Day Thirty: The Host

Day Thirty: Your favorite movie of all time

I love a good monster movie, which are few and far between. A movie where there is just a monster causing chaos, people getting trampled, buildings getting destroyed.  It's my jam.

When a monster comes out of a river in South Korea, Seoul gets put into chaos. Tons of people are either killed or go missing. When one family gets a missing relative because of the attack, the family bands together to search for her. They don't want to admit she was killed, so instead they hunt down the monsters hide out to see if they can figure out what happened to their youngest family member.

This movie has so much heart. Even when the monster is causing havoc, there is something emotion going on in the background. I find the monster incredibly interesting and unique and the main characters are honest and heartfelt. More people need to see this movie, I never get tired of watching it.

And that's the end of my Thirty Movie Day.. thing. I was almost able to post everyday. Sorta. It was close enough anyways. So onto new reviews, I have a few planned out already so it won't be too long before I have a new one up.

Day Twenty- Nine: Fantasia

Day Twenty-Nine: A movie from your childhood

You know how everyone has that one movie they watched over and over as a kid? Well Fantasia was that movie for me. I'm not sure what about it enthralled me so much - it's not the common movie kids repeatedly watch.

There isn't really a plot to Fantasia. They took classical works of music and added footage to it. For example they took the song Dance of the Hours by Amilcare Ponchielli and shows hippos and crocodiles doing ballet together. Or The Pastoral Symphony by Ludwig van Beethoven which had some Greek mythological characters including Zeus, Bacchus the God of Wine along with centaurs and the such.

I can still sit down to watch this movie and love it. I would also suggest Fantasia 2000, which has the best of Fantasia along with new additions. Some of my favorite song... video.. things are from Fantasia 2000 - they really upped the A game for that one.

Day Twenty-Eight: Howl's Moving Castle (Hayao Miyazaki)

Day Twenty-Eight: Favorite movie from your favorite director

Everything Hayao Miyazaki makes is gold. If you aren't that aware of anime, you may remember the animated movie Spirited Away that won an Oscar 2003 - well that was not only a Miyazaki movie (however my least favorite one), but also the first Japanese animated movie to win the category. Miyazaki has an impressive list of movies that he's made, or helped to make, or even just influenced. My Neighbor Totoror, Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Porco Roso, Castle in the Sky, Ponyo, Kiki's Delivery Service, Grave of the Fireflies and of course Howl's Moving Castle, are just some of them. Fun fact: one of the reasons Pixar movies are so good is because Pixar makes a habit of scooping up old Studio Gibli people - Studio Gibli being the company Miyazaki co-created and works in. Pixar admited that Toy Story 3 was a homage to Miyazaki, they even included a Totoro doll in the movie.

Sophie, a strong willed young woman, gets cursed by the Witch of the Waste which turns her into an old woman. With nothing left for her at home, she sets out to start fresh and finds her way to a warlock named Howl and his strange moving castle. There she strikes up a deal with the fire demon Calcifer who powers the entire castle- he promises to remove the curse on  her, if she can remove the curse on him. While trying to figure out what the curse even is let alone how to break it, Sophie finds herself falling in love with the mysterious Howl.

Howl's Moving Castle is one of the cutest stories around. A story about love despite appearances and per-determined opinions. A story about never giving up even when it seems hopeless. I watch this moving when I'm feeling down, when I'm feeling happy, even when I'm mad and just need to watch something. I even loved this movie so much that I went out of my way to read the book it was based off of (which is equally good and adorable by the way).

Day Twenty-Seven: 28 Days Later

Day Twenty-Seven: A movie that you wish you had seen in theaters

I love zombie. I can get all over anything and everything that has to do with zombies. It's my thing; I have my Zombie Apocalypse survival plan laid out already and everything. I can even remember exactly when my love affair with the living dead - when I saw 28 Weeks Later. (Lets ignore the fact that those aren't zombies in 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later, I didn't know that at the time.)

Jim wakes up in a hospital after a car accident, only to find the entire place deserted and in ruins. He walks out into the streets of London to also find that deserted, that is until he happens upon a group of Rage Virus infected humans and gets chased down. He happens upon other survivors and learns that 98% of the population became infected with a virus that turns them into animalistic creatures that are only left with rage. They are basically the equivalent of a super rabid dog. Together Jim and the other survivors try to find a safe place to live in the new world they live in which trying to defend themselves against getting infected too.

