Ok, I’m rounding this challenge off by answering the last two questions in one post!
Day 29 – A new movie you are most looking forward to
The movies I am most looking forward to are any of the new movies Richard Armitage has aleady made but that have not been released yet! I’m especially curious to see Urban and the Shed Crew…
I wasn’t able to go to the Leeds International Film Festival to see it and the movie has yet to get a distribution deal, preferably an international one. Fingers crossed it won’t take too long!
And I’m also very curious about Pilgrimage which should be released in 2016 according to IMDB!
But it looks to be quite a while before I will see either of these movies… Must stay patient… must stay patient…
Day 30 – The next movie you plan to watch at the cinema
There are two movies I really want to see that are already showing and I have absolutely no idea when I will be able to actually go see them!
First off, I really want to see Suffragette. For the story, for Meryl Streep (even though her part is small) and Carey Mulligan is said to be amazing in this!
And I want to really see Steve Jobs in which Michael Fassbender and Kate Winslet are also supposed to be excellent…
Hopefully these two movies will still be playing for a while, I would love to see them in the cinema!
The End!
That’s it, the end of my 30 Day Movie Challenge (done in 27 days)! It was fun doing it; I always love to think about movies and this challenge gave me the chance to really do that and go on and on about it. 🙂 Ending the challenge also means this is the end of daily blogging for now which, I have to admit, is a bit of a relief actually. Schedules are nice, freedom is nicer!
Day 28 – Your favourite animated film or children’s film
Well, the answer to this question could be the same as the answer to Day 6’s question but that’s a little easy, so I’ll pick something else.
Of course, the first movies I think of are the Disney and Pixar animated movies and there are some really great ones out there. I was 24 when I saw The Lion King in the cinema and yes, it made me cry! I love that these are movies grown ups can enjoy as well. I also like Finding Nemo, the Shrek and Ice Age movies, Bambi and The Jungle Book and Wall E and How To Tame Your Dragon andBrave. As children’s movies go, I also really like E.T., the Extra-Terrestrial, which was also a contender for my favourite scifi movie. There is one children’s movie, however, that I think I love above all others and that movie is Babe from 1995.
It’s a beautiful story about a piglet that is noticed by Farmer Hoggett at a market. He takes the piglet home and the pig has to find his place on the farm. He lives with the sheepdogs and decides that he too wants to become a sheepdog, herding actual sheep! It is such an endearing movie, narrated like a fairy tale, about following your dreams against all odds. I also love Farmer Hoggett (played beautifully by James Cromwell) who is a man of very few words but dares to think out of the box and takes a chance on a little piglet. I just adore the understated “That’ll do, pig” at the very end of the movie (if you haven’t seen the movie yet, skip the clip below).
Sweet, sweet movie! I never saw the sequel Babe, Pig in the City because I think there is just no way this movie could be improved upon; I firmly believe there is no sequel that can do it justice! I want to hold on to the charm of this movie and so I bury my head in the sand and pretend the other movie doesn’t exist. 🙂
Day 27 – Your favourite non English-language movie
I have been thinking about this a lot and again it’s difficult to pick just one movie. So, I have decided to pick 5 movies in 5 different languages instead. It’s not really cheating if you pick movies from 5 different countries, is it? Besides, good international cinema can always use a boost, so that’s what I’ll do here!
Germany
Germany makes some awesome movies, think Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others) which won a Best Foreign Film Oscar, or Goodbye Lenin or Lola rennt or Der Untergang or even the 1927 silent movie Metropolis, which really is a fascinating watch. It’s awesome that I speak German fluently, I am never dependent on subtitles. 🙂 I think my absolute favourite German movie has got to be Jenseits der Stille.
It’s about a girl who has deaf parents and is their interpreter in the hearing world. She discovers a love for music, specifically the clarinet, and wants a career in music, something that especially her deaf father can not fathom. There are many heartwarming scenes, I love how Lara interprets and interacts with her parents. For instance, there is a scene when her parents are asked to come speak to the teacher about Lara (who has some issues in class) and her interpreting between her parents and her teacher is, well, not quite literal. 🙂 Or when Lara tries to explain to her dad what the snow sounds like. Or when 18 year old Lara’s almost-boyfriend signs “I will survive” for her. Here is the clip, watch it and honestly tell me this does not make you smile. Come on, I dare you!
Beautiful beautiful movie!
France
The French famously make great movies as well. The ones that spring to mind are Intouchables or Amelie or the silent movie The Artist made in 2011 which I adored! But my favourite one is a very heart breaking movie from 2008 called Il y a longtemps que je t’aime
It’s about a woman who is released from prison after 15 years and comes to live with her younger sister. Due to her unspeakable crime, the sisters were cut off from each other and are trying to rebuild a relationship and a life. Heart wrenching stuff as the layers of Juliette’s history are slowly peeled away to reveal the heart of why she did what she did. The movie ends on an emotional but ultimately positive note and Kristin Scott Thomas (fluent in French with a little English accent) has never ever been better! It will make you cry but it’s worth the watch. Seriously.
