“Memories of Murder” The gem of South Korean cinema. One of the best movies ever made, there is no dull moment nor poor performance in this story of South Korea's first serial killer. Bong Joon Ho's masterpiece manages the impossible: transcending the screen becoming a part of the history of South Korea itself in the pursuit of the serial murderer-rapist that was still considered at large in those early 2000s.
“Come and see” The best war movie ever made. Bar none. The main character, Flyora, a teen with a loving mother and sisters and a zest for adventure has his innocence broken by the Nazi death machine as it tries grinding the Slavic people to dust. It is so sour, the experience of war, so trite and pointless, you wonder how anyone can see any value in it at all. The tension is so palpable and violence so harrowing that you will wonder how fascists can still exist today in public without being immediately executed by a mob of people. This feels like more than a movie.
Daniel Day-Lewis's performance is so strong that it elevates an already great movie into something perfect. What would you sacrifice for the black riches buried deep in those hills? For Mr. Plainview the answer is everything. In the end he's wealthy beyond measure, alone and utterly miserable but very wealthy. Completely cut-off from his humanity he becomes a wart on society and finally fully breaks when has to explain a very important concept to remember: drainage.
Season one of this show is one of the best seasons of television ever produced. Especially notable is the episode where Rust infiltrates his old biker gang again and goes into the ghetto, the long tracking shot was at the time beyond belief; the last time I saw a long shot like that was in Children of Men but the medium is so different it elevated this show, remarkable. There are rumours of other seasons, but those delusions are easily proven incorrect, only the first season exists.
“Akira” The greatest animated movie that will probably ever exist. In a dying Tokyo Tetsuo's degeneration is heartbreaking, Kaneda's bravery is epic and the events leading up to the second coming of Akira are put into motion. A unique combination of peak Japanese economy and extreme culturally-honed animation talent combine to make this government-coordinated masterpiece. Akira creates a whole universe and then makes it come to life unlike anything before or since. There are no amount of praises enough for this movie, nearly every movie after, live-action, animated, is marked with many of Akira's signatures.
Frankly one of the most creative shows to have ever had public release. Every episode is a cacophony of bizarre interludes and adult madness dressed in childish trappings. The most creative episode I've ever seen in the history of television was the last episode of the first season titled: patience...I nearly went mad when I realised what they were doing, a true test of patience.
Ask any woman who was alive in the early 90s to tell you how it felt to watch this; the fear this movie strikes in their hearts cannot be understated. The idea of using a monstrous hyper-intelligent cannibal to catch a disturbed faux-transsexual killer was not only brilliant, but gave us some of the scariest characters to ever grace the screen: Hannibal and Buffalo Bill. Helping 'broken-bird' strangers with vans was never the same again.
My lifelong love. Never has a time existed while I was alive where I didn’t love Scully and Mulder exploring the deepest mysteries of society: alien, inhuman, monstrous. Never self-conscious this show gave every imaginative person a lot to lose themselves in, and was the catalyst for the alien craze of the 1990s, to great effect. So many episodes are personal favourites it’s hard to count. In the 90s as a youngster I even managed to go to a meet-and-greet with the actors, massive green plastic alien in-hand and all. The truth is out there.
Edward Norton plays a neo-Nazi skinhead so accurately it’s chilling. Real hate is a chaotic and destructive maelstrom with humble beginnings that belies its nature to destroy everyone and everything around you. This movie does not hold back, and when the teeth grind the pavement it astounds you what people can do to each other. I only wish they would've kept the director's original ending where Derek shaves his head and returns to form.
The rage virus, true horror—one of the most frightening movies of the modern era. The trailer alone was enough to make me have nightmares for about a week; after it released I could barely watch parts of it at home. It was one thing to have zombies and their slow and shuffling shamble, fast ‘zombies’? Infected? Yea, no thank you. Eight years after the movie released I happened to be in Cambridge and realised I had walked right by a suspiciously familiar building that was the establishing shot for the Primate Research Facility…I was petrified: ground zero!
