And now we enter the finale. Previously, I talked about a biting chamber drama, a wonderfully exaggerated blaxsploitation parody, the pinnacle of modern action, a whimsical adventure comedy, and a nihilistic film about death. Thanks to everyone for reading.
dir. Tim Burton
Drama/Comedy
About 10 years back I started going out of my way to watch more movies, and like most people Tim Burton was one of the first filmmakers I really started to get attached to. I already liked Beetlejuice, Batman, Edward Scissorhands, etc. but when I saw about this movie I was immediately intrigued. Finally, I rented it from the library and fell in love with it. There is an attention to detail and a genuine love for the subject that I found very infectious. Johnny Depp is wonderful in the titular role, an aspiring filmmaker whose ineptitude is only outweighed by his ambition, and there's some wonderful support by Bill Murray, Sarah Jessica Parker, Jeffrey Jones, and at least a dozen more. But, obviously, it's Martin Landau as Bela Lugosi who steals the show. But this movie is far more than just the acting. The movie looks great, has catchy music, and tells an inspiring, sweet, tragic, and hilarious story.
dir. Nicholas Meyer
Sci-Fi/Adventure
There are few things I like as much as Star Trek. It may sound sad to say, but it's left a bigger impact on me over the past few years than anything apart from meeting my now-fiance and moving out. But even though I didn't really dig into Trek much before recently, I've been a fan of this movie for years now. What I (somehow) didn't know was how this was a sequel to not just the first movie, but to an episode of the original series as well. A tense space adventure with themes of obsession and loss, this movie gives Shatner and Nimoy some of their best material in the whole franchise, with Ricardo Montalban returning as a vengeful and psychotic Khan Noonien Singh. This is an exciting and fun story with intriguing tactical battle sequences, great character moments, and a lot of emotion. Although the spoiler isn't much of a spoiler anymore, the end of this movie still packs a wallop that gets me every time. Easily my favorite sequel of all-time.
dir. Peter Jackson
Horror/Comedy
Lord Of The Rings is great, and I have a fondness for Bad Taste, The Frighteners, and Forgotten Silver, but the absolute best of Peter Jackson by my estimation is this splatter zombie movie. Set in the late '50s after an expedition has brought back a mysterious zombie rat monster to a zoo in New Zealand, Lionel lives at home with his psychotic mother who gets bitten and starts to fall apart: literally. It only gets more and more ridiculous from there. Quite possibly the goriest movie I've ever seen, this is not the kind of thing I would/could expect most people to enjoy. It's gross, low-quality, and full of cornball sequences most people might find tonally bizarre, but I find absolutely hilarious. It's one of the funniest movies I've seen, and the creative and over-the-top deaths and zombie kills are insanely original. It's all deliberately insane and cheesy, goofy, grotesque... and it's incredible.
dir. Terry Gilliam
Comedy/Adventure
It wasn't until I watched it a couple times and read the book that I really started to like this movie, but now I obviously feel very strongly about it. I consider this just about the perfect film adaptation of a book that feels almost unfilmable. In fact, as far as I'm concerned, this is the most impressive book to film adaptation I've ever seen. With trippy visuals shot through a very wide lens, Gilliam captures the paranoid look of every scene, and the performances by Depp and Del Toro are the perfect level of crazy -- but still somehow endearing. Even though these characters behave nothing like me, I still found it easy to like them, and the wacked-out world of narcotics they leapt face first into felt completely legitimate. I love the atmosphere, sense of humor, and just how memorable nearly ever scene is. It's a bizarre sort of movie that most people claim you'd have to have experimented with drugs in order to understand. If that's the case then maybe I don't understand it, but I do love it.
dir. Paul Thomas Anderson
Drama/Western
I've written about how much I love this movie to the extent that I'm pretty tired of repeating myself. But in the end, every time I talk about it my adoration is reaffirmed. I love most everything about the movie but what I want to briefly talk about here is Daniel Day-Lewis and the complexity of the character he and Paul Thomas Anderson created. A man who started off poor, nearly broke, and injured in the bottom of a mine, Daniel Plainview pulled himself out of this hole and dragged himself back to town where he slowly began to make his fortune, build a business, and expand it. The American dream crammed all into the silent 15-20 minute opening of a two-and-a-half hour film, the rest of the movie follows his descent into madness, misanthropy, and subsequent solitude. There are great individual moments that define this character, from the adoption and exploitation of his son, to the meeting and betrayal of his estranged brother, and of course the infamous final scene, which I still maintain is nothing more than a wish fulfillment dream sequence. But the best moment is his fireside admission to his brother, the single moment that reveals more about who this man is than any action or monologue throughout the entirety of the rest of the film. There's a reason this is often considered one of the greatest American movies of the past 20 years, and it comes down to this character. I consider it the greatest performance in film and it's still my go-to pick for my favorite movie ever made.
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