My all time favorite movies: SCREAM

I have been toying with the idea of doing a series of posts on my all time favorite movies for a little while now. Working at a movie theater again has started all of these conversations about movies and I always love to hear what people have on their lists of favorite movies. I decided I would take my 20 favorite movies of all time and write a blog entry about each of them. There are no set qualifications for a movie to be on this list. These are simply my 20 favorite movies of all time. They will not be numbered. Do not assume that I am going in order from 20-1. I will probably do that starting at 10, but honestly 11-20 are not numbered. They kind of exist right outside of the top 10. A few things you will realize as the list goes on are how recent so many of them are, and how Americanized the list is. I make no apologies for this. I know most people who are deep into film as I am often have many movies from the pre-1970s on their lists, but you will only find 2 or 3 of those here. I do not dislike "classic" movies in any way, but they have never stuck with me as much. I respect the craft, but I am rarely left feeling like they are my favorite movies. I cannot really explain it further than that. I am not xenophobic, but when it comes to cinema, I just prefer the American Aesthetic. I have roughly 10 foreign films that I love, but they do not make it into this list. Again, it is just my personal taste. Each post will be labeled as "favorite ever" so you can easily find them as I go on. As always, I love to hear feedback, if not on my choices, on your choices for some of your favorite movies of all time. Okay, onto this week's post. Oh and there will probably be spoilers about each title on the list.



SCREAM

It is impossible for me to do an all time favorites list without a horror film. When it comes down to horror movies, I have to choose between 2 films, this one, and Halloween. They are far and away my two favorite horror movies, but I decided to go with Scream for a variety of reasons. Horror movies have a really bad reputation. People tend to think of them as cheesy and unbelievable and not having any real merit as films. When I was Nine years old I saw Halloween for the first time and I remember being terrified, like legitimately terrified and for some reason I drawn to that. I was drawn to movies that could really put me in a weird space like that. Scream came out my senior year in high school and I was working at a movie theater at the time and we premiered everything back then on Thursday nights after we closed. That meant the movie would be getting out around 2am. During the first time I watched it, I could remember a movie ever making me laugh and make me scared so often and so well. In fact, the movie was so funny that it made the scares, the jumps and the brutal deaths even more shocking. But those laughs lull you into a false sense of comfort and when I was walking out to my car, I was not thinking about how scary the movie was until I was near the alley and no one else had parked their car where I was. Suddenly I was truly terrified that Ghost face was going to come out of the darkness and stab me and no amount of witty movie knowledge was going to save my ass. This is the brilliance of Scream.

Wes Craven is a long time master of the horror movie genre. Go back and watch his filmography. There are, in my opinion 12 incredibly solid movies on his resume and a few of the creepiest movies ever are directed by him. He did for dreaming what Hitchcock did for showers and Speilberg did for swimming in the ocean. In the early 90s Craven first tried his hand at this META style of film making with New Nightmare, but with Scream he took it to a whole new level. Armed with a fantastic reference heavy script from Kevin Williamson, and a cast of young, fresh, ready-for-anything actors, Craven crafted a genuinely hilarious and equally scary film franchise that turned the entire slasher sub-genre on its head. Craven has directed all four Scream movies and while people have found the sequels to be varying degrees of less successful than the original, they stand as a wonderful series anchored by this whip smart, incredibly fast and brutal film. Set in the fictional town of Woodsborro, a maniac in a truly horrifying mask and cloak is going around stabbing young people. The main target appears to be Sidney Prescott and her friends. Is it a personal grudge? Is she just a victim of bad luck? Probably not. A year ago her mother was murdered and Sidney put the man who did it behind bars, or did she? Who really knows?

