A Review of "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom"

Okay, so when you make a sequel to a movie, chances are either the predecessor was really successful critically and financially (well...critical success doesn't mean dick anymore) or, if your franchise started post-2010, you had six sequels planned when you first popped the idea of making the first movie anyway. So, in the 1980s, what is with the idea of making every sequel much darker and grittier than the light-hearted first movie in the series? I get you want to make the characters go through some kind of peril and trial of suffering, much like The Empire Strikes Back, but there was one movie that got so much darker and screwed up than it should have and ever could have...Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. A prequel that teaches that Indian folk are vile madmen with bizarre, fucked up religious beliefs, ripping people's hearts out of their chests and eating snakes and chilled monkey brains for desert. The movie was slammed for being repulsively unsettling, religiously insulting, racially misrepresenting and overall just an unpleasant experience. It's on Batman Returns level of cranking up the discomfort levels in all the wrong directions as a real "punch in the stomach viewing experience. Let's dive into this mixed bag of depressing, weird stuff and discuss it, shall we?

The movie starts off with a curveball right off the bat (no pun intended) with a woman performing a song "Anything Goes" for a group of Chinese gangsters. Weird, the other two Indiana Jones movies didn't opening with song numbers. Did Disney purchase Lucasfilm thirty years before they actually announced it? After that arguably catchy and enjoyable song is over, Indiana Jones himself appears and confronts Lao Che, a Chinese gangster who promised him a large diamond in exchange for the remains of Nurhachi, first emperor of the Manchu dynasty. It is during this meeting that Indy meets Willie Scott, the club singer for the nightspot "Club Obi-Wan" (wink, wink do ya get it? Wacka, wacka) in Shanghai. The deal goes south after Indy drinks poison and must trade back the diamond for the antidote. A shootout takes place that sees Indy and Willie escape into a car driven by Indy's young cohort, Short Round. The trio make their way to an airfield and escape on one of Lao Che's planes into the mountains of southern China. The plane is sabotaged and the trio are forced to escape into a river in remote India. There, they come across a village ravaged by the theft of their sacred Shankara stone, one of three. The village Shaman says that Shiva delivered Indiana Jones to the village to help them bring the stone back. Indiana, Willie and Short Round then venture to Pankot Palace to find the Shankara stone and return it and the children of the village, captured by an evil 'Thuggee' cult to be slaves and mine for the other two stones.

"I have here, the heart of that
guy at Apple who took away
your 3.5mm headphone
jack!"

Where the movie becomes absolutely uncomfortable and difficult to enjoy for people is when the group reaches Pankot Palace. Up until now, the movie has been very much like its highly popular and revered successor, Raiders of the Lost Ark, in terms of tone and adventure. Once they get to the palace, they're introduced to the Maharajah Zalim Singh and his prime minister, Chattar Lal, both of whom grow increasingly insulted by Indy's accusations that the palace is responsible for stealing the stone and the children of the village. That night, after someone attempts to take his life, Indiana and the others sneak into the catacombs of Pankot Palace and come across a Thuggee ceremony underground. What are "Thuggees" you might ask? Worshippers of Kali. Easy enough. In this satanic rhythmic Indian ritual, the high Thuggee priest Mola Ram finds a random slave and rips his heart out of his chest, sacrificing him to the goddess Kali before sending him into a fiery pit of molten material.

Good Christ alive. First of all, the scene is wicked intense with the chorus chanting and the John Williams score of beating drum seance music. Next, Mola Ram literally reaches into this poor guy's chest, pulls out his heart, and then cackles as it bursts into flames in the palm of his hand as the guy is lowered into his demise. I'll post the scene on YouTube down at the end of the post. You really have to see this to believe it. It may be completely tame considering what movies have shown us since then, but this is what followed Raiders. Holy jumping fucking shitballs. While that's weird, the movie gets even weird. Before this scene is the dinner scene with Chattar Lam and the Maharajah...which involves Indian kinsmen sitting with Willie and Short Round as they're served disgusting trays of food that are ordered up as "Indian delicacies". From slimy corn snakes inside the roasted body of a large cooked python, to a soup of bloody broth and eyeball chunks, to oyster-like beetle bodies with entrails you can just suck out...to chilled monkey heads with brains you can eat like ice cream. Seriously, look this shit up. This is all over the place. I mean...eww.

"Holy smokin' okie-dokin' french fried potaters
Doctah Jones! They're sacrificing Indian
people to Kali!" "Kid you come up
with one more Robin-esque expression
I'll have them sacrifice you next!"

