#43 The Thin Red Line : Rumble in the jungle

Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line, can not only brag with perhaps the greatest cast ever assembled, but can also claim to be the greatest war movie put down on celluloid (although it's running extremely close-by to classics such as Apocalypse Now and contemporary masterpiece Saving Private Ryan as well). Despite it's philosophical nature, The Thin Red Line, truly delivers when it comes to the action part of the show, flaunting some of the most intense and exhausting imagery to date, while Nick Nolte's equally intense officer Lt. Col. Gordon Tall are shouting commands into a telephone, louder and more scarily, than the massive bombings that are tearing the tiny island of Guadalcanal to smithereens.
The moment in particular offers up a combination of heartfelt emotions, beautiful cinematography, great acting and what must be considered as Hans Zimmer's (the composer equivalent of a car factory) greatest orchestral score so far, as the American soldiers charges a Japanese camp through mist and confusion. Astonishing as well as horrifying. True fucking art.

#43 Burn After Reading: Basement secret

Director: Ethan & Joel Coen
Genre: Comedy
Key Players: George Clooney, Frances McDormand

In the third collaboration between George Clooney and the Coen brothers, Clooney portrays womanizing schmuck Harry Pfarrer, a slight paranoid marshal working for the State Department. In a way to score with Frances McDormand's love craving Linda Litzke he presents his secret basement project: the dildo chair. A rocking chair fitted with a dildo to go up and down when you lean back. Her reaction? "That's fantastic!" Sure is.

#42 Zombieland: Opening flair

Director: Ruben Fleischer
Genre: Zomcom
Key Players: Extras

First, this is no Shaun of the Dead. Far from it. But, it's quite funny at times and Bill Murray cameos as himself, quite brilliantly. Besides from that, nothing else in the movie tops the slow motion opening credits, where people are being attacked in all kinds of different situations. Stylish and also sets the tone for the picture. Let's take a look. (Click the image for a grander view)

#41 Forgetting Sarah Marshall - Schlong surprise

Director: Nicholas Stoller
Genre: Comedy
Key Players: Jason Segel

In my original draft, I had prepared this great essay-like diatribe, using some big and impressive words to describe the injustice and hypocrisy that is nudity on film. Unless you dig really deep and look at the very worst and the most tasteless films (and I will), not a single dick are to be found. There's no arguing that there is an unfavorable exposure towards the other sex. Don't get me wrong, I have no intention to ban or get all high up on my horse, condemning nudity and such. On the contrary. I want to see more dicks on film. If not for the purpose of equality, then perhaps for their comedic value (as we'll soon find out). End of rant. Let's begin.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall is another watered down comedy of the Judd Apatow brand. The diet Coke version, if you will, when compared with the real thing. The usual players appear to some extent, the jokes tend to deal with sex and drinking and the whole thing is fronted by the goofy looking guy from the insufferable but somehow popular (it's a total mystery!) TV-show How I Met Your Mother's Vagina (I'm pretty certain that's the name), Jason Segel. How bad the show may be, and it is, I enjoyed Forgetting Sarah Marshall more than I ever could have imagined. Plus, and here comes the twist, Segel does what few men of any sort of importance have done before: full frontal nudity. In the very opening of the film, his longtime girlfriend comes over to dump his ass. So he's just there in a towel when she drops the bomb. And he drops the towel. The camera doesn't stay on him for long, but there's no confusion here, that's his dick you see. Several times. He moves around freely, sitting down, getting up. Excuse me for the poor choice of words, but really milking it. Because they know it's funny. Dicks are funny. Because no one expects them to just pop out like that. Oh, he does it one more time in the end as well.


PS. How I Met Your Mother's Vagina is really awful, and anyone claiming otherwise cannot possibly have seen it. It's atrocious.

#40: Kingping: Bulljuice

Director: Bobby & Peter Farrelly
Genre: Comedy
Key Players: Woody Harrelson, a bull

Before the Farrelly brothers hit it really big with There's Something About Mary and joking about getting cum in your hair, they did jokes about cum in King Pin (in far bigger quantities as well), a hit-and-miss comedy about bowling with Bill Murray and Woody Harrelson. In an attempt to get Amish manboy and natural bowling sensation Ismahel to go with him and win a lot of cash, he first needs to infiltrate his community and get on their good side. So in the spirit of kindness, he decides to milk the cow. And as he is taking several big gulps from the freshly acquired milk (he's got a big bucket full of it), he is let known they have no cow. Only a bull. Cheap gag, but very Farrelly.

