dreamrot's favorite movies: The Burbs

If you asked 100 people in their twenties what their favorite movie to come out of the 1980s was, you probably get a lot of different answers. There's a lot of love for movies like The Goonies and The Dark Crystal. Labyrinth would probably come up as well as The Empire Strikes Back, maybe even Return of the Jedi. In other words, the movies we watched as children. And you'd get all the bullshit nostalgia and sentimentality to go with it. I'm sorry, but a lot of the movies that people still seem to love from the eighties just aren't that good.

If you asked me, however, you wouldn't get any of those answers. I'd tell you flat out that my favorite might be The Burbs. In fact, it might just be one of my favorite movies ever made.

The Burbs is, at it's heart, the quintessential suburban story. Mayfield Place is meant to be Anyplace, USA. When people think of the suburbs, of America, Mayfield Place is that image. Meticulously cared for lawns. Clean and quiet neighborhoods. Eccentric neighbors who can't mind their own business. If ever there was an AMERICAN image, this is it.

You can see, through the movie, the prevailing attitude of our suburbanites, "The Klopecks are different. They aren't one of us. They must be evil. Look at their lawn. They don't come out during the day. They're so different than us. We have to do something about them."

Of course, the great irony is that it turns out that the neighborhood is right and that the Klopecks ARE indeed evil. That's just one of the things that makes the movie so great. We spend almost the entire movie watching the neighborhood's paranoid reaction to the new neighbors.

Sure, the Klopecks aren't the Cleavers. Is that so terrible though? It's at the end, that Tom Hanks' character Ray, finally learns that it's okay that they're different and that the neighborhood really is just paranoid. It's after destroying the Klopeck's home that Ray sees just how crazy they'd all become. And of course it's at this point as well that we see that the Klopecks managed to fool everyone.

That illusion is shattered however when we see the inside of the Klopeck's trunk. This, naturally, leads one to wonder what kind of fool drives around with skeletal remains in their trunk? Aren't you just ASKING for trouble at that point? I mean, even a busted tail light could get you pulled over and then, catch a cop on a bad day and you can get searched if he can find even the least bit of 'probable cause'.

That's not the only question that is raised by The Burbs. The other question is 'Doesn't anyone have a fucking job to go to?' Ok, I might believe that Rumsfield and Walter are retired. And we know that Ray is on vacation. Ricky is a kid, so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. What about Art? What the hell does he do? Other than mooch off of his neighbors that is... His wife is out of town and all he does it talk to the neighbors. Is he on vacation too? Was he laid off? Is he unemployed?

The movie is also the good kind of horror comedy. The kind that works. The kind that still manages to be unsettling.

Carol: Ray isn't coming out of his room until he resembles the man I married.
Art: Carol, We don't have that kind of time.

Ray: I've never seen that. I've never seen anybody drive their garbage down to the street and bang the hell out of it with a stick. I-I've never seen that.

The lines, even out of the context of the movie are great, and the humor is obvious. But, what makes the movies so unsettling is how accuratley it sums up the American experience more than any other movie I can think of. This movie is us in a nutshell. Every cliche. Every bit of xenophobia. It's all there. Sure, the Klopecks turn out to be the bad guys we all thought they were, but we only find that out by accident, by coincidence. For all of the neighborhood's spying and investigating they weren't able to turn up the smallest bit of evidence. They dug up the Klopeck's yard and burned down their house and couldn't prove a goddamn thing for all their efforts. They were the monsters, not the Klopecks.

dreamrot's favorite movies week: the end of the road

I wonder if exfiltrate is really a word...

That was fun. Wasn't that fun?

Those are just SOME of my favorite movies. I think I'll add to the list from time to time. You know, when I'm feeling lazy. Like today. Lazy. See, I was going to do a 7 day week and do 2 more movies, but I go to thinking...I really don't feel like it. I mean, it's already after 7 today, and I have to travel tomorrow. So, the week is over. 5 days is a week, right? It's a work week.

