01/30/08: Traffic sucked.

But at least you didn't list CRASH.

1) The Departed

-Not bad, but overrated, Scorsese gets love because his previous movies were duds and everyone rewards him for going back to gangster. Nicholson plays himself again.

2) LOTR: The Fellowship of the Ring

-Parts were spotty. Arwen as warrior woman?

3) Traffic

-Overlong sermon that tells us nothing except that the war on drugs is unwinnable and Mexican kids need to play baseball at night.

4) Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

-The subtitled kung-fu epic that happened to catch the public's fancy, which seems astounding right there, but otherwise it's a silly, shallow fable. I'll take the much more outrageous KUNG-FU HUSTLE.

6) Bowling for Columbine (possibly the best documentary I've ever seen)

-Propaganda. The epitome of the white liberal's outlook on the USA. Gun violence in the USA and who gets almost the entire focus: white men. Show looney militia types, talk to Marilyn Manson for no reason, blame K-Mart and (rich white male) Dick Clark for whatever you can, harass senile actors but where are all the gang bangers? In challenging what he percieves as biased racist media hype and fear-mongering, Moore creates his own biased media. Heston's FROM MY COLD DEAD HAND!! was never said at the NRA event in Littleton, but it serves Moore's purpose to imply that it was. The Titan missile plant wasn't making weapons, but it serves Moore's purpose to imply they are.

9) Kill Bill Vol. 1 (for having so much style)

-Probably wouldn't make my list, Tarantino spins his own wheels here. Raping rednecks again? School girl assassins? Some eye-rolling awful dialouge? Lucy Liu?

I'd take part 2, which is more uneven, but has David Carradine. Kill Bill is basically one good long movie stretched into 2 above-average ones.

10) LOTR: The Return of the King (despite the 12 endings, it's one helluva visual and emotional spectacle)

-It lost me when the green ghosts won the battle like it was some real time strategy game.

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