Disturbing Flicks (Pt.2)

Part deux of some movies I would not recommend to individuals with a heart condition!  Alors, here we go:

• Deliverance (1972): Starring a young Jon Voight and Burt Reynolds, this movie is about four friends who go on rafting trip in the deep South.  They enounter a lot of eerie 'hill billy' characters and soon find themselves struggling to survive this nightmare of a trip.  I found this pretty scary because it felt realistic.  The scenarios were not completely overblown or improbable.  The actors, the setting, the dialogue, the tension, it all felt so authentic.  Great movie.
• Cutting Moments (1997):  This is a very low budget/ indie movie that might seem off-putting and dry at first but if you hang in there, you better be prepared for some very disturbing and gut wrenching imagery.  It is a pretty short film and you can probably find it online.  Please do not watch it if you cannot handle graphic violence/ imagery.
• The Road (2009):  One of those post-apocalyptic end-of-days movies; basically a zombie flick without the zombies; the world is falling apart and lawlessness is rampant.  Everyone is struggling to survive in a Hobbesian world where it is war of all against all.  Viggo Mortensen plays a father who is trying to keep himself and his son alive in this foresaken new world.  I cannot remember exactly what caused the breakdown of society, I think it was something about lack of vegetation which impacted the food cycle significantly by causing deaths of animals and then humans by starvation, etc.  Fans of The Wire (one of the greatest tv shows ever) will recognize Michael K. Williams in this.  Not a bad movie but not amazing either.  Worth a mention here though.
• Deadgirl (2008):  I hesitate a bit with adding this movie to the list because it is not a great movie by any means.  It has many flaws but I liked that the plot was demented and they ran with it.  I listed this movie in the Zombie Flicks post earlier if you want more of a synopsis.
• Shadow Of A Doubt (1943):  What the heck kind of list is this without a Hitchcock movie?   Like Rope (1948) and Rear Window (1954), and pretty much any Alfred Hitchcock movie, there is a lot of tension that builds up in the course of this film.  It starts out innocently enough but then things get dark very quickly and suddenly the lead character is faced with imminent danger.  Great movie.
• The Birds (1963):  I will refrain from listing all of Alfred Hitchcock's movies here but this one really needed to be on this list.  If you have ornithophobia and experience an irrational fear of birds, this movie will rationalize your fear!  It is basically a movie about birds attacking humans.  Reminds me of an episode of a nature show where a massive hornet attacks a bee hive but then all these little bees start to mobilize and engulf the hornet en masse and take it down.  What a great display of the power of defense mechanisms in nature.
• Shallow Grave (1994):  I already reviewed this in the Bank Robbery Flicks post but it has definitely earned a spot on this list too.
• Badlands (1973):  Like Deliverance (1972), this movie is disturbing because it seems realistic (probably because it is based on a true story).  Two young teenagers fall in love and in their rebellion against the world, they push the envelope just a little too far a la Bonnie and Clyde.  Really great movie.  Sissy Spacek and Martin Sheen were amazing in this.  It is not necessarily scary but the socio-political commentary can be a bit uneasy to swallow.

Disturbing Flicks (Pt.1)

I have come across some really weird and demented movies over the years.  Obviously, most will not be suitable for children or those who have better sense than to watch them!  I feel a great urge to insert a disclaimer stating that the views depicted in the following movies are not in any way endorsed by me (well, at least some of them):