Soon, Mola Ram and the Thuggees capture Indy, tie him and Short Round to rock columns and whip them, then force Indy to drink forbidden material that then possesses him as they attempt to sacrifice Willie to Kali next. Indy hits Short Round in the face...like full-on whacks a child in the jaw with his fist, just before Short Round burns him with a torch and snaps him out of it. Indy then breaks up the Thuggee ceremony before freeing Willie and Short Round and heading into the mines to free the slave children. A brutal fight takes place where Indiana must fight the giant Thuggee cultist hand-to-hand, much like his fight with the German mechanic in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Except this time, the Maharajah cursed Indy by stealing a bit of his shirt for a voodoo doll. A doll which the dark prince uses to torture him while he gets his ass kicked by the large Thuggee. Oh good, for a minute there I thought voodoo and torture were aspects we left out of this otherwise wholesome family film. Thankfully, Short Round snaps the little jerk out of it. Fun fact, the German mechanic and the large Thuggee cultist were played by the same man, Pat Roach. He was originally going to play another large German in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade that Indy fights hand-to-hand, but the idea was scrapped. He also died before he could play the large Russian general in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, so that idea was scrapped as well. After the Thuggee gets crushed in a rolling stone rock crusher, the trio escape the mines in a truly thrilling action sequence: an escape through the mine tunnels on a cart. Several other Thuggees jump in carts and chase them and the whole sequence inspired a ride at (I believe) Disneyland. I don't know if the ride's still in operation or not, the movie is thirty-four years old, but still a notable tidbit.

The movie climaxes (heh) in a sort-of iconic and well known scene. If you've ever seen a shot of Indiana Jones standing with a torn up safari shirt and a sword on a rope bridge, this is where that's from. He chops the bridge's ropes and sends many Thuggee cultists falling into the gator-ridden river below to be eaten, including Mola Ram. Indy, Willie and Short Round then return to the village and replace the Shankara stone and the stolen child slaves before heading off to their next adventure, an adventure that neither Willie nor Short Round will be a part of. Fun fact #2: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is often credited with being one of two movies (The other of which being Gremlins) that greenlit the creation of the "PG-13" MPAA movie rating. The movie was PG, but traumatized so many young kids who went to see it that the MPAA was like "Okay, no. We need a rating to keep young, fragile minds out." Imagine being an eight-year-old kid and seeing people eating monkey brains and ripping hearts out of each others' chests? Try watching Barney the Dinosaur after seeing that shit.

"Sorry Mola Ram... looks like you just brought a
bridge to a chasm fight!"

It's interesting to note that a large reason for the movie's foreboding atmosphere and demented plot elements is the fact that both George Lucas (story) and Steven Spielberg (director) were  going through divorces and neither of which were 'in a happy place' at the time. Many who have worked on the movie attribute its bizarre story, unsettling characters and misbehaving Indy on both mens' mentality at the time, especially Lucas who proposed many of the bizarre elements. You wonder where his balls went for the prequels, eh? Spielberg met his future wife Kate Capshaw, who plays Willie, on the set of this movie and George eventually lightened up in his own time producing movies like Howard the Duck and Labyrinth before Spielberg and he would reunite again in '89 for the much more light-hearted, well-received Raiders throwback Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade....but that's not to say you shouldn't count-out Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. A surprising number of people do. What I've found is that a lot of people have only seen Raiders, Crusade and Crystal Skull. More people have seen Crystal Skull then even care to see this movie. I remember a high school conversation when I was a freshman. That would be about the time Crystal Skull came out. People were like "Yeah, Raiders was good and Crusade was good" and another kid went "Wasn't there another one?" to which everyone in the room was kind of just confused at the notion that maybe they forgot one.

So take it how you like it. I like to give it a watch every now and then, but that's just me. It's pretty common that with the four, soon five, Indiana Jones movies, everyone's either going to pick Raiders of the Lost Ark or Last Crusade as their favorite, but everyone seems to refuse to bat an eye at this one. It's the forgotten, often over-looked or ill-received middle child. Temple of Doom is still a fun ride with some compelling action scenes. The Fight in the Mine, the Minecart Escape, the Bridge Showdown, the Shanghai Shootout. The "Indiana Jones" aspect of the movie doesn't fail. It's just the mood, tone, supporting characters, their behaviors and plot elements that really don't sit well with people. I mean, honestly, really think about it. As I said, this was before PG-13 (but this helped create it). This was when it was just NR, G, PG, R and X. So you had ten and twelve-year-olds going into this movie alone and they see shit like what's below. I get it, at our age we think its the fun-kind of fucked up. While it's true that an argument can be made that Temple of Doom is a fun movie and a decent entry in the franchise, it's nameless side characters get tossed aside pretty easily, Willie gets annoying in five minutes flat, Short Round does so in ten, the Shankara Stones aren't really all that great of a choice for "the treasure" and to top it all off, did I mention it's morbid tone and how fucked up it gets? Good.

A Review of "Cloverfield"

Where we're going, we don't need "Godzilla".

You ever just sit around and watch a movie, wondering why on Earth you picked that movie and not the other one you could've picked? You had Baby's Day Off in your hand and instead, you picked Breakin 2: Electric Boogaloo instead? Okay, I don't know why I chose those two movies, but you get the idea.

Way back in 2008, when the Marvel Cinematic Universe was in its infancy stages, Disney had yet to start whoring out Star Wars like a webcam girl for money, and the idea behind filmmaking original ideas was...okay, that was lost back then, too...but there were still some fun and exciting takes on old ideas back in 2008. The Dark Knight was destroying theater competition left and right, but a few of those 2008 movies still stick out in our minds. Like... Cloverfield. "What is Cloverfield?"you may ask yourself, obviously stuck under a rock. Cloverfield was a shaky-cam vomit-inducing horror movie with brilliant setup, entertaining enough characters and a fun location and "doomsday" esque setting that really set the tone for this sort of shaky-cam "found footage" type genre. Everybody knows the one that started the whole found-footage thing was The Blair Witch Project, with its less-than-minuscule budget and presentation using nothing more than a common household camcorder. But we aren't here to talk about The Blair Witch Project, even though I'd like to some day. We're here to talk about Cloverfield, the powerhouse shaky-cam monster movie.

