IM GIVING YOU PEOPLE WHAT YOU WANT 

My top ten (10) favorite movies 

Keep in mind we all have different opinions and interests so don’t hate from outside the club when you cant even get in. 

As you all know I’m kind of a movie buff. Recently I’ve been slacking.

I’m usually the most updated on pop culture and all things movies, music, and books.

Don’t. Come. For. Me.

I beg you.

Within this list I will provide my own rating

My favorite scene and why

My opinions on the director and the cinematography. 

This isn’t to be taken ~too seriously~ mostly because I might not even know what I’m talking about

I am not a film major. 

I did take a semester of film literature so I kinda know what I’m talking about but really

I’m Just a big fan. 

Lowkey did exclusive research on my favorite directories on my free time…

ANYWAYS 

!!! THIS LIST WILL NOT BE IN ORDER !!!

!!! MAY HAVE SPOILERS !!!

FANTASTIC MR. FOX (2009)  10/10

Directed by WES ANDERSON

This movie and “Isle of Dogs” are the only stop motion movies he’s produced so far.

This man has the most consistent “A-LIST” cast in a good portion of his movies.

They are witty, awkward, and beautifully staged. If that’s the correct term to use?

Aesthetically pleasing. 

He often matches the color palette of the setting to the focused character to kind of perceive the world or the moment is revolving around them. 

Ive noticed his signature style is overhead, symmetrical, and tracking dolly shots. 

Often slow motion shots to catch mood and moments of significance to the characters.

My favorite scene in this movie has got to be when they meet the psychotic rat “Bean security” who is played by Willem Defoe. What a versatile man he is. 

The cider room is glowing like gold to which Mr. Fox comments on and the spicy bandit music starts as they are getting ready for a one on one, but almost get caught. I love when  Mr. Bean opens the door, takes a hit from his cig, blows it and then closes the door. HAHA.  Such detail. 

CORALINE (2009) 10/10 

DIirected by HENRY SELICK

He also produced “James and the Giant Peach” 

All of my life I’ve had the utmost respect for stop motion animation because of how time consuming it is. 

This movie had over 130 sets and 52 different stages in studio to create it in its entirety. 

It took 4 years to finish.

A lot of people have told me that this movie scared them as a child and still does because of the whole “button eyes” and it’s visuals. 

Ive gone into theory about when she tells her parents about her “dreams” being so vivid and they brush it off.

I wanted to think she was lucid dreaming whenever she fell asleep and was in a nightmare in disguise caused by the other mothers spirit haunting her through the doll.

In the movie she gets stuck in the “dream land” in daylight which could also be perceived as “day dreaming.”

I later found out how the “other mother” Is mentioned as “the beldam” when the ghost of the children who went missing are introduced. 

It is another word for witch, who can shape shift and lures children into “another dimension” to take their souls and keep them prisoner. 

SO I was kind of on the right track but also wasn’t. 

My favorite scene was when the other father showed her the garden and is riding a mechanical praying mantis. The colors and the creativity behind characterizing the plants was fascinating. 

KUBO AND THE TWO STRINGS (2016) 7/10 

Directed by TRAVIS KNIGHT 

He also directed “ParaNorman” and “BoxTrolls”

This movie is the longest stop motion animation created so far At one hour and 41 minutes long. 

It consists of 145,000 single pictures. 

I will say this is VERY underrated movie, I know it wasn’t the most popular movie set out by LAIKA studios 

BUT. It’s definitely worth a watch.

The first time I saw it I was so impressed with how they incorporated origami into the animation.

It isn’t creepy creepy like the other 2 animated films he’s created. Frankly i’m not a huge fan of BoxTrolls. 

It was creative and kind of cute but something about the realistic mis-colored faces of the “adult” characters makes me uncomfortable.

I really wish it was longer or had a second part to continue the story and give more background information about the family. 

My favorite scene is somewhere in the middle, they encounter “the skeleton demon” who has the hidden “unbreakable” sword.

It is based on the Gashadokuro of Japanese folklor and is one fo the coolest creature in the film.

