Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Top 10 Drug Films

This is just a list of personal favorites

10. A Clockwork Orange

This is as brutal as it can get. Any director would match the violence with a pace in the editing and the soundtrack. Not here, Alex sings "singing in the rain" while bashing up people, calmly goes about ripping the clothes of girls, and makes people suffer slowly. The film promises ultraviolence, and delivers it, a cocktail of milk and narcotics; of rape and beethoven. If you like this film, also catch 2001:A Space Odyssey, nothing really to do with drugs, but the odyssey part in the end, with the intergalactic travel is a visual treat.

09. Blow

Like most American drug films, the film has an upper and a downer. Based on the real life story of George Jung, the film shows the ins and outs of those involved in the Cocaine Business, from the Meddelin Cartel to the famous columbian druglord, Escobar. Jhonny Depp plays the role of the dealer, who starts with weed and graduates to cokem and then to prison.

08. Easy Rider

The director and the actor were mostly stoned or drunk throughout the making of the film, and the story follows two bikers across the American Southwest. It is a simple film, pointing out the mundane realities of freedom, a film that will really open up your mind to a lot of things (like Aliens). This movie is from more or less the same bunch of guys who made 'the trip'. The climax sequence is a montage that will blow you away.

07. Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas

The scene above is a bar full of reptiles. Jhonny Depp plays a reporter who goes into Nevada to cover the terribly long Hell's Angles motorcycle race with his lawyer friend. They are on a high the whole time: "We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a saltshaker half-full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, laughers, screamers... Also, a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether, and two dozen amyls". The sequence in a Las Vegas circus is probably the best ten minutes of cinema ever.

06. Reefer Madness

The movie is a classic drug film, no film has managed to show the uselessness of a dope fiend, or a 'marihuana' addict more exploitatively than this film. The film is liable to make anyone scared of dope. What is even funnier is that the so called high school teenagers experimenting with the drug, look like today's uncles and aunts. Connects the drug to crime, probably the first film to do so.

05. Requiem for a Dream

The film has far more cuts than any other film, the creator of the hip hop montage, the film is a downer all the way. The background score compliments the film perfectly, and Aronofsky uses a bunch of techniques to perfection. Scared the hell out of America when it was released, and has made a lot of people quit.

04. The Trip

The film came up with the montage that makes requiem so appealing a few decades ahead of its time. The film shows a hallucinatory expirience of just one LSD trip (Peter Fonda again), and is compelete with dwarfs, disembodied hands of little children, and beautiful women overlayed with multicolored patterns.

03. The Wonderland Expirience

Shot entirely in Goa, this film follows a young man's journey in discovering his individual spirituality. Another film that will open people's minds about a lot of ideas. Charlie, the protagonist is lost in some unspecefied land and meets a series of people who guide him in the search for his father. The climax of the film has an unforgettable twist, a very weird and enjoyable film.

02. Trainspotting

The film follows Mark Renton (Ewan McGregor) and his bunch of heroin-addict friends. Exteremely stylish editing, combined with a sometimes hilarious-sometimes horrifying storyline, makes it a film that can be watched over and over again.

01. The Yellow Submarine

Follow the yellow submarine on its voyage through the seas of time, science, monsters, nothing, heads and holes. There is a healthy dose of beatles songs, a singular message "All you need is love", and the entry of all the four beatles will forever be etched in your minds. It is an animated film like no ther, with a unique use of lines and colors.

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