The opening scene, I think goes down in history as one of the best opening scenes in a horror movie, ever. Drew Barrymore, doing Craven a favor, plays a girl babysitting when she starts getting harassed by menacing phone calls. Soon she realizes she is in the midst of a game that probably no good ending. Creepy, bloody, smoky and weirdly comical, this opening scene sets a blazing tone for the rest of the film. Ghostface is not like so many of the slasher film villains, he is fast. He runs and he misses. He is clumsy, but he also stabs with unrelenting evil. He, like every slasher villain, somehow manages to be everywhere at all times and even though the mask deadens him, he has personality and it is not pretty. In what I like to think of as a nod to Michael Myers, Ghostface appears genuinely curious as to how people die. Like Myers slightly tilted his head when he murders Bob in halloween, Ghostface often tweaks his head after a satisfying kill, especially when Rose McGowen gets it. That scene works on so many wonderful levels and as a stand alone scene, in encapsulates everything this movie does right. That scene starts kind of funny, then gets a little bit creepy, then builds to the main action as we freak out about this character we have grown to like, then it gets gruesome. and Scene.

Of course, the thing most people remember from Scream is the rules of surviving a horror movie. I have read people in film academia write and discuss Scream from all angles, but they always come back to this idea of surviving the horror genres. By poking fun at the slasher film is Scream stuck to continue the tropes of the slasher flick? Does it have to play out exactly the way we know it is going to play out because of the rules it sets up? Essentially people ask if the META aspect of Scream trap Scream. I have always looked at it like this, I think that is the point. I think it is supposed to be "trapped" by genre conventions, but by pointing them out, the film knows it is trapped, if that makes any sense. We get a series of rules to survive a horror movie, and then those rules play out for the most part in a way that is both funny and scary because of the set up. To have scenes be both hilarious and scary really plays with your head. You are laughing because the big boobed girl is running up the stairs after a comment about a big boobed girl running up the stairs is made, but at the same time she is being chased by someone with no mercy, so is it wrong to actually laugh? I have no idea, but it gets you thinking.

That is why I love Scream so very much. it works as a satire, but it also works as a horror movie. It is bloody and scary with an awesome climatic sequence that, of course, takes place at a high school party. It has a great cast of young people and Sidney Prescott is the ultimate Final Girl, but she is not alone. I love how personal the story got, and I absolutely loved Matthew Lillard's performance. Scream has great references to a whole world of scary movies, but instead of being trapped by the conventions it dares us to laugh at how the conventions play out. That is not even including the brilliant scene of us watching the newsman watch a scene of Randy watching Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween telling Jamie to turn around as we want Randy (played by Jamie Kennedy to turn around. In sense we are Randy hoping Jamie will turn around. I wrote a whole page in an essay just about that scene once. I took a college course in horror and sci-fi film and Scream was the only film we spent more than one class period on because it adds so much to the genre of horror. It really added a new dimension to horror movies that you still see today. It existed before, (see The Howling)but it really showed us that when crazy things happen, we really only have fiction to guide us through them. If suddenly the world sprouted zombies, the one thing we all believe is that head shots will take them down because that is what we have always seen. Scream showed us that. Scream showed us that watching horror movies might be the only way to escape a real life horror movie.

A Good Day to Die Hard

Die Hard remains one of the best action movies ever. If you do not believe that, chances are you are not really into action movies. Bruce Willis has done some pretty great work in his career and some pretty terrible work, but his John McClaine feels like the basis for so many action heroes. I have loved this entire series, even Live Free or Die Hard, which most hated. I am not sure why because the series has gone so far away from what made the original film so great. In sequels McClaine is treated more like a superhero. In Die Hard he was human and fallible. His heart and wit led him, but he could be hurt, badly. In the more recent incarnations, he basically throw trucks at helicopters, leaps tall buildings in a single bound and might as well stop bullets with his teeth. Yet, there is something about the character that I still find totally endearing. Perhaps it is that he always does the right thing no matter how it might go him. He believes in saving his family above everything else and well, his stunts are awesome. I believe the poster for this addition to the series is brilliant. It really makes you forget that the 4th one was rated pg-13. It is not to say that I thought the movie looked brilliant, but it did look like a bullet riddled good time!

