A Few Of My Favorite Things is a series that appears most weekends on Driven By Boredom. Each week I talk about three of my favorite things from a specific genre of film, music, or something else all together. Each favorite thing is accompanied by a video and a description of why it is one of my favorite things. Click here for more favorites.

I have a handful of movies that I break out when I really need to impress someone. If I think someone is really amazing, I invite them over and watch some insanely twisted movie with me that I know will blow them away. 9 times out of 10 it is an Asian Extreme film… Battle Royale or maybe something by Takashi Miike or Park Chan Wook. It was hard to narrow films down to just three… I figure too many people know Battle Royale, and not everyone can appreciate a film like Salo or the 45 minute rape scene in I Spit On Your Grave… and speaking of rape scenes, Irreversible is not a film I want to watch over and over again so showing that to people is sort of out. I can usually judge a persons character by how much they appreciate Wayne’s World (unless they are really young… or really old) so that spends a lot of time in my DVD player. But, when I really thought about it, I came up with three films that I show people over and over again, that have never failed to fuck up the minds of the friends and well wishers I invite over. Keep reading to find out the top 3 films that you need to bump to the top of your Netflix queue.

1. Wild Zero – 2000
If I am pressed for a favorite movie of all time, this is usually the film I give. It is seriously the most mind blowing thing ever. In 2001 my friend Adam found a bootleg VHS tape of Wild Zero at a used record store. He had no idea what it was but it had bad engrish on the box and the tag line was “rock and roll JET movie”. I was over one day and he put in the last 30 minutes of it. I was blown away. I immediately ordered a bootleg VHS off the internet and bought one for my brother. A few years later it came out in the US on DVD (complete with drinking game) and I have purchased it for several of my friends as gifts. Anyway… to explain this movie would be impossible, so I will just list some of the amazing things that it features: rock and roll, zombies, space aliens, exploding heads, transvestites, rock and roll, magical whistles, super human drug dealers that shoot lasers out of their eyes, Japan’s legendary Guitar Wolf, exploding guitar picks, and rock and roll. For those who don’t know about Guitar Wolf, they are said to have recorded an album so loud that even on the lowest volume it is still very fucking loud. They are amazing, this movie is amazing, and your face may in fact melt if you see it. So, use caution, but see this movie NOW.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2WvVGr9PkU[/youtube]

Man Bites Dog – 1992
Another strange occurrence led me to witnessing this movie before it had received much attention in the US. A few of my friends went on a school trip to France and they were watching French TV and this documentary about a French serial killer came on. It was in French, so they didn’t really know what was going on, but they knew it was insane. They somehow figured out the name of the film and tracked down a VHS copy with English subtitles. As soon as they got back they showed it to me and I finally tracked down my own copy from this cult video rental place called Video Vault. The film is a fake documentary about a very charming serial killer who befriends the film crew and through out the movie pulls them deeper and deeper into his world. The film is extremely realistic and you can forget that what you are watching is fake. The movie is both hilarious and sinisterly dark. The film feels very Blair Witch and has a very similar ending, making me wonder how much Blair Witch was influenced by the film. Also, luckily for you Criterion has released the film in the US making it extremely easy for you to get a copy. It also has possibly the greatest DVD box art I have ever seen. Seriously, see this movie, it is intense to say the least.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oi5rmt-gucs[/youtube]

3. Trapped In The Closet: Chapters 1-12 – 2005
When my brother told me I had to see 12 R Kelly videos I thought he was out of his fucking mind. After I watched two of them I was hooked. This tends to be the exact same reaction that everyone has. When I first got my DVD copy of the first 12 chapters of R Kelly’s opus I brought it over to a house party that my friend Alex invited me to. I didn’t know anyone but him, but he had talked up my taste in movies and told me to bring over something fucked up. Instead of one of the movies above, I pulled out Trapped. When I got there only Alex had any interest in watching it. A few people stayed in the living room as we put it on, but most people gathered around the kitchen drinking and playing cards. About 3 chapters in, every single person in that house was gathered around the TV like it was a car accident. Many of those people at that apartment became close friends of mine in the following years. This movie connects people. These films are so funny that maybe even R Kelly is in on the joke… but you wouldn’t know it from his absolutely moronic audio commentary, where instead of you just listening to him talk, you actually have to watch him, watching the movie. Trapped is brilliant on like 4 levels. There are all these allusions to Hitchcock and each chapter ends in such ridiculous fashion. Seriously every bit of the movie is laugh out loud funny, all the way to the credits. Chapters 13-22 were somewhat disappointing, but it was pretty fucking hard to live up to the first 45 minutes of sheer genius that R Kelly brought to the screen. Even the Independent Film Channel is in on the joke as they had a 2 hour special showing all the chapters and released them all for free on their website. So you can watch them online for free right this very second. If you don’t believe me, just watch the first few chapters below and see if you aren’t instantly hooked. I dare you.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCXlCkY4Y5g[/youtube]

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