The Exorcist is widely regarded to be the scariest movie of all time. Personally, I would put it a little differently. Instead of calling it the scariest movie of all time, I think that it would be more accurate to say that it’s the best horror movie of all time. These may be just two different ways of saying the same thing, but I think that there is a notable difference.

I just watched The Exorcist again, and I experienced the nervousness and tension and fear that it was meant to cause and I jumped a few times, but I’ve watched several other horror movies that have caused those same feelings – The Shining, Pet Sematary, The Sixth Sense to a certain extent, even the remake of The House on Haunted Hill had a few quality scares. But I think that the thing that sets The Exorcist apart is that everything was just done right. The acting was great, the story was unique and well presented, the gruesome special effects were skillfully crafted, even the gore and the sickening profanity were put into the film with good reason and with good results. It’s so rare to see a horror movie come along (and it gets rarer and rarer as time goes on) that is actually worth watching, and when one comes along that is absolutely ground-breaking, like The Exorcist, then it’s a huge cinematic event.

The movie is based on the novel by William Peter Blatty about a young girl who becomes possessed by a mysterious being. Her mother desperately hires a young priest named Father Karras to come and perform an exorcism on the girl, leading to a lengthy and frightening ordeal for all of them that even makes Father Karras question his own faith. Interestingly, the novel is based on the exorcism of an exorcism that was performed on a real young boy in the 1940s – a boy who was cured and went on to become a NASA scientist.

The Exorcist is just as timeless as horror films get, and it should be noted for its style and its effectiveness. There have been so many imitations of this film that have popped up over the years (which is to be expected, because it created so many possibilities), but none of them, not even any of the sequels, even come close to the greatness of the original. Not only is it original and unique, but it also contained some stunning performances, particularly on the part of Linda Blair as Regan, the 12-year-old girl who was the subject of the exorcism. There were some frankly shocking things that she did for the film, and the brilliant special effects and make-up added to that to make Regan’s possession amazingly realistic, which is probably the most remarkable thing about the film.

The movie makes great use of special effects in the way it gives us so many bizarre and freaky sounds which take on an even deeper level of scarniess by the idea that they are all coming from a 12-year-old girl. In some ways it gives an almost three-dimensional reality to Regan, making it seem as though her body is a cavernous dwelling holding this demon that’s possessing her. William Friedkin’s skillful but relentless directing style clearly played a large part in the convincingness of the final outcome, which stands as one of the definitive films in cinematic history.

The Bean Meter

5 Beans out of 5.

In watching Rocky I’m reminded that every once in a while a movie comes along that just seems to fit together so perfectly that it seems perfectly natural that someone had to have made exactly that movie at some point. Other times I am pleasantly surprised at how good a movie is, or irritated at how bad, or just amazed that someone would think to make something so bizarre or cheesy. But with Rocky, everything is exactly what it should be, the movie knows exactly where it belongs and exactly what it wants to say, and so it comes across as a perfectly natural piece of storytelling.

The way that Rocky was directed not only indicates skillful direction but also very skillful acting. The film is composed of unusually long takes, which puts a lot more pressure on the actors but provides a much more realistic feel. This type of cinematography requires much more planning and meticulous rehearsal to get right, and there is much more dialogue for the actors to know all at once. There is something to be said about the actors because they were able to do this and still avoid making the dialogue sound even a little bit rehearsed.

There have been thousands of movies made about an underdog getting the chance of a lifetime and rising to the challenge, but not only is Rocky barely about that fight, it also goes deeper and gives a reason for it. The world heavyweight champion, Apollo Creed, is planning a fight on the 4th of July that is to be a major, major event. All other professional fighters are booked on other events or, if he does say so himself, afraid to fight him.

This necessity inspires Creed to come up with a marketing ploy where he will broadcast an opportunity for an amateur fighter to fight the greatest fighter in the world on America’s 200th birthday. But not just any fighter, it has to be someone significant, someone that will give meaning to the date that the event is to take place, and of course someone who will make Creed look symbolic and meaningful as he’s knocking him out.

