The Room (2003): Johnny is a successful banker who lives happily in a San Francisco townhouse with his fiancée, Lisa. One day, inexplicably, she gets bored with him and decides to seduce his best friend, Mark. From there, nothing will be the same again.

Look at that IMDB description. LOOK AT IT. Doesn't that make you want to drop everything and see it? It's so engaging! I just love how they felt the need to add the word "inexplicably" in that description. It's completely unnecessary, but it's still.....mysteriously beautiful. Actually, that's a great way to describe The Room: completely unnecessary, yet mysteriously beautiful. This film is routinely referred to as "the best worst movie ever made," and I can see why. It's TERRIBLE, in every facet, but you will be rolling on the floor laughing at just how bad it is. I figured I would take a minute to talk about this film with The Disaster Artist going nationwide this week, because that's as good an excuse as any to talk about this cult classic. It's no wonder this film is a favorite among certain circles. This movie is a GREAT party watch, which has led to many theaters having sold-out midnight screenings of it to this day. If you've never done one of those and you like The Room......oh boy do you need to change that. I was lucky enough to see this film for the first time in a midnight screening, and it is honestly one of the best movie watching experiences I have ever had. You haven't seen The Room until you see it like this. No wonder people see it in the theater dozens of times. But how does one analyze it? How has this film lived on and garnered so much attention to the point that there's an Oscar-worthy making of film coming out about it right now? These are some really good questions that I don't know the answer to right now. Let me go out and toss a football to myself and get back to you beautiful people. 

Ok I know that was a frisbee and not a football but just go with it, ok? Whatever. I don't care. 

So now that I'm back from tossing my frisbee I MEAN FOOTBALL, let's talk about The Room! I have seen some pretty terrible movies in my life. Heck for my 10,000/100,000 view specials I reviewed Manos: The Hands of Fate and Night of the Lepus respectively.  But those movies are so bad they're unwatchable. This film, however, is an absolute blast to watch. Why is that? It's hard to find a rational explanation for why The Room is a significantly better a viewing experience than something like Night of the Lepus. Why does The Room garner massive midnight screenings while Birdemic (to list another of the historically awful films out there) does not? I think it starts with the allure and (to this day) shroud of mystery that surrounds the director, writer, producer, financier, and lead actor of The Room​, the legendary Tommy Wiseau.

So do me a solid and look at that picture real quick. That is Tommy Wiseau's official headshot on IMDB. You can spend hours and hours on IMDB and not find a more ugly picture of an actor anywhere. Even John Reynolds, the....uhhhh..... actor that was allegedly high on LSD during the entire filming of Manos: The Hands of Fate just doesn't have a picture of himself on IMDB! And yet there's Wiseau's horrifically disheveled face. Right there for the world to see. We know criminally little about Wiseau and where he came from, but legend has it that he spent five million dollars of his own money to self-finance The Room. How did he get that money? Why did he come to Hollywood and try and be an actor when he had enough money to finance his own movie? He has to be well off if he has five million dollars lying around to blow. How did he look at this and say, "Sure. This looks good. Let's release it to the world!" Who knows. We may never know. This man is so mysterious that his Wikipedia page has to quote a Howard Stern interview he did this year in which he says he can speak French and is Catholic for his "Personal Life" section. In an age where we know absolutely everything about every major star, and tabloid journalists follow actors around like hawks scouring for the latest scandal, the ability of Tommy Wiseau to still, to this day, remain a complete mystery is unprecedented. It tears me apart, man! I just want to know more about him!

It also helps, in building the allure of Wiseau, that for me personally, his performance in The Room is, simply put, the worst performance I have ever seen in a movie. Everything about this performance is awful. He switches tone with his character on a dime for no explicable reason! One second he's furious at Lisa, the next it's "Oh hi, Mark!" in a playful, excited tone. When a kid he's supposedly a mentor to tells him he's in love with his fiance, (did you know Lisa is soon to be his wife?) he responds with, "Go on." He yells at himself in a very unconvincing way, then suddenly says "Oh hi, Mark!" And his laugh. His laugh is so. Just so. Freaking. Bad. It is the best worst laugh in the history of Hollywood cinema. ALSO. He also has no control over his hands and other extremities. Also this. Ricky Bobby would be proud.

