Movies you should run out tonight and go rent!

10) The Mighty.
Normally I wish hot scalding death on Sharon Stone just for being a 2nd amendment hypocrite but Kieran Culkin’s performance is intense and he earns extra bonus points for a fantastic Marlin Brando. Normally I would be put off by the sappy and juvenile plots offered by a screenplay based on a Schoolastic book (Freak the Mighty) but it works. Also, of all people Meat Loaf plays a fantastic bastard.

9) American History X
Holy crap, everyone in this film just pulled it off: Edward Furlong, who I would usually want to sock in the nose, Beverly DeAngelo who you forget entirely ever played Mrs. Clarke Griswald and Ed Norton is intense. Commander Sisko is impressive too. Warning: You will not be jumping out of your bean bag exclaiming “It’s great to be alive!” at the end of this one.

8) The Dangerous Lives of Alter Boys
A movie of impressive depth without succumbing to the zeitgeist of the pedophile clergy as the title might suggest. Once again Kieran Culkin, but interestingly playing a young disciple of Christian iconoclast; William Blake. Vincent D’Onofrio is great in everything and Jodie Foster, plays every Nun that ever tried to destroy my free will with terrifying accuracy.

7) Ready to Rumble
Wait a second, a movie about two guys who worship a pro-wrestler, who make bean burritos and drive a septic tank? Yes, possibly the greatest retelling of Arthurian legend ever composed, the subtleties are sublime. If you don’t give a rats ass about tenth century British mythology then it’s simply a wrestling movie and not much fun.

6) Magnolia
Warning: Not "Steel Magnolias", I can file that one away in “Who gives a crap”, P.T. Anderson take pretty much the same cast as "Boogie Nights" (Another one you should rent) and makes a convoluted treatise on the human condition that is as valid as anything by Chekhov (Not the guy on the Enterprise) or Dostoevsky, that comes together in one of the most surreal climaxes ever dreamed up. It’s Cocteau with amphibians.

5) Godzilla
Yes, the one and only. No go-go dancing in this one, no Jet-Jaguar, no little shoebox twins either. Just an enormous force of man made destruction laying waste to Japan like the atomic weapons he allegorizes. Some impressive visuals for a movie made 50 years ago, still frightening as all hell and no mention of Monster Island.

4) Muriel’s Wedding
I think it’s just the fact that Tony Colette plays a total misfit that drew me into this. Another epiphany: Abba is a great band, you can not escape it, even though they come from the same herring laced Scandinavian landscape as Yngwiee, Yngwiee could not exist without Abba, this is scientific fact.

3) Fear of a Black Hat
Rusty Cundieff creates the Hip-Hop “This is Spinal Tap” that had to be done. The movie appears slapstick at times but it’s really part of the charm, I had to include this because most of you have probably already seen Spinal Tap a dozen times, if not; this is Christopher Guest at the top of his game, see them back to back. Rusty is one of the most talented writers out there, he writes and directs for the Chappell show and did both for the very cool “Tales from the Hood” a few years back, which brings me to another overlooked gem of comedy with Rusty called:

2) The Hollywood Shuffle
One of the most intelligent observations of racism since “Blazing Saddles” with some of the most painfully funny moments ever to be filmed. I think I went into greater detail somewhere in this page.

1) Satyricon
It was a tossup between this and “Being There”, but in the end the disturbing imagery and absurdity of your mind going “Did that just happen” is as freakishly accurate as "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" was to the middle ages. To clear this up, if you went back in time to ancient Rome, it would be less like Peter Ustinov getting loaded on food coloring and stumbling over his toga and more like visiting an alien world with disturbing social values, if you could call them that.