01: YOUR FAVORITE MOVIE
Sense and Sensibility, The Royal Tenenbaums, Velvet Goldmine
Sense and Sensibility is the movie I would watch when I was sick as a little kid. I would watch it over and over again – like, literally as soon as it ended, I would just go back to the beginning and watch it all over again. And honestly I can still watch it like that now. I enjoy it as much every time; I think in a lot of ways that's how I begin to mark favorite movies, something that makes me all jittery with affection even though I've already watched it a bajillion times. And gaaaaah Emma Thompsonnnnn. I WOULD HAVE PROOF ENOUGH OF A BROKEN HEART EVEN FOR YOU. That sceeeeene. And when she cries at the end! And her family just sort of scuttles out sideways like awkward English crabs! It is heartwarming and beautiful and I love this movie so much I could just spew rainbows.
The Royal Tenenbaums came upon me kind of suddenly, because even though I'd seen it a bunch I didn't become wildly obsessed with it until last year. I don't know what happened. I went from a casual Wes fan to a rabid one, who knows how. But this will always be my favorite Uncomfortable Family Dynamics movie, I love all the characters, I love the look of it, I obviously have quite a bit of affection for Margot, and it has become very definitive for me.
Velvet Goldmine is a movie I have definitely talked about before. It fucked me up good when I was twelve. It put a name and face and a voice to my burgeoning baby queerness, gave me a way to contextualize it even though I didn't get it yet. You know there's that scene in this movie where Christian Bale is pointing at Johnny-Rhys-as-Brian-Slade-David-Bowie on the television and shouting to his parents, "THAT'S ME. THAT IS ME." And even though I didn't get it then and I would not get it for many years, that is the feeling I associate with this entire film. With all three of these films, really. These three in conjunction sum me up quite accurately, I think.
02: THE FIRST MOVIE YOU SAW IN THEATERS
The Lion King
I love that Simba had that same haircut that every single guy in the 90s had.
03: THE LAST MOVIE YOU SAW IN THEATERS
Catching Fire
I guess I liked this movie? My hatred for the first one is well documented, so I went to see this purely for hate-watching and lols reasons. But then by accident I was really into it? Whoops. JLaw has grown on me quite a bit, I finally gave in to her, and obviously Jena Malone was a glorious radiant angel of light; I feel so justified in being obsessed with her when I was like fourteen. I really wish this director and screenwriter had been in charge from the beginning, because the drastic uptake in quality was so obvious. It actually felt like it had an aesthetic, plus it was well paced and the writing did not make me cringe.
My only qualm is that the boys still suck so much. Like, they are all hideous and none of them can act, so why I am being asked to waste my eyeballs on them? Hemsworth might as well be replaced with a cardboard cutout of himself (p.s. in my head I have recast Gale with Gregory Peck's hot grandson. Just throwing that out there). Whatshisname, Hutcherson, I guess he's passable but I really don't like looking at him and also he 100% comes off as Katniss' gay pal. Less than zero chemistry. And I know tumblr has jumped on the Claflin train, but sorry, nope, ain't gonna happen, brother is butt ugly and terrible at acting and could not even do an American accent to save himself. I kept physically gagging every time he was on screen and could only get it under control once my friend threatened to walk out if I kept it up.
04: THE BEST MOVIE YOU SAW DURING THE LAST YEAR
The Other Woman, Baby Face, The Dreamers
The Other Woman is a movie I kind of stumbled upon, and I'm so glad I did. It got no press at all; honestly the only reason I even found it is because I really like the director, Don Roos, and I was just curious what he'd been up to. I don't like Natalie Portman as an actress but she's really great in this. It's such a great movie. Part of the reason I like Don Roos a lot is because his female characters speak to me – they're prickly and kind of callous and deeply flawed. So, basically human women. This movie in particular is about Portman's character, Emilia, dealing with grief after the death of her baby. And summing it up like that doesn't really do it justice. It's a portrait of grief that's one of the better ones I've seen, because it's shitty and uncomfortable and not pretty and often buried under loads of bullshit. Emilia is not really pleasant or open a lot of the time, and she's dealing with other shit too. It all felt very real and human to me, I liked these people and how they interacted, I liked how Emilia felt so whole as a person and character. A lot of tropes that might bother me elsewhere, like the ~strange stepkid you learn to love~ thing worked for me here. It all revealed itself slowly, very beautifully. I really recommend it.
