25) Cry-Baby (Dir. John Waters)
john waters was more or less making pop by this point, but when it's the shangri las that can hardly be deemed a bad thing. good-bad, but not evil.
24) I Hired A Contract Killer (Dir. Aki Kaurismaki)
another of kaurismaki's droll humanist fables of crime and hardship in a version of finland that's squalid yet deeply nostalgic. if stroszek were optimistic it might be something like the finn's filmography.
23) The Exorcist III (
Dir. William Peter Blatty)
a should-be tossed off threequel based on some mighty goofy lore, delivered through endless reels of exposition and rote visual direction... and somehow it's good anyway, rescued by all these weird, heavy-hearted performances and idiosyncratic, quotable, reference-heavy dialogues via possibly the oldest cast in the history of franchise movies. "
it's a tasty fish, i've got nothing against it."
22) Darkman (
Dir. Sam Raimi)
somewhere between
the phantom of the opera,
the hunchback of notre damne,
the elephant man and
the fly lies sam raimi's first and most unhinged superhero movie, considered by many to be the most authentic comic book adaptation (albeit one without a source), with neeson channelling chaney and goldblum in the starring role. universal notoriously robbed it of many of its wildest scenes, which is sad because even the neutered version is pretty fucking nutty and raw.
just take the fucking elephant!
21) To Sleep With Anger (
Dir. Charles Burnett)
a family has taken root in L.A. after what is implied to be a debaucherous past in the south, but their newfound spirituality and respectability is put to the test when danny glover, an uncle from the old days, reemerges as a deliciously unscrupulous devil figure, deliberately stoking tensions with his raspy voice and bringing about a crisis that can only end violently. here's a film that 'woke' types ought to be championing; not a condescending morality tale with white people getting vanquished or learning that Racism Is Bad, but an oddball comic drama set in a black community and imbued with rhythms and perspectives you don't find in the mainstream (the closest i've seen to something like this is cassavetes'
shadows).
20) Bright Angel (Dir. Michael Fields)
this earnest slice of americana might be compared to badlands or blue velvet for its dreamy reverie, but to me it most resembles the misfits, a similarly sensitive, unstable film which uses a version of the american west to externalise the restless yearning and burgeoning selfhood of its characters, with strange free-associative dialogue and a jarring mix of genres and performance styles (lili taylor is... marilyn monroe by way of christian slater?). its utter sincerity is its biggest strength and weakness in one.
19) White Hunter Black Heart (Dir. Clint Eastwood)
eastwood may be the only insider of the past few decades given the rope to diagnose and skewer the system from within, and in the nineties he began to obsessively interrogate himself and the hollywood myths through which he made his name. two years before aiming his rifle at clint the icon he set his sights on the golden age, but he refuses to disappear into his john huston impersonation, aware that any critique of hollywood and its associated masculine artistic traditions (hemingway, melville and conrad abound) must by nature have clint himself in its scope. it takes balls and honesty to present oneself as a figurehead of so many destructive impulses and hypocrisies, with an ending that's no more forgiving than its successor's.
18) Miami Blues (Dir. George Armitage)
a spontaneous sunbaked screwball neo-noir epitomised by a passage in which jennifer jason leigh obliviously delivers a line of such tragedy it's hard not to tear up, then throws a frisbee to alec baldwin AKA the guy whose teeth her fiancé stole, and baldwin grins and offers a frisbee salute. there are few more straight up fun, colourful crime movies, but there's a heart and brain underneath if you're looking for it.
17) Troll 2 (Dir. Claudio Fragasso)
of course the dude who says "
there must be a logical reason for all this" has to die first.
16) Dick Tracy (Dir. Warren Beatty)
forget plot, forget acting, forget depth, just eyefuck me with brazen technicolor artifice and vintage noir compositions, give me action montages set to sondheim numbers sang by madonna, drop me a grotesque, unhinged, self-loathing villain scurrying around rambling about plato and nietzsche, show me beatty escaping a room by putting together a makeshift see-saw and having his coworker jump onto one end. piss on the rules of Good Cinema and give me a genuine, goddamned shameless comic book movie.
15) Goodfellas (Dir. Martin Scorsese)
numerous scorsese films--goodfellas among them--follow characters who try, and usually fail, to make movies out of their lives. that is to say, they want all of the power, thrills, romance and glory, but none of the accompanying risk, sacrifice and terror. that the invasion of reality into this initially jazzed up gangster fantasy feels so paranoid, unnerving and nasty is a testament to how deeply scorsese shares in that doomed desire.
14) Life is Sweet (Dir. Mike Leigh)
more mike leigh goodness which might make the top ten if i'd seen it more recently. one of the most humane filmmakers, not resorting to miserablism or manipulation to drill social points home like i.e. ken loach, but merely teasing out the personality of ordinary striving foolish hilarious annoying loving people. this guy has been the best of his kind for half a fucking century and has my boundless admiration.
13) A Moment of Romance (Dir. Benny Chan)
like several early milkyway movies this was likely ghost-directed by johnnie to, but it's far removed from the precision and elegance of his later romances. even by the standards of wong's similar as tears go by this is messy, uninhibited filmmaking forged in blood and swirling emotion; there’s no content in the script, it’s all in the passionate movements and emphases of the camera, the alternately violent and steamy editing, the framing and choreography of these actors in a hong kong of moody reds and blurred neon. it's dumb as a doornail, but i live for this shit.
12) The Hot Spot (Dir. Dennis Hopper)
a funny, horny and mildly hallucinatory little small-town noir from dennis hopper, one of those that seems a thousand miles away from the outside world. jennifer connolly and virginia madsen play a pair of smoking hot femme fatales looking to mess with don johnson's head.
11) Singapore Sling (Dir. Nikos Nikolaidis)
if
the hot spot is a thousand miles from the outside world,
singapore sling is a million. there are probably many films more fucked up than this one, but i've never seen such depravity seem so natural a product of the characters' headspaces; there's no gratuitous pandering to the sleazehounds here despite an assortment of kink, nor does its underlying essay on noir tropes have the slightest whiff of arty detachment. nikolaidis' remarkable tonal control has been compared to lanthimos or strickland's
the duke of burgundy, but honestly those guys are pretty tame by comparison.