I hate watching a movie that I don’t know the ending to. Before I sit down to watch any film, I look up the details of the plot. I find that the once I know exactly what is about to happen, I can watch from a critical standpoint. For me, watching a movie is not about the twists and turns of the plot, but instead about the way the film was made. The way the director chooses to shoot a scene, the way the actor decides to deliver their lines, and especially the movie reviews after its release interest me. For some people, music helps them through rough patches. They find the lyrics relate to their life, and listening to their favorite song can make them instantly feel better. While I have never found that kind of comfort in a song, I have found it in the movies.

Freshman year of high school, my step mother discovered Netflix. Initially, she and my dad rented popular movies for us to watch every other weekend. After they burned through all the appealing, well-known titles, they began to rent indie movies that seemed to have interesting plots. One weekend, they rented the movie Brick, an indie movie about the murder of a high school girl, and her ex-boyfriend’s journey to find out who killed her. I complained that I wouldn’t enjoy watching it, but we did anyways. After the first scene, I was proved wrong. The movie opens with a shot of the ex-boyfriend finding the girl’s body in a puddle under a bridge. Instead of focusing on the body, as most movies do, the shot cut between and image of her hand, and the pained expression in the main character’s eyes. The unconventional style of the movie was instantly obvious, and I loved it.

I have always loved rainy days, and the choices the director, Rian Johnson decided to make emulated the feel of a rainy day for the entire movie. The images were dark and dreary, using gray heavily and shots that seemed almost clouded. They were paired often with no dialogue, with a soft and repetitive melody playing in the background. When words were spoken, they were fast, smooth, and eloquent. At points, the words hard to follow, but it only made me more intrigued. The story presented a lot of twists and turns, and I found myself anxious to know how the movie would end. So, I opened my laptop and looked it up. After that, I found myself enjoying the movie even more. I wasn’t focusing on trying to figure out the mystery, instead I was watching camera angles, and appreciating the details I wouldn’t have noticed if my attention was on the roller coaster of a plot. After that, I was hooked.

By watching movies in this new way, I found myself forming very strong opinions about them. I loved analyzing the film so much, that I would often voice my opinions while it played. That quickly drove everyone who watched with me nuts, and I was banned from talking until the movie finished. So instead I would make mental notes, and share them with everyone the second it was done. I would also do my research; I would spend the next couple hours reading reviews, learning about the director, the production, etc. So, naturally, when I found an outlet to talk about my opinions endlessly without blank stares and an uninterested audience I was thrilled.

I found that in writing movie reviews. My junior year I took a journalism class, one of our assignments was to write one. I usually didn’t enjoy writing, but writing about a movie was so natural. It was just venting all of the thoughts that I had while watching, mixed with snarky comments, and the research I did on movies anyways. I poured all of my energy into making it absolutely perfect, and was ecstatic when my teacher read it aloud to the class as an example of a job well done, ran it in the school newspaper. From there, my love of movies only grew, and expanded into the passion I have today.

Today, I have to have my phone near me at all times, always to look up movie facts. Even if I am not watching a movie, I often quote them in everyday conversation. If I see something that reminds me of a film, it is more often than not accompanied by a question that I must immediately know the answer to. For example, my train of thought is often “Oh, that guy I just walked by is wearing a bright pink shirt. What’s that movie where the guy only wears pink? I need to Google that.” I would say that not a day goes by where I don’t strive to learn more about movies. I hope to continue with the desire I have, and find more ways to express my thoughts about them. Who knows, maybe one day I’ll find myself making a movie that inspires someone else to learn all they can about it.