Movie Meme

[shipperx]

Gakked from cindergal:

Everyone should post their ten most CRUCIAL CRUCIAL CRUCIAL-ASS movies, like the movies that explain everything about yourselves in your current incarnations (not necessarily your ten favorite movies but the ten movies that you, as a person existing currently, feel would help people get to know you) (they can change later on obviously).

Holy cow, this is going to be difficult...  (And I'm choosing these for reasons other than quality necessarily because they are supposed to 'say something' about us, so I have different reasons for each choice).

* Life of Brian
* To Kill a Mockingbird
* Friday Night Lights
* The Princess Bride
* Pan's Labyrinth
* Star Trek
* The Heiress
* The Abyss or The Terminator (honest to God, I cannot decide)
* Aliens
* The Philadephia Story

And if you asked me to come up with this list twice, it would most probably change.

ETA: Holy crap, I just realized this list has three James Cameron movies in it.  Not sure what that means.

Comments

[eilowyn.livejournal.com]

Isn't Aliens Ridley Scott? I'm trying to save you from James Cameron!

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Alien is Ridley Scott
Aliens (the sequel) is James Cameron.

And I now have to sheepishly admit that I'm geeky enough to know that. :)

[eilowyn.livejournal.com]

Well, you learn something new every day!

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I like "Alien" too, but it's a different beast than Aliens.

In Alien you're faked out such that it's only half way through that you even realize that Siguorney Weaver is the actual hero/star of the movie.

Aliens is where she has the post-traumatic stress and the fear but goes back, and then has to rescue the girl and Michael Biehn.

Heh, and now I realise that Michael Beihn is also in all three Cameron movies that I listed! (I'll always love Terminator's Reese (well MB's version. Not sure how I"m going to feel about the new recast version and, frankly the one in Sarah Connor Chronicles was nothing special but his older brother was hot... which considering older brother was once on 910210 was a major shock.)

[eilowyn.livejournal.com]

I gotta go watch Alien & Aliens again. I started them years and years ago when I was still young and impressionable, got scared, and never revisited them.

[cindergal.livejournal.com]

James Cameron has his faults, but he does write kick-ass women. And gives jobs to Michael Biehn, whom I love. ;-)

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

James Cameron has his faults, but he does write kick-ass women

What's weird is that he's more than a little sexist in real life. And yet, yeah, he did have a tendency to write really kick-ass feminist heroines. Weird.

T1 Reese love 4 evah! "I came across time for YOU, Sarah."

[bogwitch.livejournal.com]

I liked Alien, but despite several attempts, I could never got through Aliens. THe Abyss is not as good The Terminator.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I liked Alien, but despite several attempts, I could never got through Aliens.

They're actually quite different movies. Alien is more of a horror movie (with a bunch of well played misleads, the best of which is that you don't realize that Ripley is the hero until almost half way thorugh the movie).

Aliens is an action movie, but what I like about it is Ripley bonding with Newt (the little girl) and then going to hell and back to rescue the brave little girl. She's the hero rather than Michael Biehn. Oh and the way Ripley ripped the corporate asshat a (totally deserved) new one. (Die corporate asshat. Die!)

The Abyss isn't as good as Terminator. Just isn't. Terminator is the better movie by far.

But... in the 'getting to know you' aspect of the meme, I rather liked the intelligence of the engineer heroine and how she thought things through. I can identify with the snarky, socially reserved engineer fascinated by discovery more than action heroines Sarah Connor or Ripley.

[bogwitch.livejournal.com]

Therein lies my problem, I don't really like action films as they bore me. Plus Aliens has lots of gung-ho American soldier types in it and they are a huge turn off for me. I never got as far as Newt-bonding, but I doubt that would have swayed me. I did get through Alien 3, bizarrely.

I see. Then I agree.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Plus Aliens has lots of gung-ho American soldier types in it and they are a huge turn off for me.

They also all die.

Well, except the one making googly eyes at Ripley... who SHE has to save and who spends the last third of the movie unconscious. ;)

[bogwitch.livejournal.com]

They don't die quick enough though!

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I never got as far as Newt-bonding,

That's the best part.

I still remember that I was in the UK when Aliens came out the long interview Cameron did on some Brit interview show where he explained that for him the mother/(adopted)daughter bond is the central spine of the story. It's about Ripley and Newt.



That's why Ripley finds the Alien (insect) Queen in the hatchery in the climax with the famous "Get away from her, you BITCH!" line with Ripley vs. Alien Queen, and with Ripley rescuing Newt and burning down the hatchery.

I even read the tie-in novel where (as is usually the case) there was more to it in that in the original script the reason for Ripley having been found in-stasis 75 years after the first movie, was that they had written that Ripley had a daughter and when she was woken from stasis it was to discover that she had missed her daughter's entire life. That never made it into the movie, though.

In the movie they had Ripley reluctant to return, but agreed because of inability to deal with her PTSD. The colonists are dead by the time they arrive, except for Newt (the little girl) they find in the wreckage, who had been living in the ducts and outrunning the aliens all this time. Ripley bonds with the traumatized little girl and they form a mother/daughter bond (as well as both having post-traumatic stress.)

I always think of the bedtime scene where Newt says "Grown ups tell you that there are no monsters -- not for real -- but there are." [/paraphrase] with Ripley admitting honestly, "Yes, there are monsters." And then comforting the girl.

This bookends neatly with the end of the movie where Ripley and Newt go into the stasis with Ripley telling Newt that they both can (finally) sleep now.

...Which is also why I resent Alien 3.

Alien 3 undoes all the emotional territory of Aliens in the first two minutes by killing Newt.

Aliens is oddly feminist not only with Ripley and Newt, but even with Vasquez (female soldier) being incredibly brave. (And then there's the famous cowardly Bill Paxton character. He's a hoot. "Well, now what in the shit are we gonna do? We're screwed..." heh.)