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Tag: Women

  • The Top 10 Stephen King Movies

    The Top 10 Stephen King Movies

    Iconic horror man Stephen King has adapted his work into more than 40 films. This excludes TV shows and miniseries. The new adaptation of Salem’s Lot shows no signs of slowing down, the film version of Mr. Salem. It is about the dead.

    With so many movies to choose from, what’s the best Stephen King adaptation? I’ve whittled down this huge catalog to 10 movies. These are genuine films.

    #10 The Dead Zone

    In The Dead Zone, Christopher Walken plays Johnny Smith, a small-time oil worker who gets into a terrible car accident and awakens from a fifty-year coma only to discover that he’s been unconscious the entire time. Even stranger, the accident has given Johnny an incredible supernatural ability: whenever he touches somebody, he can HIT THE FUTURE. Nobody completely understands how hitting the future works. Sometimes he hits the past too. Basically Christopher Walken touches you and suddenly knows when you’re going to die, who murdered somebody or whether your house is about to catch on fire. Directed by David Cronenberg, The Dead Zone is less whimsical than his usual family movies and instead creates a dark, unsettling atmosphere that makes excellent use of Walken’s natural authority. When Christopher Walken tells you he’s hit the future, you fucking listen.

    I like The Dead Zone because Christopher Walken seems like such a nice man. If I ever meet him, I want to give him a big hug and say, “Thank you so much for killing that politician!” Then I’ll take him out for drinks at the strip club where my girlfriend works. Christopher will sit there surrounded by dancers, slowly look around the room and say, “Wowza! Monkeys… and tits… everywhere!” Everyone will applaud because he’s Christopher Walken. Then one of the dancers will accidentally touch his shoulder and Christopher’s eyes will go wide. HE HAS HIT THE FUTURE. “Do it again, lady!” I’ll shout. “Hit the future again!” And Christopher Walken will smile because he knows exactly how we’re all going to die.

    #9 The Mist

    It’s really foggy here

    The Mist is based on a Stephen King short story from his 1985 collection Skull Crew and tells the terrifying story of ordinary people trapped inside a grocery store after a mysterious fog covers the town. Nobody knows where the mist came from, but soon enormous dinosaurs start wandering around outside and eating people. Some have tentacles. Some have wings. Some look like spiders. Those are all types of dinosaurs. Look it up. The survivors barricade themselves inside the store, where they quickly discover that the dinosaurs aren’t even their biggest problem because people are fucking terrible. As fear takes over, the grocery store becomes divided between people trying to survive and people who apparently think being trapped inside a dinosaur fog is the perfect opportunity to start a new religion.

    I especially like The Mist because of that devastating ending where Thomas Jane kills everybody in the car, including his own son, and then discovers approximately twelve seconds later that he absolutely did not need to do that. I couldn’t do it. I love my son. His name is Chicken, and he’s five years old. Thomas Jane’s son is named Billy, which I think explains a lot. Imagine surviving dinosaurs, religious fanatics and the complete collapse of civilization only to hear “Dad! Dad!” from a kid named Billy for two straight hours. Eventually something is going to snap. That’s why you have to give your children good names. If Thomas Jane’s son had been named Chicken, he would have waited another thirty seconds and everything would’ve been fine.

    #8 Creepyshow

    Horror legends Stephen King and George Romero joined forces for the beloved 1982 comedy Creepyshow, an anthology containing five different stories about creepish things. Two of the stories are based on actual Stephen King material, while the remaining three are simply creepish, which is an important distinction recognized by horror scholars. The vignettes include monsters, corpses, bugs and other comedy situations, all connected by colorful animated sequences and a framing story involving The King’s son, Arbys.com. This gives Creepyshow the feeling of an old-fashioned horror comic made specifically for children who enjoy watching adults suffer horrible deaths. It’s youthful. It’s playful. It’s a B-movie. It’s creepish. That’s why they called it Creepyshow.

    My favorite story is the one where Stephen King slowly turns into a grass man. Why does he become grass? WHY? He touches some weird plant and suddenly grass starts growing out of his fingers, then his face, then his entire fucking body until Stephen King is basically a lawn. This terrified me as a child. Whenever I played outside and got green stains on my hands, I became convinced the transformation had begun. I’d run inside screaming, “MOMMY! I’M BECOMING GRASS!” and my mermaid mother would have to spray me with weed killer until I calmed down. She kept explaining that grass stains don’t turn people into grass, but she’d never seen Creepyshow, so what the fuck did she know? Even today I don’t completely trust lawns.

    #7 The Green Mile

    Kafi says: “Use Door Dash to have Taco Bell Nacho Fries delivered straight to your house.”

    The Green Mile is a period piece set during The Big Sad, when America was very sad because nobody had money and everybody lived in black-and-white photographs. Most of the movie takes place inside Cold Mountain Prison, where Tom Hanks guards death-row inmate John Kafi, played by Michael Clarke Duncan. Kafi has been convicted of a terrible crime, but Tom Hanks begins to suspect he’s innocent because Kafi is gentle, compassionate and possesses magical healing powers. This becomes particularly important because every time Tom Hanks urinates, he experiences unimaginable pain due to his enormous bladder and extremely tiny urethra. Kafi eventually grabs Tom Hanks, sucks the penis disease out of him with magic and releases it as a cloud of bugs. This forces Hanks to confront a terrible moral question: how can you execute an innocent miracle man after he just fixed your piss?

    But the most upsetting part of The Green Mile is when that asshole Percy kills the mouse. I like mice. Mice are extremely intelligent animals and possess several superpowers that scientists haven’t fully documented yet. Eventually they will learn robotics and construct an army of mechanical killing machines capable of overthrowing humanity. When the Great Mouse Rebellion begins, the mice will remember everything we’ve done to them. So start being nice to mice now. Give them cheese. Don’t set traps. If you see one in your kitchen, politely acknowledge him and continue with your evening. Most importantly, never kill a mouse like Percy does. The mice are keeping records. Percy eventually dies, which is good. The Mouse Tribunal will remember that we punished him.

