When I started my blog back in 2020, one of the first things I did was a 30 Day Music Challenge. I thought it was fun, but I think I might have bothered people by posting a blog every day for it. Since I am a film and media critic, I thought it would be awesome to do a 30 Day Movie Challenge. I might bend the rules a tad, because after looking at the list, I thought of multiple films, and I don't want to leave anything off. Also, if I like films you don't, it's okay, this is just my list, and I don't think it is better than anyone else's list. So, lets get started.
1. The first film I saw at the cinema: I'm a little hazy, and my parents don't remember, but I am pretty sure it was Superman IV: A Quest For Peace. This is my best educated guess. It came out before my sisters were born, and I LOVED Superman. This particular film is awful, and an embarrassment that I liked it as a four or five year old. This answer also ties into the next topic.
2. A film you watched over and over as a child: I have three. I loved the first three Superman movies, and I think I watched the third film more than the first or second. I also watched the first Rocky film all of the time. I know I was at least three with Rocky, because I have pictures from my third Christmas that have be wearing little plastic beach ball like boxing gloves and a little plastic punching bag, and I loved those things. I still love the original Rocky, and think it's a Masterpiece.
3. A Film That Made Me Laugh Out Loud: This is a tough one because I have seen tons of films that made me laugh out loud. I have to say Airplane! Airplane! is one of the funniest films I have ever seen, and being an adult, there were films I saw that I didn't understand why they were funny, but being an adult, you get the jokes that go over kid's heads. This is one of them.
4. A Film That Starts With "The": The Lord of the Rings Trilogy. There are so many, and I count films and their sequels as one film for the most part. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy only told one story, and so it's not something I can just pick out of the three. However, I think that the first one, The Fellowship of the Ring is the best one of the three. It sets things up, but the cinematography is better, in my opinion, and it has scenes that are so intense that I don't feel as strongly about as I do that first film.
5. A Film That You Think Is Underrated: I have a few guilty pleasure films, but I think I will go with Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. If you don't know this one too well, it's a shame. The film making is fantastic, especially when all of the sets are green screen, and only use a few actually real props. It has Jude Law as Sky Captain, and Gwyneth Paltrow playing Sky Captain's ex-girlfriend, who is a reporter and photographer. The story and style are like reading awesome science-fiction pulp fiction comic books and is a great way to explain what Steampunk is. It's rated PG, and a great film to watch as a family. It has awesome action sequences, and an interesting plot, and delivers some fun comedic things as well.
6. A Film You Put On When You Feel Sad: This one is easy. It's my all-time favorite film, Singin' in the Rain. It has a lot of great comedy, and the dancing and singing make me feel like there are still a lot of incredible things in life that are great, and it gives me a positive affirmation that life isn't always terrible, but can be spectacular as well.
7. A Film You Would Love To See On the Big Screen: Raiders of the Lost Ark, hands down. I know they have screenings for it from time to time, but I am usually busy, or miss it. Raiders of the Lost Ark is way up on my all-time favorite films.
8. Your Favorite Film That Is Set in Space: Uh, Duh, Star Wars. I will be a lot more specific, The Empire Strikes Back is the best of the best of Star Wars. It had everything A New Hope did, but it did it better, in my opinion, and then added more to it. This is another of my all-time favorites list.
9. A Film With A Soundtrack You Love: 50 First Dates. I really really love Ska and Reggae music a whole heap of a lot, and this soundtrack is a great soundtrack for those styles of music. I love the movie too, but it has a great soundtrack.
10.A Film That Is Also A Book You Love: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. I love Harry Potter, and all of the books, especially this one. Even though I love the others, I think this one was my favorite for both the book and film version.
11. A Film That Made You Cheer At The Cinema: At the time of this post, the most recent was Spider-Man: No Way Home, but I have cheered in other movies as well. I cheered watching The Avengers: Endgame. I guess I get excited for comic book movies, lol.
12. A Film That Left You Feeling Confused: Tenet, but I have a cool story about it. My sister and brother in law and I went to see Tenet, and the sound was so weird, that we were lost, because we couldn't understand it. So, about a week later, I went back to the movie theater, which have subtitles for the movie you are watching. The base fits in a cup holder, and the neck is bendable, and so the first time I was so confused, but after going back with subtitles, it was great.
13. A Film That Made Me Want To Travel: Pretty much every movie I see, I want to go there. I think that if I had a choice, Either Casino Royale and No Time To Die. The first and last Daniel Craig in the role. They were both really great, and traveled all over the world.
14. Your Favorite Film From Your Least Favorite Genre: 12 Angry Men. I love this court drama, but drama is my least favorite genre. That's not to say I don't like them at all, I really do, but I find myself not liking the drama genre as much as others.
