This gem from 1990 breaks all the rules. It has nothing in common with the first movie: there are no characters in common, the setting is totally different, and most striking, it has nothing to do with trolls. The bad guys in Troll 2 are goblins that terrorize a family in a small town called Nilbog. Making a sequel that has nothing to do with the first movie was a dramatic departure from the traditional way of making movies in Hollywood. It was such a dramatic change, in fact, that no film maker has been so daring as to do it ever again.

The acting in Troll 2 is spectacular. It’s a crime that none of these actors have been awarded for their work in this amazing movie. Darrin Ewing, in particular, stands out. The scene where he watches as the girl he met running through the woods turns into green goo and is devoured by a gang of horrifying goblins is especially terrifying. His reaction is intense and real: “They’re eating her! And then they’re going to eat me! OH MY GAAAAAAAAAAWD!” This scene was so intense, I had to turn away. Chilling. Watch it here if you dare:

But that’s not even the most impressive scene of the movie. When the hero, played by the always fantastic Michael Stephenson, sees the town sign reflected in a car’s side mirror and shouts: “Nilbog! It’s goblin spelled backwards! This is their kingdom!” I was floored. What a treacherous bunch of bastards, these goblins are.

I implore you to watch Troll 2 if you want to know what true terror is. It’s definitely the greatest sequel of all time. It might just be the greatest movie of all time.

The first time I watched Congo, I was a jaded horror movie loving preteen, who, after watching Freddy Krueger eat screaming meatball heads, wasn’t at all impressed by a few monkeys with lasers on their heads. Now, thirteen years later and a whole lot more jaded, I can enjoy Congo for what it is: a stunning cinematic achievement.

The plot has something to do with killer gorillas in some country in Africa (I forget where exactly) and Sean from “Nip/Tuck” has a perm and Tim Curry’s some kind of evil gypsy with a weird accent and they’re all scared of the monkeys. Mix all this together and you have a recipe for amazing.

Exhibit A
Sean from “Nip/Tuck” is about to get mugged by a silverback and instead of flailing his arms and running away or punching the damn monkey in its stupid monkey face, he submissively lowers his eyes, appeasing the mugger silverback. The resident monkey expert is impressed by his monkey know-how, and Sean from “Nip/Tuck” replies, “I know. I’ve read the books.” But you don’t have to take my word for it!

Exhibit B
Apparently the producers blew all their money on robot monkeys (who can afford real monkeys now that they’ve got a union?) so they had to film a scene on the Universal Studios boat ride. But instead of Jaws attacking the boat, it’s Jaws with a hippo head on it attacking the boat. Terror ensues!

Exhibit C
The evil robot monkeys–you can tell they’re evil because they’ve got white fur, one of this movie’s many insightful criticisms of colonialism in Sub-Saharan Africa–are zombie wrestlers! After leg sweeping and clotheslining the humans, they eat them. And BAM! There it goes. My mind is blown.

All I really needed to know I learned from Congo: Never trust a robot monkey.

I remember when Mission: Impossible 2 came out I’d gone to the theater to see 28 Days starring the always fabulous Sandra Bullock, but it was sold out so I decided to see the new Tom Cruise movie instead. I bought an extra box of Jujubes to cheer myself up and prepared myself for two hours of Tom Cruise’s gross long hair. But to my surprise, Tom’s greasy hair looked great in slow motion, which is a good thing because this movie was almost entirely slow motion. His hair looked particularly good during the car chase between him and his female costar, which ended when her car spun out of control and, in order to save her from going off a cliff, Tom crashed his car into the side of hers and the two cars spun in slow motion circles together while Tom and the woman looked into each other’s eyes and tango music played on the soundtrack. Slow motion cars tangoing? I was sold!

John Woo is the master of slow motion: slow motion greasy hair, slow motion trench coats, slow motion guns, guns, and more guns. You want slow motion? John Woo’s on it. It’s thanks to Woo’s use of slow motion that I learned about a property of physics that I’d never known. Apparently if you’re on a beach and a bad guy’s about to shoot you but you’re defenseless because you’ve dropped your gun in the sand, you can kick the gunand it will fly straight up into the air in slow motion so that you can grab it and shoot the bad guy. Maybe scientists should take a cue from John Woo and use more slow motion in their studies.

Biologists, especially, would benefit from using John Woo’s slow motion technique. Scientists who study birds wouldn’t even have to conduct their own studies: they could just watch John Woo’s movies to study the flight patterns of white doves flying in front of the camera right before a tense slow motion gun battle.

John Woo’s craft is clearly on display in his best movie ever, Face/Off. It takes a certain kind of director to dare to use two of today’s most talented actors, the masterful John Travolta and the incredible Nicolas Cage. At the end of the movie, these two realistic and multi-dimensional characters, having switched faces with each other, are engaged in a fierce slow motion gun battle when they end up on opposite sides of a mirrored wall. After several tense slow motion moments, the two men swoosh around in slow motion and shoot at their reflections in the mirror, which reflect back not their own faces, but the faces of their enemies. Simply incredible. John Woo will undoubtedly be forever remembered as the world’s greatest director of slow motion movies.