#39 The Royal Tenenbaums: Suicide shave

Director: Wes Anderson
Genre: Comedy/Drama
Key Players: Luke Wilson

Wes Anderson's quirky indie comedy about a dysfunctional family reunion of sorts, is cut out for cherry picking: funny dialogue mixed with a wonderful sense of visual panache, a great ensemble (Bill Murray, Luke Wilson, Owen Wilson, Angelica Huston, Gene Hackman, Gwyneth Paltrow, Ben Stiller and many more...) and stylish music makes The Royal Tenenbaum's a bordering cult classic. At times heartwarming and funny, but also serious and emotional. Luke Wilson's fallen tennis pro Richie Tenenbaum goes to some dark places and decides at one point to kill himself. Almost in a symbolic type way, he shaves his mighty beard and slits his wrist with razor blades, all to the wonderful but melancholic Elliott Smith tune Needle In The Hay (somewhat fittingly, since Smith himself died in 2003 under suspicious circumstances). He survives, of course, and is later asked by his brother whether his suicide note were dark or not. Well, that's The Tenenbaum's. Where the light is shining even in the darkest of tunnels.

#38 Snakes On A Plane: Mouthful

Director: Do you really need to know?
Genre: Campy horror
Key Players: Who cares. They're naked and die. I'm sorry, but you're 15 minutes are up.

When lacking a proper script to base your film on, there are certain tricks filmmakers often employ. Cheap laughs, violence and gore, or perhaps the most common one, nudity. Snakes on a Plane is one of those movies. And perform poorly on all counts mentioned. For starters, a total give-away if you're watching a bad movie would be if the villain is interrupted while trying out some sweet ninja moves. (He is). And the evil mastermind plan he gives birth to? Smuggling a shitload of poisonousness snakes on board a big ass plane to off an important witness protected by bad ass Samuel L Jackson. Seems pretty uncertain in it's efficiency, but, this is the level we're at. And the scene in question is just another shallow attempt of spicing things up. Apparently, the exotic snakes were not enough to take hold of our attention.
A muscled-up surfer type guy and an airhead bimbo are getting it on in the bathroom when they're attacked by these evil snakes. He gets bitten in the throat. She in the breast. Now, if the snake had launched for her sssssssntach or taken a big bite of his, what I must assume, hard erect penis, then Snakes on a motherfucking Plane, would have brought something new, something unique, to the mix (there are too few dicks in the movies these days. Spread out the dicks). Sadly, this is the only thing I can recall from this sorry piece of film. The rest is a blur of bad CG snakes and poor acting. It's so bad, I bet Troma would not even dare to touch it with a ten foot pole. And they produce a lot of weird shit.

#37 Children Of Men: Chitty chitty bang bang bang (you're shot!)

Director: Alfonso Cuarón
Genre: Thriller
Key Players: Julianne Moore, Clive Owen

What is there to be said about Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men that hasn't been said before? It's fucking brilliant. And visually stunning. The complex and intricate sequences, spanning over several of minutes, without cutting, well, to put it as easy as can be: mind blowing. And the first of these (in a line of many) have to be car ride in which they are attacked by a gang of punk-ish rouge activists on bikes. The camera drops in and out of the action, spins around without any apparent limits, switching focus from person to person, for what seems a very long time. And all of this inside a small four door car. Certain tricks such as modified cars and specially built camera rigs are of course at play here, but the shot remains nonetheless an amazing shot.

# 36 Feast: Bollocks!

Director: John Gulager
Genre: Horror
Key Players: Krista Allen, Henry Rollins (Yes, that Henry Rollins), Jason Mewes, Judah Friedlander

A small band of clashing characters, led by TV actress Krista Allen, are forced to work together in an effort to survive an attack from a bunch of bloodthirsty monsters dressed in fur. I know, it sounds really, really corny and it has got a big "Seen it, done that" stamp all over it. And while that certainly might be true to some degree, Feast will surprise you as a funny and sometimes disgusting horror film filled with great little gags and set pieces. Allen, perhaps best know for her earlier work in which she had a tendency to misplace all of her clothes, carries much of the film on her shoulders and does so with a remarkable flair. And surprisingly, never once does she, or anyone else for that matter, feel the urge to strip down, which is so common, but tiresome, for these types of low-budget horrors. Instead we get to spend time with the large cast and it's many different characters, such as Henry Rollins motivational speaker and Judah Friedlander's beer belly redneck. At times bloody and disgusting, others goofy and not so serious. The latter being my moment of choice. When being chased through the corridors by papa monster, the group slams a door in the monster's face, only to discover that it's brownish weirdly shaped penis got stuck in-between. I smell a barbecue.

