The Lists AFI Forgot: The Acidemic Top Ten

What makes an Acidemic film? Well, it's about FREEDOM! It's beyond duality, it means doing whatever you want - sticking it to the man if he gets in your way, but doing it with LOVE. What makes an artist free? Well it's about the doors of perception being wiped clean to see reality as it truly is, infinite (to paraphrase Aldous Huxley). That doesn't necessarily mean it's a drug film, because there's plenty of drug films just as inhibited and hung up as straight films. No, it means the makers of the film either encourage or allow a perspective free of the usual dubious moral hand-wringing and punishments for transgression against the patriarchy. Seriously, how many films pretend to be badass, and then turn it into a stern cautionary tale as the badass learns she can't have children because she fucked up her DNA, so she kills herself because a world without the pitter-patter of ugh.. you get the picture; or the antihero decides to give themselves up because "we blew it," or the fallen women (of color) throws herself in front of a bullet so her true (white) love can marry the boring socially acceptable (white) gal? Or what about the lesbian couple who have to get shot at the end, or else Jessica Stein picks some beige normal safety-first Clyde instead of her hot girlfriend, or it's aaalll a dream?

Here's 10 movies that are truly free, truly alive, truly... Acidemic! Take that, AFI with your moronic categories like Sports and courtroom.

AMOK YOUTH

1. Over the Edge (pictured above)
2. Heavenly Creatures
3. Dazed and Confused
4. Kids (right)
5. Spider Baby
6. Roch and Roll High School
7. The Butcher Boy
8. Thirteen
9. Bully
10. Rebel Without a Cause (until Dean turns narc)

THE OUTER LIMITS

1. The Holy Mountain
2. Performance
3. Head
4. Yellow Submarine
5. Pierrot Le Fou
6. Psych-Out
7. Breakfast of Champions
8. Persona
9. La Dolce Vita
10. Fight Club

DRUNKS AND DRUGGIES

1. Night of the Iguana
2. The Lost Weekend
3. Scarlet Diva
4. Never Give a Sucker an Even Break
5. Leaving Las Vegas
6. Possession
7. International House
8. The Thin Man
9. Long Day's Journey Into Night
10. Bad Lieutenant

I might be forgetting something, but that's a good mix of the canonized, the eclectic and the popular, ala the AFI lists. I also made some lists over on Bright Lights After Dark!