A tradition my husband and I started when our son hit his early teens was Sunday movie night. The magic was that we rotated who got to pick, and the other two weren’t allowed to complain. It gave us the chance to introduce movies we loved to each other and selfishly, we could force our old favorites on him--some of which he loved (“Ferris Bueller”), some of which did not at all hold up (“Blair Witch,” to which he rolled his eyes, “this would never happen now, we all have phones with maps on them”). He’s in college now but when he’s home, he still keeps track of whose turn it is!
Austin, my kids are all grown and gone now! We had movie nights, (sometimes starting at noon - lol) and they also grew up during the “Blockbuster Days”. I never kept a log but we did eat a lot of pizza, KFC, and Chinese food! Any Disney movie, as well as the Goonies, and my favorite, Apollo 13, were classics for us. They were also into cheap B type horror flicks. ( I am afraid about mentioning some of the films here, lol ). Today though, we have movie nights all the time - minus kid’s - and I am pretty sure I am going to pick a specific night and turn it into a pizza fest as well. At 67, I still love to watch Disney and the Toy Story series gets me all the time. I do believe that I am getting to vicariously live my life from those years again by the wonderful stories you share. It is no wonder why your creativity is such a shining light in the world...trust me, it shines bright Austin! Thank you for all of this, and thank you for creating this community for all of us to share your journey with you!
Really cool post, Austin. Thank you for sharing. I don’t currently have kids, but I do keep a movie log for myself. I started this a few years ago in part because I’m a young screenwriter and filmmaker who watches a bunch of movies, and just really wanted to start keeping track of it all on an analog tool like a dedicated notebook. In addition to my quick thoughts on the films themselves though, I also started adding where I saw it, who I saw it with, what they thought, and if there is a ticket stub, I tape it in there. As I move through my twenties, it’s almost served less as a learning/tracking tool for me as an artist, and more as a nice reminder of friends and romantic partners who have entered (and exited) my life, family members I shared movie moments with who are no longer here, and just all around, people and experiences that little by little shape my life in ways I don’t even realize until I flip back through it.
Something panned out beautifully for us was when my son got old enough to watch Jurassic Park. (He was dyslexic and didn’t like reading for fun.) The day after he watched it I handed him the book from my shelves and said simply, a lot more stuff happens in the book! After that, if it was a book based movie, he wanted it.
Wow! Thanks for this post that flooded me with memories! First of my own growing up with a mom who LOVED movies ( she’s in her 80’s now ) She would let me wake up in the middle of the night to watch one’s she loved and thought I would too - Sabrina with Audrey Hepburn is top of mind. Then with my own daughter (who is 36 now) who I could wait to watch certain movies with her-Goonies, The Sand Lot, Bad News Bears & then later on Sixteen Candles-Breakfast Club-My favorite memory has to be taking a personal day from work - letting my daughter be absent from school and taking her to see The Secret of Roan Inish a John Sayles movie.. she was probably 8... I was a young mom so no thought to how appropriate it was.. thanks so much for jogging my memory!!!
Honey, I Shrunk the Kids was a big hit with my eight and ten year old. They also loved the original Jumanji movie (and we watched Flubber, Hook and Mrs. Doubtfire, so they think Robin Williams is awesome and in every single movie from the 90s!)
This blows me away, that you started keeping logs of your life as early as 9 years old - and have continued to share your top 10 weekly inspirations since then, it seems. You have certainly followed your calling in continuing to track and share the things that light you up in life. Kudos Austin. I hope to meet you some day.
Movie-watching was, and still is, a big event for our family. Our kids have carried forward their interest in and joy of critiquing films, but the first things we all connected over in a major way was a TV series. We did a marathon of the old "Adventures of Superman" over a Thanksgiving break one year and had loads of fun with it. The kids were old enough to notice the very cheesy special effects, but young enough to really enjoy them. A few years later, we all got into "Avatar: The Last Airbender," a show which I'm pretty sure has completely informed my 22 yr old son's sense of morality. :-) If we're all together shooting the breeze, there is a 99% chance that show will get referenced at some point in the conversation.
My all time fav was Babe, but I loved anything with talking animals (real not animated). I seem to remember something called 'Chihuahuas of Beverly Hills'! Boys are now 19 and 17 but I might make them rewatch Babe on my birthday.
I have a hard time watching movies (videos, shows...). Watching stress me. I discovered that I can watch about 20 minutes and then take a very long break before continuing.
Some anime to watch in Japanese with English subtitles!:
Your Name (dir. Makoto Shinkai)
In This Corner of the World (Sunao Katabuchi)
Giovanni’s Island (Mizuho Nishikubo)
Violet Evergarden (Taichi Ishidate)
I can’t say, though, whether other people will like them, let alone a particular subset like a family or children or particular children. I wouldn’t recommend trying them with younger kids without seeing them yourself.
I could only find an English subtitle for it and my parents couldn't read in English, so I was translating pretty much line by line for them throughout the two-hour movie. By the end I was exhausted, but what I remember the most was how much they enjoyed the film as it reminds them of their childhood :)
Studying Japanese right now so that I can watch it again in the future in the original language!
I still have the huge drawings my grandsons made telling the stories of these wonderful stories. Of course, there are some pretty dark and scary images but if your kids like that stuff, its such a yummy set of movies (and books to re-read too).
A tradition my husband and I started when our son hit his early teens was Sunday movie night. The magic was that we rotated who got to pick, and the other two weren’t allowed to complain. It gave us the chance to introduce movies we loved to each other and selfishly, we could force our old favorites on him--some of which he loved (“Ferris Bueller”), some of which did not at all hold up (“Blair Witch,” to which he rolled his eyes, “this would never happen now, we all have phones with maps on them”). He’s in college now but when he’s home, he still keeps track of whose turn it is!
