Monday, March 6, 2017

Top 5, Bottom 5: 1985

Here, let's have a quick, simple blog post to talk about my favorite and least-favorite movies of 1985 according to my Flickchart. I've only seen 23, so there are a lot more I've yet to get to, but here are the standouts so far. All rankings are out of 2588 movies.

Top 5:
1. The Purple Rose of Cairo (#10). My second-favorite Woody Allen movie is this charming story of a woman whose favorite movie character steps off the screen to spend some time with her. It takes an unexpected turn at the end that I used to like, but I have since fully embraced it.
2. Back to the Future (#20). Two 1985 movies in my top 20? Wow. This is a classic favorite for a reason. It's such a creative, smart, funny script, and all the actors do an amazing job bringing it to life.
3. Ladyhawke (#69). Granted this is a nostalgic pick for me, but I have always liked tragic love stories, and this has such a great one at the heart of it.
4. The Breakfast Club (#134). I need to rewatch this one, but I remember being really impressed with how the script brought these characters to life. This kind of one-room drama has often been attempted but this is one of the few true successes.
5. Better Off Dead (#285). A delightful surprise when I first watched it. It's a morbidly quirky rom com starring John Cusack as an emotional teenager, and it's fantastic.

Bottom 5:
5. Silverado (#2080). This one, to be fair, probably isn't nearly deserving of its spot here. I mostly remember thinking it was just okay, not bad.
4. After Hour (#1882). This Martin Scorsese comedy is so over-the-top that it doesn't sit right with me at all and ends up reminding me of Lynchian horror more than anything else.
3. The Goonies (#1818). From my experience, it seems like most people who watch this as an adult are as unimpressed with it as I am. The tone of it is super weird to me, and I don't like any of the characters.
2. Legend (#1639). Tim Curry aside, this weird little movie is pretty forgettable. I had to think for a minute to remember which one it even was.
1. The Man With One Red Shoe (#1515). Like Legend, this movie just isn't terribly memorable. I think Tom Hanks was okay in it.

Top 5 I Haven't Seen:
1. Come and See (globally #337)
2. Re-Animator (#502)
3. Pale Ride (#792)
4. Day of the Dead (#803)
5. Witness (#848)

What's your favorite movie of 1985? And which of my unseen ones should I watch first?

Wednesday, March 1, 2017

2017 Resolutions: March Check-In

I do not have high hopes for this one. February was a rough month, and I guess we're about to see just how rough.

My diet goal for February was to eat only one fast food meal a week. Yeah, I suuuuuuuuucked at that. I spent way too much money on food that's not good for me because it was easier. But I did okay like... the first week, so let's go with 2/10. So I'm trying this one again. I want to restrict myself to one fast food meal a week. Let's make this happen.

February's exercise goal was to go to the gym after work on Thursdays and Fridays. HA. 0/10. Not even once. On the plus side, I did a LOT of Pokemon walks now that the app's got new Pokemon, so I'm going to try to capitalize on that this month. Let's go with take a Pokemon walk every day it's not raining. Long, short, doesn't matter, the goal is just to make me move.

February's God goal was to keep my nightstand clear so I could stash Bible stuff on it and then spend time with God. Well, I did the hard part of clearing it off in the first place, digging out Bible stuff, and cleaning it back off at least twice, so I'm going to give myself a 5/10 for that. Now to make the second half happen. My goal this month is twofold: clear the nightstand every night (so nothing piles up and gives me an excuse) and then back to the good ol' spend time with God. I'll make each half of this worth 5 points, so we'll see where I end up next month.

February's financial goal was to caption a little bit every day I'm home before 4. I did all right on this, particularly at the beginning of the month. Toward the end it got wonky because Rev didn't have as much work as they have lately, so I kept getting out of the captioning rhythm, but I'm still pretty happy. Let's go with 7/10. This month's finance goal is to take care of the thing that's been hanging over my head for about a month now, and that's to get taxes filed. We're doing it ourselves online this year, and while it's not difficult with the program we use, it is time-consuming and I need to just sit down and get it done so we're not scrambling like we were last year to finish in time.

February's tidiness goal was to do two loads of laundry every week. Nope. Nope, not anywhere near. Not even on my week-long break where I vowed to myself I was going to catch up on all the laundry. I did a load one week and then Jacob did two loads one week, so Jacob gets a 2.5 for my goal and I get a 1. I'm going to keep plugging away at laundry, but I'd also like to assign myself a one-time-only task because maybe I'll get that accomplished even if I can't do a repeated one. So I'd like to clean up the bathroom. In our low-space bedroom area it's somehow ended up as the dumping ground for dirty laundry and stuff I never unpacked from Christmas, and that's ridiculous. I want to put away Christmas stuff, put laundry where it belongs and do a good sweep of the whole area since there's been stuff sitting on that floor for two months now.

February's relationship goal was to do some board gaming two weekends. We did this once, so 5/10. And, actually, I'd like to go for this again. Let's do some board gaming two weekends this month. And I'd like at least one of those to be with our local board game buddies which we have a terrible time scheduling meetups with lately.

February's art input goal was to watch all the romance movies in my movie suggestion challenge. This was a lofty goal, but I probably could have accomplished it if I wasn't also scrambling to catch up on Oscar nominees. Whoops. I made it through about a third of the ones I needed to, so let's give me a 4/10, rounding up because at least the reason I didn't make it was because I was watching other movies, not just goofing around online. Seeing a bunch of movies this past month felt great, and I'd like to keep that going, so let's try to see two movies in theaters every week. Let's use my MoviePass!

February's art output goal was to write one other blog post this month. GUYS I TOTALLY DID THAT. 10/10. OK, I have a very specific one for March. I contribute blurbs about movies to the Flickchart blog's monthly "Top 10 of [some past year ending in 7]." Last week was 1967. I'm always scrambling to get these pulled together at the last minute. What I want to do now is look ahead to the months coming up and get my movie blurbs for the year written ahead of time. That would be a solid chunk of output from me, and it would save me a lot of scattered work in the future.

In January, I scored 28.5/80 (35%). This month I got 34 out of 80, or 42%. That's still not, ya know, a passing grade, but at least I'm approaching the halfway mark, and that feels good. Here's to March!