Before I continue, I have a few things that I must get off my chest: Modern technology is being threatened by a seemingly innocuous and decidedly archaic form of entertainment: The book. Yes, those dusty concentrations of pulp that seem to occupy your parents’ rogue bookshelf are on the loose, and they threaten to change the world in which we wish to know: A world devoid of technology-less outlets of learning. Just when I thought that Amazon’s Kindle had the future in its grasp (that being a world without books), Stephenie Meyer had to go and eff it all up.

When I take a long and concerted look at the cover of Meyer’s maiden tale, I see nothing more than fear-mongering propaganda at its most sophisticated. What strikes the book cover reader first is the contrast between light and dark: The pale, almost specter-like hands, reaching into the light to offer a delicious red fruit are juxtaposed by a deep, rich, and eerily comforting blackness. Clearly, it doesn’t take a literate scholar to conclude that this is a tale of albinos, organic produce, and the inability to pay one’s electric bill.

But like few other book covers, Meyer’s Twilight attempts to draw the reader deeper into the intricacies of the dust cover. The reader is forced to ask: Is that a Gala Apple? A muted red delicious? Could it be a crimson plum? To assume that the delectable treat is a metaphor for the forbidden fruit is presumptuous at worst and at best, offensive. More likely, these pale hands have just caught the fruit, which was thrown by an anonymous individual.

It is easy to be drawn to the cover’s rich tapestry, but be not deceived: The hand that wishes to feed you probably has little teeth that want to bite you. Meyer is by no means your typical Babysitter’s Club-grade novelist; rather, if Beverly Cleary’s work was a Cézanne, Meyer’s would most definitely be a Jackson Pollock: unrehearsed, lathered on in an intoxicated, angst-filled stupor.

How might the book cover end? Well, as with any horizon that is on fire with the rays of the setting sun, dusk ensues, followed by darkness. You put the pieces together.

For 22 months, I have had a copy of J.K. Rowling’s “Extraordinary New York Times Bestseller” Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone hibernating on my bookshelf between Lord of the Flies and Chicken Soup for the Recreational Vegan’s Soul. One could say that the book and I go way back. After a year and a half of avoiding this book and all it may or may not have stood for, I felt the time had come to begin my project. The Harry Potter Project. As I pulled the book from its place, disturbing the spider webs, dust, and unpaid cell phone bills that had come to rest on and around the book, I knew at that moment that I was embarking on an odyssey of Scholastic proportions.

Upon first glance, the magic of this book cover takes immediate hold. The front depicts an intrepid young adolescent, most certainly the buzz-word-worthy “Harry,” adorned in Benneton’s Fall Sport-Casual line (even Hogwarts can’t escape product placement), flying (yes, flying. I found this to be a tad incredulous) with a broomstick. He appears to be retrieving some sort of Nerf-inspired handball as it is falling to the Earth. The first sentence of the back cover, however, stresses that “Harry Potter has never played a sport while flying on a broomstick.” I find this direct and dare I say, audacious contrast between pictorial and written depiction to be, at the heart of it, the genius behind Rowling’s craft.

Essentially, the entire book is a canvas of contrasts. Light and dark. Good and evil. Closeted passion for arena football and junk diving in the Hudson. Brooms and vacuum cleaners. Unicorns and genetically modified produce. Rowling captures these contrasts and immediately unleashes them with lyrical authority, leaving the reader intoxicated with her tonic of prosetic prowess. But like any finished canvas, there exists hidden layers, not revealed to the even partially-clad eye. One is only offered a muted glimpse of Harry’s dark past, forcing the reader to both pity and question the motivation and heart of this young protagonist. Again, contrast. One mustn’t, however make the assumption that this is a story of regret. Above all, it is a story of hope. And flying broomsticks. And a frolicking unicorn. And feral creatures looming in the shadows. And a woman holding a candlestick (who is she?).

Reading this book, cover-and-cover almost makes me want to see what’s written on those grainy pages in between. But then I was reminded of the quote I just made up, “A picture isn’t worth a thousand words. It’s worth 308 pages of words.”

Patrick Swayze plays a surfer named Bodhi, short for Bodhisattva. He’s on a spiritual journey to achieve enlightenment by catching the ultimate wave. His nemesis is Johnny Utah, played by Keanu Reeves. Johnny, an FBI agent who is a former college football star, represents the establishment. He goes undercover to investigate a group of surfer bank robbers who wear ex-president masks, a subtle dig at the moral bankruptcy of the American political system. At first Johnny is dubious about Bodhi’s philosophy, but over time, he becomes a convert and joins Bodhi on his quest for nirvana.

Johnny’s emotional conflict is most evident during a chase scene through a suburban neighborhood. The scene where Bodhi chucks a dog at Johnny is most telling: Bodhi, wearing a Reagan mask, represents the American middle class; in an interesting role-reversal, Johnny, who gets knocked over by the dog, experiences what it feels like to be on the other side; and the dog, fruitlessly chomping at nothing as it flies through the air, represents the futility of the American dream. This scene brought tears to my eyes.

In the end, Johnny Utah acts like a patsy of the American government and arrests Bodhi. But Bodhi persuades Johnny to allow him to surf in the biggest storm in fifty years. In the last scene, which was so powerful it was seared onto my brain for days, Johnny lets Bodhi go and Bodhi surfs a gigantic wave until he disappears into the ocean, finally reaching nirvana and being stamped out of existence forever. I challenge anyone to watch Point Break and not be convinced that it deserved the Oscar more than any other movie of the 20th century.