want to see The Express). Please remember to include your mailing address.

The Top Five Spike Lee Joints

Colin Boyd — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 07:01:04 +0000

5 - 25th Hour

4 - Inside Man

3 - Malcolm X

2 - When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts

1 - Do The Right Thing

I believe this is the first time in Top Five history that we've allowed a TV movie into the list. Upon further review, everyone who suggested Lee's Emmy- and Peabody-winning When the Levees Broke is right; that is one of his best films, and it also points to Spike's versatility as a filmmaker.

And because HBO has helped so many great pieces of filmmaking come to television, it's easy to make the case that without HBO, there would be no John Adams or When the Levees Broke at all, so we'll make an exception in this case.

Outside of 25th Hour, the other theatrical releases are well known to almost everyone, if only by reputation. People know Spike Lee directed Malcolm X and Do The Right Thing, even if they've never seen them, and for a director who plays so far out of the mainstream so often, that's a credit to him, as well.

Why do we have them in the order we do? Why isn't Malcolm X on top? I think Do The Right Thing so succinctly introduces what Lee's entire career has been about, and did so in dramatic fashion (and only a miniscule budget), that it's his purest film. It's not as polished as Inside Man, certainly, which is one of the best bank heist movies in a long time, but it's political, vibrant, confrontational, and thought-provoking.

Malcolm X feels like Lee's open letter to Hollywood; it's a big bio-pic, it stars Denzel, and it's "important." It's also a great film, no question. But I think it's ever so slightly compromised by commercialism. And I think if you look at a lot of Spike's films in the 20 years since, you can see he's tried hard the majority of the time to steer clear of conventions (movies like Get on the Bus, Bamboozled, and even Clockers).

There's nothing particularly commercial about 25th Hour, and in a weird sense, it's the best of his two worlds; it courts contemporary issues and concerns in the wake of 9/11, has a less-than-specific narrative, but it does those things with a cast of recognizable faces like Edward Norton and Rosario Dawson.

The Top Five Worst Movies Named After Song Titles

Colin Boyd — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 07:04:51 +0000

5 - What a Girl Wants

4 - Fools Rush In

3 - Addicted to Love

2 - Jumpin' Jack Flash

1 - The Sweetest Thing

Once you know about this little theory, it's hard to look at certain movies the same way. It's true, though: If a movie shares its name with a popular song, the chances are it's not very good. There are some exceptions, as there are with everything, but the overwhelming preponderance of the evidence suggests that if you use a popular song title for a movie title, the movie's bad.

Why is that? It probably has more to do with the screenplay sucking out loud and the title being changed so that it has some built-in warm fuzzy with the audience. The rules are different if you're talking Against All Odds because, obviously, the song wasn't a hit before the movie came out. But movies that reach back, even a couple of years, and glom onto something else that's popular have very little chance for success.

Among the other movies that received votes this week were Fly Me to the Moon, Drive Me Crazy, the Reese Witherspoon tandem of Sweet Home Alabama and Just Like Heaven, My Girl, One Fine Day, Simply Irresistible, Can't Buy Me Love and its remake Love Don't Cost a Thing, Problem Child, Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead (an excellent pick), Save the Last Dance, Love Potion #9, Unforgettable, and Feeling Minnesota, which isn't a song title but rather a lyric from Soundgarden's "Outshined."

Movie Review - 'I Served the King of England'

Colin Boyd — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 07:05:09 +0000

I Served the King of England

Starring Ivan Barnev and Oldrich Kaiser
Directed by Jiri Menzel
Rated R

If you're a student of history, you've probably read a thing or two about European decadence in the years before World War II. It's presented in I Served the King of England from a dual perspective, both that of a bemused disbelief and of a fond nostalgia. The film takes place over several years in the life of young waiter named Jan Dite, and over several months in the same man's life after he is released from prison in Czechoslovakia many years after the war. "I was given a sentence of 15 years," explains Dite as the film opens. "Due to amnesty, I only served 14 years, 9 months."

As this man well into his 50s tries to rebuild himself and his life in a dilapidated shack on the Czech border, he reflects on his youth, about how he wanted nothing more than to be a millionaire, in a time when the wealthiest of men were squandering all they had because they could. The film jumps back and forth between Dite as a waiter and Dite as a man who's waiting.

In those scenes prior to the war, Dite (Ivan Barnev) is a Chaplinesque character, full of life and bounding around recklessly from one stroke of good fortune to the next. After he's released from prison, this same man (now played with remarkable restraint and earnestness by Oldrich Kaiser) describes his former life as a novel written by someone else; clearly, it can't be his own story.

