This is not a picture of me. I sat much closer.
There's a generally weird feeling, coming of age right alongside the new century. I hit puberty right around the time everyone was totally sure the world was about to end, that all our computers would stop working and the nukes would launch themselves and oh shit oh shit we're all going to die. All that hysteria, and yet the only thing I cared about was figuring out was why I suddenly couldn't stop thinking about girls, and where the hell did they come from in the first place? Just a few years earlier I had been throwing rocks at them and generally terrified of catching a cootie. I didn't know what it was, I just didn't want one. Then my health class happened, and I figured I'd settle for the cooties.
And then 2000 happened. I was turning 16. My life, like the new century, was entering a new phase. Just when I was preparing myself to be absolutely 100% certain what was coming next...ten years happened.
I don't know how it happened so quickly, but before I knew it I was reading various websites listing their favorite movies from the last ten years. "Aghast" is the only proper way to describe my face as I read them.
Sadly, when this was a new movie...I spent all my time at IMDB.com
"No way!," I didn't say out loud to anyone. "It has not been ten years since X-Men. Or Gladiator. Or High Fidelity. Or Or Or Or...Nope. I refuse." Denial set in. No twist, I hadn't discovered The White Stripes in 2000. The temptation to shoot off a list of my own favorite films lurked at my fingertips, but then I recall something someone I think I generally respect said: "If you were a teenager at the turn of the century and your tastes haven't changed in the last ten years, you're doing it wrong."
In that moment I had an apostrophe (and by that I mean an epiphany). Lightning struck my brain. Have my opinions changed? I can recall almost every minute I spent in a cinema in the last ten years (oh hi there, photographic memory!), but how has the last ten years of film immersion skewed my perception?
So here I am, starting a project that I'm not expecting anyone to read, but I'd rather document this in the event something cool happens. Some revelation, some changing of opinion, and more importantly, understanding WHY.
How have I grown as a cinephile in the last ten years? I'm going to find out.
Little Betty was not in the mood to be measured by her pediatrician, Dr. Hal O'Man.
I've compiled a list of every movie I saw in a theatre from January 1st, 2000 to December 31st, 2009. Ten full years of movie watching, with all kinds of people, siblings, parents, grandparents, friends, romances, random people I'd only met hours before--they came along for the trip.
See, I've been consuming almost every film I could get my hands on since I figured out how to work the VCR, and thinking critically of films was something I've been doing since I was 12 or 13 and read one of Ebert's "The Great Movies" collections. Films weren't just loud stuipid noises and effects flickering on a screen anymore, it was something that can mean something to everyone. Sure, that movie I just watched made me laugh, but did I like it? If I said I did, could I tell you why in more than two sentences? If I hated it, could I do the same?
Film is so much more interesting if you can answer those questions. You actually have to pay attention, not just to what's happening on the screen, but what's happening with your reactions. It causes you to tap into thoughts, emotions, experiences you might have never considered or just forgotten about, and that connection is worth all the Oooo's and aaaaahhh's in the world.
So starting this week, I'm going to see why I remember liking a movie, or hating it, and see if anything's changed. I'm going to go chronologically, because it'd be silly to do it any other way. I'm only counting films viewed in an actual theatre, as going back through my days of consuming five movies from Netflix a week would be impossible to accurately re-visit. By my count, I saw over 600 films in a theatre over the last decade, so there's plenty to re-discover.
Let's see if I'm doing this right.
