Let's Go to the Movies

The first movies I ever watched were musicals with my grandmother. We would lay on the couch in the living room, I snuggled up next to her while she traced idle shapes on my back. I would often drift to sleep while we watched, but we watched the same sets of movies so often that I still came away knowing them all by heart. I saw all but one Rogers & Hammerstein film. Oklahoma!, Carousel, State Fair, South Pacific, The King & I, Cinderella, and The Sound of Music. Then came the Debbie Reynolds movies, then Julie Andrews. If we weren’t watching musicals, we often watched old black and white films. Katharine Hepburn films remain in my list of favorites. Bringing Up Baby is BY FAR the best, in my opinion, with Desk Set a very close second.

With my grandfather, I watched old, old Westerns. The smell of beer and popcorn makes me miss sitting with him at the small dining table that was next to the large picture window of the kitchen. I don’t much remember those movies. I spent more time watching him draw while they played than I did paying attention to the television. He would sketch in his little art book while the movies played, and I would sit next to him and watch him, and he would teach me between handfuls of popcorn. Those times were so incredibly precious to me.

My first movie obsession was The Wizard of Oz. I watched that movie so many times, I think we had to buy multiple VHS copies just to replace the ones I wore out. I memorized every second of that film. There was a time when I could quote it from start to finish. There’s a reason Somewhere Over the Rainbow was my first piano recital piece. I remember sitting right up in front of the television we had in the house I spent a chunk of my childhood in. As soon as the credits started to roll, I’d stop, rewind, then start it all over again. I watched E.T. and The Neverending Story with about half the fervor I spent on The Wizard of Oz. That was kindergarten and about half of first grade. Everyday after school, I’d come home and plop myself down in front of the television to watch one of those three films. After that came Annie. I watched that movie so much that my mom started calling me Little Orphan Annie. Apparently, I had a predisposition to overidentify with little red-headed orphan girls. Surprisingly, I was not a natural red head.

The first movie I remember watching in the theaters was Oliver and Company. I don’t remember being particularly impressed. When The Little Mermaid came out the next year, I saw that too. Guess what? Little red head who didn’t fit in with her family? Wanted to escape? Yeah. I loved it. I watched it a lot. Not as much as Annie or The Wizard of Oz, but it still received a substantial amount of screen time. I didn’t get the opportunity to see movies in the theater very often when I was growing up. With my Book-It rewards, I would get my little pizza from Little Ceasar’s or Pizza Hut and used my meager allowance to rent a movie from the local video shop once a month. I usually tended toward musicals when given my choice, though I did watch “traditional” kids’ movies too. I was already weird enough; I didn’t need to pile on by not being caught up on the movies the other kids in my class would go see. Even if I was often a year behind (because I usually had to wait for video) most of the time, I made the effort to see the things they talked about.

By the time I got to middle school, my interest in movies finally started to stray from musicals. I remember watching Forrest Gump in the movie theater and hating every single second. I was too young to be watching that movie. I didn’t follow most of it. Partly because I was distracted by the boy next to me with sweaty palms who kept trying to hold my hand. It was my first “real date” with a boy and it was awful. From then on, I veered away from dramas. I kept to comedies and action. I watched Adam Sandler movies, Jim Carrey, and Mortal Kombat. I was really, really into Mortal Kombat. (Read: I had a major crush on Bridgette Wilson since Billy Madison and Mortal Kombat just gave me an excuse to watch her again. Gosh, I’d nearly forgotten about that.) After that, I was introduced to Star Wars. I didn’t watch much else other than the original trilogy for years after. I mean, YEARS. Later in high school, my dad introduced me to the Alien movies and the Terminator movies. Ripley and Sarah Connor left major impressions on my developing self. Then I saw The Matrix. I wanted so badly to be like Trinity.

My senior year of high school, I worked at a Hollywood Video. I got free rentals, so I took full advantage. I watched every single Judy Garland movie I could get my hands on. I watched new releases as well, I’m not trying to make myself sound anymore hipster than I already am by nature. I just struggled a bit with newer movies geared toward my age group. Movie like She’s All That and The Princess Diaries were hard for me. I loved the latter, but it sucked seeing people who looked enough like you that people drew comparisons to you and the actors when they were in their “ugly” phase.

I watched She’s All That a grand total of once because a co-worker at the time (a slimy twenty-something who I think thought he was flirting) told me I looked like Rachael before her makeover, went so far as to ask me to take off my glasses, and then grimaced when I did so. I started to develop weird love/hate relationships with actresses that looked vaguely enough like me to call up weird comparisons. (I never thought for a moment I looked like any of these women, but people made connections anyway.) So I had a difficult time with Rachael Leigh Cook, Anne Hathaway (who I thought looked a lot like another friend of mine), Liv Tyler, and Anna Paquin. Literally the only thing they all had in common was dark hair. People are weird.

During college, I started watching a lot more movies. My friends and I would sit around together playing a game we called The Movie Game. One person would name an actor/actress, then the next in line would name a film they were in, then the next person named another person in that film, then the next had to pick another film. Around we went in a game of HORSE (but if you spelled MOVIE you were out). It usually came down to myself and my best friend. He and I would wind up in the world of obscure character actors until one of us finally ran out of ammunition. I often came up on the losing end of that, but I did win my fair share of bouts when I could steer us in the direction of Jennifer Connelly, Famke Janssen, or Rachel Weisz (they were kind of my specialties, again, I had crushes that I didn’t realize were crushes).