You missed your train, sir

Set in modern day New York City, Cloverfield shows us the lives and times of several characters that intertwine through one night. First there's Rob and Beth; two best friends who spent a night together. Oopsie-daisy. Beth then gets upset because Rob apparently didn't call her after that. Rob's reasoning is that he's leaving to become the vice president of some company in Japan, and didn't wYant Beth to get attached. It is this promotion for Rob that is the center of his brother Jason, his best friend Hud, and Jason's girlfriend Lily's planned surprise going away party for him. The movie showcases the party quite a bit, with the ignorant and well-meaning Hud being tasked with video-taping the whole night. He meets Marlena, a friend of Lily's, someone who is immediately smitten with.

Things take a turn for the weird when an oil tanker capsizes out of nowhere in the Harbor. As everyone flocks to the TV to see it, more explosions take place. The group of partygoers run outside and into the streets, where the head of the Statue of Liberty is flung toward them in one of the most famous shots of the movie. Hud catches a glimpse of the creature on his camcorder and shows it to the others. Jason immediately surmises, sight unseen, that the creature was real and not some puff of rubble moving with the wind and decides to walk his friends and partygoers to the Brooklyn Bridge to get out of Manhattan. On the Bridge, the group and several others are stopped when Rob gets a call from Beth saying she can't move. Just then, a giant tail comes up from the Harbor waters and smashes the Bridge, killing Jason and several other New Yorkers. Rob and the others return to Manhattan and formulate a plan for getting out of the city. Rob says he won't leave without Beth, so the others regrettably follow Rob to Beth's apartment. Throughout their journey, the group gets caught in the crossfire of the US Military and "Clover", a mysterious monster large in scale and brutal in nature. Looking like some sort of extra-terrestrial life form.

Eventually, the group has to take refuge in the subway as the monster bears down on them and the US military. Instead of walking back up to the surface, Rob suggests they walk the train tunnels to another station to try and get closer to Beth's apartment that way. In the tunnel, the group is attacked by large arachnid creatures that fall off of the creature's back and body. Marlena is bitten and later explodes from the bite (literally EXPLODES) when the group finds a military installation inside a shopping mall. The troopers there tell them of the Hammerdown Protocol, where the US military will bomb the shit out of Manhattan trying to kill the monster. Hud, Rob and Lily then flee the installation and continue to Beth's apartment, where they find her pinned under debris. They remove it and make their way back to the helicopter take-off point. Lily is put on a chopper and flees before the next one takes Hud, Beth and Rob. The group witnesses a stealth bomber carpet bomb the monster, but the monster rises from the smoke cloud and knocks their helicopter down, crashing in Central Park. The group awakens at dawn and pull Rob from the downed chopper. Hud is then eaten alive by the monster in one of the coolest shots of the movie. Rob and Beth take the camera and make their way to Central Park where they give final testimonials to the camera, profess their love for one another as the Hammerdown Protocol destroys the bridge they're hiding under.

A gripe I have with the movie is that it is too short, but it's also a mixed gripe because what more could they have done? The movie is sub-90 minutes, barely even breaking 80 minutes. Once "Clover" comes along, the movie's pace expedites exponentially and all of a sudden you blink and the movie's over. The movie's subplot involves footage that the movie keeps cutting to, involving Rob and Beth's visit to Coney Island, which is what the movie ends showing. Rob and Beth get buried under the bridge rubble, then cut to Rob & Beth "having a good day" at Coney Island. 80-something minutes. Short, but ultimately satisfying.

"Quick! Pose for a candid photo amidst the chaos!"

The acting is what it is. I mean, they just had to douse the actors in sweat and tell them to act panicky and freak out about their surroundings and various other things. The dialogue is what aids the movie. The suspense of finding out what the monster attacking New York City is is pretty interesting as the characters are on a journey to figure out what they're up against. I enjoy it. Plus, I mean, Clover is a pretty interesting monster. Its design is quite unique and very different from monsters that have been done up to this point. According to its designer, it is the infant form of its species. Meaning despite its immense size, it is the smallest of its kind, meaning that its mother is huge, father's probably huge-r.

All in all, I enjoy Cloverfield. Its shaky, its short and its ultimately all-for-nothing since each of the main characters meet their end as we find out the tape is just being viewed by government agents, at least we assume that's how it's going. Still, the subplots are at least interesting enough and Clover the monster is awesome with every scene its in either being hectic and jaw-dropping or spine-tingling and suspenseful. Of course, in real life, a movie like Cloverfield should never happen. If you're busy running from a monster, put the fucking camera down and run from the monster. Still, decent movie. Check it out if you're in the mood for some popcorn entertainment. Won't take up much of your night.

