Movies Seen This Year

     A listing of movies I watched this year.

JANUARY
The Princess Bride (1987)
     "Mawwidge. Mawwidge is what bwings us togetha today. Dat bwessed awwangement, dat dweam wiffin a dweam...." S. Morgenstern's classic tale of true love and high adventure translated onto the big screen of Hollywood film. This is one of my all-time favorite movies ever.

Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015)
     I've never been a huge Star Wars fan, though I appreciate how much detail was put into creating the universe. Rey was a pretty good character, but this movie is pretty much a clone of A New Hope, and that movie is incredibly flimsy. Read my review here. Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher are still awesome, though.

Dial M for Murder (1954)
     One of Hitchcock's best, starring Grace Kelly.

To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
     It's not as great as the book, but...is it ever? (Sometimes. But it's very rare.) Film storytelling is a different language than novel storytelling, and so they can't be exactly equivalent. But it's a very good movie. Gregory Peck is Atticus. (But in my imagination Scout is a gray-eyed blonde with a scraggly ponytail halfway down her back, and she always has been.)

Hope Floats (1998)
     A really well-written small-town drama starring Sandra Bullock and Harry Connick Jr, dealing with how a woman comes to grips with her husband's abandonment and her daughter's struggle to understand what happened to her parents and also cope with moving from Chicago to a little town in central Texas.

The Little Mermaid (1989)
     A much brighter adaptation of the Hans Christian Andersen short story. (I still think Disney borrowed heavily from Shakespeare's Tempest.) Led the charge of the great musicals during the 90's. I have a lot more sympathy for King Triton now, given Ariel's actions and attitude. She must have been really hard to deal with. It's also a very dark film...maybe there was some Poe influence, too.

The Big Green (1995)
     I guess you could say this is merely The Mighty Ducks as a soccer team; but I grew up with and love this movie. It's formulaic, but it works.

Wreck-It Ralph (2012)
     By far the best animated movie of 2012. Deals with the adventures of a bunch of video-game characters after the arcade closes, as Wreck-It Ralph, who's been a bad guy for thirty years(cause, ya know, it's his job) tries to become a hero.

Grease (1978)
     One of the most famous musicals of all time. I was really surprised by how seventies it was. It was okay, but probably would have been better if it didn't have such a huge reputation. Olivia Newton-John has a cool accent. Even for a musical, though, that ending makes no sense.

FEBRUARY
None. Schoolwork and sicknesses kept me too busy. I did get halfway through Drive Me Crazy as research for a short story, but that's all.

MARCH
Ratatouille (2007)
     This was the most awful excuse for a Pixar film ever. High culture doesn't make for interesting storytelling, especially if it's set in Paris among fancy restaurants. And then the protagonist is a rat? Nope. There isn't much in the way of great plot, either. Almost-nonexistent character development doesn't help; this was terrible. An interesting quote, though: "Anyone Can Cook? What that means is that not everyone can be a great artist. But a great artist can come from anywhere." It was on TV one night and I was sick, so that's why I watched it.

Sticks and Stones (2008)
     This was a Canadian-made TV movie about the uneasy relations between the U.S. and Canada over the War in Iraq in 2003, and a symbolic hockey "friendship tournament" to mend things somewhat. Based on a true story; it was pretty interesting. And for a TV movie, well written and acted.

50 First Dates (2005)
     Definitely one of the more bizarre movies I've seen in a while. On the one hand, it's a wonderful story of sacrificial love as Adam Sandler plays a philandering scumbag who settles down with a brain-damaged woman(Drew Barrymore). And as crazy and borderline creepy as that sounds, it works. But on the other hand, this is an Adam Sandler movie, so....it can be incredibly crass and disgusting.

Serenity (2005)
     The sequel to Firefly; translated into movie format, the story doesn't work quite as well, but it's still worth watching to find out what happens to the crew. By itself, it would still work pretty well as a sci-fi movie.

APRIL
Cats and Dogs (2001)
     During the cast party for Tales From Tent City, somebody pulled this up on Netflix. I liked it as much as my eight-year-old self knew I would. Yeah, it was terrible, but the concept is so wonderful, it almost makes it redeemable.

The Little Rascals (1994)
     This is outlandish and hilarious. Not to mention eminently quotable. Plus there are cameos from Donald Trump, Mel Brooks, Whoopi Goldberg and Reba McEntire!

MAY
A League of Their Own (1992)
     The story of two sisters who happen to find themselves part of the WWII-morale project that was the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Starring Tom Hanks as the team's alcoholic manager, it's a great movie.

Captain America: Civil War (2016)
     After the destruction of Sokovia, a political divide tears the Avengers in half. What follows is two hours of painful, gut-wrenching story that offers no clear answers or winners. But it's worth it. And a new superhero in Queens is going viral on YouTube....

My Girl (1991)
    A coming-of-age tale set in a funeral home? That's a crazy premise, especially when there isn't even that much of a plot to hold things together. But it works well, telling the story of Vada's eleventh summer in her small town, when her mortician dad remarried and her best friend died. It would make a wonderful novel, which makes it even stranger that this was an original script. It was kind of like if To Kill a Mockinbgbird's Scout Finch and Dill Harris were living thirty-five years later, only aging a couple years each.  

JUNE
The Shop Around the Corner (1940)
     A nice slow romance starring Jimmy Stewart as a salesman in a Hungarian department store. Later was remade into You've Got Mail. 

Oklahoma! (1955)
     This was thoroughly disappointing. Even accepting the frequently-outlandish premises of musicals, the plot was terrible. And there was a weird ballet sequence that goes on for fifteen minutes in the middle of the film and makes no sense at all.

JULY
None. Not sure why not.

AUGUST
13 Going On 30 (2004)

Ben-Hur (2016)

SEPTEMBER
Space Jam (1996)
     Michael Jordan and Bugs Buny must save the Looney Tunes from being enslaved by a race of tiny alien henchmen who have stolen the talent of NBA superstars for their boss, a theme park owner trying to raise customer interest.

Footloose (1984)
     I didn't like this much. There wasn't enough story to make a movie. The soundtrack was cool, though. And the montage where Ren was teaching Willard how to dance was so strange you kind of had to smile. maybe the remake has better acting.

Love and Basketball (2000)
     The ending was stupid-sappy, being as this is a romance, and a couple who grew up as next-door neighbors fall in love with each other, but it was an interesting idea to use basketball as connective tissue to tie everything together.

OCTOBER
Top Spin (2014)
     This documentary follows four teenagers as they try to make the London 2012 Olympics in table tennis.

Beauty and the Beast (1991)

The Fast and the Furious (2001)

NOVEMBER
Speed (1994)

Clueless (1995)

It's a Wonderful Life (1947)

DECEMBER
Henry V (1989)

The Mighty Ducks (1992)

Miracle on 34th Street (1994)

D2: The Mighty Ducks (1994)

D3: The Mighty Ducks (1996)

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
     This was fine, which is high praise for a Star Wars movie. Everyone dies at the end, and the final scene is Darth Vader slaughtering people, but it was an upbeat ending nevertheless. The story tells about the Rebel spies who stole the Death Star plans, setting up A New Hope. It still would have made a much better novel, though.

While You Were Sleeping (1995)

The Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)

Star Wars: Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002)
     'Splosions! Horrible wooden dialogue! Too much blue-screen effects and really bad CGI! And lots of standing around and talking. LOTS of standing around and talking. This wasn't the best Star Wars movie ever, but Trevor liked it.

The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006)