Tuesday Talk
 

January 24, 2012

Alissa Jared

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I'm kind of a movie fanatic. For a lot of my life, weekends at my house have meant movie nights with my family. After dinner and homework, we all curl up on the couch together and pick a movie. It's Netflix freebies all the way now, but we used to buy a lot of our movies, so we have a pretty big shelf collection too. We own almost every Disney movie worth talking about on VHS, all the Star Wars, all the Harry Potters, and all other manner of DVDs and tapes, including the complete set of the old Thunderbirds episodes and a large supply of Monty Pythons. It's all crammed with hardly an inch to spare into the massive cabinet behind the TV. Thanks to all the options, it takes longer for us to choose a movie than it does to actually watch it. It's usually a back-and-forth aimed at the timeless question of whether we're really going to watch that 10-year-old movie that mom ordered on Netflix three months ago, or a tried-and-true like Arrested Development or The Princess Bride. We watch the movie mom got about half of the time, which is probably the only reason I've seen any good films in the first place.

Anyway, it's nice, after the separateness of our days to all experience the same story at the same time. We watch comedies, dramas, documentaries, tragedies, and social commentaries...pretty much anything but horror movies, which my brother and I refuse to stomach. We travel through old movies and new to create a picture of society and pop culture that spans decades. It's been quite an education. But movies have also become part of my family's culture, part of the way we interact, and talk to each other. From our incessant recitation of quotes from Waiting For Guffman, to our perpetual references to the Terminator Movies, to our eternal love for the Brandy version of Cinderella, movies are at the center of all our best jokes, and many of our best car conversations. They are one invariable thing we will always have in common. And that's what I love about movies; they are an instant connection to a time and a place with the person who watches them with you.

Like that time when I drove to Oregon with my mom and we watched Conan the Barbarian from 1982 at 1:00 in the morning. We were staying in this really dreadful hotel in some half-empty town called Eureka, and somehow had nothing better to do but turn on the TV. We came in a little late, so we didn't get Conan's back-story, but we watched for long enough to know that the script rivaled those of George Lucas, the costume designer was disturbingly fond of loin-cloths, and if Arnold Schwarzenegger, in all his body-building glory, had not been in the lead, the movie never would have made it past the drawing board. I don't think I've ever seen a movie quite as bad as that one, but it has memorialized my trip to Oregon the same way Panic! At the Disco will always take me back to 6th grade. I will never forget the enduring last words of Conan's dying love, delivered at the climax of the movie, "Let me breathe my last breath into your mouth."

It doesn't get much worse than that.

But there have also been good movies that capture the epochs of my life like fly wings in amber. It's a Wonderful Life, Love Actually, A Christmas Story, and somehow the action movie Die Hard, are Christmas with my family. The Great Race and Mulan are my childhood. Titanic and Rocket Science are my friend Karina. Dead Again and Pride and Prejudice are my mother, Talladega Knights and Bullitt are my father, Wristcutters: A Love Story and Bran Nue Dae is my brother.

I've stopped watching so many movies since I came to Cate, there are admittedly other things I would rather do with my the majority of my time, but I still feel enough of a film snob to impose some suggestions on all of you. My first is the dramatic adventure The Year of Living Dangerously starring Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver. It's romance, adventure, and history, quite a serious movie actually, with a midget in the lead role. Then there's Dr. Zhivago, which is excellent. As tempted as you might be, do not watch the Keira Knightly version. Make sure you see the one with Julie Christi from 1965, which is breathtaking and tragic and epic. If you haven't already, watch My Cousin Vinny, a hilarious story about a clueless New York lawyer and his ridiculously funny wife who argue a murder case in the middle of Alabama. Finally, make sure to watch Stand By Me and the Diving Bell and the Butterfly at some point in your life. These are my two all-time favorite movies and they are fantastic. Stand By Me is an adventure story about a group of four boys who embark to find the dead body of a missing kid from their town. Expertly done, it is really about the moment that children grow up. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is the remarkable true story of the former Elle Magazine editor whose whole body becomes paralyzed after a stroke, except for his left eye. When he manages to communicate to his doctors that he wants to write a memoir, he dictates it, letter by letter, by blinking his eye.

So I hope you take my suggestions, and watch some of these movies in the near future, I guarantee you will like at least one of them.