25 Movies: Part 2

(this post was written by Kyle on March 12, 2009, and it concerns )

Inspired by a Facebook meme, this is the second installment of the 25 movies that shaped my world.

Here’s the list as it stood at the end of part 1:

  1. Adaptation
  2. Cool Hand Luke
  3. Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring
  4. Mulholland Drive
  5. The Life & Death of Peter Sellers

Now, to continue:

6. Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid
I must have been somewhere between the ages of eight and ten years old. I was over Adam’s house, the two of us playing down in his TV room. Then his mother came down the stairs, sat us on the brown couch, put Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid in the VCR, and told us to just sit and watch it. It was the first time an adult forced me to watch a movie for the sole purpose of exposing me to a fine film. And the best part? Adam and I both loved it! It was just as good as his mother said it would be. Alice Champion: the woman who taught me that movies could be more than just distractions. They could be art.

7. Teen Wolf
We’re staying in Adam’s TV room for this one too. Basically, whenever I slept over there, we were allowed to sleep down in the TV room and fall asleep with the TV on. Through great trial and error, we came to discover that Teen Wolf is the best movie to fall asleep to (not nap to, but sleep to; see below). Now, you know how they say if you fall asleep listening to French lessons, you’ll wake up knowing how to pick up a whore in Paris? Well, imagine what happens when, dozens of times a year, you fall asleep to Teen Wolf. I don’t know exactly what effect it had on me, but science says it it must have shaped my world somehow. This list wouldn’t be complete without it.

8. Big Trouble In Little China
Which brings us to the best movie to nap to. Here’s a movie where, if you fall asleep, great, you don’t miss much; but if you stay awake, even better, because you get to see a wacked-out- Kurt-Russell-half-sci-fi-half-karate movie. There’s simply nothing better than a rainy Sunday morning when Big Trouble in Little China comes on the tube (and I don’t care what Malcolm says, if only because of Big Trouble in Little China, Kurt Russell is a movie star)

Oh…and of all the movie quotes I’ve spouted in my lifetime, I suspect that the one I’ve used most comes from Big Trouble in Little China. Care to guess?

“It’s all in the reflexes.”

9. Licensed to Thrill
First of all, props to my brother Brendan for reminding me of this. Second, I can’t believe I needed to be reminded of this. There are only so many “episodes” in my life — i.e, “things I was up to for an extended period of time” — and License to Thrill and all the rest of the Greg Stump films were directly responsible for one of them: becoming a ski bum in Utah (well, I should probably give credit to my parents too, who took the family skiing for all those years…and hey, why not, credit to Alice Champion for making her son just good enough to be my constant skiing partner). Anyway, License to Thrill. After years of Warren Miller films, Greg Stump came on the scene and was like, “All right you fuckers, ski movies are supposed to be about skiing, not about idiots falling off a chairlift. Mr. Schmidt? Mr. Plake? If you please.” Six years later, I’m in Utah.

10. In The Realms of the Unreal
A perfect — PERFECT! — documentary. Plus, if you have any creative impulses, the subject of this documentary will make you feel like a lazy piece of shit who would rather come up with excuses than actually create. Of course, you’ll be able to take solace in the fact that you have a relatively balanced life, whereas the subject of this movie was a practical shut-in, but still….you’re lazy. A perfect documentary.

[To be continued]