John McClaine (Willis), cranky as ever, is looking for his son Jack(Jai Courtney) and unfortunately finds out he is in a Russian prison on counts of drugs and murder. McClaine heads off to Russia to find out what went wrong without thinking about it. He just goes. John and Jack are clearly not on good terms and John probably feels it is his fault. His job took precedence in his life and he was essentially an absentee father. When McClaine reaches the courthouse where his son is about to testify that he was hired by a political prisoner, Kamorav(Sebastian Koch) who once was responsible for the Chernobyl explosion, things go crazy. The man in political power wants Kamorav dead, but first he wants these vague files that Kamorav has that could damn the entire political front. At the courthouse, a string of car bombs interrupt the trial and quickly Jack is shoveling Kamorav to safety. As it turns out Jack has been a CIA operative and his mission is to save Kamorav and provide safety in exchange for these files. Well, John gets in the way and the rescue mission goes haywire leaving John and Jack alone with Kamorav with an army chasing them.

A Good Day to Die Hard is a mix of classic Die Hard and this new Superman like Die Hard. There are things I absolutely loved about it, like when the safe house gets compromised. I loved the action of that scene. It felt very old school. McClaine with a gun shooting at bad guys. That is what I want. I love to watch Mcclaine in confined spaces. That is what made the original Die Hard so excellent. That being said, there are action sequences that are so ridiculous that it was hard to fully just let go an enjoy them. Do not get me wrong, I love watching helicopters shooting at two guys who are somehow dodging all of the bullets, only to escape by jumping through one of the chutes at construction sites. However, here it felt forced. There was too much noise and not enough logic. In fact, it felt like there were giant chunks missing from the film, things that could have better set up what exactly was going on. First off, I would have loved to know how long McClaine had been looking for Jack and why.

By the time the climax comes, it is difficult to really care about what is going on. Willis looks bored, the movie is spinning out of control and the climax has the absolute worst placement of McClaine's classic catchphrase. Inf act that might be my biggest complaint about the movie: it just felt lazy. Willis can be a super fun and engaging figure on screen, but in all honesty, it is easy to tell when he bored in a movie. Here he looks bored big time. I am not sure why they felt the need to bring in a younger guy to the franchise, but Courtney does not really offer anything of substance. McClaine can kick ass plenty fine on his own. I sort of understood in Live Free or Die Hard adding a wise cracking side kick, but why add another stoic character who says little? Why give us John McClaine Jr, if he is going to be just like McClaine senior? It just makes no sense.

I wanted to love A Good Day to Die Hard, I really did, but it is tough to give it a positive review. There are some awesome action stunts, and it is always good to see McClaine, but I would rather a John McClaine who actually looked like he wanted to be there. I know they are hard at work on crafting a sixth Die Hard movie and my hope is that it involves McClaine on his day off ending up as a hostage in a bank or some other building because I want to see that McClaine again.

Final Grade: C-

My all time favorite movies: LOOPER

I have been toying with the idea of doing a series of posts on my all time favorite movies for a little while now. Working at a movie theater again has started all of these conversations about movies and I always love to hear what people have on their lists of favorite movies. I decided I would take my 20 favorite movies of all time and write a blog entry about each of them. There are no set qualifications for a movie to be on this list. These are simply my 20 favorite movies of all time. They will not be numbered. Do not assume that I am going in order from 20-1. I will probably do that starting at 10, but honestly 11-20 are not numbered. They kind of exist right outside of the top 10. A few things you will realize as the list goes on are how recent so many of them are, and how Americanized the list is. I make no apologies for this. I know most people who are deep into film as I am often have many movies from the pre-1970s on their lists, but you will only find 2 or 3 of those here. I do not dislike "classic" movies in any way, but they have never stuck with me as much. I respect the craft, but I am rarely left feeling like they are my favorite movies. I cannot really explain it further than that. I am not xenophobic, but when it comes to cinema, I just prefer the American Aesthetic. I have roughly 10 foreign films that I love, but they do not make it into this list. Again, it is just my personal taste. Each post will be labeled as "favorite ever" so you can easily find them as I go on. As always, I love to hear feedback, if not on my choices, on your choices for some of your favorite movies of all time. Okay, onto this week's post. Oh and there will probably be spoilers about each title on the list.

