We don’t dig into the obscure categories enough so we are here to remedy that this week with the top movies with “don’t” in the title. After you scroll through this list, don’t come back and tell me at least one of them didn’t pique your interest.
Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice In The Hood, wow that’s a mouthful! Similar to the parody film of blaxploitation films, I’m Gonna Git You Sucka, Don’t Be a Menace is a parody of Black coming of age, hood films: Juice, Jungle Fever, South Central, Higher Learning, Dead Presidents, Poetic Justice, Do the Right Thing, New Jack City, Friday, but more prominently Boyz n the Hood, Above the Rim and Menace II Society. Shawn is Ashtray, the everyman who got sent by his mother to live with his father in the inner city (Tre Styles from Boyz n the Hood and Caine Lawson from Menace II Society and Bobby Johnson from South Central) and Marlon is Loc Dog, Ashtray’s cousin and gangsta/drug dealer/criminal (O Dog from Menace II Society and Dough Boy from Boyz n the Hood). The film shows us the day to day antics the young men go through while trying to survive in the hood. Even though it’s a hard living for young, black men in the ghetto, the Wayans Brothers showed us the lighter version of what it was like. It’s the way of laughing through the pain they’ve been through. It was the beginning for brothers Marlon and Shawn Wayans as the writers of this film as they went on a few years after to go and give us Scary Movie and Scary Movie 2. Don’t Be a Menace didn’t do so great at the box office or with the critics, but it still makes the audience laugh every time. (Chantal Ashford)
Ever so often, you just might come across a small, indie comedy that you do not have high expectations for and you get pleasantly surprised by it. That is my exact experience with Don’t Think Twice! Writer, director, and star Mike Birbiglia is able to create a great story centered around the struggle of artists as they try to make it big. A tale about a group of improv comedians is ripe for laughs and this stacked cast of big names (like a Keegan-Michael Key or Gillian Jacobs) as well as those comedic faces you see pop up in things but you could never for the life of you name them. When is it time to give up on a dream before you get lost in your failures? What should you sacrifice in order to make that dream come true? Would you sell out the rest of your friends when you know you have a chance at hitting it big? These are just some of the questions this film tackles as it balances the group of funny comedians and the real-life drama that they have to face. This is definitely one to check out! (Shane Conto)
If you know me, you know I’ve been a HUGE fan of Joaquin Phoenix ever since seeing him in Spike Jonze’s Her. One of my favorite things about his acting is that he uses every part of himself to really put himself in a role. As the title implies, Phoenix is largely bound to a motorized wheelchair for the majority of the film as the late cartoonist John Callahan and is given the task of relying on subtle facial expressions to convey physicality that his character, the late John Callahan can’t. Outside of Phoenix’s performance, we get some truly great direction from Gus Van Sant, opting to tell the events of the film in a random manner that I believe represents how a cartoonist would think to chronicle their life: one strip at a time. If you have Amazon Prime and you’ve got a free day, definitely check out this underrated gem. (Austin Belzer)
It’s always impressive to me when a writer/director is able to mix lots of different filmmaking genres into one cohesive and entertaining movie. The Dead Don’t Die brings in dry humor (my favorite kind), interesting cinematography, meta and self-referential commentary, and real world implications together to produce something original and interesting. It’s main theme of climate change and damage to the Earth is even more poignant now than it was a few months ago at the time of its release, and it’s framed in such a way to make it accessible to the people who can understand what it is saying. This is certainly a metaphor movie, but the metaphor is important. Each character and each plot movement represents something significant when it comes to our planet. That alone makes this a film that I think people will look back on to notice its prescience and urgent message. (Robert Bouffard)
At first glance I honestly thought Don’t Breathe was gonna be a throw away little horror film that I would forget about in 5 minutes. Little did I know that this movie would be suspenseful, disgusting, horrific, and fun! Single location horror films are hard to pull off, but Fede Álvarez does so with ease capturing a truly terrifying feeling of uneasiness, claustrophobia, and intensity throughout. Stephen Lang stands out as the terrifying antagonist with a sick and twisted nature that to this very day makes me not look at turkey basters the same way. I still have my fingers crossed that one day we will get a sequel. This is a must watch during Halloween season. (Ben Davis)
The 80’s and 90’s brought us several bizarre situational comedy films, one that stood out when I was growing up was Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead. While this wasn’t a smash hit, this film did become a cult classic of sorts with it starring Applegate when she was red hot while still a part of the Married with Children Cast. Swell (Christina Applegate) is stuck with her 3 other siblings all summer with the babysitter from hell. Things go from bad to worse when the babysitter drops dead suddenly. Swell has to fib some minor details on her resume to land a Fashion Executive position that leads her down a slippery slope of hilarity. The film has a very cat and mouse type of vibe to it because Swell is always one step away from being exposed at anytime for posing as a 28 year old Fashion Industry worker. The movie feels like it could have come straight out of the Pauly Shore universe with the antics and over the top comedy that was very widespread over that time. While not as great as The Adventures of Babysitting, it contains the same type of vibe. Applegate and the rest of the cast are charming and it appears that they are having a great time filming. If you are looking for a fun comedy with a 90’s vibe to it, give Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead. (Joseph Vargas)