• Batoru Rowaiaru/ Battle Royale (2000):  WAY before the Hunger Games, we had this wonderfully demented Japanese movie by Kinji Fukasaku.  It has been some time since I saw it so I cannot unfortunately offer too many details but the basic theme is population culling by cold blooded murder!  Several students are chosen from different schools and basically thrown onto an island with bombs strapped to the collars around their necks.  The bombs are set to go off if the kids are in an area on the island they are not supposed to be in at specific times of day.  Also, they cannot leave the island until they kill everyone else off.  In short, it is kill or be killed and the last one alive is the winner!  Some of the kids are partners or best friends so you see them grapple with survival vs. morality.  Very entertaining movie, lots of fun!
• Irreversible (2002):  Starring real life couple, Monica Bellucci and Vincent Cassel, this movie centers around a really brutal incident of sexual assault.  It is a pretty powerful movie because just as there is no remote control for life, this movie does not censor the realities of assault by shortening the incident on screen.  When the movie portrays the attack it makes you sit there and watch the whole thing without pause for almost ten minutes straight.  It is very unsettling.
• Oasis (2002):  There are few directors out there who will never let you down and Chang dong Lee is one of them.  Most of his movies can easily be on this list because they are all rather unusual and disturbing; they tend to feature characters that grapple with extreme psychological trauma and grief.  Oasis (2002) is I guess a love story, in the most unconventional sense.  The two lead characters have developmental disabilities.  In fact, when Jong du (the guy) first encounters Gong ju (the woman), he attempts to rape her!  Bare in mind, she is non-ambulatory (confined to a wheelchair) and is diagnosed with cerebral palsy.  Right off the bat, the movie starts with a really shocking and uncomfortable scene.  As the movie progresses, you learn about the kinds of lives both characters lead, how they have been abandoned by their families and society in general, and how in being together, they are able to fill the void in their lives.  Very good movie and I would recommend it to those who are looking for something very different in a movie.  This is a movie with a lot of substance and heavy subject matter.
• Men Behind The Sun (1988):  During World War II, the Germans were not the only ones performing deplorable Mengele-esque experiments on other human beings.  Unit 731 of the Japanese Imperial Army would take prisoners of war and perform unimaginably cruel experiments on them, all the while referring to their victims as "materials" to dehumanize them just as the Nazi's referred to the Jews as "cargo" or "merchandise".  I really do not know how they filmed many of the scenes of torture in this movie because it seems so realistic.  I do know that the movie features an actual autopsy of a young boy.  There is also a scene involving the torture of a cat that seems very real but I read somewhere that the director confirmed it was fake.  This movie might be disturbing but what is more disturbing is knowing that this kind of thing actually happens in real life within the world in which we all live.
• Cannibal Holocaust (1980):  I still cannot bring myself to watch this movie again because it is pretty scary namely due to the "found footage" style it is filmed in, it feels so authentic.  Four documentarians travel to South America to film a tribe of cannibals but they end up raping and pillaging the tribes people.  The cannibals eventually get their revenge and it is not pretty.  The acting, the pace of the movie, the SFX.. all feels very real which gives this movie an eerie feel.  There is a scene in this movie where a woman is impaled and it looks so incredibly real that a lot of viewers were concerned.  The directors had to present the actress who played her to prove that she is indeed still alive.  Also, a warning, this movie does feature a scene of a live turtle being killed on camera which has outraged a number of animal activists.
• The Human Centipede Series:   So when I saw The Human Centipede:  First Sequence (2009), I was thrilled.  It has everything a good old fashioned horror movie should have:  bad acting, eccentric and evil bad guys, no-exit scenarios for the victims, a great chase scene, and finally, a bleak and distressing ending.  Honestly, the first movie had it all!  Then I thought I would give The Human Centipede II:  Full Sequence (2011) a chance but with low expectations because how can you master what has already been mastered?  I was in for a surprise.  The second film is pretty scary because it tries to remove the fiction out of the scenario.  The main character is a mentally disturbed individual who is obsessed with the first movie (already, this movie places the main character in our world by characterizing/ recognizing that the first film was in fact a work of fiction, a "movie"), he tries to create a "real" human centipede.  Trouble is, he is no conveniently disposed scientific mind with the tools or skills set required to operate on human beings.  Rather, his tools include a stapler, duct tape, pliers and a funnel.  This makes for an extremely gory movie!  Apparently, there is a third movie coming out next year to be added to this series.  Not sure it could live up to the last one but I have been proven wrong before..
• The Vengeance Trilogy:  This trilogy refers to three movies by a very talented Korean director, Chan-wook Park.  The most popular of the trilogy is probably a movie called Oldboy (2003).  Without giving too much away, it is about a man who is kidnapped one night and locked in a hotel room/ prison for over a decade.  He does not know why he is being imprisoned, nor does he know who is responsible.  There is a pretty epic fight scene in this movie that I love because it goes on forever and was filmed in one long shot (you will know which one I am referring to when you see it).  A quick warning, there is a scene of animal cruelty in this movie where the lead character consumes a live octopus.  Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002) is the first of the trilogy and is probably one of the more violent ones.  The movie is about good intentions gone horribly, horribly wrong.  The good guys are inadvertently the bad guys and everyone is caught in a very bloody web of revenge.  Each of the characters has a very touching story so you feel a lot of "sympathy" for their vengeance, hence the title.  The last of the trilogy is Lady Vengeance (2005), which feels really different from the other two because of the femme fetale feel to it.  The lead is a woman who was falsely imprisoned for murdering a child.  She knows who the real killer is and the whole time she is in prison, she is plotting her revenge.  The final scene is so fulfilling and will leave the viewer's moral compass a bit haywire.  Really great movie.

