6/22/2011

30 Day Film Challenge Day 30: Your Favorite Film This Time Last Year


Wow, it's over already? It's taken me a bit more than a month to get through this challenge, but it was worth it. Not only did it give me the opportunity to figure out my own thoughts, gather my own opinions on some movies not considered in years, hopefully it gave you a look into my mindset as well.  Hopefully I can convince John to do the same and you can see just how different(and sometimes way too similar) we are. 

As for this one, I'll keep it brief. Inception hadn't come out yet, and I was still considering the just released Winter's Bone and Toy Story 3. The film that had hit me the hardest up to that point was North Face, a German historical piece detailing a disastrous attempt to scale the north face of the Eiger mountain in the Swiss Alps. What struck me was the way the story combined some of the politics of the time, in particular the masculine superiority meme running through Germany, with breathtaking climbing sequences. The cinematography by Kolja Brandt made you feel as if you were on that mountain, where moving an inch in the wrong direction literally meant death. I was so engrossed that when the movie finally came to it's gut wrenching conclusion my hands were clutching the arms of the chair so hard they had lost feeling.