Law Cummer (lcummer)

While some would argue, perhaps successfully, that this isn't John Carpenter's best movie. For my money it's his most entertaining. It's fun, funny and just a little smart. Yeah, I said smart. Carpenter uses a fun sci-fi motif to open our eyes--like Roddy Piper's Nada's--to the socio-economic inquities of the 80s. The world is not so different, and the themes are only truer in today's over-marketed world. Who knows what conditioning messages exist under the simple veneer of this Website? Deserves praise if only for one line: "I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubblegum." Sweet.

Anyone who doesn't love this movie has no soul. I actually know the one person who doesn't, and can attest to the fact he's a pod-person created in the early 90s as a full-grown adult. The script is fantastic. Try not watching this movie and subvocalizing along with the dialogue.

The most entertaining dysfunctional family drama ever filmed, made all the more interesting by the 12th-century backdrop and superb performances by O'Toole, Kate Hepburn, a particularly bright-eyed and young Anthony Hopkins, and a wonderfully scheming Timothy Dalton. The man might not be able to be James Bond, but his feigned-foppish King Phillip of France could have been written by Niccolo Machiavelli. The dialogue is tremendously clever. Hepburn won an Oscar, but O'Toole is still the pick of the litter in my books.

I can watch this movie again and again and again. Just hearing the soundtrack immediately sucks me into the screen. This is the ultimate story of stepping up and being a man in the face of adversity. Whether you love Westerns (which I do) or not, you can't help but empathise with Gary Cooper's desperate attempts to protect his town of unworthies. The romantic story with with new pacifist bride is a wonderful touch. This movie stands up against the test of time, even if the soundtrack places it as a 50s Western.