Top 15 of 2006 part II

10. Crank

Have you ever eaten Shrooms and played grand Theft Auto? I did in London once, and watching Crank was an identical sensation.

Jason Statham plays Chev Chelios, an unlucky guy who wakes up to find out he has been poisoned with a Chinese synthetic, and finds out that if his pulse slows down he is as good as dead. Adrenaline is the order of the day, which he hunts down through various means including Red Bull, Cocaine, sex and sticking his hand in a waffle iron to name but a few of the less crazy methods.

This isn’t the first time people have made a film about a poisoned antagonist searching for his murderer, but it is the first time a bunch of dudes went on a five day Meth bender and then made a film like this, which I swear to god the production team for Crank did. Fuck a “slow burn”, I love it when cinema just goes bat shit crazy.

9. Slither

Another Horror Comedy making the list, Slither takes the classic American small town, adds a B-Movie alien invasion, then spends the next 90 minutes fucking us in the eyes with exquisite gore and fucked up plot twists.

An entertaining township of people, including a millionaire warped by alien DNA, an extremely pregnant chick, redneck zombies and a foul mouthed mayor with a bad habit of constantly calling people “cock suckers”.

Directed by James Gunn, who went on to create the highly entertaining PG PORN series (for people who love everything about porn except the sex).


8. Borat

This was the film I almost didn’t see. The Borat promotional vehicle went into overdrive that year, especially on the internet, and there was an oversaturation of clips, interviews and trailers. Not to mention the thousands of work place “comedians” who thought it the pinnacle of humour to adopt Borat’s accent into their daily dialogue. This was the first time I was sick of a character before the film had even opened.

I was glad I finally came to my senses and went and watched, because it was effin’ hilarious.

With the stunts that he pulled, Sacha Baron Cohen must either be fearless, or pant shittingly insane – it doesn’t matter because his style works. He relies heavily on people being pigheadedly ignorant of the “simple folk” from countries they are not familiar with. I’m reminded of the scene where Borat goes to a dinner party, uses the bathroom, but returns in a confused state with his feces in a plastic bag. The lady of the house is happy to help out her “special foreign guest” with instructions. The obvious question, is how could a man use an airport at Kazakhstan, take an overseas flight to New York, work his way through that airport and the city of New York, travel across America – and still not know how to use a toilet?

God bless the culturally retarded idiots whose hospitality he abused for our entertainment.

7. Hard Candy

The tables are turned between potential abuser and potential abused, when a 14 year old girl agrees to meet up with a photographer she has met online. The photographer is drugged, and tied to a chair, and wakes to the girl ransacking his house in search of “evidence”.

An extremely tense thriller, mainly due to the fact that you are not sure if the photographer is a child molester (he’s a handsome young professional, when we all know that pedophiles look like Geography teachers from the 70’s), and the film includes a scene that will have any male viewers wincing for days.

I’ve never been this scared of a child before, except for maybe Pet Semetary, Village of the Damned, Children of the Corn – oh who am I kidding, all kids are fucking terrifying.


6. 13 (Tzameti)

A Georgian film (which means you’ll have to read subtitles, so I’ve already put off a few of you mouth-breathers) in stark black and white, 13 tells the story of a young labourer named Sebastien who is stiffed out of a payment when his employer dies.

He intercepts a message meant for the dead man, alluding to a huge money payment – so sets off with the mysterious instructions in hopes of getting his hands on some cash. Unwittingly, he has entered an underground gambling ring where bored millionaires bet on the lives of contestants, and Sebastien is player number “13”.

If you want more details, you’ll have to see it, and I do recommend it. The film is as tense as a tight-roper walker’s anus.