How can a list of Bad Ass Bad Guys be complete without Tony @#$%! Montana!

The epitome of the gangster antihero, Tony "Say hello to my little friend" Montana is the quintessential Bad Ass Bad Guy. He has little regard for human life, which he demonstrates by spilling blood left and right with chainsaws, machine guns and grenade launchers. What I enjoy most about Scarface's Montana, played by Al Pacino, is that he is loud, angry and flamboyantly badass, which contrasts sharply with the relentless, mechanical violence of the Terminator, Anton Chigurh and Agent Smith. Tony Montana is more badass than anyone on your list Peanut, and I've dug up a few additional worthy contenders that give your baddies a run for their money.






Vincent (Collateral, Tom Cruise): Calm and collected balanced with beserk outbursts of violence. All this from Tom "Pretty Boy" Cruise? I was impressed. See the dance club and jazz club scenes for all the evidence of badass-ness you should need.





Castor Troy (Face/Off, Nicholas Cage & John Travolta): A villain so badass, he needs two badass actors to play him. Jumping out of a 747 with gold plated pistols firing - Badass! Murdering an entire hospital staff while his face is cut off - Badass! Sleeping with the FBI agent's wife, flirting with his daughter, and beating the crap out of his daughter's boyfriend - Badass!




Johnny Ringo (Tombstone, Michael Biehn): The ultimate western villain, he scoffs as Wyatt Earp's brother's funeral procession passes by, "Smell that, Bill? Smells like someone died."








Alonzo Harris (Training Day, Denzel Washington): Denzel needed to be on this list and his American Gangster Frank Lucas portrayal just had too many decent values. Alonzo Harris, Washington's oscar-winning role, has none.

Because no list is ever long enough, here are some Honorable Mentions:

Vincenzo Coccotti (True Romance, Chistopher Walken): Not enough screen time to fully qualify, but damn is Walken badass in the scene with Dennis Hopper.

General Hummel (The Rock, Ed Harris): Completely badass right up until the moment where his bluff is called and he fails to launch nerve gas on the city of San Francisco.

Jack Nicholson (The Joker in Batman; Col. Jessep in A Few Good Men; Frank Costello in The Departed): Jack gets an honorary "body of work" badass award for continuously entertaining us with evil characters, and for being Jack Nicholson.

Agree? Disagree? Vote for your favorite Bad Ass Bad Guy!

Badass Bad Guys

Over Thanksgiving Weekend, I had the pleasure of watching a movie that is sure to be on everyone's Best Picture radar in the coming months: No Country For Old Men (easily 3 PB Jars). Javier Bardem plays Anton Chigurh, a stone-cold killer in pursuit of a man who accidentally stumbled upon $2 million in drug money. You can't watch Bardem's performance without being reminded of another classic killer on a manhunt: The Terminator. From his emotionless expression to his unfliching gaze to his monotone repetition of questions, Bardem channels Schwarzenegger and, amazingly, makes his badass assasin even scarier.

On that note, here is my ranking of the Top 10 Bad Guy Badasses in movie history. Since "bad guy badass" is somewhat vague, let me try to define this category in more detail. The "bad guy" part is easy: everyone in my list is the primary antagonist of the film. No Snake Plisskens or John McClanes here, though they're definitely badass protagonists. As for "badass", I looked for characters without fear or remorse. The pursue their singular goal relentlessly and by any means necessary. They take a licking and keep on ticking.

I tried to avoid baddies with supernatural powers, though you'll see that a few made my list. I only drew from movies which I've seen, so I'm open to suggestions for additional nominees. When in doubt, I asked myself, "Which of these guys would I least want to meet in a dark alleyway?" Here are my results:

Top 10 Badass Bad Guys

1. The Terminator (The Terminator) - The prototype.
2. Anton Chigurh (No Country For Old Men) - Scarier than most horror movie monsters.
3. The Predator (Predator) - Engages in hand-to-hand combat with Arnold (and kicks his ass).
4. Agent Smith (The Matrix) - Badass in a business suit.
5. Freddy Krueger (Nightmare on Elm Street) - His dark sense of humor elevates him above his horror movie peers.
6. Jules Winnfield (Pulp Fiction) - "And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee..."
7. Hannibal Lecter (Silence of the Lambs) - From creepy to deadly in the time it took for his captors to let down their guard. Killing accompanied by classical music is badass.
8. Riddick (Pitch Black) - Who needs firearms when you have guns.
9. Darth Vader (The Empire Strikes Back) - More of a badass before we knew that crybaby Anakin Skywalker was inside that suit.
10. Gordon Gekko (Wall Street) - Badass in a business suit, part deux. The only non-murderer in the group, but don't underestimate the brutality of a Gekko-led hostile takeover.

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Recently Viewed on DVD

Live Free or Die Hard - Definitely ntertaining, but short on the twists and turns of the previous installements. I'd have to put 1, 3, and 2 (in that order) ahead of Live Free. Justin Long, you are no Zeus. (I even would have settled for Officer Carl Winslow over the Mac poster boy.) 1.5 PB Jars

Sicko - The box claimed this was "Michael Moore's funniest film yet", but I personally thought Bowling for Columbine was funnier and an overall better movie. With Bowling as my touchstone, I'd say that this documentary does a decent job of highlighting a problem in our country, but it fails to evoke as strong an emotional response (despite the sob stories of sick Americans deprived of insurance coverage). Even for a sympathetic liberal, this movie's attempt to make Canadian, European, and Cuban health care look superior to America's proves unconvincing. 1.5 PB Jars

Trailer of the Month: A Rebuttal

If you want to see a great trailer, check out the preview for the new J.J. Abrams project. (If you don't know J.J. by name, I'm sure you're familiar with some of his work: Felicity, Alias, Lost, Mission: Impossible III.)

The title of this movie has purposely been left a mystery. Right now the movie is listed as "01-18-07", the date of its release. Check it out for yourself: http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/11808/

Trailer of the Month

Iron Man has officially become my 2nd most anticipated movie of 2008 (behind The Dark Knight) due entirely to its kickass trailer. Check out the trailer on Iron Man’s website (http://www.ironmanmovie.com/) or by waiting all the way through Transformers on DVD, including the credits, to be taken to a special screen with the Iron Man trailer, among other extras. I recommend going the website route.

Fantastic music, Filter’s "Hey Man, Nice Shot" followed (of course) by the classic riff of Black Sabbath’s "Iron Man," adds to Robert Downey Jr.’s delightfully snarky performance as the title character. Jon Favreau may become a respected director yet!

Free Rice!

Put your vocab knowledge to the test and donate some grains of rice to those who need it at Free Rice.

P - Consider this LSAT prep. My WHS vocab training came through and I topped out at vocab level 43 out of 50.

Highway to Hellraiser

A Halloween Quadruple Feature

Post-Halloween candy sugar rush coma got you down? Fear not, because when you have MonstersHD network and a DVR player, it's Halloween all year long. Without further a do, here's a condensed play-by-play of my recent Halloween Week marathon, featuring one of the classic baddies of American pop culture: Hellraiser's Pinhead.

• 0:00 - As I sit down to begin Clive Barker's Hellraiser (1987), I realize how strange it is that I've never experienced this horror classic. It seems like Pinhead always makes an appearance in those horror movie montages featuring Freddy, Jason, and Michael Myers, but somehow he avoided my Blockbuster queue all these years. I'm watching the opening scene and it's pretty badass. Some dude is sitting on the floor, surrounded by candles and holding a black-and-gold puzzle box. Suddenly the top of the box opens, and as the dude peers inside, four chains shoot out and hook into his chest (to his obvious displeasure). Gross.