A truly subversive satirical show, Morris knows exactly where the limit is and then counts, to your face, how many steps he takes beyond it. So much of this comedy is dissecting the absurdity of then-current society and the many failures of the British media to recognise their own complicity in making the world a worse place. In many ways the uniquely permissive years of the 90s allowed for an amount of creativity that belies us now...humanity the way it is in modernity feels like the one thing we did not want to happen.
“The Hunter” Every man’s greatest fear made into a wrenching film, starring one of the best actors from the land of Danes. I felt like I was watching this movie through splayed fingers knowing what was to come, the casual destruction of someone, not out of malice but out of childish innocence. You can’t even be upset with the little girl for what she did, what a horribly great film.
Only the highest quality jingoism—a perfectly crafted anti-Soviet flick, this was the peak of the empire’s efforts to make a movie in this vein. Hyper-competent red-blooded Americans who live in big houses in exotic locales with delicate wives and cute-as-a-button daughters, top of their game, top of their class, every gear in sync. CIA? Good guy geniuses. Most-inconsequential-seamen? Good guy experts. Officers? Good guys with intuition. Ruskies? Clueless, propagandised, unlike us Kennedy Americans who don’t have to trick ourselves; we eat Lays on the couch and drive Ford™ F150s, it’s our manifest destiny. Ruskies…don’t you know, a dour people, give em’ a chance and show them how to really consume, they don’t know life until they’ve walked the shores of Nantucket with the arms of a Ralph Lauren sweater wrapped around their neck. Lo-and-behold, the smartest among them graduated into being Americans, because inside every Soviet citizen is an American yearning to be free. Subtle stuff. Totally enjoyable and an exciting watch.
For the first four series I couldn't believe how good this show was, the comedy is biting and the point-of-view shots really were (and still are) so novel. The El Dude 'Brothers' Mark and Jez are the such affable losers, it's outrageous and maybe a little contagious to those around them. In the early 2010s I found out that the show did not in fact end after one of the most incredible episodes of comedy television, series 4 last episode, in my mind it did. Best watched after nicking a snack.
Theme park movie extraordinaire. Tom Cruise runs and hides from the 9/11 allegory alien menace that's rode the lightning to their infernal machines parked below us. I've loved this movie since it released, and is probably my top three personal favourite movies. What's enhanced it so is the set they built for it still stands at Universal in Hollywood; I've been there probably two dozen times and it never gets old, just like this movie and the loud horns that emanate from the terroris— alien's machines.
Am I not economically viable? The only value any person has in modern (and capitalist) America is their economic viability, secondarily future, primarily present. Fury against a confusing, agitating, endlessly nonsensical society channeled into this very fun movie. I find it hard to trust people who dislike this film—Michael Douglas’s character meets his black counterpart going through the same throes of madness as him, to great approval, only to realise that despite simply holding a sign and letting his voice be heard he’s immediately roughed up and ‘taken care of’ by the LAPD, all the while Douglas’s character walks right on by with a duffel bag full of guns.
Fantastic nightmare atmosphere, this movie is a mashing up of various parts of the games but succeeds in being entertaining to get lost in. What makes this film excel are the randomly spirited performances by half its cast, the dancers who were hired to play the monsters doing a truly disturbing job, and the lack of restraint in the brutality of this foggy Pennsylvania town where the coal still burns underground.
One of the only movies I’ve seen that presents the correct solution to an unjust system: violence against the system. And not only that, not only does Denzel’s character win, but his actions result in real positive change, a rare feat in a Hollywood bent on suppressing the real. On release many I knew loved this movie for its message, and many of those people did question why weren’t more movies made with these same themes and resolutions as it was so satisfying. The same system that enables the horror of dying children slipped and let this film through the cracks.
This broke open parkour for all those 'in the know' back in the 2000s along with District B13 later on. Suddenly everyone wanted to start training to use the neighbourhood walls and railings as a jungle gym/means of transport...that was until we discovered the mid-20s seemed to be the end-of-life for parkourists, I like my joints functional thank you! The story was surprisingly gripping for being a vehicle for the parkour, which was great, because it was so incredibly incredibly cool.