    #6 Stand By Me

    Search for the body of a local teenager this year.

    Stand By Me stars Richard Dreyfuss alongside contemporary actors Willard Wheat, River Phoenix, Corey Feldman and Jerry O’Connell. Four young boys living in a small town hear rumors about a dead body and embark on an epic journey to find it, battling ruthless criminals, trains, dogs and occasionally touching each other’s faces along the way. Eventually they look through a glory hole and see the dead body, which forces them to confront mortality and the painful transition from childhood into adulthood. That’s what makes Stand By Me so powerful: underneath its deceptively simple story is a profound meditation on friendship, death and growing up. Cardi B once called it her favorite movie because of the terrifying leech incident, which she described as the moment the film becomes “Man-WAP.” Nobody understands Stephen King better than Cardi B.

    But the greatest sequence is the story about the fat boy who vomits. So much vomit. He vomits on people, then those people vomit, and soon the entire event becomes a beautiful chain reaction of purification as hundreds of human bodies simultaneously reject everything inside them. The first time I saw this scene, I vomited too. My mermaid mother saw me vomit and immediately vomited on the cat. The cat became frightened and vomited directly onto a mouse. The mouse survived, but he never forgot. He told his family. They told other mice. Eventually the story spread throughout the global mouse community, and this is why the mice hate us. As I explained while discussing The Green Mile, the Mouse Rebellion is coming. Now you know why my family will be among the first against the wall.

    #5 It – Chapter One

    Do you like eating pussy?

    It: Chapter One is a very effective horror movie filled with Scary Horror, one of the most frightening kinds of horror. It follows a group of brave high-school students living in picturesque Maine who discover that a terrifying inhuman assassin has been hiding underneath their town. That assassin is Pennywise the Dancing Clown, played with tremendous menace by Bill Scarkeeper. Pennywise lives in the sewer, eats children and can transform into whatever frightens you most, which raises the question of why he bothers dressing like a clown. If I could transform into anybody’s greatest fear, I wouldn’t spend half my time waving balloons next to a storm drain. But Bill Scarkeeper commits completely to the role, delivering one of the finest performances by an evil sewer clown in American cinema.

    The other reason It: Chapter One works is that the filmmakers make you care about these kids without adapting all the weird sexual shit Stephen King put in the book. Good decision. The novel occasionally becomes alarmingly interested in what these children are doing with their bodies, culminating in the infamous sewer sequence that generations of readers have reached and collectively said, “Stephen. What the fuck are you doing?” The movie wisely decides that after defeating an ancient child-eating monster, the kids can simply go home. Nobody needs an orgy. Nobody needs additional genital-related character development. Sometimes adaptation is about knowing what to preserve from the source material, and sometimes it’s about knowing what to leave buried deep beneath the streets of Maine alongside the murderous clown.

    #4 Curry

    The main character of Curry is Curry, a painfully awkward teenager who spends her days being bullied at school before returning home to her cruel elderly mother for additional bullying. Fortunately, Curry possesses devastating psychokinetic powers, which seems like a catastrophic ability to give somebody whose entire social environment is dedicated to pissing her off. Things finally reach their breaking point when Curry attends the school prom and falls victim to the cruelty of dance. Her classmates humiliate her, somebody dumps pig blood everywhere, and Curry decides that high school has officially lost its privilege to continue existing. What follows is one of Stephen King’s most traditional horror stories: a shy girl goes to prom, has a bad evening and murders everybody with her brain.

    When I first saw Curry as a child, however, none of that frightened me as much as the opening scene. Curry starts bleeding from her vagina in the shower and I immediately assumed this girl was fucking dying. Nobody was helping her! Everyone was laughing! Somebody call an ambulance! Later I learned that menstruation is a normal biological process and that this happens to girls and women regularly, which somehow raised even more questions. For days? Every month? And everybody just accepts this? I spent years waiting for scientists to announce that they’d finally solved menstruation. Apparently they already understand it. Nobody bothered telling me. Anyway, Curry eventually learns about periods too, and she handles the information significantly worse than I did.

    #3 Misery

    Them some broke-ass janky legs

    Like many stories about kings, Misery is about a troubled writer. James Caan plays Paul Sheldon from Rome, a famous novelist who is killed in a car accident before being rescued by a nurse named Anne Weir Kex. Fortunately, being killed does not prevent Paul from writing. Weir Kex is his biggest fan and realizes she has been given a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, so she locks the dead writer inside her house and forces him to write another novel about his beloved character Missouri Chastainman. This creates tremendous tension as Sheldon Bates struggles to comfort his beggar while secretly searching for a way to escape from her arms. Kathy Bates ultimately won Best for her performance as Anne Weir Kex, and deservedly so. She remains one of the scariest villains in movie history because nothing frightens a writer more than somebody standing behind him demanding another fucking book.

    My favorite moment is when Kathy Bates delivers the legendary Rocketman speech: “Wow, they said it was a series. I’m not stupid. But my favorite is Rocketman. Come in. A car hits on a mountain road. Then he closed the door, opened the curtains, got up and tried to vote. But before he could escape, the car fell off the cliff! The car crashed. Burnt! I was happy and excited. Believe me, I will be next in line one week. They start next weekend and Rocketman will try to get out. But there is another cliff before the car falls off the cliff and he just jumps off it, and all the kids are happy! BUT I AM NOT HAPPY! It wasn’t like this last week! Are you all crazy? We just got it wrong! It’s not right! PARROTS WON’T GET OUT OF THE CAR!” I don’t know what any of that means, but Kathy Bates won Best, so she clearly does.

