# 146 The Lion King (1994)

Who hasn't heard of The Lion King? It's an all-time Disney classic about a lion cub who is tricked into thinking he killed his father. The plot was inspired by Shakespear's Hamlet, and indeed is very simple. As Richard Bach once said, "the simplest things are often the truest". I think this quote describes the movie perfectly.

The animation is simple, yet very beautiful. I love traditional Disney animation, especially the use of highly saturated colors. You don't see all the little details, like textures and hairs, that you can see in modern animated movies, but it still looks great, and may be it's that fact that this type of animation reminds me of my childhood makes it so special to me.

The soundtrack is good, it's proably my second favorite soundtrack after Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (by the way, does anyone know why so many people dislike Spirit?!). And I'm not only talking about Elton John's hit "Can You Feel the Love Tonight". I think that "Circle of Life" and " The Lion Sleeps Tonight" were just as good as the Oscar-winning song.

I think that this cartoon is mostly for children, even though it is a little cruel from my point of view. To be honest, I can't see what lesson it's trying to teach us. If you have any idea, let me know. But still, the characters are too likable to criticize their actions. I find this movie very enjoyable, and I'm definitely going to show this one to my future kids.

Favorite quote: "Before sunrise he's YOUR son".

Interesting fact: Originally, Scar was going to send adult Nala away from Pride Rock because she ignored his romantic approaches, after which she finds Simba alive and well with Timon and Pumbaa. This idea was ultimately abandoned, as sexual harassment was considered improper in a family movie.

# 145 It Happened One Night (1934)

It Happened One Night is the first film in movie history to win the Oscar "grand slam" (Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director and Best Screenplay). The story is about a spoiled young woman from a rich family who runs away from her father to be with the man she had secretly married. It gets interesting when she meets a reporter who helps her to get to New York because he wants to write an article about it.

I don't like romantic comedies, especially when they get too melodramatic at the end. There were some brilliant scenes in this movie though. The first one I would like to mention is when the reporter (played by Clark Gable) is arguing with the bus driver over the newspapers. Another one is when the annoying bus passanger finds out about the reward the woman's father offers to anyone who can tell him where she is. I think it was amazing how the reporter fooled him when he started acting like a gangster.

So many times we hear stories about evil parents who don't let their children be happy by not letting them be with the ones they truly love. This type of scenario reminds me of cheap soap operas I got to see when I was little. I think it's great that this film shows us that most of the time the parents are right.

I won't lie, there are a lot of corny moments in this movie. Also I wonder why in old Hollywood movies almost all smartass lines are delivered by male characters, and female characters usually keep saying some mushy romantic stuff. But after all, I think that It Happened One Night is a reasonably good representative of the genre.

Favorite quote: "I never did like the idea of sitting on newspaper. I did it once, and all the headlines came off on my white pants. On the level! It actually happened. Nobody bought a paper that day. They just followed me around over town and read the news on the seat of my pants".

Interesting fact: I never did like the idea of sitting on newspaper. I did it once, and all the headlines came off on my white pants. On the level! It actually happened. Nobody bought a paper that day. They just followed me around over town and read the news on the seat of my pants.

# 144 Ran (1985)

Being a movie critic is a tough job. Sometimes you don't like some of the highly appraised movies, and you have to give an honest review without looking like a complete idiot.

Ran is Kurosawa's fourth movie that made it on IMDb Top 250 list, and the only one of these four that is made in color. It's about a warlord who decides to devide his kingdom between his three sons, which eventually leads to war between the brothers and drives their father insane. Ran can be translated as "chaos", and this is exactly what this movie is.

The pacing is very slow, the scenes with the insane warlord and his jester are so long, and there's so many of them that it starts to get irritating. The dialogues aren't nearly as good as in Yojimbo, and sound really unnatural to me. And I guess I was expecting some kind of an intellectual twist in the story, but the plot is very simple. The acting, in my opinion, was too theatrical. The actor credited as "Peter", who played the jester, was good, but still I didn't feel any sympathy for him, or any other of the characters.

