Ravenous - Antonia Bird - 1999

★★★★- Like ‘Cannibal! The Musical,’ it’s based on this Donner Party-type incident regarding one Alferd Packer, who ate some dudes on an ill-advised trip for gold. It’s up for debate whether he or someone else on his trip, whom he said he killed in self-defense, murdered people in the party.

A frontier/cannibal comedy-western about getting "the hunger" after eating human flesh as well as coked-up energy and super healing. It was pretty great. 

I somehow watch a lot of cannibalism movies. I can’t stomach the thought of meat—long time vegan. (Parker is rumored to have been a vegetarian after this all went down, by the by). I feel like a starving in the wilderness scenario would be the only way I would ever eat meat again. But that would indeed be some shit that I would t be able to bounce back from. It’s one thing to say that you could do it if you were starving. But having a chunk of long-pig in front of you that you gotta eat to live. That would fuck up me real bad. So, yeah, exploring the deep questions here. Ye olde “would you eat someone” dilemma.  

Following - Christopher Nolan - 1999

★★★★-Following. “You take it away... to show them what they had.” Made my high school girlfriend watch this. All I remember really was that it was pretty fucked up and she hated it. You’re welcome. Also, another 1999 film, one of the best years for cinema. 

Rotten Tomato Consensus: Super brief but efficient, Following represents director Christopher Nolan's burgeoning talent in tight filmmaking and hard-edge noir.

Gist of the flick is a grungy dude follows around strangers like a fucking creep and picks another fucking creep that draws him into London’s criminal underworld. Eventually they get caught up with the girlfriend of a crime boss and shit goes south pretty quick.     

Nice little short flick. Christopher Nolan’s first. You can see a lot of his signatures here. Time is all fucked up and confusing. Dudes spend the movie investigating shit. Complicated male relationship at the center of the movie. Femme fatale between them. Great shit. Plus, I fucking love neo-noir. Great story told with impressive technique with some twists and turns.     

Definite MVP is Nolan. Currently watching all of his flicks again. Doing it sort of in order. Figured I’d do the Batman films together though.    

The Blair Witch Project is the greatest movie of all time

The Blair Witch Project.  "I just want to apologize to Mike's mom, Josh's mom, and my mom. And I'm sorry to everyone. I was very naive. I am so so sorry for everything that has happened. Because in spite of what Mike says now, it is my fault." Anyone who doesn't like this movie got bamboozled when it came out. Another horror movie from my Greatest Years in Cinema Project. This one form 1999. The first time I saw this movie, before my junior year of high school,  was at the drive-in. I was at the concession though and missed the first few minutes. I missed the bit about Rustin Parr, the hermit who kidnapped and murdered a bunch of kids in the 1940s on the orders of the witch, stealing two at a time and making one stand facing the corner while he killed the other one. Sooooo, at the end when Mike is in the corner it didn't carry the impact intended as I thought he was taking a piss or something. I thought the movie was fucking dumb as shit because of this. When it came out on video I rewatched, forgetting all about that, just remembering I hated it and it was stupid. Oh, I thought, that shit is scary AF, actually. Greatest found footage movie of all time.

Rotten Tomato Consensus: Full of creepy campfire scares, mock-doc The Blair Witch Project keeps audiences in the dark about its titular villain -- thus proving that imagination can be as scary as anything onscreen.

Gist is that three film student who disappeared after filming a documentary in the woods of Maryland about the Blair Witch legend have their footage show up and shows a bunch of creepy shit. This is that footage.

More or less just three people in this with a few extras. The three we care about are Heather played by Heather Donahue, Josh played by Joshua Leonard, and Mike played by Michael C. Williams. Josh pops up every once in a while but Heather and Mike not so much, which is unfortunate since they were pretty solid, in my opinion, and since they didn't make shit and couldn't really capitalize on the success of the movie. A lot of why they could was because of the viral marketing campaign that said these were real kids that died. People ate that shit up, this was the early days of the internet and people believed everything. They still do I guess. Bursting that bubble though was when Donahue showed up in the Steak 'n Shake commercials. But some people still believed. Probably Trump supporters now. Donahue was also in maybe the worst movie I've ever seen, Boys and Girls. My girlfriend at the time made me go see this piece of trash. When middle school girls were walking out of it and shit, I thought about breaking up with her for making me stay. I never forgave her for this experience.

I remember there was this "documentary" that came out the summer of 1999 that aired on the SciFi Channel in 1999 called Curse of the Blair Witch that detailed the legend and was maybe as cool as the movie. In it we learn that the witch, one Elly Kedward, was this woman blamed for these child disappearances in the late 1700s. The towns folk ultimately sentenced her to death by exposure and banished her to the woods. Her body was never found. Then we get the guy from the 1940s, Rustin Parr. That shit was hot. Honestly, that whole legend shit and the marketing around it was the best part about it. I mean, total bullshit but cool. That is the MVP of the movie for me.

20 years later for my third viewing, shit holds up. Lot better than that Blair Witch trash from a few years back. Real disappointed by that turd. Loved two of the director's, one Adam Wingard, other movies. You're Next and The Guest but have pretty much hated everything since that. You're Next though is one of my favorite horror movies of the last decade. Up there with Get Out and shit. Then there was the sequel to BWP called Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 which I like a lot but was extremely poorly received. It stared Jeffrey Donovan from Burn Notice and Shut Eye both shows I was somewhat into and Kim Director whom I found extremely attractive. Will have to rewatch that one as well to see if it holds up. Will get back to you on if it does.

Greatest Years In Cinema Project: The Films

These are the movies I'm going to be watching for Hollywood's greatest years. Five years. Ten movies from each year. A few extras by request. Look forward to these in the coming months.

Some notes on the lists. I made sure to have the Academy Award Winner for Best Picture, a comedy, a horror movie, a kids(ish) movie, and a sports movie. If a big name director had a movie that year, I included it even if it wasn't a great flick (Bringing Out the Dead [Martin Scorsese] and Death Proof  [Quinton Tarantino] for example). There are several notable exceptions to this rule (Ghost Dog [Jim Jarmusch] and The Straight Story [David Lynch] in 1999). Otherwise, just picked better films from that year I want to watch and write about.

1939

Gone with the Wind, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Ninotchka, Stagecoach, The Arsenal Stadium Mystery, The Cat and the Canary, The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Roaring Twenties, The Wizard of Oz, and Young Mr. Lincoln 

Missing the cut: Dark Victory, Golden Boy, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Gunga Din, Of Mice and Men, Son of Frankenstein, The Women, and Wuthering Heights

1976

All the Presidents Men, Assault on Precinct 13, Carrie, Logan's Run, Marathon Man, Network, Rocky, Silver Streak, Taxi Driver, and The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane

Missing the cut: Alice, Sweet Alice, Bad News Bears, Silent Movie, The Omen, The Outlaw Josey Wales, and The Tenant 

1994

Above the Rim, Cemetery Man, Forest Gump, In the Mouth of Madness, Interview with the Vampire, Leon: The Professional, Pulp Fiction, Reality Bites, Speed, and The Shawshank Redemption

Bonus by request: Beverly Hills Cop III and possibly The Santa Clause

Missing the cut: Blue Chips, Clerks, Ed Wood, Hoop Dreams, and True Lies

1999

American Beauty, Any Given Sunday, Bringing Out the Dead, Election, Fight Club, Go, Office Space, The Blair Witch Project, Three Kings, and Toy Story 2

Bonus by Request: Deep Blue Sea

Missing the cut: Being John Malkovich, Galaxy Quest, Ghost Dog, Magnolia, Man on the Moon, Sleepy Hollow, The Green Mile, The Insider, The Iron Giant, The Matrix, The Sixth Sense, The Talented Mr. Ripley, The Thomas Crown Affair, The Virgin Suicides, and Varsity Blues

2007

Death Proof, Hot Fuzz, Juno, No Country For Old Men, Ratatouille, Superbad, Talladega Nights, The Assassination of Jesse James, There Will Be Blood, and Zodiac

Missing the cut: 3:10 to Yuma, Atonement, Distubia, Eastern Promises, Gone Baby Gone, Knocked Up, I'm Not There, Into the Wild, Mr. Brooks, and The Simpsons Movie

Also, may end up revisiting some of those flicks in years with a bunch of films that didn't quite make the cut. Just gonna focus on these for now though. But feel free to make suggestions. Thanks for everyone that suggested a film.