When the dream is within a dream, it raises the question of where it all ends and reality begins. In our lives, the only reality is the moment about to pass, and all else is constructed of memory. That memory is faulty, riddled with inconsistencies and gaping holes that are altered and shaded according to our wishes and neurological imperfections. Christopher Nolan explored this notion in Memento, in which a man with retrograde amnesia represented an extreme of what everyone experiences as a memory that will simply fabricate that which it cannot remember to iron over gaps in one’s retention. This is no small issue as our identity, in fact our entire reality is constructed of what we thought happened, what we perceived in others, and much of it is false and cannot be trusted. This mindbending concept is pushed off the ledge entirely for Inception, in which dreams are layered in a way that stretches the definition of reality well beyond the breaking point. In the eye of our protagonist, nothing of what we see can be cast in stone as part of any real world, as it could be another dream state. Everything and nothing is explained, and the construction of this fabrication is tight, Byzantine, and consistent only with its own inner logic. Inception is every inch as good as you have heard, and has already been hailed as an instant classic. It will grow in estimation with time, however. Inception is a riot of psychological trickery and wallows in regret, loss, amnesia, pleasant fictions and bitter loss – the flora of our subconscious that grows and shifts with the speed of the living world. It will be a different film to each person who sees it, as your perception will be informed by your own experience and mental baggage. And since we are different people every moment of every day, it will be a different experience each time the individual watches it. Does this intrigue you? For me, I was utterly lost in the vagaries, and did not really care about emergence from it.

Cobb (Leonard DiCaprio) is a professional thief of dreams, armed with a Whatever Technology that enables him to enter another person’s dream and sniff out secrets. A conventional movie about this premise alone would be entertaining enough, but we are instead sent into a sort of heist plot where a team is assembled for a more complicated purpose. Rather than extraction, which involves finding something out from a person’s subconscious, Cobb is hired for inception, or the planting of an idea into another’s mind as if it were their own. If you have ever attempted to persuade a person in any regard, you know how difficult this is, as the mind rebels against an alien thought – unless they truly believe it was their own to begin with. Or if they are a gullible idiot – but nobody would bother invading that sort of mind. For this task, Cobb is working with his longtime partner Arthur, played by Jospeh Gordon-Levitt, whose natural acting style hits a cool and efficient stride that effortlessly moves between professional reserve and kicking ass. Eames (Tom Hardy) is a charismatic forger, here meaning an impersonator. An architect (Ellen Page) must construct elaborate worlds in which the dream thieves must work, large enough to occupy extended sequences with details that will not betray the dream to the person who is being invaded. Saito (Ken Watanabe) hires these men and tags along for some reason as he has an interest in a corporation headed by the mark who is drugged and set for this dream sequence. The most interesting character is not there at all – Mal, played with unstable ferocity by Marion Cotillard, is Cobb’s wife. She betrays them all, every step of the way, because she is a subconscious projection by Cobb that has grown monstrous with time. The setup of this job is as intricate a maze as has ever been, and somehow Christopher Nolan keeps all the balls in the air with long and tricky setpieces that tie into simultaneous moments occurring on another plane of fantasy. As the team descends from one dream into the next, notice how the action is informed by the identity of the sleeper.

Rules are established for this world in scenes that are every bit as fun to watch as the execution of those rules. Since Batman Begins, Nolan has taken the rather laborious task of exposition as a challenge, and has risen to it. Who knew that a movie about Batman would become less interesting when Batman actually suits up to wreck shit? The best scenes consider why adopting an alternate persona is not only useful, but essential to inspiring hope in citizens and fear in his enemies. In Inception, these rules are many but intuitive to how the subconscious works. When Cobb is explaining to the architect how in a dream the person creates and perceives simultaneously, this seems innate, but you can also sense that this applies to the story proper. After all, if one cannot tell where the dream ends and reality begins, is there a margin to this tale, or is this the protagonist’s creation that becomes more elaborate with time? Is this plot part of another inception? Even the cliche touches of the ‘one last job’ seem the hacky work of a mind asleep utilizing familar touchstones. The characters have an otherworldly feel about them; all of their appearances are simple, blank face, hair slicked back, all movement is efficient and minimal, much like the supporting cast of our dreams. And in this layered chimera is the notion of inception; a parasitic idea that is not of our creation, that dominates the mind. The job within the film involves such a concept, but there are many others; chief among them the idea that Cobb is lost in a dream. The clues abound as to whether this is true, and the Macguffin nature of the job lends some perspective, but I suspect there is no real solution to the puzzle. The walls of this labyrinth will shift the next time you watch, so keep an open mind. One character utters the line “I need a guarantee!” The response is clear and murky at the same time, in keeping with the playful nature of the film.

Some reviews have complained of a lack of visual insanity, which is an idiotic notion. Unless inspired by shrooms or fever, typical dreams are populated by places and people we know, often with dull or familar situations. Except that as the dream progresses, the laws of physics goes out the window, rooms change shape, time speeds or slows, and things fall apart. Nolan captures this idea with extraordinary clarity. Inception is not meant to be a perfect film, just as The Dark Knight was not meant to be a conventional action film that can stand nitpicking about whether Harvey Dent’s face could actually look like that. These, like all of Nolan’s films, are a psychological playground of ideas that consider matters of individual identity, and how easily it can be warped. The visuals are striking and beautifully realized, and reflect the massive but generalized worlds that occur in the mind. Familiar, yet illogical, particularly in the remarkable scene where a city is folded. More important, though, is the emotional resonance within – our dreams are a thick soup of emotion that itself bends solid structures and darkens the skies. Cobb’s tortured psyche makes this a dangerous place filled with self-loathing, regret, and loss. The pleasing moments are there, but fleeting, and ultimately yield to the destructive power of desire.

Subject to variable rules of physics in a mind prepared for intrusion, the action scenes are unique and uniquely amazing. The hallway fight is as good as any I have seen. The sequences involving shitloads of bullets I could do without, since my sense of entertainment is inversely proportional to the number of bullets fired. Even so, in what would seem to be mindless action scenes, Nolan is able to inject some questions. In the chase through the streets of Mombasa, for example, Cobb’s ability to always be just one step ahead of the projectiles seems like the sort of thing that would work in a dream. Right down to squeezing through a tight set of walls. Enough of the particulars – rest assured you will be swept along.

Throughout this ride, Nolan holds the reins tightly. In a world where anything can happen, you have no reason to care about what happens, and this is the central problem with CGI-dominated films. Yet here, this malleable universe is similar to that within our own minds, and our ability to identify with it makes it all matter to us somehow. The potentially maddening idea of a dream within a dream can alienate an audience. And it would, if we did not have that experience before, and then found to our displeasure that some of it was substantial enough to populate what we thought were authentic memories. The unease is palpable, and the lack of a guarantee is satisfying and exasperating in equal measure. And this is the way it must be.

The mandatory choice of the artsy fartsies deserves it. Bella Tarr’s films often contain scenes that seem to be drawn directly from Al Bundy’s conception of critically acclaimed foreign films, and I think they can be fairly ridiculed in such instances. It’s healthy to check yourself when your head starts to nod at really, really, long black and white takes of people from a backwater country not doing much or worse, speaking profoundly. But Tarr is still awesome. To start with, he is almost offhandedly, absurdly clever in this film. The climax features a mash up of North by Northwest and Through A Glass Darkly that seems so effortless and so much Tarr’s own that I didn’t even notice the allusions (if that’s what they were) the first time I saw it. And it culminates in this weirdly funny moment that is a lot like a Jarmusch movie, though the time lines suggest this is coincidence, rather than allusion. Regardless of how he got there, being able to manage a barely noticeable fusion of Jarmusch, Bergman and Hitchcock on their level of quality is… good. Maybe that is also a testimony to a purely great film: that you don’t sit there thinking “oh yes, an allusion to whateverthefuck” and “this is clearly a symbol for fuck” because you are directly engaged by what is happening onscreen.

Still, the alignments in the story that are suggested by the title are there. We open with our protagonist, an educated, rural paper boy–kind of an Ichabod Crane figure–explaining the phenomenon of total eclipse to a bunch of drunk rubes, funnily using them as the Nerf balls of various size in his barroom science fair diorama. Later, a traveling freak show comes to town with a whale (the sun) a midget seen only in silhouette (the moon) and the same kind of mass hysteria once caused by a total eclipse is unleashed. There’s probably some parallel to Hungarian politics as well–a satellite state separated from it’s primary and set into temporary chaos. We can skip pretending to give a shit about Hungarian politics, however. I won’t even pretend to fully grasp the film and will forgo wild theories about how the shot captured above pictures a sun in the center of a solar system, then moves to a shot of a whale’s dead eye, the dead eye of the god, in similar composition, then to the eye of man and like… whoa, dude.

It’s not that I suddenly thought it was good when I noticed these intricacies. But I’m a believer in the notion that these kinds of symmetries and layers of meaning work most importantly at a visceral level, like the composition of a painting or… harmonies. On first viewing, I found the The Prince (the circus midget) and his nihilistic rhetoric captivating on their own. And maybe it’s serendipitous if rural Hungary really is that much of a miserable shithole where people lead such meager, miserable lives, but the sparseness of Tarr’s films makes them so captivating to the outside viewer: those of us who possess the easy and luxurious lives that allow us to watch such films at all. When the story is centered around a car, in a Tarr film, there is exactly one car. And in this case, old fashioned can openers and coal burning heaters can dominate scenes in a way that is oddly cozy if you are the sort of person who wishes that matches still served some practical purpose. Whatever cleverness is afoot, his filmmaking is just beautiful in such cases. Like Goddard, Tarantino or Park, at some point you can toss all ideological objections to the side and point to the screen. If it were a commercial for adult diapers, wouldn’t there still be something great up there? Maybe some secondary award should be handed out to the intelligentsia. You might remember some time when there was this buzz about a guy making long ass movies that you couldn’t see and if you tried to download them on limewire, it would take a week of stopping up your connection before failing. It was natural to assume that the artsie fartsies were just being exclusionary assholes, and that may well have been their intention, but they were still right.

“Romcom” that almost makes up for the proliferation of the word “romcom:” Intolerable Cruelty

When I started making this list, I thought of a bunch of filmmakers whom I felt must be included. Any list without Mike Leigh would just be stupid, for example. But it quickly became evident that going this route would lead to a paint by numbers list and I might as well run off a bunch of Oscar winners. However, if there was any doubt as to who the best filmmakers of the recent past are, it seems like a best of decade list, from any perspective, that excluded the Coens would be silly, doesn’t it? Whether you were trying to be “Ain’t it Cool” mainstream, or “Captain Jonathan Rosenfinkle, lord of the shit nobody has seen yet” it would seem like you were trying to meet some sort of agenda if you didn’t touch upon the Coens. And, at risk of falling into the latter category, this doesn’t have much to do with No Country. I mean, yay for Hollywood/Oscar for randomly pulling their heads out of their shit pipes before the Coens were 30 years past their primes, but if you think that No Country is the best Coen film, you are a moron and I will fight you. Any time. Anywhere. Marquess of Queensberry rules. It was basically just a very, very well made Terminator or Halloween movie. So, for me, this boils down to two films that were Lebowski level works that did not receive the ultimate Lebowski recognition. Like Lebowski, The Man Who Wasn’t There and Intolerable Cruelty were not massive hits with critics or customers upon initial release, perhaps because of their generic titles which I still sometimes struggle to remember. But unlike Lebowski, neither was ultimately recognized as a masterpiece. The Man Who Wasn’t There was perhaps the best noir of the decade, boiling catastrophe down to decisions that seemed sensible, given the time and place. But Intolerable Cruelty doubled down on that. Not only did it run with a hand off from bygone genius (The Coens’ most direct crib from Preston Sturges), it took what has become the most poisonous of genres, the “romcom” and made something great. Really, I should say they “remade” something great. Carey Grant, Sturges and many others were unqualified geniuses working in the genre. It’s only because the marketing geniuses have zeroed in on their target demographic– vacuous women and the hand bags passing as men who they drag along to the theater– that artistry has been squeezed out to make way for fantasies about illiterates with bejeweled dog food bowls outsmarting everyone at Harvard. Whether it is a disgrace or a triumph that only the Coens could make a film deserving of a place among the classics of the genre, it is a reality.

