Top 5 "Oo, That Looks Good" Movies of 2014

The new year has arrived at long last; we only had to wait 365 days or so for it. And with the new year comes the long wait for the inevitable wave of summer blockbusters that arrive every June with the timing and grace of only the most punctual and voluminous menstrual sloughs.

There is never not a good moment to use this image.

Summer this year seems to be set to flood us like so much body-temperature uterus lining with a veritable smorgasbord of exactly the same movies over and over again. With lots of lasers and jumping and looking seriously into the distance, sci-fi and alien invasion seem to be the aim of the game, so be prepared for, well, lots of sci-fi and aliens; along with the obligatory kids animated movie sequels and another superhero movie, because we're totally not tired of them yet. Yay.

Why can't we all just wait patiently for Ant-Man?

That said, there's still plenty to be excited all through the year so, without further ado (or adon't), I give you my top 5 list of movies that, as the title suggests, make you lean over to your mate in the cinema and shout-whisper, "Dude, we need to see that." Let us begin with:

5. Nymphomaniac: Volume 1 (Release: 21st February)

Subtle...

Oh Lars. What are you like? First Antichrist, now this. What with these, your porn films and that Nazi joke at the Cannes Film Festival two years ago, I almost feel like you're trying too hard to be controversial. And after the cataclysmically awful melodrama of Melancholia I'm starting to worry that you've actually lost your film-maker's touch. What happened? Where's another Dogville?

Won't you think of the children?!

I'm not a man to give up hope, however, and so this is your last chance, Lars, to restore my faith in you. I'm always a fan of the films that steer a little closer to the bone and sexuality has always been something that the film industry has shied away from like a young actress from a Hollywood producer's fly (who said that?!), so I commend the steel balls it must take to make a film that's essentially a two-part, five hour long mainstream porn movie. Whether it'll actually be any good of a film or just there for the shock factor (see Antichrist again) will only be a matter of time. I just hope Trier has realised that a little bit of subtlety and room for interpretation can go a long way.

Ah.

So, for those of you looking for plenty of sex, hamfisted imagery, disturbed characters and a little dash of Rammstein, this looks like the movie of the year for you. Here's the trailer (one of them was originally banned from YouTube), see if you can spot the subliminal vagina at the beginning:

4. The Lego Movie (Release: 14th February)

If you went to see Nymphomaniac and you now need a way to stop your children from crying inconsolably or worse, copying what they saw, you could take them to the next screen to see The Lego Movie. Yes, The Motherfucking Lego Movie. I'm a little too excited for this one as it's directed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller, the directors behind the glorious 21 Jump Street remake (the sequel is also coming out this year, but sadly ranked at number six on my list) and the solidly alright Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, features Morgan Freeman as God, co-stars Will Arnett from Arrested Development as Batman and Liam Neeson is in there somewhere too. There's not a single part of the production or casting line-up that makes me too worried about this becoming yet another all-too-formulaic kid's movie and thank Morgan Freeman, because Warner Bros. have the imaginations of countless children and former-children at stake here.

"Put all your money in a bag and hand it over or another beloved household name gets ruined." - Warner Bros. Marketing Department

Almost all of us have fond memories of ourselves or a sibling spending a rainy Sunday afternoon meticulously building a world of colourful blocks complete with characters, stories, drama and heaps of action; then destroying everything with an alien invasion or massive Godzilla earthquake or with whatever other characters or toys you happened to have lying around. The trailer for this movie evokes exactly the same kind of sense of boundless fun and joyously nonsensical carnage of the childhood imagination. Even the animation style is reminiscent of a kid moving Lego men around like hopscotch players before making the calculated executive decision to curtail the hunt for the secret cave of awesome and swallowing the pieces instead.

"Oh my god, it ate the General! All is lost!"

If all goes well, this will be one part loose "save the world" story, a hundred parts hilariously unhinged chaos and all made from the brightly coloured little blocks of nostalgia that we all know and love. Hit it, YouTube embed:

3. Interstellar (Release: 7th November)

Never before has a poster looked so...Nolany.

Let's go all the way to the end of the year and look at Christopher Nolan's next pet project, Interstellar. It's no surprise that pretty much all anyone outside the production team and cast knows about the movie is that it's something to do with astronauts and wormholes. The cast have stayed tight-lipped about any further details, as is customary with a Nolan movie, so all we can do is wait. Something that will obviously build speculation, and hype, and money. You cheeky bastard, Nolan. You wouldn't get away with this if all of your movies weren't so bloody good.

