Obscure Movie Review of the Day: King Of Kong: A Fistful Of Quarters

What if I told you my favorite movie I saw this year was a documentary?

What if I told you it was about people playing video games?

What if I told you that it had just as many plot twists, just as much intrigue, just as much deception and mysteries as your typical Hollywood blockbuster, if not more?

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters.



As you can see from the trailer, King of Kong is about two Donkey Kong players. One has always been a star. Billy set the Donkey Kong record while at a Time Magazine photo shoot for video gamers--he was there for beating a different game, but beat the Donkey Kong score during a break between picture sessions.

Steve is a schoolteacher who plays Donkey Kong in his spare time in a desperate attempt to finally become the best at something. He's had nothing but bad breaks. As a high school pitcher, he lost "the big game." That sort of thing. He plays Donkey Kong in his garage every night after the kids go to bed.

Like all documentaries, the facts of this one have been disputed by lots of the parties involved since its release, but after seeing this video that won't surprise you, in part because of the emotions and egos involved, and in part because this truly is a near-perfect story.

I get almost giddy when I describe this movie to people. It's that good.

Do yourself a favor. Forget about whatever I Still Know What You Did Four Summers Ago Last August movie you were going to rent, and get this. See if you don't care about video games.

Obscure Movie Review Of The Day: Cloverfield

So when I heard Cloverfield was going to be filmed as if it were all via video camera, I was worried.

See, I don't usually get nauseous for things. I love roller coasters, I can usually read when I'm in a car, and I'm the guy who gets recruited to clean up gross messes around the house.

But two things get me. Facing backwards in a car, and watching jerky home movies.

So I was worried.

Back around the time Blair Witch came out in the theatres, I remember seeing warnings in ticket booths that the movie was giving people really bad motion sickness.

When I went to see Cloverfield, there was no such warning. So I was a little hopeful. After all, this wasn't just a bunch of kids improving with video cameras. This was the guys at Bad Robot. They could give the impression of it being handheld, without having it be so hurkey-jurkey as to actually be unpleasant.

Sort of how movie dialogue is sort of designed to give the impression of how real people talk, without actually being how real people talk.

However, when I entered the actual theatre, there was a puddle of vomit on the floor just inside the door.

I guess that was as good a warning sign for motion sickness as any.

That's the only bad thing I have to say about this movie.

If "Everything about this movie is great, except that it might make you sick," is a good review, than this is a good review.

And I hope that's a good review, because I thought it was a terrific movie.

As far as movies go, this is way more of a short story than a novel, in terms of both length (it's only like 85 minutes long) and character development. And like short stories are the polished gems of the fiction world, this movie got just about everything right.

That's not to say it's a feel-good film, because it's not. If I had to give a film professor a one sentence "Theme" for this one, I'd probably say something like, "Doing what you think you should do is sometimes more important than how it all comes out."

So if you're still talking to friends to decide whether to see it or not, count me as a yes vote, as long as nothing in the above turns you off too much.

Obscure Movie Review Of The Day: Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World's End

I wanted to come up with something positive to say about this movie. I came up with one.

It wasn't predictable.