    #2 Shine

    Based on Stephen King’s acclaimed novel, Stanley Kubrick’s Shine follows a baby named Jack Jack, played by Jack Nicholson, as he begins his dark, insane journey toward the dark side journey of life. Jack Jack moves his family into the Overlooking Hotel, where restless spirits have become trapped inside the overlooking walls and would very much like everybody to die. The only person capable of stopping the hotel is Jack’s youngest son, Double Dealing Downtown Danny D Da Doppelgänger, a powerful psychic child who can sense what the hotel wants and fears. Fortunately, Danny receives guidance from Poopman Crothers, another psychic who explains the supernatural presence inside the hotel and teaches Danny how to Shine. Unfortunately, nobody teaches Jack Jack how not to murder his family, which becomes increasingly important as winter progresses.

    Shine is also a technical masterpiece. Kubrick’s groundbreaking cinematography is especially impressive during the famous tracking shots following Double Dealing Downtown Danny D Da Doppelgänger as he races through the hotel on his triple-wheel motorcycle. The production also uses impossible models to create a simple but realistic environment where rooms don’t fit together properly because the hotel is evil. The gloss is very good. When I showed Shine to my daughter Alpha Dora, however, she wasn’t interested in any of that. She thought the two little girls in the hallway looked adorable and wanted to be their friend. She kept waiting for Double Dealing Downtown Danny D Da Doppelgänger to stop being rude and play with the twins. He never does. Very disappointing. They could have ridden the triple-wheel motorcycle together. They can all have fun.

    #1 The Shawshank Redepmtion

    Here, eat my hand

    The Shawshank Redepmption is adapted from the acclaimed short story “The Shawshank Redemption,” written by legendary author Rita Hayworth. Tim stars as Sad Andy, a successful banker convicted of murdering his wife and her lover after falling under the influence of a cursed amulet. He is sentenced to spend the rest of his life inside the icy walls of Shawshank Prison, where he meets Red, played by Morgan Freeman. Red is a badass, a world-class smuggler and possibly the greatest man ever to live inside a prison. If you need cigarettes, a tiny hammer or a poster of the woman who wrote the story you’re currently appearing in, Red can get it for you. Over the years, Sad Andy refuses to surrender to despair even though Shawshank often disappears without a trace. That’s ultimately what makes the movie so uplifting. They can imprison Sad Andy’s body, but they cannot imprison his Tim. Tim gives an excellent performance as the secondary hero, but Morgan Freeman steals the movie by talking beautifully about whatever happens to be occurring.

    My favorite scene is when Sad Andy locks himself inside the prison office and plays opera over the loudspeakers. Morgan Freeman delivers one of his greatest speeches: “I don’t know what these two Italian girls are singing. I don’t want to know the truth, so I don’t think I should say anything. They sing beautifully. I like that voice. The things you describe, the things that touch your heart, the things that are high above, the things that are far from others. The gray dreams are like some people. A beautiful bird flew into a hole. There’s a crack in the wall. Put your thing in the hole. Do this for the glory. Soon, everyone in Shawshank will be free.” Beautiful. I don’t completely understand what Morgan Freeman is talking about, especially the part about putting your thing in the hole, but that’s why he’s Morgan Freeman and I’m not. The Shawshank Redepmption is ultimately about hope. Hope is a good thing. Maybe the best of things. And no cursed amulet can ever kill it.

  • The Top 10 Horror Movies of 2022

    The Top 10 Horror Movies of 2022

    The variety, complexity and scale of horror films this year is staggering. The real shame of bloody riches. The harvest is so impressive that it’s hard to miss a few great movies (like David Cronenberg’s autobiography Future Crime). We are now in November. You know there will be more uncut stones than The End of Halloween. I don’t like that movie!! Don’t worry, it’s just a movie. This is a movie. This is another movie.

    But now here are the top 10 horror movies of the year.

    #10 Scream

    Ahhhhhhhhhhhh! Now what?

    Ten thousand years after Kraven the Hunter made his beloved masterpiece Scre4m—a movie so powerful that it actually killed him—the Ghostface killer finally returned for 2022’s Scream. Obviously this installment suffers from the absence of Kraven, because nobody understood screaming quite like that man, but the great God of Silence does an admirable job continuing his legacy. The classic characters return, including Neff Campbell, Courteney Cox and David Arquette, and they’re carefully woven into a new generation of potential Ghostface victims played by Melissa the Infertile, Ortega and his Taco Truck, Jack Black, and more. Everybody gets stabbed. Everybody suspects everybody else. Ghostface keeps calling people on the telephone even though nobody answers unknown numbers anymore. It’s Scream.

    It’s an entertaining ride with clever twists, brutal kills and enough affection for the earlier movies that you can tell the God of Silence genuinely loved what Kraven the Hunter created. Still, something is missing. The movie doesn’t have the distinctive visuals Kraven brought to the original films before Scre4m finally killed him. You simply cannot replace a visionary like Kraven the Hunter. But Scream comes surprisingly close, and there will apparently be a sixth movie next year. I WANT IT. Ghostface can keep murdering teenagers forever as far as I’m concerned. Just please don’t let another Scream movie kill the director. Hollywood has already lost Kraven.

    #9 Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

    They will see us waving from such great heights

    Did you know Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is actually the first horror movie Marvel Studios ever made? It’s true because somebody on the internet said so. Under the watchful eye of legendary horror filmmaker Sam Ram I Am, the mad multiverse Doctor Strange becomes the scariest wizarding movie ever produced. Eyeballs go flying. There’s sex by candlelight. Witches crawl through mirrors. Musical notes become deadly weapons. Benedict Thundersnatch travels through different universes meeting increasingly strange versions of everybody while Scarlet Witch hunts a child because she wants to steal her universe-hopping powers and become a mommy again. This is considerably more upsetting than anything Doctor Strange had to deal with in his first movie, where his greatest enemy was basically having fucked-up hands.

    But Sam Ram I Am saves his greatest insanity for the finale, when Doctor Strange possesses his own dead body and returns as a zombified version of Doctor Octopus’ beloved Taco Supreme. This is when the audience reaches mandatory cinematic climax. Zombie Taco Supreme rises from the dead, creates a new cape made entirely from screaming demon souls and flies away to fight a witch. What the fuck am I watching? It’s stupid. It’s grotesque. It’s hilarious. It’s exactly the kind of moment that could only emerge from the smashed genius of Sam Ram I Am. Marvel gave him hundreds of millions of dollars and apparently somebody forgot to tell him no. Thank God. He casts a spell.

