Even if the twist ending for Bryan Singer and Christopher McQuarrie’s almost twenty-year-old classic The Usual Suspects strikes you as fantastically impossible, and it has indeed struck that chord with certain viewers, it’s hard to get angry at the ride. When the film was released in 1995, a few people actually did. Most notably, Roger Ebert put the film on his “Most hated films” list.
Cousin Marv’s is a forgettable little bar tucked away in Brooklyn. It’s a hidden sanctuary where the locals seek refuge, where Bob Saginowski (Tom Hardy) tends bar, doling out the occasional free drink to someone who needs it, to someone lost and alone in this inescapably expansive city. Bob’s cousin, Marv (James Gandolfini), manages the bar, his eyes carefully surveying the bottom line. Marv used to own this place back in the day. He used to be a well-respected king – a god, even. Then life intervened, and Marv sold the bar adorning his name to Chechen criminals. These new owners kept the name, but they gutted Cousin Marv’s soul.
After reading a blog post by an L.A. Weekly writer on the worst hipster movies of all time, my first thought was I wish someone would punch that guy in the back of the head. It was a childish reaction. Largely based on “HE HATES A LOT OF THE MOVIES I LIKE, BRARARARARAR!” logic, there was also some basic confusion in there. Shaun of the Dead is a hipster movie? Where’s V for Vendetta, the definitive slacktivist call to clammy, meaty arms? For a good five minutes, I was righteous in my self-assured agitation with this shimmering jackass.
Every year at least one good horror hits theaters. By good, I mean it actually gives me a few scares and I go recommend it to fellow fright aficionados.