Friday's Favorite Top Ten Movies

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Re: Friday's Favorite Top Ten Movies

Postby Friday » Fri Sep 29, 2017 3:16 am

6. Kill Bill (Parts 1 and 2)



Alright, here's where I start cheating kinda. I like both of these films about equally for very different reasons.

Part 1 is a love letter to martial arts films and samurai cinema, and part 2 to the spaghetti western. (Remember, super gay for westerns.)

The basic story is The Bride (played by Uma Thurman, whose mutant power is she grows more attractive the more she is beat up and covered her own and other's blood) seeks revenge on Bill and his jolly squad of psycho assassins after they shoot up her wedding.

Tarantino is... well, you either love him or hate him. Or love some of his movies but hate some of his other movies. Or you don't care much about him. Or you like some of his movies but they're nothing special or you dislike his overuse of violence and the N-word but not enough, to, like, protest about it or you have a foot fetish like he does or

Anyway, this isn't about Tarantino and I'm not going to go down that road because everyone has their own opinions about him and that's fine. But know as we go on that Kill Bill is very Tarantino.

Tarantino has said that music is the soul of a film and that's exactly how he treats his scores. Kill Bill is arguably his best scored film with some of the most eclectic and eccentric music choices.



I can tell you, without ego, that this is my finest post. If you should encounter Thad on your journey...

Thad will be trolled.

Apart from the music, both films have amazing action scenes, duels, massive bloodletting orgies, and Uma Thurman getting beat up a lot and getting hotter as she gets more beat up seriously what is with that

On the other side of things, amazing performances all around by the bad guys. David Carradine plays Bill to perfection (complete with The Bad's intro music as his own intro music) delivering a slow, methodical, and charismatic murderer who you can't help but admire. I hang off his every word in his scenes.



Michael Madsen, the only squad member to beat the Bride, is probably the second best highlight, delivering his guilty redneck role with a sad, almost nihilistic poise. Daryl Hannah is gleefully disgusting and hateful and gets her just desserts in probably one of the most satisfyingly gross climaxes ever filmed.

O-Ren Ishii, played by Lucy Liu, is the focus of the first film and if you bring up her heritage as a negative, she'll collect your fuckin' head. She's got a backstory so horrific that they had to animate it to avoid an X-rating, a legion of bodyguards and sub-commanders (Gogo, Lady of the Meteor Hammer) and a heart cold as ice. So basically my perfect woman.

Tarantino loves his cameos and his old familar faces and he uses a lot of both here to great effect. Actors throw themselves into their tiny little roles with such gusto that you can't help but fall in love with each and every one of them. Hattori Hanzo, played by none other than Sonny Chiba, is a wonderful highlight from part 1.

Like I said earlier, the two films are, despite being very closely linked, very different stylistically. Part 1 contains most of the swordplay and action, and while part 2 certainly has a good amount of that, it's a lot slower paced, with the focus on dialog and character. When the action does happen, it's over with very quickly, just like a western. Well, with the exception of Elle vs The Bride.

I'm glossing over a lot because I don't want to spoil things too much for anyone who hasn't seen the films. They're a guilty pleasure of the best kind. Take off your shoes and socks, sit down with some popcorn, and remember that the blood is stylistic and should not be taken seriously.
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Re: Friday's Favorite Top Ten Movies

Postby Bal » Fri Oct 27, 2017 4:04 pm

Friday you fucking slacker. You started a new list before you finished your old one. This is sub-WatchMojo work ethic.

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Re: Friday's Favorite Top Ten Movies

Postby Mongrel » Fri Oct 27, 2017 4:49 pm

Forum Posting Without Honour or Humanity.
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Re: Friday's Favorite Top Ten Movies

Postby Friday » Sat Nov 18, 2017 12:40 am

DID YOU THINK I HAD FORGOTTEN ABOUT THIS THREAD?!?!?!?!

well you're right I did but I remembered it now

5. The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgement Day



This is where I fully cheat. While Kill Bill 1 and 2 can be considered the same movie, sort of, T1 and T2 are not. BUT you cannot fully appreciate one without the other (especially 2 without 1), and I love both dearly, and it's my list so I can cheat, etc

Terminator 1 is 80s R-rated Sci-Fi action at it's absolute best. Jesus fucking christ I am so gay for this film. Arnold is the absolute perfect merciless killing machine. He trained extensively so he would not blink when firing his weapons during scenes. Some people have said that it doesn't take much acting skill to play an emotionless robot, but I disagree. You either sell that you've got a metal skeleton underneath, or you don't, and it's not an easy sell. Pay close attention to Arnold's body movements, the way he cranes his neck back and forth while driving, the smooth, measured speed at which he moves, without abrupt starts or stops.