And what better way to celebrate America’s birthday and how far we’ve come than for a black man to beat an Italian in a major fighting event! (you see, Creed mistakenly believed that Christopher Columbus, an Italian, had discovered America, unaware that Columbus never set foot in North America and that the Chinese had landed on American’s east coast more than 70 years before Columbus ever set sail!).

But what really wins Rocky’s way into our hearts is how regular he is. Like it or not, he’s a big, dumb oaf, but he’s honest, he’s hard-working (his job as a collector for a bookie is not exactly high-brow professionalism, but he knows it’s a bum job and he also knows that it’s really the only thing he’s any good at), he has a genuine love for someone who clearly needs it, and he cares for small animals and there’s nothing quite as charming as a huge man who loves his turtles.

Besides that, he believes in himself, even when it seems ludicrous to even consider that he might have a chance against the greatest fighter in the world.

What gives the movie real drama is that to Apollo, the entire fight is just for show, but Rocky doesn’t know that. He thinks it’s meant to be a real chance for an unknown fighter to challenge the heavyweight champion. Apollo plans to knock him out whenever he’s ready, but still that he’s doing some kind of humanitarian thing by putting an unknown fighter’s name and face up there on that poster next to his own.

The fight between Rocky and Apollo at the end of the film is one of the true classic moments in the history of film-making. It proves that it’s not about winning or losing, and it’s not even about how you play the game, it’s about giving it everything you’ve got when you have an opportunity. Rocky had a chance to do something that seemed impossible, and he ignored the hopelessness in the air and gave it everything he had. The life lesson is not the most cryptic thing in the world, but no less important.

5 Beans out of 5.

It was with some trepidation that I watched Clementine the other day, because I had heard nothing but a relentless stream of terrible things about it. I was surprised to see that it’s a Korean film in every way, given Steven Seagal’s background in Japanese martial arts and the fact that he speaks fluent Japanese. But make no mistake, Clementine is not a Seagal movie, it’s an action comedy that’s heavy on the comedy and light on the action. The only problem is that the comedy is spotty at best and Seagal’s presence on the cover box serves only to make us wonder where he is for the whole movie.

The story is about Kim, a fallen Korean Taekwon-do champion who leaves his country when a bad referee call costs him the championship title. He moves to Los Angeles and becomes a cop and never goes back to Korea, although he must live in Korea town because he and he speaks nothing but Korean, as do his colleagues and his daughter. Having lost his fighting career, he decides to concentrate on a career in law enforcement and taking care of his daughter. A fight promoter is trying to get him back in the ring but Kim doesn’t want to get back into fighting.

Kim’s daughter is impossibly cute and takes after her father. When Kim gets called in to talk to the principal because his daughter beat up some kid that was teasing her, Kim scowls at the kid and says, “Well you got what you deserved, didn’t you!” Unfortunately, there is a stupid sub-plot involving the girl’s mother that serves to do nothing but make a light-hearted, half-witted comedy pretty thoroughly depressing. The little girl who plays Kin’s daughter has some great scenes, but it seems like she was just screaming and crying for about the last 30 minutes or so of the film.

Oh and remember that huge black guy in Underworld? The one that did that weird thing where he’s trying to make his voice so deep that it just calls attention to his crappy acting? That guy is in this movie, and he’s still doing that stupid thing with his voice. Maybe someone forgot to tell him that he’s not in a vampire movie anymore. But it’s pretty much in tune with the rest of the awful acting in the movie, although Dong-jung Lee, who plays the main character, does have some pretty funny moments, especially in the first half of the film, which is the best part of the movie and I would argue that it’s even pretty entertaining and fun.

It’s revealing about the rest of the movie that the formidable talent of Seagal himself is completely wasted. He has nothing to do in the entire movie except do what he does worst in all his other movies – show up at the end and make some goofy speech and then wander off screen in slow motion. Yawn. But this is not a Seagal movie, it’s a Korean martial arts comedy where he makes a brief appearance at the end, in one of the film’s only English scenes. If they had kept up the almost family comedy sitcom story of the first half of the movie it could have been fun, light-hearted fare, but trying to give us this dramatic social situation involving the little girl and her missing mother and the whole thing with Seagal just turned it into a muddled mess.

2.5 Beans out of 5.