Baby Face. Barbra Stanwyck playing a woman who reads Nietzsche and sleeps her way to the top at a bank and basically causes the Great Depression, sort of?? WHO KNOWS. But it is glorious and she wears such good outfits and drives men to murder/suicide without giving a fuck so long as she gets her $$$.
The Dreamers sucked me into such an obsession spiral this summer. Attractive French people! The sixties! Great music! So many cigarettes! I finally had to cut Michael Pitt a break even though I've hated him for my whole life up until this point. Eva Green is obviously an angel. Louis Garrel I have always adored. Idk, man, this movie just took hold of me and would not let go. So many things I like in one place!
05: FAVORITE DRAMA
Splendor in the Grass
When Natalie goes all crazy in the bath and started screaming about how she's not spoiled, mom, she's as virginal as the day she was born, mom!!! And also the I HAVEN'T ANY PRIDE scene!!!! Omg I love it all. Basically Natalie going crazy this entire movie is the best, while Warren Beatty is sort of pretty and confused off to the side.
06: FAVORITE COMEDY
Wet Hot American Summer
These people are my comedy idols. Seriously. The State. Stella. This movie. I worship them, I will go with them anywhere. A can of mixed vegetables gives serious advice in this movie. Bradley Cooper and Michael Ian Black have a commitment ceremony in the woods even though they are ostensibly sixteen. Amy Poehler gives two of the greatest line readings ever set to film ('my kids are a bunch of AMA-TE-URS' and also 'how DAAAHHHREE you'). Showalter's confession of love! Probably none of you have any idea what I am even talking about, but this movie is perfect and it's one of those things that people have to like to really be my friend.
07: FAVORITE HORROR MOVIE
Jennifer's Body
Ugh my love for this movie is boundless. Do you like how my cap choices are making it seem like it's way more about lesbians than it actually is? That scene where Megan Fox sips the blood of that goth kid's innards like soup is my faaaaavorite. And Megan Fox's murder-by-Seth-Cohen is also such an excellent scene. This movie got all kind of fucked up, incorrect marketing that kind of screwed it over, but I guess there's no shot that it would have done well anyway, because it is totally a movie for girls, explicitly, and that is (at least in part) why I like it so much.
You know, the director of this, Karyn Kusama, is who I wanted to direct the Hunger Games in an ideal world. She's done this and Girlfight and Aeon Flux, so she clearly knows what's up, re: badass women.
08: FAVORITE ACTION/ADVENTURE MOVIE
The Mummy
09: FAVORITE CLASSIC MOVIE
The Philadelphia Story
Reeeally hard to decide between this and Bringing Up Baby, but Jimmy/Kate is everything to me.
10: FAVORITE PERIOD PIECE
Marie Antoinette, The Heiress, Funny Girl
Idk. I felt weird about this category! I watch and love soooo many period pieces that it felt really hard to narrow it down. None of these are what I thought I would pick when I first saw this category. Marie Antoinette is here because of the pure, beautiful, majestic costume porn. Funny Girl is also here for costume porn, but also here because I like period pieces from the fifties and sixties – no matter what era it is supposed to be, it just looks like the fifties or sixties. The Heiress is here for reasons of Serious Drama, but also because it is one of my favorite movies of all time and I had to stick is somewhere. So my choices here feel weirdly disingenuous to me but there is a reason for it all, so.