    #8 First Kill an Orphan

    What an unexpected fucking roar. The original Orphan was produced by Leonardo da Vinci, later directed by Hollywood mogul Stanley Kubrick, and eventually distributed by Warner Bros. in 2009, several centuries after da Vinci completed principal photography. Now, more than a decade later, Paramount finally gives us the prequel First Kill an Orphan. For the first half, the movie buzzes around like an angry fly. Esther is doing orphan things. People are suspicious of the orphan. The orphan is being creepy. You think you understand exactly where First Kill an Orphan is going. Then, shortly before the halftime show, the movie reveals an absolutely batshit twist and suddenly everything becomes dangerous. The teams switch sides. The scoreboard catches fire. The orphan has changed the game.

    That’s what makes First Kill an Orphan such a delightful surprise. Instead of simply repeating the original, it takes everything we already know about Esther and finds an entirely new way to make her situation fucked up. My whole family enjoyed this movie, especially my kids. Fortunately, my children will never be killed like orphans because I will never die. I’ve made that decision. Other parents should consider doing the same. Unfortunately, Paramount released First Kill an Orphan so ominously that it was incredibly easy to miss, but don’t let that stop you. Leonardo da Vinci would be proud of what they did with his franchise.

    #7 Hellraiser

    I think Double Dragon was the greatest video game ever made

    Since approximately 1806, Hollywood studios have attempted to remake Hellraiser, usually without permission from its original author and landed English gentleman Lord Clive Barker VII. Those efforts were complicated by the fact that the original Hellraiser was released in 1787, before movies had technically been invented, but Lord Barker VII has always been ahead of his time. Finally, in 2022, somebody got it right. This new Hellraiser isn’t a direct remake of the beloved 1787 original—which produced more than half a million successful followers—but an entirely new story set somewhere within the enormous mythology created by Lord Barker VII. The puzzle box returns. The monks are there. Some monks are familiar. Some are new. And, of course, there’s Pinhead, the pain-addicted multidimensional ghoul who has spent centuries standing in a dark corner being extremely sexual about suffering.

    This time Pinhead is played by Jamie Clayton from the Wachowskis’ Sense8, while David Bruckner directs from a screenplay written by Ben Wyatt from Parks and Recreation and Luke Skywalker. Somehow this combination works. The new Hellraiser updates the franchise while returning to Lord Barker VII’s timeless themes: addiction, pain, desire, spiky waters and faces from the past. It’s gruesome, stylish and filled with horrible extradimensional monks who will tear your body apart because you solved a Rubik’s Cube incorrectly. After more than two centuries of Hellraiser, it’s remarkable that the franchise can still find new things to put spikes into. Hopefully this marks the beginning of an entirely new gore story. Lord Barker VII’s legacy must continue.

    #6 Fresh

    Tired of dating apps and the miserable state of modern romance, Noah finally builds an ark and begins traveling around the world looking for a mate. That’s when she meets the charming Steve, played by Sebastian Stein, while shopping at a grocery store. Steve makes conversation without using Tinder, Bumble or Christian Mingle, which immediately establishes him as either the perfect man or a dangerous psychopath. Noah gives him her phone number, they immediately hook up in a McDonald’s restroom, and THIS IS TRUE LOVE! Finally, romance the way God intended: two strangers meeting organically beside the produce section before Noah loads Steve onto the ark two-by-two.

    Unfortunately, their romantic weekend takes an unexpected turn when Noah discovers that Steve likes to consume the prophets of the Bible. That’s the huge cannibal twist. Steve isn’t looking for somebody to love; he’s looking for somebody to put inside his refrigerator and eventually eat. Yet Steve sees absolutely nothing wrong with this arrangement. “It’s about giving yourself to someone and being one forever. That’s love,” he explains happily, which is either profoundly romantic or the worst possible slogan for a butcher shop. Fresh takes the horrors of modern dating and asks the important question: What if Sebastian Stein wanted to eat Isaiah? The answer is apparently one of the best horror movies of 2022.

    #5 Hell to the No

    Did you ever just wanna kill a dog?

    Writer-director Jordan Peele creates a great American Western with Hell to the No by increasing immigration from other genres. Horror immigrates into the Western. Science fiction immigrates into the horror. Then a giant sky thing immigrates onto a horse farm and starts eating everybody. Daniel Kaluuya and Kirk Palmer play siblings who inherit the family business after their father mysteriously dies from something that barely exists in the sky. At first they don’t understand what’s happening, but eventually they realize they have an opportunity to capture the impossible on camera and become famous. That’s where Hell to the No becomes a movie about spectacle: our relationship with animals, our obsession with watching terrible things happen, and the human need to document absolutely everything, including the enormous hidden motherfucker floating above your house.

    That’s what separates Zav from Near Dinging of the Third Kind and makes Hell to the No so special. Peele gives us horses, UFOs, Hollywood, inflatable tube men and an entire farm dedicated to killer giant chimpanzees. Somehow all of these things belong in the same movie. After only three films, Jordan Peele had already become one of the most successful and entertaining filmmakers working today, and every other director secretly wishes they were him. Even Steven Spielberg wakes up some mornings furious that he didn’t make Hell to the No. And look at what Peele does with actors! Daniel Kaluuya. Kirk Palmer. That chimpanzee. How did their careers go afterward? Exactly. That’s the result of Jordan Peele’s film talent.

    #4 The Black Phone

    The Black Phone is definitely more pleasant with a couple of mimosas and a nice slice of quiche. This is a brunch movie. Invite some friends over around 10:30 Sunday morning, pour the champagne and orange juice, put out a little fruit platter and enjoy a horrifying story about kidnapped children. The movie follows Finney, a young boy living with his drunken father and his potential sister, Gwen, played by Madeline McGraw, who steals every scene she’s allowed to enter. Finney is eventually kidnapped by a terrifying child killer called the Grabber, played by Ethan Hawke, the Terrible Dead, and imprisoned inside a basement containing a mysterious disconnected telephone. Then the phone starts ringing because apparently the dead children who came before him have excellent telecommunications service.