Remember when I said I'm incapable of handling scary movies? Well I had to get dragged to 28 Weeks Later because I was so sure that 28 Weeks Later fell under that category of something I'd be incapable of watching. I can't express how surprised I was when I came out loving it. Since then I've gotten knee deep in the Zombie Business. My biggest regret is that I didn't get a chance to see 28 Days Later, the far superior of the two movies, in theaters to begin my obsession much sooner.

Day Twenty-Six: Cloverfield

Day Twenty-Six: A movie that you love but everyone else hates

This is a movie that you either love or hate. Although most of the hate is because people got queasy from all the shakey cam. I loved this movie. I'm into a good monster movie and I could definitely see where JJ Abrams was trying to go with it - Godzilla for America. King Kong isn't really a monster, he's just a sad monkey who wants to go home, so I personally don't really count King Kong. Obviously, Cloverfield didn't really gain the same popularity of Godzilla, or King Kong for that matter.

Cloverfield centers on a small group of people as New York gets attacked and destroyed by a monster. That's all there is to it really - it's just a straight up monster movie. Things blow up, buildings get destroyed, there's chaos everywhere. Just a bunch of good ol' monster madness.

I'm not afraid to admit that the main reason I love this movie is because I got sucked into the viral marketing. In case you don't know, 6 months before Cloverfield came out, it's teaser trailer was shown before Transformers. I was sold instantly. It didn't even show the title for the movie. Then I went home to google it, and was introduced to the wonders of viral marketing. From that point on, I was constantly looking for newly released Cloverfield related material. I had screenshots on my computer from the trailer where I though you could see the monster, I joined discussions about what the monster could be, and I spent hours on the main site trying to find clues to anything and everything. I could tell you the entire back story of every main character in the movie along with where the monster came from and everything. I even have a Slusho shirt. Don't judge me for my obsessions. Almost every waking hour of 6 months of my life was dedicated to Cloverfield. After all of that time and effort spent into it, it was practically impossible to not like the movie since I also knew all the back story that they didn't tell you in the movie - which by the way made all of us who were deep in the viral marketing feel awfully special.

Anyways, I don't care if you don't like Cloverfield. It's oddly nostalgic for me and I'm not afraid to get all up in the Cloverfield action.

Day Twenty-Five: Hamlet 2

Day Twenty-Five: The most hilarious movie you’ve ever seen

This was another hard category to fill. mostly because it's not very often a movie gets me doubled over in laughter. The movies I do tend to find funny are more witty word play opposed to actual hilarity. Since Hamlet 2 was the first actual comedy I could think of, I decided to just go with that.

Hamelt 2 follows Dana Marschz who is a failed actor that then decided to teach Theater at a school to a total of 2 student. Between the 3 of them they produce downright terrible plays, then to top it off everything in Dana's life just generally sucks. One day when he goes into Theater class to find it packed full of students - apparently their usual easy A classes were cut, leaving them only with Theater.  When Dana is told Theater was being cut at the end of the year, Dana decides to put together one huge play to try and save it. He stays up all night trying to come up with a play for them to do, his finished product turning out to be extremely controversial in their town - Hamlet 2. A sequel to Hamlet. You know, the Shakespeare play where everyone dies at the end.

My problem with most comedies is that I hate poop jokes. It's just not my cup of tea. I consider 'hilarious' when you can't breath because you're laughing too hard - and you just don't really get that from witty word play. Hamlet 2 is one of the few movies that gets me to that 'hilarious' state, which is definitely saying something.

Day Twenty-Four: Zombie in Space

Day Twenty-Four: That one awesome movie idea that still hasn’t been done yet

This one took me a bit to figure out what to write. The only thing I wrote down on my list for this was 'Zombie in Space'. I guess I didn't realize I'd have no idea how to write about it, so here's it goes.

Imagine a future, maybe Cowboy Bebop-esque or maybe instead like Firefly. Our main characters land at a planet to do their thing, and they here rumors of a sickness spreading. On their way back to their ship, a guy stumbles in their way, a moaning groaning guy, who immediately tries to eat their face off. The entire dock gets put on lock down and the planet is put into quarantine making it impossible to leave. Now our main characters have to fight off zombies to stay alive and try and get off the planet all illegally and stuff.

That's all I got.