#35 The Dark Knight: The Joker

Director: Christopher Nolan
Genre: Action/Crime/Superhero
Key Players: Heath Ledger

It's pretty acknowledged by critic's and public alike, that Heath Ledger's performance as The Joker were an astounding one, worthy of the many accolades and awards he won post death. But for the right person, The Joker as a character is gold: extravagant and psychopathic. However, if not handled right, it could also crumble and collapse. Like it did way back when Tim Burton and Jack Nicholson tried to breathe life into the masked vigilante (I never did like those movies). Christopher Nolan were just incredibly lucky to bag an actor worthy of the task, someone who saw him through the same lens as Nolan. And out of that vision, a blazing psychopath was born. From Nicholson's clownish buffoon to Heath's ice cold killer. The transformation were immense. For me, no image speak of The Jokers insanity and raving mad personality than the one below. He's just broken out of prison, leaning out of the window of a police car, like a mad dog let free into the world to bring chaos and havoc. It's beautifully shot and put together, with the Jokers distressing theme music (a single note, growing in strength) in the background. Wonderful.

#34 King Kong: Four beasts enter, one will leave...

Director: Peter Jackson
Genre: Adventure
Key Players: Naomi Watts, Kong, three T-Rex

In 2005, when Peter Jackson's remake of King Kong was released, it was an unprecedented feat of animation and special effects: the surroundings were huge, from Skull Island to New York; the creatures, how crazy they even might have looked, you believed; and Kong himself acted and looked totally real. So to pit the mighty Kong against three Tyrannosauras Rex in a fight over Naomi Watts, well, that's a look into the mind of Peter Jackson. Even though it's a bit OTT, it works. Like always. It's one of those mind boggling extraordinary scenes that you can watch over and over, even now, five years later, and still be amazed about.

#33 Apocalypse Now: Attack of Wagner

Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Genre: War
Key Players: Martin Sheen, Robert Duvall

Coppola's frantic masterpiece Apocalypse Now, dealing with the extreme absurdities of war, offers up more than handful of great moments to chose from, all as visually strong as thought-provoking. But who can forget the massive chopper attack, accompanied to Wagner's bombastic Ride of the Valkyries. It's grand and awe inspiring as well as demented and disgusting. The horror, the horror.

#32 Rules of Attraction: Victor Ward Montage

Director: Roger Avary
Genre: Drama (sort of)
Key Players: Kip Pardue

Although it differs a little from the book, Avary's adaptation of cult novelist Bret Easton Ellis' The Rules Of Attraction, the feel and style of the movie is pretty much the same as the book. And all the little quirks and tricks that Mr Ellis employs in his writing comes forth the strongest in the "Victor Ward Goes To Europe" montage. Narrated and edited in an insane pace with images of him doing drugs, sleeping around, more drugs, meeting random people doing random things, this is how you imagine that particular chapter to look like. It's evocative and embodies Ellis' writing to a much greater extent than let's say the other famous Bret Easton Ellis adaptation.

#31 X-Men: The Last Stand: Phoenix rising

Director: Bret Rattner
Genre: Action/Superhero
Key Players: Famke Janssen, Hugh Jackman

Even though the first two installments of Marvel's cinematic series of the X-Men were significantly better, it's the third one (and the bad one) I've chosen for my ongoing series of memorable moments from the movies. In the the third and final act of the movie, Famke Janssen's Jean Grey embraces her buried persona, The Phoenix, in a pretty grand and astonishing fashion, releasing all her raw power on people and X-Men alike. There's fire, water, junk flying around, soldiers disintegrating to dust. It's quite spectacular and the only real moment that gets my nerdy comic book heart pumping with adrenaline. Piece of shit movie with a great climax.

#30 Alien: Chestburster

Director: Ridley Scott
Genre: Sci fi/thriller
Key Players: Sigourney Weaver, John Hurt

What would be more appropriate for my thirtieth posting than doing a scene from a film released some thirty years ago. Ridley Scott's slow-burning horror set in space redefined sci-fi for years to come and introduced the almighty Chestburster; a moment for the history books. Feeling a little queezy, John Hurt (fitting name, don't you think) starts panting, at this point unaware that a little monster soon will burst through skin and bone, in a flood of blood and gore, ruining a perfectly good meal. The unexpected horror and total shock of the event is so visceral and authentic, perhaps because no one really knew what was going to happen, and has become one of those extremely iconic moments that, even if you haven't seen the movie in question, you know of it and what it entails. Pure brilliance. Pure Ridley.

