It’s fall. The days are getting shorter. The temperature is dropping. As outside becomes a dark and foreboding place, you might want to consider snuggling up and watching a good film. The Buzz staff has compiled a short list of movie favorites to keep you occupied during these bleak, cold and stressful fall days.
Zoya Zia – Stuck In Love
Although “Stuck in Love” is no longer stuck on Netflix, it remains a fall favorite. The film illustrates the story of a conflicted but talented family. The father is an award-winning writer. The daughter, portrayed by Lily Collins, is an aspiring writer in college. Her younger brother, portrayed by Nat Wolff, is a writer in high school. Collins’ character refuses to speak with her mother, an artist, since she divorced her father, which left him heart-broken and alone. Collins’ character meets a nice guy, portrayed by Logan Lerman, who slowly changes her pessimistic mindset on love. Wolff’s character also has a love interest, but she affects him in a very different way. With multiple layers of emotional confusion and conflict, the movie provides a feel-good, yet realistic account of the human condition. Watching raindrops fall and clutching a mug of hot cocoa, I am stuck in love with “Stuck in Love.’
Emily Gibson – Rushmore
Fall may mean pumpkin carving and getting spooky for Halloween, but it also means going back to school. Which is where Wes Anderson’s 1998 film, “Rushmore” comes in. The movie has everything that makes an Anderson classic: Jason Schwartzmann (in his film debut!), Bill Murray and Owen Wilson (who doesn’t star in the film, but co-wrote it.) It centers on Max Fischer (Schwartzmann), an over-zealous student at the private school, Rushmore Academy, his friendship with a rich industrialist (Murray) and their mutual love for an elementary school teacher. The film helped launch the careers of both Anderson and Schwartzmann, and it also re-established Bill Murray, who won a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor for the film. But better than that: it drips with Texas pride. Both Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson went to The University of Texas at Austin, and Rushmore Academy is located in Houston. Though Texas doesn’t provide backgrounds of orange and red leaves, Anderson uses warm colors that add to the autumnal feeling of the film.
Aliyah Conley- Good Will Hunting
As temperatures drop and finals loom overhead, nothing settles the soul like Gus Van Sant’s classic, “Good Will Hunting.” The film focuses on a young janitor, played by Matt Damon, who cleans the halls of MIT’s math department. Brilliant but misguided, Damon’s character is offered the opportunity to rise above his circumstances when he solves an unsolvable equation. Robin Williams plays a wise and heartwarming psychiatrist who takes Damon under his wing and reminds us that the greatest problems we face are not those presented in a classroom, but those created from tension within. So before you let fall finals consume you, grab some popcorn and tissues, because this one will give you all of the feels.
Emma Whalen – Hocus Pocus
Halloween may be over, but my love for “Hocus Pocus” is as eternal as the centuries old, “black flame candle” that sets off all of the shenanigans in this classic 1993 flick. “Hocus Pocus” has all the key elements of a ’90s Disney movie and more. There are surprisingly high-profile actors (Sarah Jessica Parker and Bette Midler, to name a few), obligatory musical numbers, questionably risqué content that passed PG in the freewheeling days of ’90s Disney (virginity as a topic of conversation and innuendos that run rampant) and a few delightful zingers that you can’t help but use at any opportunity. I once watched this movie in July. Let that sink in. July is probably the happiest month of the year – the sun sets later and people have more free time to drink Margaritas, go boating and do whatever awesome things people do in the summer. I sat inside my friend’s house on a perfectly good day to watch this movie about 300-year-old witches. It’s that good. Now imagine you’re in the midst of midterms, finals and typical mid-November drudgery. Tell me watching “Hocus Pocus” doesn’t sound like a great idea.