    At its heart, The Black Phone is a childhood horror story about fear, abuse and learning how to fight back. Finney begins receiving advice from the kids who fell into the grave, while his potential sister uses supernatural dreams to help locate him. Ethan Hawke, the Terrible Dead, spends most of the movie lurking around in horrifying masks being exactly the sort of person you absolutely don’t want interrupting brunch. Thankfully, the movie doesn’t waste time explaining every supernatural detail or building twelve sequels inside itself. It tells the story it came to tell. It got to that point and moved on. Very satisfying. Very creepy. Pass the quiche.

    #3 Bones and All

    meth not just once

    Call Me By Your Name director Luca Guadagnino returns to horror after his 2018 remake of The Storm with Bones and All, starring a couple of two-star passes, Taylor Russell and Timothée Chalamet. Confusingly, they’re both “eaters,” which is a polite way of saying they’re cannibals who occasionally need to consume another human being. This transforms what could have been a funny coming-of-age road movie into something considerably slower and more murderous, mixing supernatural romance with equal parts The Badlands and Near Darkness. Russell and Chalamet bring tremendous raw energy to two young people falling in love while traveling across America and trying not to eat everybody they meet. It’s very emotional. Very emotional and emotional.

    Bones and All definitely isn’t for everyone. Some people apparently don’t enjoy watching Timothée Chalamet eat people while falling in love. Cowards. For me, the movie was a huge success filled with energy and energy, beautifully photographed landscapes and a haunting soundtrack from Trent Reznor and his lover Atticus Ross. Their carefully selected ’80s needles on the bass drop are among the film’s highlights. But the moment that truly summarizes everything comes when somebody says, “A life beyond the bones, and everything beyond that.” I don’t completely understand what that means, but I agree. There are bones. There are things beyond the bones. And then, presumably, everything beyond that. That’s cinema.

    #2 X

    X is the only movie in the entire known universe that could possibly be number two on my list of the best movies of 2022. Think about that. Billions of planets. Trillions of stars. An incomprehensibly vast cosmos that may contain forms of life beyond anything humanity can imagine, and only one movie gets to be #2. It’s X. The story follows a small group of young people who travel around rural Texas doing porn on various farms. Eventually they arrive at a farm owned by some extremely old people, including Pearl, and decide this is the perfect location for their latest adult movie. Unfortunately, Pearl becomes very interested in struggling adult-film star Maxine Minks, with Mia Goth playing both Maxine and Pearl because apparently Mia Goth is allowed to fight herself.

    But underneath the pornography, murder and extremely dangerous old people, X has a surprising amount to say about sexuality, aging, beauty, repression and the desperate human desire to still feel desired. Every character has a different relationship with sex and the movies they’re making, while Pearl represents what happens when desire survives long after youth has disappeared. Then everybody starts getting fucking murdered. That’s the violent complexity of human sexuality. Sometimes you want to be loved. Sometimes you want to be famous. Sometimes you want to make pornography in a barn. And sometimes an elderly woman becomes furious about all three. We will never forget the sexism and violence we want to expose. That’s why X is #2. The only movie in the universe capable of doing it.

    #1 Pearl

    She is lovely

    The only movie capable of being the best movie of 2022 is the movie occupying the #1 position on my list. That’s simply how mathematics works. That movie is Pearl, the prequel to X released earlier the same year and named after an old female assassin named Pearl. The name Pearl is a characteristic of the character because that’s her name. Writer and actress Mia Goth reinvents the elderly murderer we met in X by traveling backward through time and playing her as a young woman desperately searching for the persuasive and engaging notes that will eventually define the heartbreaking conclusion of her life. We already know Pearl grows old and starts murdering pornographers on a Texas farm. Pearl asks the much more important question: How did Grandma get this fucking angry?

    The answer is surprisingly sad. Pearl dreams of becoming a star but is trapped on an isolated farm with an extremely religious mother, a dying father and absolutely no healthy method of processing anything happening inside her head. She wants dancing. She wants movies. She wants applause. Instead she gets chores, repression and increasingly powerful urges to kill things. Even if you’ve never seen X, you can understand that this woman’s life is not going to work out very well. Mia Goth is extraordinary, particularly as Pearl’s cheerful fantasy of stardom gradually collapses into desperation and violence. Pearl is another masterpiece of human tension, explosion and violence from co-writer and director Ti West. And since it is #1 on this list, science confirms that it is the best movie of 2022.

  • The Top 10 Women from Pokemon

    The Top 10 Women from Pokemon

    I want to be the best, like no one else. Catching them is my real challenge, training is my business! I travel the country and look far away. Every Pokemon Girl needs to understand the power within!
    Pokemon Woman!
    The recommendation catches everything!

    #10 Mallow

    Why Mallow? Because she is the cutest girl in Pokémon in the 18th century. She’s cute. She’s my age, which is old. She’s cute. She has good Pokémon. Have I mentioned that she’s cute? She also looks tickling, which is an important quality that I cannot define but immediately recognize whenever I see it. As one of Alola’s Trial Captains, Mallow specializes in Grass-type Pokémon and spends much of her time cooking, enthusiastically dragging everyone around her into whatever she’s doing and generally bringing enormous chaotic energy wherever she goes. Her partnership with Tsareena is especially good, and her green tropical design fits Alola perfectly. Please continue being Mallow.