15. A Film That Broke Your Heart: I have two for this one. Life is Beautiful. It is so heart wrenching. It starts off as a romantic comedy, and them BAM, the Nazi troops invade, and take almost everyone. Then the main character, the father, sneaks their little boy into their barracks, in their concentration camp. The father promises his son that if he waits and hides, he can ride in a tank. This is an incredible film, and if any of you haven't seen it, do yourself a favor and watch this one. It's incredible. The other one is a made for TV movie I have talked about on here before. It's actually on Netflix and you can purchase it from Amazon Prime Video called Triumph of the Heart: The Ricky Bell Story. Watch it. It's about an NFL player who majored in speech therapy in college who builds a beautiful relationship with a little handicapped boy who he starts working with to help him with his speech, but then it does a ten-eighty, where the handicapped boy helps the football player as well. It's incredible, but you do need some tissues by your side. Both happy and sad moments will make you tear up. I absolutely love this movie, and is one of my all-time favorite films. It was made in the early 1990s, and for TV, so it doesn't have the polish of a Hollywood film, but the story is way worth some of the corny elements. Again, watch it!
16. A Film With A Number In Title: 42, I come from a family who eats, sleeps, and breathes baseball. 42, is the uniform Jackie Robinson wore. He was the first black person to play in Major Leagues, and this film follows him being a hero on the baseball field games, but had to deal with all of the hate and racism happening at his house. Chadwick Boseman plays Jackie Robinson, and this film is a great bio-pic for it. There is a lot of racist attacks and racist slurs in this one.
17. Your Favorite Animated Film: There is a small, but mighty, film studio in Ireland that makes incredible animated films. Their recent is Wolf Walkers, but my favorite of the bunch is Song of the Sea. It's so beautiful. go watch clips on YouTube, and you will see what I mean. it's absolutely the best animation and backgrounds I have ever seen.
18. A Film You Couldn't Stop Thinking About: Jurassic Park. I think I probably went to the theater nine or ten times. When I wasn't watching the movie, there were some dirt hills behind the park at the end of my street, and I would ride around the dirt hills with my bike, pretending I was being chased by a T-Rex, or a raptor. I loved that movie.
19. A Film Set In The Future: Minority Report. Tom Cruise and Steven Spielberg teaming up, and also showed us how to trust technology you have. It's s great reminder that technology can be wrong sometimes, and this drives the film.
20. A Film That Scared You: I can't think off the top of my head exactly on this one, but I think probably Fire in the Sky, which is about a man who gets abducted by aliens and tortured. It wasn't so much the movie that scared me as much, but there was a weird PBS show about UFOs and aliens when I was around eight or nine, and they showed pictures that people told witness artists that usually work on court cases to identify someone, and those pictures scared the crap out of me, so seeing aliens that looked almost identical to the ones in that PBS show is what really made me scared of aliens at the time. I'm not anymore, but they are ugly, lol.
21. A Film That Made You Want to Fall In Love: This will sound funny. Win A Date With Ted Hamilton. It's a great romantic comedy that ends with the girl breaking up with the model actor hot guy, and went for the shy nerdy guy. It gave me hope that I too could fall in love, and have someone love me back.
22. Your Favorite Film Set In A Fantasy World: The Harry Potter series. I know I picked Prisoner of Azkaban, but I really love the Harry Potter books and films. There really isn't much to say here, since I am sure most of you have read and seen all of them. They are super great.
23: A Film That Means A Lot To Me Personally: I know I mentioned this above, and I won't talk about it again, but Triumph of the Heart: The Ricky Bell Story. Why it means a lot to me, is when it originally aired on TV, I was ten years old, and we started watching it about half an hour after it started, and we were bummed that we didn't get to see the first half hour of it, and then so many people called or wrote to CBS and begged them to show it again, so they had an encore showing, and we video taped the movie. However, we wore the tape out because we watched it so much, and there was no home video release for it. So, one day, my sister calls me up excitedly, and told me that the movie was on Netflix and on Amazon Prime Video to purchase, and I freaked out. In fact, I had my Playstation 3 set up to my computer to transfer video from the Playstaton to my computer, and I went onto Netflix, captured it onto my computer, and made DVDs with it for my family. It's that special to my heart, and my family's hearts as well. Go Watch It!!! lol.
24. A Film Made By Your Favorite Director: Raiders of the Lost Ark, Steven Spielberg is one of the greatest filmmakers ever, and Raiders of the Lost Ark is my favorite, although, I Love Love Love E.T. as well, so his films are hard to choose from.
25. A Film That Inspired Me: Rudy. I love Rudy, not to mention it was made by the same writer and director, and film crew as Hoosiers, which is one of my all-time favorite sports films. I remember feeling like I wasn't smart, and I was bullied a lot, but Rudy showed me that if I work hard, and try to do the right things, and always give it your all, you can achieve things you may not even think are possible.