Austin, my kids are all grown and gone now! We had movie nights, (sometimes starting at noon - lol) and they also grew up during the “Blockbuster Days”. I never kept a log but we did eat a lot of pizza, KFC, and Chinese food! Any Disney movie, as well as the Goonies, and my favorite, Apollo 13, were classics for us. They were also into cheap B type horror flicks. ( I am afraid about mentioning some of the films here, lol ). Today though, we have movie nights all the time - minus kid’s - and I am pretty sure I am going to pick a specific night and turn it into a pizza fest as well. At 67, I still love to watch Disney and the Toy Story series gets me all the time. I do believe that I am getting to vicariously live my life from those years again by the wonderful stories you share. It is no wonder why your creativity is such a shining light in the world...trust me, it shines bright Austin! Thank you for all of this, and thank you for creating this community for all of us to share your journey with you!
Really cool post, Austin. Thank you for sharing. I don’t currently have kids, but I do keep a movie log for myself. I started this a few years ago in part because I’m a young screenwriter and filmmaker who watches a bunch of movies, and just really wanted to start keeping track of it all on an analog tool like a dedicated notebook. In addition to my quick thoughts on the films themselves though, I also started adding where I saw it, who I saw it with, what they thought, and if there is a ticket stub, I tape it in there. As I move through my twenties, it’s almost served less as a learning/tracking tool for me as an artist, and more as a nice reminder of friends and romantic partners who have entered (and exited) my life, family members I shared movie moments with who are no longer here, and just all around, people and experiences that little by little shape my life in ways I don’t even realize until I flip back through it.
Something panned out beautifully for us was when my son got old enough to watch Jurassic Park. (He was dyslexic and didn’t like reading for fun.) The day after he watched it I handed him the book from my shelves and said simply, a lot more stuff happens in the book! After that, if it was a book based movie, he wanted it.
Wow! Thanks for this post that flooded me with memories! First of my own growing up with a mom who LOVED movies ( she’s in her 80’s now ) She would let me wake up in the middle of the night to watch one’s she loved and thought I would too - Sabrina with Audrey Hepburn is top of mind. Then with my own daughter (who is 36 now) who I could wait to watch certain movies with her-Goonies, The Sand Lot, Bad News Bears & then later on Sixteen Candles-Breakfast Club-My favorite memory has to be taking a personal day from work - letting my daughter be absent from school and taking her to see The Secret of Roan Inish a John Sayles movie.. she was probably 8... I was a young mom so no thought to how appropriate it was.. thanks so much for jogging my memory!!!
Honey, I Shrunk the Kids was a big hit with my eight and ten year old. They also loved the original Jumanji movie (and we watched Flubber, Hook and Mrs. Doubtfire, so they think Robin Williams is awesome and in every single movie from the 90s!)
This blows me away, that you started keeping logs of your life as early as 9 years old - and have continued to share your top 10 weekly inspirations since then, it seems. You have certainly followed your calling in continuing to track and share the things that light you up in life. Kudos Austin. I hope to meet you some day.
My family really loved:
(The Gene Wilder) Willy Wonka
Hoodwinked
The Incredibles
The Emperor’s New Groove
Shrek 2
The Princess Bride
Spy Kids (the first 3 movies)
And recently my husband and I had a stay home movie date:
“Stranger Than Fiction”
We both LOVED every scene of this film from 2006.
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
Whalerider
Movie-watching was, and still is, a big event for our family. Our kids have carried forward their interest in and joy of critiquing films, but the first things we all connected over in a major way was a TV series. We did a marathon of the old "Adventures of Superman" over a Thanksgiving break one year and had loads of fun with it. The kids were old enough to notice the very cheesy special effects, but young enough to really enjoy them. A few years later, we all got into "Avatar: The Last Airbender," a show which I'm pretty sure has completely informed my 22 yr old son's sense of morality. :-) If we're all together shooting the breeze, there is a 99% chance that show will get referenced at some point in the conversation.
My all time fav was Babe, but I loved anything with talking animals (real not animated). I seem to remember something called 'Chihuahuas of Beverly Hills'! Boys are now 19 and 17 but I might make them rewatch Babe on my birthday.
I have a hard time watching movies (videos, shows...). Watching stress me. I discovered that I can watch about 20 minutes and then take a very long break before continuing.
Some anime to watch in Japanese with English subtitles!:
Your Name (dir. Makoto Shinkai)
In This Corner of the World (Sunao Katabuchi)
Giovanni’s Island (Mizuho Nishikubo)
Violet Evergarden (Taichi Ishidate)
I can’t say, though, whether other people will like them, let alone a particular subset like a family or children or particular children. I wouldn’t recommend trying them with younger kids without seeing them yourself.
This reminds me of this one time (more than a decade ago) when I watched a Japanese movie with my parents. The movie is called "Always: Sunset on Third Street" (https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Always%3A+Sunset+on+Third+Street)
I could only find an English subtitle for it and my parents couldn't read in English, so I was translating pretty much line by line for them throughout the two-hour movie. By the end I was exhausted, but what I remember the most was how much they enjoyed the film as it reminds them of their childhood :)
Studying Japanese right now so that I can watch it again in the future in the original language!
A few recommendations for you to check out:
Paulie
Eight Below
Monsters, Inc.
The Incredible, Mr. Limpett
The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings Trilogy.
I still have the huge drawings my grandsons made telling the stories of these wonderful stories. Of course, there are some pretty dark and scary images but if your kids like that stuff, its such a yummy set of movies (and books to re-read too).
Hugo. The best. Beautiful and great story. Vastly underrated.