Film Love is Blind: Our Cinematic Infatuations

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

This is one of the two Jim Carrey movies which I enjoy. His comedies just don’t usually work for me, but his more dramatic roles really hit a sweet spot. While the acting from Carrey, Kate Winslet, Mark Ruffalo, Tom Wilkinson, Kirsten Dunst is altogether terrific, it’s the bizarre and wonderful script by Charlie Kaufman that really sets Eternal Sunshine apart from its contemporaries. It’s an outstanding look into the difficulties of love, and how delicate it is to keep. For all the bad times we regret, there are also good times that we should cherish. No matter how many times Joel and Clementine may end up erasing each other, they seem likely to end up together again. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind can do no wrong.  Honorable Mentions: Lost in Translation, Singin’ in the Rain, The Matrix – Max Covill

Pacific Rim (2013)

Thomas Edison invented the movies over a century ago so that someday, audiences would have the pleasure of watching giant robots rocket-punch giant monsters in the face. Fact. Pacific Rim might be the best homage ever made to its distinctive niches, succeeding in spades as both a kaiju film and a mecha film. Amidst the CGI spectacle lies a perfect evocation of its genres, seen primarily in Guillermo Del Toro’s depth of vision and singular imagination. This is a guy who takes inspiration from Goya and turns it into two hours of colossi beating the tar out of each other against frequently psychedelic color palettes. That they do so with absolutely no regard for collateral damage almost feels like parody. Maybe that’s not your cup of tea, but if not then you should probably reconsider your tea drinking habits altogether. Philistine.  Honorable Mentions: Stagecoach, The Babadook, Oldboy – Andy Crump 

Supsiria (1977)

I am a firm believer that everyone should love whatever art they want, that it’s okay to disagree, and that there’s nothing more obnoxious than saying, “Okay, but you just don’t get it.” That being said, if you can’t appreciate the glorious absurdity that is Dario Argento’s Suspiria, you are wrong. The bright, color-soaked aesthetic, the breathtaking Gothic set design, the giallo horror turned up to 11, the genuinely terrifying finale. It feels like a gorgeous accident, a messily perfect / perfectly messy horror ideal crafted by a mad genius who highlights style without letting substance suffer. I could talk about Toy Story, which will forever have my heart, or Spring Breakers, which prevails because every criticism of it is automatically rendered meaningless, or Don’t Look Now, which is having a resurgence and deserves every second of it. But Suspiria’s feverish mania is something that makes so much sense to me, and it should to you, too. It just should. – Jake Pitre

Last Tango in Paris (1972)

When you tell people that you love Last Tango in Paris, they immediately give you a knowing “ooh you like naughty movies” wink. In a sense, this assumption is unintentionally true, for the film can leave you feeling somewhat unclean. For me it’s strangely satisfying to see the sheer desperation in the two main characters as they engage in a form of emotional wrestling manifested in seemingly pure physical acts. From the opening sequence, when the camera swoops to an upside-down closeup of Marlon Brando’s distorted face while he curses to the railroad track above him and screams his guts out to nothingness, I knew I was doomed. Last Tango in Paris left me pleasurably broken. It is a piece of cinematic masochism that I will gladly endure again and again. – Phuong Le

The Sound of Music (1965)

Never has there been a more entertaining (loose) depiction of a true story from one of our world’s most horrific times. You have Christopher Plummer (*swoon*) as a hard-ass leader of his family, the ever-appealing Julie Andrews belting out such catchy tunes, plus teenage and adult heartbreak and subdued – but still unlikeable – villains.

It’s a story that keeps on giving. The development of the central relationship between Captain Von Trapp (Plummer) and Maria (Andrews) is as old-school romantic as they come. And how can you not feel happy and mushy after singing along to My Favorite Things? Against a magnificent Austrian backdrop, the film plays with your emotions as a musical epic. I will love The Sound of Music unashamedly for the rest of my life, for the memories it has created just as much as the knowledge it could never be done better.  Honorable Mentions: The Breakfast Club, the Back to the Future trilogy, The Truman Show – Katina Vangolopolous

The Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006)

The Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift gets a lot of flack for supposedly being the worst in a series of “conventionally bad” movies, but I think it’s easily the best entry in the franchise, and it’s most important. Tokyo Drift was the last Fast & Furious movie that stuck to the seedy underworld street racing that made it so beloved in the first place. With Justin Lin on board, it was able to straddle the line of being a part of a beloved cult series and being a stupendously fun, trailblazing action film. With its explosive cinematography of cars drifting around fatal bends and the introduction of integral character Han Seoul-Oh (Sung Kang) to the series,Tokyo Drift is a pivotal, defining moment for the franchise.  Honorable Mentions: The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Repo: The Genetic Opera, The Informers – Julia Alexander