100 Movie Facts About Me: Part I

This was inspired by Brittani at Rambling Film, Andy at Film Emporium, and other bloggers who did something similar. 

1. The last movie I watched was Romantics Anonymous. Cute, pleasant romantic comedy, though not particularly funny or memorable. It was nice to see a male romantic lead who wasn't a typical hottie.

2. My favorite movie of all time is The Fall by Tarsem Singh. It is emotional, visually beautiful, with a great child performance by Catinca Untaru. Incidentally, the British actor who played "Charles Darwin" in this also played in another one of my favorite movies, The Living & the Dead
 

3. The most intense film I have ever seen is Simon Rumley's 2006 Gothic drama The Living and the Dead, a bizarre look into insanity and dysfunctional, often cruel relationships. Haters can say what they wish, I loved it. Atmospheric, surrealistic and emotionally draining.

4. I want to see the Human Centipede movies, particularly The Human Centipede II, but my mother won't let me, despite the fact that I am eighteen years old and unlikely to sew unsuspecting victims mouth to arse any time soon. Anyone who thinks that is unfair, please post. Anyone who doesn't, stay out of it *wink*.

5. The first R-rated film I saw was Witness with Harrison Ford. I was about eleven or so, and I had to leave the room for the throat-slitting scene. One of my first R-rated movies was Double Jeopardy, and my parents made sure I didn't see the sex scene between the Ashley Judd character and her husband.

6.  My favorite TV show is Firefly, which is also my best science fiction series. I you haven't seen it, you must -- it is funny, well-written, well-developed, and tragically cancelled after one season. My uncle was happy to be introduced to this show; unfortunately, he found Rumley's The Living and the Dead harder to digest. If you read this, Uncle Mike, all is forgiven.

7. My favorite "bad" movie is the 1995 schlocky horror film Dead Alive (AKA Brain-Dead,) which, I am ashamed to admit, I found MUCH easier to sit through than the Lord of the Rings trilogy, also directed by Peter Jackson. The special effects are gruesome but cheesy and the acting is appropriately campy, but the characters (including a liberated Mama's Boy and an ass-kicking Kung-Fu priest) and dialogue are entertaining, and the film never takes itself seriously. My mother hated this film. In fact, she said it was quite possibly the "worst film" she had ever seen. Hmmm.... There's no accounting for taste.

 

8. Taxi Driver is a movie I didn't think I'd like but I turned out to really enjoy. At first I thought it would be a glorified revenge movie, but it turned out to be a good character study of a guy who's a few cards of a full deck. Not evil, not glorified, just flawed. And it let's face it, most of his victims, (other than the strung-out black guy holding up the convenience store, kind of deserved it. Who's going to stand up for some sleazebag who pimps out a 12-year-old girl, or any of his low-life cohorts? 

9. One movie I truly judge people for liking is Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen, or, as I like to call it, The Disaster that is Transformers II. You have to realize I, my family, and some homeschool acquaintances went on the very first day it was out, before any of the professional reviews came out, and I was bombarded with 2 and a half hours of robots smashing against one another, one horny, obnoxious little robot, and Megan Fox's perfectly physiqued ass. Well guess what? Megan Fox's ass can't act, and neither can Megan Fox. And if you want to watch a dog-sized robot take advantage of Megan Fox's leg, go ahead. That's just not for me.

 

10. My favorite film about Asperger's (an Autism-like condition, which I have) is Nic Balthazar's Ben X, based on his play, "Nothing Was All He Said." It is realistic, for the most part, but marred by a ridiculous and over-simplified twist ending. Still, Greg Timmermans is great as the titular Ben, and the first 3/4ths of the movie are both gritty and eye-opening. I also liked Mary and Max, although I frankly found the animation a little disturbing. 

11. One of the most unique films I've ever seen is Mark Hanlon's Buddy Boy, starring Queer As Folk's Aidan Gillen and Emmanuelle Seigner, young wife of the cradle-robbing (in more ways than one) director Roman Polanski. It is a surrealistic, grimy picture about a horny, stammering Roman Catholic and all the weird people he encounters, including a beautiful woman who could be the canvas onto which he projects all his issues, or possibly The Devil. Shades of camp and multiple interpretations highlight this bizarre indie, and although the acting, outside of Aidan Gillen, isn't very good, it's still worth watching.