Here are links to the flicks we looked at, and trust me, this is a subject that we'll come back to in the future, I'm sure.

The Fifth Element
Johnny Mnemonic
Shaun of the Dead
Starship Troopers
High Fidelity

And now, I need to get back to Ratchet & Clank.

dreamrot's favorite movies week: day 5: High Fidelity

What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?

And thus begins one of my desert island, all-time, top-five favorite (not to mention most quotable) movies, High Fidelity. It's the story of a record store owner in Chicago who does all the wrong things.

No. Not all the wrong things. He does the right things, just for the wrong reasons. No. That's not it either.

Lets start over. Rob Gordon owns a record store. He has an apartment he can't possibly afford and, up until VERY recently, had a girlfriend. That would be Laura. Laura and Rob have broken up. She's moving out and he's listening to records, mulling the philosophical implications of pop music.

You see, Rob is in a rut. Much like Shaun the other day, Rob has to do something about his life. He feels he's doomed to repeat the same mistakes that he's made since his first "girlfriend" when he was 14. He thinks that there's some big thing he's been doing wrong all this time. So, he goes on a mission to find out what he's been doing wrong. He wants to kind of rehash the past and try to figure out what happened.

I should have gone to the bathroom BEFORE burying myself in records!

Rob has two employees at his record store, Dick and Barry. Dick is sort of...well, Dick. Soft spoken. Quiet. He looks and acts like the type of guy who enjoys the sad bastard music he listens to. Barry on the other hand is very over the top. Spunky, one might even say. Or, like a rambunctious chihuahua.

So, what do you think of the new Corey Hart record?

Hey, I'm not the smartest guy in the world, but I'm certainly not the dumbest. I mean, I've read books like "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" and "Love in the Time of Cholera", and I think I've understood them. They're about girls, right? Just kidding. But I have to say my all-time favorite book is Johnny Cash's autobiography "Cash" by Johnny Cash.

Rob takes on the mission of looking up his top 5 ex-girlfriends to try to figure out what went wrong while also having a one night stand with a local musician and starting his own record label.

Weren't you on the Cosby Show?

In the process, Rob does some of that growing up thing that people seem to like so much. And, in that growing up, he sees how he really feels about Laura. His problem is that it's not new. There's something about a new relationship when you're still figuring each other out, and that's gone. And he's not sure how to handle that. If he stays with Laura, he'll never feel that particular feeling again. And that frightens him.

I can see now I never really committed to Laura. I always had one foot out the door, and that prevented me from doing a lot of things, like thinking about my future and... I guess it made more sense to commit to nothing, keep my options open. And that's suicide. By tiny, tiny increments.

This picture just goes to show how much better Cusack's hair is in comparison to the rest of humanity....and why I'm so jealous of the bastard.

There's so much I love about High Fidelity. To start with, it's the first movie I saw Jack Black in and knew I was seeing Jack Black. He's great in a supporting role like this. I don't think that he's much of a lead, but man can he be hilarious in small doses. I love that Dick is so meek throughout the movie, but is probably the most well adjusted of the three. I love that I relate so well to Rob and can really see a lot of similarities between he and myself. I should also at this point add that I hate that I relate so well to Rob and can really see a lot of similarities between he and myself. Think about it, Rob is really not that great of a guy. He's a bit vain and is a bit of a self absorbed jerk. Don't get me wrong, he does kind of redeem himself, but not really. I mean, he asks Laura to marry him based solely on the fact that he's sick of...well, here:

Rob: I'm tired of the fantasy, because it doesn't really exist. And there are never really any surprises, and it never really...
Laura: Delivers?
Rob: Delivers. And I'm tired of it. And I'm tired of everything else for that matter. But I don't ever seem to get tired of you, so...

It's probably the most romantic way anyone ever came out and said "I'm settling for you." And that's just it, Rob makes such horrible choices and decisions, but still manages to come off as charming.

