Oltmans Movie Lists

You might think that being a high school teacher would make watching movies about high school unbearable, but it’s quite the opposite.   I’ve always enjoyed seeing how movies portray high school life on the big screen.   Here are my favorites: 10. Mean Girls.   I am so glad that I was never a high school girl.   This movie is terrific, really funny, and sadly I have seen real-life versions of pretty much every character in this movie. 9. The Class.   I’m pretty sure this won’t be on anyone else’s top 10 list, but it is fascinating.   It’s a French movie, based on an autobiography of a guy who spent a year as a language teacher in Paris.   It’s shot in a documentary style, starring the guy who wrote the book, and to be honest, when I watched it I thought it was a documentary.   Everything about it is incredibly real, and you can tell that the experiences portrayed in the movie are based on things that actually happened.   The guy isn’t a great teacher, but he has some good qual

I saw Gravity last weekend.  It was pretty great.  Visually, I thought it was the best science fiction movie I’d seen since Avatar.  But was it good enough to be in my all time top 10 science fiction movies? 10. Avatar   I am probably losing some credibility right off the bat by putting this in my top 10, and if I watched it again on DVD, I’m not sure I’d think as highly of it.  But the thrill of seeing the world of Avatar in the theater, in 3D, was something I’d only experienced twice before: When I saw Star Wars the first time (the first movie I ever saw at a theater), and when I saw The Matrix.  In each case they were movies that were so spectacular to look at that you instantly knew that every science fiction movie to come would try to copy them in some way. Everyone pans the the plot, but I actually enjoyed the story too. 9. Minority Report  There are several things I didn’t like about this movie: I’m not a Tom Cruise fan, and I can’t stand the Spielberg moments (like when

Well, finals week is here, so I have finally put together my list of all the movies I’ve seen this year.  This was a great year for me for movies, both in terms of the quality of movies and in the number I was able to watch.  I think I set my own record for most movies watched in one year with 80.  That doesn’t happen without a lot of good movies and a little extra time (thank you paternity leave!).  Once again the list is split into four sections: Movies I didn’t like, Movies that are enjoyable if you’re in the right mood, Movies I liked, and Movies I loved.  If you would prefer to think of them as 1, 2, 3 or 4 stars, be my guest, but remember that just because I didn’t like a movie doesn’t mean it wasn’t a well-made movie, it just means I didn’t enjoy watching it.  Last year’s best picture, The Artist, is a perfect example of that.  I decided to just rank the movies that came out in the last year or so, and the older films that I watched this year have a short summary at the end.

  Really Good Movies 1) Stranger Than Fiction – I’ve only found a couple people that like this as much as I do, but I love Will Ferrell, and thought this was a really creative movie. 2. The Departed 3. Munich 4. Babel – Except for the parts in Japan –I thought that girl was creepy. 5. The Office: Season One.   I didn’t get into this show until the end of the first season, so this was a great way to get caught up.   Best comedy on TV since Seinfeld.   Good movies – the movies in this category aren’t totally in order, but I liked all of them. 6. 40 year old virgin 7. Déjà vu 8. Fight Club (I’d already seen it) 9. Anchorman (ditto) 10. Undeclared – TV series by Jud Apatow, the guy that did 40 year old virgin, Freaks and Geeks, Anchorman, Knocked Up, etc. 11. The Constant Gardener 12. The Chronicles of Narnia 13. Thin Red Line 14. Grizzly Man 15. Glory Road 16. Minnesota Twins World Series Highlights – does it get any better than game 6 of the ’9