Otherwise Maladroit

5 May 2003

5 May 2003

Top Five

Romantic Movies

1. Hero (Broken Sword and Flying Snow stole the show from Jet Li)
2. Lost In Translation (heartbreaking because the writing focused on the quiet moments when our minds process and lay meaning)
3. Sommersby (because of Jodie Foster's performance)
4. De Poolse Bruid (I love that bear of a man that played the taciturn Dutch farmer; simplicity made it doubly sweeter)
5. In The Mood For Love (Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung again; the two hold a dear place in duo heaven alongside Bogart & Bergman and Tracy & Hepburn)

Young Adult Movies

1. Ten Things I Hate About You
2. Clueless
3. I Was A Teenage Vampire (one of Jim Carrey's earliest)
4. Space Camp (there was this one totally demure kiss in the movie that our teachers were so uptight about that made this movie memorable for me)
5. Champions (hockey finally made the map)

Weird Movies

1. Temptress Moon (wedged between art-film and artsy-fartsy)
2. Dazed and Confused (there's a statement somewhere in this movie)
3. Battle Royale (just on its content who can contend otherwise? but it doesn't mean that it's not violently brilliant)
4. Boxing Helena (only the twisted, deranged and masochistic could fall in love with someone who cut off your limbs to demonstrate their devotion)
5. Street Fighter (not sure if the title is accurate; stars Andy Lau not Sonny Chiba)

Plus 100 IQ Points Movies

1. Karakter (paternal version of the Fountainhead)
2. Fight Club (anarchic glory)
3. 2001: A Space Odyssey
4. Apocalypse Now (I don't know if I should be offended for Wagner, when his Ride of the Valkyries played in that psycho scene with a swaggering Robert Duvall, as the composer has been roundly shunned because of so-called Nazi-like sentiments; or if I should applaud, because Coppola subtly connected American neo-imperialism to Nazism)
5. The Piano (it is set in the middle of a soggy and drab rainforest where there is a treasure horde of mud; Harvey Keitel is no Brad Pitt and Holly Hunter's Ada is pinch-faced, but in this film they are more sensually attractive and sympathetic than a pair of long-limbed and golden-haired French demigods exploring S&M in sparkling Paris, pasty butts considered)

Indie Movies

1. Reservoir Dogs (need this be explained? u wanna hear from Mr. Blonde? if u still have ears that is...)
2. Girlfight
3. Lost In Translation
4. Birthday Girl (I'm not sure if this is truly indie, but it felt like it since it's so artsy)
5. Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Swashbuckler Movies (can a gun-totter be a swashbuckler or is this reserved to blade-swinging in tights?)

1. Robin Hood (Patrick Bergin)
2. The Mummy Returns
3. The Mark of Zorro (Tyrone Power)
4. Seven Samurai
5. Star Wars: A New Hope

Period Piece Movies

1. Le Roi Danse (Benoit Magimel. Sigh.)
2. Amadeus
3. A Room With A View (Julian Sands. Another sigh and regret that he isn't as big a star as he promised to be.)
4. (Franco Zeffirelli's) Romeo and Juliet
5. (Kenneth Brannagh's) Hamlet (the only version that I like for some reason)

Epic Movies

1. The Lord of the Rings (trilogy)
2. The Godfather I and II
3. The Ten Commandments
4. Gandhi
5. Lawrence of Arabia

Feel Good Movies

1. The Sound of Music
2. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
3. Strictly Ballroom
4. The Parent Trap (the remake, because I never got to watch the original)
5. Spy Kids

Animated Movies

1. Wicked City
2. Beauty and the Beast (what is this doing here?!)
3. Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind
4. Ninja Scroll
5. They Were Eleven

Pivotal Movies (for entirely personal reasons, then again all the lists are personal)

1. Sleepless in Seattle
2. Ninja Scroll
3. The Sound of Music
4. The Piano
5. Handsome Siblings (Andy Lau and Brigitte Lin, with Cheung Man thrown in)

***

Childhood Books

1. Edith Hamilton's Mythology
2. Enid Blyton's Robin Hood
3. Louisa May Alcott's Little Women
4. Whitefoot the Mouse (unknown)
5. King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table (unknown)

Pivotal Books

1. Edith Hamilton's Mythology
2. C.S. Lewis' The Horse and His Boy
3. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes books
4. Judith McNaught's Whitney My Love (I damn the day that I was ensnared by purple prose)
5. Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead (obligatory, although not without reluctance)

posted by Otherwise Maladroit @ 5:58 PM