December Meme, Question #6

[osprey_archer]

poeticknowledge asked: What are the top 10 best films you have seen this year (or in the past year, either one)?

Oh, wow. I actually think that if I listed my top ten films this year, I might end up listing every film I’ve seen, because I haven’t seen that many. I tend to watch more TV than movies, probably because I’m already invested in the characters.

...Okay, I actually went and did a count, and in fact I saw seventeen movies this year, seven of which I already posted about, so this is clearly a providential opportunity to post about the other ten.



1. Wreck-It Ralph. A cute animated movie. Jane Lynch’s tough-as-nails alien-fighting soldier was by far my favorite character (I also liked her romance with Fix-It Felix, who is way less badass than she is and perfectly okay with that), and I also enjoyed the way the movie developed the behind-the-scenes world of the video game characters, where they mix and mingle during the after hours of the arcade.

2. Guardians of the Galaxy, which underwhelmed me, possibly because I had already heard about how surprisingly delightful and hilarious everyone found it. I suspect it’s delightfully hilarious if you go into it with low expectations, but not quite good enough to live up to it if you’ve already been told that you’re going to be surprised and delighted how funny it is.

3. The Electric Horseman, which features Robert Redford as a burnt-out rodeo cowboy turned cereal spokesman (wearing a ridiculous rodeo outfit spangled with Christmas lights) who steals a horse because the cereal company is mistreating it. Fun! Lots of pretty Western scenery! Worth watching if it comes your way; probably not worth seeking out unless you’re super into horses or Robert Redford.

4. Inside Daisy Clover, which stars Natalie Wood (most famous today, I think, for her role as James Dean’s girlfriend in Rebel without a Cause - snap, I watched Rebel without a Cause this year, there goes my neat ten movies formula) who is absolutely a revelation in this movie.

Natalie Wood was twenty-seven when it was filmed, but she’s absolutely believable as teenaged Daisy Clover: mercurial, charming, prone to flares of anger and bursts of delight, inexperienced but sharp-eyed. She makes it into show business, and she’s escorted into a fancy office to discuss a contract; her eyes dart around the room, taking in the lavish furnishings, the polished smiles. She knows there’s something rough behind that smooth veneer.

Knowing doesn’t save her from falling afoul of it. This movie puts Daisy through the wringer - sometimes because of simple bad luck, sometimes because some of the people around her just suck - and sometimes it knocks her down, knocks her out, knocks her off her feet so hard she can barely get back up; and when she does get back up, and keeps on swinging (metaphorically speaking), you can really feel what a triumph it is that she keeps on trucking despite all the crap that life’s thrown at her. Highly recommend - although it’s definitely not a movie for a rough day.

5. Rebel without a Cause. Before I watched this, I must confess that I had slotted it away in my mind as an annoying white guy movie about masculinity. If you slice off the “annoying,” that’s actually not an incorrect description… But the movie is actually much more thoughtful about masculinity (and juvenile delinquency) than that makes it sound,

6. Snowpiercer. The dystopian world-building in this is weird and horrifying (I don’t buy that the train actually produces enough food to feed its denizens for years on end, but the point is atmosphere rather than strict adherence to facts), and a lot of the visuals are quite striking, but damn, this movie is a downer, and Chris Evans is not enough to make that worthwhile, certainly not with the beard. Glad I saw it, glad I’ll never see it again.

7. Blackfish, which kind of blew my mind. It’s about an orca, Tillikum, who over the years has killed at least two of his handlers (and the documentary mentions of number of other orcas who have also killed or injured handlers), and the documentary makes a (to my mind) quite convincing argument that the trauma of being kidnapped from his birth family, followed by the trauma of captivity, have basically given Tillikum orca PTSD and epic anger management issues.

SeaWorld’s visitor numbers apparently took a nosedive after the documentary was released, and I can see why. Kidnapping intelligent, social creatures and forcing them to perform for our entertainment seems more like slavery than anything else.