LOOPER

I know it seems crazy to put a movie released in 2012 onto my all time favorite movies list. I mean, how will I know if it stands the test of time? Honestly, I have no idea if it will. What I do know is that when it was over the first and second times I watched it, I had tears in my eyes and not really because of the sadness of the movie, but because of the beauty of the crafting of the movie. Looper represents everything I love about movies. It is inventive, full of heart, witty, intense and perfectly put together. Everything fits like this gorgeous and mysterious puzzle piece.

Looper is the story about a guy, Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) who kills people for a living. It is not under ordinary circumstances though, because the year is 2074 and when the mob wants to kill someone they send that person back in time to have them killed. Joe is a looper. he is in the past killing people who get sent back to him until one day when he is supposed to kill the older version of himself (Bruce Willis). That is the basic story. The final half of the movie involves a woman (Emily Blunt) and her kid (Pierce Gagnon) and Young Joe's attempt to keep them safe from old Joe.

If you are the kind of person who goes into every movie looking for holes or watches Looper and points out that the time travel thing does not make sense, well clearly the movie is not for you. That is not to say I even think there are holes in the plot or that the time travel function of the movie is the point, because it is not. Looper is, at its core, a movie about time, but not about time travel, it is about our time, about how we spend our time and how our time affects those around us. it is also incredibly full of ideas about destiny and fate and nature vs. nurture. it is full of everything life is full of. It asks questions about who we are and what we are and why we are. It digs deep into our humanity and forces us think about our own lives. Rian Johnson has written and directed 3 excellent movies in 3 very different genres with 3 very different tones and they all work, but everything about Looper is incredible to me. I love the creativity involved in the story and I loved the giant chunk of time the movie spends showing us the possible outcome of Joe's life. It was poetic and heart breaking and incredibly interesting. I was invested in Joe on two different levels as two completely different people. It was hard to root for one because you knew that there would consequences for the other. Willis gives his best performance since The Sixth Sense and Joseph Gordon-Levitt continues to blaze a trail of excellence on screen. The two of them together are dynamite. The make up on Gordon-Levitt to give him that Willis looks is astonishing. And Gordon-Levitt really mastered that Willis look and posture and mannerisms. Their diner scene is equal parts funny and tense.

However, the second half, and especially the final third are when the film kicks everything into overdrive. I was pretty stoked with how everything was going and then we get to this house on the edges of a cornfield in the middle of nowhere and the movie just ramps everything up. Emily Blunt is magical as usual as a woman keeping a very big secret and trying to keep everything in her life together and Gagnon is a fiercely talented young actor who really shines in a film full of stand outs. His performance is menacing and scary, but also sad and vulnerable. Gordon-Levitt and Blunt have a wonderful bristling chemistry that comes to a head at exactly the right time. A lot of that is owed to Johnson's sense of pacing in this film. Things move at the exact pace they need to. The movie can switch from slow burn to a fully engulfed flame at the snap of the fingers. But it never feels stilted. Then you add in the crazy effects when the kid loses his cool and Looper succeeds on a whole new level. There is this insane burst of energy that explodes off the screen multiple times and just when you recover, it hits you again, if not with crazy action, then an awesome character revelation.

For me Looper is pure movie magic. It is a film that made me think and feel about everything. It was a master work from a young director who is still on the rise. I did not get up when it ended, I did not quickly grab my phone and tweet immediate reaction. No, I sat there through the credits quietly pondering exactly what just happened. I sat there quietly to reflect on everything. It had such a profound affect on me. I wanted to watch it again for the first time. No joke, it was the kind of movie that made you sad that you could never see it again for the first time. That is not to say that more viewings make the movie less, because they do not. They add to the experience of this fascinating film. Perhaps you were not as enamored by it and that is fine for you. I know Looper is the kind of movie I am going to be telling everyone to watch when they turn to me for recommendations as people often do. The themes in Looper are eternal and so many of those movies with staying power are based on eternal themes. They ask us to think about what our lives mean to us, because that is important. How we see ourselves and how we react to our own lives is what is important. Our lives have meaning, but it is our job to excavate that movie and Looper gets to that in such remarkable ways.

