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50DMC #18: A Movie That Disturbed You

The 50 Day Movie Challenge asks one question every day, to be answered by a few paragraphs and a clip, if possible. Click here for the full list of questions.

Today’s prompt: What’s a movie that disturbed you?

I went through a few different options with this one, and almost put in Quills, one of the few movies I’ve ever seen that put me off so much I can’t separate myself from it enough to appreciate the good acting and stuff that I know it has. But I don’t necessarily think disturbing is bad; sometimes disturbing is exactly the right thing for a movie to be, and that’s what makes it good. (Some people might say that’s true of Quills; I don’t.) So instead I’m choosing A Clockwork Orange.

Kubrick’s dystopian film (based on Anthony Burgess’ novel) sets up Alex as an amoral sociopath whose only goal in life is to perpetuate a bit of the old ultraviolence, and proceeds to do so by brutalizing an elderly couple for no reason whatsoever. That’s already disturbing. You want someone to stop him, even as you find him weirdly charismatic. But in the second half of the film, he is arrested and subjected to behavior modification treatment, rendering him utterly passive and debased. And as horrible as Alex’s actions were, you basically end up feeling like the treatment is as inhumane as what he did to others, and you begin to sympathize with him, even as you remember what a terrible person he was. I still don’t ultimately know what I think about the film, but I can’t argue that it’s effective…and disturbing.

YouTube seems to have most of the clips unembeddable, so click here to see Alex being set up for the treatment.

50DMC #17: Funniest Movie

The 50 Day Movie Challenge asks one question every day, to be answered by a few paragraphs and a clip, if possible. Click here for the full list of questions.

Today’s prompt: What’s the funniest movie you’ve ever seen?

There are so many possible answers to this question, but I decided to arbitrarily go with Young Frankenstein, which ranks high on my list of most quotable and rewatchable movies. Maybe not all that arbitrarily, though. After all, not only is it supremely funny and makes me laugh almost all the way through, but it basically mines every type of humor. Absurd comedy, check. Slapstick comedy, check. Physical comedy, check. Wordplay, check. Deadpan comedy, check. Comedy of humiliation, check. Referential humor, check. It is, for my money, Mel Brooks’ most sustained and successful parody, combining the stories of Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein to make something almost even better than either of those great films. And also, it’s damn funny.

50DMC #16: Scariest Movie I’ve Seen

The 50 Day Movie Challenge asks one question every day, to be answered by a few paragraphs and a clip, if possible. Click here for the full list of questions.

Today’s prompt: What’s the scariest movie you’ve ever seen?

Spoilers

There aren’t too many horror films I’ve seen, actually, though I’m starting to get more into them these days. Generally, I don’t actually find them that scary. Probably the scariest film I’ve seen objectively is the South Korean film A Tale of Two Sisters – the sound design on that is creepy enough that I did have to pause it a few times just to get my real-world bearings again. But the film that scared me personally the most is What Lies Beneath, so I’m going to go with that.

It’s not really that scary a film, a jump-scare-filled Hitchcock throwback with a bit of a supernatural twist, but here’s the thing. SPOILER FOLLOWS. The loving and concerned husband/father Harrison Ford turns out to be the murderer, and a pretty despicable one at that. All my experiences of Harrison Ford up to this point had been of him as a hero, so seeing him as a villain was seriously traumatizing. If he could turn out to be a monster, ANYONE could be. I almost didn’t sleep for about three days, afraid my dad was going to come ax murder me or something. Which was ridiculous. But yeah. I’ve never had that strong a reaction to any other film.

50DMC #15: Biggest Movie Character Crush

The 50 Day Movie Challenge asks one question every day, to be answered by a few paragraphs and a clip, if possible. Click here for the full list of questions.

Today’s prompt: Who is your biggest movie character crush?

Okay, so, characters in movies, not actors. This pretty much came down to two – Han Solo or Indiana Jones. Battle of the Harrison Fords! But I really didn’t even have to think about that very long. Han Solo is awesome, but Indy is both a rugged adventurer AND a university professor. And that combination is GOLD for me.

And…that’s about all I need to say. :) There aren’t very many good clips on YouTube, so here’s the original theatrical trailer. It cracks me up how every ’80s trailer makes the movie look cheesy, even if it isn’t.

50DMC #14: A Movie That Made You Cry

The 50 Day Movie Challenge asks one question every day, to be answered by a few paragraphs and a clip, if possible. Click here for the full list of questions.

Today’s prompt: What’s a movie that made you cry?

I like to think of myself as a pretty stoic moviegoer, able to take tearjerkers in stride and not get carried away with them…but it’s totally untrue. I cry in a lot of movies, and barely hold myself together in countless more. So there could be a ton of answers to this question, especially since it doesn’t even ask for a favorite or anything. Just any one that made me cry. I’ve just done a couple of older films; let’s jump way up to 2009 for this one, Pixar’s Up.

The five-minute segment of Up that tells the whole of Carl and Ellie’s life together is one of my favorites in all of cinema, and that’s a bold claim I rarely make for films this recent. Regardless of how you feel about the rest of the film (I enjoyed it, but it certainly pales in comparison to this), you can’t deny that this, taken alone, would be among the best shorts that Pixar has ever made, and by extension, that anyone has ever made. It’s joyous, it’s life-affirming, and it’s heart-wrenching. And all with no words whatsoever. It’s gotten to where all I have to do is think about this scene for a moment and I start tearing up. In a good way.

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