Another young favourite, the universe of Riddick gave me so much to fantasise about in those early days of the new millennium. A science fiction movie that actually likes itself and isn't exclusively inhabited by oddballs makes this top dog in my book. I'd pay any amount of menthol KOOLs to be transported (albeit maybe with an amount of invincibility) to this wild place.
Impeccable design meets super-niche animated Japanese comedy. A somehow independent baby living with a sentient bottle in an apartment, harassed by both a landlord she hates and by The President (he stinks!) who recruits her for help, no one was doing it like Japan in those halcyon days. Half of the jokes will go over 99% of people's heads, but it'll at least be interesting and wacky while doing it. The English dub is worthwhile.
A (then) modern day American apocalypse-fantasy where you're asked to channel Will Smith through the screen, drive a cool brand new car, be a cool scientist, have your cool German Shepherd, get all your favourite foods and carry around a cool gun while living in my cool brickstone multi-million multi-level Tribeca tree-fort of solitude B-) . Also you're now socially completely stunted since everyone is dead; ironically this isolation aspect of the movie works better every passing year. A very close family member and I auditioned for this movie back in 2005/2006 for the cacophony of monster voices, that makes this movie extra special for me.
“Rurouni Kenshin” The quirky and exciting adventures of Battousai the Manslayer, very nostalgic music included. One of my favourite, if not my #1 favourite, animated shows as a youth—I even had the manga. Kenshin’s reverse edge blade and his dedication to pacifism was always a really great contrast to his heyday of brutal assassinations, that dichotomy really tickled my fancy.
“My Sassy Girl” Sometimes romance finds you in the most unlikely of places. One of the very first South Korean movies I watched or heard about, the novelty and honest nature of it really stuck with me. The lead actress Gianna is so charismatic it really elevates what would be a normal romantic comedy.
“It really happened! Cursed video(s)” The most base form of wanting to get spooked by spooky videos. The original Japanese series that started the trend (I think) in earnest and on VHS for home viewing. There about two million of these now but the first few really make you want to believe in that cold breeze on your back, or that hand on your shoulder in the dark—be very afraid!
Adventurous disaster-movie aesthetics. The script is a decoration to see CGI mayhem: Los Angeles sink into the ocean, Yosemite explode, and thousand foot tsunamis crash into hapless bystanders. Everyone involved is aware this is a vehicle for a really nice paycheque and the opportunity to star in a timely blockbuster. A complete theme park ride is what this is, and that's what makes it a massive amount of fun. It never tries to be more than what it is.
Purest post-9/11, late Obama-era jingoism straight from the source brother. Turn your brain off ranger and pretend you're a god-blessed American spec-ops operator highspeedlowdrag (my beard just instantly grew beyond regs oorah) brother. With a bald eagle stars-and-stripes tattoo somewhere who gets shit done (I just put my Oakleys™ on) and whose perpetually pregnant worried-but-understanding wife at home in the Midwest (blonde or redhead only) you're just trying to get back to, which you WILL scare in the night by pieing the doorway because of PTSD brother. After being in hellscape Middle Eastern country #538 (montage of Gaddafi looking menacing) you bring back a toy to show your confused daughter dad really fights for no free healthcare at home and the CIA (it's stained with blood of fallen brethren also the VA denied your claim). If you watch five times in a row you unlock a special Hilldawg Clinton ending No Russian style brother god bless the USA in this house we stand for the anthem.
Unusually poor for the calibre of production. Some covert funding source in coordination with the studio made something no one wanted to make. An additional explanation as to why this movie was this bad was the government liaison in charge of ensuring the movie was sufficiently anti-communist enough was derelict in going beyond just that...he or she certainly became a bit lazy and winded up trying to herd cats by the end and it shows.
Watching this on release as a kid, arguably the only demographic that could be vaguely entertained by this movie, was not enough to make this remotely passable. Maybe one of the worst movies I've ever seen in my lifetime, I am personally not turtle-y enough for any kind of turtle club at any age and in any capacity. I deserve a refund for my 2002 ticket + inflation.