Top 10 Movies Ever... Except Not Really

Alex J Cavanaugh hosted this amazing top 10 movie countdown today. I'm a bit late to the party. Some unexpected things happened late last week that prevented me from even doing an almost awesome version of this. I had intended on doing this as the Top 10 moments from crappy movies (Because I accidentally gave a real top 10 countdown a few weeks ago. Don't know why), with clips of scenes and all that sort of stuff. But after spending the last several days knee deep in emergency home improvements I’m going to have to give you plan ‘B’, The top 10 movies I like that most people seem to hate.

10: Waterworld – Look, I didn’t love this movie, but I did kinda like it. The jet-ski baddies led by Dennis Hopper were a bit cheesy, but I think this movie was more the victim of its budget than what appeared on screen.

9: Green Lantern – Yes, it sucked. But it sucked awesomely. I was pulling my hair out watching this, but I’ll be damned if I didn’t enjoy it anyway. I loved that the Lantern Corp begged Hal to take up the ring and use it and he refused. Then he traveled x number of lightyears later to ask their permission to use the ring… which they had been begging him to use. Not much of this movie made sense. But Awesome!

8: Transformers – Anyone besides me remember when people spoke fondly of this movie? It seems like people have turned on this franchise in a major way. I don’t know what folks expect, it’s about robots that turn into cars and planes and cassette players, then fight robot wars here on earth… they aren’t remaking Casablanca with each installment. So, there is a lot of hate for people over the age of 8 for these movies, but again… fun – even if they tend to be 45 minutes too long.

7: Matrix 2 and 3 – I know, I’m cheating. Look, the first movie was pretty great. It was an original film – they pioneered that bullet time thing, they took a pretty sci-fi concept and didn’t dumb it down (much). The humans are Duracell batteries rationale seemed very stupid to me, but with that aside, great movie…. Everyone agreed (weird that it came out around the same time as Existenz and The Thirteenth Floor, movies that had a similar concept), so the sequels came out and the Wachowski’s were given blank checks to go and create whatever their 'vision' dictated. The movies suffered for it. They were under no pressure to please anyone and I think it showed. Really long spells of exposition punctuated by really long action sequences… both of which were convoluted and unnecessarily… well, long . But despite that, I enjoyed the movies. Again, they did try to give a truly science fictional story its due. These movies were ambitious, and they barely failed in my opinion. I’d like to reward that type of risk-taking when I can. So they make my list.

6: Constantine – Actually, do people like hate this? It’s more like a movie that disappeared than people actually hated. I really like it, and it might be one of my favorites on this list. I’m a bit of a sucker for any heaven vs hell flick, rogue angels and all that sort of stuff – I liked the Prophecy movies with Christopher Walken. I even liked that one that came out a couple of years ago about the biblical apocalypse happening at that diner in the southwest.  I think this is the best of the bunch when it comes to this sort of thing though. It made me want to read the comic.

5: Electra – They took a movie that very few people liked, Daredevil, and spun off a movie from that. Wow. The hate for Electra is pretty thick. Me, I liked it. It was like an episode of a television show that I love. It was familiar, not too ambitious, and felt very episodic. I think it worked. I personally feel like so much of the hate comes from people who enjoy the source material, I’ve gotten pretty zen about that sort of thing over the years and try not to hold it against a movie that goes off course in that area – as long as it seems to work.

4: The Last Action Hero – this Auh-nuld flick followed up T2 and had some high expectations. It was about an action movie icon that got pulled straight from the movie screen into real life. I thought it was awesome. I think the gritty, ‘real’ world contrasted too much with the quippy, ‘movie’ world for most… it was a jarring change. But it was unique. Worth watching.

3: Dylan Dog – I saw this in the theater when it came out and hated it. But I kept kicking it around in my head afterwards, I think the premise got me excited enough that I eventually forgave it’s multitude of sins and started to enjoy it for what it is: a cheaply made crapfest of awesome. It’s on Netflix now, so have a few drinks to lower your critical thinking skills, lower your expectations… a lot… then enjoy.