As always with the Coens (and Sturges) the dialogue and the character actors in this film near perfection. And the George Clooney= Carey Grant case has its best evidence here. Catherine Zeta Jones is the goddess of her own universe, like Brigham Young. Each is physically flawless, with rapid fire wit and refinement that couldn’t actually exist. The combination is so tantalizing that we are rendered a bunch of polymorphously perverse cups of Jello. Charles Bronson would pay to jerk off Clooney and Richard Simmons would suck on CZJ’s no fly zone until she begged for mercy. Neither can be matched, outwitted, more desired by another, or more justifiably conceited.  It’s Mayweather vs. Pacquio, but less erotic. This film took some heat for being “light” or mainstream, but the signature Coen contempt for us all is plainly there. Humanity is a busload of idiots, bouncing along in happy idiocy towards a cliff. The smartest of us are able to outwit the rest and land seats in the front of the bus. And these two, our total superiors, divinity made flesh, get to ride on special thrones strapped to the top of the bus.

Best movie that is pretty cliche, which ironically means I can’t think up some dumb ass category for it: Man on a Train

I liked Man On A Train so much the first time I saw it that I awarded it a prized slot on my year end top 2 list. I watched it again for this list and up until about a half an hour in, I still couldn’t remember why I thought it was so great. Though very well-crafted, this is a story of conflicting archetypes, in the vein of As Good As It Gets, or “Perfect Strangers.” Not that there is anything wrong with “Perfect Strangers.” But about five minutes into this one, you feel like you’ve already seen the whole movie. Rough criminal rolls into town, circumstances compel him to spend time with a fruity teacher and they connect. Even though they seem like total opposites! There are moments that are arguably too contrived, and the actors play their roles almost too well, especially given that each looks like a puppet designed for the part. The film comes on pretty strong, but I think it’s supposed to because each man represents a pole that very few actually reach, but most of us are pulled by. Milan is a bank robber, the ultimate gambler. A man who simply takes what he wants, but who is nearly certain to wind up empty handed. Monsieur Manesquier is a small town teacher with inherited money who lives in total security, but is nonetheless easily startled and intimidated. Each realizes he might be very near the end of life, and can look to the other as the path not taken, and each is a signpost for almost every fork in the road that you have faced, assuming you are part of our 103.7% male readership. At the same time, it’s clear that the decisions these characters make and have made are products of their nature. Your path in life isn’t determined by a spin of the wheel that could land on “join MS-13″ just as easily as “go to Vassar.” Other people sense your nature too and most, from the first girl you pursue to a bakery clerk you have never met, will have you pegged right away and begin boxing you in. Any program designed to transform you into an A+ student, a great negotiator, or a pick-up artist will either fail or have you constantly in a ridiculous costume. So while these men fancy walking in each others shoes a bit and face some final regrets, it’s clear enough that they could not have traded places. The two men wind up considering, and in large part regretting, who they fundamentally are, and that hits with a lot of force. Whether it’s never bringing down that bully, or breaking an honest heart to chase a succubus, we want to say “if only…” differentiating our decisions from ourselves when nothing could be more intrinsic to us. When we pretend to regret decisions, we are only fooling ourselves because we really regret who we are. A sassy waitress and an AIDS patient are not going to swoop into your life and coax forth the better person who has always been somewhere inside. We follow the same patterns till death and either continue self-delusion about “could-have-beens” that could not have been, or wish we could have been someone else entirely, which really amounts to “us” not existing at all. There’s also a flipside to this story: that accepting your nature and making the best of it can make a life well worth living, which is nothing to sneeze at. These guys don’t wish they’d never been born, they just wish they could have been more. Another bit of optimism comes from the fact that taking a small step outside of our nature can be a exhilarating joy, like a career criminal trying on house slippers. Besides, as we come to appreciate each character, including their strengths and weaknesses, it’s clear life would be as unbearable as a Helen Hunt movie if we were all the same, which is what makes our flaws and limitations so critical. Perhaps people who don’t hate themselves would even find the Man On A Train uplifting. For me the greatest solaces offered by the film are the moments when the adventurer and the petit pedant share simple pleasures, like a good meal with some cognac. Their sporadic connections are among these pleasures and the even the extreme paths of each man fortunately cover some common ground. These points of commonality don’t involve revelations or conversions and are more comforting for their authenticity and rarity.

Best recompense for those painfully unfunny “Fire Marshall Bill” sketches: Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind

You know that, at the time, there was someone screaming “Homer ain’t shit! Derestrepidies is where it’s at!” And maybe he was right, but we’ll never know because Derestrepedies has long ago been erased. While it’s not precisely the same scenario, I thought about that kind of mechanism while re-watching Jim Carrey in Eternal Sunshine. Popular and critical wisdom both have it that Tom Hanks is the comedian who made the successful transition into dramatic roles, even though all of his dramatic roles have been in fucking stupid shit like The Da Vinci Code and Forrest Gump. Yet Carey, a comedic genius who can amuse with no more than a frantic flailing of the limbs, after initially Hanksing one in The Majestic, has played the dramatic lead in two excellent and arguably great films: this one and The Truman Show. It’ll be interesting to see whether or not those films work their way past Forrest Gump before I die, though maybe six months isn’t a fair time table. On a related note, I found myself thinking of this as the “Charlie Kaufman” slot, which embarrassed me and made me realize that I’m not really any different from the people who believe Hanks is the comedian who made the switch. Not that Kaufman isn’t great, but the fact that I think of him as the one screenwriter who must be accounted for almost certainly means that I am just an ignoramus and you should only read me with the faint hope of a good joke. Unless he is the greatest man of our time, it is certainly true that Kaufman is unique in his recognition, rather than his ability. I mean, fuck, film reviewers from Ruthless on up to the top of the nerdisphere consistently give credit for cinematography to the director, even thought there’s a guy specifically called the cinematographer. And sure enough, I couldn’t tell you who wrote most of the other films on this list, let alone who shot them.

Nonetheless, I give Kaufman much of the credit for how this film perfectly represents all of the self loathing and self-doubt with which all psychologically healthy people are consumed. Maybe this is the perfect male/female story. The only thing you despise more than yourself is her. You can’t live with you, with her or without her. Carey is the downtrodden rationalist, joyless and covetous, then satiated and joyless. Winslet, doing some of the best actressing of the decade, is irrational, desirable, a butterfly who seems impossible to capture but who could be a source of warmth in Carrey’s otherwise cold existence. She sees a man she can fix, but in a good way. She can help him to blossom, to have a life with some happiness and her as his muse. Then, once he is enticed and she is captured, and they are trapped together in his jar and both begin to suffocate. Until they realize once again how much they once wanted each other and how ordinary they’d be without each other. At which point, they re-embrace, probably making each other newly miserable, hopefully with a new (of course, temporary) understanding as to why that misery is preferable to the alternative misery of loneliness. Maybe the strength of this film, and the solution to this big problem, is the focus on memory and looking back, rather than forward. In the immediate pain of separation, the deletion of memories seems to be the cure because it erases the moments of mutual cruelty, regret and suffering. But in reality, it is those memories and idealizations that are our reward for enduring the conflict of the mating ritual. Remember how fun she was? Remember that time you bought live lobsters and they got loose because you were both too squeamish to cook them? Remember that fantastic fuck? Could we bring it all back with someone new? Probably not. “Why don’t we talk anymore?” Because the memories are the sweetest bit and won’t be equaled, especially because we don’t really recognize the best moments of a relationship ’till after the fact. Traveling back into those memories and fighting to keep them might be the best love fantasy put on film. Maybe Kaufman really is that good. And that’s all I have to say about that.

Best movie that, regardless of age or liberalism, would be a nightmare to watch with your mom: Visitor Q

Visitor Q can be erotic, like when a man pays his hot, teenage daughter to fuck on video; hilarious, when she makes fun of his premature ejaculation (”early bird!”) or depraved and revolting, as in depicting a middle aged woman with an active libido. I listed some of the more eye catching moments of the film in my original review, but the highlight is arguably when the father of this family fucks a corpse and his dick gets stuck due to the onset of rigor mortis, mid-boink. The punch line is that his wife helps free him with a shot of heroin and the corpse assists by expelling… some lubrication. Now there’s a whole discussion to be had about the “shock” cinema that peaked in this decade ranging from Irreversible and Antichrist, to all but one of Ki Duk Kim’s 800 films. My advice is to forget any overview and just enjoy the good ones and toss out the bad. That’s my advice in general. I mean some films might be categorized as ’00s “shock cinema” and some other films begin with the letter “G,” while others were released in October. Who gives a shit? Try to find the good ones, try to avoid the bad ones. Miike is a good man to support this view because he is generally entertaining and one of the funniest filmmakers working. He just happens to deal in mass murder, perversion and making you want to throw up. A lot of his stuff is thought provoking. My opening to this review wasn’t just hilarious. You could make the case that he is toying with the viewer’s sexuality. On the one hand he’s pushing the envelope on what you will admit to being turned on by. On the other, he’s tearing apart eroticism to reveal the oozing sacks of shit underneath it all. You’ll find something to think about with most of his movies if you try hard enough, but that is really just a fringe benefit. The real pleasure is in Miike’s pleasure at tearing everything apart. Not to replace it with true communism, or to dethrone the patriarchy, but just for fun. Everyone is an idiot. Everything is bullshit. Film is the ideal medium to act out these sophomoric realizations as an adult. Very often, Miike starts with a conventional premise and then grafts on developments that seem dreamed up by a teenage metalhead who isn’t getting laid, and uses these “twists” to destroy everything. To these round eyes, Visitor Q is, at least partially an “ALF” style sitcom. Instead of a wise-cracking plush alien, the novel figure who brings a fresh perspective to the family is a fucking maniac. The dysfunctional family is restored with the sudden injection of an outsider: a Japanese guy with an afro and a funny shirt who imparts healing wisdom– in this case, smashing family members in the face with rocks and milking the mother to orgasm. They kill, rape and maim everyone in their path and cohere into a death squad. Sha-na-na-na.

Put a gun to my head and force me to put one movie into a time capsule on death row on a desert island, my number one film of the 00’s: You Can Count On Me

I am a sucker for a lot of things, as is evidenced by this list. The relentless, cheap jokes in OSS 117 and Tarantino’s dazzling array of gimmicks and cleverness are only two examples. But nothing is more impressive (and, not coincidentally, list-making wise, more difficult to write about) as a simple story without a grand point, executed to perfection. It’s very difficult to say why The 400 Blows is better than Citizen Kane, or any other film ever made. It’s very difficult to say why You Can Count On Me is better than the 500 similar movies that came out over the decade, and all of the dissimilar ones too. The best insight I’ve heard comes from Kenneth Lonergan himself on the DVD commentary track. Remember when people watched movies on DVDs? Those were the days. I think he was talking about the inclusion of the first scenes, when Terry and Sammy, as children, learn about their parents’ deaths, when he says the scene was there to show that they “are just kids who grew up,” like all of us.

