Frozen is the finest example of a modern Disney classic that embraces the newness of computer animation to generate something truly spectacular. Animating the snow and ice proved to be a tremendous endeavor, seeing how the production crew programmed a snowflake generator that created over 2,000 unique snowflake shapes. Animating Elsa’s ice powers was also a tremendous showcase of how deep the animators’ attention to detail dove, seeing how in the scene where Elsa created her ice palace, the ice is animated to branch out the same way an actual snowflake does. Furthermore, whenever Elsa loses control over her ice powers, the ice she generates looks harsh with sharp edges, but once she gains control by using them out of love, the ice looks circular with soft edges.
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It's especially worth knowing that the now iconic song “Let it Go” was the reason why the writers rewrote Elsa’s character so that instead of her being the villain like originally planned, she was a co-lead for the audience to root for. That ended up being the right decision because, without the touching sisterly relationship between Anna and Elsa, this instant Disney classic would never have gone on to define an entire generation. It would never have pushed the Disney brand, or other child-focused industries, toward greater diversity with independent, active female protagonists who can teach kids healthy standards on what true love is all about.

PG (D)
Fantasy/Musical
1 hr. 42 min.

Watch it for FUN.
​Watch it to feel HAPPY and SAD.

Groundhog Day is not just the rare type of movie that everybody can love, but it’s also a lovely character study on existentialism. It teaches about self-acceptance, which only comes by helping others rather than by selfish motivation. When this film was first released, it was praised by religious groups, including the Buddhist community, because of the philosophical ideas it addresses. When writing the first few drafts of the script, it originally was going to start in the middle, where Phil is already stuck in the repeating days, with a much more morbid ending that suggests the film overall was originally going to be a very dark comedy.
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But then Harold Ramis was brought in to change the script so it could better appeal to mass audiences, and so it instead started with the audience getting the chance to see Phil’s reaction when the time warp starts. When filming, many of the shooting days were actually days of 80-degree weather, meaning fake snow had to be put in and the cast had to dress for winter weather in the heat. Yet it pays off: the small town of Punxsutawney feels so lived in, with the outdoor settings looking unbearably cold and the indoor settings looking warm and comfy. Anyone watching this beloved motion picture likewise will feel warm and comfy inside as they learn how to become better people from observing the transformation of Phil Connors.

PG (LV)
Comedy
1 hr. 41 min.

Watch it to LEARN.
​Watch it to feel HAPPY, SAD, and AFRAID.

Based on the book, “Alias Madame Doubtfire” by Anne Fine, director Chris Columbus describes Euphegenia Doubtfire, one of the most beloved movie characters of the 1990s, as “the grandmother you’ve always wanted.” Certain actors offered the role of Mrs. Doubtfire included Warren Beatty and Tim Allen, but it ultimately proved itself to be a role only Robin Williams could bring to life. Every single joke he improvises is absolutely hilarious, and that especially goes for the many deleted/alternate scenes that showcase more of his comedic power! To transform him into his iconic role, Robin had to sit through 3-5 hours of makeup prosthetics every day, and the result turned out so convincing that he wasn’t recognized even by his fellow cast members.
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When working on the screenplay, there was a point when the studio wanted the main divorced couple to get back together in the end, but that idea fell through because those against this ending knew it would’ve been really phony. This turned out to be the right decision—the movie ultimately found that healthy balance between expressing sensitivity toward the topic of divorce while also being one of the funniest pieces of family entertainment ever made. No other movie exists like Mrs. Doubtfire: a textbook example of how to do comedy, as well as a new gold standard on realistic makeup effects to transform an actor into a completely different person of a separate gender and age.

PG-13 (DLS)
Comedy
2 hr. 5 min.

Watch it for FUN
​Watch it to feel HAPPY and SAD.