And among everything else, I love Laura's little chuckle at Rob's question of he sanity about the cd release party. Just that smile and chuckle.

This is going to make twice this week that I've done what about to do. Not surprisingly they're both movies who appear to be about one thing (zombies and music respectively) and turn out to be about something entirely different, High Fidelity gets what it deserves, 10 mix tapes full of stuff she'd like, full of stuff that'd make her happy, because, for the first time, you can sorta see how that's done out of 10.

dreamrot's favorite movies week: day 4: Starship Troopers

If ever there was a movie that could be called "my kind of movie" Starship Troopers would fall into that category.

Think about it. It's in outer space. There a giant fuck off monster bugs. It has Johnny Mnemonic's Dina Meyer. Shit gets blown up. And Neil Patrick Harris controls ferrets...with his mind!

Come on you apes. You want to live forever?

It's the story of Johnnie, or Rico as we'll call him. Rico is that good looking athlete from high school who had the All-American smile but was quite possibly dumb as a brick. A retarded brick. Sorry. That wasn't very PC of me. An autistic brick. Whatever.

Rico decides to join the Army along with his lady friend Carmen and chess club champion Carl. Carl gets assigned to Military Intelligence. Carmen is off to become a pilot. Rico is off, however, to catch the short bus to Mobile Infantry.

Would you like to know more?

Rico starts basic with the typical tough as nails drill sergeant. Along for the ride is Flores, who had a huge crush on Rico in high school. There's also your cocky recruit named Ace. Ace is that guy who's not so much sure of himself as he is full of himself.

Meanwhile Carmen is serving under Captain Janeway while learning how to pilot a spaceship. Word on the street is that she's a little "wild on the stick" but that's a much different movie.

Back in basic, Rico is showing everyone what he's got, even making squad command, right up until he gets a guy killed. In return he gets "administrative punishment". In other words the go all sorts of Kunta Kinte on him (though in a reversal of that famous scene, the guy whipping Rico is black). Rico decides that maybe this Army shit ain't for him. When his home is destroyed by an asteroid though, he changes his mind.

Would you like to know more?

Earth and Klendathu are at war now. Rico's platoon is about to be deployed, and he's now on the same ship as Carmen. They're kind of broken up at this point. And, she's kinda with another guy. And Rico and the new guy don't exactly like each other. But does the old guy EVER like the new guy? No.

The troops begin to be deployed at Klendathu while the bugs launch their blue doodies into space to destroy the invading forces. It's an all out assault on the planet. It takes a lot of bullets to kill these things. Apparently, in the future, there is now Raid. There's no bug bombs. None of those little glue traps. You kill bugs with your foot, or advanced military grade weaponry. Those are your options so you better be damn agile if there's a spider on your ceiling.

The first wave of fighting goes pretty poorly for our infantry pals. Lots of casualties, and I'm not just talking about their pride. People get fucked up and killed. Even Rico gets punctured in the attack. Luckily, back on the ship, they're able to put him into a jar of jelly to heal.

Did you see the size of that chicken?

It's off to a new platoon and a new battle. Rico makes corporal until he dies, or the Lieutenant finds someone better. When the Sargent dies, Rico gets promoted again. The next battle results in the death of Diz and the Lieutenant. And another promotion for Rico. They're Rico's Roughnecks now.

The whole movie plays like a propaganda film. It's sort of like Saving Private Ryan meets Saved By The Bell meets Star Wars. If the army made a movie this good about Iraq, even my pacifist ass would consider it. I remember seeing this in the theater and being all excited when I left. It was so much fun. And really, there's two ways to go on it. There's director Paul Verhoeven's stated theme of "War makes fascists of us all," which there may be some truth to. I mean, people get so anti-"enemy" in war time that it can be rather scary. One could also watch this and see something very pro-military. Something that is very gung-ho and just an average action movie.

