This is my favorite part of the movie

the inflection point of the story, the false high before it truly bottoms out

the narrow depth of field, the tight framing, the backlighting, the music

it makes me want to get serious about photography again, to be creative about how I record things, and to have something, somebody to record.

For a few weeks now, my brother had been bugging me to see (500) Days of Summer. He was pretty insistent that I watch it, starting from my first big awkward talk with her, when I mentioned to him all the ways I felt confused and stupid and hurt in my relationship, and how I couldn’t ever seem to see eye to eye with her or understand her motives or feelings. “You have to watch this,” he’d tell me.

Is this going to make me want to break up with her? I asked. “No,” he assured me. “Well, maybe. Probably no, though. It’s a good movie. You should watch it.”

Later, I came to find that after seeing it, his girlfriend of two years broke up with him, rather out of the blue. He found it ironic that seeing this movie, which he had sent me as a hedge against things going south in my tentative, difficult relationship, such that I would be okay if it ended, might have have precipitated the end of his own, long-term, stable one. Suddenly, things instantly were flipped, and my problems seemed trite and stupid compared to his.

After a particularly shitty argument last night, the first truly cold day of the year, I stayed home in bed all day, feeling depressed and sorry for myself and worried at what would happen next. I watched this movie from beginning to end, and then in a burst of energy, wrote the post that immediately predates this one. Then my own relationship ended, later that night. Strangely enough, however, though I am absolutely crushed and sad and depressed and haven’t eaten or slept in a very long time, I’m not angry or bitter. Those aren’t feelings I’ve ever had for her, or about her.

And Nick was right: the movie did help. It helped a lot.

WALL-E – It is difficult to overstate how much I absolutely love this movie, and how awesome EVE is.

Up – You can count the number of movies I’ve seen with an Asian-American playing a legitimate, not-strictly-for-laughs lead role on one hand. Up is one of them. The montage tracing Ellie and Carl’s relationship is amazingly well done. And there are talking dogs! “I have just met you, and I love you.”

Ratatouille – I can recite from memory the entirety of Anton Ego’s climactic monologue. This movie made me want to be a better cook, and to make better food.

Toy Story 2 – The sequence in which Jessie tells the story of how she was abandoned by her previous owner gets me every time, seriously. One of the most moving scenes I’ve ever watched.

Monsters, Inc. – The last 30 seconds: perfect.

The Incredibles – Great story, excellent execution, love the retro-future touches throughout. A little put off by the Randian overtones, which I hadn’t noticed until somebody pointed them out to me afterwards.

Finding Nemo – Saw it with a girl I really liked at the time. She enjoyed the movie much more than I did.

Cars – The celebrity cameos were kinda cool, I guess.

A Bugs Life – ¡Three Amigos!, but with Ants.

One day, some fifteen years from now, Thomas will watch a semi-obscure movie from when his totally uncool parents were young, and he’ll finally understand where that one random thing he used to say over and over for no reason actually came from. And he’ll be baffled why his parents thought it was so funny.

When I first saw 2001 at age 11 or so, the Blue Danube spaceship docking sequence was boring and overly drawn out. I had no idea why Kubrick picked this particular song, and why there weren’t laser beams, TIE fighters, explosions or other displays of interstellar warfare. 10 minutes of a ship approaching a space station and docking. Lame.

When I saw it again at age 16, having learned about “motifs” and “themes” and “symbolism” from my AP English classes and having unwittingly turned into something of a Freudian (though I didn’t know enough to realize it at the time) this sequence was still boring and overly drawn out, but I took mild glee in pointing out that it was totally about sex. Granted, this was well before I had any firsthand knowledge of what sex was like, but from what little I learned in health class, I was convinced that this totally a sexual metaphor. But then again, I was pretty sure everything was a sexual metaphor of some kind, and that all symbolism and imagery had at their core sex as their basis. It made for some pretty interesting peer evaluations whenever I had to present my interpretations to the class.

When I watched this movie as a college student, I had another revelation: I was sure I sort of “got it”, or at least, I thought I did, how the interplay of sound and visuals cohered to make greater aesthetic statement. Sort of. The vaguely banal yet formal music highlighted how space travel was at the same time fantastic and commonplace within the context of the universe established within the story. Or something like that.

Now, a decent number of years and relationships later, I’ve come to accept that my 16-year-old know-nothing self might have been onto something, totally by accident, and that whatever other meanings might be secondarily distilled from the images (and my collegiate interpretation is, in retrospect, a load of complete horseshit) this sequence is primarily and overwhelmingly about sex, totally. A pointy ship slowly rotating and flying into a giant red rectanglar slot, set to the music of a naughty 19th century couples’ dance? Okay, I get it, Stanley, no need to be subtle here.