This shook the world with its brutally realistic portrayal of the Holocaust, one that took filmmaking techniques from documentaries, including a handheld camera during more chaotic scenes. The gorgeous monochrome cinematography further contributes to the sensation of watching real archive footage of the horrific events, while the long 3+ hour runtime runs smoothly with the masterful editing. It certainly helps in the film’s authenticity that director Steven Spielberg is of Jewish background, which naturally led to a sharper recreation of the setting. Other Holocaust survivors were also there on set, including one of the producers, who spent three years in several Nazi labor camps as a child.
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The structure of this narrative is quite genius when promoting the true value of life: rather than a traditional story with a beginning, middle, and end, the stories of individual Jews at the concentration camps are used to tell the story of Oskar Schindler, who started off as a con artist intending to make money off of the war, but over time lets his mysterious character come out more clearly. While the cast does put on some pretty awful fake accents, and there are many historical inaccuracies (for instance, the real Oskar Schindler never even created this list of his), Schindler’s List is still a powerful, important story about the failure to act on injustice. Hard to believe that Spielberg made this while also managing post-production remotely for Jurassic Park!

R (DLSNV)
Drama/Historic
3 hr. 15 min.

Watch it to THINK.
Watch it to LEARN.
​Watch it to feel HAPPY, SAD, and AFRAID.

Everyone knows Jurassic Park as the pop culture phenomenon that shook up the entire visual effects industry, yet it’s also a spectacular showcase for Steven Spielberg’s expertise in staging suspense. The first scene establishes the danger of the newly revived dinosaurs, the illusion of danger complete with the extra strange flashlight patterns. Then just a few scenes later, Doctor Alan Grant explains how vicious a velociraptor attack can be, using a claw fossil as a visualization, and the next velociraptor seen from there is funnily enough a baby fresh out of the egg. But then a reminder comes up again about the raptors’ destructive power when they gobble up a poor bull to the point where the carrying harness is shredded to ribbons. It expertly pays off in the climax when the velociraptors go after the kids.
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These techniques work as well to make the t-rex attack scene so iconic: the water ripples, the rain, the minimal lighting around the giant lizard, her toe on the wire to indicate the electric fence is out, the one flashlight, it’s a technical marvel in cinematography and editing. So it’s not just the revolutionary digital effects of the dinosaurs that made this so influential to how movies are made—the imagination behind these artists proved how magical a major motion picture can be, and how grand of a spectacle the theatrical experience still has potential for.

PG-13 (DLV)
Action/Sci-fi
2 hr. 7 min.

Watch it for FUN.
Watch it to THINK.
​Watch it to feel HAPPY and AFRAID.

Based on a poem Tim Burton wrote while he was a Disney animator, The Nightmare Before Christmas was originally going to be adapted into a TV special that pays tribute to holiday classics like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Yet what it became instead was a new approach to the laborious medium of stop-motion animation that no TV special could ever achieve. Taken straight from Tim Burton’s visualizations, this delightful little movie has beautiful set and character designs that found that fine balance between unsettling and charming, with distinct sets of colors and shapes used to differentiate between Halloween Town, Christmas Town, and the human world.
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When animating this feature film, nearly 200 puppets were made for the 230 large sets built across nineteen different soundstages. The Jack Skellington puppets alone had around 400 interchangeable heads built for his different facial expressions, and filming just one minute of screen time took a whole workweek! To make the project all the more ambitious, many digital effects, such as cartoon ghosts, were included, and Danny Elfman had to start working on his now iconic musical score before the script was even complete. Yet it paid off: this crowning achievement produced by Tim Burton is now a cultural staple that came to define the entire identity of the Halloween season, as well as become a cinematic reintroduction to the art of stop-motion.

PG (V)
Fantasy/Musical
1 hr. 16 min.

Watch it for FUN.
​Watch it to feel HAPPY.

This surprise box office hit had a teeny-tiny budget of only $320,000, making it the most profitable independent film release ever at the time. Director John Carpenter skillfully staged the scares by recreating what he loved about scary carnival rides, with some touches of techniques introduced by Alfred Hitchcock for good measure. He particularly understood the key ingredient to making a villain so scary: never getting a good look at the attacker, which explains why Michael Myers continues scaring audiences to this day. Yet there’s another ingredient to his success as a villain: he’s not in faraway castles or mountains like Dracula or Frankenstein, he haunts an average American suburb.
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John Carpenter knew how to utilize these components to churn up some solid screams, and complemented them with an intense musical score he wrote and performed himself. These efforts ended up giving birth to the slasher film, which in full honesty may just be a bad thing because of the painful genre cliches they started. Not to mention the sequels that erupted afterward paved the way for a groan-worthy franchise that, like Michael Myers himself, refuses to die. Even then, Halloween made the necessary push by enlightening the concept of the horror movie monster, which at the time hadn’t been done for a while. Yet more importantly, this defining feature film of the Halloween season opened the door for many independent filmmakers who needed the push to get noticed.