#29 Choke: Oi with the poodles already

Director: Clark Gregg
Genre: Comedy/Drama
Key Players: Sam Rockwell (great), Heather Burns

Sam Rockwell portrays Victor Mancini, a medicine drop-out and sex addict who pretends to choke on food in restaurants to earn money on people's sympathies. But when faced with boredom of regular copulation, he goes further and beyond. He sets up a meeting with a woman he found on the Internet (where else?) who gets off on "simulated rape" and some of the rougher stuff. Even though rape is not a funny thing to joke about, this particular meeting does set up a good premise for absurd comedy. "Whatever you do, do not rape me on the bedspread, its silk, it will spot, so rape me on the floor. But not on the floor itself, on a towel on the floor, but on the wood part, not the rug". When said "raping" (it's pretty awkward) does begin and things turns even weirder, frustration builds when he manage to break all the above rules concerning floors, bedspreads and so forth, "Why don't you shut up, and let me rape you my way?!" he exclaims. The whole ordeal climaxes with them taking care of their own business: she's on the floor with an electrical buzzing contraption. He the old-fashioned way. On her bed. Not on the towel, as instructed. It's a pretty bizarre moment as well as the only funny one. Disappointing.

#28 Being John Malkovich: Total Malkovich

Director: Spike Jonze
Genre: Comedy/Weirdo
Key Players: John Malkovich, John Malkovich, John Malkovich

Being John Malkovich is a meeting of sheer genius and pure lunacy (would you expect anything else from the creative madman who came up with Adaptation and The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind?). The story: John Cusack finds a hidden door into the mind/head of actor John Malkovich. Literally. Despite the weird premise you are overtaken by it's ideas, charm and excellent acting from Cusack, wife Cameron Diaz and of course the man himself, John Malkovich. But when Malkovich enters Malkovich, it just goes off the charts bonkers. Everywhere he looks, there's Malkovich. Speaking nothing else than Malkovich. It's a high concept movie, but it's insanely good and a definite must see.

#27 Zack And Miri Make A Porno: Shitfaced

Director: Kevin Smith
Genre: Comedy
Key Players: Jason Mewes, Katie Morgan, Jeff Anderson

Following the shitty footsteps of Black Book, here's some more. In Kevin Smith's mildly fun gross-out comedy Zack And Miri Make A Porno, best friends Zack And Miri (Seth Rogen & Elizabeth Banks) decides to make a porno in order to pay rent. A pretty cheap setup for nasty jokes about cum, dicks and vagina's, even for a man like Smith, who's made a name for himself as a smart and witty man while making crude jokes about sex. But I guess extreme situations demand extreme solutions. In Clerks II they put on a donkey show inside of a fast food restaurant. So how do you top that? Here's how! While shooting a scene for their movie, leading fuck-man Jason Mewes, well, to put it as simple as possible, pulls out of "backed up" Katie Morgan perhaps a little too fast ("Anal's great when you're constipated" she enthuses, but don't worry, you don't actually see anything, it's not real porn you see). Cue close-up of poor cameraman Jeff Anderson, lying on his back, taking it all in from down under (a very important angle I might add), when it all backfires and he's hit by a cascade of stark brown poo on his face (you can even spot pieces of corn in there). It's gross as well as funny. Avoid chocolate pudding while watching.

Splash!

#26 Zwartboek (Black Book) - Lots and lots of shit

Director: Paul Verhoeven
Genre: War/Thriller
Key Players: Carice Van Houten

The third (and hopefully final) mention of something that has Paul Verhoeven's named attached to it's title (previous posts include Starship Troopers and Basic Instinct). In Black Book, Paul, as I like to call him, returns to his roots, with this dutch World War II spy-thriller, re-living some memories (and some made up) as a youngster growing up in occupied Holland. And as with most of Paul's work, you'll find not so subtle undertones of eroticism and sex - Black Book is no exception. But unlike the glossy sweaty sex between Sharon Stone and Michael Douglas, here he uses it almost as a reverse effect, keeping it nasty and clinical. Almost business like. Because that's what it is: an undercover operation that makes the heroine go through all possible ordeals. And with pretty devastating results. When put in jail for empathizing with the enemy, Carice Van Houten's underground spy is stripped to her bones and gets an entire dumpster filled with crap (and I mean crap in the true meaning of the word: shit, poo, ass cream) released on top of her. It's gross, humiliating and pure nasty. Black Book shines on occasion, but is really just a watered down mix between Inglorious Basterds and Lust, Caution. Make up your own mind.

#25 High Fidelity: Put violence on shuffle

Director: Stephen Frears
Genre: Comedy
Key Players: John Cusack, Tim Robbins, Jack Black, Todd Louiso

Facing his ex-girlfriend's new lover, John Cusack's mild mannered music geek Rob Gordon, finally loses it, thinking up a plethora of ways to hurt this man (Tim Robbins) standing before him. It's well executed and quite unexpected and proves that unprovoked violence sure is fun!