Cody's Top 30 Favorite Movies of All-Time: #1 - Back to the Future

Holy schmoly, we've finally made it. Cody's numero uno favorite movie-o of all time. The single greatest piece of time travel storytelling that has ever come down the pike. No joke. I could watch this movie on a loop until the day I croak.

Back to the Future starts out in the year 1985. Marty McFly is a seventeen-year-old high school student who is, by all intents and purposes, a "slacker". He has a girlfriend named Jennifer Parker and a family who struggles to make ends meet while his father George is an awkward loser and his mother Lorraine is an alcoholic. His dad's coworker, Biff, is a narcissistic, petty bully still tormenting George even thirty years after high school. When Marty's best friend, the eccentric disgraced nuclear physicist "Doc" Emmett Brown calls him and asks him to come to the mall to document and showcase his new invention, Marty attends. There, he finds that Doc has invented a time machine, out of a DeLorean. As Doc is getting ready to travel twenty-five years into the future to 2010 (which is eight years in the past for us, *sobs*) Libyans that Doc stole plutonium from arrive and kill him for revenge. Marty escapes in the DeLorean, but accidentally travels back in time to 1955. Trapped in the past with the DeLorean's depleted plutonium supply, Marty searches for the 1955 Doc Brown to assist him getting the time machine back up and running. In the process, he accidentally alters his past and prevents his parents from meeting when he pushes his teenage father, George, out of the way of a car. Marty realizes if he doesn't get his parents together, he will cease to exist as a new timeline will materialize in which he will never be born.

It now becomes Marty's mission to 1) Restore his future by ensuring that George asks Lorraine to the "Enchantment Under the Sea" dance at Hill Valley high school, which is "where they kiss and fall in love for the first time" and 2) Successfully repair the DeLorean and return to 1985 with Doc Brown's help. So, the entire movie becomes one giant adventure as Marty struggles with the awkward task of making his parents fall in love...because you know, we'd all probably struggle with that kind of monumentally awful task. I know I would. (Hi mom).


Back to the Future is a movie I want to spoil everything for you and yet spoil nothing at all at the same time. I don't want to spoil Marty's plan for getting his parents back together nor Doc's plan for getting Marty back to the future. There's scenes in the movie that are so iconic and ridiculously popular, you'll wonder how you haven't already seen this movie. Alan Silvestri's score with the familiar Back to the Future motif, Huey Lewis and the News's "The Power of Love", Marty at the Enchantment Under the Sea dance and the best climax in any motion picture anywhere (in my opinion) in the Race to the Future at the clock tower. If you haven't seen, stop what you're doing (even if you're driving) and watch this movie immediately. You'll love every moment of it. It's truly that good.

Cody's Top 30 Favorite Movies of All-Time: #2 - Star Wars

You knew this was either #1 or #2, didn't you? Don't you give me that look, you knew this was coming. I'll bet you could smell it a mile away, eh?

Star Wars I have beaten to death talking about in this blog. I've covered so many topics and yet for every one topic I've covered about it, there's at least fifty other topics I haven't even touched upon. The universe of Star Wars is too huge for any one man to encompass in a lifetime even, so its difficult for me to really peg down the entire saga and really discuss anything beyond just the movies with any sort of merit.

The first movie, though. I wrote an entire retrospective on it thinking it was going to kickstart a long, winding breakdown of the entire franchise and its releases and re-releases. So I've covered it in great detail. I don't think my opinions on it has changed. So if you'd like to read that, click here. I won't go ahead and beat a dead horse by writing another post about it. So consider this just a preface to the actual post, which you can read clicking on that link. It's a full in-depth look, so it's going to be more girthy than the posts have been up to this point, but hey, it's #2. Thanks! Now, enjoy the most iconic opening sequence in all of motion picture history.

Cody's Top 30 Favorite Movies of All-Time: #3 - Raiders of the Lost Ark

The ultimate classic adventure film, brought to us by two of the bestest-best pals in Hollywood history.

Following the success of Star Wars, George Lucas sought to adapt another thing from his childhood that he loved so much, 1930s action-adventure serials about explorers running into peril in search of buried treasure. In the iconic role of Indiana Jones is Harrison Ford, as we join this archaeologist-explorer on a hunt for the Ark of the Covenant, the sacred chest the Hebrews used to carry around the Ten Commandments that Moses brought down from his meeting with God. Indiana Jones is tasked by two CIA agents to travel to Cairo to intercept and get to the Ark before the Nazis do, even taking along his childhood sweetheart, Marion Ravenwood to Egypt. You see, Marion's father Abner is who the Nazis were after first, as he had the headpiece of the "Staff of Ra". As Indy explains in the movie, you put the staff of Ra into a slot in the map room, and if the sun shown into the headpiece's crystal at the exact spot of the exact time of day, a beam of sunlight would point to the floor map of Tannes and give the location of the Well of the Souls, "where the Ark of the Covenant was kept".

