2024 Summer Movie Talk – Part 1

When reality collapses under a landslide of madness:

• POTUS exposed as a human vegetable
• Cost of living now requires selling kidneys for gas money
• Illegal aliens and homeless drug addicts now the two largest voting blocks in some blue states
• Kamala Harris imagining herself as president unencumbered by anyone wanting to vote for her.
• Morning Joe both extols Joe Biden as the sharpest he’s ever been and begs him to step aside to avoid defeat.

Well then, it’s time to take off the pundit cap and try to enjoy life a little.

I’ve always been partial to watching movies.  My tastes probably fall somewhere in the middle.  I’m definitely not part of the avant-garde by any means.  I’ve never enjoyed Cinéma verité and the various other European schools that abounded in the 1950s and 1960s.  They always just looked like low budget crap that someone made with a home movie camera and no money.  But by the same token I think that at least 80% of the output of Hollywood in its heyday was pretty poor stuff.

I totally believe that cinema is not a single subject.  There are several distinct things that get lumped together as movies.  Hopefully they all contain the characteristic that they entertain.  But beyond that I think one kind of movie makes you feel and another makes you think.  Now that is not to say that a movie that makes you think doesn’t also engage your emotions.  That would be odd in a movie created by humans.  But what I’m indicating is that many, even most movies don’t really make you think.  And that is not to say that only high-brow art-house movies can delve into the human condition.  Far from it.  Even someone as populist and popular as Frank Capra can capture a character or a moment that makes you think about the big questions.

So, I think I’ll divide my discussions about movies into two main categories; entertainment and enlightenment.  And let’s start with entertainment.  Because it is the summer and that is the season when we want to enjoy the beautiful weather and make believe that the world is a happy place where Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are just cartoon characters who dress in primary colors and get chased around by the Tasmanian Devil and eventually eaten.  So, let’s see.

Well, first things first, we’ll divide and conquer.  Let’s divide things into genres:

• Science fiction
• Fantasy
• Action/Adventure
• Comedy
• Drama

Science Fiction

I’ll list what I think are among the best or the most popular or the most interesting sci-fi movies in approximately chronological order.  I’ve reviewed almost all of these movies so if you want my detailed opinion you can do a search on the site.

1. Destination: Moon
2. The Thing from Another World
3. Them!
4. Invasion of the Body Snatchers
5. The Time Machine
6. The Day the Earth Stood Still
7. War of the Worlds
8. Forbidden Planet
9. 2001: A Space Odyssey
10. Blade Runner
11. Alien
12. Terminator
13. Starship Troopers
14. Independence Day
15. 12 Monkeys
16. Jurassic Park
17. The Matrix
18. Contact
19. Firefly
20. Serenity
21. The Martian
22. Dune

Now this is just my list.  Your list will be different.  I left out Star Trek and Star Wars.  I consider Star Wars fantasy and I consider Star Trek mostly awful.  But the same could be said for several of the movies I put on my list.  I hope my list will inspire a million spirited comments.  Everyone has their favorites and their turkeys.  Unlike politics we can all have our opinions on sci-fi movies without fear of doing any damage.  Have at it.