Reel Life

I wish that a could start this list off with a more exciting viewing, but we're left with one that's pretty middle-of-the-road. It would've been in early 2010, it's in one of my 2010 movie journal lists, and, like damn near all the movies I watch, it was in the very early morning, the 2:00 A.M. to 6:00 A.M. range. It's a solid movie that didn't fully hook me, though, considering it's been nearly six(!) years since I saw it, I should probably give it another shot.

I had seen bits and pieces of Deep Impact on television over the years, but didn't watch it fully uncut until October of 2009 (though to be perfectly honest, I may have watched it all the way through at some point on T.V. but, if so, I don't really remember doing so). I had bought the movie earlier that Summer at a Flea Market in Myrtle Beach on VHS. I know the medium is pretty outdated but, if you can find them, VHS is so damn cheap that you can buy a dozen without even breaking the bank and the video quality usually isn't too bad, especially with more recent flicks. The viewing would've been, as mentioned above, very early/late and, in this case, on a Saturday night-Sunday morning. I remember it just being "okay", but not as entertaining as the arguably worse, similarly themed movie Armageddon.


In October of 2009, six years ago as of this writing, I would've just been starting high school. One of the many things I miss about my time in high school was the meaning it gave to the weekends. After five straight days of pure slog (though admittedly, I was a frequent school-skipper throughout my adolescence, but more on that later) it really meant a lot to have those two days off (two and a half if you count Friday nights). Today I'm only in college classes three days a week, and have plenty of time off and, while still vital to making it through the week, the weekends have never been the same.

I few would've seen this movie probably around the time it came out on DVD, or maybe even VHS. This would've put me in the 10-11 year-old range, further signifying, as you'll see throughout these lists, that my parents didn't seem to give a damn about the mental ramifications a hard-r sex-comedy might have on a child's mind; a neglect that I am genuinely thankful for everyday. As for the movie; it was pretty obvious, even at that young age, that this isn't a very good movie, or even a good movie at all. Sure, there are a couple of laughs, but dressing up every teen-sex-comedy ever as a European road trip flick doesn't make it fresh (though I highly doubt that they were going for "fresh" here).


It was likely rented, because I sure as hell don't own it, at the old video store that was maybe five minutes away from my house. With me damn near being a movie addict, I was in there probably every other day. Half the time I wouldn't really rent anything, I'd just walk around, likely annoying the people behind the counter. It closed down in either 2006 or 2007, I'm leaning towards '07, and it, unsurprisingly, hit me rather hard.

I think I saw this the Saturday after it went into wide release, January 21st, 2012. It was a fairly average January day, cold and cloudy with a certain innocent charm about it. I decided to go see this because 1) I was curious about the backlash it got after getting into the Best Picture race, and 2) I had no interest in seeing the fourth Underworld movie. The other members of my group did however, so we split up, and I saw this while they saw that. After seeing it, I get the backlash. I didn't hate the movie like a lot of people, but it's total awards bait, and there were several better movies out in 2011.

Michael Clayton is one of the many films from the 2007-08 period where I don't really remember much about my initial viewings. It was a period in time where I had convinced myself that I was meant to be a basketball player, even though I lacked coordination, athleticism, fitness, etc, and wrapped myself in sports. After about a year or so, in the Summer of 2008, I finally came back to movies, where my heart truly lie. The details as to my first viewing of this film are pretty slim. I'm fairly certain that it was in the afternoon, and it was in my room. With those details, I'm operating under the assumption that it was sometime in Summer '08, though it could've been a sick day from school in the spring or fall. I highly doubt that it was after school one afternoon, because there were few school days where I didn't come home and pass out.


It was one of those movies that, before I did so, I could just never get around to watching. I probably checked it out from the library ten or more times before finally popping it in. Now, you may be asking why a, then, 14-year-old boy would continually rent a dour, highly adult legal thriller about a down on his luck fixer in over his head. If you are, there's no real answer and pace yourself because these oddities will be common here. As for my response, I think that I was just too young to fully appreciate the film. Over the years, my appraisal of the film has grown through subsequent viewings.

I genuinely can't remember much about seeing this movie, which is pretty rare. It has to be a pretty bland movie for me to forget even watching it. I know that I rewatched it a couple of years ago, but I still don't really remember it.Moving on...

I saw this when it opened on April 16th, 2004 at the old Wheelersburg Cinema (I say old because back then it was under different management, and it was much more packed than it usually is today). I remember being extremely excited for this, mainly because I was at an age (10) where any Marvel movie stirred up a feverish amount of anticipation. I think I actually liked it when I first saw it, but may reaction has soured in recent years (being totally honest, it's probably been seven or eight years since I last saw it uncut). Still, this is definitely a time capsule movie for me; 2004 was around the time that I genuinely fell in love with cinema. That love will likely be a topic discussed with another, better movie in the future.

This was an average Sunday afternoon viewing, though stormier than usual. As for the movie, it's okay, but way too saccharine.

This is one, I'm pretty sure, I first saw at high school. I likely would've been a sophomore, which would've been late 2009, early 2010 for anyone curios about my age, watching it in my film history class. We likely would've watched this early on, when we were looking at "classic" cinema. The class itself was a bit up and down; most of the time the assistant teacher would take the class way too seriously, treating every little thing like a life or death situation (or in this case, life or detention) but, every now and again it would be pretty fun, like our final exam. We adapted a few pages, about ten or so, of a book into a screenplay.


Most of the class chose some Y/A novels, and a few took some franchise novels (Star Wars, Halo, etc.) I chose the book After the Bomb by Gloria D. Miklowitz, about a boy who had to save his family after a nuclear attack in 1980s America. Truth be told, I didn't even really read the book. I just took a couple of pages from the beginning and ran with it. Not to tout myself, but I got one of the better grades in the class. As for the movie, it was very good but I really don't remember much of it. I should give a rewatch. Hell, I should've given it a rewatch then, but I hadn't realized that it was one of the VHS tapes that my family inherited when my grandmother moved in, but more on that one later.


Like all aspects of youth, there's always a bittersweet feeling that comes over me when I think of this class. Overall, it was one of the few classes from my high school days that I genuinely enjoyed and looked forward to. One of my biggest regrets from my high school years though, was that I never was able to print out a copy of that script I wrote. Whether I forget to, or I did and just lost the copy, it's a moment in my life that is simply lost to time, one that I genuinely wish to get back.

Until I looked at my movie journals, I was operating under the assumption that I had first seen this in the fall of '09, when I had actually seen it in February of 2010. Something about that day gave it a feeling of a mid-to-late fall day. That doesn't really change anything here, but occasionally a small detail helps the readers' understanding. This ended up being one the several films I watched directly after coming home from a day of school, and subsequently fell asleep during. I ended up finishing it around 11:00 P.M.. That's really all I've got for that day, as I'm drawing on any other details. I ended up buying the movie later that year at the now defunct video store Movie Gallery and have yet to watch it again. Maybe someday.