Jan de Bont's "Speed 2: Cruise Control" is one of the most maligned movies of all time, earning the wrath of critics and audiences alike. It has a Rotten Tomatoes rating of two percent and an average IMDB grade of 3.5--levels usually reserved for such monstrosities as The Village People's "Can't Stop the Music" (8/ 3.7) and the insult to all things good and decent that is Adam Sandler's "That's my Boy" (21/ 5.5). Judging from its box office performance, more people hated "Speed 2" than actually saw it. Yet I have to admit that after watching it on its opening weekend in 1997, I left the theater more than happy and was not surprised by the thumbs-ups it received from Siskel & Ebert. Then all hell broke loose. When I dis a movie a friend likes, all he has to do is bring up "Speed 2."

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I love a black comedy. Always have. You know, all those tragic mishaps that seem to befall Alec Guinness in the English countryside when no one is looking? But then who doesn't love an Ealing comedy. I also like "Dexter" and for similar reasons; it too, has an air of subversive glee about it, albeit darker and more graphic in nature. The appeal is never about seeing people die, though (where's the fun in that?). Nor in watching mindless torture porn like Hostel; a genre increasingly viewed as the favorite pastime of failed experiments in parenting, moreover, and thus to be avoided at all costs. I loathe the entire genre aka "Women in Danger" films as Gene and Roger once termed them. American Psycho however, is anything but a slasher film.

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Ebert's Best Film Lists1967 - present

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