Big big screen moments

That’s not a typo. I could have titled it ‘big moments on the big screen’ but I like the repetition.

Anyway, linguistic indulgences aside, this post is about movies. I go to see a movie at the cinema almost once a week; I guess that makes me a fairly serious moviegoer - considering that, last time I heard, the average Australian goes maybe once a year. So, it’s probably accurate to say that I love movies, and I particularly like seeing them on the big screen.

To be perfectly honest I can’t remember the last movie I watched outside of cinema – i.e. at my home or someone else’s¹. I just don’t watch dvds. Some of this is because I’m fairly busy at the moment, and when I’m not busy I find myself too distracted by other things – writing blog posts, for example - to sit down for the length of time it would take to watch an entire feature.

But some of it is because it’s just not the same thing.

So, I’ve seen a lot of what I consider ‘significant’ films on the big screen. Including Coraline, which I saw last week, and which prompted me to put together a piece on this topic. But I’ll talk about that one at the end.

For now I'll explain - with examples - how I went from an indifferent cinemagoer to a full-on movie buff.

A lifestyle unconducive to fostering a love of film

I certainly didn’t grow up going to the movies. My parents weren’t (and, no doubt, still aren’t) cinemagoers. In fact, I can honestly say I’ve never known my father to go to the cinema at all, and my mother would only have gone to take me when I was too young to go by myself. So, it wasn’t like heading off to the movies was a regular family outing.

Once I hit my teens I might have gotten into it more except that, in the town I grew up (Bowen) the cinema wasn’t exactly close, being in an another suburb (Queen’s Beach) – getting there required either the consent and availability of parents or a great deal more enthusiasm (i.e. to ride my bike the 6 or so kilometres Google Maps tells me is the distance between my then-home and the cinema) than I possessed at the time.

Since it was the 70s and 80s, there was also the drive-in – but that was an even more inaccessible destination. I did, however, get there a few times; I’ll mention the significant ones later on.

Anyway, I suspect that, had I really had an interest in film, I’d have done whatever was necessary – ridden, nagged my parents, nagged my friends to nag their parents etc. (something I did do, but only once – more on that later) – to get myself in front of that screen. But it just wasn’t that big a deal to me, so I didn’t.

Of course, one of the other reasons teenagers go to the movies is to hang out, either in groups or as half of a couple. But my group didn’t go more than a handful of times; it just wasn’t something that interested us, possibly because – as is the case in a small country town with a one-screen cinema - we didn’t get many of the sort of movies we’d actually want to see anyway.

And, as you might also guess, by virtue of my being on such a low rung of the social status ladder, there wasn’t ever any romantic visits to the cinema either. But, even with all those reasons not to have gone to the movies very often, there were some standout experiences - though, since we’re going back something like thirty years, I don’t necessarily remember them all that well.

The Fox and the Hound

I saw this at the cinema (as opposed to the drive-in). I didn’t choose it for the film itself; it just happens to be the first film I distinctly remember seeing. No doubt if I asked my mother she’d tell me that I saw other films before that, but this is what’s stuck in my head.

Flash Gordon/The Empire Strikes Back

This double feature is something I remember quite distinctly, though not who I went with. It was raining very lightly during Empire - which was second - and that’s not great for a drive-in movie.

I still love Flash Gordon today; interestingly enough, it was the first video I ever rented when we got a VCR (though not the first movie I ever saw on video; that honour goes to the original Freaky Friday). The movie may have had greater long-term impact on me for the music, because years later I would become a fan of Queen, who did the soundtrack.

Empire, is, of course, the best Star Wars film by a wide margin (though your mileage may vary). I don’t recall for certain whether I’d actually even seen A New Hope before seeing Empire, but I don’t think it mattered to me at the time. One thing I do remember is that it was raining, which isn’t a good thing at the drive-in. They didn’t stop the film, though.

Funnily enough, several years after that I would see Spaceballs, the spoof of Empire, at the very same drive-in. That mightn’t sound like anything worth noting, except that I don’t know whether I saw anything else at the drive-in between those two.

Return of the Jedi

When Jedi came out I was ten and, as such, my obsession for things Star Wars was probably only matched by my obsession for Dr Who. So, I was going to see Jedi at the first possible opportunity.

For reasons I cannot now remember, my parents didn’t want me to go on the Saturday afternoon when I wanted to go see it. This didn’t impress me a great deal, and - since I was as pragmatic as I was disobedient - I stole some money (not sure from where) and harassed my friend Simon into convincing his father into driving us out to the cinema to see it.

Yeah, that's the sort of kid I was. Probably why I don't have any of my own.