Warm Bodies

It is a weird thing to see a movie being billed as the first ZomRomCom. A zombie romantic comedy sounds impossible. First off, it just sounds like an idiotic proposition. Then you have to factor in all of the reasons why a ZomRomCom could not exist. Is the movie going to be about two zombies falling in love? That makes no sense, but then again neither does a movie where a living breathing person falls in love with a zombie. I mean, I feel like to make that movie would require some disgusting fetish thing to be established, yet here we are with the first ZomRomCom that I can remember. Now, it is not the first comedy to be set in a world of zombies, and I think even FIDO had some weird zombie/human love thing, but this movie was clearly marketing itself as a romantic comedy with zombies. It got me wondering, would there be a traditional Meet/Cute? Would there be a central conflict outside of, you know, the whole zombie thing? Mostly though, I wondered how kissing would be handled with a zombie. Yes, I know I have random thoughts, but seriously when you think of a RomCom, you think kissing and zombies are typically on the no kiss list. First off, infection turns to zombification, but second, ummm THEY EAT HUMANS!! So it is with these thoughts in mind that I sat down to watch Warm Bodies.

R(Nicholas Hoult)is not your garden variety zombie. First off, he narrates the story. It is not often, a zombie narrates a movie. R cannot remember how the zombie outbreak began, nor can he remember anything about his previous life. he feels like he is missing something, but he is not sure what it is. His exposition is brief and we learn there are two kinds of zombies, the kind who still have human flesh attached and those who do not. The ones who do not are called BONIES. They have lost all hope and eventually their skin rots off and they become all bones. They also become incredibly fast when they become BONIES. Zombies have being turned into BONIES to look forward to. R lives in an airplane and is a collector of stuff. He keeps almost speaking to his possible best friend (Rob Corddry) and he hates that he has to eat humans to stay alive. One day a surviving group of humans are in Zombie territory getting medical supplies, and R and his band of zombies smell them and attack. After killing a human and starting to eat him, R sees a girl, Julie(Teresa Palmer) and his entire world changes. He feels protective of her and even sneaks her out of the danger zone back to his home. His narration lets us know he thinks she is perfect and he wants to act cool in front of her, but he is a zombie. Yet, things start to change. he can say words, he walks less zombieish, believes he starts to feel things and perhaps, he is changing back into a human the longer he stays with her.

Warm Bodies is a clever movie with great wit and a big heart. Is it cheesy? Well, sure it is a bit cheesy, I mean a woman's love starts changing a zombie back into a human, so there is a factor of cheese to it, but everything is so genuine and mostly innocent that the cheesiness ends up being incredibly sweet. Hoult and Palmer have a great chemistry and their scenes are shot, written and directed with sweetness, and humor. It feels like watching a really cute high school couple slowly but surely fall in love, except one does most of his talking as voice over narration because he is too dead to actually speak in complete sentences. The story is also loosely based on Romeo and Juliet, but I was pretty ignorant to that until my girlfriend pointed out the balcony scene. It does not really come off as being truly based on Romeo and Juliet, but looking back there were nice nods to it. However, knowing the balcony scene was a play on Romeo and Juliet made me giggle more during the scene because Romeo had such pretty words with which to woo Juliet and R just kind of shrugs and grunts a lot. However, you sort of understand why she starts to fall for him. He is cute, in a zombieish way, and he is dorky and sweet and welcoming. He protects her from harm multiple times and clearly wants to help her.

My favorite thing about the film is the wit. I did not find it to be generally laugh out loud funny, but more clever or sly with the jokes. It would have been very easy to make it extremely over the top and ridiculous. I mean it is a romantic comedy about a zombie and a human. It would have been so easy to push the limits of good taste in the name of humor. Warm Bodies is not interested in gross out humor though. And it is not interested in going for the easy big broad laugh. There is a great overall feel of warmth that exudes from every moment of the film. This was made by people who cared to tell a heart warming story using the most heartless things they could think of. This is not Twilight, even though I feel the idea for the novel might have been birthed out of this idea of making loveless creatures fall in love. Warm Bodies has too much soul for that. The Julie character is strong and vulnerable. You understand why she could change the whole world by loving a zombie. Teresa Palmer is a knockout, but she is not vain about her beauty. She makes herself open to the idea of truly falling for a flesh eating creature.