11: FAVORITE ROMANCE
A Life Less Ordinary
I feel like I talk about the same movies on lj all the time, lol. But I love this movie! It's so weird! I don't think this movie did well at all, anywhere, and I don't think people really like it, not that it comes up all that often. But I love it! Cameron Diaz is perfectly perfect as a bitchy rich girl who is kidnapped by darling Ewan McGregor, only he is a failure at literally everything and she is super badass and there's some weird subplot about angels trying to make them fall in love. There's random singing. Stanley Tucci is in it (Stanley Tucci is in everything). Ewan has that dodgy haircut that British guys all seem to have at some point in their lives. I can't understate Cameron's icy perfection. I can't help having a thing for cold bitches and the fumbling heart-of-gold guys who give them inexplicable feelings. Also, somehow the climax of the film involves Cameron shooting Ewan in the heart, except he doesn't die, it just gets all lens-flare-y. Weird shit! I like weird shit.
12: FAVORITE QUEER MOVIE
Hedwig and the Angry Inch, But I'm a Cheerleader, Bound
Self-explanatory? I've talked about Hedwig and But I'm a Cheerleader a lot in the past, I feel like. Has everyone seen Bound? If you have not, I demand you go watch it immediately, right now. I fucking love that movie. Just buy it. You won't regret it. Just buy it. Jennifer Tilly is my fucking everything in Bound.
13: FAVORITE BIOPIC
Frida, I'm Not There
Two absolutely glorious movies. That top cap, from Frida, has got to be my favorite shot ever, of all the shots that have ever been shot. It's so gorgeous. Julie Taymor is one sick bitch (respect) and she was the absolute perfect person for that film, really honoring Frida visually and imbuing the entire film with such artistry. These are very different biopics but both do a perfect job of honoring the person they're about, I think. Frida is more straight-foward story-wise but tells Frida's life her way, with a vision that feels so true to her, filtering her life experiences through a lens that might feel abstract or surreal to an outsider but was just life to her, just how she saw things. I'm Not There details the many lives of Bob Dylan, and in a way I think you kind of have to be a little bit of a Dylan fanatic for all the puzzle-pieces to come together. But maybe not; I wouldn't know, being a Dylan fanatic, what it's like from the outside. I love how it splits his life up into a definitely surreal kaleidoscope of people that feels more cohesive and true to him than if it had been more traditional. People contain multitudes, yadda yadda, and both films illustrate that very well. There's more to getting across the sense of a life than events and timelines, you know?
14: FAVORITE TEEN MOVIE
10 Things I Hate About You, Drive Me Crazy, Clueless
The holy trinity of Blonde Girls And The Boys They Are Mean To movies.
15: FAVORITE ANIMATED MOVIE
Aladdin, The Little Mermaid, Anastasia, Thumbelina
I can't make choices sometimes.
16: FAVORITE DOCUMENTARY
No Direction Home
This documentary is soooo goooooodddddd but it's a very Serious Dylan Fan thing because it is five hours long, so, you know. Not for the faint of heart. But it's so fantastic. My favorite thing about it is how it sets the scene, showing you the music that was popular before Dylan so you get a real sense of his impact and what made him so different, and also showing you all of his influences so you really know where he came from. Plus he's pretty open and funny, and there is the added bonus of Joan Baez being FLAWLESS and making fun of Bob a lot in all of her segments.
17: FAVORITE CONCERT FILM
Jeff Buckley: Live in Chicago
Are we surprised? Probably not. I don't really watch a lot of concert films, actually, or at least not as many as I probably should. Live in Chicago is very excellent, it's so great to have a visual record of Jeff as a performer. His charisma and prickliness and adorableness are on full display. He spends the whole performance sort of off to the side and refusing to take center stage, even though that draw he had pulls all the attention to him anyway. Also he spends like minutes with that dumb towel over his head and his little face peeking out like a fucking puppy. Grotesque.
18: FAVORITE GUILTY PLEASURE
Fools Rush In
I don't really believe in guilty pleasures because I revel in all the embarrassing shit I like, but this is one hundred thousand percent a guilty pleasure. This movie is terrible. It is so dumb. Like, Salma and Chandler have a one night stand and get married and then ~~~~~culture clash~~~~~ ensues and then she gives birth to a baby on a bridge in the rain, which is not sanitary. But I love it. It's so stupid I love it. I will always watch it when it is on television. I don't know what this says about me.