12. In case I haven't yet made any enemies, this will be the deal-breaker -- I found Inception to be massively over-rated, over-directed, and underdeveloped. I'm sorry, guys, but it simply isn't up to par with Memento, Nolan's early amnesiac thriller. And before you say "Oh, but it's so original," the anime film Paprika, from which Nolan took inspiration, did the Inception premise first, and better.  

13. I am ashamed to admit that I have never seen any of George A. Romero's zombie movies, but I have seen my share of films concerning the walking dead. My favorite is Edgar Wright's satiric take on the genre, Shaun of the Dead, which I have watched too many times to count and still find funny. My father consistently likes to bring up at social gatherings how, when I first saw Shaun of the Dead (I was about twelve) I cried. The reason? The unexpected deaths of Shaun's friends and family members, namely *SPOILER* Ed, Shaun's dimbulb pot-dealing buddy. When my brother heard this, he stared at me in a mix of mockery and bewilderment, and said "Ed? You cried over Ed?" Needless to say, it was embarrassing.

 

14. My favorite Paranormal-slash-Haunted House movie is Alejandro Amenábar's Gothic thriller The Others, closely followed by an obvious pick, The Sixth Sense. Although I appreciate M. Night Shyamalan's ability to create fear in a completely ordinary environment, The Others had a special muchness I loved. I still get chills at certain parts of it. Plus, I did not see that twist coming.

15. My favorite serial killer movie, is -- surprise surprise -- not The Silence of the Lambs, but Tony, a British indie directed by Gerard Johnson starring virtual unknown Peter Ferdinando as Tony, the titular serial killer living in the buttcrack of London and killing out of compulsion. I liked it because the movies about England that Americans watch are usually elaborate costume dramas based on classical literature that are pretty to look at, whereas Tony gives us a candid, day-in-the-life look into the rear end of the U.K., presenting us with a setting I see the like of living in the American South, and because Tony is a character who provokes mixed feelings of strangeness, disgust, and even pity, which further complicates the matter. He is a creature of habit, and I almost rooted for him to get away with his crimes, inciting the weirdest feeling of guilt in me. 

16. My third favorite Brit thriller (after Rumley's The Living and the Dead and Johnson's Tony) is Dead Man's Shoes, directed by the great Shane Meadows, an intelligent revenge tale starring Paddy Constantine as a man released from the army who seeks revenge on the people who tormented his retarded younger brother. Paddy Constantine kicks ass, and Toby Kebbell, who plays his slow-witted brother, is good too. The fact that Paddy Constantine talks openly about having Asperger's Syndrome just makes him that much better.

17. The grossest, most visceral movie I have ever seen is Audition, directed by the infamous Takashi Mike and also infamous for its prolonged final scene of violence and torture. I hated that bitch Asami from the moment she killed the cute beagle to the moment *SPOILER* her victim's son (who couldn't act) kicked her down the stairs. I can handle violence and torture, but -- Man -- when she kills the dog, all bets are off.

18. Another deal-breaking confession about me: I liked the remake of the Land of the Lost TV show, starring Will Ferrell and Danny McBride. I know. I'm terrible. I cannot explain why I liked it, except to say that I laughed, and I found the sex-crazed Neanderthal Chaka's exploits some what amusing. And Will Ferrell may not be a great actor, but he can be funny at what he does. Why, you may ask, did you enjoy a movie where a crucial source of humor was Chaka fondling Holly (Anna Friel)'s breasts, while the android Megan Fox leg-humper in T2 can not be tolerated? All I can say is this: some great mysteries of this universe cannot be explained.

Is that... is that hair gel? 

19. Another one of my guilty pleasures is There's Something About Mary, directed by the often politically incorrect Farrelly Brothers. Although I don't respect Ben Stiller much as an actor, you must admit he fits comfortably into the role of Ted, a dorky but good-hearted guy who gets a date with the most beautiful girl in school after sticking up for her retarded brother, only to be hindered in a penis-incapacitating accident. And no, I don't think the movie is "offensive to the mentally retarded." Plus, one of my favorite character actors, Richard Jenkins, has a funny cameo as an inattentive psychiatrist.

20.. The latest TV series I am watching for the first time is The Big Bang Theory, and although I think Friends is better (and funnier), I find The Big Bang Theory to be a smart and witty sitcom. Although many people find Sheldon, a theoretical physicist and fellow Aspergian, to be the most compelling character, I would find him impossible to live with in real life. I prefer not to hang about with people who treat me as if I have Downs Syndrome. I like to think I'm a reasonably intelligent human being. (Hell, doesn't everybody?) Bazinga!

