#69 – The Muppet Movie

(1979) Rated G

Genre: Puppet musical road trip

Trend: Roughly maintaining its position

The plot:

A frog chases rainbows to make movie gold

A bear ducks thrown fruit from bad jokes he has told

Together they travel America’s roads

Pursued by a doctor who eats legs of toads

Soon, dogs, pigs, “whatevers” are quick to join hands

While singing and swinging to Doctor Teeth’s band

One last obstacle stands between their dreams:

The horrid Doc Hopper, whose frog-eating schemes

Are foiled by courage (and insta-growth pills)

The Muppets then head to the Hollywood hills

But what plot to give to their first feature flick?

Begin with a banjoist frog in a crick,

Then introduce friends of all species and shapes,

Depicting their songs, romances, and escapes!

So why is it on my list?

The songs are ridiculously catchy. My favorite is the wistful “Rainbow Connection,” but “Movin’ Right Along” will burrow into your subconscious and take up residence like some obstinate gopher. Fortunately, they are all very witty and full of fun, as befitting of the Muppets.

The humor. It’s a fast-paced road trip starring frog and bear puppets. I smell a recipe for shenanigans!

It reminds us that life is like a movie. Write your own ending. Keep believing, keep pretending.

In conclusion: You should know by now if you’re a Muppet fan or not. Still, if you’ve only seen the recent movies (without Jim Henson’s direction), then give their very first film a try to see what made them popular in the first place.

#70 - Zombieland

(2009) Rated R

Genre: Snarky zombie post-apocalypse

Trend: Slightly dropping on the list

The plot:

Through tainted meat, Mad Cow Disease

Turned clowns and humans to zombies

Yet Facebook’s founder made it out

Obeying rules like some Boy Scout

He meets a tough guy with a scheme

To take one taste of Twinkie cream

Odd couple? Yes! But soon, there’s four

Two sisters with slick tricks in store

This boy-meets-girl-meets-walking dead

Her pretty face snares curly head

A quad squad forms and makes its base

In William Murray’s ritzy place

I’ll tell no spoilers (lips are sealed)

Just know this: he regrets Garfield

Pacific Playland’s where the flick

Ends up; now watch it – quick, quick, quick!

So why is it on my list?

A fresh take on a tried genre. Many zombie apocalypse movies follow the same formula laid out by the original Night of the Living Dead. Undead roam, everybody dies. This movie manages to make the end of the world look so humorous and adventurous, that you’ll wish it happened to you!

It gets funnier on rewatch. Some movies are good but too exhausting to watch over and over again. Then, there are those gems whose lines get better (and more quotable!) each time. This is one of the latter.

It makes you want even more. Now, I hear that a sequel is in the works. Will it rock or suck? Who can say? But I know that Zombieland, with its incomplete list of survival rules, allusions to other survivors, and open world of endlessly entertaining possibilities, definitely whets the appetite of the imagination.

In conclusion: If you’ve ever enjoyed a zombie thriller, check out this zombie rib-tickler. But if blood and gore isn’t your cup of tea, skip the opening credits – the rest of the film is much tamer. 

#71 – Akira

(1988) Rated R

Genre: Psychic psychological horror anime

Trend: Slightly rising on the list

The plot: So there’s these Japanese kids driving futuristic motorbikes through the city of Neo-Tokyo. It’s Tokyo number two because a fifth grader (Akira) detonated it with his mind and started World War III. Hormones, I tell you. But this biker punk (Tetsuo) has the same psychic powers and, before he can start World War IV, gets kidnapped – I mean, “confiscated” – by the government.

Tetsuo decides manslaughter is small potatoes and seeks out the Akira to learn how to disintegrate entire metropolises by blinking. Akira’s dissected, frozen body parts have nothing to teach, besides “don’t get dissected and frozen.” Tetsuo’s arm is blown off by a cannon… in space. Tetsuo becomes the first self-propelled astronaut and rips it to shreds.

Tetsuo furthers his career by becoming a psychic-astronaut-surgeon-engineer-ballerina and bonds random mechanical debris to form a new hand. A young man with psychic powers who used to be good but lost hold of his sanity and turned murderous, losing an arm in the process and replacing it with a mechanical one? That was a Star Trek plot, right?

The movie ends with a giant monstrous blob baby, the big bang, and heavy doses of symbolism. Watch or Wiki it for yourself!

So why is it on my list?

It has a history. Akira was very influential in raising American attention to Japanese anime. I myself am more of a manga fan than anime, but as that old song about the horse and carriage goes, “You can’t have one without the other.” Where anime goes, manga follows, and vice versa. (Akira itself is based off a series of manga.) Thus, I owe Akira for being a gateway drug paving the way to many other Japanese delights.

The storyline gripped me. Akira begins in post-apocalyptic Tokyo. Things only get crazier from there! Between burgeoning psychic powers and cyberpunk machinery, there are more than enough breathtaking scenes to satisfy any fan of anime and/or sci-fi. In fact, a major theme is if the biological and technological can coexist or are, by nature, at odds. The ending raises further questions about life finding new ways to propagate itself… and whether that brings hope or horror.

It was a work of art. Akira begged audiences at the time to see that cartoons can tell serious stories, too. Furthermore, great care was obviously taken in animating both the characters and environment – quite groundbreaking at the time. To this day, it looks a bit dated, but has aged surprisingly well. Akira is so well crafted, that it still manages to revolt viewers with its unashamed graphic imagery, yet mesmerize them with sleek and just plain cool futuristic wonders.

In conclusion: If you like adult anime, pay your respects to one of the great elders. If you can’t stand images such as fingers with mouths or kids with old people’s faces, you might want to stick with Ponyo.

Introducing...

Hello, I am a lover of the cinema. I am also a lover of lists. Do the math, and you have both this blog and an impossible (or at least, improbable) equation.

What I'm attempting to do is list my top 71 (it's a numerology thing) favorite movies in reverse order, saving the best for last. I'll do my best to explain why I like each one, and hopefully inspire any poor soul stuck reading this to seek the films out for either a first time viewing or rewatch.

Why should you care what I have to say? You have no reason to. I'm no authority, and only an amateur critic at best. But then again, movies are made for their audiences, so even casual viewers such as you (unless you professionally critique, by which I mean someone pays you for it) and I can play our parts in reflection and discussion. What did the filmmakers intend to convey (and did succeeded or failed, in our humble opinions)? What did that flick mean to us personally?

We may even learn something - about motion pictures, about ourselves.