Well, this is the end of the road for Take Five! I started writing in Fall 2011. I don’t know how many I’ve actually written – say, six terms, five columns each, plus columns written during co-op terms? Say about fifty. But this is it, and it’s time to go.
So in the last edition of Take Five I will share with you five of my personal favourite movies. These are the movies I put on when I need a pick-me-up. They’re not the best movies ever, by any means. Nor are they the most touching (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), most thought provoking (Interstellar), or most savagely beautiful (Pan’s Labyrinth). In fact, those qualities often make a movie challenging to watch, and not necessarily enjoyable.
Anyways, my preamble has gone on long enough. I hope you enjoy these five movies as much as I do.
5. Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001)
In 1914, Milo Thatch (voiced by Michael J Fox) is an extremely nerdy cartographer/linguist/plumber toiling in the basement of the Smithsonian because his plans to find Atlantis are always shot down by the museum directors. But a reclusive billionaire benefactor takes interest in him and Milo finds himself on a dream expedition to find the titular mythical city under the sea with an extremely sketchy crew that includes a chain-smoking cantankerous communications officer, a medical doctor who looks like Mr. Clean, and a geologist raised by mole rats in Paris.
I can’t fight the feeling: this is my favourite animated movie. The gentle touches of steampunk, the exploration, a sense of ambition in the production, unafraid to yearn for things greater than a moral of “Be yourself!” and “Girl power!” and “Singing!” This little Disney movie hearkens back to a time where problems were solved with DYNAMITE and EXPLOSIONS and GUNS rather than the power of love. I suppose that makes sense when most of your supporting characters are a set of hard-bitten mercs with snappy dialogue (“To whoever took the “L” from the “Motor Pool” sign, ha-ha, we are all very amused.”)
And, damn, I’m very happy that Disney took the chance to make this. In 2001, computer animation was just about to overtake traditional 2-D animation. Along with 2002’s Lilo and Stitch I consider Atlantis the last hurrah of traditional animation in the Disney canon. And what a hurrah it is. Atlantis has gusto and visual flair, thanks to the direction of Hellboy’s Mike Mignola, who makes the explosions and beams of light in the climax so beautiful that James Cameron and his oversized budget would weep tears of futility.
4. Alien (1979)
The mining ship Nostromo discovers an alien-infested outpost. One is brought aboard and slowly kills off the crew.
Trapped in the dark with something that can kill you. In the words of Ash the Science Officer, “I admire [this movie’s] purity, its sense of survival, unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality.” The Thing might be the first to explore this concept, but Alien is my favourite, and possibly the purest. Pitch Black is pretty close behind, by the way, but that’s not important right now. What is important is that if, by some fell stroke of luck, you haven’t seen Alien, you go and watch it soon.
I like Alien better than The Thing or Pitch Black because, I think, of the strength of the characters. The outpost members in The Thing are sloppy and Pitch Black is a mix of civilians, mercs of various levels of competence, and Riddick. Alien has scientists and engineers, on the gloriously cold spaceship Nostromo. Also the whole crew actually looks like they belong a deep-space industrial vessel. The average age of the crew is somewhere in the 40s. They’re just doing their job.
Or how about the visceral digust at the xenomorph’s reproductive cycle? The xenomorph was designed as the embodiment of the fear of rape, down to it’s phallic head shape and vagina egg openings. That is masterful (if a little bit unsubtle) bit of creature design. Alien is a must-watch.
3. When Harry Met Sally (1989)
Harry (Billy Crystal) and Sally (Meg Ryan) meet at the University of Chicago in 1977, and separate. They meet again years later at LaGuardia Airport. They meet again years after that in a bookshop, when they finally become friends. Harry tells Sally that women and men can never be friends, because sex always get in the way. The movie seeks out to prove Harry right.
Oh, Harry. And Sally. I like this movie because I like watching people I like be happy. This is the story of two people who have grown up and know what they want in a partner, rather than two floozies who jump into bed with each other at the first opportunity. Harry and Sally take over a decade to do that.
