Cinematical Seven »

I've been meaning to purchase and wear this t-shirt since I learned of its existence a couple of months ago, but I figured I'd better let the Twilight: New Moon hysteria die down first. It would appear, after all, that openly declaring one's hostility toward the Twilight franchise on one's person, even with a statement as unquestionably correct as "Vampires Don't Sparkle," is just asking for trouble. You do not want to mess with a gaggle of rabid Robert Pattinson fans.

I do not hate the Twilight franchise, actually, though I would like to suggest that the Twilighteers may live to regret sinking so much time and emotion into something so utterly banal. But I seem to be one of the few who occupy the middle ground. Twilight might be the most divisive love-it-or-hate-it phenomenon of the last few years. Not everyone adores Harry Potter, but most people have at least a grudging respect for it; Twilight has as many haters as fawning admirers.

You gotta admit that if you can use a movie to start an argument, it's at least good for something. Here are seven other movies that seem to disproportionately divide the moviegoing population into adoring fans and angry detractors.

1. Titanic - To get the obvious out of the way. It's amazing to me how often people make offhand derisive mentions of Titanic, as if its awfulness were well-established and self-evident. As with Twilight, of course, the surprisingly widespread disdain of this movie is a backlash against its army of obsessive partisans (and from a similar demographic to boot) -- the folks who showed up on local news shows in 1997 bragging about having seen it 16 times in the theater, etc. The fact that Titanic is a fantastic film -- and not really (or at least not only) for the reasons many of its fans think -- tends to get lost in the shuffle, sadly.

I haven't been a fan of Hollywood's "Let's Remake Everything That Was Ever Popular!" plan, but I was pleasantly surprised by the reboots and reincarnations of Doctor Who, Battlestar Galactica, and even J.J. Abrams' new Star Trek movie, which is out on Blu-ray and DVD today. I'd argue that maybe science fiction is immune to the remake syndrome, but then you have Michael Bay's two awful Transformers movies. So that sort of shoots my theory in the foot.

Whatever the case, it's been great to have so much quality science fiction to choose from lately. There's also a hell of a lot out there that deserves a second look. Forgotten series from the 60s and 70s that have classic storytelling, great characters, and a lot of elements that make up truly good sci-fi: robots, spaceships, and time travel. So while you're enjoying that slick new Trek Blu-ray (even the menus are amazing!) and waiting for James Cameron's Avatar to hit screens, here are some classic science fiction properties that need some new life.

Space: 1999

This was my first introduction to Martin Landau, and even now whenever I see him in something I keep expecting him to don a white tunic and take command of things. Landau co-starred in this with his then wife (and recent Mission: Impossible co-star) Barbara Bain. The series was set in the "far future" of 1999 via 1975, and revolves around the Moon getting knocked loose from orbit around the Earth. When it goes bye-bye, it takes with it the 311 inhabitants of Moonbase Alpha. So the Moon, in effect, becomes their U.S.S. Enterprise, and they have adventures around the galaxy. Highlights included the Eagle, a spaceship that looked like it was made out of scaffolding. My best friend had a model of this when we were kids, and it was highly coveted. There have been some attempts to revive it, even as a movie, but nothing has happened. Yet.

Click here for the disco-tastic opening credit sequence for Space: 1999, then head beyond the break for more sci-fi reboots we'd like to see..

We both know that I could probably fill all seven slots of this list with just scenes from Roland Emmerich's disaster-tastic 2012, but in the interests of letting everyone else get a chance to see it, let's stick with films that have already come and gone. Some of these titles qualify because of the uniquely ridiculous nature of their disasters, while others count for what ridiculous plots unfold amidst otherwise ordinarily perilous acts of nature.

There will be a couple of spoilers to go along with our picks, but since most of these have been out for a couple of years, it's not like it's the end of the world...

The battle of the sexes is alive and well in Hollywood, and whether it is the subject of a rom-com or an indie flick, audiences love to watch a good ol' fashioned throw down. But what makes a 'battle of the sexes' comedy a tricky proposition is that someone has to lose. So how do you make your audience (who is for the most part, female) accept the idea that a strong and feisty gal has learned the error of her ways and has 'surrendered to love''? Granted, it was a heck of a lot easier when they were making these movies in the '30s and '40s and marriage was the inevitable 'happy ending' for most gals.