8. The Hot Rock, another Robert Redford film, about recently released ex-con who swiftly returns to his life of crime in order to liberate a diamond from a museum so it can be returned to its home country in Africa. (The country’s ambassador, Dr. Amusa, is paying him handsomely for this service, so it’s not like Redford’s suddenly been overcome with philanthropy.)

I loved Dr. Amusa’s dry humor - he’s just so tickled to find himself involved in a criminal conspiracy - and the heisting is fun. But it rather falls apart at the end.

9. Antman, which really, really should have been Hope van Dyne’s movie. Even the movie knows that Hope ought to be the hero. She has far more experience with the suits than Scott Lynch, she knows the layout of Pym Technologies better than Scott Lynch, and she has some epic daddy issues that would clearly be best resolved by stealing one of his suits and stopping her dad’s former student’s quest for world domination on her own.

But no. Of course we get Scott, and of course they make out. The movie itself is fun and funny and tightly made, but on a meta level it’s super frustrating.

10. The Incredible Hulk. I thought I had posted about this movie, but it seems I haven’t? I’m not sure how I would feel about it if I’d seen Ed Norton’s Hulk first, but as it is I prefer Ruffalo’s. With Ruffalo you have the sense that the Hulk expresses a darkness that was already a part of his character - although clearly a part that, when he isn’t hulked out, he keeps well repressed - whereas Norton’s Hulk seemed quite alien to him, which seems less interesting to me.

I’m sorry the later movies decided to ignore Betty Ross’s existence, though, and not just because that would have spared us the Natasha/Bruce fiasco in Age of Ultron. I like her (and now I kind of want to see her geeking out with Jane Foster, although I’m not sure their fields overlap enough for them to get really in depth about it), and I like the link she gives us to Bruce’s backstory. I think it’s easy to lose sight of the tragic element to his story when there’s no one from his past to show us all that he lost when he became the Hulk.

11. Mosquita y Mari, a movie about two Latina teenagers whose friendship develops into something more. Almost. It’s kind of developing that way and then falls apart? They’re both alive at the end of it, so that’s something, but they’re also not really friends anymore (let alone girlfriends), so it’s a bit of a bummer.



In short, here are my movie recs from the things I watched this year.

For something funny and light, I’d recommend Night at the Museum 3.

For something that will make you sob like a baby even as you delight in its clever world-building, Inside Out. Blackfish is also quite sad, although in a very different way.

For tense and cynical with a tough, complicated heroine, Inside Daisy Clover or Fried Green Tomatoes. (Fried Green Tomatoes also has some delightfully light-hearted and funny moments. Inside Daisy Clover is pretty much 100% intensity, all the time.)

For tense but uplifting (with great scenery), The Martian.

I don’t think I’d anti-rec anything I saw this year, but the others are all flawed in some way that means I wouldn’t rec them unreservedly.

Comments

[littlerhymes]

Ok I must see Inside Daisy Clover, because Natalie Wood. ♥

I was surprised by Rebel Without A Cause when I saw it too, it's not at all as pat as cultural osmosis led me to believe; and it's startlingly hamfisted in places and then so well made in others, what a mess. But Plato, omg. Crying forever.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

It's the only Natalie Wood movie I've seen aside from Rebel without a Cause and it is fantastic. Any recs for others?

Oh Plato. The bit at the end where he's waving a gun and - JAMES DEAN, YOU NEED TO TELL EVERYONE YOU TOOK THE BULLETS OUT, UGH. I mean, it's not his fault, but if only he had then maybe that dumbass police officer wouldn't have shot him!

Also Plato's transmutation of his crush into daddy issues is just so weird and kind of amusing and also really sad. And they just put a jacket over him and leave him there and he just completely melts down.

[littlerhymes]

I am pretty sure I love Natalie Wood almost entirely bc of West Side Story - musical immigrant Romeo & Juliet!!! So that's my sole rec. I haven't seen her other most famous ones. I'm very behind on Natalie Wood.

