There’s nothing better than the feeling of being able to relax and watch a good, long movie without the ghosts of all the work you are not doing lurking in the back of your brain. Since I recently completed my grade 11 year, arguably the most difficult year of high school, I’ve accumulated a pretty substantial list of movies that I put off watching during the school year because I can’t handle the crippling guilt. Instead, I’ve been saving them for the summer. Below are only a few of the movies on the list, and you can probably tell that they are most cult-classics that I haven’t seen yet so if you’re anything like me and haven’t seen them, hit me up and we can be movie buddies.
MINORITY REPORT
Recommended by my brilliant ELA teacher this year, Minority Report is an early 2000s sci-fi movie about a future in which police enlist the knowledge of three psychics to apprehend criminals before they commit their crime. When one of the police’s own (Tom Cruise) becomes the center of an accusation, age-old questions about free will versus self-determination are presented. Directed by Spielberg and available on Netflix, there are so many reasons why this movie makes it on my list.
HEATHERS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTmpKgocyYg
An American teenage cult classic with an unexpected twist: murder. It has all the elements of a movie of the breed of Mean Girls: cute dudes, a popular teenage clique, and a single outlier. In this case, after a nasty confrontation with the clique leader, the outlier (played by Winona Ryder) and her boyfriend accidentally poison her. In an unexpected twist, she soon realizes that her charming boyfriend is actually trying to murder those in their high school. Dark, twisted, yet somehow still a comedy, this movie belongs on the summer movie lists of everyone.
Legally Blonde
Elle Woods wants only one more thing in her perfect life: for her boyfriend to propose. However, her overwhelming “blondeness” keeps him from doing so, and in order to prove to him that she is more than just that, she enrolls at Harvard Law (oh if it were only that easy!), where she discovers her own passion for law. Witty, funny, and empowering, I don’t know why I haven’t seen it already.
Lost in TranslationÂ
A Sofia Coppola film, this one takes the cake for being the most alternative item on this tasting menu of cult classics. Filmed and set in Tokyo, Lost In Translation is about the unique understanding and unlikely bond that is formed between a lonely and directionless actor at the end of his career and a neglected newlywed. Based on what I’ve heard about it, it is a film that will move you. I’m prepping the tissue boxes.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
I love beautiful films. And I don’t just mean movies with a touching message and amazing hidden meanings, though that is also great. I mean films that are visually pleasing, and luckily Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is directed by former music video director Michel Gondry. Starring Kate Winslet and Jim Carrey as lovers who undergo a new procedure to erase all their memories of one another following their painful breakup, this film analyzes the complexity of relationships and the pain that accompanies their end.
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