If you know me, you know I go to the movies. A lot. (And usually by myself, which some people think is weird but that I think is awesome.) With the full knowledge that no one's out there dying to know what my favorite movies of the year have been so far, I present to you this list of my five favorites. (As long as I have a blog, I may as well use it to inflict my opinions on the world.)
5. Upstream Color
This movie makes no sense (much like Shane Carruth's other movie Primer). Except it does. Almost. The whole time you're watching it, you get this feeling like there's this perfectly reasonable explanation of how everything fits together and makes sense, but each time you think you figure it out, you realize there's a piece you left out and now have no place to put. And then you think you've really gotten it, but there's this bit about Walden that just refuses to make sense. All that sounds annoying and frustrating, which it may be. But regardless of that, this was the most engaged I've been with any movie I've seen in a long time. There are usually a few times in a movie when my mind starts to wander, when I start to think about how much longer it is (not always because it's bad--sometimes I don't want things to end), or when I start to think about all the stuff I should be doing instead of sitting in a movie. That didn't happen at all in this movie. Not once. I was intellectually engaged with it, thinking about it, the entire time. And I loved that.
4. Much Ado About Nothing
I suspect the sheer amount of enjoyment I got out of seeing this movie comes from two things.
First, I don't really go to see many comedies. This is because most movies that come out in theaters where I live that are billed as comedies are either stupid funny or disgusting funny, and I've always been of the opinion that neither of these types of funny are, in fact, very funny. I'm a much bigger fan of things that are quirky funny or stupid-but-we-know-we're-being-stupid-so-really-we're-making-fun-of-stupid-funny funny. (I like to call this intelligent funny, but that makes me sound kind of like I think highly of myself and my sense of humor, so I'm not going to do that here.) The point is, I don't see funny movies in theaters very often. Usually I see movies that are realistic (read sometimes a little dark and sometimes a little sad), so there was something really great about seeing a comedy--a quippy, sarcastic comedy-- in a pretty full theater with lots of people laughing (especially this one group of ladies who were really, really laughing).
Second, when I was in college, I decided to take a Renaissance Drama class because I thought to myself it wasn't fair the only thing people read from that time was Shakespeare. I thought there were all these other playwrights doing great stuff who had just been overshadowed, so I was going to take this class, learn about them, and then talk about them at parties (I don't know what parties) and sound really smart and above people. This didn't happen. Shakespeare's the only guy we still read because his stuff really is loads better than other stuff from the same time (except Marlowe's stuff, which is amazing, but since he died in a sketchy, bar-fight-type thing, there's not a lot of it). I read Much Ado in college, but hadn't really thought about it, or any Shakespeare really, in a while. So, the English major in me loved getting reacquainted with the Bard. And seeing his plays, in any form, is always better than just reading them, I think.
Bottom line, it's smart and fun.
(Plus the whole time you kind of feel like you're watching Joss Whedon's episode of Cribs, which is fun.)
3. Before Midnight
This is a classic example of a movie I like because it feels authentic to me. I feel like I'm watching real people dealing with real life, and those are just the kind of movies I prefer (which is clear in my top two movies). I loved the first two movies in this series, so I expected to love this one and I was not disappointed. Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy have managed to make me love their characters, so watching them fight, I was pretty worried about them. I just wanted them to work it out. If Upstream Color had me intellectually engaged, Before Midnight had me emotionally engaged. I also love it because it's pretty much just talking; it's a movie based solely on conversations. And I love those conversations; I want to talk to people like that. (The series has probably given me a very unlikely idea of how I would like to talk with someone if I'm ever in a relationship because I'm an introvert and not particularly good at small talk or conversations, but that's neither here nor there.)
2. Frances Ha
There is no way I'm going to watch a movie about a twenty-something girl who feels awkward and out of place and like everyone's lives are working out except her own and like she's being left behind and not love it. Because it's basically a movie about me. Except I'm not a dancer and I don't live in New York. But I know how it feels to watch your friends grow up, and do exciting things, and get engaged/married/whatever, and feel like you're somehow on the outside of the life you're supposed to be living, stuck in some weird place that's boring and dull and lonely. So watching this movie, which tells the story of a girl named Frances who is exactly there, made me feel not so weird and not so alone. And I love that the end isn't some big, dramatic thing. It's simple and subtle, just like the ending of this movie in most people's lives.
1. Stories We Tell
Helping a friend plan for the upcoming school year, I realized how many documentaries I watch. This is one of them. Sarah Polley interviews her family and various family friends trying to figure out the answer to a family mystery, which I won't go into, but it really turns into a picture of how we remember things, how we piece together those memories into our own stories, and why we need to tell stories at all. It's amazing. I was particularly into all the parts of people describing Polley's mom, who died when Polley was young, and how people's memories of her were sometimes markedly different and how losing her had probably really shaped how people remembered her (this is probably because my dad died when I was a kid). I'm not sure exactly how she does it, but Polley manages to take all these pieces of interviews and pictures and home movies and turn them into something truly remarkable.
(Bonus! My favorite movie of the year that other people may have actually seen...aka my favorite one that played at a normal movie theater and not the art house theater downtown is Star Trek: Into Darkness, which I love for entirely superficial, shallow reasons (please note the distinction between favorite and best): 1) J.J. Abrams, who I will always love because he gave me Felicity. 2) It's another chapter in the beautiful Chris Pine/Zachary Quinto interpretation of the Cpt. Kirk/Spock bromance, which I adore. I feel like a majority of friendships featured in movies involve girls, but guys have friends too, you guys. 3) BuffBatch. He's got muscles and a long monologue where the only thing that distracts you from his glorious voice is a lonely tear sliding down his face. Don't even try to pretend you didn't love listening to his voice in a movie theater. Don't even try.
Iron Man 3 and Monsters University were good too, but J.J. wins every day. Because Felicity. )
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