Taylor poses for Marci outside the Hobbit Motel after a very comfortable night’s stay and well before second breakfast and elevenses.
After more than a year of insane political discourse — pre and post election — it’s good to divert our attention to something a bit less agonizing. But uh-oh, my favorite movies of 2016 also carry political and social baggage. Maybe that’s just a marquee of the times we live in now. We are lucky to live in a society where art can be a protest and a protester can create art. Enough with the previews; here are the five films that captured my attention this year.
Sooooo … halfway through the movie year, there are two films I’d like to share and encourage you to see.
“What,” you ask, “August comes eight months into the year, Rodney, how can you say we’re halfway?”
Welcome to my list of favorite films from last year. I’ve been compiling these since back in the 1990s when I used to just email them to friends. Before that, I had actual face-to-face conversations about movies. Thank goodness those aren’t recorded. I remember once telling high school pals Danny Baron and Jeff Dorchen (director and co-writers, respectively, of the upcoming Brie Larson musical comedy Basmati Blues) that I really enjoyed Olivia Newton John’s terribly maligned Xanadu.
Jan
29
For years my wife and I have started humming the Downton Abbey theme song only to morph it, after the first few bars, into The X-Files opening.
Now that the two shows are on Sunday nights together (for a very limited run), I thought it was a good time to mashup their intros and put our music theory to the test.
You be the judge; the truth is out there!
Don’t hate me John Lunn (who wrote the Downton theme music), or Mark Snow (who penned the X-Files theme).
At some point or another, most TV shows jump the shark. And from there on in, you just know the end is nigh.
Our favorite programs, those that have stood the test of time, know how to avoid that one little slip. But if they jump, they somehow manage to pull on their big-boy water skies and jump right back over the shark cage.
May
22
Britt Robertson stars in the time-twisting Tomorrowland.
As we were driving home from Tomorrowland, my wife offered up an idea for Detroit. “All the abandoned, vacant land could be turned into wind farms or solar panel forests or even subterranean geothermal facilities.”
That’s the sort of thinking that the new Disney film inspires.
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Maybe it’s just my imagination (game), but it seems like more movies made news this year than in most previous years. It might just be the zaniness surrounding The Interview or the controversies about American Sniper that grabbed a lot of the headlines recently. But I think it’s because so many of the notable films were based on real-life people or events.
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Go see The Fault In Our Stars.
I can’t be any more direct than that. You’ve probably heard about the movie, based on the massively best-selling John Green book of the same title. It centers around Hazel and Gus, two whip-smart teens who are both dealing with cancer. Yes, it’s a Young Adult story supposedly, but you’ll love it if you’re 90.
