Five Movies Hipsters Can't Live Without

Here's five movies hipsters just can't live without......


Each of the following films has one thing in common: they're all nowhere near as good as that guy in the coffee shop who wears a scarf for no reason might lead you to believe. Without these five films to fuel his condescension, however, scarf-beard might be forced to become good at something besides squirting cream into boiling hot pond water. These are five films that hipsters cannot live without.

"Hello? Anyone in there? I'd like a
venti soy frap no whip, please... "
Yes, I love Donnie Darko. It's easily the best film on here, but its worth can be diluted by the cult following who saw it when they were angsty teenagers and never grew out of it. It's the perfect anti-authority film for kids who hated early bed times and thought homework was the design of fascist dictators. Donnie Darko is actually a pretty darn good flick after seeing it again a decade later, but I feel I have to hide the fact that I enjoy it from middle class Starbucks employees, otherwise I'll be met with derision. "I bet he doesn't even understand what the symbol of the airplane means. Psh, whatever."

Scott Pilgrim's success is bittersweet in that I think it's a wonderfully made film, visually stunning, well performed, and expertly edited. However, it's tough for a hipster to admit there's little here beyond implausibly clever, yet awkward teens punching each other and having no idea what that tingly feeling is in their no-no place. The bookends of the hipster film spectrum typically end at two extremes. We have the one extreme, Scott Pilgrim's extreme, that's expertly crafted, loud, and fast, yet is about as evocative as cardboard. Then we have the Waking Life extreme (which I'll get to) that's a horrible, nauseating bore that tries its hardest to mean something, yet is about as evocative as cardboard. I do like Scott Pilgrim, though, but it can get a little taxing to endure when there's next to zero plot fueling the otherwise brilliant visuals. It's like an incredibly well-animated hipster screen saver.

The Nightmare Before Christmas is a technical marvel as far as animation and design goes. The music is top-notch, accompanied by sharp voice acting. But you can't spend five minutes in a Hot Topic without seeing a fat white girl in a Jack Skellington hoodie roll herself up to the counter. What she won't admit to herself is that Nightmare Before Christmas is such by-the-book, stock grade storytelling that a 7th grade literature class could collectively write something more exciting with finger paints. It's kind of a classic now, and I do appreciate the film for what it's worth, but it's still just a darker version of ethical powerhouses like Clifford the Big Red Dog or Curious George. It's a story truly meant for very young children who need proper values explained to them like they're cavemen. But it's dark with spirals, and the trees are shaped like Tim Burton's hair, so hipster dudes can avoid classification as creepy man-children who obsess over stories for kindergartners.

""Oh, you think you're cool?
 You'll never be chewing a pipe
on a La-Z-Boy on the lawn cool."

I hate Juno. If this film centered on any other character besides the pretentious irrational jerk Diablo Cody chose to write about then I might have enjoyed it. Then it wouldn't be called Juno and it wouldn't have been written in an actual Starbucks by a grown woman named Diablo Cody. I don't even have to make this stuff up. I don't think there is any single character more intensely unlikable in any hipster film as Juno is and Cody based the character on her own self. Wow. She is written with impossibly perfect lines that no sixteen-year-old would ever be clever enough to say and after courting the affection of a would-be family to care for her unborn child leaves them hanging due to a fit of hormonal nonsense by the end of the film. Whoops! Spoiler. Sorry that I just saved you from wasting your self-worth on this wad of attention-seeking crap.


Waking Life, the ultimate hipster film that's just so deep, man. You wouldn't get it anyway. The film looks like something a Loony Toons reel crapped out, employing one of the single most needless aesthetic visual choices know to film history. Every frame is rotoscoped for absolutely no reason. This adds virtually nothing of substance to the film's ceaseless beating over the head with the intellectual intrigue of a freshman lunch table conversation. The only way this film can be appreciated is if you're high, drunk, on your period, and you're a 15 year old girl.

Oh, god... am I... becoming a hipster?

- article by J.G. Barnes