When I figured I'd watch a metric shitload of movies and upload my uninformed opinions to the Internet, I didn't know what I was getting into. Just that it would take a lot of time, and certain parts might be less enjoyable than others. I was right. I'm not used to being right this much. All of that happened, and more.
Fifty movies later, I've scraped the team off the top, and the weird scum off the bottom, for your convenient ocular ingestion. You're welcome.
THE CREAM
Love at first sight. Does it actually happen? Who knows. But it'd have to start with a conversation. Here's the most organic, naturally quick-developing romance I've ever seen. Well, watched on a screen. And the sequels are just as good. For me, this was love at first sight.
Castle in the Sky
The quintessential fantastical adventure comes courtesy of Studio Ghibli. It features puppy love and luxuriously animated destruction. I submit to you, the finest of early Miyazaki.
Donnie Darko
Ip Man
Want a genuine Hong Kong kung-fu movie? Here's your kung-fu movie. Mix together: fantastic fight sequences, desperate circumstances, and dubious historical accuracy. Stir it up, bake on HIGH for 108 minutes, and serve one (1) masterpiece.
Prisoners
Intense. Just...intense. A father going too far to save his little girl, knowing he's going too far. But what else can he do. Just watch. Once per millennium is enough.
THE DREGS
I don't get the hype. Am I dumb? Or just honest? I can figure out some of what Fellini is shooting for, but I end up more repelled than impressed. Sure, it's probably ingenious, but I'm not at the point to appreciate it yet. I leave it for the elderly sophisticates whose dopamine receptors quit functioning decades ago.
Fanny and Alexander
Long, oblique, and relentlessly depressing. I swear don't have a vendetta against European auteurs. They're brilliant, in their own way, I'm sure. But my mushy mind can't wrap around why anyone would willingly sit through this picture. Masochism, or boredom snowbound in a Swedish blizzard with nothing better to do than play this cinematic soporific on loop.
More Fellini. Feign surprise, everyone. I resubmit the same tired complaints: difficult to follow, overflowing with frankly despicable characters, and punishingly long. If this is "the sweet life," I'm going vegan.
The Graduate
Inter-generational American adultery? It might even be interesting, if the adulterers in question even remotely cared about each other. Instead their relationship collapses into a black hole of mindless unfulfilled hedonism, from which not one molecule of joy or love can escape. At least the guy learned what he's going to do with his life: perpetuate that black hole on girls his own age.
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Painfully dysfunctional relationships. I'm detecting a pattern.
What set new standards for Hollywood swearing also blazed new trails in how much I can despise every minute of a movie. I'm not afraid of Virginia Woolf -- nice lady, a tad strange, but has some interesting things to say -- but I'm afraid if I have to suffer through this film again, I'm marching off into a lake with rocks in my pockets.
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