It is also the largest puppet to be built standing at 18 feet tall. This scene is kind of hilariously tense but the assembly of the bones was the sickest intro to the beast.

BEFORE I DISAPPEAR (2014) 5/10

Directed by SHAWN CHRISTENSEN 

I came across this movie very randomly a few years ago when it was still on Netflix and had some sort of weird obsession with it. It was a little dark and trippy.

Shawn is actually the main character “Richie” who is looking after his niece “Sophia” 

This movie is based on the (2012) short film “CURFEW” which Shawn also wrote and directed himself, the endings are quite different but the plot is similar. 

My favorite scene is when he takes Sophia to the bowling alley (which is a bit sketch) and is trying to figure out what is a hallucination and what is real life since he’s a bit disoriented the whole time. 

“Sophia so far” by Goodnight Radio was also written by Shawn himself. 

Homeboy seemed bored.

This song is what makes the whole scene so good. The lighting, the dancing, and Sophia in her own world. Richie looking like he’s having a bad trip on the dim-lit side of the room kind of shows the opposite ends of the spectrum on their headspaces and emotions. It’s kind of hilarious how the background people join in and then continue like that didn’t just happen.

You gotta kind pay attention to it when you watch but is definitely not for everyone. 

ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND (2004) 7/10

Directed by MICHEL GONDRY

This movie hurts hurts. Just imagine. 

Getting a card in the mail that says “someone you know has just erased you from their memory” 

I wouldn’t even know what to do or to think. 

This movie is complex, sad, heartwarming, and spontaneous. I had to watch this for my film-lit class and was 

S O B B I N G. 

Half of this movie is actually improvised, Michel wanted to give them creative freedom with their settings and quick responses. He also played a little bit of mind games with the cast to get genuine reactions. 

Like when Jim was in one of his last memories and Kate suddenly disappeared, he didn’t know she was going to suddenly be gone and his saddened reaction was in fact genuine. The sound gets taken from the original shot and you could see he’s mouthing “Kate” Instead of her characters name because he was concerned and confused on where she went.

I think the most intriguing thing about this movie is even after their memories are erased they are still drawn to each other and meet again on completely different circumstances. With the honest truth of not knowing it had happened before and what their ultimate end result will be again..

THE DEVIL ALL THE TIME (2020) 7/10

Directed by ANTONIO CAPOS

This Netflix original truly stunned me, they are stepping up the game.

The cast is also a divine list, let me tell ya. 

Robert Pattinson’s character did throw me for a loop as a priest child molester.

Homeboy is making a breakthrough from his twilight role, which seems to be the only thing we think of when you hear his name and see his face HAHA.

His accent was a little funny but also knowing he declined a dialect coach and learned the heavy high-pitched southern sound on his own makes it kinda better. 

A+ for effort baby.

I like gory movies but this wasn’t the kind of cringe gory that looked as fake as it actually is, it was moderate and bearable.

I think what I liked most about this film is how some people’s lives are truly fated to cross paths in many many ways. It was and wasn’t a little shocking how all the individual stories managed to meet each other, becasue it is a small world, especially when you live in small towns. Sometimes history really does repeat itself. 

1917 (2019) 8/10

Directed by SAM MENDES

I tend to get bored of war movies because they all seem to be the same for me but this movie right here blew me way. It was so SO beautiful to watch.

It was apparently a continuous shot film, and the only “invisible” edits was the transitions through a black screen and movement behind objects. It was also shot on a single 40mm lens. 

My absolute favorite shots/ scenes was the burning church or “blazing city”and when he’s running through the fields with bombs going off behind him.

In the burning church scene it the largest rig of lighting at five stories high and consisted of two thousand lamps. 

The flares lit the entire scene in the city of ruins and were timed for perfect lighting and shadows it was unreal.

I could watch it over and over. Sam is truly a genius. 

The idea that your job was to stop an entire war from happening just blows my mind. 

It won all the awards it deserved. 

LORDS OF DOGTOWN (2005) 8/10

Directed by CATHERINE HARDWICKE

I saw this for the first time when I was 15 or 16 and was completely obsessed with it. 

This was based on a true story about the “Z-Boys” and was around the same time Tony Hawk’s fame had started. I think he was filming his first documentary at this time.

