Let’s Go to the Movies!

 

Oh, gentle readers and assorted others– I was going to post something writer-ish and perhaps even share a bit of my latest little project! I really was! Instead I saw this list about movies…and felt, as in lots of feels, that I should, instead, fill in my choices for all the movie categories below. It was something I saw over on FB. If that’s even cool anymore to admit you go anywhere near FB. So!! Here ya go. It’s not scientific or artistic or of any merit whatsoever. So it will probably garner moi at least five likes and even a spam comments! Squeeee!!

Most Hated Movie: Drawing a blank here so I’ll put the Matrix. I really did not like the Matrix. I did not like it in a box, I did not like it with a fox.

Movie I Think Is Overrated: Avatar– Fern Gully did this way better and it was funnier.

Movie I Think Is Underrated: Fame– the 80’s movie about the artsy school, and if they remake this one, I’m going on a rampage. Wonder Boys– Michael Douglas and Toby Maguire. I can watch this one over and over. Why is this not a staple of TBS???

Movie I Love: Office Space. I believe you have my stapler? PC load letter. We need to talk about your TPS reports.

Movie I Secretly Love: okay, do not judge me. Don’t. These movies are my version of crack, meth, Oxycontin…Twilight. Yep. Twilight. If you doubt my sanity and have taken me off your list of future Serious Girl Writers, well, I don’t blame you in the least. I watch this movie with a hate-it/this is so oddly soothing back and forth going on in my head.

Favorite Action Movie: Captain Blood came to the forefront here. With Errol Flyn. The Run-Down, with the Rock and Christopher Walken. Okay, the Scorpion King, too. It’s fun and goofy. Um, [if you’re done judging me from the Twilight admittance] the Robin Hood with Kevin Costner. Because it’s fun and goofy and features Alan Rickman stealing the whole movie. Come on!! Thelma and freaking Louise, of course, of course. Jurassic Park.

Favorite Drama: The Color Purple. Like Water for Chocolate. A Room With a View. To Kill a Mockingbird. The Grapes of Wrath. A Streetcar Named Desire. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. An Officer and a Gentleman. Terms of Endearment. The Black Stallion. The Man From Snowy River. Where the Red Fern Grows. Old Yeller. Gladiator. Dante’s Peak.

Favorite Western: The Beguiled– why did they remake this?? Why?? Unforgiven. The Apple Dumpling Gang– does this count? It’s Disney, but it’s sorta a Western. The Ballad of Little Jo– about a woman who dressed as a man to survive in the Old West, based on a true story. The Quick and the Dead, Sharon Stone one. The Coen Brothers and their version of True Grit. [My dad likes the ‘real’ True Grit, by the way. If you don’t know that John Wayne also made a movie called True Grit, you’re probably watching too many foreign cat videos over on the youtubes.] Posse. Renegade with Vincent Cassel, because no one should never not watch a French guy in a Western. Dead Man– Johnny Depp does a fantastic turn in this dark, crystal clear black and white masterpiece from Jim Jarmusch.

Favorite Horror: Okay, here goes. Night of the Living Dead– the original one, not the remake, ugh a bug, stop remaking the classics, you fucksticks. The Exorcist– it still gives me the shivers. The Devil’s Backbone– a Spanish film that’s truly gorgeous and truly spooky. Halloween– the original because I don’t have to explain why, do I? Carrie– the Brian DePalma one, with Sissy Spacechick. Yes, I do want to see the musical based on Carrie, you bet your buckets of pig’s blood I do. An American Werewolf in London, want to watch that right now. Waxwork, both of them. Both!! The Company of Wolves– based on the Angela Carter stories, gorgeous and creepy and darkly sexual. Audition– one of the truly most frightening movies I’ve ever sat through. Drag Me to Hell– eerie and so well done with just shadows and sound effects mostly, rather old-fashioned for a Sam Raimi flick. Army of Darkness– this might be in the sci-fi category, but then again, maybe not. From Dusk till Dawn. Pitch Black. The Abominable Dr. Phibes– I have to drop everything and watch this when it comes on, just a hypnotic acid trip of a movie. I’ve never done acid, but…Holy crap, will stop there.

 

Favorite Comedy: Arsenic and Old Lace. Buffy, the Vampire Slayer– with Paul Reubens and Rutger Hauer and some truly 90’s slangin’ going on. Harvey. Waiting for Guffman. The Princess Bride. Blazing Saddles. Young Frankenstein. Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Run away, run away! Planes, Trains and Automobiles. The Birdcage. This is Spinal Tap. The Ref– seriously, this is Christmas with my family, or it seems like it. Fast Times at Ridgemont High. High Spirits. Dogma. The original Ghostbusters. Heathers. Best in Show. For Your Consideration.

