This semester, I’ve had a little more time on my hands than I have in the past since I’m a senior and graduation is right around the corner. Let me be the first to say, it’s actually really great to finally be bored. I don’t have a million assignments and projects and exams to worry about at all times, so I have the ability to do other things, like write an article every other week about cars. Ask Claire Hannan, pretty much every day I’ll bother her until she hangs out with me.
With all this newfound time, I’ve been able to watch some more movies and TV. I watched a few classics like Pulp Fiction and Goodfellas. I started rewatching my favorite show, Psych and continued watching Clarkson’s Farm, which I started earlier this year. I strongly recommend all of these if you’ve got free time. And, most importantly, I’ve been watching some more car movies. Now that Senior Design is done and the Expo is wrapped up, I might as well rank the movies I watched while putting off whatever little work I did have to do!
I’m gonna focus on the car movies because, let’s be so real right now, that’s what this column is about. Shoutout to Isy for finally letting me write this after I bugged her about it for weeks. Let’s do a top five.
Coming in fifth is one of the movies I think EVERYONE needs to watch in middle school. Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby is my pick for fifth on the list. It’s super funny, an easy watch, and has a ton of one-liners that I still quote, and it’s a safe pick for any audience.
Next is the first Cars movie from Pixar. It was one of the DVDs we had in my mom’s minivan growing up, so my siblings and I have watched Cars probably a thousand times by now, and it still never gets old. Tons of nostalgia and it’s actually a really heartwarming movie in its own little way.
Third place goes to Baby Driver with Ansel Elgort. It’s a different take on a typical heist movie, focusing more on the getaway driver than I’ve personally ever seen before. There are a ton of INCREDIBLE driving sequences that blow my mind shot after shot. The pure driving talent of the stunt driver pushed this movie up a place or two, plus the storyline itself is really great, too.
Second place is the most recent movie on this list, Gran Turismo. Following the story of Jann Mardenborough as he rises from a stellar sim racer to a professional (real-life) driver sponsored by Nissan, Gran Turismo has an amazing plot that had me locked in for the entire film. The fact that Mardenborough was the stunt driver for his own biopic is just the cherry on top that almost made this my first pick.
However, I’ve gotta give first place to one of the first movies to bring car culture to my screen. It’s part of an iconic series, but this is far and away my favorite of the bunch. 2 Fast 2 Furious tops my list. It’s got iconic lines (Paul Walker saying, “I said forget about it, cuh” cracks me up every single time), great driving scenes, and a fun plot that really shows off 90s car culture with just enough exaggeration to make a great film. Overall, I love this movie, and I could watch it every day. It’s not as ridiculous as the newer Fast and Furious movies, so I can absolutely recommend it without any reservations for your next movie night.
Anyway, this was my last article in this column, so thank you for reading, and I hope you learned something! I really enjoyed writing for the Stute as a creative outlet outside of my engineering curriculum, so if you’re on the fence, then go for it! Also, if you have a crappy car you are trying to get rid of, please let me know, and I will genuinely consider buying it from you. Thank you!
Photo courtesy of TriStar Pictures
