#44 Requiem For A Dream: Be excited, be, be excited

2000. dir. Darren Aronofsky, starring Ellen Burstyn, Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly, Marlon Wayans.

Seen it before? No.

It's the feel-bad movie of the year. Ellen Burstyn plays Sara Goldfarb, a retired widow who lives in Brighton Beach and watches infomercials all day. She has a son Harry (Jared Leto) who steals her stuff to pay for heroin. He has a coke-head girlfriend Marion (Jennifer Connelly) and a friend Tyrone (Marlon Wayans) who also uses heroin.

So it's basically D.A.R.E.: The Movie as all four of them suffer horrific consequences from their addictions. Sara gets an invitation to be on a TV show, so she gets hooked on diet pills. Harry and Tyrone start dealing, but then Tyrone almost gets killed in a gang shooting and gets arrested. This costs them all of their money and their dope connection, so they resort to, uhh, unpleasant things.

This movie is pretty grating and obnoxious to watch. First of all, any time somebody uses drugs, it does this quick-cut thing where they show the drugs entering the bloodstream and then the pupil dilating. It gets tiresome the fortieth time you see it. Second,the music is annoying. Third, they keep replaying that Tappy Tibbons infomercial. Stop it! Or at least tell me the third thing.

(The first thing: No Red Meat. The second thing: No Refined Sugar. The third thing: Never revealed, because Sara goes psychotic every time they get to it.)

(EDIT: IMDB Trivia saves the day! It's "no orgasms." OK then.)

The consequences of drug addiction seem pretty exaggerated here. OK, really, the diet pills will turn you into a raving psycho and they have to electro-shock you? Seriously? Harry goes to the hospital because his arm is infected, and they don't treat him because he's a drug addict? What about the Hippocratic oath? The guy who made this movie is a sadist.

Position on the list: 61
Hey! It's that Guy!: Samir from Office Space plays the mailman.