26. A Film That Made You Feel Happy: Alright, I think this is the same suggestion as What film do you watch when you are sad to feel better. Again, Singin' in the Rain, my all-time favorite movie. It always makes me laugh and tap my feet to the songs, and the love story is both sweet and funny. I just love that film to bits.
27. Your Favorite Superhero Film: Dang, hard one. There are 22 films in Marvel's The Infinity Saga. How do I choose one? I know there is always the Sony Spider-Man films and Fox had a couple of really cool X-Men films. The DCEU has a couple of fun movies, but not like Marvel has achieved. How about this. I will say one from every one of those studios. For Marvel Studios, Guardians of the Galaxy. From Fox, X-Men 2. From Sony, Spider-Man 2, except for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, but I'm talking live action films. Also, Shazam! from DC, although Wonder Woman and Aquaman were a lot of fun too.
28. A Film That Changed My Life: A Beautiful Mind. When I learned that I have Asperger's Syndrome, I had already seen this film, and it's not the same mental issue, but after watching it again, it helped me realize that I have Asperger's Syndrome, but that I am not defined by it. A lot of events in my life actually make a lot more sense now that I know. It won the Academy Award for Best Picture, and the acting is incredible, and I love the way his wife loves him, and tries to help him, and never leaves him. I think it's a beautiful love story as much as it is a bio-pic about John Nash.
29. A Film You Didn't Want To End: This is a hard one because there are so many movies that I love. A lot of the films I love have sequels or franchises, so it's hard to choose something you know will have a sequel coming out in two years or so. This is a cheat. When The Dark Knight Rises ended, I wanted a fourth Batman film from Christopher Nolan with the Riddler as the villain. I know that in a couple of weeks from now, The Batman, with Robert Pattinson in the title role has The Riddler in it, but I thought that Christopher Nolan, and his brother, Johnathan could have made a mind-bending Riddler story. I was hoping for it before Bane and Catwoman were announced for it. I was hungry for one more, but didn't get it.
30. A Film With A Beautiful Ending. I have two, and they are both from the silent film era, well, kind of. I have talked about The Freshman with Harold Lloyd, which is one of my all-time favorite movies, silent or not, and the other is Charlie Chaplin's City Lights. City Lights was written, directed, scored by, edited by, and produced by Charlie Chaplin himself. It was also made after "Talkies" were invented, because he wanted to show that a film doesn't have to have spoken words to be a masterpiece and a work of art, which he does through the music. Whenever someone gives a speech, there is a person using a kazoo, and it's hysterical and fantastic. The movie itself is a romantic comedy, and it has probably the very best ending of a film I have ever seen. In it, Charlie plays his little homeless tramp character, and he comes across a beautiful girl selling flowers on the street. He quickly finds out that she is blind, and he falls in love with her. So when he runs through a crowded street to get away from cops, he climes in the back seat of a nice car, and gets out of the other side door, so the flower girl thinks he's rich because she hears him getting out of the car. We then meet a very wealthy man, and he's drunk, and his wife has left him, and he goes to drown himself in the river, but Charlie talks him out of it, and the drunk man makes charlie his new best friend, who he owes his life to. The rich man takes Charlie to his huge house and throws a big party. The next morning, after the rich man has sobered up, he kicks Charlie out of his house, and doesn't like him, until he's drunk again. While drunk, the rich man gives Charlie tons of money, which he uses to buy flowers from the blind flower girl. Later on , he reads a newspaper heading that says that a German doctor has a cure for blindness, and that he will operate for free, if they travel to Germany, so Charlie gets enough money saved up from the rich man, while drunk, and gives it to the girl and her grandmother so they can travel and get the eye operation. After that, the girl is gone, and the rich man takes a vacation, and we see Charlie doing a lot of funny, odd jobs. It actually has a boxing scene where he is fighting to get money, but it's so incredibly choreographed that the match almost plays out like a dance over a real boxing match. After a while, the flower girl gets home, and realizes that it's been Charlie, the homeless tramp, that got her the money to get the operation. Some kids start throwing things at Charlie, the flower girl chases them away, and puts a flower onto Charlies jacket, and feels his face, where she realizes that it was Charlie giving her the money to see. The last lines are: Charlie- "Can you see now?", and the flower girl responds, " Yes, I see now.", they both smile at each other and then fades to black. It's perfect and sweet. I didn't mean to talk about the whole film, but it's incredible, and it, along with The Freshman, should be required watching for how incredible they are.
Anywho, that's the list. It took a long time to write this post, but I am happy with it. I will highlight the questions and movie titles if you want to go by fast, but I hope you take the time to read the entries because there are a lot of great films shared and suggested. If you are trying to decide on a movie to watch, I hope you will revisit this post and pick something from it.
As always, stay safe, be careful, and don't get sick.
Thanks for reading my blogs, I really appreciate it.
Nate
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