Juno

Out of all the movies I have seen this year, Juno is hands down my favorite film out of all. I wish I had another two thumbs so I can give it four thumbs way up. This is a story about Juno MacGuff, a highschool student that was impregnated by her friends Paulie Bleeker. After for two months in labor, Juno finally finds out about it and decides to get an abortion. When she finally arrived at the abortion clinic she has learned that not only does the receptionist at the clinic have a boyfriend who’s "junk" smells like pie, but the baby inside of her also has nails. Due to this new information mostly from the latter, she decides not to go through with the abortion. When Juno tells her best friend Leah that she will not do the abortion, they decide to search the Penny Savers for adoptive parents who are looking for a new baby (who knew you could do that). After finding Mark and Vanessa Loring in the magazine, Juno and her father meet them for the first time in their house about an hour away from them. Near the end of the movie, Juno becomes very upset with Mark (spoiler) after visiting them one day by herself, later listens to a speech from her father about finding someone who will always love you unconditionally no matter what, realizes that her perfect someone was always Bleeker. Unlike everyone else in school, Bleeker always looked at her face and not her whale sized stomach and said that she loved her even though she did not want to date him. In the end, Juno has her baby and Vanessa decides to still keep it even though she will be by herself taking care of the baby. Juno laying in the hospital bed is soon accompanied by Bleeker who laid down by her side. Even though these young kids are put into an adult situation, the director was able to make this movie very funny by making it very comedic with many examples of child youth while at the same time, having all the characters learn life lessons throughout the movie

Run Lola Run

This movie is some what interesting but I wouldn't name this one of my more favorite movies. Run Lola Run is about Lola who has to get one hundred thousand dollars for her boyfriend in twenty minutes before he goes and does something rash. What i found very interesting is that every scenario that Lola puts herself into is actually exactly twenty minutes long. Every time she starts over, she learns from her mistakes from before and acts on them. But what is difficult for her to understand is that even the slightest change that she does could change many things as shown in those Polaroids whenever she touches someone. To me this is actually like a video game. Whenever you loose you could just start over and learn from your mistakes in order to win and that is exactly what Lola has done. And in the end, Lola's boyfriend was able to pay off those people and made one hundred thousand for themselves.

Donnie Darko

Donnie Darko has always been a very controversial movie. Every person believes differently about this movie and has their own explanation for it as well. In my vision, I believe that Frank the sinister looking bunny rabbit is from a different dimension in a different world who was sent to Donnie's world. Frank is supposed to be some sort of messenger or ambassador of his planet and is supposed to warn Donnie that his world will be destroyed. The reason why he is so important is that the "worm hole" which allows people or even objects to travel within space and time itself is actually inside Donnie. This would explain why he was able to see his and every ones liquid blob thing come out of their chest which shows where they will be going to in the future. When Donnie's teacher tells him that one will need some sort of device that could travel very fast to go through space, Donnie for some reason believes that to save the world, he has to die, so he uses a worm hole to transport the engine from the plane to crush him. I don't know how much of what i believe is actually true but what I can say is the more you watch this film you will learn something new every time.

Rushmore

Rushmore is one of my favorite movies I have watched through this entire course. Wes Anderson, the director has made many movies that I really enjoyed such as this one, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, and The Darjeeling Limited. Bill Murray, who is in about ever Wes Anderson movie has impressed me yet again with his amazing performance. This movie had a bit of dark comedy in it which made very comedic in some inappropriate places such as when Herman and Max started to hate each other and would try to pull pranks on one another. I also found it hilarious when it showed all the clubs that Max Fischer started and is somehow president for all of them. In the end of nearly all of Anderson's films, he has a way of clearing everything up such as the relationship between two characters so that they learn from their mistakes and become friends again just like in the beginning of the story.

ChungKing Express

This movie has to be one of the biggest turn around movies for me. The first day of watching this, I felt like I had no clue what was going on the motion of the camera made it seem as if the story was going twice as fast than it was supposed to be. Once the first story ended, I felt so dumb because I had no clue what the purpose of that story was. When the second story started, I was a little happier to see that the new character was not psycho. Watching this new story really made me start to appreciate the movie because I could see how others and I could relate to this character. I felt a big connection to this guy. I was surprised to see that I was the only one in the class to actually start enjoying the movie at this point. Also, I found the part with that woman sneaking into Cop 633's apartment and cleaning it up to be hilarious. Somehow once again, I was the only person in the class to find that funny. By the end of the movie my opinion completely turned around about this movie being bad and was even facinated by how well it turned out to be. I believe that the moral of this story is that time heals everything and you must learn to move on with your life.

