School has absolutely demolished my blogging rate lately. I currently have 4 weeks left and expect to do some serious movie reviews when I have some free time. I’ve been dominating my movie list this year- though my free time has been sparse, I’d rather relax on my couch or in bed and watch a 2 hour movie then plug away at a video game or book- Video games are not appealing to me right now because I have no satisfaction in completing them. I haven’t even completed Portal 2 yet. And books, well I’ve read more business cases and books in the last 6 months than my prior 6 years.... So movies have satisfied a happy medium right now...
Here is the progress on my top 20 anticipated movies of 2011.
1. Tree of Life
2. Super (Review Soon)
3. Super 8
4. X-Men: First Class
5. Extraterrestre
6. Stake Land
7. Hobo With a Shotgun
8. Anonymous
9. Apollo 18
10. Carnage
11. Rubber
12. Knights of Badassdom
13. Piranha 3DD
14. Conan the Barbarian
15. Cowboys & Aliens
16. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
17. Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol
18. Immortals
19. Captain America: The First Avenger
20. Thor
Cross two more off my list, X-Men and Thor. I also watched the Hangover 2, the new Pirates, Battle: Los Angeles and Kung Fu Panda 2. I’ve seen 79 movies in the first half of the year, destroying my 2010 pace!! I have short reviews written on some of these movies but this post isn’t about them. It’s about a movie I saw for the first time yesterday, a movie that broke into my top 10 of all time. Just to show you how prestige that list is… my top 10 movies of all time are:
10. Star Wars Return of the Jedi (1983, Richard Marquand)
9. A Bridge On the River Kwai (1957, David Lean)
8. 12 Angry Men (1957, Sidney Lumet)
7. Pulp Fiction (1994, Quentin Tarantino,)
6. Mulholland Dr (1991, David Lynch)
5. Seven Samurai (1954, Akira Kurosawa,)
4. M (1931, Fritz Lang)
3. The Shawshank Redemption (1994, Frank Darabont)
2. 2001: A Space Oddesy (1968, Stanley Kubrick)
1. Rear Window (1954, Alfred Hitchcock)
0. Inception (2010, Chris Nolan)*
It appears 1954, 1957 and 1994 were good years representing 60% of my top 10 list. Inception is listed at number 0 because I haven’t quite got over the honeymoon of just how extraordinary that movie is- not just from a masterpiece of directing standpoint, but how an overly complex ORIGINAL screenplay can be so emotional, entertaining and fun to dissect.
I’ll stop dragging it out and announce that Once Upon a Time in the West has made it into my top 10. I will admit that my knowledge in westerns is very limited, having only seen Leone’s big four, Unforgivin and both True Grits… but Once Upon a Time in the West feels completely different from the movies I just listed. And it starts with the music. So what am I obsessed with? The Man with the Harmonica.
There is something so ominous about this music, it makes my bones chill, raises the hairs on the back of the my neck, goosebumps appear on my arms. I’ve listened to it so many times today that I discovered SiriusXM’s channel Chill, plays a remix version by Apollo 440. I love them equally. Hope you enjoy them.