2: Mortal Combat – I don’t know if this is hated as much as forgotten, or never noticed. But this video game movie from the 90’s was the best American made kung fu movie of its time (pre-matrix). Like a few others on this list, technically, it’s stupid. Stupid characters do stupid things for stupid reasons. But, also like other movies on this list, it was awesome. It was also notable that, in an ensemble film, the clear leading man was Asian…. I can’t recall seeing that in many American movies before then (I’m being kind, I couldn’t think of any since Bruce Lee’s Enter the Dragon). It’s something I didn’t notice at the time, but have realized upon reflection. I haven’t seen this movie in a long time, so I’m sure my memories are fuzzy, but I can’t recall if he had a love interest, I think that there was one given to Johnny Cage, which was bad, because that character had no charisma at all… I can’t actually remember though, so I should probably just stop typing about that. Also, there has been a youtube series that has revived the Mortal Combat franchise in live action. It’s truly epic.*

1: John Carter – I’m actually not sure what public opinion on this movie is, really, but I think this is the best film of the bunch. It works in all the ways an action movie should. It’s great fun, and it’s another one that’s a beauty to look at. Like Waterworld, its budget was a bigger story than the movie itself, and a series of marketing missteps that are almost worthy if their own movie, doomed this thing from right after production began. The studio did nothing to quash rumors that this had a ballooning budget and were knee deep in desperate reshoots to try to fix the story – despite the fact that the production kept to its budget (granted, it was $250 mil) and all those reshoots were planned (because Stanton, the number 2 guy at Pixar, who directed this, believed the first round of shoots were a rough draft, and reshoots were where you really get to see the movie become great – the Pixar way!) – and so it was labeled a disaster long before anyone had a chance to see it.

How badly did Disney screw John Carter? So much that a whole book was written about it. It will leave you befuddled at the perfect storm of events that conspired to make this a flop.

And there you have it…

*The recent Mortal Combat series stars Michael Jai White, who is responsible for the greatest single kung fu kick I think I’ve ever seen on film, granted, I may have been drinking heavily when I saw it, but it appeared in one of those Universal Soldier movies… it was the one that starred him.

The Greatest Movies of ALL TIME! EVER!

Editors Note... I started messing with my blog and I don't know what the hell is happening now. So, enjoy the chaos if you can. And I hope you can figure out how to leave comments like this better than I can. Because I'll be damned if I can figure it out.

My favorite movies of all time!

I hate this sort of thing, the idea of having a favorite movie is ridiculous to me. It’s a nebulous thing, sometimes I love this thing and other times I only like it. It’s always fluid, and I’ll forget how much I love a thing until a decade or two later when I see it again and I think, my god, I can’t believe I’ve lived without you for so long.

Or, whatever.

So I was writing over the weekend, I had intended on writing a third chapter in my WIP (for the third time, btw) and I decided to just have some background noise on while I worked. I wanted a movie I’ve seen a thousand times that I can just leave running and ignore. I usually write in silence, but again, I just wanted… something.

In doing so, I selected a much loved movie that I haven’t seen in about a year. I have probably seen it close to a dozen times, so even though it’s been a while, it’s not something that I’m likely to forget major portions of.

And from 60 seconds in I knew I was screwed. I put my laptop down and watched, riveted, just like I was the first time I’d seen that movie. When I breathed again and it was two hours later I thought I might as well just go ahead and make a list. My Favorite Movies of all Time.*

5: Dazed and Confused: I waffled between this one and School of Rock, but I went with this one because it reminded me so much of high school that I can’t help but get a little twinge in my belly every time I watch this. And yes, this one really is kind of like high school for me – even if it’s off by about a decade. I’ll let you decide which character I see as most like myself. Probably seen this one about 7 or 8 times.

