26 REDS & A BOTTLE OF WINE

Not too long ago I posted my choice for ten films that they should have made sequels but didn’t. I mostly credited dim-witted studio types with tiny balls and little in the way of entrails for such implausible decision-making. Yet, from time to time, and for no particular reason, a film is sequeled in such a magnificent way and with such breath and beauty that if I were not to post about these modern masterpieces God himself would puke.

So here are the ten best sequels ever:

The Good, the Bad and The Ugly
Easily the greatest movie ever made. Okay, that’s a bit much but explain where else in the modern history of film someone looks as much a badass as Lee Van Cleef. Sure, John Ford made beautiful westerns that captured the very core of the American experience. But only the Italians understood why Gunsmoke was on TV for 20 years. Cause gun are made to go off and people are made to die. As far as Clint is concerned he’s never more on form. This guy wouldn’t bother taking a leak on Dirty Harry. After all Clint has the line “You see, in this world there's two kinds of people, my friend: Those with loaded guns and those who dig. You dig.” Brilliant!

Superman II
Superman is a piece of shit. But it’s a piece of shit on purpose. You have to explain that Superman is an alien and he works at a newspaper and that the slut down the hall doesn’t even know he’s alive and that Lex Luther is an asshole and that everyone loves Superman. If someone could have gotten all that on a poster we could have skipped the pleasant chit-chat and gotten right to General Zod tossing Superman around like a hobo and Ursa giving me a boner the size of Utah. Serious film scholars will point out the inevitable cliché of the superhero genre sequel. I will point out that ‘serious film scholar’ is an oxymoron and that all film critics and scholars can easily be filed under one category: useless jackass. Superman 2 has a number of endearing qualities: horrible special effects, statue-like acting, a villain clearly more powerful than the hero, pointless violence against people who live in New York City, Superman getting his ass handed to him by extra from a Jeff Foxworthy sitcom and of course Sarah Douglas as the villain Ursa, who single-handedly introduced me to the sick and twisted world of female domination. (Kidding) No seriously, it’s hard to watch a single scene with her and not want to turn out the lights.

Godfather 2
The Godfather is as close as you can get to perfect without drawing attention to yourself. Here is a movie that is basically avShakespeare play but with guns and Albert Brookes totally getting it. If you don’t love The Godfather you’re an asshole. Plain and simple. If you don’t love Godfather 2 it’s because you haven’t come to terms with being an asshole.

The Empire Strikes Back
Do I have to explain this? Can’t I just say that this is the only one of the six Star Wars films my children will be allowed to see? If they so much as see a trailer for Attack of The Clones or the fucking thing with the furry midgets I’ll commit an honor killing on my own children. I’ll do it… I’m not fucking around here!

Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Kahn
Okay, I’ll explain… First, they dug deep into the Star Trek vault and found a silly, rather forgetful episode fron the series and used it as the basis for the second Star Trek movie. That takes balls the size of the Nebulon Galaxy. But wait! The episode in question stars the dude from Fantasy Island… WHAT THE FUCK!?!? Brilliant. Fucking Genius. Not to mention it is actually the best of the six hundred Star Trek films that have been made to date. Pitching this movie, much less making it, took the kind of guts you find only on kamikaze pilots and Browns fans.

Gremlins 2: The New Batch
This IS a really great movie (not that the others aren’t), The original Gremlins was a brilliant mash between the schlock film ecstatic of the 1950s and the postmodern jadedness of the 1980s. It rode a perfect line between funny, scary, cute and clever. Few films have done it this well…. EVER! (I’m serious, if you haven’t seen Gremlins lately go check it out, it’s fucking brilliant) For the sequel they need to up the stakes. The final product was anything but a horror sequel by the numbers. Gremlins 2 is keenly aware of it’s own origins, willing to be both involved in it’s own story and aware of the audience’s expectations. It’s is the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle at work. Gremlins 2 existed because you saw Gremlins 1, had you not seen Gremlins 1 there could be no Gremlins 2.. I find it worthy of the following statement: Gremlins 2 is the most perfectly constructed and executed postmodern film in the history of cinema.

The Way of The Dragon
Some smartass is going to tell me that The Way of the Dragon is not really a sequel to Enter the Dragon, that it was only released as such in America. I’ll then remind that smartass that he’s in America and if he’s not he’ll be it Gitmo soon if he doesn’t knock off the horseshit. First off this movie has Chuck Norris in it… awesome. Second this is Bruce Lee at his most bad ass. Sure, he’s always an unstoppable killing machine, but here he the killer of unstoppable killing machines. Bruce Lee directed this film and it’s as if he always secretly thought his films were bullshit and he was REAL going to bring it in this one. In a rarely seen sequence that was cut from the American release Bruce Lee kicks the living hell out of Jesus Christ… It’s an amazing sequence.

Aliens
Sequels are already awesome when all they have to do is put an ‘s’ at the end, denoting that there will be multiples of whatever there was one of last time. In this case it’s multiples of badass. Aliens is like James Cameron was about to make Alien and Ridley Scott beat him to it. Instead of getting mad Cameron set out to make a much better version. He’s like “One alien? Fuck that! Give me the whole damn planet!” Aliens is like Alien with all the pretentious art house horror replaces with bullets.

Okay, out of a sense of tradition I’m going to end this top ten list at eight. If you don’t get the reference you should keep reading.