My Top Ten Movies

1. Donnie Darko

An absolutely intriguing film that is perfect for the Halloween season, even if it isn't a horror movie (also just a great movie to watch anytime in general). Also such a great movie to rewatch every now and then. The plot surrounds Donnie Darko (so it's not just a clever name), and the days leading up to the apparent end of the world, in his eyes. He is a paranoid schizophrenic with visions of a rabbit man named Frank who directs him to do various actions such as flooding the school or burning down a pedophile's mansion. The movie deals with concepts of time travel, mental illness, fate, and death.

2. The Truman Show

If you want to feel paranoia about being filmed/watched all the time, or like everything around you is preset, this movie is for you. This movie is one I thought about a lot as a kid, and even I thought about this concept before I knew of its existence. I'm also a big Jim Carrey fan, and this is by far his best role. Most people know the general concept of this movie, but it's about an ordinary man who has his whole life manufactured by a film company around him, making his entire life a huge TV show for the world to see with millions of fans worldwide. Honestly, no wonder there is a mental illness that spawned after this movie released, there's a lot of things in our world that do seem too good to be true, like it's part of a major plot line.

3. Princess Mononoke

My favorite Ghibli film by far, and I've seen quite a few Ghibli films. Spirited Away, Kiki's Delivery Service, and Howl's Moving Castle are all also masterpieces I hold near and dear to my heart. However, Princess Mononoke to me speaks on Miyazaki's worldly beliefs that I share myself, and in many ways I resonate with the focus character of the film, San. It follows Ashitaka, a young prince with a cursed arm after battling a corrupted forest god, traveling west for a cure before it takes his whole body. He gets involved with the conflict between Irontown and the forces that protect the forest that they encroach upon. This is where one of the main focuses of the story come in, San. A human raised by wolves determined to kill all humans, both to defend the forest and to seek vengence for what they've done. This film provides a nuanced look of human development and balance with nature, as Irontown is a highly progressive city in feudal Japan allowing rights to women and sick people that aren't granted much elsewhere at that time. It teaches a great lesson about how we treat the world and what we pay for the cost of humanity over everything else, and how the world may react to this.

4. The Boondock Saints

A duo of two Irish-American brothers who gain a religious vision one night after a run-in with the Russian mob. They set out to wage a crusade against organized crime in their city in almost Natural Born Killers style with media glorifying their actions and being immortalized as local folk hero vigilantes, giving us both a sweet ass action packed movie and a good comment on what we would all do to seek justice.

5. A Clockwork Orange

A classic cult film based off the 1962 novel and a staple of Stanley Kubrick's best works. It follows Alex DeLarge and his gang of droogs in a run-down and gang-ridden yet authoritarian, dystopian, near-future Britain. Raping, robbing, and beating up weaker people for fun. In a botched robbery, Alex kills a lady in the heat of the moment and is betrayed by his gang, immediately getting arrested. In prison, Alex is tortured as part of an experimental form of punishment, which leaves him completely defenseless to all forms of abuse he recieves. I will not spoil the rest, but it's a good film dealing with authoritarianism vs individuality, and the nature of good vs evil. I also absolutely dig the whole look that is going on with everything on the movie, by far my favorite depiction of the future. It's very bleak with all the brutalism, the modern art and sculptures present in various scenes, and the interesting outfits that the known gangs wear (the droogs wear white dapper wear with bowler hats, and their rivals wear old Nazi surplus). I also love the infusion of Russian/Slavic lingo, as someone who is personally invested in eastern european culture.

6. Zero Day

Filmed in the perspective of found footage, we follow a duo named Andre and Calvin as they film both their everyday lives and their double-life of preparing for Zero Day. Zero Day is their code name for their plan to shoot up their school and die in the process. The scenes go from the two boys having fun, like firing off fireworks, egging houses, and going to parties, to pipe-bomb and sawed off shotgun tutorials, stealing guns, and their last recorded will and testaments. There isn't much to spoil as it plays out exactly how you'd expect, the movie ends with the duo executing their plan, their last moments on their camera shows them running off into the distance armed to the teeth headed towards their school, and then it shows the CCTV footage of the shooting as it unfolds with the two shooters ending themselves after the massacre. It is clearly based on the Columbine Shooting, as the two shooters also documented their plans and seemingly had normal lives outside of what they were doing in their basement. It is very eerie, even in a fictional setting seeing people who you know will go on to do horrible things just living life like anyone else. It really makes you think who you walk past on the street, who you talk to, or people you even know on a daily basis could be doing horrible things behind closed doors or are simply ticking time bombs.

