makes one a Chewer? It isn’t just reading CHUD.com regularly, although
that’s a great start. It definitely isn’t being an expert at
mastication. Being a Chewer requires a certain sensibility that’s
outside of the mainstream. Sure, a Chewer can hold his or her own in a Star Wars
OT vs PT argument with a standard movie geek, and sure, a Chewer can go
with the rest of the film snobs to an Ozu revival, but a Chewer also
gets really, really excited about the DVD release of The Manitou.
Over
the next few weeks we’re going to be bringing you The CHUD.com
Essential Films Collection – the films that would be in our dream
Chewer DVD Box Set. These are 50 movies that we think every Chewer
should see and love. This is by no means the definitive list of movies
that make one a Chewer, but it’s a good start. It’s also in no order –
the first films that we list are just as essential as the last ones.
And it’s a list that will leave off the obvious as much as possible –
you don’t need us to tell you to see Lawrence of Arabia or Seven
Samurai.
So fire up your Netflix or your Amazon accounts –
every day we’ll be bringing you two movies that are worth seeing, and
probably worth owning as well. Chew on, Chewers.
The Movie: A handful of fun-loving cops do… things. That’s pretty much the plot behind Super Troopers. Things involving drug deals, corruption, and the feuding between branches of police exist in the story, but the glory of Broken Lizard’s second foray into feature filmmaking is in its characters, their dialogue, and honestly, the weird way in which it all somehow is classic and utterly re-watchable despite the fact that there’s no “killer app” here.
Why it’s Essential: If you’ve seen the film more than once, a tour through IMDB’s ‘memorable quotes’ page for this film is filled with little lines and moments that for the hardcore fans is like being in the company of an old friend. Whether it’s the fact that the syrup bottle hits the fellow on his head as he’s descending right after the syrup chugging scene, the look Thorny gives Rabbit after he cops out too soon that they parked Foster and Mac’s car around the corner, or the sight of a denim-clad Brian Cox walking into the frame, it’s the minutia that gets you and the cult of Super Troopers is a special one. When I uttered an off-hand ST reference at the BOA restaurant in Santa Monica while we were out there a year ago and the waier calmly replied in response from the film, it was as if the stars aligned during the equinox at the peak of my menstrual cycle underneath the cherry moon behind the Atomic Hoagie Shop. Classic, classic flick and though there’s the inherent Broken Lizard backlash now, those people can go fuck themselves.
The Movie:Lessee…how to summarize the complex plot of this film. Chow Yun-Fat
has a gun with lots of bullets. There are lots of criminal bad guys
waiting to meet the bullets. Repeat if desired. Oh yeah, and most of
this happens in a hospital. Good for the corpses piling up.
Why it’s Essential: This
is the salvo that got a lot of unfamiliar Americans – myself included –
really familiar with the greatness of John Woo’s Hong Kong canon.
Whether you think of him as a hack these days or not, you can’t deny
the potent, vital energy from his action flicks starring Chow Yun-Fat,
and while The Killer
is greatness, I think this one is just a bit more essential. Yun-Fat’s
Tequila is one of the essential cinema tough guys, and if there’s a
nearby bannister for him to slide down or table to slide under, you’re
fucked. This film also features great turns by Anthony Wong and Tony
Leung, in addition to a number of truly neat touches like the sequence
in the baby ward. The two-gun, two-fisted power of this film continues
to resonate throughout action filmmaking more than a decade later. And
it’ll live in celluloid greatness for many decades after.