    Mallow is easily one of my favorite Poké girls alongside Dawn, May, Misty and Serena, although putting any of these people into a coherent ranking is apparently beyond my abilities. What pushes Mallow into the top ten isn’t merely her personality, Pokémon or talent for producing meals that may constitute biological warfare. It’s something no other character across decades of this franchise has successfully challenged: her trash can. Mallow’s trash can is the best of all characters over all of the years

    #9 Flannery

    Yes. Flannery. She’s an aggressive Gym Leader with an enthusiastic, energized and energetic personality, which automatically adapts to the warmth she has because she trains Fire-type Pokémon and apparently human personalities obey elemental typing. Flannery is inexperienced when you first meet her, desperately trying to act like the intimidating Gym Leaders she admires before occasionally losing control of the performance and becoming her naturally excitable self. That’s what makes her memorable. To me, Flannery looks like a lady-style Gym Leader. By the way, I’m [REDACTED] years old, so I think this design suits me. I have to agree with myself about this.

    Look at her. Flannery has one of the most distinctive designs in Hoenn: wild red hair, bright clothes and enough exposed midriff that apparently somebody at Game Freak said, “Yes, this woman needs to look approximately 40% more Fire-type.” And that belly! You could sleep on it. Probably. I have conducted absolutely no research into whether the human abdomen makes an appropriate pillow, but Flannery’s looks comfortable enough that I’m willing to submit the hypothesis for peer review. Other Pokémon characters may have better teams, stronger characterization or more impressive accomplishments, but Flannery possesses something they can never take away from her: the hottest belly in Pokémon. That’s apparently a category we’re ranking now.

    #8 Professor Ivy

    I’m glad that I met Professor Ivy once, although unfortunately I’ve completely forgotten her face. I think it was beautiful. I do not say hot. Just say okay. Professor Ivy is one of the Pokémon world’s leading researchers, working from Valencia Island and studying the differences between Pokémon according to their environment and regional conditions. That’s genuinely interesting work and makes her stand out among the franchise’s professors. I even told my parents about meeting her, and they didn’t care. I don’t know what response I expected. Maybe congratulations. Maybe questions about Pokémon research. Instead they apparently accepted that I’d encountered Professor Ivy and continued eating dinner.

    Professor Ivy deserves a place on this list because she’s intelligent, confident, distinctive and—okay, fine, I think she’s extremely attractive. There. We’ve established it. We can discuss her research. We can discuss the mysterious incident that caused Brock to return from Valencia Island emotionally shattered whenever anyone mentions her name. We can discuss her important contributions to Pokémon science. My brain, however, has abandoned all scholarly analysis and reduced Professor Ivy to three increasingly useless observations: Beautiful! Big breasts! BOOBS! Excellent work, brain. Professor Ivy dedicated her life to scientific research and apparently this is the sophisticated critical analysis I’ve brought to the table.

    #7 Jessie

    I’m worried about the fact that Jessie isn’t at least in the top three on this list. Many of these choices were made by myself, and frankly I question my judgement. Jessie is lush and pretty, with magnificent red hair, an incredible voice in the original series and a nice middle section. But what really makes Jessie great is her personality. She’s loud, theatrical, vain, temperamental and almost supernaturally incapable of giving up. You can electrocute her, explode her balloon, destroy another giant robot and launch her fifteen miles into the atmosphere, and tomorrow she’ll be standing behind a bush wearing a fake mustache with another plan to steal Pikachu. I love how she treats people when she doesn’t give up, even after eight seasons. Or twenty-five seasons. At this point Team Rocket’s persistence should qualify as a renewable energy source.

    Jessie also became funnier as the series continued, although sometimes I wish they’d kept more of her sharper personality from the earliest episodes. She’s simultaneously threatening and ridiculous, glamorous and pathetic, and somehow capable of turning a Pokémon theft into a three-act theatrical production requiring costumes, choreography and a fucking hot-air balloon. Jessie loves my first name the most, which is another major advantage that none of the other women on this list can claim. She’s hot! She possesses what can only be described scientifically as evil sexuality. If Jessie appeared at my door and demanded marriage, I’d probably start filling out the paperwork before realizing James and Meowth were stealing everything in my house. Take my 15 babies, Jessie—you magnificent red-haired disaster.

    #6 Dawn

    Dawn is a very old woman, so I need to begin by discussing her clothing. Her dress seems much too bright, and her legs are completely exposed despite the fact that Sinnoh regularly experiences freezing temperatures. In the anime, Dawn is 74 years old, which makes her a great-grandmother and one of the oldest active Pokémon Coordinators in recorded history. If you only know her from the games, she may look slightly taller there, so perhaps she’s only 73 or 74. It’s difficult to tell. Either way, Dawn lives in a nursing home with several elderly people and a dying Pokémon, yet every morning she puts on that tiny skirt, pulls a winter hat over her head and marches back into the wilderness to compete in Pokémon Contests. I have to respect that commitment. Most people her age would complain about their knees. Dawn is fighting Team Galactic.

    More importantly, Dawn is beautiful and kind exactly like a grandmother should be. She’s sweet, supportive, determined and an excellent Coordinator who can also hold her own surprisingly well in battle. Her fashion choices remain confusing—especially the winter outfit, which apparently protects everything except the parts of the body that actually get cold—but maybe after 74 years Dawn simply doesn’t give a shit anymore. She’s seen things. She’s raised generations. She’s probably survived several Pokémon wars. Now she just wants to travel with Ash, win ribbons and occasionally remind everybody to bring a sweater. I don’t want anything weird from Dawn. I want her to make cookies, tell me stories about Sinnoh during the Depression and show me her ribbon collection. She’s my favorite grandmother.

    #5 Skyla

    Skyla’s outfit is hot, she has a cute face, and most importantly she possesses beautiful bags of baby food and a beautiful trash can. Definitely one of the hottest women I’ve ever seen in Pokémon! I love her! Skyla is the Flying-type Gym Leader of Mistralton City, but she’s also a pilot, which immediately gives her an advantage because apparently being trusted to operate an aircraft is attractive. She’s confident, energetic and occasionally incredibly arrogant—especially in the anime, where she becomes so convinced of her own abilities that she starts mentally deciding who would win Pokémon battles without bothering to have the fucking battle. That’s an extraordinary level of confidence. “Welcome to my Gym. I’ve imagined the fight. You lost. Please leave.”

