Reflection Upon Watching Movies

I don’t know when I realized that I like movies as much as I do.  It simply happened naturally.  It wasn’t a “This is an amazing movie and makes me love movies!” type of thing.  Movies grew on me.  That’s all it was.  When people ask other people what movie made them fall in love with movies, they always have answers.  I don’t.  It’s something that just kind of happened and there really is no solid point of it occurring.

I can remember having always watched movies.  Even at a young age.  I know I saw The Rocky Horror Picture Show when I was four.  No, it was not in a theater.  It was 1994.  I’m not sure why I saw it.  Actually, I am sure.  I was sleeping over at my cousin’s house and we woke up pretty early.  We were four.  We didn’t know the pleasure of sleeping in.  What are young children to do when they wake up early and the adults are still asleep?  Of course we put in a movie that we wouldn’t be allowed to watch normally.

I also grew up in a house where my father liked action movies.  I saw The Terminator and Terminator 2 at a young age.  I grew up with Lethal Weapon playing in the background.  Do I remember the entire movie anymore?  No.  I’ve seen it many, many times though.  As I have both Terminator films.  There were also Stallone movies, the other Arnold movies, and many others.  I’ve seen Jim Belushi protect a school in The Principal a countless number of times.  Sure, these aren’t necessarily the pinnacle of action films but they’re part of my upbringing.

One of the weird things I can remember from my childhood was seeing part of American Pie 2, and being told to leave the room when the two women were getting Jim, Finch, and Stifler to do stuff to each other.  Yet I was allowed to see The Blair Witch Project and Scary Movie.  I don’t understand that, but it’s what happened.  I’m still confused.

The first instance of knowing a non-star of a movie being in another movie was when I was watching Basic.  Basic isn’t the greatest movie ever.  I’m not going to argue that.  But when I was watching it for the first time, I was thirteen or fourteen.  I noticed that one of the guys looked familiar, and remembered he was in SWAT.  He wasn’t nearly the biggest star in either of them.  He was just some guy.  But I knew he was in both.  I never remembered his name after that, until recently.  I started watching the tv show Cougar Town.  That guy popped back up again.  Brian Van Holt.  But Basic was when I first noticed him, and is the first time that I can remember noticing someone from another movie who wasn’t the star.

None of these situations were when I knew I loved movies.  I don’t know when or how that happened.  All I know is that I can remember times when I watched certain movies.  I can describe these times, or things associated with watching them.  I guess that means that those specific movies mean something to me, for whatever reason.  Yet I don’t know which movie or situation gave me my love and appreciation.

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