My Favourites (Pt.2)

Here are some other movies I would highly recommend: 

• Die Hard (1988):  New York cop, John McClane, goes to California to meet his estranged wife, Holly, at her work Christmas party.  The party gets hijacked by German terrorists (the main bad dude played by Alan Rickman) and it is up to John McClane to save the day by knocking them down one by one and yelling, "Yipee ki yay mofo!" a few times.  Best Bruce Willis movie(s) ever!

• Dear Frankie (2004):  Okay, this might be a "chick flick" but j'adore!  It is a really sweet movie about a single parent who writes letters to her son posing as his father.  Very cute movie start to finish.
• The Mist (2007):  Ah The Mist, one of the most fail-safe movies out there.  Kind of like The Man From Earth, it is one of those movies that very few people can possibly dislike.  If you have not seen it, chances are you will enjoy watching it!  It is based on Stephen King's novel of the same title.  People go about doing their business as usual but then all of a sudden this enormous mist creeps up over the land and strange creatures/ monsters start to emerge from it and start killing people in horrific ways.  GREAT monster flick.
• Cube (1997):  I really like this movie because there is nothing quite like it out there.  Several people are kidnapped and placed into a massive Rubik's cube/ maze.  They seem to have been individually selected based on their skills:  there are 2 child prodigies, 1 doctor, 1 police man, 1 escape artist, and 1 architect.  Just a really intriguing movie that I highly recommend.
• Rope (1948):  Probably one of my favourite Alfred Hitchcock movies.  Simply put, this movie is about two boys who commit murder and throw a dinner party to covertly celebrate, with the body hidden in plain sight.  "[We have committed] an immaculate murder...We are alive, truly and wonderfully alive!"  Among the guests, they invite their favourite professor, played by James Stewart, who senses that something is amiss.  There is a lot of tension and as the night wears on, the boys start to lose their confidence.  This movie plays with a lot of the themes from Friedrich Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals:  Superior humans vs. inferior humans, superior humans being above 'morality' in the conventional sense of the word, etc.  It is the tension throughout this movie that makes it one of my all time favourites.
• Conversations With Other Women (2005):  Okay, another "chick flick" alert but I personally really, really, appreciate the place this movie is coming from.  I think I read somewhere that men generally find it more difficult to watch because of the split-screen format.  The entire movie is split-screened so we see what is currently happening on one side of the screen and what had previously taken place on the other (this is possibly a spoiler, sorry!).  It is driven by a dialogue taking place between the two main characters (Helena Bonham Carter and Aaron Eckhart) at a wedding.  It is a very flirty movie because it does not give everything away, you have to sort of figure it out along the way.  It touches on the complexities of human relationships; companionship, monogamy, first love, forgiveness, guilt, growth, change, nostalgia, etc.  Really love this film!

Bank Robber Flicks

Okay so this post started off as "My Favourites (Pt 2)" but realizing how I had already mentioned so many movies about bank robberies, I figured I should just re-title it and focus on that genre.  Bare in mind, many of the movies listed here feature some of my all-time favourites, as well.  Here we go:

