Fan Girl Friday: Christian Slater's Top 5

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You learned yesterday that I was once in love with Christian Slater. My love has not died over the years, it has merely changed. I don't wish to marry him anymore, but I do love his body of work. Christian Slater is an incredibly underrated actor. The problem is not with his acting - it's with the quality of the scripts he works with. But there are some gems amongst his body of work and because I feel the need to make a case for his acting talent we are going to discuss his most well written movies on this,

Fan Girl Friday!

He Was a Quiet Man

The first film I would like to discuss is He Was a Quiet Man. Why this film is not more well known is beyond me. At the risk of sounding like James Lipton, I'm going to say that I think it's resplendent. It's about a man who works in an office where he gets no respect. He is a cog in the machine and the only time he ever gets any notice at all from his co-workers is when he does something wrong. Slater's character is shown to be somewhat mentally unstable as he fantasizes about shooting everyone in his office. One day, he decides to actually do it, and that's when the real story begins. Imagine if Milton from Office Space had decided to go postal. The film is dark, but not without humor, and hands down the best film Christian Slater has ever made.

The Name of the Rose

Next on my list is The Name of the Rose. One of Christian Slater's first roles, he stars as a Franciscan friar opposite Sean Connery in this film adaptation of Umberto Eco's debut novel of the same name. I might favor this movie simply because there's a really great sex scene, but I don't think so. Because it's based on Eco's intellectual 14th century murder mystery The Name of the Rose is an engaging and thoroughly well written film. Slater and Connery work to uncover the origin of a string of murders in a Benedictine monastery in the midst of a theological disputation on the subversive power of laughter. I know it sounds dry, but I promise, it's really good!

Murder in the First

I love this movie so much. In Murder in the First, Christian Slater stars as James Stamphill, the public defender assigned to Henri Young an inmate at Alcatraz who murdered another inmate with a spoon. Everyone believes the case to be open and shut, but as Stamphill speaks to Henri Young he realizes tha the murderer is also a victim of an unjust penal system. He works to achieve justice for Young and the two form an unlikely friendship. Gary Oldman plays the bad guy, and I am not kidding when I tell you that if you haven't seen this film, you must. It is severely underrated.

Basil

Basil is an adaptation of a Victorian novel of the same name. I cannot speak to the quality of the novel, but I feel that the film is just lovely. The story concerns Basil an young aristocrat who is at odds with his high upbringing. The plot is entirely too complicated to sum up here, so I won't even try. Slater plays a tragic antagonist and nails it. Radha Bharadwaj both wrote and directed the film and she did so with poise, grace, and style. The end result is stunning.

Crossing the Line

Christian Slater narrates this documentary about a U.S. Army soldier who defected to North Korea in 1962. Why would a good, red blooded American defect to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea? The writer takes time to focus not only on the defector's story, but also on the lives of several Koreans. The end result is nothing less than fascinating.


Some other really well written and arguably better known Christian Slater films are: Heathers, Pump Up the Volume, Interview with the Vampire, True Romance, and Very Bad Things. If you aren't familiar with any of the movies discussed today, you really should be.

Christian is brooding because he knows you haven't seen any of his movies. For shame.