"How you like them apples?"

   And so begins a new year and a new tally of movies! Here are the first five movies I watched this year:

1. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (01)
2. Finding Nemo (03)
3. Good Will Hunting (97)
4. Into the Woods (14)
5. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (03)

    When I was but an angsty teen, my life was all LOTR all the time, and I am barely exaggerating. I loved The Lord of the Rings with the heat of a nova and regard it now with the fond glow of nostalgia, and so when pals of mine said they were marathoning the three LOTR movies (extended, of course) I was there. However, teens we are not and sleepiness caught up with us so we split up our viewing. I also kept arriving part-way through the movies. So I watched the last couple of hours of FOTR, the first hour-ish of TTT, and the last half of ROTK. I'm counting it as two movies altogether, because it's my party and I can cry if I want to. Speaking of crying, if the moment in ROTK when Eomer finds Eowyn on the battlefield and starts yelling and crying doesn't tug your heart strings then I don't know if there is any hope for your heart of pure stone. Also: I may or may not be able to quote/act along with a great deal of all three movies.

   I don't need to talk about Finding Nemo, do I? We all love Finding Nemo.

   Do you love hilarity? Do you love Meryl Streep? WE ALL DO. Go see Into the Woods, glory in it. It's so great. Fun fact: when I'm at my pals' house (the self-same LOTR marathoning pals from above) and I'm holding their cat and he's trying to get away from me, I sing songs from Into the Woods to him to make him stay. Does it work? SOMETIMES. Hashtag cat whisperer.

   Let's talk about how great baby Matt Damon is in Good Will Hunting. So good, right? I watched Rounders near the end of last year and had a major need to see more baby Matt Damon, so Good Will Hunting was the natural choice, especially since I somehow hadn't seen it before. It is as excellent as I expected it to be, and made me want to maybe do some math or something.

   It is bittersweet to watch movies with Robin Williams in them.