The movie is iconic for many reasons. The action scenes, the fight scenes, the story, the characters and the music. It's when the duo of Steven Spielberg (director) and George Lucas (story) shines the best is with an Indiana Jones movie. Sure, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is a wishy-washy mess but the other three are stellar at least. There's many scenes that people remember, most notably are the ones that the Disney live show, Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular portrayed, which are the three most memorable ones: Indiana's infiltration to the temple of the Golden Idol, Indiana's street fight in Cairo and Indiana's airstrip fight with the large German mechanic. All three scenes in this movie are awesome and perfect examples of action-adventure. Raiders of the Lost Ark is so well made, even the ending could feel like a copout had it not been done the way it was. I won't reveal the ending, but let's just say that the Nazis incur God's wrath while Indiana and Marion stand by and watch. I watched a clip on the special effects of those shots and I was flabbergasted at how they did it.

If you claim to be a film buff and you haven't seen Raiders of the Lost Ark, then you really should either sit down and watch the Blu-ray or stream it HD on a large flatscreen (you know, for full effect) or turn in your film buff card and start pursuing other self-titles. I highly, urgently, imperatively recommend you watch it post haste. Spielberg, Lucas, Harrison Ford, action-adventure, and religious mishandling. What more could you ask for? Now enjoy one of the most iconic scenes in motion picture history.

Cody's Top 30 Favorite Movies of All-Time: #4 - The Big Lebowski

In the year prior to Office Space being a box office flop, along came another movie that suffered similarly with the box office receipts. Surprisingly, it was a movie that was directed by two of the most influential directors of our time, the Coen Brothers.

The Big Lebowski follows "The Dude" (Jeff Bridges), a lazy, unemployed slacker living day-to-day life drinking White Russians and bowling with his two best pals, Walter Sobchak (John Goodman) and "Donny" Kerabatsos. The Dude's life gets turned upside down when his home is invaded by two perps looking for the millionaire Jeffrey Lebowski (David Huddleston), who just happens to share the real name of the Dude. In return for wasting their time, the crooks pee on the Dude's rug. The Dude seeks comeuppance for the destruction of his rug by demanding a new one from the real Jeffrey Lebowski. That's not it though. The Dude is then summoned back by the real Lebowski to help find his wife "Bunny" Lebowski (Tara Reid), who has gone missing... You see? A group of nihilist German musicians are believed to have kidnapped her and the Dude is tasked with making a monetary hand off with them in order for Bunny's safety.

What happens as this main plot unravels is perhaps the most bizarre and yet entirely memorable series of events in motion picture history. Maude Lebowski (Julianne Moore) seeks out The Dude after the rug he took from "The Big" Lebowski was found to not belong to him, but her. She frequently speaks to the Dude regarding his investigations into the kidnapping of Bunny Lebowski, even revealing to the Dude that the lead nihilist Uli Kunkel (Peter Stormare) was in a porno directed by Jackie Treehorn (Ben Gazzara), who may also be a potential kidnapper candidate for Bunny.

The movie is full of so many memorable scenes and lines. It's perhaps the reason that The Big Lebowski is one of my favorite movies of all-time and one that I'm always inclined to watch. There's the scene where the Dude first describes his rug getting stolen, the scene where he's hallucinating meeting Saddam Hussein and dancing with Maude Lebowski, there's a scene where he and Walter attempt to make a hand-off for the girl by handing off a bogus bag of money; then there's any sort of interaction between Walter and Donny, and the ever infamous "Shut the fuck up, Donny!" exclamation. If you're in the mood for something fun and interesting and have about two hours to spare, just sit back and pop in The Big Lebowski. One watch is all it takes.

Cody's Top 30 Favorite Movies of All-Time: #5 - Office Space

TOP FIVE, MANG. Boy, it's so close I can taste it!

Office Space comes to us from the creator of Hank Hill himself, Mike Judge. The movie tells the story of Peter Gibbons, a man who hates his job and feels he lives in a dead-end rut of an existence. It all starts out when his bosses chastize him over his missing cover on his TPS Reports, including the venomous boredom howler Bill Lumbergh (Gary Cole). Along with Peter at the offices of Initech is Samir Nagheenanajar (which is spelled exactly as it sounds), Milton Waddams who idolizes his stapler and is ignored by much of the office and Michael Bolton, no relation to the "no talent, ass clown" pop singer of course. Together with them, Peter has coffee and moons over the beautiful waitress Joanna (Jennifer Aniston). That night, he attends a hypnotherapy appointment with his girlfriend Anne. The hynotherapist promises to cure Peter of his downtrodden look on life by sending him into a trance, but before he can bring him out of it, he dies of a heart attack, leaving Peter in a daze of total absconding from responsibility.

What follows is Peter finally setting his life right in all the ways he's wanted. He skips work and asks Joanna to lunch. The two of them bond over their hatred of management and their love of the TV show Kung Fu. As Peter's life continues to improve, the ones around him turn sour. Two consultants are brought in to assist in the downsizing of Initech and all of Peter's comrades are due to be laid off; Michael, Samir and their mutual friend Tom Smykowski. They all plan one final trick to get back at their employer. Michael develops code that will divert fractions of pennies into a bank account owned by the three of them. They find that the transactions are so small to be undetected but still will add up to a substantial amount of money over time.

