25 Movies: Part 3

(this post was written by Kyle on March 13, 2009, and it concerns )

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

Here’s the list as it stood at the end of part 1 and part 2:

  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
  6. Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid
  7. Teen Wolf
  8. Big Trouble in Little China
  9. Licensed To Thrill
  10. In The Realms of the Unreal

Which brings us to…

11. The West Wing
I know this isn’t a movie, but since I watched it on DVD, it may as well have been a movie, right? Here’s the thing: I’ve probably watched the entire West Wing series, all seven seasons from start to finish, at least four times in the past couple of years, and I’ve watched seasons one through four at least another three times besides (since season five sucks, season six slightly less so, and season seven slightly less so than that). All of which is to say that 7/10ths of what I think it means to be an American I learned from Toby Ziggler and Jed Bartlett. If the Obama administration wants to bring civics back to the education system, they should just mandate screenings of The West Wing.

12. When Harry Met Sally
I married my best friend. ‘Nuff said.

13. Wonder Boys
Released in 2000, Wonder Boys reminded me that movies didn’t have to be about the auteur director, or the out-of-this-world dialogue in the screenplay, or the unbelievable cinematography, or the high-budget special effects. They could just be simple movies with quirky characters, minimal plot, and a whole lot of heart. I love this movie.

14. The Big Lebowski
“Say what you will about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least its an ethos.”

15. The Seven Up Series
I don’t know if this qualifies as TV or what, but the The Seven Up Series, which if you haven’t heard of it, is a documentary project in Britain where the filmmakers follow the lives of a fourteen British citizens. They started when the people were seven years old and the filmmakers check back in with them every seven years. In the last installment, the people were 49 years old. Why is it on my list? Because it’s shaped the way I see myself. As the motto of the series goes, “Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man.” We all get older, wiser, more hardened in our ways…but we’re all still the seven year old children we once were.

[To be continued...]