A movie walk to remember...

Before I post the second half of my Top 10 Movies of 2009 list, I thought I'd shed a little light on my movie-watching street cred...

To yank a line from a really annoying movie, "The events of my life are fairly inconsequential." I guess I had as normal a childhood as you can have in a dysfunctional family (think the Bundys meet the Simpsons and up the vulgarity, crudeness, and abrasiveness to 11). To me, the most significant part of my youth would have to be the love I developed for movies.

If you can have natural ballplayers, natural musicians, and natural nymphomaniacs, you can have natural movie watchers. From almost the beginning of my life, I've loved nothing more than to sit down and catch something on the tube or on video. The first significant landmark in my film-watching career was when, at the age of four, I had "The Ultimate Experience in Grueling Horror!": I watched Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead. From that point until I turned twelve or so, my most-watched genre of film was horror. Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Gremlins... it didn't matter. If it had the elements of a horror flick, I was there.

Another landmark of my movie life was when my fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Tyree, showed me It's a Wonderful Life for the first time, and it changed my life forever (I still haven't thanked her for that). I know it doesn't take much to entertain an eleven-year-old, but for a movie to affect one's definition of the meaning of life is something above and beyond exceptional. Another thing that's important about it is that it's the movie that taught me that there is a lot more to movies than seeing how many times I could watch Bill and Ted or Cheech and Chong; they can make you cry, make you think, and, as I said before, change your entire outlook on life. I've given the movie as a gift many times to many people for this very reason.

It's a Wonderful Life is also responsible for my foray into classic film. Before George Bailey, I would've never even considered watching Casablanca, The Godfather saga, or even Psycho, which is a member of my favorite genre. Now those, as well as many others like The Seven Samurai, Dr. Strangelove, Citizen Kane, and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari are amongst my favorite films of all-time. You're doing yourself a great disservice if you don't brush up on your movie history, because you'll find gems like It's a Wonderful Life that'll change you, I promise.

When I hit my teenage years, it was time for me to spread my movie wings even further. I began delving into other genres in more detail, and that's when I discovered three of the indie film scene's main superheroes: Kevin Smith, Quentin Tarantino, and Robert Rodriguez. Thus began my love affair with the "pop culture junkie" lifestyle, of which I am now a proud member. It should come as no surprise to anyone that my favorite movie character of all-time is the Kevin Smith creation Brodie Bruce (from Mallrats). This is also the period in my life where I pretty much blossomed to the point that I became a lover of all things film.

My militant love for movies has always more or less kept me on the outside as far as the whole social structure of things goes. It wasn't until I was older and almost out of high school that I met people that I could share my fondness for film with, and most of them I became acquainted with on the internet (you can find most of them still lurking about on here or on my Facebook friends list). I never really had many friends, and you can bet your sweet ass that the friends I do have maintain one thing in common with me: they love them some movies!