7. Gummo

Yeah, this movie is really fucking weird to say the least. It is a very unorthodox film that doesn't follow a storyline other than the fact it takes place in a small white trash and incest-ridden town in Ohio after a tornado struck. It shows some of the daily lives of its residents, the main one being a kid named Solomon. He and his best friend's daily activities include hunting stray cats and huffing glue, and he narrates some of the movie as well. The movie shifts between different focuses on people such as a silent kid who is always wearing pink bunny ears, skinhead brothers who are rumored to have killed their parents, three sisters with a missing cat, and various other strange characters. It's a film that really focuses on the parts of urban America that nobody likes thinking about, and it really doesn't pull back any punches. There are a ton of scenes involving racism, sexual assault, poverty, abuse (both of humans and animals) and mental illness. There are many scenes that personally sicken but intrigue me, which is why this one of the few favorite movies I'll only ever watch once. There are many scenes that are either off-putting like a scene where two identical twin brothers bathe with each other, and some that are absolutely vile, such as all the scenes inside people' roach-infested and run-down houses. However, the soundtrack is probably my favorite movie soundtrack, featuring both suspense-inducing ambient tracks and the best underground metal band lineup I've ever seen in any movie soundtrack, including Sleep, Eyehategod, Burzum, Mortician, Mystifier, Bathory, Absu, The Electric Hellfire Club, Nifelheim, and Bethlehem. I would absolutely KILL to get an official CD copy of this soundtrack!

8. Office Space

Pretty much anything Mike Judge makes is guaranteed to be a great product. As the creator of both Beavis and Butthead and King of the Hill, he has made some great movies over the years, Idiocracy is another great movie worth mentioning. But Office Space is probably the most painfully relatable thing that Mr. Judge has produced, and I'm sure most can agree with me on there for those who have seen it. It follows Peter, an office worker who says that every day of working gets worse than the last. One day, he simply decides to just stop going to work and he starts living life to the fullest while his coworker friends suffer through the monotony and stress of a 9-5 in contrast. Peter sees this, and he plans to set his friends free from their wage-salve lives. Something I've always noticed about Mike Judge's work is how misanthropic he can be sometimes, just showing how stupid, excruciating, or inconvenient people often can be.

9. The Thing

A John Carpenter film that was not well recieved at the time of its release, and my personal favorite horror movie. The movie explores the concept of lovecraftian cosmic horror and how fear brings out the worst in all of us. Our lineup of characters are researchers at a station in antartica, they take in a dog that turns out to be a shapeshifting alien and one by one each character gets killed off grusomely and is mimicked by the alien, leading the survivors to watch their backs and distrust one another as they never know who is really themselves.

10. American Psycho

Yes, I am aware this is a movie that all the most annoying people like but I still love it. Also based on a novel, it focuses on Patrick Bateman. A 90s yuppie with a Harvard education working as something (I'm not sure if it's mentioned or anything, just some rich guy job I guess). The main focus however is his favorite past times of killing people while spending a solid minute talking about pop music or hgih-end fashion brands. In the book, there would be entire chapters just focused on Patrick talking about his music tastes or his tastes in expensive brands. The depiction of psychopathy is very realistic, as he will act all shallow and blank-faced in a social setting, like an alien trying to fit in amongst others (see what I did there?) and in the next moment he is hacking someone to death with an axe. The film/novel itself is a critique on both our culture of capitalism and masculinity with its intertwining with materialism, though it's quite odd that not many people see this and still somehow idolize Bateman.

Honorable Mentions Lightning Round

• The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

• Trick R' Treat

• Natural Born Killers

• Predator

• Alien

• Lost Highway

• Eraserhead

• Blue Velvet

• Friday the 13th

• Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls