Donnie Darko (2001)

Cellar Door

When you're done watching Donnie Darko, you know you've seen something great. You may not know exactly what the hell just happened but you know you've seen a good movie about time travel, a boy who hates his parents, and a giant bunny.

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I'm not even going to attempt to explain the plot of Donnie Darko except to say that parts of it are complicated. A lot of it doesn't make a lot of sense (most of it actually) but the main plot has to do with a teenager who gets trapped in a tangent universe due to a time paradox and must help beings from the future fix the paradox and return the universe back to its primary state.

Yup...

But if that's all DD was about, it would be called Primer and people would suck the movie's dick just because they don't understand it. That's not the case here. People suck Donnie's dick because, at its core, it's about what every teenager experiences: a journey to discover one's place in the universe. Donnie's place is just a tad more complicated than most and involves a six-foot rabbit bossing him around and telling him to break water mains and expose kiddie porn rings run by Patrick Swayze.

By the way, ask any self-respecting emo kid what their favorite movie is, and it's Donnie Darko...100% of the time.

They made me do it.

There are a couple reasons this movie works beyond the complicated plot and time traveling aspects. The first is the cast. Holy shit is it good. This should be the model for every low-budget indie flick: find a main cast full of talented no-names and surround them with big names in bit parts. You've got Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal, real-life siblings, filling out the ranks of the unknowns (at least at the time) and then Drew Barrymore (in her least annoying role EVER) and Patrick Swayze (as a motivational speaker secretly addicted to kiddie porn) in supporting roles in which they are fantastic. Everyone's good in this thing.

The dialogue is great, too. There are definitely some high-quality quotes sprinkled in there:

"What's the point of living if you don't have a dick?"

"Chuuuut uuuuup!"

"Why are you wearing that stupid man suit?"

"How exactly does one suck a fuck?"

And if you're talking Donnie Darko, you can't forget about the music. Wow...it's good. The montage of everyone waking up after returning from the tangent universe as "Mad World" plays, it might be one of my favorite scenes in any movie. It's that damn good. What a perfect song to match the tone of the film...haunting and sad and...perfect. No song is a better companion to a movie than Donnie Darko and "Mad World." I gotta go listen to it right now!

Why It's Awesome: It's a movie that makes you think, but it doesn't just rely on being complicated. If it had nothing to do with time travel or tangent universes, it would still be good.

Best Quote:

Kitty Farmer: Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion!

 

 

The Terminator (1984)

I'm going to say something pretty controversial here...

The first Terminator is the best movie in the series. I know, I know. Terminator 2: Judgment Day is a nearly flawless sci-fi action movie, but I still cling tightly to the assertion that the first film is still the best. You want proof?

It's the only movie in the franchise that makes any damn sense.

In my opinion, nothing is more important in a film than the story. The story has to work. The story makes sense in the first movie. Its themes are well-developed. Machines become sentient and start a war with mankind. Mankind fights back. In a last ditch effort, the machines send back an assassin through time to murder the mother of the leader of the human resistance before he's even born. The humans send back a lone protector to prevent the abortion of their leader (They're pro-lifers).

Did I mention that the dude the humans send back (Reese) bangs the woman and becomes the father of the guy who sent him back in time in the first place?

Ok. Forget that part. Other than that, it makes sense. The machines send a machine back. The humans send a human. It's a classic underdog story as Reese has to make use of his ingenuity and creativity to defeat the unstoppable killing machine with an Austrian accent (What?). It's man vs. machine. That works. It makes sense.

Here's the plot of the second movie: Oh, by the way, we forgot that the machines actually sent ANOTHER machine assassin, even more badass than the first, back through time to kill John Connor as a child. Oh, and the humans sent back a machine through time to...um...fight the other machine...wait....what?

That's right. It's stupid. It doesn't work. The entire theme of the series is man vs. machine and now you've got machine vs. machine. And the machine the humans send back is the same model of the one that tried to kill Sarah Connor...

And the third movie is even WORSE. Oh, by the way, the machines actually sent a THIRD machine assassin back in time, even MORE badass than those other two...(sigh)...it's dumb. It's just dumb!

Not only are the plots dumb in the sequels but they actually destroy the integrity of the first film. It brings up a lot of very good questions:

1) Why doesn't Skynet just send back its MOST badass robot assassin (the T-X) right away? What the hell was Reese going to do against that hot robot bitch?

2) Why doesn't Skynet send back multiple robot assassins? Does it really matter if they're not all that discreet if they get the job done?

3) Speaking of being discreet, if the T-800 is an infiltration model, why is it a giant, 6 ft. tall, muscle-encrusted dude with an AUSTRIAN accent? SKYNET SUCKS!

4) Seriously Terminator 3? Seriously? You're just going to totally cancel out the first two movies by claiming that NOTHING has been averted AND kill off Sarah Connor just because Linda Hamilton knew what a train wreck the whole thing was going to be? Seriously?!

I think I've made my point:

Terminator > Terminator 2 > Terminator 3 > Terminator Salvation > Terminator vs. Predator

Why It's Awesome:

Because it makes sense. There's a guy and a machine and they fight. Man vs. machine. It works.

Best Quote:

Uh...let me think...