RIP Heath Ledger what a good role he played in this movie. 

Seeing this made me want to get back into skating, and wishing life was as simple it was back then. 

If you liked Mid 90’s you should definitely watch this. 

Throughout the movie you could see each of them transition through different phases of teenage hood and dealing with the hardships of life in the 70’s.

I don’t have a specific favorite scene but when they are breaking into houses and skating in empty pools It looked like so much fun and it actually turned into a sport. 

It was illegal to do that in California at the time. 

MIDSOMMAR (2019) 10/10

Directed by ARI ASTER

The only other movie I’ve seen by Ari Aster is Hereditary and lemme tell you he is on my list of favorite directors with these two movies alone.

Anxiety inducing and perfectly fucked up. It was so hard to look away. I’m a sucker for psychological thrillers. 

I have come to appreciate A24 productions A LOT recently, they are releasing banger after banger.

When I tell you I was on the edge of my seat ready to leave the theatre because of how uncomfortable I was, ARI IS NOT MESSIN AROUND. 

I don’t even know where to start with this film. There were so many hidden hints that foreshadow their fate and re appearances of her family even tho they died. I had to watch it a couple of times to actually notice them.

I know for the most part they were drugged and Dani’s character was the one having the worst trip from emotional trauma and mental heath issues. 

Her hallucinations of the plants growing into her get more pronounced throughout her stay foreshadowing her eventual decision to join the community and in the end scene of the flower gown/crown signifies her complete engulfment by the community. 

Fun fact, this was not actually shot in Sweden but in Hungary. Most of the Swedish dialogue is deliberately not subtitled to create a sort of isolation especially for the audience and the foreign visitors in the film. 

The practice of “Attestupa” is literally a myth and is kind of a reflection of the Icelandic medieval tradition of depicting Swedes as barbaric on account of them converting to Christianity a century later than Iceland did. 

Swedish critics praised the film as “an excellent black comedy” instead of striking fear in them.

I would sound like a psycho if I said I had a favorite scene in this horrifying movie but I did appreciate the minimalistic color palette of the community and the field scenes with the white gowns. 

Such a great movie all together. 

AND LAST BUT NOT LEAST 

TENET (2020) 10/10

Directed by CHRISTOPHER NOLAN

My boy Nolan really knows what the fuck he’s doin. 

I could name allll of his masterpieces but true fans just know. This film is definitely up there with Interstellar and THAT movie is beyond great in its entirety. The Prestige is also one of my FAVORITE Nolan movies, words cant even explain how fantastic It is. I get so geeked talking about his directing. 

This is the most recent recent movie I’ve seen in theatre and it was sooooooo worth it. 

I didn’t even have to watch it a second time to completely understand it.

This was his first original produced film.

For starters,

THE CAST LEARNED HOW TO PERFORM STUNTS BACKWARDS AND SPEAK IN REVERSE FOR THIS FILM ISN’T THAT CRAZY. THERE WAS NO CGI OR VISUAL EFFECTS EITHER.

Absolutely no one knew that the film was about before its release, the cast had to read their script RIGHT BEFORE FILMING. There was so much secrecy with its production.

I cant even find the words. The storyline the visuals the music everything about it. 

The word ‘TENET’ originated from the sator square which is a word square containing a five-word Latin palindrome that dates back to the ruins of Pompeii. The puzzle is a five-by-five square made up of five 5-letter words written in five lines: SATOR, AREPO, TENET, OPERA, and ROTAS. In every direction the square is rotated, these five words appear both horizontally and vertically- a property that fits the time inversion feature of the film. ALL FIVE WORDS APPEAR IN THE FILM. 

I’m not even going to include my favorite scene you just have to watch it to understand. 

That concludes my list. 

If you haven’t guessed I love movies and yes I’ve considered becoming a film major to do just this. 

It was very hard to decide on which ones to pick and might have a second list soon. 

Even if you don’t like these movies as much as I do, to each their own. 

I know I could have done waaaaaayyy better in my selection but that gives me a reason to do another post.

HAHA.

Let me know what you think ;)