The other actors in this film aren't that great, but dear GOD they look like superstars next to Wiseau. And yet.....I still love this performance. There's just something so lovable about Tommy Wiseau. He's terrible, but he's still trying to live his dream in this movie, and that's something I can respect. Heck that's something a lot of people can't say. He's just really, REALLY bad at it in a great way.

Outside of Tommy Wiseau, there are just a lot of problems with this movie. Problems with the script, (what about Lisa's mom having breast cancer? Or that drug deal that goes south with Denny?) problems with the set, (throws spoons in the air) and problems with character actions, (and they enter and exit and play football and enter and exit.....) to name a few. But you already knew that. You wait for these moments and the famous moments of the script because even though they're terrible......they're still awesome in a mysteriously beautiful way. Miiiiiiiiinus the soft-core porn sections littered throughout the film. Those are just baaaaaaaaaaaad. This film comes in at 99 minutes long, but it really feels like at least 20 minutes of that is just soft porn. Oh ya! Also, also.... some of this film isn't even in focus! Oh! And the audio gets de-synced a few times! Wiseau and company failed in SPECTACULAR fashion in every facet of filmmaking with The Room. It's really quite amazing how thoroughly someone can fail at something, but you won't care. You'll be laughing along every step of the way. Despite its epic failure, Tommy Wiseau and his lovable cast of misfits managed to craft a movie that is a timeless classic. A movie that still brings people together almost 15 years later. I have to give this film a 1/10 because yes. It is terrible. But there's no doubt this is the strongest 1/10 I can ever hand out. Now I sure do hope that Lisa's mom is doing ok.....

The Critique: The best worst movie ever made, The Room is a lovable, timeless classic that still brings people together 15 years later to marvel at how much someone can so completely and utterly fail in every aspect of filmmaking.

The Recommendation: It gets a 1/10, but I will still call this movie an absolute must see for everyone. Because it is. Somehow.

Rewatchability: High

The Verdict: 1/10 Lovably horrific
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Titanic (1997): A seventeen-year-old aristocrat falls in love with a kind but poor artist aboard the luxurious, ill-fated R.M.S. Titanic.

For those who don't know, I consider Titanic to be one of the films that made me realize my love for movies. It's a true modern Hollywood epic, coming in at a whooping 194 minutes, and features one of the most exhilarating hours of cinema (the sinking of the Titanic) I have ever seen. It's amazing that this film still holds up extremely well 20 years later, but that's thanks largely to the fact that director James Cameron and his crew basically rebuilt the Titanic from the ground up, then sunk it using practical effects. THAT SAID. Before you just assume I'm gonna gush about this film in this review and thus should be entirely discredited, this film is FAR from perfect. So no, as much as I may love this film, it is FAR from perfect.

Let's start with the bad first, because otherwise you may not believe me when I say I have issues with this film. The biggest problem with Titanic, by FAR, is the love story. It's not great. When you have something as dramatic as the Titanic sinking on screen it's not an issue at all, but in the second act of this film (before the iceberg) there's not a whole lot for us to go on other than this story. As a result there's a lot of cringe-inducing dialogue in this second act. Leonardo DiCaprio is one of the top actors in modern history, but even he struggles with some of these lines. The scene where he pulls Rose out from a tour of the ship and tries to blurt out a monologue of his love for her is......bad. It's just bad writing. Additionally, even though she was (somehow) nominated for an Oscar, there are several scenes in this film where Kate Winslet REALLY struggles. She's a great actress, no doubt, but this performance is not that good. Well, let me rephrase that. She's pretty good in the first and third acts, but in the second act she, like DiCaprio, really struggle with the material they are given. Her struggles are just a bit more obvious. The two of them really don't have any chemistry, either. But I think most of this can be traced back to Cameron's borderline awful dialogue. Fortunately there are a couple of sequences in the second act like the third class dance party that break up this monotony, but otherwise the second is bad to the point that it is nearly unwatchable. Also, Billy Zane's character Cal doesn't hold up very well now, as he definitely comes off as a bit of a cartoon-y 90s villain. But it's Billy Zane, and as we know Billy Zane does what he wants. Also, Jack's friends Fabrizio and Tommy really aren't given much to do here, which is saying something (especially for Fabrizio) when he literally runs on the ship with Jack and this movie is 3+ hours long. Probably would have been for the best had we gotten more scenes of the three of them versus scenes of Jack + Rose. Finally! There are some scenes here where Cameron just couldn't help himself and did his best Michael Bay impersonation. Most notably, when the first column of the ship falls on Fabrizio. (Don't cry spoiler this movie is 20 years old I can do what I want haha) Did we REALLY need to see that? Really? Did we really need to see people falling into the ship as it splits in two with a whole bunch of random explosions? These shots are a tad distracting in the otherwise exhilarating third act, but that still does not change the fact that the third act of this movie is one of the most exhilarating hours of cinema ever filmed.