Today, The Ugly Truth has been released on DVD and just like a million films to go before it, the story centers on a man and a woman who 'meet cute', fight a lot, and then fall in love -- and just like every other film, the whole thing hinges on the happy couple. When you're covering well trod ground like a battle of the sexes comedy, the charm and likability of your leads are your bread and butter -- and on a personal note, I just don't think Truth pulled it off, and I never got that charge from watching Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler engage in a little 'verbal foreplay'.

So at risk of sounding like somebody's grandmother, I decided that when it comes to the battle of the sexes comedy, nobody did it better than classic Hollywood, and it didn't matter whether it was during the hay day of screwball comedies or gritty films noir. That's why this Cinematical Seven is dedicated to those classic Hollywood couples that could battle with the best of them, but unlike Heigl and Butler, their chemistry became the stuff of movie legend.

After the jump; seven classic couples that are all-time champs when it comes to the battle of the sexes....

I think it's safe to tell you, without spoiling the movie, that The Men Who Stare at Goats includes a couple of scenes with Jeff Bridges and George Clooney dancing around. The scenes are amusing and a little strange -- why are soldiers dancing? But they did fit consistently with the film as a whole. However, I was reminded of moments in movies that aren't musicals, but suddenly shift to some crazy kind of dance or musical number. I love these moments, and in fact I wish the dance scenes in The Men Who Stare at Goats were a little less toned-down and a little more "WTF?"

Okay, I'm kind of BS'ing you here. The Men Who Stare at Goats is a flimsy excuse. I really just wanted to write about surreal dance numbers in otherwise straightforward movies, because that can be so much fun. Last year's Adam Sandler vehicle Bedtime Stories was an annoying dud ... except for one glorious, shining moment where Guy Pearce launched into a song-and-dance number. Sometimes these dance moments are the best part of a movie, sometimes they spoil the mood and sometimes they're just one more weird aspect of an altogether bizarre film. Here are seven of my favorites.

We live in a time when war movies based on toys (Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra) are better received by the public than those that have a basis in truth (The Hurt Locker). G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, out on DVD and Blu-ray today, dances around its origins as military action figures by positioning its heroes as an elite unit, more like well-armed spies than anything resembling common soldiers. The aim appears to be similar, though: provide heroic figures that inspire others to follow in their footsteps.

Back in the 80s, movies that could be mistaken for recruitment propaganda became surprisingly common. The film industry, which had firmly resisted anything related directly to the Vietnam War while it was being waged, became schizophrenic in the 80s, releasing anti-war and pro-war flicks side by side into theaters. Here are seven key films, listed chronologically, that helped shape the public's perception of the military during that decade.

Private Benjamin (1980)
Nancy Meyers began here, co-writing and co-producing the tale of Judy Benjamin (Goldie Hawn), a bride who wears black after her husband (Albert Brooks) dies on their wedding night. A spoiled woman-child, Judy enlists in the armed forces; basic training toughens her up as she realizes she can deal with the rigors of military life. As a budding feminist, she still had miles to go to learn that she didn't need a man or the military to be all she could be; as a poster child for plucky women in the armed forces, Private Benjamin was a positive-reinforcement milestone.

Let's face it, your the hero of your movie is only as good as your villain is bad. If you've got an amazing, swashbuckling, ass-kicking hero who faces off against someone wimpy, it just feels like you had an amazing appetizer and a lackluster main course. We want villains that we love to hate, not villains that we hate to love, and once we find them, we don't want to let go of them so easily. Just look at how much Darth Vader has dominated the world of villainy. He was in four of the six Star Wars movies, and is still pretty much the poster-boy for awesome villains.

But what about the villains who could have joined him? There's a whole slew of sub-villains who weren't given enough screen time, or were killed off too easily. Villains who deserve to roam the hallowed halls of the bad guys and girls club. We dedicate this Cinematical Seven to those who could have been great, but are instead relegated to the ranks of the Almost Perfect Villains Club.

