100 Film Favorites – #43: Super Size Me (Morgan Spurlock, 2004) “Ah, my favorite time of day. When I get to be fat on the bed.” No one would think me a proper student of film if I neglected to include some documentaries among my “Film Favorites.” Well, here you go. The one and only…
100 Film Favorites – #44: “Night of the Living Dead” (George Romero, 1968) “They’re coming to get you, Barbra!” In a near-180 degree shift from yesterday’s iconic Christmas special, we now come to a film which still consistently ranks among the scariest horror films ever made. It’s Night of the Living Dead, the movie which…
100 Film Favorites – #45: How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (1966, Chuck Jones) “The Whos down in Whoville liked Christmas a lot, But the Grinch, who lived just north of Whoville, did not.” In an impressive display of concision, the opening lines of today’s film introduce the setting, the characters, and the central conflict of the…
100 Film Favorites – #46: The Abominable Dr. Phibes (Robert Fuest, 1971) I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to keep up with the trend of one post hinting at / leading into the next, or whether that spoiled the surprise too much. I’ll probably phase it out and/or forget about it before too long. At…
100 Film Favorites – #47: “The Wizard of Oz” (Victor Fleming, 1939) I have been sitting here for an hour trying to figure out what can be said about today’s selection which hasn’t already been said. The 1939 film adaptation of L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is without a doubt one of…
100 Film Favorites – #48: 7 Faces of Dr. Lao (George Pal, 1964) “The whole world is a circus if you know how to look at it.” 7 Faces of Dr. Lao was the final film directed by George Pal. Pal was a Hungarian-American animator who pioneered a style of stop-motion animation in the “Puppetoon”…
100 Film Favorites – #49: Shrek 2 (Andrew Adamson, Kelly Asbury, & Conrad Vernon, 2004) Already into the 40s! Yeah, that’s right. Today’s pick is a non-Pixar animated sequel. I live dangerously. Three less-than-universally acclaimed selections in a row. I promise that after this cluster of entries we’ll be getting back into films that are…
100 Film Favorites – #50: National Treasure (Jon Turteltaub, 2004) And so we begin the second half of our Countdown. We are now among the Top 50 “Film Favorites.” GET PUMPED. This entry might lose me any claim to critical credibility, but I imagine after the inclusion of Beanstalk, any amount of that I may…
100 Film Favorites – #51: “Napoleon Dynamite” (Jared and Jerusha Hess, 2004) It’s possible many of you just groaned audibly upon reading the title of today’s selection. Of all the films on this Countdown, this is the one I’ve heard the largest amount of vocal detestation for. A surprising number of people seem to vehemently…
100 Film Favorites – #52: “Hot Fuzz” (Edgar Wright, 2007) As with selection #69, X-Men: First Class, this is another instance in which my opinion of a film is greatly influenced by the conditions under which I first saw that film. Hot Fuzz was the first R-rated movie I saw in theaters without adult accompaniment.…