I have read fic fix-its of the ending of Reben, and I would read them again, because Plato. Don't just leave him under that jacket. ;_;

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I have never seen West Side Story. I am a failure at classic movie viewing.

But even if they don't leave Plato under the jacket, he's still going to have to come to terms eventually with the fact that James Dean is not his father! It will be, like, an anti-Darth Vader moment. "Plato. I am not your father." "NOOOOOOOOO!"

Also pretty sure that James Dean is too in love with Natalie Wood (I really should know their character names) to notice Plato, so that's going to be upsetting for him too. Poor kid.

[littlerhymes]

On the upside, we both have so many movies ahead of us to enjoy? :D?

LOLing at your imagery. Does this make Natalie Wood's character Padme?! I know it's just wishful thinking but I like to think it could all be solved via handwaving and threesome. All the happy endings! ALL THE THREESOMES!

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure! I mean, if James Dean is not Plato's father, then Natalie Wood wouldn't be his mother either, right? Maybe she'd be one of Padme's handmaidens who occasionally dresses up as Padme to foil assassins? James Dean could be a bodyguard who sometimes dresses up as Anakin...

Usually I am all about solving things with threesomes, but I'm just not seeing it here. He's just so much the third wheel: it's all unrequited pining toward Dean, and he really doesn't have any relationship with Wood at all.

[silverusagi]

Blackfish, which kind of blew my mind.

Yeah. I don't know about smaller marine life, but it seems pretty clear that there's not a humane way to keep animals as large as Orca.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

The part about the adult orcas circling the orca-catching boats to call to the captured orca children also just about destroyed me. Jesus Christ.

[hyperion-swan.livejournal.com]

-"and the documentary makes a (to my mind) quite convincing argument that the trauma of being kidnapped from his birth family, followed by the trauma of captivity, have basically given Tillikum orca PTSD and epic anger management issues."

is it terrible that I think of your Bucky in this moment

-I'm so glad I didn't watch Snowpiercer now, I don't think I could have handled it :/ Depressing cinema tends to get lodged in my head

-WRECK IT RALPH, WRECK IT RALPH <333 it's a fun movie C:

-oh, hey. heyyy. I was going to mention when I replied to your email re: Fangirls AU etc, but I'll just comment now: I just saw Man from Uncle, have you seen it? Delightful movie. Absolutely delightful. =3

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

NGL, I had some Bucky thoughts while I was watching Blackfish. I was imagining Murphy make the STRIKE team watch it, and the asset's along that time, and he feverishly tells Pierce that their next mission should be saving the killer whales (the asset felt deeply connected to the killer whales), and it gives Pierce a hearty and much-needed belly laugh.

Snowpiercer was, um, an experience. In some ways it's so absurd that it almost negates the depressingness - it's a dystopia, but it's a dystopia I can't quite believe in. But I don't think I would recommend it unless your preferred viewing experience involves staring at the screen, mouth slightly open, going "What the fuck" repeatedly.

I haven't seen the new Man from UNCLE movie. I meant to while it was still in cinemas, but somehow the timing just never worked out. Maybe next year!

[hyperion-swan.livejournal.com]

BUCKYYY orz

Re: UNCLE I'm just going to say that I can't remember the last time I smiled and wailed happily that much at a film screen. Naturally I was watching from the privacy of my now home and without any witnesses present, so I felt free to be inhibited with my joy.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Snowpiercer has to be the movie that I was most underwhelmed by in the context of other people's admiration of it. I just couldn't suspend disbelief AT ALL, and I found everything about it to be simplistic and message-y to the power of 100. It was, um, interesting to look at? And kind of dreamlike? So those were pluses, but...

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

It is very interesting to look at! I just... there was just not enough space on that train to feed everyone. And the rich people should not have been living in that much style after that many years on the train; even they would run out of things without any ability to stop for resupply, surely?

But I guess it would be less interesting to look at without that really sharp contrast between the grinding misery at the back and the opulence at the front, and that really seemed to be the point, so world-building be damned.