My take is that it's satire. It's a send up of war movies. It's so blatantly propaganda. That's what makes it fun. That and the bugs are a lot like zombies. I mean they're almost unstoppable. And there's so many of them. They swarm.

What's great, too, is think back to 97, think of the movies that were coming out. CGI was good, but not exactly great. The effects in Starship Troopers still look good. It's one of those flicks like Jurassic Park or Star Wars where the effects will always look great.

Starship Troopers gets 9 citizens with the courage to make the safety of the human race their personal responsibility out of 10.

dreamrot's favorite movies week: day 3: Shaun of the Dead

It was at some point in the summer of 2004 when I first started hearing about Shaun of the Dead. I don't exactly recall when I first heard about it, but I remember the anticipation as it neared it's release. I remember hearing more and more about how great it was, and seeing previews that just looked amazing. And I remember talking about it with other movie nerds.

It wasn't until it came out on DVD though that I finally saw it. My love for the movie was immediate and all encompassing. This was everything I could have wanted from a movie. Blood, guts, zombies, comedy, Philip. These were the kind of jokes that I made. The characters made choices I would make. I didn't have to try to understand the movie, I'd practically been living it in Detroit without the zombies. I didn't have to "get it," it got me.

I can see for miles and miles and miles and miles and miles and miles and miles and miles

Look at your life. You do the same things day after day. It's easier to go to the same place that you know you like than to try something new and take a chance. You're in a rut. Get up, go to work, eat dinner, go to bed, was, rinse, repeat.

Shaun and Liz are on a date of sorts. They're out. At the bar. Again. The same bar they always go to. Liz would like to do something different, but Shaun likes the comfort and familiarity. Shaun tells Liz that they'll go someplace nice tomorrow, and when he fucks that up, she breaks up with him.

Shaun resolves to get his shit together and get Liz back, but there's something that might get in the way of his plans, a metric shit ton of zombies. Shaun has to save his mom, his friends and his favorite bar from the threat of death.

I'm not going to do the play by play on this one, sorry. Let's skip to the best part, what I liked.

There was an accident, then, everybody died. Trouble was... they didn't stay dead.

Director Edgar Wright does a great job of foreshadowing through out the movie. People who you right off as extras and don't pay attention to come back as zombies. The two trips Shaun makes to the store are shot nearly identically with the exception of the destruction the second time and Shaun is completely oblivious to it all.

The characters are all stereotypical enough to be familiar while at the same time unique enough to be believable. I love how the movie sort of toys with your normal zombie cliches. I love how for all of the jokes and humor in the movie that there is never a moment where the zombies are not treated dead seriously. It would be so easy to make the zombies act stupid and funny, but the zombies behave like zombies should. Shaun spends the movie trying to be the hero but is constantly coming up just short. He doesn't save the day. He doesn't manage to save all of his friends. He doesn't save his mom. He essentially fails at everything except winning Liz back, but it's so easy to relate to him because he tried. If he had succeeded at everything you'd think "That's so great! He won!" but instead, you don't give it a second thought. It turned out the way it turned out. Sure he got his girl back, but look at what it cost.

That's why they call me Mister Fahrenheit

Ultimately, Shaun wants to change his life. But he doesn't! Everything just stays the same, except he's got a story to tell. There's a certain tragedy and realism to that that I just love.

I don't do this often, but as far as I'm concerned, Shaun of the Dead deserves and gets 10 slices of fried gold out of 10.

dreamrot's favorite movies week: day 2: Johnny Mnemonic

Here's where I let it all hang out. Here's where I admit to loving a movie that is absolutely awful. But, dammit, I can't help it, I love Johnny Mnemonic.

Just look at the cast, Starship Trooper's Dina Meyer, The Chase's Henry Rollins, Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo's Ice-T, and Much Ado About Nothing's Keanu Reeves. An all star cast if ever there was one!

Need more proof of how great this movie is? Try this...Dolph Lundgren as a preacher/assassin. Yeah.

