Can't We Be Dysfunctional Like A Normal Family?

A suicidal gay uncle, an unspoken emo brother who dreams of flying jet fighters, a motivational-speaking dad who always seems to be out of touch, a seven year old out of shape pangeant-contesting "super-freak", and a heroin-addicted grandpa with the power to spout out Oscar-worthy expletives, all capped off by a mom who tends to serve popsicles for dessert.
Everything you need to provide a big yellow vehicle such as this one with a solid push.

When living within the slums of Beverly Hills, you'll find that every once in awhile, you just have to pack up the family and move. Particularly, when the rent is due.
Oh, and when this does happen, as a courtesy to the next tenants,
please don't forget to remove the cat from the oven.

For my money, Dolores Claiborne is one of the best Stephen King adapatations out there, with a dense story that is typical of a King novel and which is stone solid from beginning to end. After winning an oscar for her role in Misery five years earlier, Kathy Bates returns for this, another King vehicle, and once again shows that playing the "heavy" with ease is an inate talent for her. The plot may tend to come off as a bit complicated some times, but the movie does a great job of walking the viewer through the intermingling flashbacks and various plot points that show the uphill emotional steps of the main character's redemptive journey. A journey which includes a mother's fight against against a man's world to save her daughter from the father's "parental indulgences" and how that struggle can lead one to find strength in the most unlikely of places.

'Ey, you wanna really discover a how messed up a family is, what they really look like behind the social masks they wear out in public? Look at how they behave when the time comes to claim an inheritance. They say "money changes everything". In family matters, even with the more well to-do, it tends to "reveal everything". Particularly those secrets that show what really binds 'em together... their love for each other or their love for money.

Lemme tell you something,
no matter how sane a character you cast Mariah Carey in a movie about dysfunctionality,
you still gotta make the other main characters in the film as effed up as possible just to make the viewers buy into the credibilty of her role as someone who's not the possible trainwreck that she can be in real life.

When you are the mother of a family full of dysfunction, it's important to realize doesn't take much to edge the household into a place that can be pretty scary. That's why it's usually mom's job to try and keep things together. She's the one who usually tries to empathize with the troubled teens and their tribulations. Or tries to make sure dad doesn't let his emotions stray too far from the home. And when the youngest kid is kinda weird, has a nervous "click" tick, not to mention a severe allergy to nuts, it's up to mom to help that kid keep her head on straight.
If not, well then, she's gonna find out if all the strange happenings in her house are her fault for not doing her job, or if it's all just hereditary (...see what I did there?).



When it comes to horror lead roles, I think Toni Collette's performance here is second only to Essie Davis' in The Babadook (which I have often said, is one the single best performances to drive the dread and danger of a film's plot in recent horror movie history).
Her portrayal of skewered matriarchial emotions that completely disintegrate really helps to bring out the overall creepiness that is the heart of Hereditary.

After his drug-addicted mother dies from an overdose, a directionless young man is accepted by his extended family and then tries to assimilate into his next of kin's way of criminal life. Soon, however, he realizes that in such a lifestyle, the blood isn't so thick as to keep him safe from the heirarchical laws of this kind of "animal kingdom".

"Since then he's been slappin' the salami, no offense..... apparently he's goin' for a world record.... anyway, uh, he was afraid there was somethin' wrong with him, like he was a pervert or somethin'. I told him 'That's just what little dudes do. We've all done it'."



"... you need a license to buy a dog or drive a car, hell you need a license to catch a fish! But they'll let any butt-reamin' @sshole be a father."

Steve Martin, putting away the arrow thru the head, joins Keanu Reeves, in his most excellent d00d disposition, along with this most excellently cast of 80's veterans, to present the up and down roller coaster ride that is non-planned parenthood.
Oh, and to provide a hint of irony into the production of this movie about familial dysfunctionality, in the carny position for this particular amusement ride is Opie, from the Andy Griffith Show.

What happens when a family member gets too out of line?
You give 'em the kiss of death, then you have 'em whacked.
Way more effective than a time-out.

In this family, dysfunctionality is a form of functionality.
Stretching mom out on a torture rack or throwing the baby out of a third story window is simply a way of communicating "You're okay, I'm okay".
And one of the advantages that comes with having the last name of Addams is that, no matter how many family-friendly games of tag you play,
your cousin will always be Itt.