I think this movie hit me at just the right age. An age of not being as judgmental, an age of not really understanding what it meant for a movie to be good and, most importantly, an age of being way too keen on the films of Adam Sandler. Following an Israeli special forces officer who fakes his death to live out his dream of hairstyling, the events that transpire are just as ridiculous as the premise make them sound. Full of crazy antics, along with a dastardly villain, the best way to consume this is just to roll with the punches…literally. If there’s ever been a viewing experience that requires you to suspend your disbelief, and then some – it’s this one. This is also probably the wackiest Adam Sandler has ever been. You can tell he’s having fun in this one, and it allows you to kind of let go of prejudice and laugh along with him, even if some of the laughs come from pure, unadulterated cringe. If anything, for me it’s a nostalgia piece, that really brings me back to what it was like when I would watch anything and everything. It was a simpler time, and this is a very, very simple movie. It’s a bit of a laugh really, and that’s pretty much it. (Alice-Ginevra Micheli)
Ever so often you come across a film that is based on a true story that is so hard to watch and believe because the absolutely horrible things that take place. Boys Don’t Cry is one of those films. Not many mainstream films take on the ideas of transsexuality, especially not outside the past 10 years. But director Kimberly Peirce takes on the story of Brandon Teena in a powerful and respectful way. You as the audience get to see a transman battle with the society that shuns his very existence. At times this film is euphoric in the way it presents the love affair between Brandon and his new love, Lana. At others it feels like a straight sledgehammer to the gut as it shows the adversity and the dark fate that confronts Brandon in his attempt to live his life on his own terms. What makes this film extra special is the trio of top-notch performances that balances the film and its story. Hilary Swank made a huge impact with her career launching performance (which for some reason fizzled out way too soon for an actress of her talents). She inhabits the passion and struggles of Brandon in a most meaningful and emotionally resonant way. The performance is a perfect match for the purely magnetic and mysterious performance that Chloe Sevigny brings to the table. The intimate scenes between Swank and Sevigny are so poignant because of their impressively powerful chemistry. And then there is the performance of Peter Sarsgaard. Has he ever played a character that isn’t purely disgusting and slimy on screen to the point you just want to punch him in the face the second he is on screen? I believe that is a big NO. (Shane Conto)
There are some great films adapted from the works of Daphne du Maurier. We’ve had Alfred Hitchcock bring us films from her novel Rebecca in 1940 and her short story “The Birds” in 1963, while Henry Koster and Roger Michell adapted her novel “My Cousin Rachel” in 1952 and 2017, respectively. While these are great films, I don’t think any is quite as enigmatic as Nicolas Roeg’s 1973 thriller, Don’t Look Now, which is based on a short story from du Maurier. The story focuses on a married couple, John and Laura (Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie), who travel to Venice following the accidental death of their daughter. Soon after, John begins to experience strange sightings that he can’t seem to explain. Sutherland and Christie deliver powerful performances as grieving parents who are trying to move on with their lives, despite it being one of the most difficult things that they ever had to do. The dramatic depth of their acting pulls you into the disturbing journey that starts to unfurl before them, brining us on a twisted path of being as uncertain as John and Laura are in such a trying and terrifying period in their lives. You won’t have a full understanding of what’s been going on the whole time until the final minutes, and once it’s over, the film demands to be viewed again. Believe me, the word “shocking” doesn’t even begin to describe what this movie’s ending has in store for you. No matter how busy your schedule may be, you must set aside some time to watch, or re-watch, this film as soon as you can. (Vincent Abbatecola)
This film has so many elements blended together, that it makes it hard for me to classify it in a specific genre. I’d like to say this falls in the crime, drama, mixed with a bit of a quirky comedy type movie. The world can be a great place for most, but when a depressed woman Ruth (Melanie Lynskey) has had enough after her home has been broken into, she chooses to track down the thieves with the help of her neighbor (Elijah Wood). The interactions between these two is honestly what makes the movie for me. This is the first film for Director (Macon Blair), I think he does a great job capturing how awkward and frustrating the average day is for most people. I think (Elijah Wood) ends up stealing almost every scene he’s in. I’d best describe him as a ‘Suburban Dwight Schrute’. It’s a good watch to find on Netflix if you have a good hour and a half to spare. (Alex Henderson)
Also see:
Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid, Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead, They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? Please Don’t Eat the Daisies