Welcome To The Dollhouse
In public schools everywhere, for every one popular girl that we see, there are probably 20 plain jane or "unattractive" girls like Dawn Wiener lurking anonymously in the background.
Welcome to the Dollhouse follows the life of this 7th grader as she struggles to deal with her place in a family in which she is virtually non-existant (with the exception of being compared as a bad example to the beloved & favorited ballerina primadonna sibling) & in a junior high school where her only purpose is serving as a door mat for the class bullies.
In the end, Dawn is left detachedly singing along with her school bus-mates in a chorus of their school song, with the other kids voices fading off, the attention remaining on her solo voice, cracking with an almost hopeless resignation.
This is a hard-nosed depiction of those who are quietly & easily overlooked & who tend to make up a larger percentage of the student school population than many of us want to or even care to notice.
Forrest Gump
Sad not only for the life & eventual fate of Jenny, or for Forrest's speech to "his girl" after she's gone,
but also for the fact that this film kept beating Pulp Fiction at all the major awards of that year.
Grave Of The Fireflies
To be honest, I was never a big fan of animation that told stories that could've told as a live action film. To me, it always felt like if you had the unlimited tools of animation at your disposal,not using it to go into realms of the "too fantastic" for the real world (like a sci-fi, the talking animals genre or what have you) or use it to distort features or creatively caricature it's charaters and/or elements of the story to enhance the plot's premise. Therefore, even though I heard alot good things about Fireflies, I held off on it for a while before I finally got around to watching it. As it started, I felt the same blase feeling that I usually get from such a feature. But as the movie progressed, I did find myself eventually surrendered into a story that untraditionally seemed more to center on victims of war that it does on the basic heroic (& according to formula, usually triumphant) struggles of war.
Though there have been countless tales of the human effects of this period in human history, this movie is reminder that for those lives that eventually become reduced to numbers in the tolls of such conflicts, each one of those numbers is an individual story that essentially, at best will be forgotten, or more typically, will never even be told.
Streetwise
An emotionally wrenching ending, because it's real life & not a script. This film focuses those who are easily forgotten & brings to the surface their reality & all the drama & emotion that the world of escapism entertainment can never really compare to.
Joy Luck Club
The year that this film was released, I had a girlfriend who liked to go out with me, but only when
she planned it & was in control of the date. On one week-end night, I was supposed to go see Joy Luck Club with her, but since it was at
my suggestion, she, as always, phoned me to tell that she felt like maybe she was (conveniently) coming down with something. Now don't get me wrong, she wanted us to see this film, just not at my suggestion (I'll skip any psycho-analyzations as to why she was always like this).
Well I had finally had it, so I called her bluff, & told her that if there was a chance she'd get sick or somethin', we would call the whole night off.
Before she could respond, I hung up the phone & then went to go see this movie by myself, more to piss her off than anything else.
By the time this stunningly moving, mother-daughter generation-crossing epic-fare/chick-flick was over, my hairy pimp-ass found it quite difficult to refrain from repeatingly dabbing at that "something in my eye" that seemed annoyingly persistent during the final two sob-strewn scenes.
Right there & then, I knew that my relationship with my then-girlfriend was over.
Cuz no one makes me cry my own tears.
No one.
Titanic
Because of this movie,
I may have developed a real lifelong hatred towards icebergs.
For a brief moment there,
this flick actually had me believing that a man would actually allow himself to freeze to death in the icy ocean waters of the North Atlantic, just b'cuz he loved a girl so much that he couldn't bring himself to ask her if she could maybe scoot her fat ass over on the drift board just a
little bit,
to make room for his skinny butt.
....godd#mn icebergs......!
Dances With Wolves
Dunbar hearing Wind-In-His-Hair cry out that Dances-with-Wolves will always be his friend, knowing that the day of the Indians is almost done.
Iron Giant
Just when I thought that my hairy pimp-ass had finally reached a point in life that was hardcore enough that even the idea that I could get misty over a movie-ending was, for me, about as far on the otherside of the street, that it was in anudder 'hood, dawg.
Then comes along the Iron Giant, & proves me wrong.
And it's not just that it's a movie,
but even worse, it's an animated movie.
A cartoon.
Whenever I watch the scene with the line " ....Suuperrmann...",
I always find it quite difficult to refrain from repeatingly dabbing at that "something in my eye" that starts to become annoyingly persistent.
Damn.
This movie makes life hard out here for a pimp.
The Bridges Of Madison County
A truly romantic story of how the escapist fantasy high/feeling that initially results with falling in love must eventually be realistically dealt with, as the conditions & responsibilities of one's current situation come quickly creeping back in. This movie always reminds of something I heard once: that couples pairing up for the sake of
true love is still a relatively young concept in the context of human history. That we as both a society & a species over-all, have not evolved enough yet to be able to deal & accept each other in a manner that would be considered as total unconditonal love (which is the only real love). And it is because of this that the world population has yet been unable to formulate an effective means of discussion that would truly begin a process of unity between it's racial, social & in this case, gender factions. Maybe, like this film depicts, this is why so many make decisions more for the sake of a security based on social & financial reasons than what is right for us on an emotional level. And as they impeded on Robert Kincaid (Eastwood) & Francesca Johnson (Streep), decisions which may impede on our ability to follow our hearts & therefore sway us, individually and socially, from a path that would lead to true love
before it's too late.
Brian's Song
Probably not until The Shawshank Redemption was there a film that truly encapsulated the genuine feeling of amorous friendship between two straight men.
Interracial hetero man-love at it's finest.
Anne Frank Remembered
A film that I instantly appreciated, not so much for any kind of "craftsmanship" as a film, but more on the scale of the message that can result from seeing how this real-life situation unfolded.
As with everyone else, sometimes, it gets pretty easy for me to forget how good I really have it in life. Every time I watch this movie, & hear the part when Anne writes in her diary of her waiting for things to get back to normal, as a viewer who knows that for her it never will, it serves as a great reminder to me that not taking things for granted is an act of appreciation that should never wait until tomorrow. The only existing moving-figure footage of Anne that is included in this documentary, truly serves to enhance the importance of this lesson of gratitude.
Reply to Topic