Darth Maul

Speaking of Star Wars, Did this guy get a bad rap or what? He a Dark Lord of the Sith for pete's sake, yet he hardly talks, zips around on a scooter, and gets killed at the end of the only movie he appears in. He does kill Obi Wan's mentor, sure, but why not keep him around for later? He looked scary and cool at the same time, and wielded very cool double-ended saber. Plus, Ray Park did a kickass job playing him and making those fight scenes look amazing. Unfortunately, one chop to the midsection and he was never heard from again. Darth Vader went on to become a legend, but Darth Maul only became "that guy with the red face and the horns," and no one is rushing to make a movie about his origins. The Star Wars saga actually has a plethora of great villains we would like to see more of: Jabba the Hutt, Grand Moff Tarkin, Boba Fett, IG-88, and more.

I'm sure Peter Sarsgaard didn't intend to make a horror movie that would provoke gales of unintentional laughter. Yet in a key, emotionally-wrought scene near the end of Orphan -- out on DVD today and, perversely enough, worth a rental -- that's exactly what happens; by that point, the film's determination to take itself way too seriously has worn down the viewer, and its lunatic premise collapses upon itself. Sarsgaard bravely goes down with the ship, as does Vera Farmiga, two talented actors that were better than their material.

How do good actors end up in bad movies? The same way some of us end up in jobs we hate: (1) It sounded better than it turned out; (2) Gotta pay the bills. Sometimes they liven up the movie (The Devil's Advocate wouldn't be nearly as much fun without Al Pacino's self-parodying scenery-chewing) and sometimes they look befuddled that they ended up in such a turkey (Robert Downey, Jr. in Gothika, Zooey Deschanel in The Happening). We salute those who gave it their best shot, and ask the rest: what were you thinking?

1. Jon Voight in Anaconda
Intentionally cheesy or merely undone by cheap CGI? This tale of a film crew seeking to document a mysterious tribe of Amazonian natives is a rather tepid and poorly-executed horror adventure until Voight lends it a jolt of electricity as a jungle guide with an accent that's never been heard before. While decent actors like Eric Stoltz and Owen Wilson look like they're ready to cash their paychecks and go home, the Academy Award-winning Voight nearly saves the picture with his larger-than-life theatrics. That's entertainment!

We love it when our heroes fall for the suspicious types: the wolves in sheep's clothing, the dangerous femme fatales. It happens often in film noir and a heckuva lot in comics, and provides some of the best last-act twists and turns as our hearts palpitate along with those of our protagonists... up until the bitter end. Can't that evil love interest turn out to have a heart of gold, so we can all have a happily ever after? Sometimes, yes. Most of the time, no.

What is it about these doomed romances that we love so much? Perhaps it's the futility of it all; you can't have your cake and eat it when you're a superhero or a (wo)man on a mission to right wrongs, even if you'd rather be kissing that beguiling bad guy than fighting them, arresting them, or foiling their evil plans. Turning down a chance at love is the ultimate sacrifice for a hero or heroine to make -- it proves their commitment to the side of good. Hence, loving a villain makes a hero even more heroic. How tragic!

In what will surely spur controversy, I've whittled my favorite villain-hero romances down to the seven best pairings in cinema. No, Phantom of the Opera didn't make it. That would have been too easy. Instead, find odd couples, would-be perfect pairs, star-crossed lovers, and yes, the world's most legendary bromance after the jump.

As the film prepares to take flight tomorrow, reviews are starting to pour in for Hilary Swank's Amelia. It's quite the mixed bag, from Roger Ebert's praise to Keith Uhlich's description of the film as a "colorfully hollow biopic about America's beloved aviatrix." Should more chime in with Ebert's positivity, the film could get decent buzz, but as it stands while writing this on Thursday afternoon, out of 13 reviews, it's got a paltry 23% fresh rating.

The negative sentiments aren't really a surprise. The early pictures of the film weren't exactly promising, and the trailer induced skeptical responses. But rather than rant about dreams of Amelia Earhart getting one of those biopics that mesmerizes from the get-go, I'm going to try and stay positive. Not every biopic has to struggle to find footing. In fact, some manage to capture the magic of their subject and make for a damn fine film.

Catch seven of my favorites after the jump, and since such a small number can't begin to cover them all, please weigh in with your own in the comments.