Warm Bodies might be the least gross or gory zombie movie to ever exist as well. There is action though. I really enjoyed the climatic action sequence. It was funny, but also thrilling. I thought the effects of the BONIES were very well rendered. Jonathan Levine, the writer and director, has a great touch for material. This is the third movie (50/50 and The Wackness) of his I have seen and the one constant in those three movies is how he treats the characters as real people with real lives and real emotions. He believes characters drive plots and not the other way around. I very much admire him for caring so much about his characters because it makes it so much easier for us to care about his characters. I should have not felt so strongly towards this weird ZomRomCom. Oh and yes, there is a Meet/Cute but it is not terribly cute. It is definitely weird.

Oh last thought, I loved that the zombies absorbed the memories of the people whose brains they ate. For some reason, that aspect of zombieism made it so much more tragic. And it made R that much more of a tragic hero to me, but not in the traditional sense because tragic heroes die and R starts undead. Well, you know what I mean

Final Grade: B+

Bullet to the head and Last Stand thoughts

In the 1980s and early 1990s there were a variety of big action movie stars, but Stallone and Schwarzenegger were probably the biggest and baddest. You can make a case for Bruce Willis and I would listen, but for just pure action, these two guys were it. Schwarzenegger clearly had other ambitions, but Stallone has always popped up in movies and over the last few years has seen somewhat of a resurgence with The Expendables, which is just total awesome nonsense. At the beginning of this year we were treated to movies starring both of these aging stars. Stallone with Bullet to the Head and Schwarzenegger with The Last Stand.

I am not going to review them separately because it seems unnecessary. I will say this, I preferred The Last Stand to Bullet to the Head, but I think Bullet to the Head should have been the better movie. One thing that comes to the fore front as soon as both of these movies start is the completely lack of subtlety. This, of course, comes as no surprise, but from the first two seconds of each movie we are bludgeoned over the head with these super loud and in your face crazy camera motions. It is as if these movies were filmed for people seriously deprived of hearing and sight and needed everything big and boisterous from the first second on screen. Bullet to the Head opens with a bullet piercing the images of all of the companies who funded the film. GET IT, IT IS CALLED BULLET TO THE HEAD!!! See, here is a bullet to open the movie. Also, wait for the moment when Stallone actually says BULLET TO THE HEAD!! In case you forget the name of the movie, there are no less than 6 people who get what? Oh yeah A BULLET TO THE HEAD!!

I understand the practice of action film making is often an exercise in bold faced testosterone, and I have been known to truly enjoy, even seek out, big loud pointless action movies. I have an undeniably stupid soft spot for the Fast and Furious movies. However, there is a finesse to the ones I like. These two movies just clunk along at the highest level of obnoxious as possible. At least The Last Stand has a sense of humor to it. Do not get me wrong, Bullet to the head provides enough racist jokes to be TRULY HILARIOUS, as hilarious as a BULLET TO THE HEAD, but I appreciated the Johnny Knoxville aspect of The Last Stand. In fact, My favorite Johnny Knoxville performances are when he is the wacky comic relief in ridiculous action movies. Schwarzenegger understands how utterly ludicrous the entire idea of him as an action star is, and he embraces it to comic effect. Every time he falls, he groans and moans about being too old. he knows his limits and to be honest, The Last Stand has a pretty cool climatic showdown. It plays like this goofy, over the top western inspired shoot out. None of it makes any sense, but it is a total blast to watch.

Bullet to the Head had so much more potential to be an awesome flick. I love revenge flicks and I love movies where cops and bad guys have to team up to get someone even more nefarious and Jason Momoa (Game of Thrones) makes about the most imposing villain this side of a WWE wrestler, it is a shame he is mostly wasted. I did laughingly love the Ax fight between Momoa and Stallone, but it was not enough to save the movie. Also, Bullet to the Head just made me sad for Christian Slater. I think Slater deserves better than to be Mr. Exposition in a movie. I hate every Mr. Exposition character. Bullet to the Head also takes itself too seriously. It is completely humorless, unless you enjoy Asian racist stereotypes. Granted, Bullet to the head has boobs and the Last Stand is shockingly boobless, but in the long run, boobs do not make a movie better.

