Starring Brendan Frasier (Mummy franchise), Joe Pesci (Home Alone) and Moira Kelly (the voice of Nala in the Lion King, also my ageless childhood crush.)  This was one of two coming of age movies for me that taught me to see people for who they are at their core. There was more going on in the hearts of these college kids than the world could know... and they too had lessons to learn about people... and the scars they carried.

It also acqueinted me with the works of the poet Walt Whitman, who I immediately dove into. Leaves of Grass is simply one of the greatest compositions Ive ever chanced upon. The verses that the characters read toward the end of the movie characterize the entire premise: to not latch on to any one viewpoint for fear you might believe it to be the only valid one. There's a need to filter every influence, including your own. And when you do, you find connection and beauty --two things that disappear quickly when someone gets up on a soapbox.

The soundtrack sounds and feels like Fall of 1994 stuck out of time. it instantly transports me back. Yet, none of the production feels out of date.I discovered a cool lounge-groove called "tribe", Madonna's "I'll Remember" was in my Sony Discman on repeat for the bus ride to school for months, and Duran Duran covered a timeless Led Zeppelin song.  I even got back to my 80s roots with "She Sells Sanctuary"-- Patrick Dempsey's radio DJ character plays it in the opening scene, introducing it with the line..."a little crushing music, maestro!" It iInstantly sets the mood for this fantastic throwback.

A film channeling the life-lessons and groundwork laid by Dead Poets Society. Kevin Kline plays a teacher in an all-boys school from a half century ago, who prides himself on his craft. Early in the film he asks a boy to read a plaque on the back wall of the classroom. It is this particular thing that I treasure most about the film, both in the way it is introduced, and the sublime lesson it teaches when he circles back to it later in the film. It forwards the plot, but unveils a bitter truth in a beautiful way about the nature of people and what loyalty is really worth once it's put up for sale. It's a slow movie, but a pleasure to watch. And it features a mostly-unknown-at-the-time cast who went on to fill some rather great roles soon after.

In the 90s, there were few movies where Mel Gibson failed to deliver. This was one of his slower-moving, small-plot stories, but was nonetheless heavily impactful to me. He plays a man scarred on over half his body from being trapped in a burning car years ago. The main character is a boy living with his mom and two sisters in the 60s, hoping to get into a military school to escape his home life. He discovers that Mel Gibson's character was once a teacher and asks him to tutor him so he can pass his entrance exam.

The story plays out showcasing the mundane things of life and how they affect us, like the gossip and hearsay that threatens trust in relationships. These drive the boy to question everything in his life: why his father "left", the authenticity of his mother's love, the mean-spiritedness of his sisters, but also what actually caused the fire in his tutor's past. What unfolds is a profound lesson in trust, faith in people, and validating just how well you really KNOW what you say you know. It teaches in a very real way what Obi-Wan told Luke about truth depending greatly on one's point-of-view. It also highlights the need for REAL friends, which most people have few , if any, in a lfietime. These may not be part of our everyday lives, but are no less important, in fact even more so.

Bobby Fischer is an actual world renowned chess champion who broke records years ago when he beat a supercomputer. That said, this movie isnt about him or that true event. To be fair, my recollection of this film is perhaps better than the film itself, but there is a single scene from this movie that I have never been able to shake from my mind. Most of us can relate to parental pressure --trying to shape us into someone we may or may not want to be. And each of the characters are trying to influence a young boy whose father forces him to play chess competitively --his pride as a father attached to the success and talents of his son. This hit me hard for so many reasons.

The father hires a chess instructor, a defeated man, the same who trained young Bobby Fischer, and who regrets much of what he's been celebrated for. So when he sees this boy following in the same footsteps, there's a scene where the boy is having a panic attack trying to see his next several moves, petrified of disappointing his father, and when his dad forbids the instructor to intervene in anythning beyond the boy's chess training, the teacher simply tells the boy over and over "dont move until you see it." This goes on for minutes and is just so stressful to watch... all the invisible pressure from so many conflicting sources... Finally, the teacher stands up and says: "here, let me make it easier for you..." and knocks all the pieces off the board in a single, traumatic stroke, before walking out.

