1988 - Akira
Like every nerdy teenage boy at 14, this movie opened my eyes up to anime. I took great pride in knowing that I came out the same year as this movie.
1989 - Ghostbusters II
It's not a great movie, but still it had enough laughs in it to keep me going.
1990 - Total Recall
Again, nerdy me at age 16 this time and completely set on marrying the girl with three tits.
1991 - Hook
While Terminator 2 may have dominated my teenage years, I cannot forget the times I had as a kid watching this tape.
1992 - Aladdin
First movie I ever went to go see in theaters so it has stock over the other movies from this year like Ferngully, Home Alone 2, The Mighty Ducks, and some of the other kids movies out at that time. Of course those movies would be replaced with ones like Hard Boiled, Twin Peaks: Fire walk With Me, Batman Returns, Alien 3, and a few others. Still the nostalgia of my first movie will trump anything else.
1993 - Jurassic Park
I was SOOO into this movie as a kid it was ridiculous. I remember the man at the ticket counter berating my mum for bringing me and my mum telling him to go **** himself, that I was the one that dragged her there, and so on. My mum had actually read me the book (omitting various pieces obviously), so I was a little disappointed that certain scenes didn't happen, but then I saw a dinosaur and forgot about everything else.
1994 - The Mask
Again, another movie I was really into at a younger age that had some disadvantages. I didn't really start to understand all the jokes until I got older, but in the early '90's Jim Carry was the shit. I also saw The Lion King this year which was another great movie from my childhood, but for some reason I have more memories attached to The Mask.
1995 - Toy Story
Pretty self-explanatory for a 7 year old kid in the '90's.
1996 - Rumble in the Bronx (young me) & Trainspotting (old me)
Rumble in the Bronx was my first Jackie Chan movie and got me (and probably thousands of other kids) to get my mom to sign me up for karate lessons (which I promptly dropped, like thousands of other kids). It was a fun movie with lots of ass kicking and high flying stunts, it was also filmed in Vancouver (my home) with no real effort to make it look like New York City. In fact, the scene where Jackie jumps off section of bridge onto the hovercraft (and broke his foot) was filmed at the Burrard Street Bridge, only a few blocks away from the apartment I was living in.
Now enter my teenage years when I was 16 and just read Trainspotting. My first exposure to the film was brief, my dad wanted me to watch the scene where Rents and Sick Boy were discussing Sick Boy's philosophy on life while shooting dogs at the park. It stuck with me and I remember looking at the bookstore and finding the book. Finally after reading it (took me awhile) I rented the movie from the local Rogers Video Store and was really blown away by some of the scenes.
1997 - Gattaca
I'm going to leave the childhood nostalgia behind now because it's just going to generate a bunch of generic responses. Gattaca was a movie I saw when I was 17 and had just finished reading Brave New World. I was very impressed by how well the book and the movie fit together, and was an interesting look at sci-fi, compared to Men In Black's over-the-top comedic approach.
1998 - Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Next to no story, incoherent and rambling dialog, and little characterization... yet I still love this movie. It's a great movie to watch when fucked up and say "Well at least I'm not those guys!".
1999 - The Matrix
Sure it might have confused the fuck out of me when I was 11, but all I cared about was girls in tight leather and guns, and boy did the film ever deliver.
2000 - X-Men
I loved the TV series during the '90's and the movie was my first experience with a good comic adaptation. While Spawn was my first comic book movie, it did little but visually assault my eyes. At least X-Men had more to it than just visuals.
2001 - Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring
Not even going to bother.
2002 - Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
Again.
2003 - Lord of the Rings: Return of the King
Same reason.
2004 - Hellboy
Very different from the typical Marvel or DC adaptations, very refreshing.
2005 - Serenity
I loved Firefly when it came out and was very upset when the series ended. The movie was a good continuation of the story, but it still left me wanting more.
2006 - The Departed
This movie was to me, what Goodfellas was to people who saw it back in 1990.
2007 - Knocked Up
2007 kind of starts my "I don't care about new movies anymore" trend.
2008 - The Dark Knight
Yes I'm really that predicable when it comes to cinema.
2009 - District 9
I really didn't even try to keep up with movies from 2009, that was really the only one I saw besides Inglorious Bastards
2010 - I haven't seen anything from this year so I don't know.
|