Neither of these movies are movies I would have seen without the joy of free movie watching, but The last Stand is the one I felt was worth my time for the most part. It knew it was completely stupid and just rolled with it. I can appreciate bad movies when they have a sense of humor about how bad they are. Both are hell bent on destroying any sense of grace or flare for stylistic film making, but I guess when you star one of these two aging stars, those kinds of things do not enter the equation.

Anticipating 2013

I am getting this out a bit later than I would have liked, but I am finding my time mostly being taken up with job hunting. However, January is a dumping ground for new movies, so it is not like any of the movies I am most excited for have already been released or anything. I have my 10 movies I am most looking forward to and I am also going to briefly about some other movies about which I am excited.

the Sundance film festival just ended and from that film fest, I think the two movies that intrigue me most are Don Jon's Addiction and Fruitvale. Who knows if they will see a 2013 release, although I suspect they both will. There were other exciting movies coming out of the fest (based solely on tweets and reviews), but these are the two I am most curious about. Don Jon's Addicition is Joseph Gordon-Levitt's screen writing and directorial debut. It is a about a guy (Levitt) who is addicted to porn. It co-stars Scarlett Johanssson as a girl who is addicted to RomComs. The very idea interests me, and I am always excited about new Gordon-Levitt ventures. Fruitvale is the true story of a bay area man shot and killed by BART police. From what I understand the whole movie takes place on this young man's last day. it won two big awards are Sundance, but my main draw is Micheal B. Jordan in the lead. This is a young actor who deserves to be a huge A-List type actor. I kid you not, from being a young teen on The Wire to his amazingly heartbreaking performance on Friday Night Lights, Jordan is the real deal.

Evil Dead probably has the award for the horror movie I am most excited about. It is not technically a remake, but a continuation of the legacy from the Evil Dead series. The red band trailer might be the most effective use of the Red Band trailer I have ever seen and in all honesty, the movie just looks bonkers.

The Rock owns the Guilty Pleasure category this year. He has 4 movies releasing before July this year and 3 of them are movies I am looking forward to immensely, but have no real logical reason why. G.I Joe:Retaliation is probably going to be terrible, but it has ninjas and Bruce Willis. Awesome! Then you have Pain and Gain which looks silly, but in all of the best ways. The Rock and Marky Mark as meat heads trying to pull of a caper all directed by Michael Bay??? Yes Please! But the icing on the cake that is the Rock's 2013 is easily FAST AND FURIOUS 6!!!! I have no good reasons for why I am such a fan of this series. The movies are brainless, but they entertain in every way. The Super Bowl teaser was stupid nuts and I cannot wait, seriously. I just want it now!!

For the first time since I could remember there is only one Superhero movie in my top 10. Thor 2, Wolverine, Man of Steel and Kick Ass 2 are all just outside of my list this year. It is not that I have Superhero fatigue, I do not think. it boils down to 2012 having 2 incredible Superhero movies. Thor was good, but not great, the last Wolverine movie was insanely disappointing and I love Zack Snyder more than most, but I am not sure I care enough about Superman to get greatly excited for Man of Steel.

Oblivion and After Earth are two movies I want to be excited about, but feel like both will be terrible. I always love seeing Will Smith on screen, but knowing M. Night Shyamalan directed After Earth automatically angers me.

If my list included numbers 11 and 12 they would be The Hobbit: The desolation of Smaug and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.

Also, I do not even know what to make of The Great Gatsby at this point. I want to be unbelievably excited for it, but knowing it got shelved for 7 months worries me and I have heard things that make me uneasy about it.

Okay onto my 10 most anticipated movies of 2013

10. The Wolf of Wall Street: Scorsese directing a Wall Street movie with mob ties already sounds like a hit, but to have a cast of DiCaprio, McConaughey (career revolution continues), Jonah Hill, Spike Jonez and Kyle Chandler(seriously love him) and I am completely sold. We've got the mob, securities fraud, Wall Street and corporate banking? I think Scorsese is out to make a statement and I am stoked.

