Flickchart’s Greatest Battles

 In which we pit two movies together using flickchart.com, debating their merits or lack thereof.

ROUND ONE

The Silence of the Lambs

VS

The 40 Year Old Virgin

Both The Silence of the Lambs and The 40 Year Old Virgin have been majorly influential in their respective genres. The former helped to launch a franchise and features one of the most recognizable and infamous fictional characters in American history: Hannibal Lector.  The second is one of the funniest movies to come out in the 2000s, and will have a firm place in movie history because it is a milestone in the larger nerd-core movement; the seeds of which were planted back in 1994 when Rivers Cumo and the rest of  Weezer wrote an album about playing Dungeons and Dragons in the garage and looking like Buddy Holly. That album dawned the age of the nerd. Pop culture began to shift away from the cool-guy-jock archetypes like Arthur Fonzerelli and Zack Morris to Seth Cohen and the cast of The Big Bang Theory. The reason The 40 Year Old Virgin is a milestone is because it is the first movie to feature the lead as a real nerd (and he is full on action-figure collecting, Asia loving, friendless-virgin) while at the same time treating the character’s story and person with dignity and telling a story people actually want to hear. That being said, Silence of the Lambs is a better movie. It is superb film making in the way each scene builds just the right amount of tension to the titanic performances by Anthony Hopkins, Jodie Foster, and that guy who played Buffalo Bill whom I still have nightmares about.-SR

Winner: Silence of the Lambs

ROUND TWO

The Bourne Ultimatum

VS

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

 Matt Damon returns and punches people out for being jerks. He’s a badass for the majority of the film, and explains stuff that people on the internet were crying about from the first two films. Yes, the first of the Bourne films had plot and enough action for you to believe that yes, Bourne is a trained assassin. Ultimatum deviates from this, and supplies a lot of action and enough plot for you to believe that, yes, this is a movie that is slightly more high-brow than a Steven Seagal film.

Harrison Ford and his never ending quest to make more money leads to a shitty film about aliens. Karen Allen was nice enough to come back (yay!) and then they cast Shia LaBeouf (no!) as Indy’s son? The majority of persons who have seen this film have repressed most memories in order to preserve the character of Indiana Jones from the previous three films. Sure, Indy is used to getting out by the skin of his teeth from boulders and Nazis, but what about nuclear refrigerators and inter-dimensional beings?

Okay, so the Ark melts people apart and the world rejoices. “Kali Ma” and friends was a great ride, even though we can agree that it’s stupid and overtly racist. “Dr. Jones! You’re my best friend!” Thanks Short Round. And drinking from a cup dusts bad guys, because they don’t know which has the Jesus Juice. We, the viewers and lovers of Indy, want to see the outlandish. We want to see things that are unbelievable. Things that will be locked away and researched by “top men.” What emotion did you feel when you see a flying saucer disappear over a collapsing temple? Confusion, swiftly followed by anger, then booze, in efforts to repress the memory of this film. I’m sorry to open old wounds.

This may seem like a forum to shit on Indiana 4; there may be some truth to that. Why not just have Scully and Mulder explain the alien phenomena at the end? What was the other film? That one wins.-TA

Winner: The Bourne Ultimatum