5 movies I have loved since my childhood:
- the Nightmare Before Christmas: It’s no secret that this movie, what I’d readily call Tim Burton’s greatest work to date, has a very special place in defining a lot of my younger days. I think I’ve grown to love the eclectic and less conventionally attractive things that I love mostly since I was very young, I was taught to appreciate such things (found all throughout this particular movie). I never had a chance to watch this movie again for many years between when I first watched it with my uncle Keith and when I watched it again for the first time about three years ago, but there definitely was no love lost.
- the Alien series: I’ve never been a fan of the brutish Predator movies but the cunning, sneaky, stealthy Alien movies have always ruled the dark and dank kingdom that is my nightmares. I don’t actually dream about these slithering, slimy beasts, but I’ve always reserved the spot of “Top Predator” and “Momma Monster” for the beloved (if not so cuddly) fiends from this series (with what can only be described as a cult-like following).
- the Die Hard series: Okay, so there are some movies that will make you cry and think and feel, and then there are the movies made for sheer fun-factor. I do believe Die Hard (I-III) falls into the latter category. Perhaps my often poor choices of diction (read: colourful outbursts of profanity) presently have grown out of watching these curse-fests as a mere child. That, or maybe it is in my nature to be a bit on the hot-headed side (it runs in the veins of the men in my family, really). Anyway, the mix of explosions, gun-play, rampant profanity, and general hazard-to-the-wind attitude of Bruce Willis’ character (John McClane) have made for fond childhood memories of this series of films. Not much to say really. It’s always fun to blow stuff up, right?
- U571: This is a movie about submarines. I never watched war movies like Saving Private Ryan or any of the other more popular war movies around that time, but I did happen to watch this movie (which is about a U.S. submarine crew who have secretly/accidentally taken hold of a Nazi U-boat and are under the command of a rookie officer). Submarines are badasses and we all know it. Yeah sure, jets fly fast and tanks blow stuff up, but subs are sneaky, like a sniper ninja mosquito. It is for this reason that I love them. My fondness for submarines could also be fueled by my dad’s fascination with them. I don’t normally admit to liking stuff that my dad likes, but this is one of those cases where I think his interest in something has caused me to like it too.
- the Mask: Okay, so this was a relatively stupid movie but it starred Jim Carrey, an actor that I had really liked when I was a kid. He always played very wacky roles (like the Mask, Ace Ventura, etc…) and so I generally liked anything he did. Jim was like a real-life cartoon in the flesh. This kind of thing really defined (or rather, blurred) my lines between “normal” life and “funny” life. I grew up taking from this movie the notion that pretty much anything could potentially be funny, given the proper spin or take on it.