Film Asks: 16, 10, 7, 36. Thanks!
16. Five films you’d choose to have if you were stuck on a desert island?
I mentioned in a previous answer that Kind Hearts and Coronets has been one of my favourite films approximately for ever, so that’s definitely on the list.
Also, The Court Jester, because:
The pellet with the poison’s in the vessel with the pestle, the chalice from the palace has the brew that is true. BUT. They broke the chalice from the palace! Oh, no! And replaced it with a flagon with a figure of a dragon. Did you put the pellet with the poison in the vessel with the pestle? No, now listen! The pellet with the poison is in the flagon with the dragon. The vessel with the pestle has the brew that is true. Just remember that!
Babette’s Feast, because the movie is the movie equivalent of a perfect little gem of a short story about one wonderful meal.
The Lord of the Rings movies, for which I will cheat and treat as one movie, because when I first went to see fotr it actually made me cry. I remember just how amazing it was to see that Peter Jackson had got Middle-earth right, even if I didn’t always agree with other things he’d done in adapting the story.
Zulu. This is just about the only war movie I’ve ever liked, partly because, while its focus is on a small contingent of British soldiers in Africa in 1879 (based on a true incident, the Battle of Rorke’s Drift) it does not demonise the Zulus, who are the enemy. In fact, the film-makers consulted with Zulu elders to check the details of the battle, to make sure they got it right. It is a great, great human story, and it also features an impossibly young Michael Caine in his first major film role. Also, a very earwormy theme tune.
10. Whats a film you’re embarrassed to admit you’ve never seen?
Most of the Marvel Universe movies? I just can’t get into them. They bore me to death. I keep trying, and they keep underwhelming me. I just don’t have the action movie appreciation gene, I guess.
7. Was there a film that you watched over and over again as a child?
Not really, because VCRs weren’t really a thing until I was a teenager, so there was no way to watch movies over and over again, except each time they were repeated on TV - and that was usually only once every couple of years at most.
36. Is there a film that made you view the world in a different way?
Probably the Fourth Man, which I saw at a film festival when I was a teenager. It… opened my eyes to more than one thing.
Feel free to send me more film asks. I’m procrastinating while my story draft glares at me.