21. My second favorite science fiction series is Doctor Who, preferably starring David Tennant, who both I and my mother think has some physically appealing qualities. Okay, I think he has some physically appealing qualities. My mother thinks he's mighty fine. Plus, he's an excellent comedic actor with a full range of expressions. My favorite character in the new series -- besides the Doctor, of course -- is Rory Williams, the endlessly devoted husband of Who companion Amy Pond. You just can't help but love him. I'm seriously going to cry if anything happens to him in the next season. He's been through enough already *sniff*. Stephen Moffat, do you want to make a nearly grown woman cry?

22. My favorite Skinhead-themed movie is American History X. Edward Norton is a fantastic actor, although I hear he is a pain in the ass to work with (in fact, director Tony Kaye is quoted as saying that Norton "raped" the film American History X.) Kaye's and Norton's on-set relationship was venomous, leading Kaye to try to remove his name from the credits of his own film. Nevertheless, the result was extraordinary. It might interest you to know that Stephen Graham's performance in the similarly themed This Is England was equal in intensity to that of Edward Norton.

23. The worst TV pilot I have ever seen, besides the abominable first episode of Highlander which I only saw a few minutes of (if anyone defends the show by saying '"Duncan is gorgeous" one more time, they're begging to be bitch-slapped), is Alcatraz. Yeah, it has some things going for it -- it had a decent premise and attracted the producer of Lost -- but let's face it, it's so ridiculous it's not even funny. Its only real merit is that it's easy to laugh at. Okay, let me elaborate, my Dad is a cop, and NO law enforcement officer acts like they do in the show. When a mad shooter is on the roof sniping people and the gorgeous female officer is told that they want him alive, what does she do? The tough yet pretty broad approaches the shooter, puts down her gun (you have to realize that he's still armed) and tries to coax him down. She's a cop, not a fucking therapist! I'm not one of those cop show purists (that's my dad, again) but this is just frickin' ridiculous.

24. A movie I really want to see is God Bless America, directed by Bobcat Goldtwait. You'd be the first to know that vigilante movies are not my genre of choice, but the trailer really caught my interest, and the controversy surrounding the film just makes me want to see it even more (you know me). I love the expression on Joel Murray's face in the promo when the guy tries to take photographs of his killing spree in the theater. And who hasn't thought about running over Westboro Baptist Church members with a car?

25. My favorite movie with hardcore sex scenes is not the hard-to-digest-but-nevertheless-critically-acclaimed Shame, but Weekend, a gay British  drama. It's not porn, but you'd be forgiven for thinking so when the sex gets graphic. Although it's implausible that two men would forge a deep bond over the span of two days, the acting is fine and the characters, complex human beings with complex human motivations, had intelligent conversations and brought a realism to the movie that a lot of films lack. This is not a movie that most straight men could watch -- the no-holds-barred man love is sure to get the average guy squirming, whether he's homophobic or not. 

26. Marley & Me is a movie that always makes me cry, no matter how many times I watch it. I am a major dog lover and enthusiast, and Marley is so lovable that I'm practically inconsolable by the end. My brother thinks I'm the biggest pussy ever. What you need to know is that I am not a pussy; he is a *stone.* Do you know how you get tears out of a stone? It's very hard. Punch it in the face, maybe.

27. An evil, bloodsucking bitch who shall not be named (I'm talking to you, Adesa) :-P got me to watch Hachiko: A Dog's Story one warm afternoon, reducing me to a puddle of tears by the end. After the movie was over, I lay in her hammock and sobbed my eyes out. Again, it's my thing about dogs. Whenever they're hurt, or scared, or (God forbid) dead, I cry. Figures I can handle just about anything happening to an onscreen human, whether is be drowning, burning, or slashing. Just don't hurt the doggie!

28. My guilty pleasure TV show is, hint-hint, not Grey's Anatomy, not Jersey Shore, but the vamp-soap True Blood. I have so many reasons not to like it: the ridiculously stereotypical portrayal of Christians, the pseudo-glorification of rape themes, the camp, the occasionally corny dialogue, and a heroine who keeps hooking up with Bill despite his generally ugly personality (he's not right for you, girl!) Nevertheless, I'm addicted. That's it. It's addictive. I have no other excuse. And I'd take it over the Twilight crap any day. 