Not enough? Ok, look at this:

Do you know what that is? It's a drug addicted, navy trained dolphin. Named Jones. It's THAT kind of a movie.

Remember when we all thought that this was what the internet would look like? Me either.

Johnny is a courier. He transports data, in a brain implant. His capacity is 80 gigs (160 with a doubler). I think there are iPods with that kind of storage space now! You have to forgive that though, I mean, in 95, 80 gigs would have seemed as massive as 80 terrabytes would now.

That's some high tech shit right there.

It was still a pretty bad movie in 95, though. What can you do? Bad is timeless. There is no rational reason for my love of this movie. I'm not even sure that there is an irrational explanation! Something about it though, 20 years from now I won't be able to put my finger on it.

The story itself is pretty laughable, but the acting is even worse! When Johnny gets pissed off, and goes into a tirade,

"Listen. You listen to me. You see that city over there? THAT'S where I'm supposed to be. Not down here with the dogs, and the garbage, and the fucking last month's newspapers blowing *back* and *forth*. I've had it with them, I've had it with you, I've had it with ALL THIS - I want ROOM SERVICE! I want the club sandwich, I want the cold Mexican beer, I want a $10,000-a-night hooker! I want my shirts laundered... like they do... at the Imperial Hotel... in Tokyo."

You don't sympathize with him. You sit and laugh and say "what the shit cock was that?" Ice-T was possibly the best actor in the movie! Rollins was ridiculous as a doctor. Not because he couldn't play a doctor, just because the character was a joke.

Like I said though, I love it. And not just because of the soundtrack (which is pretty good).
It's crazy to look at in a way, I mean, in the mid 90's there were a lot of movies like this. We just had no idea what life with computers really was going to be like. The internet was so new. Now, I still don't think we know what life with computers will be like in the future, but I think we've realized that it won't be too different.

I'm going to give it 7 doubles of myself so that I can hack my own brain out of 10, even though honestly I know it only deserves 4 muscles relaxers injected into my spine to relieve the symptoms of my Nerve Attenuation Syndrome out of 10. Though, had I been doing this back in 97, I would have given it 8 and a half street preachers run over with my van on the way to the hospital out of 10.

dreamrot's favorite movies week: day 1: The Fifth Element

I breifly considered holding off on The Fifth Element until Day 5, just because I thought it would be kind of clever in a completely obvious sort of way.

But no! We are kicking the week off with it! I'll just do something else for day 5.

I remember seeing commercials for this when it hit the theater in 97 and thinking that it looked so fucking cool. I desperately wanted to see it, but for some reason didn't. I was pretty anti-social back then and it's a good possibility that I just wasn't up for dealing with people. Or maybe I just had to work. I can't remember now. Regardless, it was on VHS by the time I saw it. For free no less because I was working in a video store by then. In fact, it was probably the movie I rented the most until I broke down and bought it.

The Fifth Element, also, for you dreamrot trivia buffs, was one of the very first DVDs I bought along with Run Lola Run.

The movie starts on Earth, early in 20th Century Egypt. An archaeologist and his assistant, Dylan, discover hieroglyphics describing a fifth element, a supreme being meant to destroy evil. The celebration of the discovery is cut short, however, by the arrival of a race of robotic turtles. War is coming, and they've come to retrieve the elements from the temple. They promise, though, to return in 300 years to combat the evil.

It then skips 300 years of human history and shows the president. A large man with a wonky eye. Somehow, he managed to get elected. Crazy. I mean, this guy looks like he should have been a pro wrestler, not a government official! We also meet Vito Cornelius, a priest played by Bilbo Baggins. Bilbo explains that they are fighting pure evil. It doesn't want money, or power, it only wants to destroy life. Pretty sweet, huh?

