#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.