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litlover12First of all, thanks to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mosinging1986 for suggesting that this project have a tag of its own. I think it's a great idea and I should have thought of it before. So I came up with "top 20 movies" as a tag (because I'm creative like that), and hopefully it will be helpful to anyone who wants to refer back to these posts when looking for something to watch.
18. Shadowlands (1993; dir. Sir Richard Attenborough; starring Anthony Hopkins, Debra Winger, Edward Hardwicke)
I was in high school, and just starting to discover C. S. Lewis, when this movie about his marriage to Joy Gresham came out. (Somehow I'd missed the Narnia books as a child.) Like most biopics, it's heavily fictionalized. The more I've learned about that warm, wise, wonderful man, the more I've realized that the "stiff bachelor needed free-spirited woman to pull him out of his shell" trope really didn't fit him that well. But as Joy's son Douglas Gresham put it, "In terms of hard facts it is deliberately and by necessity very inaccurate, but emotionally it is spot on." This beautifully made film helped to cement my attachment to the man who would become one of my very favorite writers -- and also taught me something about the amazing woman who was his wife -- and for that it holds a special place in my heart.
Note: Some believe that the film makes it look as if Lewis lost his faith in the end, but I've never gotten that impression from it. It's true that he struggled with his faith for a time after the loss of Joy -- that's made very clear by his heartrending little book A Grief Observed -- and it seems to me that the film is a fairly faithful reflection of that struggle.
17. The Sword in the Stone (1963; dir. Wolfgang Reitherman; with the voices of Rickie Sorensen, Karl Swensen, Junius Matthews, and Sebastian Cabot)
Yes, I saw and loved all the Disney princess movies when I was growing up, especially Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast. But none of them ever made me laugh like The Sword and the Stone, and that's why it's the one that made the list! There's not a princess to be seen -- just a future king called "Wart" and his tutor, Merlin -- but as far as I'm concerned, Disney animation doesn't get any more enjoyable than this.
Tomorrow, The Princess Bride and Charade.
mosinging1986 for suggesting that this project have a tag of its own. I think it's a great idea and I should have thought of it before. So I came up with "top 20 movies" as a tag (because I'm creative like that), and hopefully it will be helpful to anyone who wants to refer back to these posts when looking for something to watch.18. Shadowlands (1993; dir. Sir Richard Attenborough; starring Anthony Hopkins, Debra Winger, Edward Hardwicke)
I was in high school, and just starting to discover C. S. Lewis, when this movie about his marriage to Joy Gresham came out. (Somehow I'd missed the Narnia books as a child.) Like most biopics, it's heavily fictionalized. The more I've learned about that warm, wise, wonderful man, the more I've realized that the "stiff bachelor needed free-spirited woman to pull him out of his shell" trope really didn't fit him that well. But as Joy's son Douglas Gresham put it, "In terms of hard facts it is deliberately and by necessity very inaccurate, but emotionally it is spot on." This beautifully made film helped to cement my attachment to the man who would become one of my very favorite writers -- and also taught me something about the amazing woman who was his wife -- and for that it holds a special place in my heart.
Note: Some believe that the film makes it look as if Lewis lost his faith in the end, but I've never gotten that impression from it. It's true that he struggled with his faith for a time after the loss of Joy -- that's made very clear by his heartrending little book A Grief Observed -- and it seems to me that the film is a fairly faithful reflection of that struggle.
17. The Sword in the Stone (1963; dir. Wolfgang Reitherman; with the voices of Rickie Sorensen, Karl Swensen, Junius Matthews, and Sebastian Cabot)
Yes, I saw and loved all the Disney princess movies when I was growing up, especially Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast. But none of them ever made me laugh like The Sword and the Stone, and that's why it's the one that made the list! There's not a princess to be seen -- just a future king called "Wart" and his tutor, Merlin -- but as far as I'm concerned, Disney animation doesn't get any more enjoyable than this.
Tomorrow, The Princess Bride and Charade.