19: FAVORITE BOOK-TO-MOVIE ADAPTATION
Trainspotting, Interview with the Vampire
20: FAVORITE MOVIE WITH FEMALE PROTAGONIST
Mermaids, Secretary, The Opposite of Sex
Ugh but also Heathers! Ugh but also so many other things!!!! This was the hardest oneeee. Winona Forever, obviously. Secretary is a movie I will always love. The Opposite of Sex is also Don Roos' doing, and Christina Ricci is extremely wonderful ("I don't have a heart of gold and I don't get one later."), as is Lisa Kudrow (his other movie, Happy Endings, is also excellent).
21: FAVORITE FILM DIRECTED BY A WOMAN
Waitress (Adrienne Shelly)
Bitter about the ending to this day tbh, because even though I liked the stuff with the kid, SO SUE ME, I wanted her to end up with Nathan Fillion. His wife was nice, SO WHAT. You don't have to be with people just because they are nice, jfc. Their relationship and the way it destroys me is based entirely on the voiceover line where she says she never had a real best friend before, or something like that, and then she tells him all the things she had kept bottled up forever!!!! AND HE BOUGHT HER A GOLD PIE DISH. AND HE HUGGED HER FOR TWENTY MINUTES FOR NO REASON EXCEPT TO COMFORT HER, WITH NO EXPECTATIONS. Ughhhhhh. I understand what the movie was doing in making her single-minded about her kid, and I respect that, but w/e, I wanted Keri and Nathan to just fucking be together. He had such respect for her as a person I can't take it.
22: FAVORITE DIRECTOR
Wes Anderson, Todd Haynes
Wes is my main man, as I've said many times. I just dig him. I know it could get kitchsy or twee, but I never really feel that about his stuff. It just feels like his vision to me, and I respect that. I like how relentlessly he sticks to his shit and keeps putting out new stories, original stories. I like people with definite aesthetics, too. My only complaint with Wesley is the number of old white dudes in his stuff, esp. because I don't really get Bill Murray, like I really just don't care.
Todd Haynes! In many ways he is the opposite of Wes but not really. Like, I love that Todd Haynes' adjusts his aesthetic completely from film-to-film as he rearranges other stories to create new things. The same ear-markers are there: incredible music, incredible eye for detail, immersive experiences. If I ever went into film (ahahah), he's what I could see myself becoming, you know? I love his re-working of biography and real people and whatever else into these gorgeous truth-in-fiction, overwhelming kind of movies. That said, I did not like Mildred Pierce one bit and I feel I have to state that.
I wanted to do a 'favorite female director/favorite male director' thing but to my extreme depression, I couldn't think of a female director who I love in the same way, as in: their entire oeuvre, give or take a few, is my shit. There are a lot of female directors who have only done a few things I loved, or who I like a lot but don't get excited about in quite the same way. Julie Taymor, maybe. Sofia Coppola. But I don't know. I tried really hard but I couldn't think of anyone without it feeling untrue somehow and it really made me sad and sent me into shame spiral for a couple days.
23: FAVORITE ACTRESS
Michelle Pfeiffer
My queen. LOOK AT HER BE SO PERFECT IN EVERYTHING. I do not even think Michelle gets enough credit for how talented and incredible she is. Woman does not disappoint. Chéri, which I liked quite a lot, had this closing scene that just lingered on Michelle's face for fucking ages, wordlessly. Shit was amazing. I was not bored for even one second just looking at that woman's face emote silently.
24: FAVORITE QUOTE FROM ANY MOVIE
Brief Encounter
I don't even know. Thanks to the History Boys I know this entire thing off by heart and it was the first thing that came into my head.
25: FAVORITE CHARACTER FROM ANY MOVIE
Isabelle, The Dreamers
I don't know about this either, lol! There were a LOT of people I could have chosen, I guess. But I was so obsessed with Isabelle, and I'm still not sure why. Something about her really spoke to me, with her being this cinema-obsessed self-created-femme-fatale creature who was just a normal teenage girl at the end of the day (you know, incest aside). Eva Green also imbued her with this, like...zaniness? Playfulness, maybe. It's hard to describe. Eva Green is a goddess. Also, pink cigarettes. Cannot understate pink cigarettes.
