Dark City? More Like Dark Shitty

A movie so dark it can barely show us its title.

I had read a lot of great things about Dark City. Apparently, it has garnered a cult following, and film critic Roger Ebert has a raging boner for it. But that’s the thing about cult movies. Usually, they aren’t popular for a reason. Sometimes they can turn out great, like Evil Dead. However, most of the time, they suck ass. Dark City is that kind of movie.

Watching it, you can tell that at one point the script was probably good. It tries to tell a complex tale of an amnesiac who suddenly gains telekinetic powers. There are some genuine high-concept ideas as the film poses questions about the nature of personality and memory. If your memories were given to someone else, would that person become you? Would they retain their original personality? What really defines us as individuals? It’s cool stuff, for sure, but it is handled the same way you would handle dogshit: grab it in a plastic bag and throw it away as fast as possible.

Classically Shitty: The Hustler

This would have been better than what we saw in The Hustler.

There are certain movies that grace every “Best Of” list of top films. These are the ones that filmfags can’t help but jizz over at their mere mention. They get praised by critics, and labeled as “groundbreaking” and “influential.” Typically, they are also boring as shit and are a test of patience to even sit through them. These are the movies I want to discuss in “Classically Shitty.” The ones you are supposed to like because the filmfags said they were great, but when you watch them you can’t help but feel like you just wasted two hours of your life.

Although the first entry into this series was probably my completely fair and balanced review of 2001: A Space Odyssey, I will officially kick off this series with a review of one of the worst pieces of shit ever put to celluloid: The Hustler.

This is a 1961 film starring Paul Newman. The American Film Institute regards it as the 6th best sports movie ever made. Well, if you consider “sports” to be standing around, smoking, drinking, and acting like a jackass, then yeah, this is a sports movie. It’s about a guy named Fast Eddie Feltcher Felson who likes to play pool, and wants to beat the reigning king of the game, a dude named Minnesota Fats. The apparent twist is that Fast Eddie is a lot better than he appears to be, and hopes to take out Minnesota Fats by surprise.