Acting as his foil is the man him-fucking-self, Michael Biehn as Kyle Reese, humanities last guardian from the future. Tough as nails but also fragile and emotionally unstable, Kyle is absolutely as impressive a character as Arnold's Terminator. His love for Sarah brings a very personal quality to his desperate struggle, because it's not only the future of humanity on the line.

Speaking of Sarah, she starts the movie as a weak person but quickly finds her strength in the face of a fantastic but very scary situation. She mostly shines in the sequel, though.

The Terminator isn't just relentless but almost impossible to destroy. After burning up in a truck crash, the metal skeleton continues to pursue (and seriously, that shit is nightmarish) and even crawls onward after having its legs blown off. I still say "you're terminated, fucker" to enemies in games that have been giving me more than a typical amount of trouble.



T2 is the flashier 90s take on the formula. Now with the inclusion of teen John Connor, Arnold has swapped sides and now is tasked with protecting John. Sarah has become the fucking poster woman for "badass" by this point and can hang in there with the toughest of the tough guys in movie history.

Filling the role of the relentless hunter comes a new model, the T-1000, played by Robert Patrick. Unlike the original cyborg, the T-1000 hunts with a catlike, fluid grace and an ice cold gaze. He's even got a little sass to him that the original T-800 lacked. From "Say, that's a nice bike" to wagging his finger at Sarah, there's just a bit more going on in whatever passes for the T-1000's brain. Again, people say playing a robot is easy, but Patrick brings the T-1000 to life even more convincingly than Arnold did in the first movie, and these movies are all about how well you sell your villain. A silly bad guy (See: The female T-X from 3) would seriously drag down the movie.

The stakes at first look the same as the first movie... but then a wrench is thrown in there. Our heroes might be able to prevent the whole goddamn nuclear apocalypse in the first place! (Well, until they made more movies and ruined that.) Now with 3 billion plus lives on the line, it's not just about surviving and hiding anymore.

The relationship the T-800 develops with John is very real. The fatherly role he plays doesn't seem hokey, like in the most recent movie, but rather natural and even a little cute. In a deleted scene, Sarah and John disable his read-only mode and he begins to learn and think for himself, culminating in him finally understanding human emotion, just in time to make everyone watching the movie cry.

The special effects look a bit outdated nowadays, but at the time, holy shit, DID YOU SEE THAT??!?! This movie contains some of the most satisfying "shoot the bad guy" scenes in history. I still love when he opens the elevator doors only to have Arnold blow his head in half with a point-blank shotgun blast. And of course, hasta la vista, baby.

But the movie's not all about flash. It's got a very solid emotional core, with Sarah's love for John, John's relationship with the T-800, and Miles Dyson's efforts to put the genie back in the bottle. Sarah also has a nice little arc herself, rediscovering her humanity and why it's not okay to kill.

Quotable as hell, action packed, lasers, giant robots, liquid robots, the world's toughest mom, and that holy shit John's 90s hair. What more could you ask for? I seriously doubt anyone reading this hasn't seen the movies, but if you haven't, I can't imagine you not liking them.

*smiles*

Trust me.
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Re: Friday's Favorite Top Ten Movies

Postby Bal » Sat Nov 18, 2017 8:13 am

I know now why you cry.

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Re: Friday's Favorite Top Ten Movies

Postby Friday » Sat Nov 18, 2017 2:29 pm

4. Aliens



Okay, I admit it. The first movie, Alien, is the superior film. It's the best of the best when it comes to Space Horror.

But this isn't a list of the Best Films, it's my favorites, and two things puts Aliens waaaay ahead for me.

