Unlike my pal Club Soda, my list only contains movies I’ve actually seen. Picking five movies is a very difficult task. I have omitted several movies I love. Plus, there are no Bill Murray movies. How did I let that happen? What about Bob? and Groundhog Day are fantastic comedies. Maybe we’ll do a “best comedies” list next. Now it’s on to the greatest movies ever…
1. The Searchers – “That’ll be the day.” John Ford is the greatest director of all time and The Searchers is John Wayne’s greatest performance. There are a lot of great Westerns, but this is as good as it gets.
2. Godfather 2 – “I’m your older brother, Mike, and I was stepped over!” The greatest mobster movie of all time.
3. Last of the Mohicans – “You stay alive, no matter what occurs.” Daniel Day Lewis directed by Michael Mann. Miami Vice set in the eighteenth century. This movie is almost 20 years old and it’s still great.
4. Fight Club – “Like everyone else, I had become a slave to the IKEA nesting instinct.” The first rule is you don’t talk about Fight Club.
5. The Fellowship of the Ring – “I would have followed you my brother, my captain, my king.” The first film in the trilogy is also the most perfect film in the series.
I find it difficult to make a list of bad movies. Some of my favorites movies are so bad that they’re actually enjoyable to watch. For example, Batman and Robin. By any measure it is one of the worst movies ever made, but it’s so bad that it’s unintentionally hilarious. Below are five terrible films in no specific order…
Into the Wild – This is actually a critically acclaimed film that millions love. Sorry, but I can’t relate to a tale of a spoiled hipster dufus who is upset his parents aren’t perfect. The moron starves himself to death out in the wilderness. It’s not enlightening; it’s annoying.
Vanilla Sky – I don’t even know where to begin. The film is a mess, it doesn’t make any sense and we’re supposed to take it seriously because Cameron Crowe directed it. This movie is painful to watch.
The Fountain – Did I say painful? I can’t remember much about this incomprehensible movie other than Hugh Jackman should pick movies more carefully.
The Happening - M. Night Shyamalan’s disasterpiece is one of those blockbuster movies where the audience asks, “Who paid for this?” In this case, Shyamalan found some Indian investors who paid for this environmental movie.
The Matrix Revolutions – Part of the reason this movie is so bad is because the first film is so great. The first film featured a clear concept of good and evil. By the time the third film was finished the only clear thing left was that the Wachowskis siblings had run out of ideas.
I wanted to list the movie Powder, but the ending of that movie is so incredibly funny I can’t list it. Please go to the 3:16 of this clip to see what I’m talking about. The series of solo shots are hilariously awful. What else can you expect from a scene shot in Houston, Texas?
Kevin Costner also gets a honorable mention for Waterworld, The Postman, Message in a Bottle, and Robin Hood. Those four movies are really bad, really really bad, but just not bad enough.
Last December I wrote about the movie Revolution staring Al Pacino as a fur trapper who gets caught up in the American Revolution. The movie was a colossal box-office disappointment and had never been released on DVD until this year. I have finally had the opportunity to watch a version of the film
Al Pacino and the director Hugh Hudson reedited and changed the ending of the film. I can’t really give an opinion about the original film. The new version adds a narration and cuts 10 minutes. Why wasn’t the film accepted back in 1985? Here’s one theory by Hudson.
Q: You say on the DVD, referring to Pacino’s character, that America in 1985 was not ready for an “anti-hero.”
A: The movie heroes were, what? Stallone, Schwarzenegger. And Reagan. Reagan was a true hero to the American people, in a way. Pacino plays a grunt, a soldier, a resistant man, resistant to going to war, to fighting, to being a part of society. He was a roughneck, trading furs. An anti-hero, really. He says, “It’s not my fight.”
Like George Bush is to blame for every problem faced in the 2000s Ronald Reagan is still a liberal whipping boy for the dreadful 80s. President Eisenhower was immensely popular during the 1950s and the movie The Searchers staring John Wayne is considered a classic. John Wayne played the anti-hero Ethan Edwards. The real problem with Revolution is that it’s a terrible movie.
At the beginning the American colonialists are just an angry mob. Pacino’s boat is seized by the mob and then inexplicably his young boy “joins the cause.” After that it’s just one boring event after another. The problem with the movie isn’t the historical interpretation or Pacino’s reluctance to fight, but the dreadful plot. It’s just not a fun story to watch. Back in December I wrote “It [Revolution] certainly cannot be worse than Mel Gibson’s The Patriot.” I’m not so sure, but I know I won’t go out of my way to watch either film again.
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