29. There are many films I have no interest in watching, but the Twilight franchise is one of the first and foremost. The first book was one of the longest 500-or-so pages of my life. The characters are about as entertaining as rubbing sandpaper over your anal sphincter. They are boring, flat, and stale as year-old Coke. Why does Bella like Edward? He is dull, creepy, and pallid. Why does Edward like Bella? She is, quite simply, the most ill-begotten heroine in the history of literature. But no, Edward cannot "solve the rubiks cube that is Bella" (honest to God.) Stephanie Meyer's mind must be a void that produces only dingy and ill-conceived ideas.

30. My first horror movie was the 80's camp fest The Lost Boys, starring Kiefer Sutherland and the late Corey Haim. The dialogue is ludicrous and the acting is sub-par, but it features the funniest Grandpa and the coolest Husky in the history of film, and God-damn it, it's funny! Basically the same fun as Dead Alive, with less gore and no domineering mother zombies. And the vampires don't sparkle. Respect.

31. Now that I have displayed my embarrassing enjoyment of camp and needless gore, let me present to you my favorite of all vampire films: Tomas Alfredson's emotionally compelling masterpiece Let the Right One In, a film about two children who find each other, against all odds, and form a bond that could either end in love or disaster. The vampire is not a monstrous killer or the sparkling subject of the masturbatory fantasies of teenaged girls. It presents a half-life as it could really be lived. Don't be a afraid of the captions. Subtitles won't bite you... Eli might.

32. My most over-rated comedy movie is *winces, waiting to be shot* Raising Arizona, directed by the usually great Coen brothers. This movie is about as far from  Fargo as Kentucky Fried Chicken is from the Hilton. I must have laughed twice. Now I know why this movie made my Nonna hate Nicholas Cage, who is, frankly, almost as annoying as Brendan Fraser. Some of the scenes in this are bad beyond belief.

33. My favorite Coen movie is the pretty typical pick: Fargo, the Midwest-set black comedy starring Frances McDormand as the wonderfully unique pregnant law enforcement officer Marge Gunderson. Loved the humor, loved the drama, loved the relationship between Marge and her postage stamp-painting husband Norm -- so natural, so true to life. I'm not sure if Frances McDormand should have won the 1996 Academy Awards though; Emily Watson in Breaking the Waves gave her a run for her money.

34. The most overlooked Coen movie is Burn After Reading, which was criticized by professional critics and viewers alike. I thought it was hilarious. Very different role for Frances McDormand, with Brad Pitt delivering a hammy yet lovable performance as the dim-witted blackmailer Chad Feldheimer. I thought you might be worried... about the security... of your shit. And like most Coen films, there's a meaning behind the insanity. On another but not totally unrelated note, don't Joel and Ethan Coen give off the impression of being a little different? I'm guessing high-functioning Autism, or Asperger's.

35. My favorite movie starring a Who actor (Doctor Who, everybody) is Jude, the 1996 Michael Winterbottom film based on the classic novel Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy, starring Christopher Eccleston (9th Doctor) and Kate Winslet. I generally don't like dramas based on classic literature, because I think they are boring, but something about this movie really grabbed my interest. Just get ready for a shocker of an ending. Although Jude the Obscure was later made into a relatively well-received movie, it was trashed by critics of the time and Thomas Hardy's career never recovered. He never wrote a novel again. Interestingly, David Tennant (10th Doctor) also has a small part in this film as a drunk man in a bar residing in Jude's hometown.

 36. One of the most underrated child performances of all time is that of William Eadie in Lynne Ramsay's Ratcatcher. Eadie, who was a first-time actor and, according to Ramsay herself, was not a typical Hollywood "cutie," impressed in his first and only role, playing impoverished Scottish youth James, who lives in squalid surroundings -- the garbage men are on strike and his apartment tenement is rank with trash and filth -- and his friend drowns in the canal, a death for which he feels responsible. The movie itself is ugly and bleak and doesn't rank number #1 on my to-watch-again list, but William Eadie portrays emotion with finesse surprising for a child of his age.