Nearly all of them.

Looking at the crew, it's certainly going to make for an interesting film. There's the production designer from The Dark Knight, the editor from Inception and Elysium (expect lots of fast shots and not a lot of knowing what's going on) and the cinematographer behind the chilling Let the Right One In, which means we're probably looking at a complicated, fast-paced, creepy movie with lots of twists and turns. So, yeah, a Christopher Nolan film. I canny wait! We'll just have to wait and see what he churns out, as the trailer doesn't really shed any further light on things:

2. The Wolf of Wall Street (Release: 17th January)

I'm kind of cheating here seeing as The Wolf of Wall Street, Martin Scorsese's new biopic of another Henry Hill-type sleazeball called Jordan Belfort, came out in the good old US of We'll Show Our Movies a Month Before You Get Them Ner-nee-ner-ner on Christmas Day, but it doesn't come out over here until mid-January, so I think it still counts.

You wouldn't look so happy without all of your missiles and stupid premiers, would you? Noooooo.
Dick.

A Scorsese movie is really best described by itself, so I present to you the trailer for Wolf of Wall Street and dare you to say that this doesn't have absolutely everything you want from a film in it, up to and including Leonardo DiCaprio's adorable smug-face (see poster above):

1. The Wind Rises (Release: Unannounced)

Hayao Miyazaki is retiring! Why, God, why?! His final movie, The Wind Rises, is a fictional account of the life of Jiro Horikoshi, the man behind the design of the Mitsubishi A5M fighter plane used by Japan during World War II, which eventually evolved into the famous "Kamikaze" A5M Zeros that were in that one good bit of Pearl Harbor. It's caused a bit of a stir over in Japan, what with a story humanising the designer of weapons of war seemingly going against Miyazaki's famously pacifist ideologies. The controversy is only fuelling my hunger for this film even more, however, as it has been hailed as Miyazaki's most personal film and apparently focuses on a healthy dose of adult themes not seen before in an anime that has hit number one on the Japanese box office for the whole of the year. It reminds me of another Studio Ghibli movie set in World War II Japan that featured pretty heavy themes and something about dead bugs...

If I think about it too hard I might start crying again.

Grave of the Fireflies is possibly one of the greatest and most devastating films ever made, and now the best anime director ever (Isao Takahata holds just as strong a place in my heart, mind) has made a new film about the same subject. I think it might kill me if I see this...

Worth it.

I would urge those of you who are a little dubious about watching cartoons (particularly anime) to give this a try, you'll be seeing the work of a master of an industry at his very best. Everyone loves him. As for me, I'll have to watch the trailer at least another 5 times before I can get through the whole thing without breaking the laptop from the resulting efflux of drool and tears of joy:

So, my little band of unholy abominations, what films are you looking forward to this year?

Friday the 13th Special: Top 5 Survivors

The attentive few among you may be aware that today is not Friday the 13th. Nor is it even a Friday. To be honest, that whole title is a bunch of filthy, filthy lies. I'm not even planning on doing a list article (more shameless Cracked plugging, because those guys really need it). I jest. Yes, this article is a little late for the titular day of unluckiness and gore and such, but I'll be damned if I'm going to give myself more work by not playing by my new posting schedule, so you'll read this five days late and bloody well enjoy it!

He's still on call for another week; don't make me page him.

To celebrate Jason Voorhees' official nameday, I thought it might be nice to commemorate his insatiable desire to horrifically murder vast swathes of people, leaving but one man (or, more likely, one buxom blonde woman) standing, usually soaked in blood and fear pee. So, for your viewing pleasure, I have collated a list of my top 5 survivors in cinema, ranked by the percentage survival rate of their situation in comparison to real world versions. A bit like if I were to suggest the least safe medical procedure performed in a film compared to your likelihood of bleeding to death while doing it in real life.

Another landslide victory for improvised amputations!

So lets get this party started with a couple hundred horrific drownings.

5. Rose Bukater - Titanic (1997)

Rose DeWitt Bukater (sadly of no relation to the father of the year) is Kate Winslet's character in James Cameron's sombre and modest 1997 Oscar trawling net. She's the one with, y'know, the naked posing and the outstretched arms and shit. She falls in love with Leonardo di Caprio's baby-like complexion and cries when it gets all covered in frost at the end while she sits on a very large door watching him freeze to death.