Time Bandits (1981)

Take every little boy fantasy and cram it into one movie, add a touch of British humor and a bunch of midgets and you've got one of the most underrated children's fantasy movies of all time...TIME BANDITS!

Directed by Terry Gilliam (whose other time-traveling flick is the badass 12 Monkeys), Time Bandits is about a little boy whose parents are totally douches who gets kidnapped by time-traveling midget themes who have a map that shows them all the holes in the fabric of the universe (allowing them to travel through time). Did I mention they jacked the map from God, who is pissed off and wants it back?

The time-traveling and God-escaping escapades include several run-ins with famous historical figures and then some elements of fantasy that pretty much cover every little boy fantasy ever dreamed of. The escapades include...

- Watching Napoleon laugh his ass off at a play about puppets hurting each other.

- Being captured by Robin Hood and his Merry Men, all of whom are kind of douchebags.

- Becoming the heir to Agamemnon's throne by helping him kill a minotaur man.

- Going down with the Titanic (and not being bothered by floating around in sub-zero temperature waters)

- Stealing a pirate ship from an ogre and his wife (Mona from Who's the Boss?).

- Plunging a needle into the head of a giant, gross fat guy.

- Fighting an evil demon using cowboys, archers, and a tank (all unsuccessfully, I might add).

Oh, and keep in mind it's midgets doing all these things so...yeah...even more awesome.

The whole time I was watching the movie I was thinking that had I seen this when I was eight, I would have had such a massive little boy boner the whole time.

And the ending? HOLY SHIT! It's right up there with Se7en and The Mist for best movie ending of all time! At the end, the little kid's parents BLOW THE FUCK UP! I mean, they just explode! And this is right after the kid's house burns to the ground. And then the movie just ends! The movie is like, "Hey, you know this kid who's been traveling through time with those midgets? Well fuck him! His parents just exploded and he's homeless!" Terry Gilliam is a heartless bastard and I love it!

Why It's Awesome: Time travel? Check. Fantasy elements? Check. Legendary historical figures? Check. A battle between Good and Evil with the fate of the universe at stake? Check. A midget getting crushed by a giant column? Check. Yup. This movie has everything a little boy could hope for in a fantasy flick.

Best Quote:

Supreme Being: Dead? No excuse for laying off work.

Primer (2004)

After watching the greatness that is 12 Monkeys, I've decided to spend March watching time travel movies. Since I've already watched the Back to the Future series, I'll be starting with some more obscure entries in the genre and work my way back to some classics.

Every now and then you'll finish watching a movie and have no idea whether you enjoyed it or not...because you have no idea what the hell you just watched (think Vanilla Sky or The Matrix). So is the case with Primer, a low-budget flick about two engineers who accidentally invent time travel and then deal with the question of how to use their newfound power.

There are layers upon layers to the narrative that starts out linear (the first half hour is just technical babble about how the time machine is invented), but then it gets all kinds of complicated. In fact, it's so complicated I needed to watch it three times and then read a research paper on the film's plot and study several diagrams of the time travel mechanics online just to figure it out (I'm not joking either). It's impossible after a single viewing to understand, completely and entirely, exactly what occurs in the movie, and I wanted to understand it as much as possible before writing my review.

I can say with complete confidence that I understand the movie completely and can offer an intelligent diagnosis of Primer and its overall effectiveness as a film. And here it is:

Primer is bullshit...complete and utter bullshit. The reason this movie's reputation has been blown out of proportion is because it suffers from Inception complex, where just because a movie is complicated, people think it's great. The problem with Primer isn't that it's complicated; the problem is that it's poor storytelling. That's what makes it complicated. Certain information necessary to understand what's happening is purposely withheld and other information is either unclear or must be assumed by the viewer. If you have to read a research paper to understand the plot of the movie, then the filmmakers failed to do their job.

The other major problem with the film is that the character motivations don't make any sense. The point of the movie is to explore the ethical issues of time travel, but the example provided in the movie is petty and stupid. A guy breaks the ethical rules of time travel to stop a woman he knows (not his wife or girlfriend or anything) from getting threatened with a shotgun by her ex-boyfriend. Not killed or maimed, just threatened. It doesn't make any sense. If you have the power to travel through time, would you waste it making sure an associate doesn't have a shitty evening? Then there's the random guy who travels back in time who we really have no idea who the hell he even is or how he got back. Add to that all the implied action that occurs off-screen that we're told about through a dump of voice-over narration and we don't have one of the best movies ever made; no, we have an example of poor storytelling.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and 12 Monkeys both have complicated, non-linear plots that leave you with a sense of completion, a sense you've seen something complicated but also quite wonderful. Primer leaves you with a sense of having seen something complicated...that's it. It spends an inordinate amount of time explaining the time mechanics of the time traveling device in an attempt to seem deep and authentic. Fuck that! Tell me time travel involves a Delorean traveling at 88 mph or a phone booth. I'll believe it. Just tell me a good story and I'll believe anything!

Why It's Overrated: Like Inception, people watched Primer, were confused, and assumed anything they didn't understand must be magnificent. At its core, all film is nothing but visual storytelling. Primer is an interesting movie in that it avoids Hollywood clichés, but, like many Hollywood blockbusters, it fails to deliver what every movie must: a coherent and satisfying story.

Best Quote:

Aaron: Man, are you hungry? I haven't eaten since later this afternoon.