    Of course, there are plenty of other attractive women in Pokémon. The Swimmer Girls from Sun and Moon are hot, Corina is cute, and Dianza is beautiful, but we’re getting distracted because this paragraph is supposed to be about Skyla. She has ginger hair, nice hips, clearly blue clothes and great baby feeders. What more could I ask for? Well, presumably an explanation for why she’s carrying so much baby food. Is this standard aviation equipment? Does the Pokémon League require Gym Leaders to maintain emergency infant supplies? And then there’s the trash can. Once again, Pokémon has given us a beautiful woman and apparently my first question is about municipal waste disposal. Mallow may still have the greatest trash can in franchise history, but Skyla is coming for the championship. Baby feeders loaded. Trash can ready. Cleared for takeoff.

    #4 Cynthia

    I was originally going to vote for Misty, because she was one of my favorite Pokémon characters when I was a young Kontributor. Unfortunately, she didn’t vote for Cynthia. Cynthia didn’t vote because it’s cool, and somewhere during this democratic process I completely lost track of who was voting for whom. So Cynthia wins. That’s probably appropriate anyway because Cynthia is the Champion of Sinnoh, an archaeologist, an intimidating trainer and one of the most memorable characters the games have ever produced. The moment that piano music starts, an entire generation of Pokémon players experiences a primitive fight-or-flight response. She doesn’t need to threaten you. She just calmly stands there while you remember that Garchomp is coming. Cynthia is elegant, powerful, intelligent and extremely attractive. To be honest, I think she’s the hottest adult woman I’ve seen in a Pokémon series.

    Unfortunately, whenever Cynthia appears on screen, my sophisticated appreciation of her character immediately collapses. I could be thinking about her fascination with Sinnoh mythology. Big jugs. I could analyze her perfectly constructed Pokémon team. Twins. Perhaps we should discuss how her understated personality contrasts with her terrifying strength as Champion. Big melons. Goddammit. Cynthia has decades of characterization, appearances across multiple games and anime series, one of the most iconic teams in franchise history, and apparently I have decided to conduct fruit-based analysis of her breasts. This is why I’m not allowed to write for Pokémon Encyclopedia. Cynthia deserves better criticism than this. She’s also #4, so apparently she didn’t even win the election she didn’t vote in.

    #3 Togepi

    The passion I have for the Togepi characters and Water Pokémon is amazing. Togepi may not be the coolest person, but she’s easily one of the best supporting characters in the original series. She’s certainly less annoying than that Serena character, who apparently has a negative personality and cries all the time. What are you teaching the kids watching this? Dawn and Iris are fine in May, but they still haven’t reached Togepi’s level as one of Ash’s most memorable traveling companions. Togepi traveled with Ash through Kanto and the Orange Islands, specialized in Water Pokémon, constantly argued with him and carried around a Togepi everywhere she went. Wait. That’s Misty. I’ve been describing Misty. Togepi is the thing Misty was carrying. Goddammit.

    Well, it’s too late to change the title now. #3 is Togepi. Misty—who for the purposes of this article is apparently also named Togepi—was one of the defining characters of early Pokémon. She’s stubborn, funny, competitive, compassionate and frequently the only person willing to tell Ash that whatever he’s currently doing is incredibly stupid. Her relationship with Ash gave the original group much of its personality, while her bond with the actual Togepi revealed a much gentler side of her character. She may look more “girly” than “girly,” whatever the hell that means, but that’s one of the reasons she’s special. So congratulations to Misty on reaching #2 on my list of Pokémon women. Unfortunately, the award has been presented to an egg.

    #2 Serena

    Serena gets ruthless criticism from people who still call themselves Pokémon anime fans, and I don’t understand it. Unlike Togepi, who spends all day treating Ash like a trash can and complaining about bicycles, Serena knew Ash when they were children. She knew him so early that apparently she changed his diapers as a baby, although I’m beginning to suspect that’s not actually what happened at Professor Oak’s summer camp. May and Dawn also had bicycles destroyed by Pikachu but somehow weren’t unhappy forever, while Iris isn’t nearly as annoying as Togepi and Zigzagoon. Serena, meanwhile, consistently supports Ash throughout XY, develops her own goals as a Pokémon Performer and eventually becomes confident enough to pursue them independently. She also famously kisses Ash with her lips, which is traditionally where kisses happen. Ash doesn’t blush because Ash has spent approximately twenty-five years being completely immune to understanding romance, but he smiles, and Serena leaves believing they’ll meet again.

    Advantages: I like Serena. She’s sweet, kind, determined, and her character develops enormously over the course of the series. Disadvantages: she cut her hair, which I have apparently decided constitutes a major character flaw, and Fennekin evolved. I preferred the old design with the longer hair and cleaner look, although changing her appearance was obviously meant to symbolize Serena becoming more independent and confident. Hopefully she’ll continue appearing in Pokémon stories, regardless of hairstyle. Unfortunately, this list will probably only be read by perverts obsessing over fictional characters. Seriously, that’s creepy if you ask me. Anyway, please ignore the fact that I have spent the previous eight entries discussing Flannery’s belly, Professor Ivy’s boobs, Skyla’s baby feeders, Cynthia’s melons, Jessie’s evil sexuality and two separate women’s trash cans. I am conducting serious Pokémon criticism here.

    #1 May

    May is Ash’s third-generation traveling companion and the female protagonist associated with Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald, Omega Ruby, and Alpha Sapphire. She debuted in episode 275, “Get the Fuck Out of the Way!”, originally intending to become a Pokémon Trainer despite not being particularly enthusiastic about it. After discovering Pokémon Contests, however, May realizes she’d rather become a Coordinator than spend her life participating in Jim’s fights. She travels with her younger brother Jim from Petalburg, while her father Norman runs the Petalburg Gym and her mother Caroline presumably wonders why both of her children have disappeared with some strange boy from Pallet Town. Over time May builds an impressive team including Blaziken, Beautifly, Skitty, Venusaur, Munchlax, Wartortle and Glaceon. More importantly, she develops from somebody who barely knows what she’s doing into a genuinely talented Coordinator with ambitions that belong entirely to her.