"Just to clarify: if this boat sinks, we'll need a piece of debris this size to fit both of us, right?"

Rose is lucky to have survived one of the largest commercial naval disasters in human history, racking up an impressive 1514 deaths out of a total 2224 passengers (yes, Wikipedia, don't judge me). That's a staggering 68.1% dead boat. Hold on, turn that around. That means there was a one in three chance of survival. There have been worse odds...

Whingy bastards.

Actually, if we delve a little deeper into the statistics, we notice some interesting stuff. Out of the 144 first class women aboard the boat, a mind-numbing 4 died. Yeah. Four people. Hell, we see one of them drown in the actual movie, meaning there are only three more spots to be filled before Rose's survival is inevitable.

Taking one for the historical accuracy team.

Survival Rate: 97% - Another reason to advocate upper-class white guilt.

4. Chuck Noland - Castaway (2000)

Castaway is a very simple concept: everyone loves Tom Hanks and movies that contain a Tom Hanks. Everyone also loves beaches. And volleyballs. Subtract all of the excess fat from the formula, like other actors, and you have the perfect Tom Hanks movie.

To create drama, remove volleyball.

For this one I looked up (read: Wiki'd) commercial plane crashes that occurred in 1995, the year the film is meant to be set. Now, firstly, I'm more than aware that the plane that crashed in the film was a cargo plane, and that only looking at one year is hardly representative of a whole, but I'm two list numbers in and I've already eaten a half pack of chocolate digestives, so screw accuracy. 

Out of the rather low number of 10 crashes (I have a feeling this may not be an extensive list) and a total of 646 passengers, 67 survived. Plus one dog. That's a 89.6% chance of being dead inside an exploding metal cigar. Unless you're a dog. Apparently the Hollywood invincible dog law really is true.

They don't even die when you hit them with meteorites.

However, these are all land crashes, and our good friend crashed over water. What's the score on the doors for that? There was one water crash on the list I looked at and, of the 18 passengers, not a single one of them met a grisly demise. By these numbers, Chuck was guaranteed to survive. Even if we actually take into account the plane he was on, with a crew of 4 excluding Chuck, that only brings the death toll to 4 out of 22, which ain't too shabby for a type of crash which is usually considered un-survivable. There's even been quotes in everyone's favourite dubious publication, The Economist, that "in the history of aviation the number of wide-bodied aircraft that have made successful landings on water is zero".

But then again, Tom Hanks is even harder to kill than the most adorable puppy.

Survival Rate: 81.8% - It's too bad the number isn't lower; we might have been saved from Lost.

3. Mr. Pink - Reservoir Dogs (1992)

Everyone has seen Reservoir Dogs, yes? Good, then I don't expect to have to explain the plot, characters, or why Madonna likes well endowed gentlemen. 

Hat stands.

This one was a toughie to get some nice, juicy numbers for, so I've decided to change the stipulations a bit. "Surviving" here counts as not getting caught by the police after the robbery. Now, we never find out the fate of Mr. Pink, and although it is quite heavily suggested that he might have been caught, it is possible that he might have gotten away, so survivor he is. Plus he didn't get riddled with bullets, so there's that too.

How could you shoot that adorable face?

To the number crunching! There have supposedly been 14 high profile robberies in the US in the past 80 years, including the Goodfellas Lufthansa heist. Of the total of 94 people involved in the heists, 14 were killed, 74 arrested, 5 went into witness protection and one is still as yet uncaptured. This means that Mr. Pink has a 14.9% chance of going the same way as his compatriots and getting gunned down, dismembered or, in one hilarious case, bitten by his pet snake while trying to milk it. If he's OK with prison, he's got a 79% chance of being served his meals for the rest of his life. But to get off scot free? Nah, not likely. 

Better get used to the soap never being left in the tray...

The trouble with these things is that in real life, if one guy gets busted, they all get busted, so the story seems to go that each member usually gets picked up one by one over the next few years. Luckily, in Mr. Pink's case, he's the only remaining survivor, so there's no-one left to rat on him, plus they didn't even know his real name if they could still speak through all that lead. Maybe, just maybe, he did get away with it.

Until they released the composite sketches.

Survival Rate: 1.1% - There's always witness protection if you're a great big girl's blouse.

