I've seen probably 80% of those movies. I'm surprised Pearl Harbor and Farenheit 9/11 are on there... well not so much on Pearl Harbor.



I hate Michael Bay... I really don't like his films and I stay clear if I hear he's attached to a product. But the MFer sure brings in cash... and until he doesn't, we'll have to put up with more of his garbage.





Anyhow, I saw the movie Knocked Up yesterday. In a week it brought in 40 some million - the studios said it only cost 30 million to make.



My point was that there is a simple date movie story. Guy meets Girl, get's her pregnant and then has to fight to win her. It won't surprise you that it has a happy Hollywood ending (except a geography mistake in the final shot where they're supposed driving to east LA but they're headed up the 1 freeway past the Santa Monica Pier to Pacific Palasades -whoops, wrong direction).



Indie directors or newbs who are in love with their art wouldn't have ended that way. They would have it end some wild and "original" way, most likely involving zombies massacreing everybody. That's retarded.



You ask your audience to invest 2 hours of their life watching perfect strangers in a movie - you've got to make them care about your characters. And then you've got to deliver a satisfying ending. Even in a tragedy... it has to be satisfying. Romeo and Juliet - the star crossed lovers love each other so much, that they'll die for one and other. Star Wars - the good guys beat the bad guys and get them to change. Casablanca, Rick gives in to the greater good.



All movies need to conclude in a way that will be satisfying to the audience - to uphold the morals and beliefs of the characters or the society or whatever.



So yeah, give them what they want.



Maybe you can make some money doing it.

Wow I was really surprised by some of the movies on here...Some are classics, most of them were pretty good, but some I thought were awful. It would be interesting to see the cost of each film as well. Or a list of highest net profit films.

Thanks Ovation, I'm going to try to check these out.

great stuff again Ovation

I just tell people Hollywood is top 40 and the indie scene is college radio. Then I tell them more like Britney Spears than [insert trendy, flash-in-the-pan indie band here] because, while it might not be to your (and my) taste, it's still good. Then I run and hide.



On the flipside, I completely understand how hard it is to not get all snobby when you see something like this...



220. 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003) $127, 083, 765



: /

Ovation Financial Group wrote:

ratgreg wrote:

I just tell people Hollywood is top 40 and the indie scene is college radio. Then I tell them more like Britney Spears than [insert trendy, flash-in-the-pan indie band here] because, while it might not be to your (and my) taste, it's still good. Then I run and hide.



On the flipside, I completely understand how hard it is to not get all snobby when you see something like this...



220. 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003) $127, 083, 765



: /

2 Fast 2 Furious ***



BY ROGER EBERT



John Singleton's "2 Fast 2 Furious" tells a story so shamelessly preposterous all we can do is shake our heads in disbelief. Consider that the big climax involves a Miami druglord who hires two street racers to pick up bags full of money in North Beach and deliver them in the Keys, and adds, "You make it, I'll personally hand you $100 Gs at the finish line." Hell, for 10 Gs, I'd rent a van at the Aventura Mall and deliver the goods myself.



But this is not an ordinary delivery. The drivers are expected to drive at speeds ranging from 100 mph to jet-assisted takeoff velocities, which of course might attract the attention of the police, so the druglord has to arrange a 15-minute "window" with a corrupt cop, who he persuades by encouraging a rat to eat its way into his intestines. Does it strike you that this man is going to a lot of extra trouble? Despite the persuasive rat, the cops do chase the speed-racers, but they have anticipated this, and drive their cars into a vast garage, after which dozens or hundreds of other supercharged vehicles emerge from the garage, confusing the cops with a high-speed traffic jam. Oh, and some guys in monster trucks crush a lot of squad cars first. It is my instinct that the owners of monster trucks and street machines treat them with tender loving care, and don't casually volunteer to help out a couple of guys (one they've never seen before) by crashing their vehicles into police cars. You can get arrested for that.



Does it sound like I'm complaining? I'm not complaining. I'm grinning. "2 Fast 2 Furious" is a video game crossed with a buddy movie, a bad cop-good cop movie, a Miami druglord movie, a chase movie and a comedy. It doesn't have a brain in its head, but it's made with skill and <myspace>style</myspace> and, boy, is it fast and furious.



