An Introduction: Me, My Mom and The Movies

Anyone who knows me, even just casually, knows that I LOVE movies. My mom took me to my first movie before the age of 2 (she tells me it was Cinderella) and that was the first of many movies we would watch together. My mother did little censoring of what I watched with her other than having me plug my ears for swearing and cover my eyes for nudity and sex. After watching a movie, we would end up having a discussion about the film we had just watched. These discussions were a way for my mom to let me talk about and process what I had seen and give her a chance to chime in about a movie and what may or may not have been realistic. I still remember seeing Pretty Woman and we had a long talk about how a romance with a prostitute may have seemed romantic and beautiful when it was Julia Roberts and Richard Gere but in “real-life” that isn’t exactly how it would have looked or played out. To this day, I can’t watch a movie without wanting to talk about it in-detail with someone else. 

When I was a sophomore in college at the University of Michigan, my boyfriend (now husband) suggested I write movie reviews for our school paper, The Michigan Daily. I thought it was a fantastic idea. Despite thinking I didn’t really have a shot at being a reviewer, I did pursue it and started as a guest writer and then got on staff as a regular movie reviewer for The Michigan Daily. You can still pull up some of my old reviews if you google my maiden name and the movie titles. They are pretty funny to read now as some of the reviews seemed to stand the test of time and others, I now read with embarrassment.

As I got older and pursued my career in psychology I often get asked, if you weren’t a psychologist what would you be doing and I instantly say, “I would write movie reviews!” It is the path not taken for me and now, thanks to the popularity of blogging, I can sort of live my dream.

I enjoy almost every genre and love more movies than I hate. If I was entertained, I usually like the movie. That being said, I am able to identify crap from quality, but that doesn’t mean I sometimes don’t enjoy the crap and hate the quality. Although I like action movies, I despise lengthy, drawn-out action sequences with a lot of CGI. People! You cannot stream a bunch of actions scenes together with no plot and call it a movie (think Transformers 2-17, or whatever sequel they are on currently).  I am bored with all the superhero movies but still love the quality ones like Iron Man and all of Nolan’s Batman films. I used to avoid cartoons or any Pixar films but that has changed after having kids and now it means I get to watch movies with them so that’s kind of cool. But hands down, my favorite movies are horror movies and I love them all, the good, the bad and everything in-between (and to be fair, there is more bad than good with that genre).

Movies are my family tradition. A tradition my grandmother started when she took my mom to weekly movies and one I am now passing on to my daughter and son. Every Friday in our house is movie Friday (sometimes it’s movie Saturday if we’re busy). We watch a movie and then, you guessed it, we talk about what we just watched, together.

To paraphrase a favorite quote, among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can; all of them love movies!