Czechoslovakia struggled mightily during its 74-year existence, being bound by Nazi rule and then just a few years later by Communist rule, which lasted four over four decades. To see the juxtaposition from a free democracy where nothing appeared to be off limits, especially in excess, with a world where the same people have nothing but their memories is a tough thing to pull off in a movie. Consider, too, that the memories worth keeping are of a time that was barely even real. But director Jiri Menzel has managed to keep these worlds as separate in his film as they must've felt to Czech citizens who managed to live through it all.

I Served the King of England (the film gets its name from the boast of one of Dite's superiors while serving as a waiter in a posh hotel) could easily drop the ball, but the two lead performances are each captivating, and the production design, those little stitches we need to see that transport us to a time in the past we've only read about, are flawless. The movie looks great, it sounds great, it's funny, well-acted, and has an equal amount of hope and desperation.

The Top Five De Niro or Pacino Performances

Colin Boyd — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 07:05:09 +0000

5 - Cape Fear (De Niro)

4 - Serpico (Pacino)

3 - The Godfather Part II (Pacino)

2 - Taxi Driver (De Niro)

1 - Raging Bull (De Niro)

It's no surprise that most of the films in this week's Top Five are from the 1970s (OK, so Raging Bull is 1980, but still). De Niro and Pacino, along with Dustin Hoffman, really helped chart a new course for leading men in the movies during this time, and they influenced a couple of generations of actors that have followed them.

It's also not surprising that their autumn years really aren't in our list, nor did any of their performances after 1995 get any nominations; they simply weren't at the head of the class any longer. It doesn't mean they were worse actors after a certain age, just that the roles they took didn't have as much to offer. However, I thought Pacino was damn good in The Insider, which might be the most underrated movie of the past decade, and he was terrific in Insomnia, as well.

De Niro has not given anything resembling his best work in a decade. Going backwards, Jackie Brown is the last valuable contribution he's given, but after 1997, there's nothing. I don't even think you can make an argument for anything after that when you consider that we left Goodfellas, Once Upon a Time in America, and The Deer Hunter off our list.

This is one of the rare lists that doesn't need much explanation. You might substitute something else for Cape Fear, but I'd ask you to watch Cape Fear again, in that case. Maybe you're not a fan of Serpico and think that should be Scarface. To me, Scarface is the beginning of Pacino's ladled on queso, the affectations that make Frank Caliendo's impression so good. He stopped acting around that time and just amped up the crazy. That's why I prefer Serpico. It's also just a better movie.

Movie Review - 'Netherbeast Incorporated'

Colin Boyd — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 07:04:08 +0000

Netherbeast, Incorporated

Starring Darrell Hammond, Steve Burns, and Judd Nelson
Directed by Dean Ronalds
Not Rated

I’m a big believer in turning a time-honored character or literary motif on its ear. Vampire movies have, over the course of 100 years, sucked the genre dry, if you’ll pardon the expression. So when a movie like Russia’s Night Watch blitzes us with incredible visuals and a unique universe not found elsewhere in vampire literature, it’s doubly exciting.

The Ronalds Brothers’ feature debut, Netherbeast Incorporated, follows that logic and gives bloodsuckers a fresh new reality. For example, did you know that vampires live and walk among us everyday, hold down jobs in corporate America and can count President James A. Garfield among their ranks? It’s true.

Berm-Tech Industries is more or less a front for a sect of vampires the world would’ve otherwise forgotten. But they’ve kept themselves going through a communal approach; they work together and all live in the same building to make sure their numbers, which certainly aren’t growing in the 21^st Century, at least don’t diminish. There’s a wonderful bit of backstory, in the vein of a corporate training video, used to explain what Berm-Tech is and how it began. It also demystifies some of what you think you know about vampires (i.e. they don’t turn into bats).

But the wind in Netherbeast’s sails is the implied satire that corporate America really is a kind of bloodsucking scene of likeminded beasts that never see the sun and feeds off unsuspecting humans. Credit writer Bruce Dellis for the clever script (based on his short film, Netherbeast of Berm-Tech Industries) and the team of Brian and Dean Ronalds for finding ways to keep the obvious corporate comparisons subtle and the particular circumstances and characters of Netherbeast front and center.

Though the project is a joyously independent affair, there are plenty of familiar faces, featuring Darrell Hammond, Dave Foley, Jason Mewes, Steve Burns from Blue’s Clues, and Judd Nelson. I won’t spoil the fun of spotting Robert Wagner.

The film is not perfect, struggling with those things sub-million-dollar projects always seem to. An extra ten days to shoot or $20,000 more in the hopper would probably go miles on a project like this. But Netherbeast Incorporated is clearly its own film. It has a refreshing perspective on a genre gone flat, a foreboding sense of humor, if such a thing exists.

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