April Summary

April Summary

05/10 - Darker Than Amber
08/10 - Good Will Hunting
07/10 - The Breakfast Club
08/10 - Field of Dreams
07/10 - Suspiria
04/10 - Poliziotto superpiù (Super Fuzz)
05/10 - Lord of War
09/10 - An American Werewolf in London
07/10 - The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
07/10 - Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
04/10 - Group Marriage
03/10 - Friday the 13th Part III
01/10 - Cruel Intentions
05/10 - Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter
06/10 - Point Break
09/10 - Scarface
03/10 - A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge
02/10 - Los Angeles Streetfighter
07/10 - El laberinto del fauno (Pan's Labyrinth)
09/10 - Night of the Living Dead
09/10 - Scream
08/10 - Frankenstein
06/10 - Bride of Frankenstein
06/10 - Young Frankenstein
08/10 - Cool Hand Luke
06/10 - True Lies
03/10 - The Cheerleaders
05/10 - Gangs of New York
06/10 - Mission: Impossible

Quick Facts:
Movies seen in April: 29
Time spent watching movies in April: 3219 minutes (53 hours, 39 minutes)

Best Movie Seen (Overall):
An American Werewolf in London
This movie is almost a 10/10. It's that great. A perfect blend of intense action, cool characters, and a good plot makes this film edge out Scarface for this spot.
Runner-up: Scarface
[An American Werewolf in London was a first time viewing; Scarface was a repeated viewing.]
[Note: These two films will not be included in the next two rankings.]

Best Movie Seen (First Viewing):
Scream
This movie balanced action and horror amazingly well. After seeing all too many cheesy and legitimately bad slasher films recently, this was quite the relief. It played off of itself to perfection. Night of the Living Dead was amazing for an older black and white zombie film and really impressed me - just not enough for me to place it above Scream.
Runner-up: Night of the Living Dead

Best Movie Seen (Repeated Viewing):
Good Will Hunting
With only four films to choose from here (and one of them being ineligible in Scarface) and this one being the obvious best there's no real debate. Good Will Hunting has some of the best constructed characters from recent films in my opinion. The Breakfast Club takes second here as it's a just a really fun movie to watch.
Runner-up: The Breakfast Club

Worst Film Seen:
Cruel Intentions
No surprise here. This film is stupid all around and takes place in some fantasy land where kids have no consequences for their actions. What a bore. Coming in next is Los Angeles Streetfighter where we have 30 year olds playing high school students. So it's stupid for a different reason.
Runner-up: Los Angeles Streetfighter

Most Surprising Film Seen:
Frankenstein
There's a lot of eligible choices here but this one takes the prize. The real reason here is how great and tense this film was for being released all the way back in 1931.

First runner-up: An American Werewolf in London
Second runner-up: Scream
These two spots are neck and neck. And even with that I could throw in Suspiria and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre as close behind. Note that all of these films are horror films. Maybe the A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th series diminished by expectations so much that anything that wasn't them ended up looking better. Whatever the case, the two I did choose just floored me with how good they were.

Most Disappointing Film Seen:
Gangs of New York
Even though I entered this viewing with trepidation because of my love-hate relationship with Scorsese's work, I was still overall disappointed. Everything up until this point was always good but I felt like Gangs of New York dropped the ball just one too many times.

First runner-up: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Second runner-up: El laberinto del fauno (Pan's Labyrinth)
Overall, it's a pretty good month when the movies for these spots both got 7/10 rankings. Anyway, they were basically chosen because I entered with really high expectations for each. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington had a great performance from Stewart but it never had that "one scene" that would set it up there with the greats. Pan's Labyrinth on the other hand had just enough flaws that I noticed to make it not the great movie I was expecting.

Most Enjoyable Film Seen:
Scream
The film is both a good slasher but it's most enjoyable because of how much fun it has mocking itself. I wrote quite the lengthy set of comments on how many things it did right.

First runner-up: Scarface
Second runner-up: Los Angeles Streetfighter
Scarface is just so well done with how it balances "absurd" and "real" that it's a joy to watch. Los Angeles Streetfighter was picked because it's just hilariously bad. I mentioned the humor here is like an 8/10. Then it has then bizarre ending that just sent me over the edge.

The Film More People Need to See:
Cool Hand Luke
Really people need to check this out for Newman's performance. I immediately placed it as one of my favorite performances ever. The film is pretty good too, but Newman is something to watch.

First runner-up: An American Werewolf in London
Second runner-up: Field of Dreams
An American Werewolf in London initated the "Best Achievement in Makeup" category at the Oscars. It's worth it to watch how mesmerizing a film can be even without copious amounts of CGI. Field of Dreams is selected for an entirely different reason. This film is about following a passion and, while I didn't find the story and some of those aspects that great, the thing to watch for is how Ray Kinsella truely loves baseball. Everyone has some sort of passion like this and I think Field of Dreams does a good job at showing this.

Best Scene Seen:
Cool Hand Luke - when Luke is in the church
This is such a moving scene in the film. Up until this point, Luke has been calm and levelhanded, easily tackling all adversity. Here, he breaks down in the church during a monologue with God. It's the highlight of his amazing performance.

First runner-up: The Breakfast Club - the long chat
Second runner-up: Scarface - the final shootout
The chat scene in The Breakfast Club is one of my favorite scenes. It's chilling how emotional and real these characters become as we are perhaps witness to the best scene in a high school ever. The Scarface final shootout is just too fun not to love. Montana is out of his mind on cocaine as he screams at his intruders. Though I hate a very prominent portion of this scene in the killer, it's still overall an excellent scene and is such a good way to end the movie.

Voting Update:
06/10 --> 05/10 - The House of the Devil
After watching some more horror I realize how lacking the main segment of this film is. Sure it does a lot right but it also is just boring for too long in the middle. And I've decided that Donahue's beauty just doesn't "catapult" it to that 6/10 ranking I did have.
06/10 --> 05/10 - The Crazies
Pretty much the same thing as above. The Crazies is fun and all but I had it ranked above A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th which is clearly false. It's about on par with these two so I adjust accordingly.

Two changes both in the horror genre. A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th are really showing an influence on my ratings it seems.

April Comments:
I pretty much forgot about school and decided to pack April with movies this month. It seems I do this every year. Anyway, I saw a lot of quality stuff here and discovered that some real classics are actually great (Night of the Living Dead and Frankenstein to name two). I also continued my slasher watching but gave a go at some non-franchise slashers in Suspiria and An American Werewolf in London both of which were pretty good. Overall I think this was a really good month with a wide range of stuff that I checked out.

May Outlook:
I want to take a break from the horror genre this coming month and instead focus on some noirs. I always come back to noirs as the genre that I need to watch more since I've liked a ton of what I've seen in the neo-noir subgenre. I just don't have the knowledge of classic stuff like Double Indemnity or The Maltese Falcon so I want to give them and similar films a watch. In a completely unrelated note, I also plan on doing a complete Star Wars watch this month so that's something I'm also looking forward to. Hopefully with school finishing up I can watch at least 15 films but that might be overly optimistic.