Overwhelmed by an immense sense of guilt, busy schedules and other lame excuses I won’t elaborate on, I thought it was about bloody time (pun very much intended) to write a review again for good old Choking on Popcorn. I may not be this site’s high-heeled vampire expert, but I can certainly appreciate the occasional cinematic blood sucking. TV shows dealing with vampires usually are corny and occasionally witty (Buffy), and a rather acquired taste, that is not always my cup of err… Bloody Mary. I heard much good stuff about Alan Ball’s True Blood though (and at that point I did not even know who Ryan Kwanten or Alexander Skarsård was so I approached this completely open-minded). And with Six Feet Under in my humble opinion being one of the best TV dramas ever created, finding American Beauty pure genius and Towelheads emotionally breathtaking, it was hard to resist a new Ball TV show.
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On Jan 21st, my wife had just finished having surgery. In her hospital recovery room, she was trying to relax so I decided to put the TV on to see what was playing. It was a news program and when we saw what they were reporting, the air left the room. That’s how we found out about Heath Ledger’s untimely death. At that time, the Dark Knight had yet to come out to blow us all away and reinforce that we had lost a major talent that was really starting to come into his own. Then we heard about the project he was on when he passed. Terry Gilliam always has had a history of troubled productions so to hear that Heath was halfway through filming Terry’s new film when he left us was, sad to say, no surprise. So the question became, would Mr. Gilliam find a way to overcome this and be able to finish his film in a way that is not only cohesive but (dare we dream?) may remind us of the Gilliam of old?

He did.

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James Cameron is one of my heroes. I remember seeing Aliens for the first time, and being absolutely awestruck by it. I have yet to see a better sci-fi thriller. The Abyss and Terminator 2 are also genre classics, and both pioneered visual effects without getting caught up in them and forgetting to tell a decent story. But I didn’t like Titanic so much (and yes, that’s sarcasm right there), and since then “the JC of movies” hadn’t really made any movies. Until now. And boy has it been worth the wait.

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The joke was to imply that the teens had misbehaved, and like that old punishment of staying after school of writing repeatedly of what one’s school sin was, “We must not destroy the world” read the repeated cursive tagline for 1985’s My Science Project. I remembered the film just barely, but I did recall one of my own high school teachers commenting about that form of school punishment. It went something like this: the punishment has a downside. When students are forced to write repeated sentences with perfect penmanship on a chalkboard, after awhile, on a psychological level, they don’t like to write and/or will take shortcuts to writing. I don’t know if there is any scientific proof in the theory. I do know that when I first saw My Science Project back in ’the mid 80’s, I didn’t care for it all that much. This past week, I was compelled to see it, just for curiosity’s sake. While it wasn’t as bad as I originally thought, it did appear that writer-director Jonathan R. Betuel spent too much time in front of a chalkboard.
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There is a bit of a tug of war with me right now. Part of me thinks that the live action remake of the 2000 anime horror is a loud and crazy bloodbath with endlessly annoying slow motion as well as abundances of hyperactive camera angles. Then there’s that other part, which, despite the dizzy spells and the cravings for high doses of caffeine, says that, even though the movie’s narrative is incoherent, it is an impressive loud and crazy bloodbath. If for some reason you like swords, the Japanese schoolgirl anime clothes AND maximum carnage, look no further. Christmas comes early.
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I recently put together a list of my top 100 films of all time. Let me reiterate. I recently was all but unemployed. So between filing out applications and watching reruns of the Twilight Zone, I put together a list of my top 100 films of all time. What I discovered was that 54 of those 100 films were made within the last decade. As a self-described film snob, I was not only surprised but also a bit horrified that my scope of cinema seems to be so small. So with my head hung down I tried to make sense of why I’m so biased to recent films. Then it hit me. My true love for film started in the mid to late 90s. Before then I didn’t pay much attention to what was playing at my local Cineplex, not anymore then the next guy. Any memories of walking out of theaters speechless by what I’d just seen or chattering away to whomever would lend me an ear, started during this last decade. Unfortunately I couldn’t have that for Star Wars or Psycho or Jaws. But I did have it for most of the films you are about to see on my top 10. That said, it was tough to pare down 54 excellent films to 10 that are the crème de la crème. So here’s what I did. The 10 that I chose are films that I recommend to everyone I pass. That would be you.

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Last Chance Harvey is an unconventional love story set in London. The thing that sets this film apart from your average romance movie is that it is not about two incredibly attractive young people. It’s about a relationship that develops between two older people, who are both slightly dysfunctional and withdrawn from the world around them. The film is full of honest performances, and there is a genuine chemistry between Emma Thompson and Dustin Hoffman, which makes the evolving relationship between their characters very believable.
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