Oh sure, maybe your family isn't as effed up as the one in this movie (or maybe, your family is worse). But, after viewing Ang Lee's The Ice Storm, you'll be left with the perfect feeling of indigestion, bitterness and hopeless depression that can only come after an over-bloated feasting of dead bird, pumpkin pie and thickly gelatinous cranberry sauce from a can.

The Ice Storm is a Thanksgiving flick that, as far as Thanksgiving flix go, this one might not be the most positive,
but let's be honest, Thanksgiving is a holiday when everyone gets together just to be reminded of how deep the level of dysfunction runs within your loved ones.
Besides, there are so few Thanksgiving flix to begin with, let alone quality Thanksgiving flix, that we should all give thanks for the few, like this one, that we have.

Here's a caveman clan that put the dysfunction in the whole idea of dysfunctional family before being a dysfunctional family became vogue. Basically because they were very first dysfunctional family.
And sure, maybe compared the today's definition of what makes families totally coo-coo, the Croods make come up as kinda lightweight.
But, amidst the heavy influx of big blockbuster 3D animations that have crowded the market these days, this prehistoric household's quest for a peaceful house to hold is one that easily reminds us of why we like these flicks so much. A concrete combination of clandestine comedy, character chemistry and computer oomph, this jurassic (somewhat) journey demonstrates the hi-tech norm of what has become a sign of these much more modern times.



But at the end of the day, there's no denying that the best part of watching this film is the fact at the time when primordial mammals known as homo-sapiens were still adjusting to walking with their spines erect, the dynamics of this family structure were just starting to evolve into something that had hope of some day being normal, despite being so archaically crude.

An eccentric cartoonist who takes the idea of artistic integrity to it's most purest/extremist definition, the aptly named Robert Crumb paved his own unique way through the underground side of comicbooks (or "comix", as that part of the medium likes to refer to itself). Watching this guy talk about how he practically discovered his sexuality by riding his aunt's leg as a child, one can easily come to the conclusion of just how "weird" Crumb is. And yet, once you "meet" the rest of his family, it becomes painfully obvious that it is he who comes off as the most normal one of the bunch.

With names like Gene Hackman, Bill Murray, Gwyneth Paltrow, Ben Stiller and Angelica Houston,
it's no surprise that as far as dark comedies go,
The Tenenbaums are what you might call the royal family of aristocratic and eccentric dysfunction.

A family portrayal that depicts how even the most ordinary people are not very ordinary.
Trying to live a life of normalcy can often be much more of an emotional household hindrance than it is as a sign of achievement of the American dream.



Before I ever saw this movie,
I thought that Mary Tyler Moore was one of the most beautiful, heart-warming human beings ever to be onscreen.
After I watched Ordinary People,
I couldn't stand to even look at her.
Now that's acting.

Honestly,
I don't know what Carrie's big deal was with the pig's blood an' all.
I mean, at least she had a date for the prom.

There was no need to be such a bitch about it.
Then again....
now that I think about...
when you see how much of a bitch her mom was,
maybe she just couldn't help it.
Maybe it was just in her blood.

A new York high society couple who deal in art have their lives interupted by a homeless street grifter who's charm and wit ends up inspiring them through a successful and lucrative art deal. But when the repercussions of his grift come home, the unbalance of their familial situations soon rise to the surface to reveal the emotionless circumstances that they share with both friends and family.

In a well-to-do family, Brick Politt, is an ex-athlete who drinks to forget why there's an "ex" before "athlete". However, at a family reunion, deep seated memories are jogged which explain why this movie is on this list... Pulitzer Prize winning family dysfunction, Tennessee Williams style.



BTW, on a side note, if you're a young movie fan and wonder why Elizabeth Taylor is considered such an iconic Hollywood beauty in the world of golden age cinema, this is one of the films that will show you why. Believe me, as soon as she appears on the screen, she will make you easily forget any dysfunction that may be deep-seated in your own "genes".

I once made a movie list called "Crazy Bitches", listing movies like Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct as examples of the running theme. In other words, there were films about women who are mentally unstable. But, even really quality movies that follow this theme, no matter how good they are, the concept of feminine mental illness is done with the typical over-the-top Hollywood flair.



