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May. 13th, 2014 08:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
darchildreEveryone should post their ten most CRUCIAL CRUCIAL CRUCIAL-ASS movies, like the movies that explain everything about yourselves in your current incarnations (not necessarily your ten favorite movies but the ten movies that you, as a person existing currently, feel would help people get to know you) (they can change later on obviously).
1. Bride of Frankenstein. This is the one that I pretty much do make everyone I know watch. BECAUSE IT IS THE PERFECT FILM.
2. The Great Mouse Detective. Y'know how kids do that thing where they get obsessed with something and just want to watch it over and over again until everyone around them wants to scream? This was that movie for me. I'm pretty sure that I can still recite the whole thing along with the characters.
3. Dracula. Ahahaha, weird creepy childhood crush on Dwight Frye. Maybe this movie is not really that great but I still have so many feelings about Dracula, you guys, and this is where it started. (Also, basically, the first thing I ever wrote fanfic about. Also, basically, my first slash fandom.)
4. Son of Dracula. I spent a lot of my childhood wanting female monsters and not finding satisfying ones. And then, a few years ago, I watched this film and found what I'd been missing. It is not a good movie, probably, but Kay Caldwell is a good monster.
5. Re-Animator. This is my "I've had a bad day and want to feel better" movie. Which I suppose says something about me.
6. Dark City. There are a couple films I watched obsessively in college and this is one of them. It is so beautiful and weird and probably doesn't make a lot of sense if you think about it too hard but I just want to live in this film sometimes.
7. The Maltese Falcon. Another college obsession film. I'm pretty sure I had elaborate fanfic for this at one point, but I never wrote it down and have forgotten most of it. But everything about the movie is great.
8. Labyrinth/(Nightmare on Elm Street). Labyrinth is the last of the college obsession films on this list. It's the one I watched obsessively with other people. Nightmare on Elm Street goes here too because a) I love it and b) they are the same movie. Watch them as a double feature sometimes - it is absolutely true.
9. The Abominable Dr Phibes. I feel like this movie sort of sums up everything you need to know about my sense of humor.
10. The Wicker Man. The original, obviously. 8) Okay, this sounds weird, but I actually have complicated religious feelings about this movie. Watching it is, kinda sorta, like symbolically enacting a ritual. Human sacrifice is, obviously, wrong - let's put that up front. But there's a lot of power in the symbol of it, and you see that in some pagan rituals. I don't know about other faiths under the big pagan umbrella, but I've read about a lot of heathen blots where a doll of some kind is made - out of straw or bread or some other material - and, in the ritual, it's symbolically a person who is sacrificed to the gods. And the film is kinda like that. We mark the fictional character of Sgt Howie as our symbolic sacrifice. We join the people of Summerisle, are allowed to take part in their mysteries and ceremonies, and we watch the sacrifice burn. It's harrowing, because it should be - even symbolic sacrifice should be hard. And then, next time, up he pops like John Barleycorn, ready to go through the ritual again. I always come away from the movie feeling spiritually refreshed, somehow. Probably, that's not what the film makers intended, but it works that way for me. Sgt Howie died for your apples, basically.
It would be fun to do this again with tv, I think.
1. Bride of Frankenstein. This is the one that I pretty much do make everyone I know watch. BECAUSE IT IS THE PERFECT FILM.
2. The Great Mouse Detective. Y'know how kids do that thing where they get obsessed with something and just want to watch it over and over again until everyone around them wants to scream? This was that movie for me. I'm pretty sure that I can still recite the whole thing along with the characters.
3. Dracula. Ahahaha, weird creepy childhood crush on Dwight Frye. Maybe this movie is not really that great but I still have so many feelings about Dracula, you guys, and this is where it started. (Also, basically, the first thing I ever wrote fanfic about. Also, basically, my first slash fandom.)
4. Son of Dracula. I spent a lot of my childhood wanting female monsters and not finding satisfying ones. And then, a few years ago, I watched this film and found what I'd been missing. It is not a good movie, probably, but Kay Caldwell is a good monster.
5. Re-Animator. This is my "I've had a bad day and want to feel better" movie. Which I suppose says something about me.
6. Dark City. There are a couple films I watched obsessively in college and this is one of them. It is so beautiful and weird and probably doesn't make a lot of sense if you think about it too hard but I just want to live in this film sometimes.
7. The Maltese Falcon. Another college obsession film. I'm pretty sure I had elaborate fanfic for this at one point, but I never wrote it down and have forgotten most of it. But everything about the movie is great.
8. Labyrinth/(Nightmare on Elm Street). Labyrinth is the last of the college obsession films on this list. It's the one I watched obsessively with other people. Nightmare on Elm Street goes here too because a) I love it and b) they are the same movie. Watch them as a double feature sometimes - it is absolutely true.
9. The Abominable Dr Phibes. I feel like this movie sort of sums up everything you need to know about my sense of humor.
10. The Wicker Man. The original, obviously. 8) Okay, this sounds weird, but I actually have complicated religious feelings about this movie. Watching it is, kinda sorta, like symbolically enacting a ritual. Human sacrifice is, obviously, wrong - let's put that up front. But there's a lot of power in the symbol of it, and you see that in some pagan rituals. I don't know about other faiths under the big pagan umbrella, but I've read about a lot of heathen blots where a doll of some kind is made - out of straw or bread or some other material - and, in the ritual, it's symbolically a person who is sacrificed to the gods. And the film is kinda like that. We mark the fictional character of Sgt Howie as our symbolic sacrifice. We join the people of Summerisle, are allowed to take part in their mysteries and ceremonies, and we watch the sacrifice burn. It's harrowing, because it should be - even symbolic sacrifice should be hard. And then, next time, up he pops like John Barleycorn, ready to go through the ritual again. I always come away from the movie feeling spiritually refreshed, somehow. Probably, that's not what the film makers intended, but it works that way for me. Sgt Howie died for your apples, basically.
It would be fun to do this again with tv, I think.
