Let's Go to the Movies

I love movies. All kinds of movies. I’ll even watch bad movies just to see how they are put together. But most of the movies I like the best are the ones my family won’t watch with me. Foreign movies and documentaries are my alone time movies.

My father was a film editor. Growing up, I was used to my father adlibbing through movies. Usually cracks about a bad cut. He always knew the plotline and if I asked what was going to happen, he would tell me. He always knew.

My first boyfriend once got really pissed off at me over my movie watching habits. We were at the drive-in (ah, remember drive-ins?) and actually watching the movie (which means we had been dating for awhile and weren’t there just to make out). I was saying, “OMG. What’s going to happen?? Where’s she going?? Why would she go there??”

He turned to me and basically told me to shut the fuck up and let him watch the movie and why the hell would I ask him what was going to happen when I knew he had not seen the movie before either???

First of all, this is not the person I married.

Second of all, a major epiphany. Up until this ripe age of 16, I had assumed that knowing what would happen next in a movie was a male thing. I was too stupid to realize it had more to do with the line of work my dad was in. Other epiphanies on how my dad did not symbolize all men would come later with my husband. Like men putting the lights on the Christmas tree and being handy with fixing things in a house. But I digress.

I used to be somewhat hip and up to date on all the movies coming up. For two years I taught an elective, “Film as Art,” and it gave me a reason to watch a lot of movies and read my Entertainment Weekly somewhat religiously. Since this is not a post on the sorry state of electives in the public school system, I won’t go into why I went back to teaching regular English.

Sooooooooooo, this break I was able to see two movies that I did not know about until recently, but surprised me in how good I thought they were and how much I enjoyed them.

I took a colleague friend to the movies one night and since it was her Christmas present, she got to pick it out. We saw Slumdog Millionaire. I highly recommend it.


On Netflix I rented Sex and Lucia. It’s Spanish with subtitles. It has a lot of sex in it. Don’t watch it when your kids are around. It’ really hot and sexy and I should probably get it again because my husband would probably like it because of the naked chicks and sex. But I also loved it because it is a writer’s story. It blends fiction with reality. The writer’s novel with what is really going on in his life. I also prefer foreign movies because they do not abide to American formulas and I love not being able to figure out what is going to happen.


Let’s get some recommendations going in the comment thread. Seen any good movies this break? What is your all time favorite? Hidden gems anyone?