• 0:15 - The last 15 minutes were pretty much just exposition. Larry Cotton and his wife Julia move into an old house that belonged to Larry's parents. We soon find out that the gory opening scene took place in the attic of this house, and that Larry's brother Frank was the unfortunate victim. Larry's teenage daughter Kirsty drops by to check out the new pad, but there's definite tension between Kirsty and her stop mother. While the Julia explores the house, she finds some of Frank's photographs and flashes back to a sordid affair with Frank. (In the interest of time, let me skip to the good part.) Larry cuts his hand while moving a mattres and spills blood on the floor of the attic, where the remains of Frank's body lie beneath the floorboards. The fresh blood revives Frank, who goes through an icky resurrection process. I'm guessing this is one of the iconic scenes of the film, though the stop-motion SFX feela little dated now.



• 0:45 - So I'm thinking this would be a good time to start drinking heavily...not that the movie is that scary or gory...well, yes it is pretty gory. Julia's plan to resurrect Frank involves luring sketchy old dudes up to the attic of the house. Frank then takes their skin/body parts/soul (?). I'm guessing this was part of the inspiration for The Mummy (the Brendan Fraser version, of course). At this point, I decide that a couple of (six packs of) beer and some Halloween candy I nabbed from work will help to lighten this viewing experience a bit.



• 1:30 - Wow...That was a great freakin' movie. Really weird, but great. Hellraiser: 2.5 PB Jars



• 3:00 - I just finished Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988), and like most horror sequels, it wasn't much more than a pale imitation of the original. I liked the fact that Julie returned as the resurrected character in this one, and at least they got Kirsty and Pinhead back for the sequel. Also, there's a sweet twist toward the end of the movie, when Pinhead and his demon associates actually do battle against another demon who wants to destroy Kirsty. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" is one of my favorite movie themes and is a staple of horror sequels (example: Blade II, when the humans and vampires unite to battle the Reapers). Downsides of Hellbound: it's pretty much the same plot as the first movie, but everything seems less menacing because it's a re-tread. Also, while the first movie (and the title itself) implies that the demons bring their victims straight to hell, the ending of Hellbound portrays Pinhead and the demons as creatures from another universe, "the Labyrinth." I'm hoping they'll ditch this plot point in the sequels to come. Hellbound: 1.5 PB Jars



• 3:39 - Yo, I'm less than halfway through Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992), but I can already tell it's going to suck. This is definitely the Jaws III of this franchise: different setting than the first two movies, different main character, and the movie shows too damn much of the monster. The longer the monster is on screen, the less scary it is. In just the first 40 minutes, Pinhead has already matched his total screentime from the previous two films.



• 4:10 - Hellraiser III officially jumps the shark when Pinhead attacks an underground dance club and flying compact discs slice into the DJ's head, transforming him into a CD-throwing demon. Riiiight. Then Pinhead and the CD Demon chase the main girl (not Kirsty) down a city street, blowing ish up left and right. Watching ish like this is the reason that B criticizes my movie taste.



• 4:30 - Thankfully the movie has ended. Hellraiser III: 0.5 PB Jar



• 4:35 - Last but not least, it's Hellraiser: Hellseeker (2002). Why am I ignoring Hellraisers IV and V, you ask? You'll have to take that up with the good people at MonstersHD, who decided to skip straight to VI (which, I found out later, was a straight-to-video release). Despite it's questionable credentials, I'm already liking the setup: Kirsty is back (in a secondary role), the lead actor is Dean Winters of Rescue Me and Law & Order semi-fame (pictured, below), and the movie itself is much more of a psychological thriller than a horror film.



• 6:00 - Wow! A great freakin' movie to bookend my Haloween marathon. Amazingly, this may be the BEST of the Hellraiser movies (unless that's just the alcohol and sugar talking.) This movie is a mind trip akin to playing that immensely entertaining Xbox/PS2 game "Max Payne". The viewer experiences the events of the movie through the protagonist's mind, and this subjective POV helps to ratchet up the viewer's curiosity and anxiety. Pinhead's benefits from reduced screentime; the director wisely hints at his presence in many scenes, but does not reveal him until the movie's conclusion. Overall, Hellraiser VI is a great stand-alone movie. It prioritizes intrigue and suspense over gore. You would enjoy it even if you're not a fan of the horror genre and haven't seen the original film. Hellseeker: 2.5 PB Jars