As part of a once-in-a-lifetime, two-part breaking of my PooterGeek “No ‘Bloggers’ Memes” rule I answer Eric‘s challenge:

“I nominate Normblog and Pootergeek to list two films they like that most people don’t…”

but I do so in my own way:

Independence Day fails on almost every level as a work of serious cinema; but as a continuously compelling parody of disaster movies it towers like an Olympic high-jumper in a creche—yea, higher even toward the heavens than Airplane!. This is, remember, a film that begins with REM’s It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine) playing in the background and contains egregiously crude examples of almost every major minority stereotype known to mainstream Hollywood: the eccentric Jewish scientist; the screamingly camp homosexual; the swaggering, wisecracking black action hero; the drunken trailer-trash alien abductee; the noble family dog, the stripper with a heart of gold; even the long-believed-dead, stiff-upper-lip, what-ho! English fighter pilot and stripey-shirt wearing member of la Résistance. (I think at some point in the global holocaust someone religious regains his long lost faith as well.) But it manages to cram in some of the most audacious scenes of large-scale destruction ever rendered, one of the best chase sequences of all time, and a few excellent and unarguably intentional jokes.

The film everyone else thinks is good but I think is rubbish is The Piano. It’s pretty to look at, but the script is Mills & Boon with pretensions. It’s soft porn for nice girls who think God will never let them have their own Aga if they dare to take the sexual initiative: “Ooh, only by reluctantly allowing the wild native man to ravish me throbbingly will I be able to continue my music lessons!” The whole movie is, people, a tragic waste of talent.

Once I have filled in some remaining blanks I will attempt Norm’s “Seven by Seven“.