With this site, I cover a lot of different topics. One I wanted to cover here today was movies. It might shock you to hear that my claim is that I’ve seen over 3,000 movies. When you really look at the numbers, it might be on the low end.

I’m an emotional person, but I try not to show it a lot. I internalize everything. Most of my life, I just felt no one actually cared to hear about “how I feel” about anything. No one cares. Well, your parents do. Probably. But my whole life I threw myself into things – I then become obsessed with them. I need to know everything about it, how it works, and master it. In my high school years – it was baseball, tennis, chess, and trumpet. Had a bad day? Hit some tennis serves. Girl shoot you down? Play a blues scale on the trumpet. Teacher give you shit? Go for a run after school.

When college happened – most of those outlets were taken from me. This led to an obscene amount of partying in college. I found that all of the shit in my head tended to be silenced by profound amounts of alcohol. Towards the end of college, I shredded my ankle and was on crutches for 5 months. I had taken 42 credits my senior year as well so the partying had to slow down to graduate. With no outlet, I stumbled upon movies. At this time in late 1997/early 1998, the American Film Institute (AFI) put out their top 100 list and I was curious. I mean I liked movies – but I had never really dug into a list before.

Armed with a list from Blockbuster, I then decided to watch the top 100. I’d rent the max amount of movies at Blockbuster for maybe 3-5 years, all the time. Then Netflix came along in perhaps 2002ish and I’d get the max amount of movies sent to me by them. All in all, it was easy to come up with the number of 3,000 movies.

I found that movies also silenced my thoughts. For 2 hours, I get to jump head first into someone’s story. Where reading books failed me as I could not stop my wandering thoughts, watching movies gripped me and pulled me in. It was probably early 2000s when I also started writing to get these crazy thoughts out of my head on to paper. So I probably am now at something like 2000-3000 essays in my life as well.

The lists change sporadically, but this is also a rather subjective list based on popularity. Remember Siskel and Ebert? These guys would give “two thumbs up” to critically acclaimed movies that might have been boring AF. Then, highly enjoyable movies get killed by the critics.

What makes movies interesting for me is to match them with moods. There are movies that are very moving and tough to watch – like perhaps Schindler’s list, The Pianist, or Life is Beautiful. It gives you depth to your soul to understand the horrors and plight of others. You feel empathy. You might be feeling weird about the economy and want to watch some sort of dystopian future where they show you how society functions after things break down. You might then have just had a great day and want a guy’s movie and fire on Terminator 2 and get your fix of science fiction. Perhaps you are wanting a form of trilogy – which dates back to Greek theater – and fire on Godfather 1-3 or Star Wars 4-6. I know during the most difficult break up of my life I fired on Godfather 1-3 to absorb 10-12 hours and hit the snooze button on having hurt someone’s feelings and seeing her sob. If I was to fully absorb that…I don’t know how I could deal. I have to remove myself and immerse myself in something to stop the searing pain, and while this may come off cold to someone, it’s the only way I can deal. I share this with you, because it’s very important to have healthy outlets and not just turn to booze or something when you are horribly affected. Movies are an important outlet for me, for both the good and the bad.

This then had led me to follow directors. Certain directors given you a flavor of film making. For me early on, I just hit the list of movies and let things sort themselves out. Some that are ranked so high, I don’t get. To each their own. But when you find a director that challenges you, you want to see what else he did. Examples here were James Cameron, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorcese, Stanley Kubrick, and Tarantino, and David Lynch. Later on – it was the spaghetti westerns and Sergio Leone. Then I latched on to actors and watched everything they did – which then eventually led me to watching genre films. More recently, I consider complete TV series and miniseries as part of this. For example – Battle Star Galactica to me is like a really long ass movie. This is not like the TV show “Hunter” which just was episodic. Where Star Trek The Next Generation was mostly episodic – in my mind you have Star Trek Deep Space Nine as more like a long movie. Band of Brothers is a 10 episode miniseries – but to me, it’s also just a long movie. However, the miniseries allows you to more focus on particular stories within the bigger story which gives it dimension.

