Masquerading as Life: April 2011

I love when shit blows up. So, here then are a few of my favorites. And yes, if you think you have a better idea about which explosions should be included here, you are just mistaken. And wrong. Please enjoy:

NUMBER 5:
A FIST FULL OF DYNAMITE
aka
DUCK YOU SUCKER (1971)
This makes the list because A) Leone was a genius, B) that is a real bridge made out of stone that they really blew up for real, and C) the explosion is insane. Just look at it carefully. It's not happening in slow motion. It's not repeated a bunch of times (see number 3). It's just a massive real life explosion that shakes the Earth. For real. Watch it again and again, and you begin to see just how massive and crazy this explosion really is.

(explosion at 6:55)

NUMBER 4:
ENEMY OF THE STATE (1998)
A lot of people like to include Die Hard, or Terminator 2 on explosion lists. But see - those guys really only blew up a floor or two of a building. That's just not getting it done in my book. You blow up some shit, you blow that shit up all the way. No half-assing it. To that end, Tony Scott does quality explosive work when he completely levels this old industrial building. What's even cooler, is that one of the heroes of the film blows up his own house, and Gene Hackman has that great line of dialogue as they race away from the scene that can only live in action movie logic: "I blew up the building... because you made a phone call."

Brings new meaning to 'will you accept the charges'

(explosion occurs at 07:29 of this Youtube clip, just couldn't find a better one)

NUMBER 3:
ZABRISKIE POINT (1970)
I know, you are thinking - what the crap is this movie? Well, for cultural framing: over 20 years after the film's release Rolling Stone editor David Fricke wrote: "Zabriskie Point was one of the most extraordinary disasters in modern cinematic history."
Basically, it's a 1960's counter-culture film, and it's not very good by today's standards, although it it expertly photographed by Alfio Contini . But let's get back to the topic at hand - the explosion at the end of the movie: this is pure explosion porn. Not only does director Michelangelo Antonioni show the house exploding from every single angle he shot it from, (and he does blow up the entire house) but he then takes every item from inside the house, and blows them up individually - in super slow motion. That's going the extra mile, and it deserves to be recognized.

NUMBER 2 :
DARK KNIGHT (2008)
Once again, blowing up the whole building get the respect. I give this one high marks because of the framing in the film, it's just a wildly successful explosion plot, character, thematically, and it's just plain fun. And it's a nice big fat fatty of an explosion. If you can still get a lot of bang out of an explosion from a freaking helicopter shot, you know you got a good one!

(embedding disabled)

NUMBER 1:
BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI: (1957)
Ok, maybe not the balls out best explosion ever, but when you add it to the plot of the film, you just can't pre-load the expectation for an explosion any more than this. This is hands down the most meaningful explosion on film, you just can't get more attached to a thing that blows up in a movie. And once again, it's all full scale - no miniatures - just good old fashioned mayhem.