How much like a video game is it? The two drivers are named Brian O'Connor (Paul Walker) and Roman Pearce (Tyrese). As they race down city streets at one-fifth the speed of sound, they talk to each other. They can't hear each other, but that doesn't matter, because what they say is exactly the kind of stuff that avatars say in video games. I took some notes: "Let's see what this thing can do!" "Watch this, bro!" "Let's see if you still got it, Brian!" "How you like them apples!?" Walker returns from the original "The Fast and the Furious" (2001), which established Vin Diesel as a star. Rather than appear in this movie, about cops infiltrating his car gang to bust the drug cartel, Diesel decided instead to make "A Man Apart, " playing a cop fighting the drug cartel. Oddly enough, F&F2 is the better movie.



Walker's co-star is Tyrese, aka Tyrese Gibson, who was so good in Singleton's "Baby Boy" (2001) and is the engine that drives "2 Fast 2 Furious" with energy and charisma. He's like an angrier Vin Diesel. Walker, who gets top billing in both movies, is pleasant but not compelling, sort of a Don Johnson lite.



Other key roles are by Cole Hauser as Carter Verone, the druglord, whose Colombian parents didn't name him after Jimmy, since he's too old for that, but possibly after Mother Maybelle; and Eva Mendes, as Monica Fuentes, the sexy undercover cop who has been on Verone's payroll for nine months and is either sleeping with him or is a sensational conversationalist.



O'Connor and Pearce are teamed up to work undercover as drivers for Verone, and promised that their records will be cleaned up if the mission succeeds. First they have to win their jobs. Verone assembles several teams of drivers and tells them he left a package in his red Ferrari at an auto pound 20 miles away. First team back with the package "gets the opportunity to work with me." That sets off a high-speed race down Route 95 during which one car is crushed under the wheels of a truck, several more crash, and various racers and, presumably, civilians are killed. O'Connor and Pearce return with the package. As they're driving back, they don't even seem to pass the scene of the incredible carnage they caused in the opposite lanes; just as well, because at 120 mph you don't want to hit a gapers' block.



All of the chases involve the apparently inexhaustible supply of squad cars in South Florida. There's also a traffic jam in the sky, involving police and news helicopters. At one point a copter broadcaster hears a loud noise, looks up, and says "what was that?" but we never find out what it was, perhaps because the movie is just too fast and too furious to slow down for a helicopter crash.

Exactly. I despise everything about that pile of filth, but a lot of people thought it was good outlandish fun. It's like the Backstreet Boys of movies. I'd even recommend it to certain people.



And yes, if I could be the next backstreet clone dancing my little dance and singing songs I didn't write I would. In a heartbeat.

I'd say about 50% of that list is good, and at least half of the remaining 50% is tentpoles.



But, as with everything, film is entirely subjective. What I like, most people don't. And what most people like, I think is pretty dull.



I've known for some time that I need to follow the Weinstein route of distribution, small films for small audiences which still make back their return. I'm never going to have a multi-million dollar budget in order to make a multi-million dollar return, so I've pretty much excluded the main Hollywood route.

Killer Cordova wrote:

I'd say about 50% of that list is good, and at least half of the remaining 50% is tentpoles.



But, as with everything, film is entirely subjective. What I like, most people don't. And what most people like, I think is pretty dull.



I've known for some time that I need to follow the Weinstein route of distribution, small films for small audiences which still make back their return. I'm never going to have a multi-million dollar budget in order to make a multi-million dollar return, so I've pretty much excluded the main Hollywood route.

You never know. Christopher Nolan started off making off-beat indies like Momento and then handed Batman Returns (which he did very well).

That's true but Christopher Nolan was an extremely well suited pick for Batman, anyone who's seen Momento knows that (Following still rocks my socks).



If anything I see myself following more of a John Sayles indie path. He does a lot of rewrite work, and uses the money he makes from those to self finance his own projects, including the terrible Silver City.



At one point in time he worked on a rewrite for the script for The Mummy. It seems like the best path for me, though making a film for something like The Watchmen would be incredibly sweet. To bad nothing Alan Moore has written has ever been translated well to the big screen, and I don't see Zack Snyder doing a good job with it (I thought 300 was a dull translation).

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