Office Space is one of those extremely universally relatable movies that anyone who works in an office can relate too. The ambience of scanners running, printers jamming and phones ringing. Mundane managers, dragging conversations and soul-sucking coworkers that make your skin crawl are the focus of the background characters. Anyone who watches this movie will instantly know what it feels like to be Peter Gibbons. This is where the movie's most prominent strength comes from. Other things to note are Gary Cole's and Ron Livingston's portrayals of Bill Lumbergh and Peter Gibbons, respectively. Lumbergh has been made into one of the most popular memes on the internet, the "Yeah if you could just..." meme. If you haven't seen Office Space, get yourself to the Netflix, the Amazon or the Hulu and find anyway you can to rent it or buy it, physical media or digital. The humor can be a little dry at times, but it's one of the most subtle brilliant comedies of our time.

Cody's Top 30 Favorite Movies of All-Time: #6 - Jurassic Park

This movie was released the same year I was! *Pause for applause*

Jurassic Park was a 1993 science-fiction adventure movie directed by Steven Spielberg at the same time he was making his Oscar-winning picture Schindler's List. Jurassic Park was a Michael Crichton novel about a Walt Disney-esque mogul named John Hammond who whisks paleontologists Alan Grant, his grad student Ellie Sattler and mathematician and chaotician Ian Malcolm to his island of Isla Nublar. There, the group discovers that he's been able to successfully clone and recreate living, breathing dinosaurs.

In the movie, basically the same thing happens, but there was a few changes to some of their characters. Ellie is no longer Alan's grad student but of a fellow doctor of paleontology and John Hammond is no longer an angry billionaire with cunning schemes but a gentleman who looks out for both his employees, his guests and his family. It was Richard Attenborough's kind-hearted portrayal of this character that necessitated the changes. Everybody remembers Jeff Goldblum as Ian Malcolm, the mathematician who dresses in all black and spouts this-and-that about chaos theory regarding the island its too many automated systems.

Well naturally, it wouldn't be a movie about dinosaurs if something didn't go haywire. Turns out Wayne Night's character Dennis Nedry isn't a very nice guy. He agrees to commit corporate espionage for another character simply named "Dodgson" (Lewis Dodgson in the novel) to steel embryos and return them to him for money. Dennis writes a backdoor into the park's systems, deactivating security long enough for him to make the embryo hand off and return to his seat to restore power after fifteen minutes. Well, he gets lost on the way and eaten by a Dilophosaurus, leaving the park's systems off and the dinosaurs start running haywire. Including the imfamous, well-paced, well-acted suspense scene of the Tyrannosaurus Rex breaking from her pen.

I won't spoil too much more of the thrill ride, but just know the movie is one of Spielberg's finest. It's up there with Jaws, ET: The Extra Terrestrial, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Jaws as some of the best work Spielberg's ever done. It's another fun adventure film, and considering what we get in his Indiana Jones movies, we're in for something great. All the characters scramble to restore order to the park as dinosaurs roam free and attack them. Quite a spectacular movie. If you haven't seen it yet, get out there and see it. You won't regret it a single second. Unless you're terrified of raptors. In which case, view with a parent or significant other.

A Review of "The X-Files" (season 3)

Took me quite a while to get through this season. I trailed off doing other stuff and watching other things, but I can go ahead and write about it now. Something tells me we'll need a bit of a breather away from my top 30 favorite movies countdown if it isn't already finished.

So what can we say about The X-Files' third season that hasn't already been said about the other two seasons. Well, what I liked is a lot of the Monster of the Week episodes have improved greatly in quality. Many of the Monster of the Week episodes are quite more memorable than their season two counterparts. Many notable ones to go over. This season sees Mulder follow the order of a UFO autopsy tape into the back of a mysterious train car. There, in the two parter Mythology episodes "Nisei" followed by "731", Mulder questions a lot of his beliefs and pushes further, trying to delve deep into the origins of the Syndicate as well as trying to find out when and where the alien colonization of Earth is bound to take place, if it hasn't already started. Mulder's informant from the previous season "X" pops up from time to time here, mostly to give either misleading information or to convolute things by making Mulder wonder whose side he's on and which side's information he's leaking.

 Joining Mulder as always is his faithful chum and partner-in-alien-busting, Dana Scully. Scully takes more a central role in season three in the Mythology episodes, but the Monster of the Week episodes she takes her usual skeptic's role. Her and Mulder's boss and secret ally Walter Skinner even gets a minor role bump, even having an entire MOTW episode based around him. The episode "Avatar" shows Skinner hiring a prostitute only to find her dead the next morning and be accused of murder. The episode "Hell Money" guest stars BD Wong of Jurassic Park fame as an investigator who aids the agents in tracking down a malicious bogus lottery ring, where the losers must surrender internal organs as opposed to cash. BD Wong had yet to film Mulan by this point, so he was still just pretty much known for Jurassic Park.

In this season, the villainous Alex Krycek and the Cigarette Smoking Man aren't far off Mulder's investigations into the truth. Skinner and Scully work together with Mulder to put a stop to them, but they seem to be at every corner where he is. The season also marks the first appearance of the infamous X-Files "black oil", the infectious extra-terrestrial bacteria that infects hosts and turns their eyes black. The oil during the season infects Alex Krycek as Mulder is pursuing him. It was the material discovered in the Mythology two-parter "Piper Maru" + "Apocrypha". At the conclusion of it all, the infected Krycek dumps the black oil into the hidden UFO inside the missile silo. Another subplot involved Scully hunting down and arresting Luis Castillo, the man who mistakenly killed Melissa Scully, Dana's sister. While he's in prison, he was eliminated to be silenced.

