Nothing else to say
“Our next movie is quite simply a masterpiece…”
So said Roger Ebert on one episode of Ebert & Roeper back in 2002. The movie in question was Spirited Away, and up until that point, my knowledge of anime did not extend beyond the Pokémon TV show.
I know, I know. This is three movies instead of one.
Yet as the very overused meme would say, “one does not simply pick one of the films in The Lord of the Rings Trilogy.”
Of all the 25 films I have on my list, none has me more at a loss for words than 2011’s The Tree of Life.
I recently tried watching it (my Blu-ray got busted up halfway through, so it looks as though I will need to get the Criterion Collection version after all), but it was enough to remember two things: This is one of the most visually stunning films in my lifetime, and I am still not entirely sure what to make of it.
Looking back, most would agree that no other year this century had a more top-notch lineup of films than 2007 (although 2019 would come to mind).
That said, it is somewhat forgotten that the year was also solid in its output of musicals. You had originals like Enchanted (which showed the world how alluring Amy Adams can be) and High School Musical 2 (though not as adaquate as the original in my book, the music to that trilogy had popularity like you would not believe). Then there were stage-to-screen adaptations, such as Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (one of Tim Burton’s very best films) and Hairspray, which took delight to a whole new level. Still, no musical (of any year) had me rushing to iTunes to buy the whole album quicker than Once.
In High School, my english class always seemed to be one of the first of the day, and that was no exception back in my sophomore year.
Yet one day in January of 2004, I can safely say I don’t at all remember what we were supposed to be doing, because I was not paying any attention. We were in one of the computer labs (do those even exist anymore? I don’t know), working on research of some kind, but my mind was elsewhere: the Oscar nominations.
The following review is based on actual events.
Only the names, places, and events have been changed.
“You know what freedom is Bob? No fear. Like Tom ****ing Cruise!”
When this is said by the character Sergio (Benecio Del Toro) in the recent One Battle After Another, you get a sense of content agreement. Growing up, I always saw Cruise as the guy who was able to sleep with the girl in some way shape or form, whether he was risking his life or not. That was not the case when I saw him in Minority Report.
Months ago, my friends and I had a night where we had fun making power point presentations on anything we wanted.
I generated positive feedback for my presentation as I managed to dream cast our cohorts into Disney characters. While I did not do a slide for myself, I was asked at the end which character I would best associate with myself. As someone who does not do well socially all the time but is also a hopeless romantic who yearns for romance, I easily identified with the titular character of my favorite Disney/Pixar film to date, WALL-E.
If you were asked to come up with the most prominent film director of the 21st century and the name was not Christopher Nolan, you would be climbing a rather slippery slope.
After his breakout second feature Memento, Nolan began a steady rise as the most revered of directors of the last century. When coming up with this list, I knew sticking to the “one film per director” rule would prove most difficult with him, because even his lesser movies are still worth watching. That said, when you make a film that is possibly the most popular of all films this century, one of the best sequels ever made, the best of its genre (superhero/comic books), and, after not getting a Best Picture nomination, even (allegedly) made the Academy start having more than five Best Picture nominees,…yeah, I had to go with The Dark Knight.
Throughout my four years of being on my High School Speech team: there was one unwritten rule that seemed to be the most concrete (when it comes to written speeches): Never write a speech about speech team.
True, one should write what one knows, but there were so many speeches about speech team (especially in the Original Comedy event, which I was mainly in) that it was a cliche even before I entered High School. What I never mentioned was how the idea came from having just seen the Spike Jonze film Adaptation.
Nothing else to say