Its one of the best, and hardest hitting scenes in any movie I've ever seen. There's so much going on it emotionally, intellectually, developmentally... I muse on it often. My main take away from it was not to look too closely at anything in life. Its just a game with only so many pieces and so many moves. We get lost in the details and miss the big picture. Each piece has a role and a function that can either help you reach or hinder your goals. But the board is only so big. As many possibilities as there are, there's only so many outcomes --only so much consequence. an 8x8 grid with 64 squares between you and your opponent... So stop overthinking. Enjoy the game. Play it out. Learn what you can. Win or lose, don't try so hard. You can always start over.

Little did I know that this drama/rom-com would mark the start of a lifelong love for the writings of Aaron Sorkin. The movie's premise is simple. It asks the question (albeit in far simpler times where the office still harbored a measure of respect) "what would happen if the president went out on a date?" Sure it sounds contrived, but where the ride takes you is unbelievably well acted and intelligent. It asks all the vain questions about what people expect from their leaders, the news, themselves... And it shows just how low a man's enemies will strike when they can mar someone's public image with just a few words.

Michael Douglas and Annette Bening are an amazing couple on screen. You cant tell they were getting paid. Michael J. Fox plays a speech writer. And Martin Sheen would go from playing his role as the the chief of staff here to the president in its legendary spin off, "West Wing" which is hands down THE best TV show of my lifetime. (My wife and I have rewatched all 6 seasons from start to finish a total of 7 times at the time of writing this.)

So, yes, if you see Sorkin's name in the credits, it's likely worth a watch. He crafts some of the most authenticly real and thought-provoking dialogue between characters ever seen on screen. There's no filler. Ever. Its incredible. The scene in the oval office and the president's closing speech at the end of the movie are a one-two-punch of epic writing. I know it and the whole movie by heart from playing it on repeat in the video store I worked at in my teens. I think im responsible for almost everyone in the town i lived in for renting this and loving it. 

Specifically, the TV remake from 1996/1997 starring Jack Lemon... I saw this version first although I absolutely loved the original black and white one as well. 99% of the runtime takes place in a single room where all you have is a snapshot of the jurors deliberating over the fate of a man on trial for murder. The depiction candidly reveals the worst of humanity: prejudice, intolerance, self-centeredness (and all under the guise of wanting to appear to be fair and openminded.)

This film single handedly taught me the value of NOT forming an opinion without having all the facts, and to have faith in  the existence of facts I may NOT have been presented with! It taught me to  ask more questions, that the truth is never found on the surface... You have to dig... and you have to WANT to!  It's gonna take effort. It also taught me that it's okay to disagree, even with myself, and that it's okay to BE wrong. It's just not okay to STAY wrong, or to be apethetic toward what's right.

This movie is just a big, dumb, awesomegood time. The soundtrack alone was worth  it, featuring everyone from Van Halen, Eric Clapton, and Deep Purple to Tori Amos, Shania Twain, and even old show numbers from Oklahoma! By far though, the greatest unsung hero for this flick was the casting director who couldnt have picked anyone better for each role.

Dusty, played by the late Phillip Seymour Hoffman, is a beloved favorite with some of the greatest unnecessarily hilarious dialogue of the film. Speaking of which, Twister is one of the great quotables of the ages! Nearly every line is instantly memorable and grin-inducing, especially out of context. Rabbit, with his maps, Preacher with his facial expressions... its all just so great. I cant even :) This movies is also perhaps one of the last vestages of film-making before the era of cell phones and the internet, when CG was just an ingredient and not yet an entree.

And perhaps even more brag-worthy is that when they inevitably made a sequel almost 30 years later, they DIDNT ruin my love for the original! They simply took the premise and ran in the spirit of it, rather than trying to incorporate every throwback to the original just to crank out something artificial and soulless for the sake of a buck. Nope, the "sequel" kept its soul. And that too is quite an accomplishment. Hats off to Mr. Spielberg! The man knows things.

My wife introduced me to Inside Out 1 on our Disney honeymoon cruise. It was an instant love. But little did we know when we went to the theater to see the sequel, two grown humans would be ugly crying over such an amazingly moving film. It blows my mind how an animated movie can depict in a way that feels even more real such profound aspects of the human experience. So when the makers introduce characters that embody the traits of boredom, embarrassment, envy and anxiety, I thought they had their work cut out. I was wrong. Its scarily spot on to watch how the personification of these emotions attempt to influece or take over our lives, and that all can be incredibly destructive no matter how well-intentioned.

