I hated
Akira. Maybe I chose a bad day to watch it, but I remember being bored/disinterested for the entire movie. We watched
To Kill a Mockingbird in high school after reading the book. Even with the classroom setting (the viewing was likely stretched over two days) and most of the students harboring prejudice against old black-and-white movies, it seems like everyone was fairly impressed with it. Book is better, as is almost always the case, but I owe the movie a proper re-watch.
Dazed and Confused is one of the greatest, most naturalistic hang-out movies. I was flipping channels recently and came across it on one of the movie channels. Meant to just watch for a few minutes, but ended up watching almost the entire movie. It was like dropping in on some friends and suddenly finding yourself at a party with a beer in one hand and a joint in the other. As someone who wishes they could've been a teen in the 70's, when music/fashion/attitudes/etc. seemed so much cooler,
Dazed and Confused lets me live that fantasy for the course of its runtime. The strangest part is that the characters and their situations aren't much different from the same aimless Friday/Saturday nights my friends and I would experience during our own high school/college years, just minus the bell bottoms and Foghat. I didn't vote for it, but it's a borderline top-50 favorite.
Toy Story is the first movie to appear from my own ballot. My entire grade (I was eight in 1995, so I think that would've been 3rd or 4th grade) took a field trip to the movie theater to see it. None of us had ever seen computer animation before, so
Toy Story felt revolutionary. Even at such a young age, I think we all realized that we were witnessing the future of animation. As time has passed, making the once groundbreaking technology now look quaint, the movie's greatness hasn't suffered since its biggest strengths were its adventurous story, lovable (and instantly iconic) characters and spot-on voice acting. This is easily one of my most-watched movies. If I ever had a bad day at school, Buzz and Woody were waiting at home to put a smile on my face. "You've Got a Friend in Me," indeed.