For those who do not know, the 2012 King of the Hill Movie Challenge is my system for determining the best movie of year that I saw. One movie from each month will be selected and, at the end of the year, I will do a tournament style showdown where they will take each other on until the final movie has been selected. Bracket placement will be determined by the number of movies the monthly movie faced and won.
April was not a busy movie month. I only watched two films during the month Titanic and The Little Princess. If there was another movie I watched, it was not significant enough to implant itself in my mind. So today, I have two movies to pit against each other. Titanic, the extremely popular, massively grossing film by James Cameron. And The Little Princess (1995 version), an underdog remake of a Shirley Temple film. For me, the decision was easy, but I don't expect this decision to be quickly accepted by my readers.
Titanic is two movies rolled into one. It is the disaster movie of the famous voyage of the RMS Titanic. It is also a "romance" movie. The romance story follows two characters Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Rose (Kate Winslet). They are two people from different worlds on a voyage to America. The two meet under the most unusual of circumstances and quickly fall in love with each other. The disaster story follows the RMS Titanic (CGI) as it crashes into an ice berg (CGI) and begins to sink into the murky depths (either CGI or a giant kiddie pool).
It is the story of the sinking of the Titanic that made this movie great. The romance had decent moments, but was more of a detraction than anything else. For one thing, Titanic has some of the worst dialogue I have ever seen in a movie. The most irritating is how often Jack and Kate use the other's name. This is not natural dialogue and if you don't believe me, record yourself for a day and see how often you say someone else's name when talking to them.
The Little Princess is a movie directed by Alfonso Cuarón that follows Sara (Liesel Matthews) as she attends an American boarding school while her father, a British factory owner is fighting in World War I. Her life is comfortable and filled with all of the amenities until her father is reported as having been killed and that the British government has seized his assets. Suddenly, Sara is without a penny to her name and thrust into working as a servant girl along side Becky (Vanessa Lee Chester).
The Little Princess is clearly aimed for young girls, but the story is a whimsical tale that can entertain a wider audience. It has moments that are over the top, such as a scene when the neighbor's aid, Ram (Errol Sitahal), fills the attic with exotic foods and fabric for Becky and Sara. Despite these over the top moments, the movie gives a very realistic look into boarding schools during the early 1900's. The dialogue makes Titanic look like a Saturday morning cartoon, and it was a better, overall period piece.
April King of the Hill Movie Winner: The Little Princess
And if you case you were wondering, the March King of the Hill Movie Winner is The Hunger Games
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