2. Chev Chelios - Crank (2006)

Why is Jason Statham so awesome? Does he douse himself in so much gorilla pheromone that it actually seeps through the TV screen and makes everyone watching equal parts jealous and aroused?

Fight the urge to hump a table leg.

Whatever it may be, Crank is essentially the natural conclusion of distilling enough Statham and injecting it directly into your own eyeballs. Plot? P'shaw. Guns? Yes! Killing things? YES! Public sex, drug use, swearing and more guns? *noises inappropriate for children* 

The easiest way to introduce your children to the concept of sexual gratification.

This film is insane, and every last minute is absolute amphetamine-induced joy. But the climax takes the biscuit (spoilers), with Chev Chelios (Statham) chasing down the generic bad guy in typical action movie fashion. Soon, the fight takes to the air in a helicopter but they both fall out and Chelios manages to snap the generic bad guy's neck. Then Chelios smooshes into the ground AND TOTALLY FUCKING SURVIVES BECAUSE STATHAM.

So what is the actual likelihood of that happening? Well, to start, this site gives us some relatively reliable numbers for skydiving fatalities in the past ten years, amounting to a total of 557 deaths since 2004. How Stuff Works says that, in the US, around about 3 million jumps are performed every year by approximately 350'000 registered skydivers. So, by the power of maths using completely unreliable source material, that suggests that if you are a skydiver in the US, there is a 0.16% chance that you will die if you keep jumping for ten years. Not, like, jumping constantly for ten years; just, you know...fuck it.

"Question my authority and lose that adorable little hand, Timmy."

But that's not really what we're asking. How many people have hit the ground and survived? I can't find a number, but not many. A quick Google gave me about 6 people in the past ten years who have essentially hit the ground running if you will, smacking the Earth like a scolding mother, and lived to tell the tale. So if we add them to the 557 people who didn't, we give ourselves a nice 99% chance of dying horribly from the most epic head-butt of all time.

Survival Rate: 1.07% - A pretty sure-fire way of disposing of people you don't like. Unless their name is Jason.

1. Sidney Prescott - Scream 1-4 (1996-2011)

This is an article inspired by the classic slasher movie so its only fair that the winner is from the series of films that so expertly dissected, analysed, mocked and rebuilt the genre over more than a decade. I adore the Scream series; they're horror films inhabited entirely by people like me: self-aware, pop culture-literate arrogant bastards. What's not to love?

This guy. Don't love this guy.

The protagonist, Sidney Prescott, is terrorised over the course of four films by killers who don the titular Scream mask, taunting her and the other victims with horror trivia, in essence telling them how they're going to die. It is genius. And exactly how I would choose to commit serial murder.

I mean, me? Serial murder? Never.

So, horror movie trivia, kids: you have ten teenagers looking for a good time and one deranged psychopath. By the end of the film, how many people will be left? One! That's right! Everyone is dead except the sexy protagonist. Maybe, just maybe, her love interest will survive with a couple of mortal wounds, so that's two at a push. So, what do you think the likelihood is of that same person surviving the same situation four times over is? 

We'll wait.

Yeah, the chances of surviving a murderous rampage a second time over is ludicrously unlikely, but in the Scream series there are three recurring characters who refuse to die four times over! Way to ruin the formula, stupid fi- oh, I see. It takes a second for satire to catch up with me.

Why didn't I pick either of the other two for this list? Because Sidney is the target. In every movie she's the one the murderer wants to kill. And any guesses as to how many of those survive in real life?

You'll be one in the minute if you don't put that hand down, you wee bastard.

There's a hint in the crime. Murder victims ain't meant to survive, otherwise it isn't murder. Duh. There is a 0% survival rate for murder victims, but more interestingly is the likelihood of being a murder victim. This handily confusing graph gives the incidence rates for murders from 1970 to present in the US. If we take the rates from 1996 to 2011 and average them, that gives us 5.7 murders in every 100'000 of population, or in my beloved percentages, a 0.0057% chance of being killed by some dude for some reason.

"Do you see the thing that your action has influenced me to do?! DO YOU?!"

Some separate dude tries to kill Sidney four times, which means she faced those odds four times. Maths, take it away:

The likelihood of being a Sidney Prescott is 1.06x10^-9%

That means that in our current world population of 7'179'714'000 people, there are seven poor sods who have been attacked by a different murderer four times. And to you, we salute you.

Survival Rate: Negligible - The moral of the story is get killed the first time round, it'll save you the bother.