The season ends with the Mythology episode "Talitha Cumi", where the agents find a man with strange and powerful healing abilities. He heals everyone involved with a shooting at the start of the episode. In this episode, the Alien Bounty Hunter hunts the man who heals as he is supposed to be some sort of extra-terrestrial presence. Meanwhile, Jeremiah Smith, the alien shapeshifter member of the resistance against the Syndicate, is interrogated by the Cigarette Smoking Man. It is during this investigation that Jeremiah reveals the Cigarette Smoking Man's supposed lung cancer diagnosis. Grave stuff.

One of the best episodes of season three is also one of the best of the whole series, and it starts the grandpa from Everybody Loves Raymond, Peter Boyle. "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose", where the agents find that Clyde (Boyle) can see the future, as well as the murderer they're trying to catch. Several psychics die as Clyde and the agents race with the murderer to apprehend them before it's too late. In fact, "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose" is just one of a few MOTW episodes I recommend from this season. Let's take a look at a few of my favorites.

• DPO: The agents travel to Oklahoma where they find that a boy who survived a lightning strike can conjure lightning strikes and fry electronic devices at will.
• Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose: As stated, Mulder & Scully find a man who is actually psychic in a world of bogus psychics who help them track and kill a fellow psychic who is also a serial killer.
• The List: Mulder & Scully visit a prison where one of the death row victims seems to have returned from the grave to seek vengeance on five prison personnel who had him executed.
• 2Shy: Mulder & Scully track a serial killer who stalks insecure women through online dating, inviting them to meetings and then feasting on their innards for sustenance.
• Oubliette: A little girl is kidnapped, causing a woman who went through similar circumstances to develop a psychic link with her, allowing Mulder and Scully to use her to track the little girl.
• War of the Coprophages: As Scully works from home and offers scientific answers, Mulder and a bug expert track mysterious killings where each of the victims are found in cockroaches in murders most alien.
• Pusher: Mulder & Scully work with local authorities to stop a man who can use his mind to bend people to his will.

The X-Files season 3 continues to thrill and shock its Earthly viewers with strange twists, bizarre episodes and even spookier creatures. It's definitely a step-up from season two, but it's not quite on par with the show's stellar debut season. Season three features more memorable MOTW episodes if that is what you're into, but season two was a more Mythology based season. Now, as I'm writing this, I just started watching season four, so hopefully we'll see some more spooky stuff. There were a couple images in the season that were unsettling, such as the final shot of "2Shy", where the man who hadn't eaten innards in a while was decomposing as he was talking to Mulder and Scully at the end. That final shot was horrifying. So far as I'm going through the show, I'd rank this season second on the list, above two but below one. It was a pretty great season, for both MOTW and Mythology, we'll see how season four unfolds!

Cody's Top 30 Favorite Movies of All-Time: #7 - Ed Wood

Oh man, this one's fun. Ed Wood is a 1994 semi-fictional, loosely-based, lightly-adaptive re-telling of the life and early career of the alcoholic transvestite Edward D. Wood, Jr. Often cited as the worst director of all time, Ed Wood made some of the worst movies in history. His movies aren't like The Room where its notoriety as a crap-ass shitfest actually immortalized it with the internet for all time, but more like when you go to get a colonoscopy and instead of the tiny wire with the camera, they shove a garden hose up your ass with the help of a leaf blower. Oh and you're awake. For the whole thing. No meds.

Anywho, Ed Wood perfectly and comedically pokes fun at the shithouse director while also simultaneously paying tribute to his work and saluting him and those that worked with him. His first three directed features are chronicled in glorious fashion: Glen or Glenda, Ed's bizarre look into the mind and life of a man who likes to dress in women's clothing. Bride of the Monster, Ed's 1950s schlock mad scientist swill that was so run-of-the-mill for its time, it sank into obscurity. Finally, it ends with his most famous crappy movie, Plan 9 From Outer Space, Ed's sci-fi look at when aliens beam electronic waves into the heads of the recently deceased, resurrecting them.

The movie gloriously pays tribute to his work as well as takes satirical jabs at him. His alcoholism and descent into monster nudie films isn't documented, but his work with past-his-prime horror star Bela Lugosi is. Lugosi is played by Martin Landau and well deserving of the Oscar he got. You forget that it's not actually Lugosi on screen, he did so well. Other real-life friends of Ed Wood chronicled are Criswell (Jeffrey Jones), the psychic who opened Plan 9 From Outer Space; Tor Johnson (George "The Animal" Steele, the famous pro-wrestler who played many horrific looking characters in many of Ed's films; as well as Ed's friends, Paul Marco and Conrad Brooks (Max Casella and Brent Hinkley), Ed's all-around production assistants; Bunny Breckenridge (Bill Murray), Ed's gay friend who is tasked with finding him transvestites for Glen or Glenda; Vampira (Lisa Marie), the famous 1950s TV star who gets fired from her show and gets stuck working for/with Ed. In the middle of it all is Johnny Depp as Ed Wood himself. Also a fantastic casting, because his energetic and bumbling man of desperation and determination is one that is the complete opposite of his work as Jack Sparrow. I love this cast.

