Episode 1, Top 5 With Jake: Movies

Episode 1 of, Top 5 with Jake

Movies

Aladdin is the all time best movie ever made. I think when it gets right down to it there is a Disney character that everyone can personally relate to. Aladdin is mine. Let’s just say, if I grew up on the streets of Agrabah I would be the one hopping roof tops, dodging royal guards, and saving the princess. Though like all Disney sequels, the animation, story, and all around quality of Return of Jafar was lacking, and the quality from the Return to The King of Thieves was even more disappointing, the concept of Aladdin and even the sequels are far better than any other Disney reincarnations. I mean really, Pocahontas 2, Journey to a New World… please…

Quotes:

Genie: [as Jack Nicholson] All right, sparky, here's the deal. If you wanna court the little lady, ya gotta be a straight shooter. Do ya got it?
Aladdin: What?
Genie: [pointing to each word on a blackboard] Tell... her... the *truth*!

Batman The Dark Knight ranks up there in my top five because it is just put simply, an incredible movie. Truthfully I was not a fan of Batman Begins but the Dark Knight more than did it for me. It is passionate, it is heartbreaking, it is beautiful, it is psychotic, it is dark, it is intense, to put it simply once again and there is nothing much more to say other than it embodies perfectly what I think a lot of movies try to do but few ever accomplish. It is art. That is it.

Quotes:

Harvey ‘Two Face’ Dent – “Have you ever had to talk to the person you love most? To tell them it’s going to be alright, when you know that it’s not?”

Inception is a more recent development for me. I usually don’t like to put a movie on my top movie list until a few years have gone by since the first time I saw it, because it gives me time to understand if I was just infatuated with the movie right off the bat and it ultimately really didn’t mean that much to me. This movie however, I believe is the exception. Call it an obsession, call it psychosis, call it mental insecurity, but I have often felt as Cobb did in this movie, the silently tortured soul who knows the importance of doing the right thing regardless of how painful it might be, whilst still holding on to that hope of goodness that you’re not even sure is a possibility anymore but nonetheless you can’t help but to still hope. I know that a lot of people don’t like Leonardo DiCaprio, and I understand why they don’t but I actually appreciate his talent and enjoy his films. Despite what others say about his acting skills I think he really is a good actor, and I think he did an exceptional job of solidifying that fact in this movie.

Maybe I relate because I feel as though I’ve swam the shores of my subconscious and have wondered if I really am just lost in a dream that I can’t escape from. Maybe I need a totem… wait a minute, I have a totem I just realized, but if this is indeed a dream right now than my totem is inevitably skewed by my own dreaming subconscious in its ability to tell me the difference between the waking world and the dream world… what to do, what to do… I just don’t know.

Quotes:

Cobb: I think positive emotion trumps negative emotion every time.

Newsies, ah Newsies, I love you, that is it. You make me feel young again, and also like grabbing the ceiling fan and spinning and spinning and spinning until my head pops off while a group of kids dance and sing throughout the restaurant I am trying to eat in. The old New York style setting run by gangs of poor Newsies inspires me to…I’m not sure, but it definitely inspires me, especially when I think about Crutchy. I love you Crutchy.

Quotes:

Crutchy: It's this brain of mine, it's always makin' mistakes... it's got a mind of its own.

Enemy Mine is one that is an odd oldie that I’m not sure how many people even know exists. I think it is one of those epic nerd movies like, but much more obscure and unknown than 2001 A Space Odyssey, War of the Worlds, Battlestar Galactica, and Lost in Space. Not a fan of Dennis Quad at all but I like the movie, what can I say. I don’t know if it is an easy movie to appreciate or even watch because it is similar in some ways to Cast Away with Tom Hanks in the fact that there are a lot of long, no dialog scenes of survival. Basically a Human and a Drax, two enemies, crash land on a desolate planet, find each other and learn to overcome their differences in order to survive on the planet.  It gets a little weird when Willis finds out that his new friend “Jerry” is pregnant… but the premise of the movie is great and you just have to accept those strange things… I realize it takes a certain type to appreciate a movie like this but I do appreciate it for its albeit cliché moral values in overcoming differences and coming to the knowledge of goodness in others one might even consider an enemy.

Quotes:

Davidge: "If one receives evil from another, let one not do evil in return. Rather, let him extend love to the enemy, that love might unite them." I’ve heard all this before... in the human Taalmaan.

Jerry: Of course you have. Truth is truth.