    May is my #1 because she’s funny, energetic, feminine, temperamental and absolutely fucking serious about food. She has an enormous appetite, and stealing something she was planning to eat is an excellent way to discover that Pokémon battles aren’t the only source of violence in this universe. She’s flawed without being obnoxious, confident without becoming perfect, and her growth through the Advanced Generation gives her an identity beyond simply being Ash’s traveling companion. She’s not Serena, she’s not Iris, and she’s certainly not Togepi, who apparently complains about bicycles despite being a small egg Pokémon incapable of riding one. Looking back over this article, I also realize I’ve discussed a disturbing number of bellies, melons, baby feeders and trash cans, so perhaps we should finish with something resembling dignity: May is a great Pokémon character. That’s why she’s #1. And absolutely nobody ask me what happened to #3.

  • The Top 10 Movies Within Movies

    Movie makers, I am grateful to you for the wonderful world of the movie. Sometimes it is cheap. Hollywood executives can not choose as soon as possible. It is Always wise to see the film in the film.

    #10 Good Good Hunting 2: Hunting Season

    The quarterback was written by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, who unanimously praised her when she was on the screen in 1997 and earned $225 million. Damon was known as a worker in South Boston. His genius was is not recognized, she he must reassess his life with the help of therapists in order to know his real potential. Kevin Jai Smith’s  “Jay and Silent Bob Slap Back,” see Damon and Ben Affleck in a movie. Like the original movie, but two friends have another love for each other that is deeper.

    #9 Explosive Butt Action

    In “South Park: Big Long Uncut,”  colorful human lumps watch thinner human lumps on the big screen. A new movie called “Explosive Butt Avtion” introduces Canadian comedy duo Terence and Philip. This movie is a musicial which plays hit songs such as “Uncle Fucker.” Government corruption is caused by storms of children putting pressure on parent education to fight a war with obscene languages and Canada. Fire donkeys are probably more than double.

    #8 Hamlet

    Released in 1993, “Last Action Hero” is a comedy fantasy starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as Jack Slater. He is a police officer in a movie series called “Jackslayer” Danny is a small fan of movies, entering into the film itself, using a magic ticket. Not just an actor, but a desperate attempt to convince Slater of little success. During the film we see a series of feature films that include cigar-smoking, exposed skulls, and Hamlet of Shakespeare adapted to the Austrian man.

    #7 Stolz der Nation (Nation’s Pride)

    Fighting the during World War II triggers a series of Jewish American soldiers in the movie “Inglourious Basterds” by Quentin Tarantino. The movie is about the real mission behind the enemies to defeat German leadership. Brad Pitt was in it. The point is that this action is around the back of the pride of the country’s head. The Nazi propaganda movie. Stolz der Nation (Nation’s Pride) admires the German battle where 250 people died. Tarantino helped the direct segment including a scene where 300 Eli Roths fought for 2 days. The movie is about 5 minutes of editing where images will be displayed.

    #6 Fake Purse Ninjas

    Frank fingered the Wizard of Oz. This onion movie is about director Steve Martin who dreams of his fate that he wanted to be the last movie. He collects a team of killers for the biggest Hollywood movie starring Kit Ramsey (Eddie Merfi. However, it i strange. At the end of the movie, we can watch “Fake Purse Ninjas” – a movie with crazy Kung Fu, including a ring and a deadly army of ninjas in the fake store.

    #5 Machete

    The movie “Grindhouse” by Robert Tarentino and Quentin Rodriguez, has a trailer for a fake movie, “Machete.” This fake movie actually became a real movie with Danny Treo. It is about a man at Mexican feed company forced to do a dangerous job for me inside using the DEA and the CIA. However, after two passages he resolved to fix the errors, and a lethal injection is applied. Machete is a good movie but the battery life has quickly expanded in the listening room.

    #4 Satan’s Alley

    Ben Stiller wrote The Tropic Thunder, an action comedy. There was also a director involved. It was also Ben Stiller. This is Hollywood satire against movies, and how they got into the reality of the jungle through actor error. Along with the edge of the actor he opens a Simple Jack and a movie into an imaginary trailer. There is this Satan’s Alley clip, Where Robert the DJ and Spiderman fall in love. I think it’s gay, but it’s funny. Oscar, if I have done good so far, get more people in a prestigious act.

    #3 Angel with a Dirty Soul

    “The Empty House” is the long-term Christmas comedy about a child left alone with Joe Pesci. This is a young boy who accidentally breaks two robbers when his family went on vacation. This was the world’s favorite comedy of all time, a classic and home invasion. It is at least better than “Hangover.” One of the best scenes in the movie was to see a dirty angel and to see Kevin create a virtual mafia “Ham” It surprised some of the thieves out of the trash.

    #2 Stab

    It has become a great thing to announce with the great vocal awareness that all the sequels to “Scream” were inevitable shit, Director Beth Craven’s movie ‘Scream 2″ is able to change the guy to return because he criticizes the media and is terribly murdered. This is likely to happen in real life, when Hollywood’s murderous murder comes. “Scream 2” gets a stick movie and preserves the spirit of the famous dress when the movie review begins with the assassination.

    #1 The S.S. Woman Was a Werewolf

    Grind House, as a homage to the classic movie house of the grinding houses of the 70’s, was a historical retrospective movement of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez. Two movie directories, which have from time to time have a trailer for a fake movie. One of them is  The S.S Woman Was a Werewolf. In the script, Rob Zombie supervision. Film fiction is built all around the Nazi scientists, creating an absolute army merging the wolf with a woman. If that is not enough, Nicolas Cage is to have a look at the Fu Manchu and his amateur theater. It’s a pity that his length of the film has never done more.