If you haven't seen this movie, drop what you're doing now and give it a watch. It's the perfect movie about making movies, a genre that usually has classics in it. The only better movie about making a movie would probably be An American Movie, but this one competes with it. You'll love it. I promise.

Cody's Top 30 Favorite Movies of All-Time: #8 - Superman (1978)

From one comic book superhero movie to another. The granddaddy superhero movie of them all. The one that took your favorite heroes and made them marketable to moviegoers everywhere. The dozens of superhero movies that have been released in the past twenty years can get on their knees and thank Superman. Well mostly Batman '89, but that has Superman '78 to thank so boom. Transitive property.

Superman was written by Mario Puzo and later re-drafted and edited by Tom Mankiewicz. Being a Mario Puzo story, the film was destined to be an epic. Indeed, the screenplay was split up into basically a three-act play. Act I is known as "Krypton", or before Superman arrives on Earth. Act II is "Smallville" which shows Clark in his formative years and Act III is "Metropolis" which shows Clark as an adult and is the debut of Superman. Clark Kent / Superman are played masterfully by then unknown actor Christopher Reeve. Reeve did what very few of seldom ever done (though Henry Cavill has come close) which is dutifully and notably separate the two identities so that more than just the glasses makes them distinct. Reeve plays Clark like a bumbling oaf and awkward nerd who's too shy, mumbles and stutters everything he says and is a giant clutz. His Superman is firm, confident, tall and imposing...yet caring. It goes without saying that no matter who they get from here on out...though again, Henry Cavill has come very, very close...that Christopher Reeve was, is, and forever will be Superman.

Supporting characters for this movie include world-renowned actors Marlon Brando and Gene Hackman as Superman's dad Jor-El and Superman's worst nightmare, Lex Luthor, respectively. Gene Hackman notoriously refused to shave his mustache for the role until director Richard Donner pranked him into doing it. Marlon Brando was paid top dollar for five days work in typical Brando fashion. Playing the role of love interest Lois Lane is Margot Kidder, basically one of the best Lois Lanes out there but Dana Delaney still wins it for me as the voice of the animated Lois Lane, but that's a whole different beast there.

Complete with John Williams' masterful score including the now-legendary "Superman March" that has become synonymous with the character, Superman is a triumph for both the world of the modern day blockbuster and the modern day comic book movie. As I've said, any comic book movie today owes something to either Batman '89 or Superman '78, but my vote is Superman '78. It's iconic, it's legendary, it's euphoric; while it can drag at times and seem a little boring, it's story adapts a character that even at that point had been around for a while and made it modern-age and classic at the same time. Superman is a timeless classic no-matter how you slice it. Enjoy the opening credits and try not to fall in love too hard.

Cody's Top 30 Favorite Movies of All-Time: #9 - Batman (1989)

I'll give an honest nickel if you didn't see this movie being anywhere in this top ten.

Batman? What can I say about it that I haven't already said in previous posts. It's basically my favorite Batman movie of all time, and with many good reasons. Michael Keaton, known for his comedy roles before hand, stirred the pot of controversy back in '88 when it was announced he was cast as the caped crusader. This caused an uproar because people feared that this meant Warner Bros. was only making a movie similar to that of the old Adam West TV show; Campy, cheesy, funny and absolutely not what they wanted Batman to be. What they didn't realize at the time is just how fucking wrong they were going to be proven, because not only did Keaton take the Bruce Wayne ball and run with it, but he also scored at home plate, picked up the bat and knocked another home run in with his Batman portrayal. Dark, violent and menacing.

Opposite Keaton is Jack Nicholson as the Joker, another one of my favorite portrayals of the Joker. We could sit here and have yet another Nicholson or Ledger debate, but save that for another time, if we haven't already. My memory sucks. Nicholson decided to play the Joker his own way, only borrowing lightly from previous portrayals. His maniacal laughter and twitchy mannerisms are comic book tropes the Joker is known for, but the other stuff? The talking and moving in the scene? That's all Nicholson, and it's what sets his Joker apart from other Jokers. You can argue that it isn't really the Joker, but just Jack Nicholson in clown make-up that he's playing, but still. Great chemistry. So much so that the Keaton and Nicholson won an MTV award in 1990 for favorite on-screen pairing in a motion picture, as well as the movie Batman itself winning for audience's choice award.

The movie was only the third directorial effort by then relatively unknown arthouse-beatnik Tim Burton, known today for his gothic movies with 30s and 40s inspired macabre and atmosphere. Beetlejuice, Sleepy Hollow, Edward Scissorhands, Batman Returns, Corpse Bride and even Dark Shadows all have that signature Tim Burton stamp on them. He's got his own swing and his own style. I like Tim Burton...except when he does remakes. Planet of the Apes (2001) and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory were supposedly piles of garbage. Batman on the other hand? Give it a watch. Your superhero movie knowledge and collection are both incomplete without it.