It was the start of my love of soloing at the movie theater. Part was borne of the guys I was friends with, or thought I was, who tried to use our large group trips to the movies to try and trick others into thinking that I was dating one of them. I can’t tell you how many times I argued with my guy friends that, in fact, no I did not owe you anything as we are NOT dating. I decided that in order to avoid that all together, I would just go see things on my own. It served me well for many years and even became something that I enjoyed. I made a day of it. I would usually spend an hour or so at the bookstore before heading over and people watching before the movie started.

The weird “ugly” brunette makeover movie trend thankfully died a fairly quick death. And then the trend of good fantasy movies started. I was more than ready for that particular trend. It gave me a physical representation of my Eowyn in Lord of the Rings. She didn’t make the sheroes list solely because I didn’t read the Lord of the Rings books until college. On the broad list of my favorite fictional characters, however, she is top five. It gave me the Harry Potter movies. Yes, I was one of those rare folks who never touched a book and started instead with the films. In my case, it’s good that I started with the movies because I have struggled mightily to read those early books. The only books I read prior to the film release were The Half-Blood Prince and Deathly Hallows.

Around that time, I was also given the Mummy movies. Though technically probably a horror series, the first two films in that series remain two of my favorites. The 2000s were an excellent decade of fantasy movies. The Underworld series, 300, Pan’s Labyrinth, The Chronicles of Narnia films, the Gaiman films (MirrorMask, Stardust, and Coraline), and the start of all the comic book movies (some decidedly better than others) all kept me incredibly entertained. I spent a lot of time in the movie theater.

The 2010s saw a definite decrease in movie watching. I lived on my own for the first time and worked a job that meant I could barely make ends meet so I had to make very conscious decisions about the films I saw in theaters at the very start of the decade. By 2012, I was moved to California from Kentucky and living with my soon-to-be wife. My movie watching trend of seeing very few things remained mostly unchanged. I did, however, start seeing the Marvel films mostly in theaters. This decade has been an interesting one for my desire to see films. The films I’ve seen, I’ve loved. My wife and I saw every Pitch Perfect movie in the theaters within the first month of release and honestly, that is RARE for us.

In 2017, I was given a live action Wonder Woman film. I was so skeptical. When I heard the casting choices, part of me was so mad. I groused for months about it. The hero above all my heroes was going to finally be a feature film like her male counterparts and I prayed to every deity I could think of that the film wouldn’t suck. Just don’t let it suck, I thought. Don’t be in the bottom tier of comic book films. Please, sweet, merciful Jesus, don’t let this movie suck. I didn’t have a lot of hope that it would be good, but I just needed it not to suck. I was a mess about this movie. When they released the trailer, I was mad. Wonder Woman doesn’t kill. That’s the whole crux of one of her biggest storylines in comics that she felt she had to kill a human, Max Lord, in order to protect Earth. And here she was in the trailer, killing humans all willynilly. Nothing was easing my fears about this movie. Gal was still too skinny and UUUUUUUUGH!

I bought my ticket for either the day it released or the day after. I went with a friend of mine with whom I’ve seen several comic book movies. I was decked in Wonder Woman gear (let’s be honest, I have enough shirts to wear a new one every day of the week) and terrified. I wrung my hands anxiously as I sat in the theater and the lights went down. By the time the previews for other films finished rolling I thought I was going to puke. Here she comes. This is it. Oh shit, please don’t suck. Just don’t suck.

Every. Single. Second of that movie was everything I dreamed of for a Wonder Woman film. It was perfect. I sobbed through half of it. Etta Candy was perfect, Diana was perfect, Steve Trevor was perfect, Queen Hippolyta was perfect. All the characters I loved from the comics were perfect. And then there was Robin Wright as Antiope. Princess Buttercup was a goddamn badass general. I could barely contain myself. Sameer, Charlie, and Chief Napi were perfect. The scene where Diana makes her way across No Man’s Land with her shield and the crescendos and decrescendos in the music and her heels digging into the mud gave me goosebumps over my entire body. I had to keep myself from shrieking. The second the movie ended I wanted to watch it again. I convinced my wife to go with me the next week to see it again. I wondered if this was how guys felt after every superhero movie they saw: like they could do anything and thoroughly mess up anyone who so much as looked at them cross-eyed. I felt powerful in a way that I hadn’t since I was three years old with my Dartballs of Truth, slinging them at targets in my grandparents’ front yard. I wept quietly the second time I watched it as well. I’ve watched it at home a couple times since and I still cry when I watch it.

The preview for the new Wonder Woman 1984 left me shushing my wife while I watched it. I felt that familiar tightness in my throat watching Diana backhand a fucking bullet, and then swing the lasso around GODDAMN LIGHTNING BOLTS. I have feelings. Patty Jenkins earned every ounce of my trust after the first movie and my body is not ready for the sequel.

So, kids, give me your top ten list of favorite movies. They can be any list you want: all-time, fantasy, sci-fi, comic book, comedy, drama, period pieces, horror, thriller. The choice is yours. What movies are you looking forward to? Who are your favorite actors/actresses? Tell me all the things.