Movies, Memories, and Musings

Hello!!

Welcome to my first blog. I have never done this, but thought it would be fun to document my journey through watching all the movies I never watched growing up. My husband and I went through a few of the streaming services and made profiles on each with lists of most every movie I have not seen. Total from just four of the services, there is a list of 355 movies. Movies from Brokeback Mountain to things like Dude, Where’s My Car. Classics, comedies, pop culture staples, and defining movies for some actors careers.

But why haven’t I seen all these movies before? Well, growing up we had a very interesting household where we were anti-TV, in the sense that it did not need to be on every night or even every day. There were some exceptions of course: sick days, their favorite movies or shows, or just because us kiddos would relentlessly beg. Despite not really watching movies or TV, we still had a plethora of movie options in the collection on betamax, laser disc, VHS, DVD and eventually Blu-ray. Yes, we did have a working beta player, VCR and laser disc player for the older collections.

We were more of a musical family. Preferring listening to the radio and CDs, going to musicals, and actively participating in other groups. I was in the marching band all four years of high school, along with on the lighting and stage crew for the theater department. My times as filled with other activities as well. Marching season was from the end of August until end of October, then Pep Band with all of basketball season, wrapping out the school year with concerts and the spring musical. Even before high school, there was middle school band. When I wasn’t in band or theater, I was in Girl Scouts camping one weekend every month and a week in the summers.

There really was not much time to watch movies when they came out, and eventually there was no desire to buy a copy for home. Hollywood Video and Blockbuster also went out of business, and there was next to no desire for my parents to sign up for Netflix. To this day, they still do not like streaming services. If they are going to watch something, it will be a short video on Youtube at the most.

When we did watch movies, the rules about what was acceptable were very… arbitrary. Like there are the standard rating systems (G, PG, PG-13, R) but those really did not factor into what I was allowed to watch. The BEST example of this: when Lord of the Rings came out, I was allowed to watch it no problem but when The Amazing Spider-man came out (the first one with Toby Maguire) that was too violent. I was not allowed to watch the animated Anastasia movie. If my parents were not particularly interested in watching the movie, generally speaking it would not be seen. This left a rather large gap in my movie and actor recognition.

Enter this project, to watch as many of the movies as I can. The list of movies seems to be growing every day, and I can only hope to one day watch all the “important” ones. Benchmark movies it seems everyone has seen, like The Notebook, Brokeback Mountain, Expendable, Dude Where’s My Car, and so many many others.

Thank you for joining me on this adventure!