Elepahnt

After watching this movie, my mouth just completely just dropped to the floor. I was never ever a fan of any form of school violence. Its hard to imagine what the bullies of the school really did to those poor kids. Not that I think what the shooters did was right but sadly when you mess with the bull you get the horns. Sometimes when I'm walking through the halls, I think if this could actually happen here and if it could, who would do it. I did like how the director filmed the movie. It was interesting to see a free moving camera following the characters and then switching point of views when one of the characters pass another. I also enjoyed seeing that the kids in the movie acted the same way they did in the interviews. I'm happy to see that they were not angry or aggressive kids who actually might have thought about doing something like this before. This was a very good movie and i think that all schools should have to show this movie to all their students so they know what could happen.

THE LIST OF ALL LISTS: THE BEST OF THE BEST

(not necessarily in the order from best to worst)

MY TOP 30 LIST:

1. Pulp Fiction
2. Godfather Part 1
3. Godfather Part 2
4. Schindler's List
5. Raging Bull
6. Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back
7. Saving Private Ryan
8. Se7en
9. Reservoir Dogs
10. Star Wars: A New Hope
11. The Usual Suspects
12. American Beauty
13. Dog Day Afternoon
14. American History X
15. Monty Python and the Holy Grail
16. Apocalypse Now
17. Taxi Driver
18. Leon: the Professional
19. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's nest
20. Kill Bill: Vol. 1 Vol. 2
21. The Shawshank Redemption
22. LA Confidential
23. Once Upon a Time in America
24. The Deer Hunter
25. Gladiator
26. The Departed
27. V for Vendetta
28. Full Metal Jacket
29. Clerks I and II
30. Goodfellas

Groundhog day

This has to be one of my favorite movies of all time. This was one of Bill Murray's best roles. He was definitely one of the best actors to pick to play an arrogant asshole. He would act as if he was better than everyone else and more sophisticated as well. My favorite scene in the movie has to be when he memorized everything that is supposed to happen during the day so he was able to easily steal the money from the truck. On the IMDB trivia for this movie, it said that the screen write wanted him to repeat the same day for ten thousand years but they later made it only three years. Also the scene when Bill smashes the clock against the floor, it really did keep playing that song even though it was broken. Just a funny thing to know.

Goldfinger

To be honest, this is the first 007 movie i have ever seen. Whenever i tell my friends this, its always hard for them to understand how that can be true because i watch so many movies. I basicaly expected this movie to be somewhat poorly directed but I did think Shawn acted great as James Bond. The acting was kind of fake and the decapatating hat was just funny. Theres not much I can say more about this movie except that James Bond is probably the deadliest, super rich ladies man who goes on secret missions to stop terrorists.

Double Indemnity

Right now, I will sadly have to admit that this is one of the first times that my opinion prior to watching a movie was completely different than after i watched it. Usually, I have like a sixth sense when a movie will be good or not but i was one hundred percent off on this one. In my opinion, this movie is very similar to Macbeth where all the women are evil and are able to corrupt even the most humble and honest men. I loved the scene when Walter kills Phyllis's husband and Phyllis doesn't change her emotion or expression on her face at all. Its as if her face is made out of stone and nothing can make her even blink once. I also enjoyed all the mystery and suspicion that was going on throughout the entire film. I would have to rate this in my top 15 favorite movies of all time.

Do the Right Thing

Do the right thing was directed very well by Spike Lee with great acting by all the actors in the movie. Some things that I really enjoyed was the setting of the movie and how everybody was outside or inside trying to cool off from all the heat and tension. I also liked how Samuel Jackson's character (I would just like to say that he is in every single movie and is also a jedi) described the mood of the story once in a while. That was a very clever idea to do. But the movie seemed very predictableto me. From the first day of watching the movie, I was able to predict that either the Korean or the pizzaria would be destroyed, I just wasnt sure which one it would be. Finally, I would like to say a comment that probably everyone who saw the movie asked; did Mookey do the right thing? Just one thing I would like to figure out on my own.

Spirited Away

To be honest with everyone, I am a very big fan of anime and other Japanese movies and animations. Spirited Away is definitely my favorite anime cartoon/movie I have ever seen. The story was great and it was filled with lots of sound and visual

effects that enhanced the greatness of the movie even more. One complaint that i do have about the movie is that there was almost no intro to the movie. It starts off with the family on the road moving to their new home but there was no explanation of any of the characters. Within the first 15 minutes of the movie, the family was already in the magical world. It seemed that I was being rushed while watching it. Also, I wasn't too fond of the ending as well. It also seemed to be too short. There was no explanation of what happened to Haku near the end and when the family arrived back at the car, I believe that it would have been better if this whole story took place in one normal (human) day. But all in all, it was an excellent story with adventure and and many developing characters.

Witness

This movie has greatly acceded my expectations. Watching Harrison Ford attempting to adapt into an Amish society is a real laugh and yet quite astounding. Usually in his other films he is a rebel or an action hero. In this he cant even curse or hold a weapon because of the village he is in. It could be just me, but I think its funny. The scene to the right was one of the most beautiful and creative moments I have ever seen in any movie. How often do you see an entire town working together to accomplish one goal. When watching this, I felt lively and a feeling of togetherness. The director really did a great job with this scene and the rest of this movie.