The year is almost over and Oscar season is just around the corner! Winter is my favorite season and certainly offers the perfect weather to curl up with a hot drink and a great movie (or two, or three, or…). Nevertheless, it’s time for my monthly recap post.
Unfortunately, work has taken over much capacity and energy for my free time once again. I thought that working mornings would help get a lot of my writing done; in many ways it did, but I’m also juggling a few other life changes as well. Therefore, I sadly failed in my goal to write about every movie I watched during my Disney Extravaganza. On the other hand, this month was not without its benefits. For one, my Disney theme has helped make this month a very fun one, as a watched a good number of new-to-me Disney flicks, as well as a few rewatches. Moreover, I’ve gotten the most hits on my blog this month since last January! I think this is due in part to my increased writing activity, but also just an overall example of how magnetic of a topic Disney movies are.
However, my introduction is finished. Here are the movies I watched last month, with links to the ones that I reviewed. Asterisks indicate rewatches.
- The Parent Trap (Meyers, 1998)
- Whiplash (Chazelle, 2014)
- Ghostbusters (Reitman, 1984)*
- I’m Gonna Git You Sucka (Wayans, 1988)
- The Great Mouse Detective (Mattinson et al., 1986)*
- Frozen (Buck & Lee, 2013)*
- The Rescuers Down Under (Butoy & Gabriel, 1990)
- Under Wraps (Beeman, 1997)*
- Cool Runnings (Turteltaub, 1993)
- Swiss Family Robinson (Annakin, 1960)
- Interstellar (Nolan, 2014)
- Mary Poppins (Stevenson, 1964)*
- Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (Johnston, 1989)*
- Atlantis: The Lost Empire (Trousdale & Wise, 2001)
- The Sword in the Stone (Reitherman, 1963)*
- The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Trousdale & Wise, 1996)*
- The Aristocats (Reitherman, 1970)*
- Feast (Osborne, 2014)
- Big Hero 6 (Hall & Williams, 2014)
- Mickey’s House of Villains (Mitchell, 2001)
- Bimbo’s Initiation (Fleischer, 1931)*
- Ha! Ha! Ha! (Fleischer, 1934)*
- Be Human (Fleischer, 1936)
- Betty Boop’s Hallowe’en Party (Fleischer, 1933)
- Red Hot Mamma (Fleischer, 1934)
- Popeye the Sailor (Fleischer, 1933)*
- Minnie the Moocher (Fleischer, 1932)*
- Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Nichols, 1966)*
- The Homesman (Thornton, 2014)
- The Theory of Everything (Marsh, 2014)
New-to-me: 16
Rewatch: 14
Total watched in 2014: 615
Total new-to-me in 2014: 519
So it’s easy to see that, compared to my output from the first half of the year or so, this month is rather pathetic. Although I watched my goal of a film per day, almost half of them are rewatches and a good fraction of them are cartoon shorts. Hopefully I can get myself back into gear for the final stretch at the very last bit of the year.
As we bid adieu to Disney month, I’ll announce the next theme for next month’s watch-and-blog-a-thon. It’s one that I’m particularly excited for and with which I am certain to have a really great time. Throughout the month of December, I’ll be watching films from any genre, any year, any country… with the common thread being that they’re all female-directed! This is meant to shine a light on the many lady filmmakers out there that usually never get the same amount of acknowledgement for their efforts as their male counterparts. I’ve already discovered many woman directors who I absolutely love and admire (the above screencap comes from Věra Chytilová’s Daisies, possibly my favorite film of all time), and I really want to discover even more. I have no doubt that this next journey will be a satisfying, enlightening one!
Films Like Dreams, Etc. 