A Woman Under The Influence handles the subject with a much more intimate and introspective portrayal, one that surpasses gender and leaves the viewer to feel the same slow but staggering feeling of incomprehension as all the characters involved. But this story's subject matter doesn't end there, as the material also extends into themes of societal roles and expectations of women in and out of their family relationships.
And if all that makes this film sounds a bit deep, it is. But that is what is expected from the typical John Cassavetes film. A movie that is directed more to those who love film for the exploration of the human psyche more than it is to those who go to the theater just for the empty calories that come from sensationalistic escapism and a bucket of popcorn.

The family that loves together stays together.
Or, if taken too far,
just completely crumbles together.
A grey, sodden story of family disorder that is as bleak as the subject matter can be,
and provides for some really good acting all around, but particularly Lara Belmon, not to mention an excellent directorial debut by actor Tim Roth.

Personally, I think that this is a movie that tries to remind us that we have the ability to keep life in perspective, but usually don't. I think that what American Beauty tries to say with it's message, especially at the end is much bigger than most of us realize. This is a film that I hope I can remember to watch every 4 or 5 yrs of my life, just as a reminder to "something" that I genuinely believe we all already know, but hardly ever allow it's awareness to surface during the course of our lives.
Or maybe I'm just looking at things bigger than what they really are in this movie.
Which could easily just be a side effect of the one-too-many times that I kept pressing the pause button during Thora Birch's naked breasts scene.

Over at a dynastically run hotel, a high ranking family is holding a celebration for their father's 60th year.
And one of the patriarch's major surprise gifts, by his only son, is the unveiling news that he is responsible for the suicide death of his daughter as a result of a family history of sexual abuse.
Although, coupled with the other troubled revelations that reveal themselves as the party chugs along, "Big Daddy" probably would have preferred on just getting a tie.

How do you get back at your parents for punishing you with a wire hanger?
Try writing a based-on-my-life book that's ends up becoming a movie.
That'll show 'em.

A neglected high school girl summons up the courage to ask the boy of her dreams out to the prom. And when he turns her down, she ends up summoning her effed up parents to help her capture the boy's heart. With the intent of drilling the idea of her undying love into his head.
Literally.

A date movie in which the term "getting lucky" means "getting out". Alive.

The movie celebration of the season! Big sis is getting married! So put on a bridesmaid outfit, a sarcastic smirkiness for drama, carry in a burden of a lifetime of simmering family tension and denial, and then get ready to cut some cake. And maybe reopen a few emotional wounds or two.

Makes me can't effin' wait til effin' Christmas with my effin' family.

A widowed father swears that he's been touched by the hand of God and enlists his two boys in helping him to wipe out "demons" who walk the Earth in human form. But is he really a divine slayer of evil or just a serial killer with a biblical excuse?
Frailty is a movie that proves that the only thing better than a high quality serial killer flick is a high quality serial killer flick with a twist ending.

With their consecutive lives falling apart, two brothers scheme to rob a jewelry store owned by their parents. Hoping that the money will improve each others situation with the belief that the insurance will cover the loss to the store.
However, this being a movie, you know things are going to go awry. As the plans, then the robbery itself fall apart,
the brothers find their relationship with each other, with their father and just with their lives falling deeper in dysfunction.
A great film with a great cast directed by a great director, Sydney Lumet, in his last directorial outing.

"This is our son Damien. He's quite the little devil."
Literally.



Probably the only family situation wherein if the child does something good, he'd get a time-out.

A community from Small town U.S.A. comes together for one of their own.
Well....
one of their own that came "outta the the abandoned basement of society", which we have all seem to deny exists. Until, that is, the media comes arunnin' to shine it's light of "subjective truth" upon it.
A story that starts out macabrely weird and ends up macabrely moving.

Here is a film called Happiness that is directed by indie film-maker and bon vivant Todd Solondz. This is the same guy who directed Welcome To The Dollhouse (which takes a look at the kind of dark realities of the coming-of-age stage of life), Palindromes (a runaway's dark journey through a series of "palindromes") and Life During Wartime (which follows up certain characters from this movie and depicts the dark paths that have transpired by the mundaneness of their lives).
In other words, Happiness is a film about anything but.
Solondz isn't the most well known name out there in Hollywood, but for those hardcore film buffs out there, they know exactly what they're gonna get with a film directed by this guy. A story about total emotional breakdown. Which can affect even those families who think they live behind the protection of a white picket fence of the "average" household.

