Doing this I realised I suck at doing write-ups for films. Hope you don't mind, there will only be twenty and yes, you may be spoiled.
So, to start of this list I will first say that I haven't seen as many films as some people here, mainly because of my age, but also because I don't watch films as often as I used to. Furthermore, I'm not a fan of action films, (romantic) comedies or dramas, so my list won't really contain any of those. My list may be very boring, because it contains many well known films, but probably not in the order you'd expect them. I'm a huge fan of psychological thrillers and films with good character development or films that are all out weird. Also, I'm not a film elitist, so I haven't seen *that* many films, but I think I've seen enough in order to judge them. I rarely watch films more than once, because that doesn't really interest me, unless I really like it. So; this list is based on the impression it gave me; if a films gives me something to think about or stays in my head for a long time, that's usually a good thing. Enough rambling; to give you a taste, here's a couple of honourable mentions that didn't make my list:
- Trainspotting (1996)
- Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998)
- 2001: A Space Oddyssey (1968)
- Goodfellas (1990)
- Jurassic Park (1993, had to give this a mention, it goes all the way back to my dinosaur-loving childhood)
- The Men Who Stare at Goats (2009, similarly, this is the funniest and most random film I have ever seen and therefore it deserves a mention)
And then the actual list, starting out with 2 at a time:
20. What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993)Directed by: Lasse Hallström
Featuring: Johnny Depp & Leonardo DiCaprio
Also known as the film in which DiCaprio plays a little idiot (yes, I'm serious). This film struck me because of the human-ness of it, as it tells a story that could very well be real. Young adult Gilbert (played by Johnny Depp) has to take care of his morbidly obese mother who's so fat she can't even exit the house and of his little brother Arnie (played by DiCaprio) who's mentally disabled, while he also lives with sisters who seemingly don't care about anything and finds the love of his life in a girl who's temporarily stuck in the town, after having had a relationship with a married woman who's husband died somewhere halfway. Doesn't sound very interesting, does it? It did for me, because I could, for some reason, identify myself very well with the main character, because of the way the story is told. He goes through so much shit and suffers it and soaks it up, but somewhere down the road, it obviously goes wrong. Being the person that he is, a caring, loving young man, he lets the guilt take the better of him after punishing and hitting his younger brother for something relatively insignificant. The film actually ends on a high note for me, because at the end, the mother dies, but can't leave the house: because of her weight it would take a crane to take her down, so the siblings decide to burn the house, symbolically destroying the place the made Gilbert's a life a living hell. Or something like that; describing films apparently isn't really for me, but if you want a more thorough story,
here's the wikipedia article. The films is a lot better than I just described, at least in my opinion.
19. Melancholia (2011)Directed by: Lars von Trier
Featuring: Kirsten Dunst
Far and away the most recent film on my entire list and probably also the least known one. The film is a weird one, consisting of two parts, around equal in length, but very different in content. The film tells the story of two sisters, Justine and Claire. Claire lives in a huge family estate with her rich husband John. The first part of the film (titled 'Justine') shows the wedding party of Justine and newly wed husband Michael in this family estate, to which they arrive late. During the course of the evening, various things happen to frustate Justine and by the end of the night, her newly wed leaves her. Of notice is the joyfulness and speed of the montage here, very different from the second part. The second part (titled 'Claire' is very bleak and very slow, it almost drags along, as Justine is depressed by the events and now stays with Claire and John, but here we also learn why she was the way she was in the first part; a rogue planet is moving towards Earth, set on a fly-by, narrowly missing Earth. John, an amateur astronomer is looking forward to this event, despite there being different theories on what the planet will do. Again, this sounds stupid in text, but the film is way more awesome when watched in real. Especially interesting is that the character roles from Justine and Claire switch, as the story progresses. Justine because the stronger woman, while Claire loses all the will to live. It takes some time to sit through this, especially the second part, which kind-of drags along, but this is a film very different from any other end-of-the-world films and it's told from a much more personal perspective.
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more tomorrow.
Topic: Top 20 Films/Movies Thread - Up now: toro (Page 25) (Read 77167 times)
