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10 Coolest Film Presidents

By Christopher Campbell posted 1 year ago

Will this year’s presidential election be determined by which candidate is more hip? Barack Obama is younger, listens to Jay-Z and Kanye West and is something of a trendy choice among college students. McCain, on the other hand, is older and (now) less athletic but is still considered to be hip in a cool grandpa kind of way. Like the grandpa who has exciting war stories to share. Have you seen the video footage of him jumping from an explosion during the USS Forrestal fire? That’s pretty cool.

So, the outcome of the race may depend on what the majority of Americans think is cool. Charisma or Muscle. It reminds me of an election for high school class president. Who is more popular, the preppy basketball player or the more jockish captain of the wrestling team?

But do we really want a cool president? Let’s take a look at some of the coolest fictional presidents from the movies and decide if it’s truly a good idea to base our vote on which candidate we’d prefer to hang with.

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Lists

10 Most Critically Acclaimed Action Movies of the Past 10 Years

By Christopher Campbell posted 1 year ago

Over the weekend, Wanted had a 100% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.com. It’s since gone down to 81% (at the time of this writing — and with top critics it’s down to 67%), though that’s still pretty good for a movie that initially looked like just another Matrix knockoff.

But will the good reviews make for great box office? Last night, while viewing the latest trailer in a theater with some friends, I mentioned that Wanted was receiving great reviews. Nobody believed me at first, and then they didn’t care; they still thought it looked terrible.

Good reviews rarely help an action movie, and bad reviews rarely deter audiences from seeing them. However, if we look at the top 5 most critically acclaimed action movies, it’s clear that people do often prefer a good action film to a bad one. The next 5, on the other hand…

The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (2003)
Rotten Tomatoes’ “T-Meter” score: 94% (top critics: 98%)
All Time Domestic Box Office Rank: #9 ($377 million)
Sample Critic Quote: “The film event of the millennium.” (Richard Corliss, Time)
My Analysis: In terms of both reviews and gross, it is possible that, yes, this final LOTR film was the film event of the millennium only three years in. It even won the Oscar for Best Picture, as well as ten other Academy Awards. However, we do have a few hundred years left, and Corliss’ assessment is likely to be challenged one of these centuries.
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