Marc from Go, See, Talk is spearheading a multi-blog event today entitled "The Films That Defined Us." The post is intended to be about "the movies," he writes, "we were raised on which (probably) forever defined our tastes." And for me this statement is essentially critical. As most of you know "The Last of the Mohicans" is truly the movie that defines me. But I saw that in the summer of 1993, long after I had begun watching movies. So how did I get there? How did I become what I am? How did I turn into a maniac for Michael Mann, a Kate Winslet worshiper, the only person on the face of the earth who believes "Oceans Twelve" is far better than the original (and it is), and a man who will fight anyone to the death who dares diss "Titanic"? Let's get to it, shall we? The Films That Define Me...
Captain Blood (1935) & The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). Much like the child I may or may not have will be raised on the music of Bruce Springsteen whether he or she likes it or not, my mother raised me on the swashbucklers of Errol Flynn and gave me absolutely no choice in the matter whatsoever. My hopeless romanticism, my eternal love of melodramatic epics, my hatred of all who bring the "real world" into the movies can be traced directly here. These two movies, all these years later, still rock.
"Stars Wars" (1977). What guy my age could make a list like this and not include "Stars Wars"? And I specifically say the (real) first "Star Wars". None of the rest. And it has nothing to do with sci fi or the cool special effects or the whatever but something much, much simpler. It's so old fashioned. Seeing Luke stare out at the twin suns longingly....damn, man, my heart cracked. I may as well have been staring out at the Des Moines Weather Beacon longingly.
"Ghostbusters" (1984). My cinematic comedic tastes were settled forevermore upon seeing this movie as a wee lad at the Valley 3 Theater in West Des Moines, Iowa in the glorious summer of '84. I didn't get all the jokes then, but I got enough of them, and over time I realized irreverent dryness was my funny movie métier. The effects have aged but the jokes have only become better. ("Maybe now you'll never slime a guy with a positron glider.")
"Glory" (1989). It's always a chore to find movie characters with whom you can truly identify but then suddenly there was Matthew Broderick's Colonel Robert Gould Shaw. Now this isn't to say that I could ever ably lead a charge on a Confederate redoubt, never mind properly unsheathe a sabre, because I couldn't. It wasn't what Shaw did, it's who he was. An idealist, a romantic, a guy who never used foul language beyond "rat filth" and "nasty little cuss", and, in one of my favorite passages ever of movie dialogue, requests the honor of leading the fateful attack on South Carolina's Fort Wagner by declaring, "There's more to fighting than rest, sir. There's character. There's strength of heart." I'm fairly certain that was how I scored my date to the junior prom: There's more to dating than having your own car, Michelle. There's character. There's strength of heart.Source URL: https://extravagancedeplumes.blogspot.com/2010/08/films-that-define-me.html
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