30 Day Film Quiz: Days 1-10

A few friends of mine have been filling in a '30 Day Film Quiz' on Facebook over the last week or so and - with all my distractions of late - I'm arriving late to the party.

Day 1 - Your Favourite Film

For reasons I've gone into time and time again on this blog, Paul Thomas Anderson's 'Punch-Drunk Love' is my favourite film.



Day 2 - Your Least Favourite Film

Hmmm. This is a hard one. As a kid my least favourite film was Brian De Palma's 'Mission to Mars'. I haven't seen it in over ten years, so maybe it's better than I remember, but at the time it became a byword for "bad" between myself and the friend who saw it with me. I remember it being really dull. Watching the trailer (below) it doesn't look anything like as bad as I remember, but I'll list it here anyway to save me going off on one about 'Transformers 2'.



Day 3 - A Film You Watch to Feel Good

I'm trying to think of a scenario where I've been down and put a film on to cheer myself up. What would that film have been? Certainly the aforementioned 'Punch-Drunk Love' would do the trick, but having already used that as an answer I'll pick something else. I can't imagine being sad watching 'Singin' in the Rain', so here is an upbeat musical number from that.


Make 'Em Laugh by movieclips

Day 4 - A Film You Watch to Feel Down

I don't know if I'd watch a film to feel down but, accepting the premise of the question for a moment, I'd likely stick on 'The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo' because everything about it is so ugly, from the look of it to its view of the human condition. It wouldn't fail to bring me down.

I hate revenge flicks and torture porn anyway, but here those sorts of things are wedded to a kind of dreary realism that makes them all the more antisocial. Say what you will about 'Kill Bill', but at least that's clearly a colourful, comic book of a movie - set in a slightly campy alternate reality. However, 'The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo' injects the same ideas into a trite, TV detective story and provides over two hours of intense misery.



Day 5 - A Film That Reminds You of Someone

A lot of films remind me of the people I first saw them with. 'Bubba Ho-tep' reminds me of an ex-girlfriend. 'The Phantom Menace' reminds me of my best mate who watched it with me (for my eleventh viewing and his seventh or eighth) on the floor of an empty screen at the Bournemouth Odeon some weeks into its run - where we talked, using the film (which we knew by heart anyway) as expensive wallpaper during an otherwise eventless summer afternoon. Bond films remind me of another mate of mine from Bournemouth, with whom I used to play a lot of GoldenEye on the Nintendo 64 and who has accompanied me to 'Tomorrow Never Dies', 'The World is Not Enough' and, more recently, to the two Daniel Craig movies. I don't even like Bond films, but I like watching Bind films with him.

Loads of films remind me of my father and my granddad, both of whom introduced me to a lot of movies growing up. I think I'll pick something that reminds me of the latter, with a 1987 TV movie called 'The Murder of Mary Phagan' coming to mind first.

I can't find a trailer or a clip for it anywhere online, so you'll have to take my word for it when I say it was an incredibly effective drama about a real-life murder case from the US state of Georgia which took place in 1913. The cast speaks volumes for its quality: Jack Lemmon, Kevin Spacey, William H. Macy, Dylan Baker, Cynthia Nixon and Peter Gallagher. I was probably around ten or eleven when he made me watch it (I'd rather have been playing video games), but as it went on it got incredibly gripping. Being a barrister himself, a lot of his favourite movies were legal dramas and he also introduced me to 'Inherit the Wind'.

Day 6 - A Film That Reminds You of Somewhere

Having been to film festivals in Berlin, Venice, Cambridge and Kaunas in the last year, a lot of films now remind me of those places. 'Black Swan', for instance, will always remind me of stepping into the Sala Darsena on the Venice Lido for the first time - an aircraft carrier sized cinema with a massive screen. A storm hit the island during the first few days there (possibly during 'Happy Few') and I remember hearing the wind and the rain through that makeshift building's paper thin walls.

I'm going to go with 'Wild Wild West' though, which always reminds me of my brother and I excitedly dashing into a midweek preview screening at our local Odeon after missing the first ten minutes. The trailer (below) is strangely hypnotic.



Day 7 - A Film That Reminds You of Your Past

Um... I feel like the answers to the last two sort of apply to this one. But looking at it a different way, Noah Baumbach's 'The Squid and the Whale' is deeply personal for me. It's a film that speaks to me about my own adolescence through Jesse Eisenberg's character and his relationship with his father, played by Jeff Daniels.



Day 8 - The Film You Can Quote Best

Anything by Wes Anderson or the Coen brothers could fit here (I can quote 'The Big Lebowski' from beginning to end, which means I can no longer watch it with people), but I'm going to go for 'Jurassic Park' - which I quote constantly with a number of people, including Dave of IQGamer and Toby of Shine A Light.



Day 9 - A Film With Your Favourite Actor (Male)

Sam Rockwell is certainly a candidate. However, Phillip Seymour Hoffman is maybe the greatest actor living. Here he is in the film 'Doubt'.



Day 10 - A Film With Your Favourite Actor (Female)

Samantha Morton is a fantastic actress. In everything from 'Synecdoche New York' to 'Sweet and Lowdown' she is extremely committed and intelligent, giving raw, emotional performances. Here she is with Sean Penn in the latter film, where she plays a mute. As a side-note, this is possibly Woody Allen's best work.



I'll post my remaining answers here to two further blocks of ten later this month. If anyone else wants to "play" here is the full 'quiz' as posted by frequent podcast guest, local radio personality and fellow Disneyphile James Tully:

Day 1 - Your Favourite Film
Day 2 - Your Least Favourite Film
Day 3 - A Film You Watch to Feel Good
Day 4 - A Film You Watch to Feel Down
Day 5 - A Film That Reminds You of Someone
Day 6 - A Film That Reminds You of Somewhere
Day 7 - A Film That Reminds You of Your Past
Day 8 - The Film You Can Quote Best
Day 9 - A Film With Your Favourite Actor (Male)
Day 10 - A Film With Your Favourite Actor (Female)
Day 11 - A Film By Your Favourite Director
Day 12 - A Film By Your Least Favourite Director
Day 13 - A Guilty Pleasure
Day 14 - The Film That No One Expected You To Like
Day 15 - The Film That Depicts Your Life
Day 16 - A Film You Used to Love, But Now Hate
Day 17 - Your Favourite Drama Film
Day 18 - Your Favourite Comedy Film
Day 19 - Your Favourite Action Film
Day 20 - Your Favourite Romantic Film
Day 21 - Your Favourite Sci-Fi/Fantasy Film
Day 22 - Your Favourite Horror Film
Day 23 - Your Favourite Thriller/Mystery Film
Day 24 - Your Favourite Animated or Children's Film
Day 25 - Your Favourite Documentary Film
Day 26 - Your Favourite Foreign Language Film
Day 27 - Your Favourite Independent Film
Day 28 - The Most Obscure Film You've Ever Seen
Day 29 - Your Favourite Film As a Kid
Day 30 - Your Favourite Film This Time Last Year