"Top 10 Movies I Love That Most People Hate" By Jason Anders

10. "Defending Your Life"
A movie written and directed by Albert Brooks about the afterlife, sort of the comedy version of What Dreams May Come, makes number ten on my list not because most people hate it, but because I only know one other person in my life who has even heard of it. I saw this movie in 7th grade and tried showing it to my friends- Who knew that seventh graders weren't ready to find humor in Judgment Day? If Judgment City really does exist, I think we can certainly count on seeing Shirley MacLaine there.

9. "Some Kind of Wonderful"
As a lover of eighties movies, no one understands more that most films from that decade can be at best embarrassing to watch- This is not one of those movies. It feels like cheesy 80s as the opening credits role, with Mary Stuart Masterson banging away on the drums, and the movie probably could have done without not one but TWO songs about Lea Thompson's character, Amanda Jones. Those minor details aside, the dialogue by John Hughes ranks with the best modern teen comedy scripts like Juno. In fact, one of Hughes's biggest fans is Jason Reitman. Those who have given Hughes's movies a chance can see clearly why.

8. "Species"
There's nothing more exciting for a hormonal middle school sci-fi geek than an alien movie where the monster is played by a sex-crazed Natasha Henstridge whose goal in the film is to have a baby. What is most intriguing about the story is that you find yourself rooting for a murderous monster who you are also fantasizing about. Roger Ebert rightfully proclaimed this wasn't 2001: A Space Odyssey or Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and if the movie could have been more subtle it could have pulled off being a modern day Frankenstein. Any movie that stars Michael Madsen as a hitman should never be held to that standard. This is the kind of movie where you see a woman's spine ripped out of her back while she's on the toilet. She had it coming. Sort of.

7. "The Frighteners"
The movie was too tame for fans of Peter Jackson's earlier work like Dead Alive and Bad Taste, and it was too bizarre for the mainstream audience with which it was designed for. I still remember seeing the 3-D movie poster in the theater lobby when I was a kid, and my dad standing over my shoulder forewarning me that I wouldn't be allowed to see it. How often do you get to see Michael J. Fox as a modern-day Ghostbuster, battling the mom from E.T. and Gary Busey's son? Be sure to watch the director's cut of this movie, it's superior. Come to think of it, the first half of the movie is like an R-rated Casper.

6. "Breathless"
This movie had no chance. The only people willing to give this a chance now are cinephiles, and they'll be the first to condemn it for even attempting to remake Godard's classic film- But I think this movie is more enjoyable than the original. Richard Gere is hilarious and Valérie Kaprisky is more charming than Jean Seberg. However, this isn't a movie to compare with À bout de souffle- I love the original and never even think of the two existing in the same universe. They can't. Don't compare them. Don't condemn this movie. It's pure fun.

5. "Vanilla Sky"
I fell in love with this movie while sitting in the theaters. Everything about it grabbed me emotionally, like connecting with a truly great record unexpectedly. The first words I heard when the closing credits began to roll were, "Well, that sucked." Why do people hate this movie? Because it's a horrific new-age science fiction thriller disguised as a romantic comedy. It challenges us to question our own selfish desires for money, sex, and vanity while ignoring the things in life that truly matter- Love, friendship, and family. I was shocked to discover how many people loved Inception after seeing this movie slammed so hard. I guess it just took nine years for people to adapt to the idea of a movie about dreams.

4. "Elizabethtown"
Vanilla Sky wasn't the only Cameron Crowe movie to make my top 10 most hated list- Elizabethtown had far more potential to be liked by the average movie goer, but I'm convinced that it was more ill-received than Vanilla Sky. Why? I truly don't know. Cameron Crowe bared his soul with his autobiographical Almost Famous, and he returns to that in this film, but attempts to tell his story in the style of a Billy Wilder movie. It's about finding ways to connect with people, even when it seems to be too late, such as with a deceased father. Two years earlier was a film with a familiar theme, Tim Burton's Big Fish, which I found highly annoying but everyone else seemed to love. The typical reason given for despising this movie is being annoyed by the performances of the actors. I, however, found them delightful. It's no Say Anything, but it's classic Crowe.

3. "From Dusk Till Dawn"
This is not a movie I am shocked to discover people hated- It takes a certain breed to enjoy this sleazy exploitation tribute to Grindhouse cinema. This movie premiered long before Tarantino and Rodriguez made "Grindhouse" a household name, and even that project was ill-received. Here they outdo even themselves in an attempt to make the raunchiest vampire movie in history. Tarantino brings back legendary 1970s actors to help slay demons from hell such as Fred Williamson and Tom Savini. This was George Clooney's first movie, and Harvey Keitel received top-billing as a minister who has lost his faith after the death of his wife to an automobile accident. The genius of the movie is that we hang out with the key players for the first half, and we forget that there is even the potential of monsters showing up. The only tragedy is that we lose one of the main characters before the fighting really begins, and it's someone I would have loved to see in the situations that developed after their death. The script by Quentin Tarantino is up there with his best, despite the lowbrow and bloody subject matter.

2. "Jaws 3-D"
First off, this is not a sequel to Jaws. Comparing it to Spielberg's original immediately destroys your chances of enjoying it. Secondly, it is meant to be seen in 3-D sometime after midnight in a rowdy downtown movie theater with intoxicated teenagers, not in its VHS format in your living room. However, that is how I first viewed it. When I was a kid, seeing the Jaws movies lining the walls of video stores was in itself exciting, they just seemed off-limits for some reason. My first viewing of Jaws 3-D stands out more in my mind than any of the others, if only for that floating severed fish head. My sister was terrified of The Living Seas at EPCOT Center thanks to this movie, as it takes place in Sea World. The 3-D shots looks awful on DVD, but if you can find a bootleg copy of the 3-D print, it's really not that bad considering the technology back then. Richard Matheson, a key writer from The Twilight Zone, wrote the script, but was unhappy with the "doctoring" that was done with his work and disliked the film. It's campy. It also stars Lea Thompson, and the movie was parodied in Back to the Future: Part II. "The shark still looks fake."

1. "Psycho III"
Norman Bates is back to normal, but Mother is off her rocker again. That was the tagline for the second sequel to Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (a running theme in this list seems to be horror movies and sequels, maybe my next list will be a little more diverse.) Anthony Perkins actually took up the role as director for this film, and he turned it into a black comedy. Certain scenes from this film never leave your mind; like the sheriff chomping on bloody ice cubes pulled from the cooler where a girl's dead body is buried while he interrogates Norman, or Jeff Fahey playing guitar in the corner of a dark room next to the corpse of Mrs. Bates while Woody Woodpecker plays on the television set. There's also a very bizarre sex scene which would benefit from being cut from every print of this film. If the premise of Psycho isn't strange enough, this time it's a love story between Norman and a nun on the run who just failed at committing suicide and instead accidentally murdered a fellow sister. If that's not enough, she's slandered, nearly raped, and left for dead on the side of the road after being picked up by a hitchhiker. She also has the likeness of Janet Leigh, and gives Norman flashbacks of murdering the 1960s shower victim. Remember that shovel scene in Psycho II? This time we get to see Bates beat someone to death with an acoustic guitar, swim the dirty swamp where all of his victims are buried, and in the creepiest of moments, see he him cut the head off of his dead mother... while dressed as his mother! This movie is messed up. It's no wonder I turned out the way that I did.