It was a great action film for 1985, with all the battle scenes, which by guess take about eighty percent of the movie's running time, but it has aged so much over the years, that I found myself unable to become engaged in it. The most spectracular scene of this film was probably the one in which the old man calmly sits in the castle tower while it goes up in flames. Unfortunately there weren't many close-ups in this film, for some reason Kurosawa keeps shooting his characters from a distance. The ending was a bit surprising, but not enough to change my perception on the movie.

Favotire quote: "Man is born crying. When he has cried enough, he dies".
Interesting fact: The story was inspired by samurai legends, but also draws on William Shakespeare's "King Lear" as well.

# 143 Million Dollar Baby (2004)

Million Dollar Baby tells us a story about an old boxing coach who owns a small gym, and eventually decides to start coaching a female boxer. This is another classic from Clint Eastwood, and, just like in Unforgiven and Grand Torino (which I got to see earlier than Million Dollar Baby), he is a director AND one of the lead actors.

I love boxing movies, even though I'm not a big fan of boxing, but somehow boxing movies usually turn out to be the most dramatic and emotional out of all sports movies. But only part of this film is about boxing. Here comes a spoiler... After a serious injury, the main character, played by Hilary Swank, is paralyzed and has to be ventilated.  I think the question of euthanasia is very complex. I definitely don't think that everyone who is disabled and can't take care of themselves lives a meaningless life. I admire those who find something to live for in situations like this, and I understand why some people say that this movie sends the wrong message. But at the same time I think Eastwood did a great job showing us how the main character came down to this choice in this particular situation.

Clint Eastwood's character in this film is psychologically very similar to his character in Grand Torino. I personally find his relationship with the church very interesting. As for Hilary Swank, I think this is the movie where she showed that she is an outstanding actress. Morgan Freeman appears in several Eastwood's movies, and I think that he was a good choice for this role. There are some cliches in the movie, especially when showing the main character's white trash family, but it didn't look that bad, at least it didn't bother me.

I can't say I've learned anything new from this film. All these things have been written about in books and shown in other movies. It did, however, remind me about something important.

Favorite quote: "If there's magic in boxing, it's the magic of fighting battles beyond endurance, beyond cracked ribs, ruptured kidneys and detached retinas. It's the magic of risking everything for a dream that nobody sees but you".

Interesting fact: Boxing and kick-boxing champion Lucia Rijker, who also plays the part of Billie "The Blue Bear" in the film, was Hilary Swank's boxing coach.

# 142 Yojimbo (1961)

Yojimbo is a story about a samurai without a master who comes two a village devided by two feuding gangs, and, of course, he wants to free the town. But he's not trying to simply cut the bad guys' heads off, he is two smart for that. Instead, he decides to play them against each other.

Actually I was stuck with this one for a while, as I watched it a week ago, but couldn't force myself to write  review until now. There's been to many samurai movies lately, and there's more to come. As good as they are, it's hard for me to watch old japanese movies, it makes me feel like I'm watching the same movie over and over again. Kurosawa is a great director, but I don't like the camera work that much,  especially when they're shooting outside, it's sometimes hard to tell what's going on.

What makes this movie more special to me then other Kurosawa's movies, is the fact that this is the movie Rachel and Frank watched in The Bodyguard (1992) when they went on their first date. LOL, I know, I know, some people hate it, but when I was growing up it was my most favorite movie of all times, so I thought that since it's not on the list, I'll write a little bit about it in this post.

Anyway, back to Yojimbo. The plot was good. I loved how the main character fooled one of the villains when he reunited an abducted woman with her family. Some dialogues were very witty, which I really enjoyed. I cant say that I liked all of the actors' performance. Some of them, for example the gunfighter, didn't look realistic to me, but Oriental acting is a bit different from Hollywood acting, and I'm starting to get used to it, so it wasn't a big problem.

Favorite quote: "Kill one or a hundred. You only hang once".

Interesting fact: Later remade as Per un pugno di dollari (1964) (American title A Fist Full of Dollars with Clint Eastwood and remade as Last Man Standing (1996/I) with Bruce Willis.

# 141 The Big Sleep (1946)

The Big Sleep is a movie about a private detective hired by a rich man to get the blackmailer off his daughter's back. It is based on a novel, and the title is probably explained in the book, however, I've never read it, so I have no idea why the movie is called "The Big Sleep".