#SpoilerAlert - Toward the end of the movie is hands-down the hardest-hitting and most accurate depiction of a human being experiencing a real panic attack. They never say it. They dont call it what it is. But they didnt have to. And the fact that it hit me as hard as it did and that its happening to a 13 year old girl in the movie, made me feel like 47 year old KID navigating a trauma. I just wanted to hug the character so tight, knowing the length and breadth and depth of those feelings all too well. This movie is nothing short of a college-level emotional education. Everyone needs to watch it. And not just for entertainment value, although it certainly checks that box too.

Long after I first saw this movie, I found myself interested in learning more about the Bible, though not with a desire to be religious. As a kid, I found myself turned off by the depictions of "God" in films. Any voice over was a huge, thundering boom and anything but heavenly-father-like. That alone would make a kid be afraid or hesitant to want to have anything to do with Judeo-Christianity. So when I watched this, I found myself delighted and softening some regarding my attitude with anything Biblical. Even considering what creative license they admitted to taking in the opening titles, they managed to, in an animated film, make very, very real the people depicted in the Bible, right on down to emotions and expressions that Moses MUST have had. But perhaps even more novel and nuanced was how tenderly they depicted the scene at the burning bush. When God spoke, they layered the sound of both a man's and a woman's voice. Not only was this in keeping with what the Bible mentions about God's image being both masculine and feminine, but also that when heard it was "as the sound of many waters", as if it came in waves or layers.

And when Moses had to deliver the last of the ten plagues, Val Kilmer's voice over about what the plague would do was so deeply and hard-hittingly emotional, as if pleading for it not to happen, but if it had to, "let us do exactly as instructed so we can be safe." And if that wasnt enough, the producers hit you with a one-two punch of feels between how it depicts the plague at work with simple animation, but that after it had happened, Moses, on his way home, ducks down an alleyway and drops his staff in deep despair as he listens to the wailing of all the mothers who just lost their eldest children. I still remember how hard I cried when I first saw this scene, KNOWING, that no human who was involved in carrying that out could not have felt EXACTLY the same way. And while the Bible didnt specifically say that this happened, I know in my heart that he did just so.

Soon after, I made the determination to start studying the Bible, if only academically, so I could separate what I had heard about it and believed because of my own bias and any cultural conditioning from what a book that claimed to be from God ACTUALLY had to say. Doing so would mark an immense turning point in my life, where I began examining all religions in an attempt to understand why people everywhere who had ever lived devoted so much to them.  And in doing so, I actually, unbeknownst to me at the time, started becoming a spiritual man who appreciated the viewpoints of people and cultures who lived long before me, discovering that despite advancement and technology and social evolution, they were not very different at all from us and had the same doubts and questions. And so I asked myself why would I or anyone not want to know what they found?

I think I was 7 when this movie came out. I had no idea how incredibly well done it really was. I just knew I liked the animation and the story. As an adult though, there were so many aspects about growth, love, justice, personal responsibility and accountability all woven in to a such a "simple" plot. It was all done by hand back then. No CG. No Disney-backing. Just Don Bluth making an unsung masterpiece with a ton of talented unknowns outside the industry. It featured voice acting by everyone from John Carradine, an old western actor who did the voice of the Great Owl, also Dom Delouise, who played my favorite character, the Crow, Jeremy... and even an unknown-at-the-time  Shannon Dougherty who played the eldest daughter of the main character who went on to be a teenage heartthrob from 90210.    

For an animated film in the early 80s, when adults never considered that this medium could be for anything but a kid, Secret of NIMH dared to tackle adult problems as well as intellectual and emotionally-developed themes that till this very day still apply and we need well-depicted lessons in. I still treasure this film for kicking off a lifelong appreciation for learning real-life lessons from works of fiction. It taught my child heart how to grow up. And want to. And to be concerned about how and the way it would work as I got older. That is the ultimate purpose of quality fiction... to teach us truths we might not otherwise ever learn in the human experience. Because real life is heartbreaking enough, why would I want more hurt from my entertainment? The answer? Because... thats the only place where positive change comes from!