4: The Abyss: I originally had some other Cameron movie here, but I decided that this is the one I like the best. It would be higher if the third act was as great as the first two, but as it stands I still can’t turn away any time it’s on. It’s aged very well in my opinion… and the deep sea is the creepiest place on earth. I’m tempted to go read Starfish again by Peter Watts after writing this. I’ve seen it about five times.

3: Zoolander: I don’t know why. It just is**. Seen it about 9 times.

2: Good Will Hunting: Look, this is pretty much the story of my life… except for the abuse, the super high IQ, the relationships, and the personalities. But aside from those things… oh, and the setting, and circumstances… it could have been a biography of my life.

Seriously, one my most loved movies of all time, and this is the one I put in the other day while I tried to write. Amazing flick. I never tire of it. I think I’ve seen this about a dozen times.

1. Contact: Based on the novel by Carl Sagan (which I’ve read a few times as well). One of those rare instances where the book, which was already pretty good, was improved on with the movie. There were aspects of the book I liked better, but Robert Zemeckis was genius in how he made some pretty heady material from the book compelling and emotionally gripping.  I also tip my hat to the effort that went into making this as scientifically accurate as was possible, especially considering the made up technology that emerges later in the tale.

I must have seen this more times than I can easily count. There was a time when I’d come home from work and just hit play on the DVD player and let it be on while I did whatever I was doing. It was awesome. I’d guess I’ve seen it close to 50 times, more than any other movie I’ve ever seen by a long shot***.

*Okay, look, I saw Starship Troopers and thought it was the greatest movie ever made. I saw it a second time and thought it sucked. I eventually came to the opinion that it just isn’t very good. A similar thing can be said for Independence Day, I loved it at first, and liked it less upon each viewing. I simply can’t watch it anymore. My point is that I can be overwhelmed by spectacle and it can cloud my judgment early on, so I really don’t know how I feel about a movie until about a year later and after at least two viewings. And the reverse is true too. When I first saw Contact I thought it was okay. That was a movie that I liked a bit MORE each time I saw it. Same can be said for Zoolander – which I initially thought was the stupidest movie ever made.

**Another point, comedies in general are weird, I might laugh like crazy the first time I see one, then hate it after (Borat, Ms. Doubtfire) or I might love it every time I see it (Dumb & Dumber, Groundhog Day). But like I mentioned in my above point, some movies grow on me after not liking them at first, comedies seem to be that way for me more than any other genre though. I hated Austin Powers, but grew to like those films, same for Hot Rod, Joe Dirt, whatever other widely panned movie that finds its way into my heart.

*** I really wish I knew how to make that little cross thing instead of three asterisks. Regardless, the clear number 2 on the ‘most watched’ list for me would Rocky III, which played at the $.99 theater near my house back in the summer of ’82 (I think). I had a huge change collection and I robbed it daily to go see Rocky beat up on Clubber Lang… I even read the Rocky III NOVEL. When it came on VHS later I must have rented it with enough regularity to put my total views into the upper 20’s at least. For anyone interested in a list of my most viewed movies, here it is (and man, how awesome would it be to have a footnote to my footnotes, that would be meta-awesome):

Contact  - 50 ish

Rocky III – 30 ish

Star Wars – 15 to 20 ish

The Empire Strikes Back - 15 to 20 ish

Star Trek IV – 15 ish

Raiders of the Lost Ark – 15 ish

Zoolander, Star Trek: First Contact, The Fellowship of the Ring, The Goonies, The Terminator, T2 – all somewhere between 10 and 15 times a piece.

Blade – 10 ish – it was the first DVD I ever purchased and was the only thing I had for a few weeks before I got my second DVD, which was Star Trek: First Contact.

I’m 40 years old. Don’t judge me for wasting my life. And also, I love the idea that I’d have more words in my footnotes than in my actual post. I love footnotes, love them. I’m thinking one day that my post will just be a single asterisk, then everything else will just be the footnote for the asterisk. Now THAT would be awesome.