Sammy and Terry are so sympathetic, not in the cheese-bomb way of being wholesome and “characters you can root for”, but because of they’ve hung on to that piece of youthful authenticity. Maybe people who really and truly become adults have become substantive fabrications, day-to-day versions of the carefully patched together Rose Parade floats wheeled out for display on “Meet The Press,” always trying to make you feel serious and comprehending. Or, if we’re being a little too honest, we would compare these real adults to almost every character in almost every film, even some of the best ones, like Punisher: Warzone. For anyone who is “real”, or who has the bad habit of integrity, and who does not deny their past, the magical transformation never quite happens. Sammy becomes a church going professional to provide for her son. Terry is a drifter who runs into problems. They’ve been forced to adapt to the circumstances of adulthood, more than become masters of their domains. But they cut through each other’s bullshit as siblings can, with a simple “I remember when you…” Yes, that delinquent buffoon, that wallflower who stammered around boys or girls… whoever you used to be. That is still you. But hopefully you’ve learned to adjust and maneuver, and to balance presenting highly modified versions of yourself when the situation requires, which happens so often for Sammy, and keeping it real, like Terry does a bit too often. As Sammy’s fatherless son looks up, we see the need to present one’s self as something to be looked up to if there are children in our life. Maybe that doesn’t mean being 100% honest. There is a place for pretending to be a real adult, even when you are just a kid who grew older. But sheltering phonies are not ideal role models either, and Terry’s harsh and clumsy lessons do some good, along with the harm. Maybe there’s a big, “conservative” theme here about how kids need role models and teachers, not buddies or even some radical fascist contention that boys look up to men. If so, conservatives are right on this one. But obviously this is not a film meant for a sub-nation of dead eyed Palin or Oprah supporters who pretend to work themselves into a panic over “how to talk to their kids” about realities such as 9/11 and Janet Jackson’s partially exposed breast. And if you ever think that Amy Taubin, perhaps the worst critic of the decade, should ever be taken seriously on any subject, you need only look at her authentically moronic review of this masterpiece to correct such misconceptions.

Everything comes back to earth in perhaps my favorite scene of the decade when Terry whips out a joint and shares it with Sammy, for a guilty indulgence. This is everything right with the being human, even after adulthood has tried to ruin it. It is a meeting point between abusive irresponsibility and sweet relief from relentless responsibility. Sammy might be a roughly conservative figure but she isn’t a soulless ghoul in the Dr. Laura vein. It’s an almost forgotten, little joy brought back to life. “Remember when I…” And there is a real family values message of the film, one of intimacy and connection, not repression and conformity. It made me think of little transgressions with my rural cousins, even though we’ve now grown up and I voted for Kang and they probably voted for Kodos. It’s about a shared connection to the freedom of youth. Even with parents out of the picture, we still sneak indulgences that would make them disapprovingly shake their heads. For Sammy, smoking a d00b with her brother on the porch is only one of a few such moments left coming to her. That is what makes it so sweet. And the older you are, the more that scene will hit you because you realize the scarcity of those moments. “How many more of these will I have? Three or four? Maybe this will be the last one.” Or, in Terry’s case, “will I ever get my life together to the point where smoking a joint feels like meeting The President?”

Terry sticks the path of nonconformity and when Sammy worries about what will happen to him, he answers, probably accurately, “nothing too bad.” But probably nothing too good either. Trust me on the latter point. But, as with Man on The Train, the sweet spot is that commonality. Terry comes over to Sammy’s side and falls in love with her son. He won’t be a proper father figure, but he is already looking forward to pinch hitting again. Sammy blissfully shares Terry’s joint. Love, connection and authenticity exist together. For a brief moment, I do not hope that a meteor hits the earth tomorrow.

Arguably the Best Casey Affleck movie: Gerry

I have a tendency to compare everything to Kobe Bryant, but Gus Van Sant is like Kobe Bryant. Not only in his penchant for sodomy, but in that I feel like he’s gone out of his way to build a resume that demonstrates how great he is and the media response has kind of been like, “look, we won’t have our hand forced, and maybe this bid for greatness is too contrived, so we are going to give you slightly less recognition than you deserve.” Kobe scored 81 points in a game, he won multiple championships with two completely different teams, he took over games, he tried to step back and facilitate teammates, he wanted to meet every criteria for greatness. Yet he he has one MVP, just like Dirk Nowitzki. While I certainly don’t know his motivations, I think Van Sant’s body of work is similar. He made an excellent, feel good, box office success with Good Will Hunting. He made an artsy, true crime story with To Die For. He’s experimented with his Psycho remake, which I intend to watch and judge fairly one day, and he caps things off with his “Death trilogy” headed by Gerry, which stylistically feels like the film Von Trier was trying to make during those Dogma years because the time flies by as we watch two, simply filmed guys pretty much just walk around.

I’m certainly not alone in that the open road fascinates me, as do the vast expanses of still-unsettled territory in the American West. So I can only imagine that to foreign viewers, who all live in countries the size of New Hampshire, these themes are even more intriguing. If you’ve driven across the American expanse (next gas, 38 miles), you’ve imagined being lost in it. “My God, if my car broke down and I walked 800 feet in the wrong direction, nobody would ever hear from me again.” As with many great films, you wonder how nobody successfully acted on this scenario before. Van Sant captures the beauty of the dessert, or maybe these are plains or prairies. But that sparse, fruitless wilderness that still occupies so much space, and bears a harsh unfriendliness to modern humans, even those who know enough to build a fire. Consequently, the film is goddamned terrifying from about the ten minute mark on. Yeah, maybe it seems obvious that we mortals are confronted with physical realities that will extinguish our selves, and that there’s no way around it. Like, we are all trapped in the desert, man. We are all looking for water. We all exist in a world full of beauty that cannot sustain our consciousness for more than the blink of an eye. We are all putting off the inevitable with half baked theories and false hopes. As the process progresses, we only become crazier and more wrong. It seems blunt and obvious, but excellence often does, like Kobe drilling a three pointer in someone’s eye at the end of the game. But if it’s so simple, why is nobody else is doing it?

“Where are you going?”

“I dunno. Wanna help?”

Best evidence that French film will continue to be vital until the country is eventually taken over by Muslims: A Christmas Tale

When I made a section for our reviews of Christmas movies, Alex and I had a little “great minds think alike” moment when he offered to write a review of A Christmas Tale for the section. I’d been thinking of doing a review as well, but the movie was simply too sophisticated for me to tackle without repeat viewings, so I was happy to hand it off to him. Eventually he wrote me back to say that he was sorry, but the film was just too complex for him to shoot from the hip and it required several viewings. Now, that is not to say that the film is some impressionistic maze of symbolism. In fact, I would contrast it to Desplechin’s Kings and Queen by saying that, while Kings and Queen is just slightly too affected, A Christmas Tale is two tons of pure substance.

Speaking of national cinemas, this is an example of the virtues of doing it how you do it. Visual geniuses like Godard are anomalous and the next one might pop up in Hungary or Thailand or even The United States. So you can’t bank on that. But there is some sweet spot about Talking Frogs that can be hit again and again. The beauty of the language is one factor. Also, speakers of Romance languages tend to prattle on not only endlessly, but very directly compared to their Germanglo counterparts. As a person of Northern European heritage and tradition, even after years of exposure to less subdued cultures, I was still shocked by some of the directness in this “family” film. “Well, I’ve had similar feelings, but I thought you were supposed to hold them in for twenty years, then blurt them out when everyone was drunk, and then use the drunkeness as an excuse for pretending nothing ever happened, even though you know they know and they know that, so mission accomplished!… ?”

Have I said a word about the film itself yet? Truthfully, there is not that much to say, other than that it is masterful. Director, writers and cast execute a convoluted family drama flawlessly. By the 2:06 mark you should be hooked. It is “Dallas” with the arts and madness and these graphic titles separating each segment which are simple but extraordinaire. It is overseeing the perfection of such details that makes the greats. What else is there to add? There is a labyrinth of familial relation, founded upon a child conceived only to unsuccessfully provide a bone marrow transfer to another child. There is a black sheep deemed mad. Then there is a real black sheep, left stranded and broke. There are May/December romances headed into January. The virtuosity of the film lies not with its symbolism or allusion, but with it’s careful, tight packing of story and character. More critically, complex familial stories are drawn out by several expert hands and, though nobody will agree, I found the multi-technique and multi-perspective approach approach of the film to be Tarantinoesque. I grimaced a bit at the casual privileging of artistic and intellectual figures, particularly in France, which is the bastion of phony philosophy. But if I can look the other way for Woody and his belief in Freud, I can look the other way here. I’m regretting my failure to find a place for Mike Leigh on the list more than ever, but Desplechin is a monstrous talent as well. Even if he really thinks drawing sketches of Greek myths makes you better than everyone else.

Best cinematic equivalent to a Fifteen song, including age-inappropriate sexual implications with somewhat plausible deniability: Pan’s Labyrinth

I feel like the only one who “got” this movie, which basically means I had a heavily subjective and 100% correct interpretation of it.  I strongly object to those critics who went out of their way to deem this powerful, old school fairy tale as being too strong for kids. Maybe it’s not in step with current pablum, simplified to the demands of dim mothers who invest the entirety of their own value in the quality of the babies they made and who therefore insist upon boilerplate meant to build entitlement irrespective of virtue, but hey, it teaches Spanish, just like Dora! And it’s not like anybody blows a fucking horse in the movie. It is intense, it can be scary and it is powerful for all of the right reasons. But is there anything in this film more “inappropriate” than the death of Bambi’s mother? Only if you regard children as mylar Care Bear balloons. The protagonist is a little girl who finds herself swept, along with her mother, into the home of a literally fascist patriarch. He demands acquiescence and she denies it. The Spanish Anarchists, who are obviously doomed to fail even if you don’t know history, put up a fight against her step dad, a right wing goon captain. Our hero is a little girl who buys the fairy tales, favors picture books to hard truths and is rewarded by being stabbed to death by a sadistic monster.

It’s one of the most honest films about being on the left, or to be more neutral, on the side of principle and social justice instead of whoever has the most power. The film is Spanish, but maybe it rings most true for the American in Dick’s big decade of rape. We lost every time (and will continue to). The sadists and the cash money perverts win every time. What is the value of being in the right, instead of grabbing for the shiny things during your short life? Well, the moral of this story is that life is all about your story, or in extreme cases, fairy tale. Ofelia, obsessed with her stories, perhaps well past the point of madness, demands that her own life measures up them.

Suppose they do win in the end, as they almost invariably do. 100 years from now, you’ll be dead either way. Regardless of whether it is ever retold, what will your story be? Did you capitulate and cower for a modest remuneration while ignoring the fact that others suffered? Or did you bear down and fight and go out like a fading champion? Maybe the oddest thing of all given that this is a male filmmaker and I am me and I am writing for Ruthless is that I find this to be the rare feminist film that is actually inspirational, rather than condescending or only saved from being condescending because the source itself is so stupid that it lacks the capacity to condescend. No blithering idiotically about how fashion is high art and how half wits who discuss nothing but clothes, babies and gagging on dick represent a mere difference in tone from those of us who can name a Supreme Court justice. But we have a heroine hemmed in by ageism, sexism and rightism who refuses to capitulate. Accuse her of wanton subjectivity, but, again she listens to her heart, writes her own story and destroys her chosen target, not by overpowering him, but by resisting his will until it snaps, and this fits best with a female character, whereas when I say “toady,” “cronies” or “goon,” you first imagine men.