• Dog Day Afternoon (1975):  Based on a true story, this is an incredible movie about a bank robbery starring Al Pacino.  Such great characters in this film.  This is not a movie where the robbers are bad guys or sleek/ cool or money hungry.  They are just average guys trying to maneuver around this situation they have found themselves in.  In fact, one of the three robbers at the beginning of the movie, bails out on the other two because he is too afraid to go through with it!  I love this movie SO much!!  There is a lot of social commentary: about the frenzied effects of the media, Stockholm syndrome, the Attica prison riots, queer equality, etc.  I especially love the ending because it was done so perfectly.  It portrays really nicely how we as people, when we are trapped with one another, we construct this fleeting world of meaning that is so powerful and feels so authentic; but once we are free to move away from each other, the fantasy ends and we slip back into the larger more generic world of meaning.
• Heat (1995):  It is as though someone ordered a sandwich with Al Pacino and Robert Di Niro, and a little bit of Tom Sizemore and Val Kilmer on the side.  Fan-tastic movie!  Admittedly, it is "pretty Hollywood" but it has definitely earned the status of being a "classic".  I love this movie almost as much as I love Dog Day Afternoon.  It is not a movie you will easily forget.  It has a definite sleek and sexy feel to it and each of the characters are played so well.  It is a movie where everything came together just right!  Definitely of the "cool" variety.
• Der Rauber/ The Robber (2010):  This is a German film that has a pretty interesting take on the bank robber film genre.  It is another movie based on a true story but again, very unconventional.  The lead character does not rob banks because he is destitute or in a crime syndicate or whatever.  He does not even really care about the money.  He literally does it because it makes him feel alive, it makes him feel something substantial in his life.  He is a marathon runner and probably feeds off the endorphins/ the thrill that comes with robbing a bank.
• The Ladykillers (1955):  Not sure what idiot thought this movie needed to be redone because it is perfectly hilarious the way it is!  This movie is a ball of laughs!  Posing as talented classical musicians, five robbers rent a room at a little old lady's house.  They play all sorts of classical records to make her think they are playing their instruments, but in actuality, they are scheming, smoking, and hashing out a plan to rob the bank down the street.  Unfortunately for them, she is a just a bit intrusive and has a tendency of "getting in the way"!  A really fun movie that features an Amazon parrot for those parrot lovers out there!
• Shallow Grave (1994):  Okay so this is not really a movie about a bank robbery AT ALL but it involves a big wad of cash being discovered by three roommates leading them to act in really strange ways.  I thought it would not be too out of place here.  This is one of those really demented movies that make you feel weird about watching it while you are watching it.  Lots of dismembered bodies, paranoia, jealousy, greed and I would venture to say madness in general!  Good movie.
• Waking Ned Devine (1998):  Okay so this is REALLY stretching it.  Again, not about bank robberies AT ALL but it could fit into this category because it is about stealing money from the lotto commission.  An elderly man from a small town in Ireland wins a really big lottery but sadly, he passes away from all the excitement.  When the townsfolk catch wind of this, they devise a clever plan of having someone pose as him, cashing in the winnings and splitting it amongst themselves.  Fun little feel-good movie!  Pretty much talks about how money can have the exact opposite affect on you that Shallow Grave portrays!!

My Favourites (Pt. 1)

This post will contain some of my favourite movies that I highly recommend!  Mind you, this list is subject to change over time.  Without further ado, here we go:

• The Princess Bride (1987):  Great movie!  Not your conventional fairytale love story; there is a lot of humour and silliness in this little cornball of a movie.  You will also leave with a lot of fun one-liners and a whole new meaning to the word "inconceivable"!  Truly great movie because it stands the test of time:  I loved it as a kid and I love it as an adult.  I would like to think it crosses gender lines but it could very well be the case that women might enjoy it more.
• The Man from Earth (2007):  This movie is about a man from Earth (!).  In fact, he has been on Earth for a veeerrryyy long time!  This is an excellent example of a movie with a weak premise can be executed so well owing entirely to a really well-written script.  The movie is purely driven by dialogue; the entire movie is filmed in one location, there is no SFX, no nifty camera work; just a few friends sitting in a room having a chat and being completely enthralled in conversation.  That being said, I hope I did not hype it up too much.  It is a very laid back movie that will not entertain you if you are looking for action, romance or comedy.  It is just a movie looking to intrigue you through dialogue, kind of like a good old fashion symposium!
• Singles (1992):  Old school, grungey, clever and funny movie!  Lots of big names (Bridget Fonda, Kyra Sedgwick, Matt Dillon, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Tim Burton, Bill Pullman, to name a FEW).  Matt Dillon was so great in this..  I guess it falls into the romantic comedy genre but it really is so much more than that.  It captures the feeling of the 90's so well, it is a bit of a trip back in history.
• Dirty Work (1998):  Norm MacDonald is easily one of my favourite comedians of all time.  I am a little embarrassed to admit how much I like this movie.  It is PRETTY DUMB.  Artie Lang, Chris Farley, Don Rickles, Adam Sandler, and Chevy Chase are some of the big names in this movie.  So many memorable scenes to look back on fondly!  Ah..  This is NOT an incredible movie by any means, in fact it is quite stupid and half-assed.  The nice thing is that it is one of those movies I can pick up years later and still laugh at, while watching it.
• Kung Fu Hustle (2004):   Made by Stephen Chow and starring him as well!  I LOVE this movie, so child like and fun, so charming in every way.  The bad guys are the Axe Gang, they dress real nice with their tuxes and top hats.  They also have a cool dance that they do when they are around!  The good guys are not what you would expect.  In plain terms, they are the biggest dorks in the universe.  This is a really funny movie with great visuals.  You will have a blast watching it so long as you are not stubbornly opposed to subtitles.
• Predator (1987):  One of the greatest movies ever, no doubt.  A Special Ops unit lead by Arnold Schwarzenegger go into a jungle on some sort of a rescue mission then they come across an invisible alien that is trying to kill them!!  Too good, too good..  I really love this movie.  A classic that should not be missed!