I think the main problem of this film is that they tried to put too much plot into it. I've seen it happen with so many films that are based of book (The Da Vinci Code being the brightest example). Seriously, the plot is very hard ot follow. When I first started watching this movie I had to stop it and start all over because I could not understand a thing. Some of the main characters never appear in the movie, and are being talked about so much that it gets confusing.

There is a lot of sexual innuendo in the movie. Note that is was filmed in the age of Hays office censorship, so many things from the novel were presented discreetly, and I didn't understand what they were about until I read about it in Wikipedia.

What I loved the most was, of course, Humphrey Bogart's acting. I'm amazed how such a short skinny man with a lisp managed to become a sex symbol. The greatest witty lines in the movie come out of his character's mouth too. Here is one of them.

Favorite quote: "She tried to sit in my lap while I was standing up".

Interesting fact: Due to Humphrey Bogart's affair with co-star Lauren Bacall, his marital problems escalated during filming, and his drinking often resulted in his being unable to work. Three months after the film was finished, Bacall and Bogart were married.

# 140 Into the Wild (2007)

Into the Wild is a true story about a guy who decided to give up his ordinary life to go hitchhiking, and, later on, live in the wilderness in Alaska. The idea didn't impress me that much at first. It's hard for me to understand someone who gives up everything, and burns his money. Was his life really that bad? I don't think so. The fact that he wasn't happy with his parents doesn't explain his behaviour. There are a lot of kids that dislike and even hate their parents.

Besides, I don't get why he was so proud of not taking anything with him if he still lived in someone else's bus. If you want to live in the wild, why don't you sleep on the ground, or find yourself a cave or something? Another thing I did not like is that they showed the main character, Chris, as a very talented, smart and good-looking you man. Why do they have to show someone who is "all that" to make us like him?

However, I found the second part of the movie very moving. The first thing that attracted me is that this film is about someone who is not afraid to do what his heart is telling him to do with his life. So many people are doing something everybody's expecting them to do, never thinking about what they really want. Secondly, towards the end of the movie, the main idea was starting to become more and more clear (I will quote it in the Favorite quote section of the review), and I found myself agreeing with it as I watched the last twenty movutes of the movie.

I think Emile Hirsch played well, and looked somewhat like the main character in real life. Also, as I have already mentioned in my previous reviews, I give extra points to movies that are based on true stories =) So, congratulations, Alexander Supertramp, you are on my "good" list!

Favorite quote: "Happiness only real when shared".

Interesting fact: Shot on location, except for the bus scenes. According to Sean Penn they abandoned the idea of shooting at the real bus out of respect for Christopher and the McCandless family. Instead, they built a set in the wilderness, with an exact replica of the real bus.

# 139 Ben-Hur (1959)

Ben-Hur is a story of the friendship between two boys, one being Jewish, and the other one Roman, who grow up, and become enemies due to the fact that one of them is a Jewish prince, whereas the other has become a commanding officer of the Roman legions in Jerusalem.

This movie kept me focused the whole three and a half hours inspite of being old and long, given that I'm not even a fan of historical epic films. The movie is well paced, at the beginning of the movie I kept thinking it was going to be boring, and that they wouldn't come up with enough events to fill the whole movie with, but I was wrong. There's just so much going on here, so many themes and ideas. No, it's not breathtaking, and it was not very emotional to me, but if I had to use one word to describe it, it would be "interesting". There is a romantic plotline, but, surprisingly, it doesn't ruin the film.

I think one of the things that make this film outstanding is the fact that it doesn't use computer generated graphics for action scenes, such as the chariot race, and still all of the action is of a very high standard. The naval battle was also well done. My favorite part was the scene with the galley slaves rowing in a galley.

Although the tagline of the movie is "A Tale of the Christ", we only see Jesus on the screen for about five minutes throughout the whole film, and his role is so small, that I wouldn't even call him a supporting character. Of course, we understand, that when Christ appears in the movie, it's very special, but the person who is really trying to deliver the message is the daughter of Ben-Hur's slave, Esther. This film is not about forgiveness, it is about mercy though.

Favorite quote: "One God, that I can understand, but one wife? That is not civilized. It is not generous!"

Interesting fact: This is the only one of the three movies who have won 11 Academy Awards (the others being Titanic (1997) and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)) to have won an Oscar for acting performances.