1940 DONE! & Year #16: 1987

Alright, so for our 1940 movie we watched "The Great Dictator" starring the great Charlie Chaplin. I must say, we rather enjoyed it. The humor was very silly as you might expect from old Charlie, lots of physical goofiness going on. The story is basically about a Jewish barber (Chaplin) living in the 1930s slums who just so happens to look exactly like the Great Dictator of Tomania (think Germany) whose name is Adenoid Hynkel (also Chaplin, don't think we need to explain who this represents). This barber somehow keeps outwitting the "Nazi's" whenever they try to kill him by having his girlfriend hit them over the head with a frying pan (this happens like 4 times, you'd think the Nazi's would see it coming eventually) and at the end of the movie the fact that the barber and the dictator look EXACTLY alike finally comes into play when he is actually mistaken for Hynkel. Well, that got fun. Actually, it got quite serious. Right at the very end of the movie when Chaplin is playing the barber who is being mistaken for the dictator he is at a rally and gives a pretty awesome and very serious speech about freedom and equal rights and stuff. Pretty much the most serious ending to such a ridiculous film we've ever seen. It was quite the gutsy movie, considering it was made in 1940, one year into World War II.

Both movies we watched from 1940 were very good - Rebecca and The Great Dictator - but were extremely different styles, which makes it very hard to compare. I mean, it's Hitchcock vs. Chaplin, so either way you know you're in good hands. However, we would both have to choose Rebecca as the "better" film.

So now we move along to our next year, 1987. The Best Picture from 1987 was "The Last Emperor" starring some Asian guy and Peter O'Toole. It was a good movie but not great, Adam gave it a 4, I gave it a 4.2, totaling out at 8.2 It was very interesting especially considering it was based on the true story of China's transition from being a nation run by an emperor to more of a republic. It follows the story of the last emperor (duh) from when he comes into power (basically when he's still a baby) to his adulthood. O'Toole comes in a little ways into the film as the emperor's tutor in the teenage years, when China is in the process of switching over their government but no one has told the kid this yet, so the emperor still lives in and rules the forbidden city and doesn't even realize that he's going to be losing his power soon. Anyway he eventually becomes an adult and is sent to prison for some reason (I honestly don't remember and neither does Adam) but I do remember that in one scene his wife starts eating a bunch of flowers at a party to get herself high, which was cool. It was a long movie that felt long, and even though it was interesting I probably wouldn't watch it again by choice. I will say it was the kind of movie that made you want to read up on the actual story, which is at least serving some sort of purpose.

So, onto our picks from this year!

Adam's pick: Fatal Attraction
Kim's pick: Witches of Eastwick

Adam picked Fatal Attraction because he remembers seeing some parts of it when he was younger and thinking it was good and he wanted to watch it again, plain and simple. I have also heard that this is a good (albeit completely messed up) movie, so I'm quite excited for it.

I picked Witches of Eastwick on a recommendation from Adam's parents who said it was a fun movie, and I won't usually turn down a chance to watch a movie that has Jack Nicholson playing the devil.

It is worthy of mentioning that we actually both picked "Good Morning, Vietnam" as our backup choice for this year, but we would have only needed to use it if we picked the same movie as our #1 choice, which we didn't. Oh well, sorry Robin Williams! Better luck next time.

So now it's your turn, which movie from 1987 did you like best?