Best political thriller: The President’s Last Bang

Yep, another spot for South Korea. And it could easily have been a couple more. Call me a trendy fuck, but I agree with the herd that the Koreans kicked ass this decade. I wonder how these little clusters of artistic achievement happen. There’s an economic phenomenon called agglomeration. It basically means that as the an industry thrives in an area, each of the component parts of that industry feed off and facilitate each other until one day, there’s no porn like the porn from the San Fernando Valley, though I think my textbook focused on the manufacture of small airplanes in Wichita, rather than T.T. Boy plugging Jill Kelly, as was the fashion at the time. With something as subjective as filmmaking, maybe you also need a vanguard of obvious brilliance, in the case of South Korea, that would be Park. Perhaps a champion from the mainstream, like Tarrantino. Then the more subtle talents are granted a world stage and everyone enjoys the cultural nuances that make a national cinema. Eventually, every one is like, “I get it, Koreans are insane and exist on a switch that moves back and forth from from utter repression to explosive catharsis. I wonder what Pakistanis are like.” Who knows? It’s certainly interesting how these little bubbles in places like Hong Kong, Romania, South Korea and even France ebb, flow and maybe burst. Malcolm Gladwell should write a half-assed book about it that I won’t read but will enjoy getting the gist of from an NPR interview. I can tell you a couple of things for sure, though. Many, probably, most of the SK films that have been celebrated in the West deserve the acclaim they received and probably more. Whatever your tastes might be, there were at least a few SK films this decade that would be just as much sure fire home runs to you as a hanging Chan-Ho Park pitch is to any competent major league hitter. The agglomeration was swinging and you’ll find many well constructed, acted and shot movies in many genres. However, investigating some of the domestic box office hits that didn’t quite make it to the West reveals that the dumb and bad in Korean film still holds a “Sabado Gigante”/”The King Of Queens” relationship to the dumb American film. I’d rest my case on My Boss, My Hero, which is a total turd that has seventeen sequels over the course of four years.

So I think this one is a case of a film that is made and seen because of the buzz around the national cinema. Not that director, Im Sang Soo isn’t a swinging dick. Not that the movie isn’t gorgeously shot and brilliantly executed, which is a big part of why it made the list. But it’s a movie about historical events that you are, at best, vaguely aware of and you sort of have to wiki it to really know what is going on. It is about how, in 1979, the dictator-ish president of South Korea, Park Chung-hee is assassinated by a small cell within his security team, led by his friend, who is director of the KIA. The film is often touted as a “black comedy,” which is an angle I think critics generally overplay because it makes it seem like they are getting something that you are not. But, while sardonic in tone, this is much more a historical, political thriller for me than a comedy. It’s fascinating on a few levels. South Korea wasn’t exactly a banana republic at the time, (largely thanks to this President’s efforts) and it was a major cold war front, so it’s pretty wild, just as an event unto itself, to watch this little group decide to assassinate the president and then, just do it. Though the motivations have been brewing, the decision and action are almost spontaneous (the best approach, if you think about it). The crime is meticulously recreated, from every angle. We get a look inside of the heads of everyone involved. The secondaries who are surprised by the assassination order, trying to man up and carry it out. The imported floozies who suddenly find themselves in the middle of a blood bath and spend hours hiding, wondering what the fuck is going on and if they are about to be killed. The high officials of the government who must react to this shock and decide how to handle it on the fly. Based on my own extensive research, The President was roughly a Thatcher/Reagan figure, using right wing measures with the ostensible aim of national prosperity, while himself, living la vida Kennedy. This makes it even more interesting that the KIA would play a role in bumping him off. Usually, it’s the guy who wants to nationalize the copper mines who gets snuffed by the military/intelligence community, with a bit of outside encouragement. And, indeed this was a domestically driven move. Was it a blow for South Korean Democracy? Was it something more personal, in that the President’s overindulgence in women and booze, coupled with his repression of dissent simply meant that he, as an individual, was becoming more king-like and less fit to govern, regardless of his place on the political spectrum? Well, that implication led to a successful defamation suit against the producers, to the tune of $100 million. Given that 95% of the people reading this haven’t seen the film, I’d sell it this way- a top shelf director is telling you the story of one of the great crimes of the century that you probably don’t know much about. Imagine a more politically laden Zodiac, with little to no foreknowledge of the the case and, yeah, a bit more humor. Also, it starts a bit slowly. Give it fifteen minutes.

Five Parting Shots:

Since I posted the first half of my top twenty, I’ve seen several other groups and critics copy my idea of a best of decade list. I’ve noticed that these shoddy imitations often feature films that, though they may have some outstanding qualities, do not belong on any such list. If you must copy me, at least wait until I release the correct answers and copy those. Don’t embarrass yourself by claiming that any random film that was halfway OK is one of the decades best.

Can I make another point? Yes, I can. Most of you are aware of this boneheaded cliche that persists among ignorant, limited, female writers who manage to grind out a living by labeling themselves as feminists. “Why are actresses awarded for playing either whores or hurderrdurrdurrmmmmm?” “Whore,” is the chosen word of the “feminist/scholar,” mind you. So, as someone often labeled a misogynist, I would like to point out that at least four of these latest ten films alone would not have even sniffed the list without great, strongly female characters and performances. And these characters were neither prostitutes, nor women who won the gold medal in men’s heavyweight boxing. Maybe the reason that there were so many more actresses who could carry box office in years past, is that they had great roles as women. No, no, surely the path forward is to cast Rebecca Lobo as the next Batman.

The top 3 “meh”s people are trying to pass off as the best films of the decade.

Waking Life:

Why is it interesting to watch famous actors ramble on about new age bullshit and “I’ve never actually read a work of philosophy” philosophy? Linklater’s Slacker was good because we knew that the ramblings came from a collection of fools, weirdos and radicals. It was fun. Waking Life is supposed to be good because it used rotoscope animation. Seriously, I read several reviews trying to decipher the praise for the film at the time, and it came down to “lucid dreaming, trippy mayne!” and “Animationz!” The films’ reputation has grown like a mushroom in shitty dark and now it’s bandied about as one of the best of the decade. If that’s the criterion we’re going with, I think it’s only fair to agree that one of the best films of the decade is Charles Schwab Commercials. It’s been proven in study after study that top flight financial prognosticators can’t beat the dart board. Why pay for anything more than basic advice on distributing risk? The best case scenario is that you are being duped into paying for pure guesswork. The worst case is that you’ll be swindled by a Madoff. This seems more useful to me than Ethan Hawke wondering what it would be like to be a goldfish. The Schwab commercials are also in rotoscope.

Almost Famous:

Would that it were so!

May God damn the soul Cameron Crowe, the A+ student of the film world, to the unrelenting suffering of hell. Yes, he’s really good at producing uninspired, boring tripe that tells middle aged, boring people what they like to hear. I’m sure that, as an actual student, he could churn out a great paper that regurgitated the teacher’s views on Hamlet’s sanity and he’s been churning out the same shit ever since, receiving accolades for products that feel like they should ultimately be pinned to his mom’s ‘fridge. Special thanks for inflicting a decade of Kate Hudson on us, which was justified largely with her portrayal of a historically bullshit character: a cum dumpster who is really an angel… but then she is not quite an angel. How real and bittersweet! You’ve taken a character who, in real life, would have a reservoir tip on top of her head, tried to sell us on the idea that she’s actually interesting and virtuous, but then taken a “realist” turn in revealing that she’s a little bit tainted after all. I’m going to puke. On you. After ingesting poison. Hopefully, there will still be enough poison in my system to kill me.

Silent Light:

This one really pains me, because Silent Light has some of the most gorgeous scenes of the decade. I really hate hyperbole about this shit, because when I tell you that the opening ten minutes are among the most astonishing pieces of film I’ve ever seen, it sounds like I’m bullshitting. But I speak the troof. Every scene looks like a dream made of candy bars. I don’t know how or why one movie looks so great compared to the others, but let me redress one of the wrongs I attributed to reviewers, including myself, earlier in this piece. The cinematographer, whatever his name is, not the director, Carlos Reygadas, is the genius here. This film is so gorgeous that it almost deserves the top 10 spots it’s getting. But the reasons it does not deserve this acclaim are equally clear. Too much is contrived. I’d kind of like to peer into the world of Mennonites for real, but I’m not so interested in them as a trump card in the game of “look at the minorities I can tolerate!”As pretty as it was to look at, I winced at the contrived, overlong kiss between the the simple, blue-eyed farmer who looked kind of like the Pillsbury Doughman and his aquiline mistress. At some point, maybe eleven or twelve minutes into the forced kiss, The Saw Nose vs. The Soft Eyes resembled a Godzilla movie. Also, if you are a casual film enthusiast you should always be on the lookout for the “anything that is kind of like a Tarkovsky film is genius!” fad. Don’t be duped. While I’d encourage everyone to see this film, and the other two in this category are barely worth seeing at all, I feel like somebody had to say something.

1 very strangely not given it’s due: ABC Africa

ABC Africa is great. I honestly value the cinematic pseudo-intelligentsia. It’s easy enough to blast them for their stupid conformity and their attempts at academic legitimacy through embracing the exclusionary. But on the other hand, if everything were left up to the top newspapers, we would probably not know who Kiarostami is and Sea Biscuit would be on this list. One thing I like and agree with the pretend-geniuses of this decade about is their eagerness to privilege films that give us a look into unknown corners of the world, like Jai’s rural China. This pseudo tourism is the most underrated aspect of seeing foreign films. It is what ABC Africa pushes, and I am buying.

So now that too many know the name, Kiarostami’s film is dismissed as a mere home movie. It is not that, but let’s pretend it is- what is wrong with one of the world’s greatest filmmakers creating a visual travelogue? Are you curious about the rest of the world? Do you wonder what the rest of the world thinks about the rest of the world? If you answer “yes,” this film can only be regarded as a treasure. A man from an alien culture, who happens to be a great filmmaker, tools into a far less fortunate culture that is alien to him and us and he shoots the results. He plays with the of filming people, who play with being filmed. We get the feeling of a vicarious visit, and of the world through another person’s eyes. Not interested? Here, I have a ball. Perhaps you’d like to bounce it. I found it more intriguing than the “Paris” and “Tokyo” compilations and hope that those types of talents move instead, to emulate ABC Africa. I’d jump at the chance to see Breillait’s “home movies” of Saudi Arabia. I want to see my city of Los Angeles through the “home movies” of Wong Kar Wai. And the phrase “Soderbergh’s ‘home movies’ of Shanghai” makes me drool. Charitable motivations appreciated, but not required.

Number 21: Bad Santa

I’m just going to have to fall into critical cliche here. One reason Bad Santa is so good is its realism, and it’s willingness to look at the realities that the characters face. It would be easy enough to make a film about a drunkard Santa who throws up on kids and is totally out of control! In fact, that might even be a pretty fun movie. But Bad Santa and Billy Bob manage to hang on to that aspect, and balance it with the realities of depressive alcoholism. Having Billy Bob beat the shit out of a band of bullies in their early teens was one of the most fun and overdue scenes of the decade. And if he’d he’d fucked them up proper to the tune of missing teeth and broken noses, the film would have cracked the top 20 easily. That’s fun, but the movie only really clicks if you click with Billy Bob fantasizing about being dead. The writing is accurate enough, that I’d imagine whoever is responsible is dead by now. “You’re an emotional fucking cripple. Your soul is dog shit. Every single fucking thing about you is ugly.” I’m pretty sure you can only write something like that with yourself in mind. Maybe an exaggerated version of yourself, wallowing in pessimism. But that only makes it better.