I can’t remember what I thought about it, but I’d like to hope that – despite my enthusiasm and the efforts to which I went to get to the blasted film – I wasn’t especially impressed. I suspect that, even as a ten-year-old, the mindboggling lameness of the ewoks and the other disappointing plot developments (not to mention the standard awful Lucasian dialogue) would have left me underwhelmed.

Karma? Possibly.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

Again, another film chosen not for the significance of the film itself, but for the unusual nature of the experience. I saw this when on holiday in Brisbane, and it was the first time I’d been in a cinema other than the Summergarden in Bowen.

The Summergarden has (or, at least, had; I imagine it’s bit more upmarket these days) bare concrete floors, shabby old brown chairs for the back half the audience, and canvas deck chairs for the front half. So it was quite a shock to go to a ‘proper’ cinema after only experiencing that before. I remember being fascinated by the fact there was carpet on the walls. Talk about the country mouse...

Crocodile Dundee 2

Definitely not in for the quality of the film, I note this one because, while in Townsville in 1988 for my brother’s wedding, it was the first time I went to the cinema on my own. It would, however, not be the last time.

A change in situation

In 1992 I moved to Townsville to go to uni, and started to go to the movies a bit more often. Not that often; James Cook University is about 12km from the city so that, despite moving from a small country town to a small country city, I’d managed to double the distance between me and the nearest big screen.

Obviously, this wouldn’t have been much of an issue if I’d owned a car. But I didn’t, so I only ever went if it happened that someone else was going. On the plus side, I was living at a residential college, and going in groups to see movies was a not uncommon occurrence. I had put my feet on the path to true movie fandom.

Pulp Fiction

No film has ever had as much impact on me – in terms of pure, visceral shock value – as Quentin Tarantino's masterpiece, Pulp Fiction. I saw it at a midnight screening at a cinema in Maroochydore with my friend Taity; it was only by accident that we ended up seeing it, since we’d gone there to see Interview With a Vampire only to find out it didn’t start until midnight the following day.

Afterwards, we spent a couple of hours wandering the streets of Maroochydore talking about it. Doesn't paint enough of a picture? Fine. Try this: I, generally a non-smoker, bummed one from Taity and found that it helped.

Hey, I said it was impactful.

The Usual Suspects

Another of my favourites, this is also significant because it was the first ever low budget arthouse film I saw, and it was the first step in my understanding that there was an alternative to the Hollywood mainstream. While Townsville at the time couldn't be described as a city with a great deal of interest in culture, it wasn't completely without.

Romeo + Juliet

The only film I’ve ever seen more than once during an original theatrical run – and I didn’t just see it twice, I saw it three times. I loved nearly every aspect of the film, and it took my interest in Shakespeare to a whole new level.

A Clockwork Orange

Probably the first film I saw outside of wide release, and the last film I saw in Townsville. Which was annoying in a way; they’d just started doing late-night screenings of cult classics at one of the cinemas in town, and I’d started getting a bit more serious about film.

Of course it shocked the crap out of me – and I’d read the book. Years later I’d learn that the guy who was the bodyguard was David Prowse – or, as he’s sometimes known, the guy who played Darth Vader. The body, not the voice - that was James Earl Jones. He's never been a Welsh national bodybuilding champion - well, at least not to my knowledge.

Another change in situation

In November of 1997 I moved to Adelaide and, for the first time in my life, had ready access to cinemas – lots of cinemas. The Piccadilly, in North Adelaide, was only blocks from my house. A short trip to the city would take me to many more: Hindley Street, Rundle Mall and the Academy (all of which are gone now – except maybe Hindley St.) covered the mainstream fare; Palace and Nova (before they joined forces) provided the arthouse end of the spectrum.

But I didn’t get that heavily into movies straight away. It took the complete collapse of my social life to do that - basically, I’d only made one or two friends after moving, and I needed to find something I could do on my own that would get me out of the house and entertain me.

So I started going to the movies, sometimes as often as twice a week. I saw so many films in the first year I was here, both mainstream and arthouse. Individual films stopped having such an impact on me – I don’t mean that in a bad way; it’s more that I’d had my mind opened so much by the quantity and variety of films I’d see that I didn’t see anything that had as dramatic an impact on me as the ‘big’ films I noted earlier in the post.

My lifestyle changed slightly when I went back to uni; I stopped going quite as often. But that changed when I discovered one of my friends like film as much as I did and we started going once a week – typically on Tuesday, to take advantage of cheap tickets. He left the country and I found myself less inclined to go as often – so I missed quite a few films I wish I’d managed to see on the big screen.

However, other ‘movie buddies’ have come along and I’ve managed to maintain the regularity to almost a weekly occurrence – depending on whether there’s anything on worth seeing; I’ve managed to see some shockers - [cough] Transformers 2 [cough] - that’ve made me a little more picky about what I do and don’t see.