Italy
I don’t think I know that many Italian movies (I recall some “Spaghetti Westerns”and Bud Spencer/Terence Hill movies) and there are even less Italian movies that I remember really liking (and yes I do know I should still really watch Cinema Paradiso). However, La Strada from 1954 with Anthony Quinn and Giulietta Masina springs to mind and Stromboli, the first movie Ingrid Bergman made with Roberto Rosselini, which I remember as somewhat weird but good. The Italian movie I would like to highlight here, however, is La Vita E Bella.
From IMDB: “When an open-minded Jewish librarian and his son become victims of the Holocaust, he uses a perfect mixture of will, humor and imagination to protect his son from the dangers around their camp.” Yes, a lovely movie that is funny and tragic at the same time, and that’s a difficult combo to achieve! Robert Benigni famously went wild when he won an Oscar for this movie… and thanked his parents for the ‘gift of poverty.’ 🙂
China
I know even less Chinese movies but there is one I saw in the cinema in the 1990s and then went to watch it again and later again… The movie is called Raise the Red Lantern, a tragic movie with Chinese actress Gong Li about a young woman who becomes the 4th wife of a Chinese man and must adjust to life with 3 other wives (you never see the husband properly, it’s all about the 4 women).
Absolutely fascinating and gutting movie, with an unhappy ending but so very very good!
The Netherlands
And I am including a movie from my own country. The Dutch can make some nice children’s movies but generally I am not a huge fan of Dutch cinema. There are a few good Dutch movies, however, and I think my favourite one is De Aanslag (The Assault), which also won a Best Foreign Film Oscar. It is also a very good book by Dutch author Harry Mulisch.
From IMDB: “One fateful night in 1945, the Dutch Steenwijk family sit down to dinner when shots are heard next door. Moments later, Nazi soldiers invade their home and hold young Anton’s father, mother, and older brother responsible for the murder of a Nazi collaborator found dead outside their door. Anton’s family is shot before his eyes, and he is sent away to family in Amsterdam. As an adult, Anton desperately seeks answers to the night that changed his life.” That fateful night has such an impact on Anton’s whole subsequent life, influencing his life’s decisions. It takes almost 40 years of searching and finding small pieces of the puzzle before he can finally fully understand and make peace with what happened that night. Book and movie really are excellent!
Yes, doing three in one this time! As much as I am enjoying this 30 day movie challenge, I am also starting to get a little impatient with it and want to get it over with… Of course, I could not post so regularly but then this challenge would take forever and would always loom over me. I could also just quit or not answer all the questions, but I’m not happy doing that either! So, here are three challenge questions in one post!
Day 24 – Your favorite thriller
I think I’d go with a Hitchcock thriller here, he made so many excellent ones! I think the one that had me on the edge of my seat the most was Rear Window with James Stewart and Grace Kelly.
Having said that, I also have to admit that The Silence of the Lambs is definitely worth a mention as well, due to the Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster interaction! That movie was a chiller as well as a thriller. It’s usually classified as a thriller but it’s somewhat horror to me as well, which is not really my thing, and yet somehow I really liked it. I have to put it down to these two great actors that kept me watching.
Day 25 – Your favorite western
I’m not that big on westerns although I have seen my fair share. Don’t like John Wayne very much and I haven’t seen the possibly most famous western The Good, the Bad and the Ugly because, well, it just doesn’t grab my fancy… I did really like Dances With Wolves and High Noon but I think my favourite is yet again a Gregory Peck movie! The movie is from 1958 and is called The Big Country, also starring Jean Simmons and Charlton Heston. It’s about a sea captain from the east coming out west to marry a young woman but finds that her father is caught in a land-and-water feud with a neighbour. Peck is an ever righteous man who refuses to ‘prove his manhood’ and refuses to pick sides. “A man like him is very rare” says Ramon the ranch hand of the Gregory Peck character in this movie and he is right!
Here’s a little light-hearted behind the scenes look at The Big Country presented by Jean Simmons. I just love the chess playing segments! 🙂
Day 26 – A movie you feel you should see that you have never seen before
This one is easy – The Godfather! Everyone is always on about it and I really feel I should watch this but… well, it’s mafia and I don’t generally like mafia movies… I tell myself I was surprised by liking Inglorious Basterds, maybe I would also like this! And yet, I can never make myself watch it… hmm…
Gosh, I’m not sure. I’ve never seen Apocalypse Now or properly watched The Bridge on the River Kwai but of course I have seen my share of war movies. The ones that I thought were quite excellent are Schindler’s List, The Deer Hunter, The Imitation Game, The Railway Man, Atonement or Good Morning Vietnam and probably more that I can’t think of right now. However, when I saw this question, two war movies did immediately spring to mind and again I can’t decide between two classic movies.
First up is The Guns of Navarone with Gregory Peck (yep, him again), Anthony Quinn and David Niven about a group of men that need to disable strategic German guns on the Greek island of Navarone. Stirring stuff which leaves you on the edge of your seat throughout the movie.
And The African Queen with Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart about a gin-swilling riverboat captain who is perusaded by a prim missionary lady to use his boat to attack an enemy warship at the beginning of World War I in East Africa. Even though I’m not a huge Humphrey Bogart fan I love the interaction between him and Katharine Hepburn in this movie.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen either movie but I would again in a heartbeat.
The Book of Esther 