Here’s another random movie list: Worst Movie Mothers. These range from the stomach-turning to the chuckle-inducing. And three of the top ten are in movies from the past three years.
Worst Movie Mothers
Movie Lists
Least Convincing Movie Monsters
Given the Cowboys & Aliens hubbub and my post on 1994’s Oblivion, I’ve been thinking about phony looking movie monsters. So here’s my list of the Least Convincing Movie Monsters. These monsters are so bad that Godzilla doesn’t even make this list. And the dogs wearing fright masks in The Killer Shrews (above) are only #3. Enjoy.
More prison movies (the raunchiest of the genre)
It’s not often that I get accused of being too high brow, but my friend Steve has criticized my heretofore well-regarded list of 10 Best Prison Movies for not including Women in Chains (1972). Women in Chains is part of the subgenre of women-in-prison exploitation movies. A prison setting offers a filmmaker the possibility of violence, sex and S&M to exploit. With women’s prisons, nude shower scenes and catfights are added to the mix. Steve fondly remembers this aspect of Women in Chains. But, Steve, it was a made-for-TV movie, so it couldn’t have been THAT racy.
The absolute master of this genre is the website BigBustOut.com – The Original Encyclopedia of Women in Prison Films, which lists over 300 women-in-prison movies. BigBustOut.com also has an excellent history of the genre. I’ve included BigBustOut on my list of Other People’s Great Movie Lists. Here is BigBustOut’s take on Women in Chains.
My own guilty pleasure from 70s prison exploitation films is 1971’s 1,000 Convicts and a Woman, which I saw in a drive-in during a misspent evening of an otherwise upstanding youth. 1,000 Convicts and a Woman doesn’t make BigBustOut because it’s not about a women’s prison. Instead, the oversexed daughter of the warden returns from finishing school and moves into the men’s prison. Played by vamp-eyed blonde Alexandra Hay, she immediately begins to tease the incarcerated, with forseeable results.
Coming up on TV: Midnight Express
On July 23, Turner Classic Movies is broadcasting 1978’s Midnight Express. This film is so gripping that, thirty-plus years after its release, you can’t hear “Turkish prison” without immediately thinking of Midnight Express. It’s probably done more to keep American kids from bringing drugs into Turkey than any other factor. Midnight Express is based on a true story, and is amped up considerably by Oliver Stone’s screenplay. Nominated for six Oscars, it won two.
TCM is also showing Cool Hand Luke on July 23. Both are on my list of 10 Best Prison Movies
DVDs of the Week: hang ten this summer!
Let’s go surfin’ now
Everybody’s learning how
Come on and safari with me
It’s a great time for the two most awesome and gnarly surfing movies, the documentaries Step Into Liquid and Riding Giants.
Step Into Liquid (2003): We see the world’s best pro surfers in the most extreme locations. We also see devoted amateurs in the tiny ripples of Lake Michigan and surfing evangelists teaching Irish school children. The cinematography is remarkable – critic Elvis Mitchell called the film “insanely gorgeous”. The filmmaker is Dana Brown, son of Bruce Brown, who made The Endless Summer (1966) and The Endless Summer II (1994).
Riding Giants (2004): This film focuses on the obsessive search for the best wave by some of the greatest surfers in history. We see “the biggest wave ever ridden” and then a monster that could be bigger. The movie traces the discovery of the Half Moon Bay surf spot Mavericks. And more and more, all wonderfully shot.
The filmmaker is Stacy Peralta, a surfer and one the pioneers of modern skateboarding (and a founder of the Powell Peralta skateboard product company). Peralta also made Dogtown and Z-boys (2001), the great documentary about the roots of skateboarding, and wrote the 2005 Lords of Dogtown.
Both of these films make my list of Best Sports Movies.
10 Best Baseball Movies
Since we’re at the All-Star break, it’s time to take another look at my list of 10 Best Baseball Movies.
Patriotic Movies for the 4th of July
I haven’t found any other acceptable lists of patriotic movies. Other lists tend to be less patriotic and more jingoistic and nationalistic, less about celebrating the essential American values and triumphs (sometimes triumphs over ourselves) than about dominating some furriners in war or sport. That’s why Top Gun and Miracle show up on those lists, but not on mine.
Throughout our history, American patriots have taken risks and made sacrifices for ideas and causes greater than themselves. Here are ten movies that celebrate such authentic patriotism: 10 Patriotic Movies.
Incendies: best movie of the year so far
This searing drama is the year’s best film so far. Upon their mother’s death, a young man and woman learn for the first time of their father and their brother and journey from Quebec to the Middle East to uncover family secrets. As they bumble around Lebanon, we see the mother’s experience in flashbacks. We learn before they do that their lives were created – literally – by the violence of the Lebanese civil war.
Because the film is anything but stagey, you can’t tell that Canadian director Denis Villaneuve adapted the screenplay from a play. Lubna Azabal, a Belgian actress of Moroccan and Spanish heritage, is brilliant as the mother.
It’s a tough film to watch, with graphic violence against women and children. But the violence is neither gratuitous nor exploitative – it is a civil war, after all, and the theme of the film is the cycle of retribution.
Incendies was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Oscar, but lost out to a much inferior film on the same subject of violence, In a Better Life.
Coming Up on TV: The two best Civil War films
The Civil War began 150 years ago this month, and TCM is broadcasting the two best Civil War movies on April 25.
Ron Maxwell’s 1994 Gettysburg is the gold standard of Civil War films. It follows Michael Shaara’s superb historical novel The Killer Angels and depicts the decisive three day battle. It was filmed on the actual battlefield with re-enactors. Maxwell took great care in maintaining historical accuracy. Civil War buffs will recognize many lines of dialogue as historical, as well as shots that recall famous photographs. In addition, Gettysburg is especially well-acted, especially by Jeff Daniels, Tom Berenger, Stephen Lang, Sam Elliott and Brian Mallon.
The other very best Civil War movie is the 1989 Glory, which tells the real-life story of an all-black unit in the Union Army. Glory has tremendous performances by Denzel Washington, Andre Braugher, Morgan Freeman and Jihmi Kennedy.
Best Movies of 2011 – So Far
I’ve starting my running list of Best Movies of 2011 – So Far. So far, I’ve included Source Code, Carancho, Potiche and The Adjustment Bureau.
There are some intriguing candidates coming out soon, including Poetry, In a Better World, Incendies, Meek’s Cutoff and The Princess of Montpensier.
My top movie so far, Source Code, is in theaters right now. Here’s the trailer.