Thursday, April 3, 2008

My Top 5 Favorite Guilty Pleasure Movies of All-Time


Guilty pleasures, everyone has them, from films to music to books.  As for myself I am about to share with you my top 5 favorite guilty pleasure movies.  They range in genre but these are movies that I will only watch by myself and then lie about not liking them, when in reality I thoroughly enjoy(ed) them.

#5.  Terms of Endearment: Now this is not a horrible movie by any standards, really.  The cast is great, this 1983 picture included such stars as Shirley MacLaine (won an Oscar for her role), Jack Nicholson (who also won an Oscar for his performance), Debra Winger, John Lithgow and Jeff Daniels.  So if this film is so revered on a critical level, what makes it a guilty pleasure? I cry when I watch this movie, every time.  This film covers so many emotions in its 132 minutes that you don't really know how to react.  You can probably see this movie on Lifetime at least once a week.  I reccomend it to anyone.

#4.  The Day After Tomorrow: This 2004 epic disaster film stars Dennis Quaid, Jake Gyllenhaal and a bunch of other people I don't recognize.  This film is filled with cliches and conceptually the plot just doesn't work.  I like this film for a few reasons.  One being that there is a certain political message inside this film.  Secondly I found Quaid's performance as a caring father who just wants to find his son rather believable and heartfelt.  Disregarding the plot and the hundreds of millions of dollars (maybe) that went into making this film, I was able to look past it's CGI and other effects to see a real human interest story.

#3.  Gleaming the Cube: This 1989 skateboarding film stars Christian Slater who plays a rebel teenager trying to unravel the mystery behind the murder of his adopted Vietnamese brother.  Yes this is a terrible movie and yes it tries way too hard.  Everything from the 1980's "skater lingo" to the fact that whenever Christian Slaters character is skateboarding from a distantce you can tell it's actually Tony Hawk who is probably a good 8 to 10 inches taller than Slater.

#2.  Child's Play Trilogy:  When little Andy gets a Good Guy Doll that he always wanted....he soon realizes it's possessed by a notorious serial killer who is good with black magic and put himself into a toy doll.  I was never really scared by these films, I find these are more of a laugh riot.  Chucky follows poor Andy all the way from early childhood to his late teenage years just so he can "get a real body".  Killing nearly everyone that gets in his path, Chucky is truly the most violent, sadistic doll in cinema history.

#1.  Judgement Night: This is my favorite guilty pleasure of them all.  This 1993 film stars some of Hollywoods greatest: Emelio Estevez, Cuba Gooding Jr., Jeremy Piven, Denis Leary and Stephen Dorff.  When the guys decide it's time for a mans night out--Piven's character decides to rent a super sweet RV.  As they are on their way to the boxing match they hit some heavy traffic.  So they decide to take a "short cut".  Little do they know they made the biggest mistake of their lives when they run into Denis Leary and his gang of thugs.  This movie is PURE shit but I LOVE it.

Other notables: "Losing Isaiah", "Out Cold", "The Marine", "8 Mile" and "Apocolypto"

8 comments:

Ms. Feldman said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Alex Kotce said...

I don't feel guilty about that in any way whatsoever.

joshua francis said...

- legends of the fall
- any urban romantic comedy (deliver us from eva, love &basketball et al)
- meet joe black (i think it has something to do with claire forlani)
- forrest gump

dave kutz said...

- The Majestic
- Love Liza
- all David Lynch movies

Tyler James said...

Oh Man -- totally agreed with Day After Tomorrow. Same goes for Deep Impact and Armageddon. I'm all too willing to stomach horrible love stories that take up 95% of the movie for 12 seconds of poor CGI apocalypses.

joshua francis said...

I almost forgot my all time fave guilty pleasure movie. There was a time in the early '00s when Fools Rush In with Matthew Perry and Salma Hayek was on cable 2-3 times a week. It sucked me in every time.

Same goes for She's the One. Leslie Mann as the lesbian bartender with a crush on Edward Burns's wife was a performance for the ages.

Alex Kotce said...

I know, I keep disregarding half of these in my head. There are so many. 5 doesn't truly give guiltiness justice.

kevin romine said...

You just can't beat my guilty pleasure movie, "Copland".

This film has all of the cop movie stereotypes. There is the hotshot rookie, the Internal Affairs snoop, the dirty cop, the coked out cop and the wannabe cop. The whole premise of the movie is just so over the top and unbelievable that it makes for a cult classic.

The over acting of Robert Patrick and Ray Liotta is not to be missed. Neither is the classic line from Robert De Niro, "I gave you a chance to be a cop...AND YOU BLEW IT!!!"