LIST! Movies - what we watched in 2015

Last Christmas, you gave me... an Apple TV!

So, in 2015, we had a lot to choose from... 't Was truly a year of movies. Looking back, there was so much to enjoy! Amazing. Thank you, Apple TV : )

A friend collects our tops and flops... I could not resist sharing them here, as well. I am so happy with our selection! Even with our flops. And I wish for you to have at least the same amount of cinematical joy in 2016... or more!

1. Date Night (2010)

Without competition, the best movie I watched in 2015. Steve Carrell en Tina Fey depict parents of young children. Although exhausted, they go through with their planned Date Night. They land from one unexpected situation into the next, screwballing stand up comedy style through an action flick like plot. They hysterically hit bullseye in many all too painfully recognizable parenthood issues.

I am filled with anticipation, waiting for Fey's "Sisters" (2015) to arrive on iTunes.

2. Aloha (2015)

Top Gun meets Spy Kids meets When Harry Met Sally, located on Hawaii, with a TEDtalk cameo: love this film. "Did you see my TEDtalk? Bono made me do it." Bill Murray slurs casually, typical in his role as multibillionair Carson Welch. 

3. Stranger Than Fiction (2006)

Will Ferrell starts this "being John Malkovich-"like plot. Emma Thompson is the estranged topwriter, Queen Latifah her assistant who has to pull her feet back on the ground and Dustin Hoffman costars as an unwilling professor/therapist. What's not to love?

4. Superbad (2007)

Coming of age screwball action movie. Sweet, funny, awkward... everything 21 Jump Street was not (but should have been, really). I never even thought about Johnny Depp, who knew that was possible? YES! Go see.

5. Chef (2014)

Food, real food, good food. People, real people, well, people the way you'd like to see people behave and look... inspiring actors doing inspiring things. A dad talkin' to with his son the way I love to see parents talk with their kids. Twitter. Music - cuban? - that makes you wanna dance. Hang on. I gotta make some yummy snacks, invite some friends over and watch this one again (too).

6. The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard (2009)

De carsales business from the inside starring - oh yeah - Jeremy Piven (who we know as the deliciously bad Ari, the  business agent in Entourage). Piven's character will happily sell his mom if needed. In the film he goes from superbad to... maybe not so bad after all... that's what we want to see! Even car salesmen have hearts! Love. 

7. Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008)

Yes please.. funny actors, eye candy, in uncomfortable partly recognizable situations... making things worse for themselves... screwball romcom bromance, anyone? I'll take one. And oh, what's with Hawaii? It's located on Hawaii. Again.

8. Penguins of Madagascar (2014)

I'd have thought Minions was gonna be the movie our kids would want to watch over and over and over... but no. Penguins is the DVD that lives in our DVD player, getting all the repeat play our kids are allowed. Skipper, Private, Kowalski en Rico and the other characters crack us up every time. Two of my favorite scenes:

Classified: Remain calm, penguins. You're now under the protection of the North Wind.

Skipper: Private, dibble me.

[Private takes a dibble bag out of Rico's body, gives it to Skipper, then he jumps in front of Classified]

Skipper: We're not going anywhere with you.

[munches]

Skipper: We don't even know who the heck you are.

Classified: The North Wind is an elite undercover inter-spe...

[Skipper munches]

Classified: an elite undercover inter-species...

[Skipper munches again]

Classified: task for...

etc.

Or bad guy Dave videophoning in to make his end of the world threats:

Skipper: Debbie!

Kowalski: Dave.

Skipper: Dave!

Corporal: He hacked into our system.

[There's no sound onscreen as Dave speaks]

Eva: Where's the sound?

Kowalski: Dave, your microphone, it's not on.

Classified: Click on the button with the picture of the microphone.

Short Fuse: Every time a villain calls in, this happens.

Dave: Hello?

[the screen goes off]

Dave: Hello?

Kowalski: But, now we can hear you.

Short Fuse: So annoying!

Kowalski: But we cannot see.

Short Fuse: Every time!

Classified: It's like talking to my parents.

9. Heidi (2015)

A lovely, slow family movie about friendship, nature, fantasy and what a child needs to grow up healthily. Pictureperfect mountaineous Suisse acts as a backdrop. A wonderful remake of the original story that  the cheap Japanese big eyed animation had spoilt for me decades ago (the eighties, was it?).

Also good:

Hope Springs (2012)

The Sessions (2012)

No Strings Attached (2010)

Unfinished Business (2015)

I'd like to watch in 2016:

* Get Hard (2015)

* Sisters (2015)

* Cloud Atlas (2012) big budget independent 6-in-1 film, by the team who did the Matrix, starring Tom Hanks, Hally Berry and other great names.

PS here's our friend's list (he's VW, the third one):
They'll put up the overall list by February, I'm sure.
Why they all thought Inside Out was so great, beats me, however... it was so hasty, wild and ill-drawn. But then again, they probably did not have the set of child reviewers ages 4 - 8 with them that we did ; ).