I’m not sure there’s much special about When Harry Met Sally anymore, even the diner scene, particularly in an era of vibrating panties and sexual mishaps all the way up to the hoo ha. They both have loads of one-liners and warm chemistry and stuff.
But I guess my favourite part of it, though the film tries to deny it, is the genuine friendship that develops over a decade of acquaintance and endures horrific 70s hair and 80s shoulderpads. Yeah. You find in a lot of modern romantic comedies that the two leads just look like they hate, intimidate, or frighten each other the time. Where’s the basis for that sort of relationship?
Perhaps in the depth of my heart I yearn for a return to an era of romance built on friendship, but really, I know that era doesn’t really exist, except in When Harry Met Sally. After all, who gets banter this snappy in real life?
2. Hot Fuzz (2007)
Sergeant Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg) is an overachieving urban cop reassigned to the sleepy rural hamlet of Sandford, England. after his superior performance is making the rest of the London police “look bad”. He doesn’t fit in with the laid-back village attitude and immediately begins to suspect that something sinister lies beneath the model-village veneer.
I enjoy but don’t particulary care for the rest of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost’s Blood and Ice Cream trilogy, the first one being Shaun of the Dead and the third being The World’s End. Sure, they’re fun, but I don’t really connect to them, y’know?
But Hot Fuzz is special. Never in my life have I seen such gleeful attention to detail and comic timing in the movie. I love Edgar Wright’s mastery of visual humour. I love how every little bit of this movie is quotable. I love Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. I love how all the tropes laid down the first two thirds come back with a vengeance in Act 3 and kick Sandford’s ass. I love the unrestrained, unfettered glee in every impalement, gunshot, and ketchup explosion. The fact all this havoc takes place in the beautiful town of Sandford is a plus. Garrus Vakarian says, maybe “Gardens, electronic shops. Antique stores, but only if they’re classy.” Sorry Garrus, but I think shooting up the model village tops classy antique stores.
Hot Fuzz is tight, man. Howard Hawks said that a movie should have “three great scenes and no bad ones.” That’s Hot Fuzz. I’d pick the trolley boy takedown, “Farmer’s mums” (both times) and the opening montage, but really, the WHOLE MOVIE is full of moments like that. It is, in my opinion, a perfect movie, that succeeds in everything it seeks to do.
1. The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001-2003)
Do I really need to run down the plot for you? Fine. A hobbit (Elijah Wood) is tasked with destroying an evil ring by taking it to Mount Doom in Mordor.
Every term, without fail, I watch the whole extended trilogy front to back. That’s twelve hours of hobbits and elves cavorting towards the unhappiest place in Middle Earth. The trilogy is not perfect, it’s not canon compliant, and there are certain directorial choices that don’t make sense.
However, this is the movie that got me into movies in the first place. The craft and detail in this movie is unparalleled. Do you know that they have hobbit-scale and person-scale replicas of every prop, including the clothes, such that the weave would appear right? In the age of 1999, do you know how much of this was achieved through miniatures and ingenious fussy camera angles and forced camera angles to make the hobbits and dwarves look smaller than the humans and elves? And now that the Hobbit has reached its overblown conclusion, do you appreciate how much Peter Jackson got right the first time around? No director has ever aimed higher or achieved more. He went from low-budget horror movies in the 80s and 90s to a massive $300M fantasy trilogy.
Oh, it’s not perfect. Nearly every scene that Arwen is in makes me cringe. I don’t dig the love triangle they try to set up with Aragorn, Arwen, and Eowyn. Legolas and Gimli deserve to be more than comic relief.
Despite it flaws, the trilogy’s true amazingness of this is that it managed to make me care about each character. Yes, I wept a little bit when Boromir died and when Frodo went into the West, or when I watched the extended version showing exactly how Denethor screwed up his fatherly responsibilities towards his unfavourite son Faramir. Yeah. Favourite scenes include the whole lighting of the beacons, Boromir’s last stand, Gollum’s argument with himself, and the entire ending in the Shire that makes you realize that sometimes you can’t go home.
If you aren’t moved a little bit by this trilogy, then you have a heart of stone.
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