Equilibrium and my Top 10 Favorite Movies

I’ve set TiVo to record Ebert & Roeper, primarily because I miss out on movie commercials (I skip all commercials with TiVo). And, last December they reviewed Equilibrium, which had some gun flights which intrigued me at the time. Christian Bale — that guy from American Phycho — plays the main character.

But, it only received 35 at Metacritic and I didn’t think much of it again until recently. Now that we have Netflix, It doesn’t cost anything extra to watch bad movies ;), so I suggested that Mike add it to our queue.

So, Mike and I watched it last weekend. And, I was completely amazed by this movie — it not only had good story and character development, but also gunfights that rivaled or surpassed those of John Woo. There wasn’t a “lobby scene”, but there is one scene in particular which I enjoyed just as much (nah, I’m not going to spoil it here).

If you like guns — and lots of them — then this is the movie for you. As someone who appreciates intricate gun work, I was smiling from beginning to end. And before the movie was even over, I knew that it’d be among my top 10 favorite movies.

I thought about how it’d place on my top 10 list, and here’s how it fits in:

1. The Matrix. I saw this five times in theaters and I don’t think there’s a single part I didn’t like about the movie. “Guns. Lots of guns.” [buy on DVD]
2. Return of The Jedi. Yeah, critics often like Episode 5 more, but I preferred this one for its climactic action scenes. [not available on DVD]
3. The Empire Strikes Back. Some would place this as the best of the series, but I think we can all agree that it’s better than Episode 4. [not available on DVD]
4. Terminator 2: Judgment Day — Director’s Cut. One measure of a good movie, in my mind, is its quantity of guns & explosions. This has plenty of both :) [buy on DVD].
5. Star Wars: A New Hope. At times, this is a little hokey, especially compared with ESB and ROTJ (“But I was going to the Tosche Station to pick up some power converters!”). But, the lightsaber scenes were reason enough to include it ;). [not available on DVD]
6. Equilibrium. The mythical martial art that was invented for this movie, gun-kata, is astounding and almost plausible. [buy on DVD]
7. Raiders of the Lost Ark. Yeah, the other two in the series were also good, but the second one seemed a bit off and the third one didn’t reach the levels of the first. [buy on DVD]
8. RoboCop — Director’s Cut. Favorite line: “Put down your weapon. You have 20 seconds to comply.” (and the resulting scene that follows). And, if you haven’t seen the director’s cut, it’s even more violent than the theatrical release (yes!). [buy on DVD]
9. UHF. Weird Al’s comedic masterpiece. Favorite line: “I’m thinking of something orange!” (you’d have to see it to understand). [buy on DVD]
10. Amélie. Before seeing this, I knew absolutely nothing about it (only that my friends had recommended it highly). And I was quite surprised to hear French dialog when the movie first started ;). Still, a charming movie. [buy on DVD]