R (DLSNV)
Horror
1 hr. 31 min.

Watch it for FUN.
​Watch it to feel AFRAID.

Inspired by a real condition where people die while having a nightmare, A Nightmare on Elm Street helped define the slasher movie with its innovative use of surreal special effects. The clever spectacles all were done under the constraints of time and budget, yet still made tremendous use of their resources to send shivers down the audience’s spine. Two of the characters’ deaths were filmed inside a revolving set, and it made possible the horrific sight of blood cascading upward from a bed onto the ceiling. There are more visual tricks to explore the possibilities of a killer who can use any means possible to attack his victims in their nightmares by bending reality, be it by turning the stairs into goop or by chopping off his own fingers.
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Yet none of this would have been nearly as impactful without the iconic design of Freddy Krueger, a villain whose appearance was inspired by a scary drunk man Wes Craven ran into as a kid. With his red and green striped sweater that’s meant to hurt the eye, and with his burnt skin made to resemble pepperoni pizza, Freddy Krueger has become one of the greatest horror villains ever. Wes Craven’s career-defining film right here may be just as flawed as any slasher movie, but it sure as heck set the gold standard for what any scary movie must do to make the audience feel a bit queasy!

R (DLSV)
Horror
1 hr. 31 min.

Watch it for FUN.
​Watch it to feel AFRAID.

Of all the slasher films that started their own endless franchises, Scream is perhaps the best of all of them. With its self-aware storytelling that cleverly mixes humor and terror, it leads to no surprise that the movie’s original title was going to be, "Scary Movie.” Its plot revolves around a bunch of teenagers who love scary movies and ultimately are forced to face the very scenarios from the genre they claim to know so much about, and on the way, every cliché of the slasher genre is addressed. In fact, the script is so self-aware that director Wes Craven even includes critical references to himself and the movies he’s directed!
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Yet this film also works as an excellent showcase of generating fear, as established by the famous opening scene where Drew Barrymore’s character is the victim of a tense phone call. The rest of the cast was full of actors who were well-known on television until starring in this movie helped launch their careers on the big screen. But the real star of this genre-defining piece of entertainment is its chilling soundtrack, which kicks up the adrenaline as it turns the suburban setting into a massive house of horror. It’s hard to think of anyone who wouldn’t get the creeps from watching Wes Craven’s masterpiece, a movie that made future slasher films lean more toward the real world instead of the supernatural.

R (DLSV)
Horror/Thriller
1 hr. 51 min.

Watch it for FUN.
Watch it to feel HAPPY.
​Watch it to feel AFRAID.

Night of the Living Dead, with its disturbing atmosphere, made an impression on its original audience for how it proved the potential behind zombies in the movies. To make the film look as chilling as it does, the makeup artists for the ghouls took the time to emphasize the prominent features of each actor’s face. (For instance, an actor with a narrow nose would have ghoul makeup that made his nose look even more narrow.) Other actors portraying the ghouls had black makeup around their eyes and gray powder on their bodies to appear dead, while the blood effects were made from black paint and chocolate syrup.
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The movie is made to feel all the more claustrophobic inside a single house shot in black-and-white film with stark lighting, yet the scope also feels a little bigger with some news reporter scenes included from Washington D.C. For as uncomfortable as all the creative decisions feel, the ending was equally as uncomfortable for audiences at the time, because the co-lead, a Black man, was wrongfully shot and killed by law enforcement. Yet the filmmakers felt this ending was necessary because it reflected the death of Martin Luther King Jr., which happened while production neared its end. Ultimately, while this film may suffer from paper-thin unlikable characters, it’s still just the right kind of entertainment necessary to help anyone appreciate the possibilities behind the horror genre.

NR (LV)
Horror
1 hr. 36 min.

Watch it for FUN.
​Watch it to feel AFRAID.