Movies – My Top 5 Favorites
Continuing on my mission to share more about myself, I’m sharing my top 5 favorite movies. I’d like to think that a lot can be learned about someone if you know their favorite movies. Maybe it can help form a connection or fondness. A window into the soul perhaps?
In the article “The Quickest Way to Get to Know Someone: Ask Their Top 5 Movies”, when I read the favorites of the editors, writers, and contributors of xoJane, I instantly felt friendly towards the ones who listed loves of mine. (Sidenote: Before researching articles to include in this post, I’d never heard of xoJane.)
National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation and The Muppets Take Manhattan. Clueless and Back to the Future. The original Muppet Movie and Elf. Come on! These are my kinda peoples!
Love Actually
Love Actually is my current number 1. I think what I love most about this movie is that many love stories take place in it. At a running time of 2 hours and 16 minutes, it’s my longest favorite. And if I’m actually going to take over 2 hours out of my day to watch a movie, I enjoy that all of the different stories and connected characters can keep my interest that entire time.
While it takes place in the weeks leading up to Christmas, I don’t just save this movie for the holidays. Love Actually is with me all year long. That’s not to say that I don’t watch it almost every other day in December, but I don’t intentionally save it for Christmastime.
It also bears the distinction of being the only movie that I’ve ever purchased an addition copy of on iTunes and moved onto my iPod.
Perfect for plane rides. 🙂
Bridget Jones’s Diary
This wonderful film shares some similarities with Love Actually…actually. 😉
The same guy that wrote the screenplay for Love Actually, Richard Curtis, was also a main writer for this screenplay. Bridget Jones’s Diary also has a bit of a focus around wintertime and Christmas, AND Colin Firth and Hugh Grant are both the leading men. Ahhh…good stuff.
Even though it comes in at number 2, Bridget Jones’s Diary is probably my favorite pick-me-up movie. It always has me laughing, it contains too many favorite scenes for me to count, and it never makes me cry.
13 Going On 30
With a release year of 2004, my number 3 is the newest favorite of mine.
Does that say anything about how often I expose myself to new movies? Really, why spend precious time and money on investing in new movies when I can stick with what works? 🙂
Until Nick pointed it out, I didn’t realize that the main character reminds me of me. Mostly in that my 13-year-old self and her look rather similar. And some of the childish antics of her 30-year-old self remind me of myself right now.
Being grossed out and laughing at the “raunchy striptease,” getting ready for a night on the town to Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance with Somebody,” and needing to go home for a hug and homemade breakfast with her parents. That’s all super Steph.
I can usually make it through without crying, but if I do cry, it’s only at the end when “Crazy for You” comes on anyway. Again, another happy ending.
When Harry Met Sally
I’m almost obsessed with the concept of best friends becoming lovers and mates. I’ve never been down for what’s “normal” these days and am a firm believer in the lifelong relationship advantages of establishing a platonic friendship first before any physical contact. I’ve always asked myself, “Who would I want to be stuck talking to when I’m old and all we can do is talk to one another?” My answer, of course, is Nick, and because of this ideal, I love When Harry Met Sally.
One of my favorite scenes from the movie is when Harry and Sally are in their separates homes, talking to each other on the phone before bed. Until we moved in together, the first 6 years that we dated, Nick and I called each other almost every night. After our part-time jobs, in our parents’ homes, we’d talk every night from about 9:00-10:30PM. That routine from our early days holds many fond and cozy memories for me.
The Family Man
The most dramatic of my Top 5, I mostly save The Family Man for the holidays now. Since it’s the least light-hearted of the lot, I have a hard time wanting to pop it in. It’s only 10 minutes shorter than Love Actually too, so it’s a bit on the long side.
My big love for this movie comes from the “What if?” It’s very George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life. Gets me crying almost every time. I watched it in the movie theatre with Nick back in December of 2000, and I was inconsolably crying in his car afterwards. I guess I put myself in the main character’s shoes and imagined my life without Nick. If we ever broke up, I couldn’t imagine being 20 years down the road with someone else.
There’s two parts of the movie that say it all for me.
- At the very beginning, when they’re at the airport, about to part ways, and she says, “I have no idea what this life’s gonna look like, but I do know it has both of us in it. And I choose us.”
- At the end, when they’re at the airport, about to part ways, and he yells out to her. I won’t share the whole thing here, but he describes their life together. He talks about their home and their kids together. Their marriage and how they’re still crazy in love with each other…
I can’t even go on. I’m tearing up. But it were those moments that hit me harder than anything else ever has in a movie.
Whew!
A Little Analysis
According to “What Your Favorite Movies Say About You,” based on the book Cinescopes: What Your Favorite Movies Reveal About You, I’m a Vivacious Romantic. Authors Williams and Werb claim that Vivacious Romantics “have big, warm hearts, and their dreams of true love are enduring. They’re close to their families and loyal to their friends.”
I would say that’s about right. 🙂
In a blog post by Elizabeth’s One Quality Life – “If the entertainment that we continually seek has recurrent themes and evokes specific experiences, it is also likely we are attracted to similar experiences in our daily lives.” Her post “What do your favorite movies say about you? 8 Personality profiles based on the most popular film genres” asks readers to examine their favorite genre(s) and determine if those personality profiles fit them. I believe mine do.
Based on categorizing my top 5 movies as Romantic Comedies, I fit into both the Comedy and Romance personality profiles.
Comedy
Elizabeth states, “If this is your preferred genre, you prefer to come out of a movie experience feeling good, escape the harsh and mundane realities of everyday life. You can easily find the silver lining in any given situation and you are not afraid to laugh at yourself. Your main goal in life is to make it one that you enjoy, by having fun!”
While I am not the best at laughing at myself (and I’m completely hurt when others laugh at me), the rest feels like me. I know that I’m pretty big on the silver lining thing. And I definitely want to come out of a movie experience feeling good.
Why would you want otherwise??!
Romance
“This genre is focused on love stories, passion, affectionate involvement of main characters,” Elizabeth writes.
Yes. And I love all of that.
She continues,”If Romance is your preferred genre, you are a hopeless romantic. You believe in the grand gestures people who are in love should do for one another. You often wish to have a romantic encounter like those seen on screen. You’re affectionate and express your love daily to those you care about. You believe love is the element that binds us all and makes life worth living.”
While I wouldn’t consider myself a “hopeless” romantic in any way, I definitely believe that love makes life worth living. And not just with lovers. The love I give and receive from my family members, my girl friends, and animals keeps my world turning.
I’m down with the grand gestures but even moreso the little gestures.
As far as being affectionate and expressing my love to those I care about – I definitely aim for “daily.”
I hope this helps you understand where some of the Sweet in Sweet Green Photography comes from. 😉
Now…
What’s YOUR Top 5?
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