My favorite movie
My favorite movie is The End of Evangelion. Kind of.
I first watched evangelion in April of 2020, and it hit me hard. I thought about it every day for at least a month. And not in the hyperfixation kind of way, but more in the “what am I doing with my life” kind of way that a lot of people go through after watching it. I think the questions evangelion raised really changed me and the way I think about my life. Whenever I'm in a sad phase I still think about Shinji and how much of myself I see in him. The end of the end of evangelion is probably the main influence for my personal philosophy:
“Anywhere can be paradise as long as you have the will to live. After all, you are alive, so you will always have the chance to be happy. As long as the Sun, the Moon, and the Earth exist, everything will be alright.” -Yui Ikari
But when I try to think of what my favorite movie is, it feels incorrect to say evangelion, because it's supposed to be watched after watching the series, and so in a way the reason I like the movie is because I like the series so much. So the next thing I try to think about is a standalone movie.
The first that comes to mind is Everything Everywhere All At Once. In my mind it occupies a similar place to EoE, mainly because it tackles similar themes of depression or existentialism. I first watched it with friends during my last year of high school, and a second time with my mom in the summer before I started uni, and in fact the week I applied. Those are the only times I have watched it. It was obviously an important part of my life and I think I found the message of the movie comforting in a way, which helped me a lot.
But as much as I like it, I also don't like calling it my favorite movie. Because I feel like it doesn't reflect the kind of movie I usually like. A few years ago I would have said my favorite movie was Interstellar, and I still really like it. More recently, I have really enjoyed Oppenheimer and both Dune films. I really like that kind of big, epic story with a Hans Zimmer soundtrack and 3 hour runtime. I cannot explain why, it just makes my brain go happy mode.
Actually stopping to try to decide what my favorite movie is has prompted me to create a letterboxd account, just to try to get a better idea of the kind of movies I like and watch, because the truth is that I don't actually know what my favorite movies are. But for now my favorite movie is The End of Evangelion/Everything Everywhere All At Once/Interstellar.
Update:
A while after finishing this I watched The Little Prince. I knew the book and have liked it for a while, and I knew there was a movie based on it but I never got around to watching it. I now think that everyone who has read the book has to watch the movie. I went in expecting a fun reimagining of the original story, proceeded to cry several times, and came out thinking that this is the definitive version of the story. I don't want to say it's my favorite movie because I think it's too early to tell, but it might be.