Ah yes, the 70’s….
With films like Deliverance, The Hills Have Eyes, and this one, it was the decade that introduced the notion of the kind of horrors that awaited anyone who might find themselves lost in the middle of the southern backwoods of the U.S..

If anybody in this household (particularly, anyone who wears a mask of leathered flesh on his face) ever wanted to borrow any of your power tools (particularly any that you have to yank to get started), it’s a pretty fair bet that you don't expect to ever see it again.

And speaking of an evil household full of hellbent hillbillies….



Here's a dark ditty of deviltry about a family of twisted white trash that makes even Lucifer hisself go "Damn....! These ratchety-ass rednecks are just plain downright evil.....!"

A father/daughter relationship of superheroic proportions.
And not until the daughter can slice the bad guys into bits, shove their teeth into their brains and shoot expletives with as much precision as a bullet in between the bad guy's eyes can she expect to be truly considered as Big Daddy's lil' hit girl.
Crimefighting runs in the family in Kick Ass, a foul-mouthed fun-filled over the top action flick that's not for the faint-hearted comic books fans whose preferences off the spinner rack were mags like "Archie".

Ever since The Godfather, it seems like mafia families just don't get it.
Living "the life" means "la familia" of the mob gets priority over the family of your blood.
And making the life of "la familia" a family bizaness, usually translates into the idea that the family that shoots together, dies together.

Next thing you know, you won't be able to tell whether you're at a family reunion or at a family funeral.

I hestitated about putting this movie onto this list. Because it's placement here, just that alone might be enough as a spoiler for the mystery of the story that this film is centered on. See, Cache's premise is mystery that is left up to the viewer to solve. So, I can't really get much more into it without giving away any more than I may already have.
So, I'll just say that while it may appear on the surface that this movie does not belong on list because of the theme, IMO, it does.

The roller coaster ride of dysfunction: the family vacation.

Which makes me realize,
mannn....
the last time I took a vacation,
John Candy was still alive, Beverly D'Angelo was thin and Chevy Chase was actually pretty damn funny.

Living a life with just enough to get by, "Sully" Sullivan seems okay with just that despite the years piling on. When his estranged son comes to town with his own son in tow, "Sully" starts to feel the twinges of patriarchal charge towards the grandson he never knew had. Moving through the typical "atypical" happenings of his small town, Sully finds the pieces of his life starting stitch together in a way in which he must decide to either just keep crustily cruisin' by, or, to do that one thing that has always felt alien to him.... take some responsibility.



This is simply one of those movies that I really enjoy that never really gets much mention anywhere. Paul Newman, Jessica Tandy, Bruce Willis, Melanie Griffin and Phillip Seymour Hoffman are a great cast of actors playing a great cast of characters in this, a pretty great film (at least, in my opinion it is). And each one is a piece of a puzzle that, despite their sharp edges, all still fit in perfectly.

In an effort of a getaway, a french group of young robbers seek to rendezvous near the border.
And they find it at what appears to be a quaint, family-owned inn.
However, they quickly come to realize that the family runs the inn as a place where "you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave."

Here's a Mexican movie that was remade three years later in the U.S., under the same title, but with some pretty dramatic changes to it's setting. And it's because that these changes were so dramatic (some may even say "drastic"), that this is the version that many feel has more spice in it's menu.



After the father dies unexpectedly, a struggling family must find a way to put food on the table. But which family member will "man up" and fill the role of breadwinner, especially since this family has very "particular" tastes when it comes to what they eat? Or, to put it in another way, one of them must now accept the responsibility of bringing home the kind of bacon that isn't found in the frozen meat section of the local grocery store.

The Great Santini is a hero, an honored war veteran & an iron fisted father who thinks everyone should be as pasionately competitive as he is.
However, his oldest son is growing into an adult. And in the process, he's getting tired of following orders, being called a sports fan & having his head used as a basketball court. But through it all,
what he really wants is to find out what is it that truly makes his dad, "Santini", so great.