Cornelius explains that the robotic turtles have the weapon to destroy the evil and must be allowed to come to Earth. The President says no problemo and the robot turtles enter our space. They're almost immediately attacked and destroyed by a race of alien pitbulls who want to retrieve a case for Jean-Baptiste Emmanuel Zorg, an arms dealer and all around nice guy. Everyone soon discovers that the robot turtles did not have anything in the case. They didn't trust anyone and had someone else carry the stones.

What the robot turtles did leave in the wreckage of their ship was a fist. A fist with enough DNA to replicate the being it belonged to. This being is, by all modern tests and standards, perfect. Perfect or not, she doesn't want to be with the government and jumps off of a building into the cab of one retired military dude named Korben Dallas. Dallas decides to help her escape and off they go.

The girl turns out to be Leeloo Minai Lekatariba-Laminai-Tchai Ekbat De Sebat, or Leeloo for short. Leeloo likes computers, chicken and clothes. Leeloo does not like being kissed by strangers.

There's really only once character left, Ruby Rhod. Ruby is a DJ or something. I don't know. He has a radio show and is an interplanetary celebrity as a result. He has really weird hair and a god awful voice provided by Chris Tucker. For some reason, he is something of a sex symbol in the future. This is a sad turn of events that I must implore all of you to try to prevent. It's not to late. Only you can prevent forest fires AND save the future!

They're not gonna catch us. We're on a mission from God.

That's neither here nor there though, everyone is now on a mission from God. And Leeloo learned English! Which means the rest of her dialog for the movie goes to shit, but hey, sacrifices have to be made sometimes!

I am an opera singer I sing in foreign lands

The stones are being held by the Diva, played by the other chick from Haute Tension. Before the stones can be delivered, or the opera completed, the hotel comes under attack from the alien dogs. There's only one person who can save the day, Korben Dallas. And the day he does save. Crisis averted and stones retrieved, it's time to haul ass back to Egypt and let Leeloo do her thing. But she doesn't want to. Why bother, people are just going to fuck the damn place up themselves. Leeloo changes her mind when Korben tells her he loves her, and she creams at the ball of evil, stopping it in it's tracks. And they all live happily ever after.

The Fifth Element did not get good reviews when it was released. I remember a lot of people disliking it (like that jerk Mr T). I remember kids in school talking about how it bombed even though it spent two weeks at #1. All I know is that once I saw it I was hooked. I love the humor. I love how the hero (Dallas) and the villain (Zorg) never even meet each other. I love how fluently Milla speaks an entirely made up language. I love how annoying Ruby is. It's just such a fun movie I can't understand how anyone could watch it and not enjoy themselves!

The Fifth Element is an easy 9 points removed from your license after you make a mad dash from the cops into the fog because a chick with orange hair just crashed through the roof out of 10.

dreamrot's favorite movies week

I'm going to be honest with you. I started watching movies quite some time before I started blogging. YEARS before I started blogging. Before there was an interweb. Before I could drive. Before I could write. Back before I even knew what good and bad movies were (growing up I loved Jim Belushi in K-9, what was wrong with me?).

I thought to myself a few weeks ago, in the midst of FILMuary, "Self, you know what would be fun?"

"No, me, what would be fun?"

"Watching new stuff is great and all, self..."

"It sure is!" I'm in the habit of interrupting myself.

"Like I was saying, it's great, but do you know what might be fun too?"

"Making popsicles?"

"Well, of course. But I'm thinking maybe more movie related. Self, what if we take a week and look at some of our favorite movies!"

"Oh my god, me, that's fucking amazing!"

"I know. So, we'll spend a week doing it and then, down the road, when we're bored or just lazy we can ADD TO THE LIST!"

"Can we call it 'dreamrot's favorite movies week'? Can we? Can we? PLEEEEEAAAAASE?"

"Yeah, do whatever the fuck you want."

And thus an idea was born.

Hang out with me this week and we'll check out some of my favorite movies to watch when I don't want to watch something new! You can join in too! Tell me what you think of my favorites. Do you love them too? Do you hate them? It's okay if you do. I won't hold it against you I promise.