My Favourite Films

Join me as I share some of my favourite films with you. If you follow me on TikTok, Instagram or Youtube, you may have seen my post about this. However, this is where I can go into some more detail on what makes these movies some of my all-time favourites!

The Nightmare Before Christmas

This has always been one of my favourite films. I can still remember watching this on VHS in my living room. Being totally consumed by the balance of colour, the contrasting characters and the songs that pulled you in and emersed you within the holiday world. Finding out that this film has over 110,000 frames and took over 3 years to make blew me away!

As a teenager, I used to watch the bonus feature on as many of my favourite DVDs as possible. Learning the elusive how, how did they film that shot? How did they get the actor to portray this exact emotion? How did they find this or do that, how how how.

Empire Records

Technically a box office failure this was one of those gems that was such a fun watch. It was a film that really showed me what the power of a good soundtrack could do.

I learned a lot about using the space you have while watching this movie. The way the record store itself felt like a character helped me to see the value of utilizing your set to tell your story.

Donnie Darko

What can I say about Donnie Darko? It’s messed up and greatly executed at the same time with so many little details mixed in. If you liked Interstellar, you’ll enjoy this!

the cast is great and if you’re a fan of Jake Gyllenhaal then you’ll already (kind of) know what to expect. In regards to theatres, this was another major flop at the box office. But it really shows that there IS a market out there for your films, you might just have to dig a little deeper to find them.

The United States of Leland

A trend appears in the majority of these films. Most have been described as “exploring the dark side of suburbia”, which was probably a main draw for me. Growing up in Scarborough, outside of Toronto left me feeling (and probably a lot of teens) like I didn’t fit in. This is what drew me to The United States of Leland.

Not that I can relate to what Leland did (or did not) do, but the aspect of having someone interested in you and your story was such a unique aspect and viewpoint for me. I know this isn’t a favourite of a lot of people and can be hard to find but in my journey of falling in love with film, this was a hidden gem that I loved.

Drive

Now we get into a heavy hitter, Drive. A film that inspired countless Halloween costumes, revived a colour scheme and showed that with the right direction and motivation a great actor doesn’t need a lot of words to portray an amazingly deep character.

One of the core themes from all the interviews I’ve read is that when a director casts the right people for the right roles AND lets them do what they’re best at, magic can happen! Giving actors the opportunities to fill out their characters and read and feel the tone of the story, they will bring those characters to life in a way a forced hand never could.

Bonus: SLC Punk

Salt Lake City Punk. I don’t know how much I learned about filmmaking from this movie but I’ve never felt myself in a film like the way I did with this. Hearing this quote, “Wouldn't it be more of an act of rebellion if you didn't spend so much time buying blue hair dye and going out to get punky clothes? It seems so petty. You want to be an individual, right? You look like you're wearing a uniform. You look like a punk. That's not rebellion...that's fashion. Rebellion happens in the mind. You can't create it...you just are that way.”

That hit me harder than almost anything I’ve ever heard in my life. It helped me understand that who I was and who I wanted to be, didn't come from what I wore or how I looked.

I hope you’ve enjoyed getting a deeper look into some of my favourite films and I can’t wait to share with you what I have planned for the summer! Stay tuned! and make sure you follow along on TikTok and Instagram for all of my latest posts.