37.  A recent film I liked, that an acquaintance recommended to me, was the 1992 Irish children's film Into the West, which I had never heard of until my counselor Marcella brought it up. She said she had found it very moving and even cried at one point. Just for the record, I did not cry. It was, however, a surprisingly down-to-earth family movie, with a well-balanced portrayal of the alcoholic father, played by Gabriel Byrne, and good performances by the two boys. One part bothered me: the scene in which the motherless heroes break into a movie theater, stallion in tow, and steal popcorn, giving copious amounts to the horse. I could not take this with a grain of salt -- it would all be well and good if these young vagabonds were taking from the bourgeois and giving to... well, themselves, but the people who ran the theater suffered from financial troubles too and how were they supposed to run their little business when there was horse spit in the popcorn? What is wrong with me? Why can't I see the big picture?

38. The most annoying character in recent cinema is Sir (Albert Finney) in Peter Yates' The Dresser, a whining, theatrical drama queen waited on hand over fist by his gay servant Norman (Tom Courteney). God. What a pain in the whose-its whatsits. If I were Norman, I'd slip something a little extra into his morning tea and send him into a sleep he would never wake up from. A completely arrogant, narcissistic ass utterly convinced of his own importance in the period of the earth-shaking World War II. The final scene adds insult to injury. Ah well. At least Norman has a sense of humor about it. The picture below basically sums it up.

39. Choosing a most evil character is hard, considering the competition, but I'm going to have to go with Gabriel Engel in the powerful German serial killer thriller Antibodies. I don't believe in quote-unquote "pure, unadulterated evil," but Engel, a repugnant and remorseless child killer-slash-rapist, would make me question that belief in a instant. A completely revolting man. To see him is to hate him. Antibodies is similar in some ways to The Silence of the Lambs, and is definitely worth watching even while it tends toward the melodramatic.

 

40. One recent underrated and misunderstood horror film is The Bleeding House, which starts out as a torture movie but becomes something more. People who criticize it for sub-par character development and stupid actions are missing the point; what the movie is really about is human evil trumping supernatural evil. Nick represents the Devil, Gloria (or Blackbird) represents the evil people commit. It's a lot to think about. After all, maybe that's all the Devil is: humans thinking and wondering and behaving badly.

41. My favorite movie in my pre-teen years was Rain Man. I know, I'm a nerd, I wonder sometimes why it couldn't have been Just My Luck or A Cinderella Story or Hannah Montana: The Movie. A note to the haters: the film was made by Barry Levinson in 1988, when autism was not highly researched, and higher-functioning forms of autism (i.e. Asperger's) were not yet in the DSM (although Hans Asperger had brought AS to the table years before that.) Rain Man was good for the time it was made, and Dustin Hoffman worked with the tools he had. It is not a bad movie, just outdated. And Tom Cruise is not as bad an actor as you may think.

42. My favorite male actor is Ralph Fiennes, and my favorite film in which he plays (well, there's two really... between this and The Constant Gardener it's a close race) is Cronenberg's Spider, a compelling study of a paranoid schizophrenic with unresolved mommy issues. Ralph Fiennes plays this troubled character impeccably, and the movie doesn't explore the nature of his madness with elaborate camera tricks and dream sequences as much as a careful shift in perspective, making the final twist all but impossible to figure out.

43. To this day, one of the strangest  movies I have ever seen (I haven't seen any David Lynch -- I know, shame on me) is Alejandro Jodorowsky's 1989 horror/art house film Santa Sangre, or Holy Blood. Some of the scenes in that movie really had me shaking my head in bewilderment. And it really had some good qualities. Pity the acting wasn't better.

44. My coolest fantasy creature, excluding vampires, zombies, and talking animals, is the Lolemar, the obstinate, monkey-like critter from Avatar. Even though it is only shown for about ten seconds, its uniqueness and (dare I say it) cuteness stands out in my mind. Oh, and by the way, I like Avatar. Indie purists (AKA mainstream=bad) can just get over it.

45. My favorite horror-comedy (besides Shaun of the Dead) is An American Werewolf in London, directed by John Landis in 1982 with funny writing, genuine scares, and fantastic make-up. More impressively, Landis wrote the script for the movie when he was nineteen years of age. Don't listen to Ebert on this one. Roger Ebert panned this even though he gave thumbs up to the pedestrian celebration of bumbling idiocy Paul Blart: Mall Cop. What is wrong with him?! Don't get me wrong, he's a great critic, but he occasionally completely misses the mark. Next favorite: Zombieland.

