Lists of Bests

Listsofbests.com is my new favorite site. Being an avid cineaphile there are many films I need and want to see. However it's hard to keep them all straight. With this site you can make a list of anything. When I discovered it, I signed up and immediately made a list of my favorite films (well to be exact, films that move me, groove me and turn me on) and one with all the films I can't believe I haven't seen and need to.

Of course you don't have to just do movie lists. You can do whatever you want. Check it out.

Here are the lists I'm working on:



Here's my favs:

Juno or: How I learned to stop worrying and love the womb

Some films snag your eyeballs and suck you into complex visual labyrinths. Others crack open your cranium and massage and stimulate your brain with intellectual delicacy.

But not Juno.

Juno did a free-for-all cannon ball crash deep inside my ear canal splashing out worthless and cliché jargon and filling it up with puns and comebacks more ripe and potent than a 7th-grade hallway stink bomb.

In Juno's world, language is her haven--her comfort zone where her snarky attitude nestles and mates with the kind of words and phrases most 16-year-old don't bother even trying to decipher. Her wit has grit and it's as sly as it is harsh. But it's also as brave and groundbreaking as it is hollow and weightless. Juno's vernacular is the product of her inward unawareness, her self-doubt and her seemingly obscure yet highly camouflaged naivety. The wittiest and most cunning vocabulary in the world wouldn't help Juno feel older; it would only make her look it. And even then, only to those that didn't know better. Her jarringly suave and savvy persona is brittle and bleak and more of a defensive mechanism than anything else. This juxtaposition between the way Juno acts and the way she feels sets up the film's theme. Juno, although witty and at times verbally impressive is an immature, unaware, stupid 16-year-old. Age is nothing but a number, but wisdom and maturity take time and experience.

To really blow this point up and exaggerate the inner turmoil of Juno's delicate self-esteem and her brazenly confident manifestations of it, the writer literally blows Juno up. She has her get pregnant I mean. She has her take on something not only tied with adulthood but something that is sure to provoke some kind of growth or arch within Juno’s delicate but transparent antihero-like attitude. This rough and tough persona is hardly who she is but as a facade it masks Juno's vulnerabilities.

Juno, bored and curious, has afternoon sex with Pauly Bleeker. Bleeker's semen, surprisingly more alive than him, swims upstream as steady and swift as Alaskan Salmon. When hearing about the pregnancy, Juno's Father Mac, a blue collar softy, is somewhat impressed with Bleeker. "I didn't think he had it in him," Mac says.

Bleeker's name says it all. He's the consummate underdog; a likeable sap who's as endearing as he is annoying. Bleeker and Juno aren't in love and never consider keeping the baby. Bleeker doesn't ever really acknowledge his part in the pregnancy and doesn't insist on participating in any big baby decisions. This in turn leaves Juno to solely handle and deal with the weighty responsibilities and consequences of decisions made by two.

The male characters come across passive and weak. They don't know what they want or how to get it if they did. They've never pushed anything out of a vagina and therefore are the weaker sex because of it. Jason Bateman plays Mark Loring, the husband half of the couple seeking to adopt Juno's baby. Mark is the 'forever wandering' male misanthrope archetype. He's cursed with arrested development (Loring not Bateman) and unlike Juno who's forced to deal with an adult situation, Mark does everything he can to avoid them. As Mark and Juno get to know each other, Mark becomes turned on by not only the attention Juno gives him but the thought of doing something juvenile and wildly age-inappropriate. Juno and Mark spend afternoons watching splatter-film classics and listening to Sonic Youth. As they build their relationship, Mark decides to leave his wife. He thinks Juno is throwing herself at him and even through he understands boundaries and knows better he longs for a youthful fling. Juno, being 16, doesn't know better and is oblivious to Mark's affection.

The Ying to Mark's Yang is his wife Vanessa played by Jennifer Garner. Vanessa is strong willed, controlling and robotically determined. She feels it’s her life mission and destiny to be a mom. She doesn’t care how she becomes one, as long as she does. This is a tough sell. The writer, Diablo Cody seemingly makes Vanessa the feminist prototype; a wild-eyed, no nonsense business woman bent on business life success. She then straps Vanessa down with a traditional gender role; an undeniable urge to become a mother. Vanessa controls all aspects of Mark's life. She boxes up his comic books and shoots down his dreams. She determines which room in the house Mark can use for his music room and condemns him from watching movies during the day. Yet somehow, this narcissistic head-strong super-bitch is going to be a wonderful mother. One of my favorite scenes illustrates Vanessa's cold, detached nature. At the local mall, Vanessa runs into the very pregnant Juno and attempts to talk to the baby. She kneels down and very systematically talks to Juno's stomach. She's comes across like Data from Star Trek; all business and no emotion. But somehow, someway, Vanessa's character works. Like I said, it’s a hard sell, but Garner convinces us that deep inside Vanessa is destined to become a successful mother.

So in the end, Juno has her very mature adult experience. An experience so much more profound than anything in her life. She gives birth. The outcome of this experience is what makes the movie great. She doesn't want to see the baby nor have anything else to do with its life, she just want to live. Juno's epiphany comes when she realizes faking maturity and owning maturity are two vastly different things. She's determined to have another go at being a teenager and this time she's determined to play her role. In the final scene Juno rides her bike to meet up with Bleeker. And she rides it like a kid.