26: AN OVERRATED MOVIE
Love Actually, Big Fish
Ummmmmm. I feel shady about this category because I don't want to fuck with shit that people love. But. I AM SORRY, OKAY, LOVE ACTUALLY IS TERRIBLE. I am the only person I've ever met who hates it, and I'm always so shocked that that's the case. I was actually totally indifferent to it until I found out it was so universally beloved and then hatred began to fester in me because I am built of spite at the end of the day. I don't get it. I do not fucking get it. It is such a bad movie and it's so depressing, like why would I watch this and especially why at the holidays. Why would I want to watch Alan Rickman cheat on the divine Emma Thompson? Why would I want to watch some dude get all up in Keira Knightley's business when I could be watching her be cute with her husband Chiwetel Ejiofor? And Laura Linney's entire life was so depressing? And Colin Firth's story was so stupid and not romantic and they had no chemistry and it made no sense. Also I am consistently enraged by that plot about the irritating dude going to America and scoring like a hundred random women as though women don't have brains at all, or I guess American women don't. WHATEVER. I HATE IT. Things I will give you, though: Prime Minister Hugh Grant and the cute secretary girl.
And I just never thought Big Fish was as magical or interesting as it purported itself to be, even speaking as a serious business Ewan McGregor fan (also, bless his heart, his American accent is always wonky as fuck).
27: AN UNDERRATED MOVIE
Bachelorette
I loved this movie a LOT and it seems like no one else really did, for the most part. I just loved it. I will worship Kirsten for all of my days, it is known. Lizzy Caplan is an honest to god gift from the lord. Isla Fisher is a princess and her comedic timing was beautifully flawless. I thought they all played off one another perfectly. I mean, it's a movie about terrible humans being absolutely terrible. Is it because they're women, is that why people didn't like it? That is exactly why I liked it, lol. I will always be down for watching people be morally bankrupt in black comedies, and especially women.
28: A MOVIE THAT DISAPPOINTED YOU THE MOST
A Single Man
I will spend the rest of my life bitching about this movie. Every time it shows up on my tumblr dash I want to fucking flip tables. It enrages me. I love this book so much and the cast was SO EXACTLY PERFECT, every one of those people was the right choice for their character. I watched the trailer incessantly until I finally got to see it. And then. AND THEN. Ughhhhhh. Fuck you, Tom Ford, fuck you forever, my grave will read the words: beloved daughter, ps fuck you tom ford. I could hash it out in more detail if anyone cares, but basically he took everything that was messy and true in this novel and turned it into an orange-toned perfume ad. Gross.
29: MOVIE WITH THE BEST SOUNDTRACK
Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Darjeeling Limited, Trainspotting, The Bling Ring, The Dreamers, I'm Not There, Velvet Goldmine
Why choose one thing when you can choose eight things?
30: THE LAST MOVIE YOU WATCHED
On the Road
This is not actually the last movie I watched, but it's the last movie I watched when I started this picspam and the last movie I watched that I actually wanted to talk about. I really thought I would hate this movie, I went into it ready to hate, and I was really only watching it out of spite and a love of Kirsten Dunst. But I guess as often happens, I ended up pretty much loving it. It's a long movie and it feels like a long movie, but not in an oppressive way; I really did enjoy it. It felt very true to its subject matter, the atmosphere and feeling of that. I finally get why people seem to like Garrett Hedlund so much. I thought he was so boring and milquetoasty until this movie, but he really made a fantastic Neal/Dean. Totally perfect, such intense All-American douchebag charisma. You could tell he was really giving it his all and there was no holding back on his part, which fit the role quite well and I really respected. My only point of contention is the casting for Sal/Jack. He was fine in the face, acting-wise, but his American accent was absolutely the worst I've ever heard. It was immensely grating. I winced every time he spoke. He also made Jack a little too...sweet, maybe? But I think that was the direction too. Jack was a little too sweet and a little too neat. And really that HEINOUS accent. But his acting was pretty good aside from that so I'll let it slide. I was also pleasantly surprised by the actor cast as Ginsberg, because I didn't think he'd be good going in, but he really was.