Movies

So I can already tell that I'm going to be bad at doing this, particularly if i start having actual things to do with my life, but here's number 3.

I love movies, probably more than most people though I understand that, like music, pretty much everyone loves movies. I've seen 9 of the 10 Oscar nominated films this year, a couple of them for the first time at an Oscar showcase over two weekends, 18 of the top 20 current Netflix top 100, and I'm currently watching When Harry Met Sally (easily the best romantic comedy of all time). I'm more than a little obsessive with them, but really there isn't a whole lot I'd rather do than sit around and watch movies all day, with bonus points for being curled up with someone else while watching them.

The best part of movies is there ability to absolutely gut-wrenchingly change your state of mind. I'm talking walking out of Transformers that first time and just wanting to punch the sky because man that was awesome, I'm talking seeing Jurassic Park as a 7 year old kid scared shitless for the next 6 months that raptors are going to jump through my window and eat me (extremely unlikely...), I'm talking watching 500 Days of Summer and wanting more than anything else to be in love. Movies are awe-inspiring, movies are horrifying, movies are love. What more could you ask for for $12 bucks and 2 hours of your life?

While I've seen a lot, I readily admit to liking some absolutely terrible movies because really it doesn't take a whole lot for me to get caught up in a movie. For example, 28 Days Later... completely nonsensical horror story disappointingly categorized as a zombie movie when it really isn't (similar to I am Legend which also completely missed the point of the original story)... but with music so unbelievably perfect that I could watch the movie with no visuals and enjoy it, even with the mostly terrible dialogue. I have similar love of otherwise debatably not great directors: Kevin Smith (nerd satire and dialogue), Wes Anderson (quirk and music), and Monty Python troupe (ridiculous hilarity).


One of those few things that can ruin movies I'm going to affectionately deem "Movie Nazis", those people so absolutely sure of their own opinions that any other opinions are wrong and they'll let you know about it. It's hard to enjoy a movie with the constant reminder that this story is trite and overdone (I don't care about the story Avatar was shit-my-pants amazing), that actor was terrible (fine Keaunu Reeves can't act but he didn't need to for the Matrix), or that puppets are terrible (Team America: World Police was hilarious and if you came expecting anything other than the ridiculous puppets you saw then you're clearly not going to the right movie). So be accepting, learn to love them all from the outrageously pretentious drama (Synecdoche New York) to that mindless Action movie that knows exactly what it is (Shoot Em Up). Variety is the spice of life!

So times to get Scrubs style self-reflective. All things considered, I'd love to be a movie critic, but I lack the talent to do so and have an annoying tendency to ramble on about completely unrelated things. That's one of the reasons I'm writing this blog, to help myself focus myself while writing about things that matter to me. Practice makes perfect and I hope that in rereading these some day they start to make sense.