LA Confidential

This is in the list more because it’s the first movie I saw in Adelaide – it may even have been on the day I arrived. It’s still a damn good film, and I’m now a big fan of James Ellroy’s novels.

2001: A Space Odyssey

Kubrick was a nut about many things. When this movie opened, cinemas weren’t allowed to show it unless they had the proper-sized screen to do it exactly how Kubrick wanted it – and he sent people to the cinemas to check. If they didn’t have it set up correctly, they wouldn’t be allowed to show it. And I can understand why. It’s an amazing piece of work, and would be next to pointless on anything other than a big screen.

Of course, I’d be lying if I said I understood it – or even enjoyed it beyond being absolutely blown away by the technical expertise.

The Big Lebowksi

It’s now my all time favourite film, and was my first Coen Brothers experience (I hadn’t seen Fargo at that point). I went to see it based entirely on the promo flyer I saw in the cinema foyer on an earlier visit – mostly because of the references to tenpin bowling. I reckon I sat through it with my mouth open the whole time. Wacky genius filmmaking, great characters, and some of the best dialogue ever written.

Moulin Rouge!

This has to be mentioned because of how funny the experience was. I saw it at Piccadilly in North Adelaide with my ‘movie buddy’, Chris. We both knew it was a musical, but didn’t realise it was a jukebox musical rather than original songs – so, at about the time it dawned on us that Ewan McGregor wasn’t singing something written for the show but was actually singing Love is Like Oxygen, we just cracked up. It only got worse as the film went on.

What made it even more hilarious was that there were a few dozen pensioner-age people there as well – and they just couldn’t work out what was amusing us so much.

The Lord of the Rings

Like many people who’d read the book, I was dubious about how well it’d work on the screen. I’d seen the underappreciated The Frighteners, so I knew Peter Jackson was a talented guy – but we’re talking Middle-Earth here. But once we got a decent way into Fellowship I was convinced they were going to pull it off. By the end of ROTK I was satisfied.

Of course, there’s the argument here that the full LOTR experience is only achieved when watching the extra scenes on the dvds – but I’ll certainly be hitting the cinema to see them if they’re re-released in their ‘complete’ versions. Especially if there’s 3D involved...

The Incredibles

I’ve always been open to animated films, and rated many of them quite highly – but The Incredibles took it to another level. It was just a great animated movie, it was a great movie. As much as it’s still a good one to watch on a small screen, I’m glad I saw it on a big one.

No Country For Old Men

While they may be a bit hit-and-miss – by which I mean if you agree that they alternate between (at worst) solid films and (at best) mind-blowingly-amazing films - Joel and Ethan Coen are by far the most talented filmmakers working today. Not since Pulp Fiction had I been so riveted, so emotionally beaten by a film. I was so tense the whole way through that I’m surprised I didn’t burn out my adrenal glands.

Coraline

Before Coraline, I’d not seen a 3D movie. To me it sounded like a gimmick – which, I guess in a way it is – that wasn’t really going to be all that significant to the overall art of filmmaking.

Boy, is my face red. 3D is, to put it bluntly (and coarsely) absolutely fucking awesome. Coraline would’ve been a good film anyway – Henry Selick is a genius, and the source material was a story by Neil Gaiman, another genius – but in 3D it was just spectacular.

For those who haven’t experienced 3D, don’t think of it was just a means by which – for the sake of an occasional effect – things will fly out from the screen at you, i.e. that it’s a movie in 2D with occasional 3D ‘bits’. Yes, that does happen, but that’s not the most significant aspect. Basically, it’s like watching things take place on a stage rather than a flat screen. The resulting depth adds, well, depth to the whole experience.

More and more films are being shot in 3D and more cinemas are getting the equipment to show them. It may not become all-encompassing – one suspects that low-budget productions won’t spend the money on something that isn’t vital – but it will certainly become more common.

However, it’s not – for me at least – going to be enough to overcome the negative aspects of an otherwise bad film. Films still have to be good. A pile of crap with icing on top is still a pile of crap. The feculent Transformers 2 in 3D would still have sucked ass; it just would have distracted me for a bit longer before I reached that inevitable conclusion that I’d wasted my time and money, and subsequently cursed Michael Bay and sworn to be far more circumspect about any future productions.

I’d like to think I’ll be adding more films to this list. If I don’t it’s unlikely to be from lack of trying; I still intend to be getting myself in front of a big screen as often as I can find the time and the right motivation.

¹ True at the time of writing but not at the time of posting; I actually saw The Boat That Rocked at a friend's place last night. But I wanted to illustrate my point so I didn't change it.