#18 - THE UPSIDE OF ANGER

Plot: While investigating the disappearance of her husband at an archaeological dig in Syria, Joan Allen accidentally breaks an ancient biblical artefact, effectively unleashing a satanic army of ungodly proportions.
Why is this a contender for Best Movie. Ever?
This is quite a difficult film to describe. The first half hour is mildly interesting exposition and context, whilst the remaining hour and a half is literally just Joan Allen fighting through wave after wave of zealots and various devils in a poorly-lit subterranean temple. Unprecedented in both the level of gore and unrelenting action, this is a film even fans of the genre might turn their nose up at. This is an excessive movie, to be sure, but an absolutely spectacular one. Despite not much happening besides Joan Allen constantly shotgunning hordes of monsters, there is always something new to see. The visual effects are absolutely phenomenal, more than deserving of the Oscar back in 2006, and it goes without saying that everything still looks as good as they day it was released. Never before, and not yet since, have so many CGI characters appeared on screen at once, and for such an enormous stretch of film time. Not for one moment do the geniuses over at Industrial Light and Magic let up and give us more than enough whiz-bang eye-candy to send us into severe overload. And this would not be a worthy review without calling attention to Joan Allen's tour-de-force performance throughout the entirety of The Upside of Anger. Drenched in litres of blood and viscera for the majority of the film, screaming almost all of her lines both in triumph and desperation, convincingly massacring countless thousands of minions of Hell without restraint. By the time it's all over and Allen wades through the mountains of corpses she has created, the audience feels just as exhausted as her character. You don't just watch The Upside of Anger, you experience it. It changed my life.
Best scene: It's too hard to segregate specific scenes because they all run together into an almost balletic frenzy of death. But highlights include Mike Binder's truly sinister Lucifer, Evan Rachel Wood and Alicia Witt's formidable succubi and of course the showstealer, a fully-realised Cerberus played in motion-capture by Keri Russell.

And the CGI Kevin Costner is so freaking lifelike, too.