46.  The Shining is a movie that makes me laugh even though it shouldn't. Before you hate on me, it's not that it isn't a scary movie, it is, and it's not that it's a bad movie, it isn't. In fact, it's very good -- one of the best horrors of the 80's. But Jack Nicholson has kind of a black comedy quality to him; subtlety isn't his trademark. And his performance as the dramatically unhinged Jack Torrence cracks me up every time. Give me the bat, Wendy. Give me... the bat. Wendy? Darling? Light, of my life. I'm not gonna hurt ya. You didn't let me finish my sentence. I said, I'm not gonna hurt ya. I'm just going to bash your brains in. Gonna bash them right the fuck in! Ha-ha. The movie is scary and it is a classic, but Nicholson's Torrence sends me into a fit of giggles. His response to his son seeing a TV program on cannibalism is hysterical.

47. For a few years, my favorite book was The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. Her prose is so beautiful and lyrical that it finds light in a dark subject, and the end is breathtakingly beautiful. That said, the film version by special effects enthusiast Peter Jackson is an unfit adaptation. I did not dislike it as much as Roger Ebert did ("The Lovely Bones is a deplorable film with this message: If you're a 14-year-old girl who has been brutally raped and murdered by a serial killer, you have a lot to look forward to" -- Ebert.) I know it's hard to fit a 300+ page book into two hours or less. but Peter Jackson took out the very essence of the book and tried to compensate by making it visually beautiful. Saoirse Ronan has a lot of potential as an actress, and Stanley Tucci gives one of the creepiest psychopath performances in film history and does a better job than we ever could have hoped for, but something is missing. The fact that Susie's heaven looks like a perpetual display of Windows screensavers might have something to do with it.

48. While reading the book The Butcher Boy, I thought it might be impossible to adapt to screen. Patrick McCabe's writing is so fluid, so stream of consciousness (like Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, I am told, but how would I know, a brilliant reader of classical literature I am not.) It may surprise you to know that the film version by Neil Jordan, the director of The Crying Game and Interview With A Vampire, is as good an adaptation as you can hope for, with an adept performance by Eamonn Owens as psychotic youth Francie Brady. Francie's character is one of the most complex in literature, and Eamonn Owens plays him brilliantly, instilling him with the deluded bravado and murderous rage portrayed in the book. A must watch.

49. "Made With Real Cheese." "All-Natural Flavors." "Absolutely won't give you the runs!" Everyone who's familiar with consumer culture knows that little fibs keep the public buying the products, and we are generally none the worse for it. But no advertisement campaign is crueler or more sadistic than that of the "whimsical" Belgian film Ma Vie En Rose, which is proclaimed, on the front of the box, to be "this season's A Wonderful Life." Yeah, well, Boohockey. I am here to tell you that is the biggest load of bullshit you will hear in your life. In this movie, the "uplifting" story of a young transgendered boy, you will see a seven-year-old child being bullied, alienated by his family, and attempting suicide by putting himself in a freezer. Yes, a freezer. Finally, he has nothing to hold onto but fantasies of inclusion and acceptance. Seeing Georges du Fresne (who is a very capable child actor)'s Ludovic suffer unjustly will tie your heart into a million knots and stomp into your soul until it looks like a smudge of dog poo on the bottom of your shoe. Watch this "inspirational" picture and want to kill yourself.

50.  It has probably become woefully apparent to you that I am more interested in the U.K than in my hometown, in which, although I will not divulge the location for safety reasons, time stands still, nothing happens, and middle-aged men in John Deere caps spit tobacco outside Wal-Mart. I can tell you all kind of delightful middle-class-in-the-South stories, but instead I will present my concluding chapter of part one of my blog-project, (drumroll, gents) the most underrated British movie: Treacle Jr. Tragically, this slice-of-life drama received only a 5.4 on Imdb, and it is not yet available on Region 1 DVD (although you can get it on Amazon for a multi-region player, as I did, or download it on itunes, if you enjoy watching it on a tiny, unsubstantial screen.) Aidan Gillen, who is one of my favorite actors, plays a sweet but clueless Londoner with a birth defect and Tom Fisher (who I had never heard of before now, but does a good job all the same) plays a man leaving his family who runs into Aidan, quite by accident, and spends a much of the film trying to get away from him before finally trying to help him improve his life. Anyway, it's sad, sweet, and unpredictable, and the performances are strong all around. You know what? Watch it on the tiny screen. It's worth it.

Please leave comments, and prepare yourselves... for the next chapter of my blog post, 100 movie facts about me. Hmmm ... I bet you're not looking forward to it as much as The Dark Knight Rises. Think about that for a moment as I leave in an indignant huff.