FilmRecommended films and other visual media.
Recommended films and other visual media.
They Live
Though largely forgotten among horror fans, perhaps "too easy" for sci-fi fans, there is brilliance in They Live, Carpenter's take on the Invasion of the Body Snatchers trope. Though set in the late eighties, the backdrop is an unexpectedly real and current America, where the powerful exploit and crack down on the powerless. A paper thin plot and buckets of action movie tropes then quickly plunge it into camp territory, but the imagery ("OBEY" on billboards, "THIS IS YOUR GOD" on dollar bills") and the alien overlord conspiracy remain iconic and relevant to this day.
Hackers
Among the top google suggestions for Hackers is the question: is Hackers a queer movie? ... Yes. First of all, it's short haired Angelina Jolie. Second, the plot is driven by her bet to get Zero Cool guy into spandex lingerie. Third, every bizarre outfit, character background soundtrack and visual is driven by pure commitment to the bit. One could call it a cheese fest, but that sells Hackers painfully short. Surprised how none of the hacking lingo makes sense? Well, would you have your villain enter on a skateboard lifting on a car? It's all intentional, and that is what lifts Hackers above its supposed genre.
American Psycho
No film captures the existential hell of contemporary life quite like American Psycho. A shocking window into a society where the status game is even more disgusting than the violence, and the violence is tame compared to the yuppy exorbitance. Like Patrick Bateman looking lustfully at himself while having sex with two women. Brilliantly, the film doesn't answer the question whether the murdering was all Patrick's perverted fantasy, and he really was just jerking off at work, or whether they were real, and it were his surroundings denying the truth and rewarding his behaviour - and which would be worse.