Favorite Romance: It Happened One Night. Strictly Ballroom. Dr. Zhivago. Pride and Prejudice– I like any version of this, really. The Proposal. The Philadelphia Story. La Belle et la Bete– Beauty and the Beast, 1946. Bus Stop. Bringing Up Baby. Sense and Sensibility. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Out of Sight. Moonstruck. Penelope. The Holiday– this might come under guilty pleasure movies. House of the Flying Daggers– this might fall under action/adventure as well? The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. Little Women– the one with Winona Ryder.

Favorite Shakespearean Movie: Twelfth Night. Midsummer Night’s Dream– with Kevin Kline. Much Ado About Nothing, with Emma Thompson.

Favorite Period Epic: Far and away, the Ten Commandments. Yul Brynner chewing scenery in that sexy manly skirt outfit, yes, please.

Yul Brynner as so and so in Ten Commandments. 

Favorite Disney Movie: Darby O’Gill and the Little People. I watch this all year round, by the way. Just in case you were curious.

Favorite Science Fiction Movie: The Ice Pirates. [Go ahead, look this one up, I dare you not to wonder what happened in my life to make me list this movie in a public forum.] One I saw recently, Metropolis, a silent movie that they should show to those who think history isn’t important…The Terminator. E.T. The Road Warrior– still such a stunner of a movie. Pan’s Labyrinth. Labyrinth– David Bowie as the Goblin King!!! The Dark Crystal. The Beastmaster, with Marc Singer! If you have not seen that one or heard of it, honeychile, you need to go watch it ASAP. Eighties hair, animals, bad dialogue, oiled up heroes and villains. And standing around looking very helpless all the time ex-Charlie’s Angels eye candy. Go. I understand.

Favorite Animated Movie: Toy Story 2. How To Train Your Dragon. I still love Fantasia. Monsters, INC. Finding Nemo– that opening scene…! The first Land Before Time. Bambi. The Emperor’s New Groove.

Favorite Superhero Movie: Christopher Reeve as Superman, that first or second outing he had as the Man of Steel. [The glut of superhero movies lately have left me cold, clammy and indifferent to cookie cutter men in tights. Captain Ironman Spiderhulk Magnetic Batdude can suck it. I’m starting to hope a super-race of villainous vaginas attacks from outer space and turns all the superboring studs into those anal plugs morticians use. Is that so wrong? That was a bit mean. Maybe turn them into potted plants? That way they can brighten a room and give back to the environment.]

Favorite Musical Movie: Singin’ in the Rain. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. Sound of Music [did you really think that one would not make a list of movies that I cobbled together???] Brigadoon. [Anything, basically, with Gene Kelly.] I enjoyed the soundtrack way more than the movie of Across the Universe. If that means anything.

Favorite Bad Movie: Um, ahem, [[twilight]] ahem. Oh– Beast of Yucca Flats. Night of the Lepus. Catwoman– omg, I can watch this one over and over and never get tired of watching Halle Berry awkwardly imitate a cat. Wow.

Childhood Favorite: Charlotte’s Web.

Favorite Franchise: Star Wars! I can’t recite the dimensions of the Millennium Falcon, so don’t ask me to.

 

Best Trilogy: LOTR.

Guilty Pleasure: Dodgeball. The Mummy, with Brendon Fraser. The Fast and the Furious movies…any of them. A Million Ways to Die in the West…I know, shh. The Patriot, with Jason Isaacs. Peter Pan, with Jason Isaacs. Basically, anything where Jason Isaacs shows up as the veddy British baddie. [Lucious Malfoy, you betcha.]

Favorite Movie so far this year: I did go see Beauty and the Beast. I did enjoy it.

Favorite Movie Of All Time: The Fisher King. I keep wanting to write an entire post about this movie.

Okay. Yep. I think you were supposed to keep it down to just one movie per category. Whoops.

My taste in movies is atrocious. So, probably, is yours. I’ve seen a lot of those films on those big important lists that AFI and such put out. I’ve also watched those movies everyone actually watches. As trying to get through some of those ‘important’ films just makes me want to slap puppies at times. But I persist and get through them and then feel really smart and important for the rest of the day. I tried to be honest and not just list those films that make me seem super-intellectual and esoterically out there. Films that would make me seem super-duper ‘artsy’. Don’t get me wrong, I do like the obscure, made in the twenties, silent, B/W, made with actual clowns and random people passing by, German Nouveau, Post-Plague, Pre-Finger-Painting, three-hour take on a dog’s journey to bury its bone in the rotted bosom of society itself.

 

Oh heck yeah, I will actually watch something along those lines with real wonder and astonishment. I’ll also sit through Dracula, Untold, and enjoy a guy turning into bats to fight the Turks.