Tagline:

Reanimated. Rearmed. The Ultimate Rematch.

Entire Story in Fewer Words than Are in this Sentence:

Dolph and Jean-Claude convalesce, reunite with clothes on

Homoeroticsim:

Universally absent. With Andrei Arlovski on board I thought for sure we would witness a sweaty kimura or shirtless takedown at the very least but no, nothing substantial to report. Dolph and Van Damme exchange an uncomfortable moment before they man-wrangle that should be understood within the context of how poorly the Belgian has aged compared to his Swedish contemporary. In JC’s defense, he can still lob a pretty vicious pacemaker, er, haymaker when provoked. The pre-fight silence is awkward and Dolph, further deranged by his recent cloning, begins mumbling about how he wants to say something to his old private but can’t remember what. Perhaps, “Should we finally fuck now?” He never really spits it out but a “g00k traitor” also comes to mind. And what the hell was Dolph doing in this movie other than to be handed one of the greatest novelty deaths in the history of cinema? More on that later.

Corpse Count:

Elevated. At least 73 bloodied bodies flew across the screen in such relentless heaps I could hardly stay focused. As meticulous as I tried to keep my notes, the final count could very well be as high as 80. This movie is fucking violent. Aside from a bodyguard who gets rearranged by a car, virtually everyone else is shot, stabbed, blown up, or punched to death.

UniSol Corpse Count:

Six, including Dolph, who was onscreen for about ten minutes. The roughhousing between the 4th nameless UniSol and Arlovski (an NGU: New Generation UniSol) makes for a better MMA fight than I’ve seen in recent memory. Also, Andrei is 6′4″which is admirable, but he is totally wearing platforms because he lumbers around like a Belarusian Yao Ming.

How Bad Is It Really?

Compared to, say, The Return, it’s actually quite good despite taking itself a little serious. Wall-to-wall carnage coupled with fairly inoffensive acting and backed by an adequate budget makes for one hell of an entertaining straight-to-video. Much of the film is shot in a gritty, muted grayscale indicative of the fallout that permeates the setting and there’s some pretty competent fight choreography to boot. The score is unusually creepy for an action flick. It’s like Alien meets The Thing, but given the state of JC’s visage and the fact that the UniSols are repeatedly referred to as “freaks” it’s not entirely out of place. Sure, the plot is thin and predictable. A grungy rabble of Russian freedom fighters have abducted the prime minister’s children and taken them to the ruins surrounding the Chernobyl power plant, threatening to blow up reactor #3 if their comrades aren’t released from prison. Not exactly the safest place to sit around drinking vodka and waiting for demands to be met but we are talking about the Ukraine. For no legitimate reason the rebels are joined by a rogue American scientist and his pet Andrei “The Pitbull” Arlovsky.

Over in Switzerland, another scientist is helping JC attempt to live a normal life as part of a Universal Soldier rehabilitation program that clearly isn’t going well because he’s still spending most of his time moping around, assaulting people, and casting his trademark empty stare. We hear him grind through a few lines here and there but he is largely uninvolved until the end. A third really smart scientist has kept some random Gen-1 Soldiers on ice over the years so we confidently send them in to pacify the Chernobyl insurrection. They are all quickly dispatched by the former UFC champ– two gutted, one impaled, and one triangled into UniSol heaven. Fearing the worst, and because Eastern Europe has fallen into a state of limp-wristed compliance, the prime minister collapses and agrees to release some prisoners. Enter Van Damage.

While the splitting of his legs redefined the 80s action genre, I always thought JC was robbed of his Cobra moment, his Commando moment, that golden moment where he could abandon the flexing, training, tanning, and apply it to a greater purpose. Well, my friends, that moment has finally arrived. JC is abducted by the military and forced onto a treadmill, pumped full of horse semen®, and turned loose. All told he slices, dices, lacerates and emasculates his way through no less than 30 rebels before confronting Dolph and Arlovski. It’s an absolute joy to watch. In fact, I’m convinced that the Muscles from Brussels passed up a spot in The Expendables because he finally silenced the nagging little specter that’s haunted him since the heyday with this career-defining killing spree. At last we have our lobotomized butcher!

Novelty Death:

I guess it makes sense that JC would be lumpy and haggard at this point but I seem to remember Dolph being fed through a giant bale shredder in the first movie. Point is, our two legends rumble through the radiated ghost town in a clash that rivals any of the old classics, and without the banter. They punch and throw each other down dusty hallways and over crumbling walls for several minutes before crashing out of a window. At this point JC grabs a burr-encrusted pipe and slams it through the front of Dolph’s skull. Then he slides the barrel of a shotgun into said pipe and makes his own little Lundgrenobyl.

Stupid Political Content:

Holed up in the twisted industrial wreckage of the Soviet Union’s greatest technological folly, the Ruskies are portrayed as nothing more than disheveled drunks. One unfortunate stooge is so caked in soot he appears to have been spat out of a muffler. In America, however, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it because we get better with age. Not only did we win the Cold War but 20 years later we will rub it in by demonstrating that a reasonably fit 50-year-old can take down an army of hapless Dimitrovs and Pishtolovs with little effort. Not to be overlooked are the obvious benefits that will come with the advancement of biomedical gerontology.

Was There An Atomic Blast At The End?

No, but there would’ve been had JC not wrenched the detonator from reactor #3 and driven it into Arlovski’s back. The subsequent explosion is satisfying enough but the biggest blast is the one you’ll have watching this murder picnic.

What You Learned:

Got a couple of bullets lodged in your torso? Been toppled from several high places lately? Stabbed a few times? A light jog and some fresh air should clear it right up.

Shirley Adams

There are some events in life that are truly impossible to understand unless they happen to you. Nothing can prepare you for coping with such situations, and empathy is forever out of reach. Shirley Adams is a single mother living in Cape Town, and her son was left as a quadriplegic (with some arm use) after being shot in the spine by thugs. The event is not portrayed, nor any reason given for the event, and rightly so since such things are meaningless for those left to pick up the pieces. Her husband left, and it is suggested that an inability to deal with his son was the reason. While avoiding melodrama, Shirley Adams gets across just how thankless a task it is to care for someone who is left a shell of his former self. The son is unable to provide even minimal self-care due to being physically shattered, and emotionally he is a husk, as he is well aware of the empty life left ahead of him. This is better than just about any film I have ever seen about the complexities of the aftermath of tragedy. It is messy, incomplete, and fraught with abrupt shifts in tone, just as it should be.

Shirley’s son attempts suicide by pill ingestion, which is extraordinarily difficult to do when you cannot use your hands. Shirley cannot understand how this feels, nor the drive for suicide; she does not pretend to. She just keeps working, and doing her best to take care of him. We are taken through the daily routines, cooking, cleaning, dealing with money and medication shortages due to being unable to work steadily, bathing him. Daily work, with no end in sight, no crying, no emotion if at all possible. The question of why this happened, and why her son was shot never comes up, though it is made clear the question circulates through her mind every moment of every day. There is a wonderful sequence where the boys who perpetrated the crime are caught, and it is made clear just how hollow any sense of victory is after the tragedy has already taken place. The mother and the son no longer have any reason to care about this, and the absurdity of daily life is written on their faces. A social worker drops by to work with her son, and her naivete is as plain and awkward as a newborn impala. She may want to find a way to help, but can never be savvy to whether that help is wanted or needed. Her ability to wake him out of his funk has an unexpected result, but then, one can never predict the effect people can have on one another.

Shirley Adams is filmed with a claustrophobic eye, often choking the viewer – this is not a comfortable film to watch as it often hits rather close to home. The technique is often jarring, and pitch-perfect. Oliver Hermanus filmed this for SABC television, but it comes off as feature film quality. The central performance by Denise Newman is bold and unflinching, and one can hope she finds equally challenging roles in the future. The resolution is as random (yet strangely expected) as anything else in the film, just as the tragedies and triumphs of life are often random and not interested in whatever plans you have previously made. Life goes on. Or not. What Shirley Adams conveys with astute observations is the relative lack of meaning in our direction; there is only the drive to survive, which not everyone has. Even more crucially, one cannot comprehend what it is like to live with disability. Those who are cut down are locked in their perspective, and those who remain whole are in theirs.

Thorn In The Heart

Michel Gondry is one of the more exciting directors today, crafting some of the more revolutionary (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) or at least clever (Science of Sleep) films that consider what it means to be human, which is an elusive and complicated subject to say the least. It is surprising, then, that his new film is such a meandering slog. The subject of this documentary is Gondry’s aunt, who taught classes at various levels in the south of France… and that is about it. She tells stories, expresses regret about one of her sons who has been a ‘thorn in her heart’, and we revisit some of the places she lived in her youth in this traipse down memory lane. The question of why this demanded an actual film is left unanswered, except that Gondry has the resources to make a movie. It really is little beyond an assemblage of home movies with a few interesting scenes thrown in with no overall vision. There is one such scene where the ruins of a former school are resuscitated for one night as they show a film for the locals who have gathered in what is now a forest clearing. Probably the most inessential film of the year apart from Nightmare on Elm Street.

Point Traverse
It is convention in cinema that the protagonist is someone special (otherwise, why tell a story about them?), destined for greatness. A chosen one on the hero’s journey, or perhaps an ordinary individual who must triumph over incredible odds. This artifice bleeds off the screen and into popular culture and the life of the viewer as one identifies with those onscreen. I like to think this plays a part in the entitled psychology of this generation. It is deeply satisfying to see this convention left for dead in Point Traverse, one of the best features of the year so far. An ordinary story is told with solid craft by Albert Shin in a confident feature debut. The background subtext, as persistent as the fluorescent overhead lighting in a fast food restaurant, is the uncomfortably bleak but practical question “What if I was not destined for greatness… or anything at all?” Fortunately this existential trip without specific direction has more than its share of interesting stops, all relating to the central theme.

The opening shots are drenched in the realism of drudgery; Adwin works in a small town burger place, generally by himself, and seems content with this responsibility and the steady paychecks spent on his solitary apartment. Cael is a drifter, hitching rides and going from one random place to crash after another, stealing when possible to stay alive. Cael went to school with Adwin; presumably neither saw a reason to go past high school. In short, one is tethered to a stable job and an adequate life, the other is in dire poverty but is completely free. The characters are neither eloquent or particularly self-aware, and the film is devoid of expository dialogue, requiring you to read between the lines to understand who these people are and how we relate to them. Our plot, what little there is, sets in motion when Cael drops in on Adwin to hang out for a while before moving on to the next town. Nothing is revealed apart from their circumstances, and Adwin and Cael drink the night away. There is no overt reflection on this night, at least not immediately. The only progression in the story is that of character development, which is largely wordless.