9. Elysium: I did not love District 9 as much as the rest of the world, but I recognized the talent of the man who created it. Here he is again creating another world. This time the Sci-Fi aspect takes on a futuristic world. I love dystopian future movies. I also love movies that star Matt Damon and I have heard that Damon is doing some of his best work in this movie so that right there is enough for me to include it in my top 10.

8. This is the End: A bunch of hilarious actors playing versions of themselves facing the apocalypse? Hell yes! Seth Rogen got all of his friends together and they went at it. I have no idea if this will be wickedly hilarious, or if it will just be ridiculous, but I am stoked. For some reason knowing Emma Watson is playing herself in this movie makes me even more interested. Go to the IMDB page for it just to see all who is supposed to be in this. it is worth it for that. It is going to be so META!!

7. Monster's University: I truly think Monster's Inc is the funniest PIXAR movie. It is one of the best PIXAR movies, and more than anything else, it actually gets better every time you watch it. Any chance I get to see Mike and Sulley again, count me in. I love the idea of them at Scare College and the trailer kills me. Billy Crystal and John Goodman are the perfect team. Plus i need the taste of Brave out of my mouth.

6. Star Trek into Darkness: Star Trek surprised me. It was so much fun, but still had heart and created an interesting mythology. The sequel looks darker and much more massive, but still quite excellent. I love Abrams' flare...or lens flair even. I just like the way he paces movies and how he builds tension. I find the cast to be incredibly appealing and I want to journey with them for longer. I am not sure what is going on in the trailer, but I like that.

5. Inside Llewyn Davis: To this day I can count 1 Coen Brothers movie that I have seen that I did not like, therefore, when they release a new movie, I am always going to be a excited. When they decide to make a movie about a folk musician and have it co-star Carey Mulligan, Justin Timberlake, and John Goodman, will even better. Setting it in the 1960s for some reason makes it sound even more appealing. It fits the Coen Brothers' style. I imagine this will be weird and hilarious, but also sad and touching.

4. Iron Man 3: I know people were disappointed by the second movie in this series, but I was not. However, a new writer/director is taking the reins, which normally scares me, but the new man on the film is Shane Black who is awesome and writes and directs awesome movies and who wrote and directed Robery Downey Jr in the underseen brilliance that is Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. The Trailers look brutal, but still with a hint of humor. Ben Kingsley already looks awesome as the villain and Marvel really knows what it is doing with their movies. I expect this movie to have laughs, killer explosions and ultimately a big heart where Tony and Pepper are concerned.

3. 42: Jackie Robinson has always been a hero to me and to millions of others. When people whine about sports, I always think about how Robinson did not only change baseball, he helped change America. I have always been curious about a biopic for him and now we finally have one. I have a friend who has seen it and said it was incredible, and his opinion has a lot of value for me. I am pretty sure I am going to love it because of what Robinson means in the grand scheme of my love of baseball, but knowing someone thought it was awesome helps. Harrison Ford looks like he is doing his best acting in decades and the trailer brings me to tears every time I see it.

2. Pacific Rim: In most years this movie would be number 1 by miles. Now it is number 2 by miles and just under number 1. Guillermo Del Toro is a genius. I really believe that. His movies are inventive, weird, full of a dream like imagination and awesome. But this takes the cake, Aliens come to Earth and humans control GIANT ROBOTS to fight them!!! Oh and Idris Elba is one of the stars. Are you kidding me? It is so many things I love in one place!!!! The teaser trailer is epic beyond belief and well, did you read the summary?? Giant human controlled robots fight giant aliens!!!!

1. Gravity: To be very honest, I do not know much about this movie. George Clooney and Sandra Bullock star and as far as I know, they are pretty much the only two people in the movie. The movie is about astronauts trying to get back to Earth after their space shuttle gets knocked around by debris and they are just floating through space. The biggest reason this is my number 1 movie is Alfonzo Cuaron. He directed the best Harry Potter movie and the wonderful Y Tu Mama Tambien, but his last movie was Children of Men. Children of Men was an instant classic for me. It is without question one of my all time favorite movies. I have been waiting for a follow up for 7 years now and it is finally here!!