To this day, sci fi and dystopian futures are probably my favorite with war movies also in there. I struggle to find new sci fi worth anything to watch, and the dystopian future stuff seems to appeal to a prepper side of me that wants to prepare for the worst. I want to see how society would act. How they cook. What the rules are. What strategies and tactics seem to work under different circumstances. For example, I know by today’s standards “Red Dawn” might be laughable, about how a pack of kids helped stop an invasion of the US, but as a 9 year old in the middle of the cold war, to me this movie appealed greatly to me. It was my first understanding of guerilla warfare. Later, in ninth grade, I was able to take an elective class – which I took military history. The first lesson, we are taken outside to overlook the valleys (I went to Twin Vally High School in Elverson, PA) and with this – you learned about the high ground in battle with the battle of Palo Alto or Bunker Hill. However, I have to be in a particular mood for war movies. I wanted to be in the military since I’ve been in diapers. I get to work for it the past 15 years or so as a contractor, but the movies told me the stories. The rich history. The struggle. I then started to appreciate the struggles my grandfather had in the Navy in the Pacific during the island hopping when I saw “The Pacific”. Many might think being a fan of war movies makes you a war nut – no – for me it’s a reminder of why we should not have war, but we also want to know the details. What led to it. Who did what. How did they win? What casualties were there? What types of weapons were introduced, and how did technology play a role in it? What was the outcome for the belligerents? What particular strategies or tactics were used? War movies for me were trying to unpack history, authenticity, a compelling story, and have reverence for the bravery of men who fought for each other.

With this, I am writing this because I wanted to start introducing my 14 year old to movies on a more cerebral level. While he’s in track, he doesn’t play music like I did, go run – although his chess is coming along! With high school coming, and the land mines that come, I feel arming kids with movies to cope, celebrate, and understand others might be something pretty important. The challenge here is to introduce genres, directors, actors – but make things age appropriate and not bore the shit out of him. For me, one of my top movies of all times is The Outlaw Josie Wales – talks about post Civil War….has a spaghetti western feel – but is like 3+ hours long. I first saw this at like 4am on a Saturday after a night of drinking at like 26 and passed out during the first hour. I then had to hunt it down and watch it in its entirety. The Godfather 3+ hour movies might also be a bit much. Likewise, you have to understand that certain movies are chopped up on the cutting floor and you need to watch the right version of the movie. A movie like Once Upon A Time in America was released in the theaters at 2 hours and was critically panned. The spaghetti Western director made this film that was chopped all to hell to cut it to 2 hours and left audiences confused. The FULL version was damn near 4 hours and one of the best movies of all times now. I had seen the full version in like 2005 and at this point it was low on IMDB. I wrote a massive review of the masterpiece that it was, and my guess is others started to check out the long version and its now 20 or so years later one of the highest rated movies on IMDB.

My 14 year old has seen mostly Marvel movies – and I had recently taken him to see John Wick 4, after having watched the first 3 the last few months.

What to have him watch?

I think I’m going to start with “The Matrix”. He is familiar with Reeves from John wick, and this is a sci fi movie. I have seen the movie like 50 times, I can handle it again. I think I want him to watch the first 10 minutes of Saving Private Ryan, to get a feel for war authenticity, some shock value, and get him more interested in how I perceive war movies. I think I then want to look at a Spielberg movie with Indiana Jones to get him more on the adventure side of things. For the most part – stick somewhere with action, compelling stories, and the higher quality movies.

Goodfellas might be a great intro to crime movies. Casino was more graphic than I am comfortable with, although it’s a good story. Fight Club is a nice noodle bender. But I have to see where his personality goes. Maybe he sees Fight Club and likes to watch Pitt movies – maybe he likes “A River Runs Through it”? Maybe this then leads to Pitt in Inglorious Basterds and maybe Once Upon a Time in Hollywood? Maybe this leads to Bruce Lee movies like I used to watch with my dad? Seeing the Bruce Lee Chuck Norris fight as a kid was like watching a Super Bowl for me.

But does following actors then lead to Schwarzenegger and Terminator? T2? What about Tom Cruise sci fi movies that I love? Edge of Tomorrow was terrific – but what about the thought police of Minority Report? Or Vanilla Sky?

The list is endless. Some of my top movies….in no particular order

  • Heat
  • The Day After Tomorrow (important as a kid)
  • Schindler’s List
  • Godfather
  • The Good the bad and the ugly
  • Pulp Fiction
  • Inglorious Basterds
  • Snatch
  • Ocean’s Eleven (fun and not highly critically acclaimed)
  • A River Runs Through it
  • Terminator 2 (need to watch 1 first though)
  • Star Wars original trilogy
  • Band of Brothers
  • 1883
  • Battlestar Galactica
  • Goodfellas
  • Clockwork Orange
  • Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
  • Once Upon a Time in America
  • Tombstone
  • Shawshank Redemption
  • Fight Club
  • The matrix
  • Indiana Jones
  • Gladiator
  • American History X
  • Memento
  • The Bourne Identity
  • Die Hard
  • Top Gun Maverick
  • The Sixth Sense
  • Kill Bill
  • V for Vendetta
  • Gone with the Wind
  • 1984
  • Catch me if you Can
  • Rocky
  • The Grapes of Wrath
  • Dances With Wolves