Snobbin: Beautiful Trash in the Pop Culture Gutter

Wim Wenders' Yasujiro Ozu documentary is a contemplative journey to Tokyo in search of people, places, and situations connected to the Japanese director.

5. Ms. 45 (1981), Abel Ferrara, Image For some reason, I have watched too many of this sort of film recently. Revenge fantasy movies are a dime a dozen, but Abel Ferrara's film is better than most. It follows Thana, a mute seamstress, who takes revenge on her rapists. The film is highly stylized and the cinematography is spectacular for a low-budget grindhouse feature. Ferrara respects Thana for the most part and allows her to get her revenge in fairly unexpected ways. The film starts off with cascading violence (Thana is raped twice in the first ten minutes), and I expected a much sleazier picture, but Ferrara's attention to detail and the great performance by Zoe Tamerlis Lund, without any dialogue no less, redeems a picture that on paper could read like an eighty-minute exercise in sadism. The brisk pacing and running time no doubt help. 4. The Thin Man (1934), W.S. Van Dyke, MGM The Thin Man is not a faithful adaptation of Dashiell Hammett's novel, but it...

6. Withnail and I -- This film surprised me as I was completely unprepared for its premise and picked it due to its poster because it was drawn by Ralph Steadman. Later, I learned that it was one of my best friend's favorite films and wondered how I missed it. Bruce Robinson based it on his life in London in the 1960s, and it follows the lives of two struggling actors,  the manic Withnail (Richard E. Grant) and the more sedate Marwood (Paul McGann)  who take a disastrous holiday to Withnail's Uncle Monty's (Richard Griffiths) cottage. The two men cope the best they can in their daily farcical struggles for alcohol and drugs, running into strange characters and stranger situations. The film is dark, yet laugh-out-loud funny at times. 5. My Winnipeg -- My favorite film for purely visual, surrealistic inspiration. Complete with reimaginings of hockey teams and horse heads which appear near the Red River, Guy Maddin's My Winnipeg is a stunning pseudo-history, what he...

259. Bulldog Drummond's Revenge (1937), Louis King, Paramount 260. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992), David Lynch, New Line Cinema 261. Crash (2004), Paul Haggis, Lionsgate 262. Marilyn Hotchkiss' Ballroom Dancing and Charm School (2005), Randall Miller, Samuel Goldwyn 263. A Walk in the Woods (2015), Ken Kwapis, Broad Green 264. Paris, Texas (1984), Wim Wenders, Argos 265. Eraserhead (1977), David Lynch, Libra 266. Powwow Highway (1989), Jonathan Wacks, Anchor Bay 267. The Man Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail (1945), Akira Kurosawa, Toho 268. Mikey and Nicky (1976), Elaine May, Paramount