Adwin and Cael are on two opposite sides of a looking glass, and they wonder, with remarkably internal performances, what lies on the other side. For Cael, freedom is his prison, and the source of his crushing poverty. He gets a job, and a girlfriend, but his habits make it impossible to keep one, then the other. And he moves on as always. Adwin glares balefully at the tools of his trade and begins to wonder what else there is in life. He hires a girl and cultivates a relationship, but being a pathologically lonely social retard, this does not go the way he plans. All he has is the dead-eyed endurance that allows him to do well in his job. In one exemplary scene, he is sawing chicken carcasses, and the scene stretches… a little too long. Similar to how a word hanging in the air long enough becomes awkward, he considers his situation and the silence magnifies his absurd existence. Such nothingness itself can organically grow tension, much as Jean-Pierre Melville would as he advised his cinematographer “Kiddo, let’s stretch this one out a bit.” Both Adwin and Cael tread water in their isolation, but this isolation has emotional investment. There is a murder, but it has no import or relevance to the story; at least, no more than the trees the people trudge through, the lakes they overlook, the mountains that stare down upon them. Such things will stand long after our minimal existences cease, and function as signposts for those who walk by.

So much of Point Traverse is a blank slate (filled with symbolism and beautifully shot moments, of course) that one is free to project and consider their own lives in a similar context. In a way, your enjoyment may depend on what you bring to the theatre, and whether you are in the mood for something entertaining in its own right, but with room to stretch out and get philosophical.

Izulu Lami (My Secret Sky)

Films taking place in the most impoverished parts of the world begin their lives at high risk of devolving into tragedy porn, and it takes a sure hand to steer the ship into such troubled waters without losing an audience. There is nothing worse than feeling manipulated, even if the goals of the manipulator are noble. Izulu Lami, a remarkable new film from South Africa, avoids sentiment and hokey cliche in favor of a narrative designed to bring its audience to understand the life of an orphan in one of the most harsh places in the world to be one. Shot on location in KwaZulu-Natal, a boy and girl watch their mother die, ostensibly of HIV/AIDS, and their world falls apart quickly. All they have left in the world is a woven mat their mother completed just before her death, and it comes to embody their hopes for the near future. This is nowhere near as precious as it sounds – Izulu Lami is a surprisingly cynical and knowing film.

There are an estimated 11 million children orphaned in sub-Saharan Africa, and HIV is only one of the causes (about 70% in this part of the world). Rural areas are unusually affected due to a relative lack of preventive education and support services. When parents die, the only common solution is for distant relatives to adopt them, and so they do for the benefit check. Often they are exploited in ways physical or sexual that the community tends to ignore. Izulu Lami nails this sense of the world crumbling beneath the feet of the two children as their aunt sells off everything of value before leaving forever. Funerals happen in every community, no matter how small, every single weekend, and this sort of thing is common enough to be accepted. They are left with a bare house of no value – but the older girl has managed to hide the potentially valuable mat. The village prays to the ancestors and ancients to protect these children as the myth of universal African generosity is skewered mercilessly. It is satisfying to see these cliches burned at the stake – Africans are no more or less greedy than anyone else, and this intensifies if the dead relative had the AIDS curse. The children are more than poor – they are untouchable.

Left with few options, they decide to flee for the city – that other cliched source of hope and boundless optimism. There is a white priest there who had purchased a mat from their mother in the past, and perhaps he would favor them this time. They do not have a name, only a photo and maybe an address. But Durban is a five hour drive from their remote village, and these children are wandering on foot. The journey is a difficult one, made all the worse by their discovery that kindness is hard to come by. Eventually they reach the sprawling urban center of Durban, only to find that religious figures are of no help to anonymous street kids like them. The only assistance they can find is of the accidental kind, as a glue-sniffing street kid, played with considerable charisma and presence by Tshepang Mohlomi, lends a hand while figuring out how to wring some money from these farm children. Sobahle Mkhabase turns in a complicated performance as the young girl who must obtain some street smarts in a hurry or the city will swallow them whole.

In the end, the mat along with any other potential source of hope turns out as false as the supposed cohesion of their home village. Izulu Lami takes a fascinating and circuitous route in showing that true hope only comes from within; any external source is worthless. In a quiet scene with considerable emotional punch, the children set aflame not only a source of such false hope, but a symbol their ancestors, their religion and everything that failed to provide even minimal solace. It is only too common that children orphaned by AIDS in Africa must fend for themselves. For these two children, there is no way out, but there may be a way through. Izulu Lami is at turns funny and heartbreaking, but above all else it is grounded in reality.

The Exploding Girl

The movement of aggressively quirky, ironically detached cinema has given way to more dreary mumblecore dramas with pretensions of neorealism, which in a way is like meningitis becoming a persistent vegetative state; less of an emergency during which you shit yourself, more of a languid bore that is easily forgotten. In that vein, let us explore, and then promptly ignore The Exploding Girl. This is a tale of love lost and then sort of found again, which is something you have experienced unless you have been aborted in the first trimester.

The Girl in question has a boyfriend, Greg, who moves across the country, and the two have a long distance relationship. As so often happens, one (in this case Greg) loses interest and finds someone else. Meanwhile, a guy from her college moves in with her and her mom (since his parents sublet his room) and the two begin to gel in the way people do when not afflicted by agoraphobia. This is nothing you have not seen before, and is crushingly straightforward without the benefit of an incompetent director to bring something interestingly ludicrous to the table. This whole thing is so much more inconsequential on the big screen than in real life.

I wish I had more to say on the matter, but there just isn’t much here. An element of drama is attempted as the girl has a seizure disorder which manifests itself when she drinks too much after being dumped. This gimmick adds nothing of value other than unnecessary metaphor. Meanwhile, I managed to compose an elaborate grocery list and read The Onion twice. So, at least you can get something useful done if you wish to see The Exploding Something Something.

Mid-August Lunch

Ferragosto is the harvest festival, traditionally at the end of summer, reduced from one solid month of faffing about in Roman times to a single day of celebration in the present. With that setting, Gianni is about to host his own small, but significant festival in his flat. Gianni takes care of his 93-year-old mother, and lost his regular job, making it impossible to pay rent. Fortunately, his landlord has a solution: watch his mother so he can get away for the weekend. As it happens, additional professionals drop off their elderly family members to cancel out unpaid debts, and our hero is running a miniature assisted living facility. This lighthearted and gentle farce is a considerable change of pace for the director of Gomorrah, to put it mildly. It does not have a larger point to make, apart from noting that a lust for life can last well into the twilight years, barring onset of dementia. These ladies are very much alive, ready for one glass of wine after another, dancing, and enjoying the fine cuisine that our long-suffering host can provide. Initially this is a burden for him, as these women are quite the handful. One in particular is all about the bar scene, nipping out to troll for ass and then drunkenly trying to seduce Gianni. This is not a ham-handed commentary about neglect of senior citizens, it is just a slice of life plugged into a cooking-heavy film where everyone has a glass of vino in hand at all times.

Mid-August Lunch is brisk, and almost slight enough to blow away with the breeze. One grounding aspect is Gianni’s push well past middle age. He seems to understand just where he is headed, and can only hope to appreciate the time he has left as much as his charges do. This effortlessly charming film is funny, and emotionally involving without a hint of manipulation, never for a moment overstaying its welcome.

Sweetgrass

Touted as a beautifully shot look at the life of sheep farmers in Montana, Sweetgrass had considerable potential as a meditative look at an extraordinarily lonely job. On these terms, Sweetgrass works reasonably well, though it is so distanced from its subject that one is left with a sort of ‘huh’ feeling at the end. The landscape photographs well, and the director manages to capture not only the beauty, but the unforgiving roughness of the terrain. Odd scenes such as the opening shot of a sheep staring gormlessly into the camera evokes a mood rather than offering illumination into how such a life is lived. The ranch hands take their sheep on epic strolls across the mountains to graze on public lands (until 2003 this was the case), a massive effort with shorn wool as the fruit of their labor.

It captures the absurdities inherent in the life of a cowboy in the modern age; open grazing is coming to an abrupt end as factory farms produce nearly all of our food supply. Sheep no longer scrabble along ridges for sweet grass – they are jammed into massive warehouses and fed chemical mixtures with antibiotics. The men working this herd do not appear to enjoy their jobs, or at least that is the impression given by one hand who is raving about the motherfucking terrain, the cocksucking sheep, and his son of a bitching knee. He needs to walk on it considering his dog is too exhausted to even stand, and his horse is approaching lame status thanks to the fucking piece of shit mountain. Times change, and Sweetgrass considers the end of this way of life.

Check back for longer individual reviews of the following films from Wisconsin Film Festival: The Law, Cell 211, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, A Film With Me In It, and Police, Adjective.

Maybe it’s the fact that I once fucked a carpet cleaner telemarketing chick who was his doppelganger. Or perhaps it’s the voice like Orson Welles, combined with that unforgettable ginger afro, that does the trick. Even more, it could simply be that he incurred the wrath of Zeus for killing off all the winged horses save Pegasus. Or his obsession with whipping the shit out of, well, everything. Whatever it is, Calibos is the heart, soul, and ravaged-mug center of Clash of the Titans. He’s brutish, deceitful, cruel, and not above sending a giant vulture into a woman’s room to steal her spirit for a night of masturbation. Even after losing a hand to the dreaded Perseus, he dusts himself off and fashions a pitchfork for a new appendage. He’s arguably one of the cinema’s most misunderstood villains, as his punishment – banishment to the marshes and that god-awful skin tone – was hardly deserved for such minor crimes. Zeus, typically self-righteous and sanctimonious despite raping damn near half the lower world’s unsuspecting mortals (usually disguised as an animal, no less) craved vengeance, not justice. Typically, Zeus exempted his own kin, preferring the children of other gods to punish. What is a man cursed to look like a deformed devil to do? And his cry – “Remember me how I was!” – is simply devastating to behold.

2. Bobo

The only thing more surprising than America not being taken by storm with a Bobo toy craze in the early 80’s was Harry Hamlin’s insistence on calling the little bugger “Boo-Boo.” All clicks, chirps, burps, and peeps, his disarming means of communication is a curious combination of a cuckoo clock, R2-D2, and a Jethro Tull flute solo. And who could forget Burgess Meredith’s cry as he first entered the scene: “By the gods! An owl!” No ordinary owl, my good man. He not only lights the trail for Perseus and his band of brave souls, he steals the Eye from the Stygian witches, signals oncoming danger, and isn’t so proud that he can’t trip and fall like a reasonable comic sidekick. He’s cute and cuddly to boot, never more so than when he stretches his mechanical limbs after a good night’s sleep.

3. Medusa

Yet another poor mortal given the shaft by an unreasonable Zeus, the former beauty was shackled with a serpent tail, rattle, and snake-infested weave after being raped by Poseidon in the Temple of Aphrodite. Even then, so many centuries ago, women were blamed for having the audacity to be on the cock end of a sexual assault. At the very least, she was blessed with incredible bow hunting skills. And that rattle! It’s one of the creepiest memories of my early years, especially when it continues to pierce the silence after her beheading. Murdered by Perseus for no good reason, she gamely defended her turf until being tricked into spilling her bloody cocktail sauce throughout her dimly lit chamber. At least she’s given the last laugh by ending the Kraken’s reign of terror, thereby sticking it to that Poseidon cocksucker.

4. Laurence Olivier

As if the Jazz Singer remake wasn’t enough, the world’s greatest thespian couldn’t resist yet another slumming exercise to rid himself of the demons that forced him into dreck like Hamlet and Othello. Giving Zeus every last ounce of his talent, he ignored the ever-present Pink Floyd light show behind his head and managed to make lines like, “You set him down half-naked in a despairing city?”, ring with eternal truth. Or when punishing Calibos: “He will become abhorrent to human sight!” His gusto seemed a bit forced when he yammered to Perseus on the shield, whispering, “Find, and fulfill your destiny,” as if half-awake and fully stoned. And who else could pull clay statues from a wall and shape their destinies in a scale model of an amphitheater, as if playing with childish army men? Sure, it was just a paycheck and likely something he bitched about in his final days, but he never let on during the film. He’s the legend this masterpiece needed to survive the nitwit who played Andromeda.

