Personal Favorites: My Ten "Desert Island" Films (The Second Five)

6.   The Perks of Being A Wallflower:  This is my newest favorite, and wonderful on so many levels.  I loved the book and had high hopes for the film, which it ultimately exceeded.  The film can't beat the book's intimate nature, but perfectly brings to life every image and emotion the book evokes.  Plus, the actors are the perfect embodiments of the characters, even better than what I had imagined.  Ezra Miller is a multi-layered delight, the kid I wish I'd had the courage to be, and Logan Lehrman grabs is the kid I felt I was (but without his "baby deer in the headlights" beauty).  It really gets that feeling of powerlessness that so overwhelms us as teenagers and continues to plague us as adults.  It definitely has it's cheesey moments, but those moments (like the Rocky Horror sequence) are also the sequences that make me the most nostalgic. 

7.  Snow White and the Seven Dwarves:  The first, and to my mind the greatest of all the Disney animated features.  Artful, ornate, and timeless.  And I love Snow White for all her squeaky voiced naivete, because even though she may not hoist on armor and lead a battle, her strengths are kindness and optimism and a love of animals.  These are traits far more valuable to me than anything Kristen Stewart's sulky ass could manage, so suck it haters. .

8.  Splash:  I've always been fascinated by mermaids, used to sink down to the bottom of the neighbor's pool and look up at the surface, imagining the world above to be some strange and otherworldly place.  Splash looks at all the things that can hold love back and at loves power to overcome those obstacles

9.  The Wizard of Oz:  America's myth.  The greatest quest tale, and one that greatly influenced one of my other favorites, The Muppet Movie.  Pretty much a perfect film.  Iconic performances, iconic music, an aesthetic that has affected the way we see the world in ways we might never completely comprehend.  It's the story and film I hold closest to my heart, partially because it illustrates so perfectly the film's true message (no, not that "there's no place like home" b.s.) that whatever it is you long for, desire and wish to be is already inside you, and accessing it is easier than you ever imagined.    Bonus:  The back story of how everything came together to make this perfect film that almost wasn't is fascinating.  Additional bonus:  While the film owes a lot to the original source material, it doesn't simply regurgitate in unimaginative fashion what was in the book (like the first couple of Harry Potter films) but adds a modern, largely vaudevillian sensibility that makes it its own creature.   

10.  9 to 5:  Strong women kicking ass and taking names, getting what they deserve and doing it with flair.  Three perfect characters who buoy each other up rather than tear each other apart.  Plus those fantasy sequences are completely awesome on their own and I love how they're fueled by realities that foreshadowed their arrival.  I loved the film even more once I was old enough to get over being scandalized by the fact that my heroines smoked pot.  This film was also where I first learned the term "S & M" so it was educational on many levels.

So that's it, my favorite films, my "desert island" movies.  I'd love to hear about yours if you are so inclined to share...