Let's start there with the good, because that third act (the sinking) is the obvious centerpiece of this film. If you have no idea how this film was made, you really should change that, because it's incredible. This crew basically rebuilt the Titanic, inside and out, and then sunk it in a controlled environment. The fact that they really did recreate the sinking of the Titanic using practical effects makes this entire sequence that much more real. Heck, this film looks better than some other modern-day films because of it! (Looks at Justice League) This whole sequence is incredible, from the ship striking the iceberg to Titanic's final plunge into the ocean. And, despite how epic it feels, Cameron somehow manages takes the time to have some wonderfully intimate moments spread throughout it. I still rock the ugly cry every time we get to the "Nearer, My God to Thee" sequence. It's a beautiful moment in the middle of all this chaos, and it's easily my favorite sequence of the entire film. (And one of my favorite sequences ever, for that matter.) A director, Cameron included, being willing to risk adding a sequence like this into the climax of their big budget film has been lost in modern Hollywood, which makes me really sad. Additionally, there are really strong performances from Kathy Bates and Frances Fisher. These actresses play "the unsinkable" Molly Brown and Ruth Dewitt Bukater respectively, and man are they awesome. I was freaking stoked when I saw Kathy Bates in The Boss a few years back just because of her role here in Titanic. I don't think I've seen Fisher in hardly anything else which is unfortunate because her performance as Rose's mom is the best performance of the entire film! Also, every member of the White Star Line is awesome, even the extras that only have a few lines. There are a LOT of members of White Star Line, and I love all of them, even Mr. Fantastic. Finally, I have to hit on the technical departments, because there's no doubt Cameron's crew hit it out of the part on nearly all of these. The costumes are amazing. I cannot even begin to imagine how expensive the costume budget was for this film, because not only do Rose and her mom wear some exquisite costumes throughout the film, but all the extras in the background do as well! I can't imagine how expensive the costumes were in some of those first class party sequences. No wonder they won an Oscar. And no wonder they won an Oscar for the production design! Though when you rebuild an entire ship, inside and out, then sink it, that Oscar is kind of inevitable. But geez great job to the production crew for rebuilding the Titanic, then being totally ok with their lives as James Cameron destroyed it. FINALLY, we have to talk about the score. The late James Horner has a lot of great scores to his name, but his score for Titanic is undoubtedly his best. This film's score is in my top 10 favorite scores of all-time, with iconic theme after iconic theme. Yes, the Celine Dion's "My Heart will Go On" is VERY 90s, but the rest of this score is pretty timeless, with Horner's "Hymm to the Sea" being synonymous with both the film and the Titanic disaster itself. And the song in the third class party is easily the best moment of that otherwise monotonous second ac, and we only have Horner to thank for that.

So.....there you have it. Yes, I still gush over the third act of this film, (I didn't really touch on it but there's a lot to like in the first act, too. Most notably the fact that they got permission to film the actual Titanic sea disaster in the early sequences somehow) but this movie is still 3 hours long, and that middle hour has some borderline unwatchable moments thanks to a weak script. But the production value, practical effects, score, costumes, and "Nearer, My God to Thee" still make this a great film, and one that I know I will still be watching 50 years from now. (It will probably still hold up then, too) Happy 20th anniversary to one of the films that helped me fall in love with cinema!

The Critique: Despite a monotonous second act, Titanic​ features some of the most exhilarating and gut-wrenching sequences ever put to film that still manages to look better than many modern films thanks to its incredible production design and practical effects.

The Recommendation: If you've somehow never seen this film....well you already know you need to change that so don't mind me.

Rewatchability: High

The Verdict: 8/10 Great 

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