5. Harry Hamlin

All lips and cleft chin, his cause is nowhere near as compelling as a half-dozen other characters, but I refuse to be the first and only to refuse those pecs their moment in the sun. Oiled, bronzed, and in possession of the decade’s greatest non-Michael Landon head of hair, Hamlin deserved the stardom that followed, even if no one could remember whether or not the lad could actually act. Still, his character is introduced in one of the cinema’s greatest montages, where he ages a full two decades in a matter of seconds. One minute he’s walking naked with his mother, the next he’s standing atop a majestic steed, furiously leaving behind an indifferent sea. And when he’s not pursing his kisser like the male model he longed to be, he fished, sunbathed, and looked altogether fabulous. We believe Andromeda would crave a peek behind the loincloth, and just as strongly, understand why Calibos would fear him so.

6. The Witches

Who needs Macbeth when you have these three lovely ladies; blind, damn near deaf, and sadistic enough to boil passersby in their cauldron of cruelty. Ah, but they also possess the wisdom of the ages, leading Perseus to Medusa’s island home, as well as giving away the Kraken’s Achilles’ Heel. And the eye! It’s all they really have, and when taken away, it reduces them to a screeching, slobbering mob. “Give us back the eye!” one yelps, as if possessed by the wrath of the very gods who mock her plight. Still, no moment tops the one witch who, when contemplating the battle royale between the Kraken and Medusa’s severed, though still-lethal head, cries, “A titan against a titan!” It’s a unique moment of triumph, and one these isolated, attention-starved women desperately need. They make the most of their brief scene, and who doesn’t want to slap the shit out of Perseus when he tosses back the eye, cruelly shouting, “Here, catch!” It’s the only real reason why we root like hell for the giant scorpions.

7. The Kraken

Few things are as priceless as the sea-swept looks of orgasmic awe on Poseidon’s face when he lets loose the Kraken on Zeus’ orders, but the Kraken’s emergence from the ocean comes pretty damn close. As unjustly murdered as Calibos or Medusa, he’s simply following orders, whether that means coming to steal away the world’s most beautiful woman or flooding a once proud city, killing every last inhabitant, including the wretch who set all this shit in motion to begin with by placing Perseus and his mother in a coffin and setting them upon the waves. And why does that dude remain standing amidst rubble, rising waters, and shifting ground, acting as if he’s Joe Cocker having a stroke? No matter, as the Kraken is the epitome of catastrophic efficiency, rising from his lair for but a single purpose. As it’s less about wrath and savagery than a need to please his master, the Kraken remains a tragic figure, doomed to die for the lust of a slow-witted mortal. The Kraken is all muscle and might, while Perseus needs magic helmets, swords, and shields – as well as the intervention of the gods, no less – to so much as wipe his ass.

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10: COBRA

Cobra skewers and roasts Night Slasher

At number 10, the final death in Cobra is like the Tim Duncan to the Jordans, Kobes, and Lebrons of the other elite 80s Action deaths- perhaps it’s not the most flashy or memorable scene, but when you sit down and look at the end product, everything you could ask for is there-

1) Set in a factory that somehow uses giant hooks to manufacture large quantities of sparks and molten steel. Though obviously abandoned, the factory is humming along at full capacity, which includes like 20 random small fires. I’m not sure about the business model of the facility, but the scene opens with a hook rolling ominously behind the villain in a foreshadowing that can only be called artful.

2) Excellent foreplay. The back and forth between Cobra and Night Slasher over who will penetrate whom with what and their discourse on the failings of the liberal criminal justice system is a fine prelude, as educational as it is erotic. Did you know that it’s illegal for a cop to shoot a man who is threatening to kill him while armed with a sawed-off in one hand and a giant knife that is studded with smaller knives in the other hand? Night Slasher calls Cobra a pig at least four dozen times before finally demanding “take me in. Pig.” Out come the chains–not that there’s anything gay about leather-clad men calling each other “pig” during chain play.

3) Inept women. The bad chick briefly comes to the aid of Night Slasher, postponing his death for two minutes by jumping on Stallone’s back as Sly is about to squeeze the trigger, which has helpfully been labeled “fire.” She is promptly blasted. Stallone’s chick is of even less help, cowering in hiding, rather than blindsiding Night Slasher when he seems poised to kill Stallone. In an 80s Action male encounter, the only function of women is to remind us of their uselessness.

4) Great performances. Obviously, Sly is one of the greatest people ever to live. But Kudos also go to Brian Thompson. While blessed with simian sex appeal, he’s not afraid to die shrieking like a woman. Too many of the stuntmen and karate consultants who die in 80s action go out with pride, depriving us of the satisfaction of a final display of cowardice and agony. Not Thompson who, finally stuck on Sly’s steel, wails and claws pointlessly at the point of penetration in his back as he is dragged to immolation. He even tries to protect himself against a raging blast furnace by covering his face with his arm. Small deduction for going limp when he reaches the flames, rather than emitting a final, blood curdling scream, but this remains an elite novelty death.

5) Pre-mortem one liner: This is where the law stops… and I start.

9: ROADHOUSE

Local man unable to continue living without throat

Marshall Teague’s epic demise in Roadhouse ranks right up there with the very best novelty deaths that 80s action has to offer. While the mode of death is fairly unique, it’s the gritty, sweat-drenched pre-mortem fight that makes it one of my personal favorites. Teague’s character, Jimmy, is the embodiment of what you want in an 80s action henchman- he’s cocksure, wears an earring, leaves his chest exposed, has an accomplished martial arts background, and after knocking out the token fat guy, he uses the dude’s belly to vault himself onto a stage with a pool cue. Swayze, however, is the peaceful warrior– calm, calculating, and possibly heterosexual. Yet from the moment we see the two of them on screen together we know a bloody engagement of some kind is imminent.

After blowing up the old landlord’s house, Jimmy rides off on a dirt bike, stops to look back at his handiwork, and laughs the kind of ridiculous bad guy laugh that cracks me up every time I see it. Swayze, meanwhile, is wearing nothing but tight gray sweats and a beaming coat of oil. The two square off near a small pond and it isn’t long before Jimmy takes Swayze from behind in a chokehold and says, “I used to fuck guys like you in prison.” Now interpret this however you want but Jimmy is gay; it’s clear from the beginning what he’s interested in. When he realizes that he cannot have our hero, he decides that nobody will, and pulls a gun. “I’m gonna kill you the old fashioned way,” he says. What’s the new way, you ask? Right, Swayze knocks the gun into the air and promptly rips Jimmy’s throat out with his bare hands before kicking him facedown into the water. Somehow Jimmy lets out a final audible grunt despite missing a good portion of his neck.

Kelly Lynch shows up at the end of the fray to see if Jimmy is alive because she’s hot, sympathetic, and useless. Okay, she also happens to be a doctor. After discovering that there is nowhere on Jimmy’s neck to check for a pulse, she stands up and casts a disapproving scowl at Swayze, who she awkwardly fucked mere nights before, and walks away without a word. Naturally Swayze becomes enraged. He hauls the corpse into the pond and sends it adrift to be carried out by a pretty damn strong current in what amounts to little more than an Olympic-size swimming pool. While Teague’s death is only a preamble to the symphony of murder Patrick conducts at Jackie Treehorn’s mansion, it remains in 9th position for obvious reasons.

8: DEATH WISH III

Bullet proof vest < rocket launcher

Death Wish is one of the seminal films of 80s action and therefore, the Western Cannon. The innovations of the film would echo through countless depictions of inept cops, unpunished criminals and hot, steamy vigilantism. I don’t know how legendary 80s Action producers, Golan and Globus–-figures celebrated alongside the likes of Yitzhak Rabin and Golda Meir in their native Israel– got their hands on the franchise, but it took their genius to improve upon such a classic. With some critical examination they saw that, for all of Death Wish’s greatness, there was fat to be trimmed and replaced with lean muscle. Rather than squandering running time on a coherent story line, they could have Bronson kill a bunch more people. Instead of a compelling, emotional core, why not a bigger gun? Lesser filmmakers would have run into a dead end were they to follow this line of thought, because the conventional (and inferior) story elements (such as character development) used to build to a climax have been replaced by violence and hardware. Where do you go after ninety minutes of Bronson blasting thugs with the biggest hand gun in the world? It seems like a question with no answer.

Until you see Bronson use a rocket launcher to kill one guy. At close range. Inside a small apartment. But, given that the gloriously reverse-mohawked villain, Fraker, is wearing a bullet proof vest, it’s the only logical solution. Fraker has already been shot half a dozen times. The way bulletproof vests work is that, if you are shot, you pass out. Then you spring back to life and have the drop on everyone. Everyone, that is, who doesn’t happen to keep an anti-tank weapon by the phone, next to a pencil and paper for taking messages. Bronson blasts Fraker, turns half the apartment into a flaming hole, and Fraker’s scant, smoking remains become a spectacle for passers by on the street bellow. The scene worked so well that there was no real choice but to rehash it in the Death Wish 4 climax.

7: OUT FOR JUSTICE

Italian scum beaten almost as badly as he deserves

There is no movie in Seagal’s catalog that better demonstrates his streak of sadism than Out for Justice. Virtually every scummy, unlaundered guido in Brooklyn gets beaten to an oily pulp at some point. Nobody escapes. Hell, even a Chinaman and a crusty Irish boxer get their asses handed to them on a silver platter. But when the dust is settled and the trail of corpses carted away, none of the beatdowns come close to the hurt that Seagal puts on Richie Madano (William Forsythe). See, Richie killed Bobby Lupo, which, is, really the last thing in the world you want to find yourself doing. So Seagal appropriately saves his most severe ass-mugging for last. He pummels Richie, and I don’t mean quickly, I mean he fucking pummels him in what can only be interpreted as a degrading S&M snuff session. Somebody, somewhere, has masturbated to this clip, I’m sure of it.

Richie doesn’t land a single punch. Instead, he is clubbed and prodded with a variety of cutlery and other kitchenware including a humungous pepper-grinder. He is thrown into walls, onto tables, into cabinets, and finally, headfirst through a window. Having already confessed to liking pain, Richie understandably convinces himself that his next effort to kill Seagal will succeed. What results is a cataclysmic failure to achieve and surely one of the most bizarre and kinky novelty deaths of all time. Rather than drop his jeans and slather Richie’s chest with a broiling mound of feces, Seagal opts to conclude the humiliating rendezvous by planting a corkscrew into his forehead, thereby avenging the proud memory of our beloved Bobby Lupo. Also, this particular killing might be Steven’s most passionate as it was among the Italians. It was real greaseball shit.

6: UNIVERSAL SOLDIER

Horse spunk saves the day, yet again.

The “X-factor” of this epic battle between Dolph and JCVD is a syringe which, particularly in a barnyard setting, seems to be loaded with horse semen. Now people have accused us of reading homoeroticism into these films where it doesn’t exist. But you don’t have to crack page one of Freud to raise an eyebrow at a pair of rain-soaked, musclebound studs achieving greater power through semen injections. “Hey, what’s the big deal? Popeye ate Spinach, Dolph and JCVD shoot piping hot ejaculate into… their hearts?” And no, I don’t buy that it’s just a coincidence that the substance is identical in color and consistency to the ol’ baby batter, especially since the power juice at the center of Dolph’s I Come in Peace is exactly the same. JCVD’s useless chick is seemingly dispensed with a nice preliminary killing-– she’s fleeing to safety when Dolph chucks a grenade that blows her up. Is JCVD upset about his love interest being blown into cornflakes? Sure baby! Like he’d be upset if you spilled his Fresca.

