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My favorite movies
Jun. 13th, 2010 12:08 amI was thinking today about my favorite movies, and what would go on my top-five list, and I realized that it's kind of an odd collection. So I'm going to tell you about them.
1. À la folie... pas du tout
Actually, I'm going to tell you about all but one of them--my all-time favorite. The reason I'm not telling you about it is that you really shouldn't know anything about it before you watch it. Don't read any reviews or the IMDB page or anything, just watch it. Trust me. Twenty minutes into my first viewing of it, I didn't think I was going to like it very much; I then watched it three times in the next twenty-four hours because it's just. that. good. I own it and I try to get everyone I can to watch it with me, and so far every one of them has agreed with me that it's truly excellent.
2. Boondock Saints
This is about two young Irish Catholic men living in Boston who take up vigilante justice. Willem Dafoe does a brilliant job as an FBI agent trying to track them down. It's extremely violent and occasionally offensive, but it's the characters who are violent and offensive, not the movie, if that makes sense. Sometimes I watch a movie and it feels like it's implicitly accepting things like that; this one shows people who are like that and lets you decide what to make of them. My first boyfriend introduced me to it--I think he, like many of the young men who make up most of the film's cult following, likes it because he can live vicariously through the badass main characters. I can see that, a bit, but I like it because of the frank way it tackles the question of what justice is and who should get to mete it out. I also like it because it's funny as hell.
3. The Emperor's New Groove
The older I get, the more I realize how difficult it is to write really good kid-appropriate humor, which this movie absolutely nails. It's an animated film set (very) loosely in the Inca Empire. The basic storyline isn't anything special: a selfish young royal is turned into a llama and has to team up with a peasant man (John Goodman) to get back to his palace and turn back into a human, in the process learning a few life lessons. The beauty of the film is in the little moments and the characters, and the lovely little occasional breaks in the fourth wall.
4. The Iron Giant
Another animated film, less of a comedy, although it does have some funny moments. I watched it in theaters when it came out in 1999 and liked it a lot, because of the characters and storytelling. Then I watched it again as a teenager and realized, holy shit, this is about the Cold War and the paranoia of the '50s! I had no idea when I was ten how realistic a lot of the movie was. It's really well-done. Also, Dean is one of the hottest animated characters ever. I'm just saying.
5. The History Boys
This movie is not about child abuse. It really isn't. Nor is it about homosexuality; the characters are pretty much all male, and some of them are gay, but it's not about that. It's about sexual dynamics between adults and teenagers (some of which could be considered abuse of power, but when the boys are seventeen years old, it's not pedophilia, and I really hate it when people talk like it is). It's also about education, which people tend to overlook in discussions of the movie because sex is more immediate, but there are some fascinating ideas in there about teaching styles and methods. It's intense, and it always leaves me thinking, but there's also a lot of squee in it. I thought Dakin was hands-down my favorite character the first time I watched it, and the second time Irwin and Posner seemed just as great, but then after the third time I realized how different and plausible a movie it is if you think of Rudge as the main character.
Man, now I really want to watch all of these again.
1. À la folie... pas du tout
Actually, I'm going to tell you about all but one of them--my all-time favorite. The reason I'm not telling you about it is that you really shouldn't know anything about it before you watch it. Don't read any reviews or the IMDB page or anything, just watch it. Trust me. Twenty minutes into my first viewing of it, I didn't think I was going to like it very much; I then watched it three times in the next twenty-four hours because it's just. that. good. I own it and I try to get everyone I can to watch it with me, and so far every one of them has agreed with me that it's truly excellent.
2. Boondock Saints
This is about two young Irish Catholic men living in Boston who take up vigilante justice. Willem Dafoe does a brilliant job as an FBI agent trying to track them down. It's extremely violent and occasionally offensive, but it's the characters who are violent and offensive, not the movie, if that makes sense. Sometimes I watch a movie and it feels like it's implicitly accepting things like that; this one shows people who are like that and lets you decide what to make of them. My first boyfriend introduced me to it--I think he, like many of the young men who make up most of the film's cult following, likes it because he can live vicariously through the badass main characters. I can see that, a bit, but I like it because of the frank way it tackles the question of what justice is and who should get to mete it out. I also like it because it's funny as hell.
3. The Emperor's New Groove
The older I get, the more I realize how difficult it is to write really good kid-appropriate humor, which this movie absolutely nails. It's an animated film set (very) loosely in the Inca Empire. The basic storyline isn't anything special: a selfish young royal is turned into a llama and has to team up with a peasant man (John Goodman) to get back to his palace and turn back into a human, in the process learning a few life lessons. The beauty of the film is in the little moments and the characters, and the lovely little occasional breaks in the fourth wall.
4. The Iron Giant
Another animated film, less of a comedy, although it does have some funny moments. I watched it in theaters when it came out in 1999 and liked it a lot, because of the characters and storytelling. Then I watched it again as a teenager and realized, holy shit, this is about the Cold War and the paranoia of the '50s! I had no idea when I was ten how realistic a lot of the movie was. It's really well-done. Also, Dean is one of the hottest animated characters ever. I'm just saying.
5. The History Boys
This movie is not about child abuse. It really isn't. Nor is it about homosexuality; the characters are pretty much all male, and some of them are gay, but it's not about that. It's about sexual dynamics between adults and teenagers (some of which could be considered abuse of power, but when the boys are seventeen years old, it's not pedophilia, and I really hate it when people talk like it is). It's also about education, which people tend to overlook in discussions of the movie because sex is more immediate, but there are some fascinating ideas in there about teaching styles and methods. It's intense, and it always leaves me thinking, but there's also a lot of squee in it. I thought Dakin was hands-down my favorite character the first time I watched it, and the second time Irwin and Posner seemed just as great, but then after the third time I realized how different and plausible a movie it is if you think of Rudge as the main character.
Man, now I really want to watch all of these again.
