I like watching movies more than once. Mind you, not all movies are worthy of repeatedly spending a few hours in their company, but there are some that I usually end up buying and watching once a year or so. While 'on vacation' at mor's, we watched a couple of older favorites that both sent me wandering down memory lane.
The Hunt for Red October
. What's not to like? It's got a young, very hot Alec Baldwin and an even hotter Sean Connery (what is it with that man? Every woman I know, regardless of age, would happily... erm... 'spend an evening in his company') and a nailbiter of a plot that gets me every single time. After watching this movie more times that I can remember, I know exactly what's going to happen, can even quote certain lines of dialogue, yet it keeps me on the edge of my seat, happily worrying about the outcome until the end. The first time I saw this movie was on a first date with a man I was quite infatuated with - I remember being incredibly aware of his presence in the chair next me and I'm sure the adrenaline flowing from the action on screen didn't help matters one bit. This was the man who started my tendency to bestow nicknames on my boyfriends/lovers/partners (still struggling to find a good word for that). This one, I called The Minimalist, from his remarkable ability to be content with very little, to the point of not doing anything much. Not surprisingly, we didn’t last long.
The Silence of the Lambs. Jodie Foster is fabulous, Anthony Hopkins is even more fabulous - his performance is beyond chilling, even the 11th time you watch the movie - and that scene at the end with the nightvision goggles freaks me out even though I know how it ends. The movie unnerves me on my tiny TV and it was even more unnerving on my mother’s 37” screen. I first saw this in the early 90’s, when my friend Andrew and I would haunt the local movie theatres a couple of times a month. We very much wanted to see this movie and choose the first week of its release and the late show. When we were lining up in front of the theatre, we talked about how we wanted to listen in on people's conversations as they came out, as that always gives you a good sense of how the movie is. When the movie ended, the doors opened and an entire theatre full of people came out, pale and silent. I remember the moment where we looked at each other, completely puzzled, never having experienced something like this before. Then we went in and spent the next two hours desperately clutching each other's hands, when we weren't fighting about who got to hide behind the other’s back in an attempt to turn down the tension. I still remember the awful flash of the scene with the cop on the cage (you know the one I mean). And then we left the theatre, pale and silent and utterly terrified. The dark of the night and the empty parking lot convinced us to never again choose the late show unless we were watching a comedy.
What’s on your movie memory lane? And what do you call a boyfriend once you've grown out of your teens?
p.s. I finally got off my arse and joined the Amazon Associates, except I'm apparently too much of a Techno Twit to figure out how to build a bleedin' link. Anyone out there willing to take me through it, slowly? Correction: I don't mean in Blogger - I can't figure out the proper code to use from Amazon.
p.p.s. Thanks to Stephanie and Diane for helping the Techno Twit figure things out.
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