Watch on Youtube.

There’s some more horseplay before the actual death and frankly, it’s pretty dull stuff. Eventually, JCVD, powered by a fresh sperm injection, impales Dolph on the blades of a corn thresher and there’s a satisfying moment of agony. But Dolph then plays possum, drawing JCVD in for a closer look. When he gets his chance, Dolph makes a last ditch effort to pull JCVD onto the blades, but he counters with a Seagal-worthy arm snap, leaving Dolph helpless, in agony and slowly bleeding to death. That’s a good start. Finally, we get what we have been salivating over since the corn thresher first entered the frame. JCVD turns on the machine and chunks of œbermensch are sprayed across the heartland, fertilizing the fodder of continued American supremacy.

5: RAMBO III

Kourov gets hanged and banged.

Whether he’s wandering the foggy backroads of the Pacific Northwest, shoveling rocks in a military prison, or repairing wagon wheels in Thailand, history has shown us that it doesn’t take a whole lot to get John J. Rambo back in the swing of killing commies. In Rambo II we saw him duped and leg-swept into refighting Vietnam by Charles Napier and the Cobra Kai Sensei. This time around Rambo’s hand is forced into action by the capture of Colonel Trautman who, for some reason, decided to deliver American missiles to the Mujahideen with a few jeeps, an AK, and a dozen ill-equipped guides who are all stuffed with bullets in a matter of seconds. Are we to believe Trautman thought he could actually make a difference in Afghanistan? Or are we to believe he sacrificed himself knowing that Rambo is the only human being capable of defeating Russia single-handedly? Or are we to believe that Rambo merely wants to uphold the right of Afghan men to participate in their sacred game of drag-the-goat-carcass-through-the-sand without fear of Russian helicopters launching rockets at their horses because he is better at it than them and feels guilty? Have fun sifting through the mound of bodies to find your answer.

Watch on Youtube.

There are some complicated novelty deaths to consider here as the movie is basically an endless string of them. For example the Russian Spetsnaz Commander is shot, then impaled by the cannon on Rambo’s tank, then blown up, which is a death as improbable as Charles Bronson’s reanimated corpse lacing your cannolis with cyanide. For sheer hilarity, though, the novelty award goes to the Commander’s bodyguard, Kourov. We all know the mountains of Afghanistan are littered with giant holes in the ground that serve as entryways to a gargantuan subterranean netherworld of Islamic horror. So Kourov and Rambo throw down near one of these openings as Trautman creepily watches, sometimes observing through the scope on his gun. After a quick and playful tussle, Rambo wraps a nylon rope around Kourov’s neck, pulls the grenade pin attached to his vest, then kicks him into the blackened maw where he falls roughly thirty feet, snaps his neck, and erupts into a fireball that rivals the explosion of Alderaan. USA!!!!

4: ROBOCOP

Emil briefly experiences life as a goulash.

I think I’d actually like Emil M. Antonowsky if it hadn’t been for the scene where he was going to murder the gas station attendant because he went to college. Other than that, he just seems like a fun-loving degenerate who smokes while pumping gas. Plus, I like how screenwriter Edward Neumeier felt that a character with 4 minutes of screen time required a middle initial. But the way he tormented the gas nerd was just unforgivable. It revealed Emil to be a bully and an anti-intellectual so he probably deserved to be shot off of his motorcycle while trying to get away from the gas station, then to skid across the top of a car and some asphalt and land in a heap of injuries. If that’s the second worst thing to happen to you in the movie, and a very distant second, you’re making a run at 80s action immortality.

Indeed, Emil’s actual death is kind of a replay of the first accident, only with more toxic waste and fleshy liquefaction. Emil’s driving again, Robocop shoots his ride again, only this time, he’s not lucky enough to crash into a car. After plowing his truck into a huge container of toxic waste, Antonowsky comes spilling out the back of his truck, a half-melted, steaming-hot insta-mutant. He gasps for air, begs for help (although he is clearly further beyond any kind of medical help or restoration than Rocky Dennis after a chimp attack) and zombie-shuffles in front of Boddicker’s speeding car. In his slightly dissolved state, Emil explodes on impact like a balloon filled with chum, mucking up Bodicker’s windshield something awful. Be sure to appreciate how Emil’s head remains largely intact as it slides like a curling stone along the hood, windshield, and roof of Boddicker’s car.

3: COMMANDO

The Arnold transforms a simple, third world tool shed into a schoolhouse: of pain.

It might seem like there should be more Arnold on the list, but for all the great one-liners and set-ups, the actual murdering is often just a bit less than spectacular. This is not the case with the tool shed scene in Commando. Unfortunately, there is no tradition of oral history amongst 80s action goons because they all die within seconds of assuming their roles. If there were, fathers might pass down to sons the knowledge that firing hundreds of rounds into a small structure where your target is trapped can often be useless if every shot is aimed on the assumption that the target is standing erect in the center of the building. Rake the ceilings and floors to be sure, son, otherwise someone will swing down from the rafters and stab you in the heart with a pitchfork, like what happened to your uncle Miguel.

The glorious violence of this scene largely speaks for itself, but I enjoy the added irony that Arnold has turned on hired Latino help with the very tools that sustain their people. Every tool of the gardener, landscaper and handyman is used to kill a man who, barring this highly unusual case of some guy picking him up at Home Depot to guard a weirdo’s compound off the coast of Santa Barbara, relies upon those tools for his very livelihood. It would be like if Arnold killed Irish mercenaries by throwing drunken police officers at them. The violence itself is elevated to full blown slasher status for a few shining moments. I don’t remember Voorhees ever killing so many with such a variety of pointy things in so short a span. We’d not see a novelty spree killing of this magnitude again until Punisher: Warzone.

2: INVASION USA

And THAT’S why, you don’t snort coke through a metal tube.

We only have to wait about ten minutes to witness the best novelty death sequence of Invasion USA. While Chuck is busy wrangling crocodiles and hamming it up with his pet armadillo in the swamps, Rostov and his cohort of terrorists are literally invading the United States of America. Surely if waves of impoverished Cubans can take over Miami, then a batch of well armed terrorists can take over the country. Rostov’s plan is to bring America to its knees in less than 24 hours but before he does so, he decides to hit up a motel and sell some cocaine to Frank Nitti from The Untouchables. The strange part about the scene is that it has almost nothing to do with anything other than to show us that Rostov is a bad, feathery-haired motherfucker. Presumably he’s trading a couple ounces of blow for a huge cache of weapons that he already had.

Anyhow, before he and Nitti can complete the transaction, Nitti’s broad starts greedily railing lines off the desk as any befitting cokewhore should. This must’ve angered Rostov because he slams her head down, driving the metal tube deep into her nose, sending her screaming and flailing across the room. Rostov then shoots a couple of goons in the hallway before casually sliding his gun into Nitti’s pants and firing two shots at his cock. Afterward he grabs the hysterical bitch and hurls her through the window in a display of wanton violence that’s pretty extreme even by 80s action standards. Because the scene is completely irrelevant to the plot it ends up acting as a pretty effective, and clearly intentional, anti-drug advertisement. People who buy and do drugs deserve to be castrated and killed. People who specifically snort cocaine are always at risk of having their utensil irrevocably lodged into their nasal cavity. Minorities conduct drug deals. People who sell drugs also deserve to be killed but preferably at the hands of bearded American patriots. In fact, the only acceptable form of commerce is a proper and shady cash-only weapons deal.

1: MARKED FOR DEATH

Seagal kills one Jamaican at least four times.

Frankly, the Ruthless camp is divided on the matter of 80s Action’s greatest badass. But their can be no disputing Segeal’s status as master of the novelty death. He has achieved the peerless greatness attained by so few in any endeavor. One might argue about the greatest ballplayer, the greatest director or the greatest beauty. But in the field of novelty deaths, Seagal stands alone in unchallenged supremacy–-the Shakespeare of the severed spine; the Kasparov of defenestration. Half a dozen of Seagal’s kills could be in the top ten of all time, but Marked For Death is his masterpiece. One of the many turns of genius that sets Seagal apart is the corpse kill. He realized that the mere fact he had killed someone, and they were now a dead body, should not prevent him from killing them at least once more. In Under Siege, for example, one assumes that Tommy Lee Jones’ character has perished once Seagal has driven a giant knife into top of his skull, up to the handle. So? Like so many men of innovation, Seagal sees a starting line where most see the finish line. Rather than be satisfied with allowing Jones to die only once, Seagal throws him through a radar screen, issuing a corpse kill by massive electrocution. Now you might think that pushing beyond even the corpse kill would risk ridiculousness. But you’d be wrong. Dead wrong. And dead wrong again. For, in Marked For Death, Seagal performs a dizzying combination that others had yet to even conceive, let alone attempt. Lesser novelty killers were still wondering how to pull off the corpse kill when Seagal surpassed it. While they strove for the 360 dunk, he went straight to the 540 off-the-glass tomahawk: the double kill, corpse kill with a twin.

Now, as every schoolchild knows, the primary villain in Marked For Death is the mysterious Skrewface who seems to have voodoo powers. When Seagal catches up with Skrewface, he quickly crunches through a couple of henchmen and finally gets his hands on the antagonist. Even with the preliminary slice to the balls, you have to initially be a bit disappointed with the quick decapitation via samurai sword after only a few seconds of pain. The only uplifting aspect of the kill seems to be that Seagal lugs Skrewface’s head around town like a newly won Stanley Cup to prove to the henchmen that their leader is not an invincible shaman, but rather a visibly mortal drug-pusher. But then, Skrewface appears alive and well. A twin! Now we are cooking!

Watch the clip on Youtube

You can look at this one of two ways. You can count this as Skrewface being killed twice (corpse kill not included), or you can roll it into one grand ball of suffering for the remaining twin. Before the first punch is thrown in the final battle, Seagal opens with, “Oh hai, here is your twin brother’s head, which I chopped off a while back. I might use it at the bowling alley later.” Using this as a starting point, Seagal proceeds to beat Skrewface shitless, slice open several wounds with the sword, then thumb the Jamaican’s eyes back into his skull. This culminates when Seagal audibly snaps Skrewface’s spinal chord in several places which, if it didn’t kill him instantly, would certainly leave him with nothing more than a few seconds of shutting down. Seagal then lifts the motionless Skrewface and hurls him down an elevator shaft to certain death. Finally, Skrewface is impaled on some machinery at the bottom of the elevator shaft, because after you have lethally destroyed a man’s spinal chord, then thrown him several stories to his death, it’s best to also impale him. No matter how you choose to divvy up this smorgasbord, the basic facts are as follows. At the beginning of the film we meet a character named Skrewface. By the end of the film we have seen him suffer four different fatalities, garnished with various beatings and mutilations.

While we’re at the whole list making thing, we’ve compiled a list of potentially offensive acts you could perform and listed them in order of the severity of the beating, torture and death that you would suffer as a consequence.

4. Take your Vespa club to the Laughlin River Run.

3. Start a chapter of D.A.R.E. in Juarez.

2. Finger paint a picture of Mohamed in the ejaculate you  release after spanking to Ayatollah Khamenei on Al Jazeera.

1. Borrow Seagal’s TV tray and then forget to return it.

THE END