Most fathers like to bond with their sons through playing catch or taking 'em fishing. For this family, Dad hands you a gun and teaches you how to aim it at a squirrel and blow it's nuts off.
In this household, the family name is carried on by picking up a sniper rifle and aiming it right between a target's eyes.

Four Chinese women migrate to the United States after experiencing their respective trials and tribulations in their homeland. Leaving China during a time when the effects of World War Two left the country in dire need of change from it's ancient and archaic customs, they come to America with hopes and dreams of a better life for their children. But, even after raising their daughters in the Land of the Free, they discover that some emotional scars tend to trickle down from one generation to the next.

Okay, so we all know by know how a broken home can start when dad, as the head of the household, decides to leave mom. But when mom starts to shows signs that she not all together "up there", then the home gets even more broken. And when an old family friend decides to overstay her welcome, even when she's dead, then the family situation is more than just broken... now it's just plain "lights out".

Two high caliber actors, one known for always "walken" the tightrope of creepiness, the other with a rep for consistently straddling the fence of full-blown enragement, pool their talents into this tale of white-trash crime syndication. Sean Penn and Christopher Walken prove to be a dynamic duo of drama with enough cray-cray chemistry between the two of them, to provide this backyard crime-drama with the kind of brewing tension and uneasiness that makes the sense of backyard danger usually reserved for the trailer park, feel like it's at a closer range.
(Oh, and this comment was posted with all apologies to any of you out there reading this who are trailer-trash.)

In public schools everywhere, for every one popular girl that we see, there are probably 20 plain jane girls like Dawn Wiener lurking anonymously in the background.
Welcome to the Dollhouse follows the life of this 7th grader as she struggles to find her place in a family in which she is virtually non-existant (with the exception of being compared as a bad example to the beloved and favorited ballerina primadonna sibling)and in a junior high school where her only purpose is serving as a door mat for the class bullies.
This film is a hard-nosed depiction of those who are quietly and easily overlooked & who tend to make up a larger percentage of the student school population than many of us want to or even care to notice.

An annoying wife and mother, a kid who likes to talk with his finger,
and a dad who suffers not only from writer's block and a possesed spirit, but also from a severe case of "redrum" on his mind.



"Honey...
I'm home."

A fine, upstanding, God-fearing young woman breaks out into her own, and answers an ad for a babysitter job in order to kickstart her road to financial independence.
After the parents of the child that she is sitting go off into their planned " date night", she comes to discover that the household isn't as God fearing as she is. But, every family has it's secret demons. And sometimes, what makes those demons so secret, is that they need sitting.

What's scarier than being deep out in the middle of the woods? Being out in the middle of the woods with a buncha rednecked hillbillies, that's what.
And what's scarier than being out in the middle of the woods with a buncha rednecked hillbillies?
How about being out in the being out in the middle of the woods with a buncha rednecked hillbillies who worship a pit that contains a supernatural force.
On top of all that, it's a buncha rednecked, pit-worshippin' hillbillies that's led by that crazy bitch, Sean Young.
Maybe this movie doesn't take it all to it's highest potential of backwards horror, but still, the combination of all those elements is enough to let anyone know that if ever you come across somethin' like this in their neck 'o' the woods, yer in fer a whole heap of alotta trouble.

The title of this movie could also have been "We Are What We Eat". But then again, now that I think about it, maybe that would've been a bit too obvious. Because if a horror movie alludes to humans eating something that's out of the ordinary, then in keeping with the horror angle, we all can pretty much guess what that "something" is. And if that "something" is part of a family recipe, having a dinner guest over is most likely the answer to what makes that family what they are.



WAWWA is a remake of a Mexican film from 2010 called "Somos Lo Que Hay". And because of some of the drastic changes to the English speaking version, it does tend to lose some of the spice in it's translation. But there's still enough on the plate of this version to keep its proper place at the table.

What happens when you don't find out until it's too late that the leader of a vast galactic Empire who has been corrupted by the darkside is really your dad,
and
that a beautiful Princess that you have the hots for is really your sister?

Well, for the first part, you turn your life over to the Force, lead a rebellion against the Empire until your dad sees the light and dies a hero.
...and then,
just pretend that the second part never really happened.