1. I'm super gay for Space Marines.
2. Michael Biehn plays a Space Marine.

A lot of what makes Aliens so great is heavy spoiler territory, so I'm gonna give those of you reading this who haven't seen the movie a fair warning. Spoilers ahead.

...














...

Alright, so. Let's first start with the physical design of the Xenomorph, and why it's so brilliant. The Xenomorph is, without a doubt, the greatest movie monster ever created. Never before has an actual alien been brought to life so well. HR Giger, of course, gets most of the credit for the look and feel. The fully-grown Xeno is at once otherworldly but also terrifyingly real, striking a careful balance between fantastical and predatory. The facehuggers are creepy as fuck and are straight out of a nightmare. Most of the time when designing something so horrible and nightmarish, you stray into fantastical, unbelievable territory. It might be scary, but it's also detached from reality. The Xenos are very grounded and obey rules. Weird, alien rules, but rules, and that keeps them real in the minds of the audience. Jason, Freddy, evil ghosts, these things are scary but the audience knows, on a certain level, that they don't really have limits. You can't kill them, they can pretty much manifest whatever powers the plot demands, etc. The writers for Alien and Aliens did not fall into this trap. By making the Aliens "weaker" by grounding them in the real world, they became much more effectively scary as a real, physical threat.

A big part of horror (or action-horror, in aliens) is the soundtrack, and James Horner (RIP) does not let you down. Take a listen to the following iconic track, especially from about 1:00 to 1:20, as they fly away from the reactor that's about to go nuclear:



Recognize it? You should, it was used in every fucking action movie trailer following Aliens' release for a fucking decade. That shit gets your blood pumping like nothing else.

That's pretty much what Aliens is about. Alien 1 was about the slow, horrible isolation and creepy atmosphere of being hunted. While Aliens has a good amount of creep and atmosphere, it relies more on jump scares, Space Marines, and action set pieces to get your blood churning.

Speaking of Space Marines! Hicks, Hudson, Vasquez, Apone, Gorman and the rest are some of the most iconic movie soldiers. They're joined by a solid supporting cast with Paul Reiser as Burke, the OG evil corporate guy before movie evil corporate guys became a joke trope, Lance "has been killed by an Alien*, Terminator, and Predator" Henriksen as Bishop, your friendly neighborhood artificial person, Newt "they mostly come at Night" surrogate daughter kid, and of course Weaver as Ripley, the only female action hero who can stand in the same room as Sarah Connor.

The characters are great and play off each other amazingly. You really believe that this band of marines has seen a lot of shit together, with the way they constantly mock and berate each other. But you also know that this time, they're in over their heads.

Aliens does a lot with very little. The shots of the Aliens are brief. The movie spends the first almost fucking hour with absolutely nothing happening to build the tension. But once the marines descend down into the nest, all hell breaks loose for the rest of the movie, culminating in the reveal of a new type of Alien, one that can think and carry a grudge. You probably couldn't sell "two pissed off mama bears going at it, and one of them is in a mech" to today's executives, but what final confrontation tops it? "Move away from the child, you cranky female" remains one of the most well known lines in movie history.

Too bad the sequels ruined everything forever. Pretend they don't exist (well, watch Alien 3 as like, a scientist, for how rewrites and executive meddling can ruin what could have been a good movie) and enjoy the first two movies, especially the second, for the masterpieces they are.

*Well, okay, he isn't actually killed by an Alien. But I mean, she impales him and rips him in half. If you really want the actor who's been killed by an Alien, a Terminator, and a Predator, it's Bill Paxton (RIP). Though even he might have just been captured and used as a facehugger pod, dying in the explosion, so. I guess there's not a 100% candidate.
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Re: Friday's Favorite Top Ten Movies

Postby Büge » Sat Nov 18, 2017 3:44 pm

Friday wrote:1. I'm super gay for [...] Marines.
2. Michael Biehn plays a [...] Marine.


Calling it now: The Rock (1996) is #1.
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Re: Friday's Favorite Top Ten Movies

Postby Friday » Sat Nov 18, 2017 4:02 pm

Sorry he was a Navy Seal in that one
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Re: Friday's Favorite Top Ten Movies

Postby Blossom » Sat Nov 18, 2017 5:53 pm

He was a Seal in The Abyss too, so ... Lords of Discipline, I guess.
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