laszlo's favorite films
i am a major cinephile !! i love highly stylized films and auteurs, queer film, pretty aesthetics, love stories, stories about what it means to be human, dramatic and soulcrushing things, and also lighthearted fun things. oh, and the mcu... i'm pulling the autism card there, though, you can't judge me for this.
TOP 10
1. The Grand Budapest Hotel
this is my absolute favorite film of all time. wes anderson is my favorite director--both his visual and writing style have captivated me for ages, and his films are the films that made me care about film. i've seen this film over 200 times? (i had a lot of time during quarantine)
along with being visually stunning, rich with pastels and jewel tones, perfect symmetry, lovely costumes, grandiose locations, and charming miniatures and paintings, this film will also change your life. it's a found family story; it's a story about resilience, about loss; it's a story that asks you why you choose to hold on, even when the world around you is leaving so much behind, when the world around you is turning cold and dark and vicious. like a lot of wes anderson's films, it's hilarious, and that makes the melancholy hit so much harder. i love this film more than life itself.
it's also filled with such wonderful characters. i adore m. gustave. he's like. my father figure fr. zero is also such an amazing character--he's so sweet and determined. i just love this film.
2. Dead Poet's Society
i first watched this film in my senior year of high school, because it was on the curriculum for my state's academic superbowl competition that year. and good lord. this film is a classic for a reason !! the acting is amazing; the ending is bittersweet and breaks your heart; the storyline is nostalgic and fresh all at the same time; the cinematography and aesthetic have helped countless loser teens and uni students romanticize going to class. i know for me, it helped me romanticize trig that year. oh boy...
this film also means a lot to me because it's a keystone piece of queer media--if you didn't read it that way, you weren't reading it at all, i fear. while it doesn't have a happy ending for the character that is most obviously the queer allegory we're meant to take straight out of the text, it still is a story of choosing one's own path, of not giving into the stories that others try to tell us about our lives. furthermore, it has, in my opinion, one of the sweetest subtextually queer relationships in any film--todd anderson and neil perry, kiss !!! kiss right now !!!
this film is also so important to me as someone going into the humanities: i'm an anthropology major, and so i often think about one of the first signs we point to for the shift to modern humans was symbolic behavior--like art, like burial. this film, in a way, is about what makes us human. it's the love we share for others that drives us to create, to live life to the fullest, to do things because they're silly like playing saxophone in a dark cave or send a desk set flying from great heights, to inspire each other the way mr. keating inspires all the boys, to grieve, to mourn, to come up with intricate rituals in which we can express all the ways we love each other when we're here and when we're gone. this film makes sense of all that. reminds us what we're doing and why we're doing it. the arts are humanity.
3. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
this. film. is. amazing. i will not accept criticism or disagreement. this film is amazing!
part riff on political thrillers from the nineties; part peak mcu action film complete with spies, supersoldiers, and soviet + nazi collusion; part... the greatest found family and love story ever told? captain america: the winter soldier truly balances it all !!!
4. Conclave
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5. The Phoenician Scheme
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