I love movies and everything about them: the plot, the acting, the dialogue and the underlying themes; even the most subtle nuances of a facial expression on the big screen simply speak to me in a way no other artistic outlet has ever spoken.  Not only do I love movies, but I also take my movie-watching experience rather seriously.

My silver screen obsession is an inherited trait.  My dad’s wall-to-wall collection of thousands of films made me a born-and-raised movie buff.  This shared passion has also provoked many 3 a.m. father-daughter movie binges.  However, the plot twists and riveting characters are not the only things that affect me on these occasions. Under the blanket of night, I have also heard the wisest advice.

I do not usually cry in movies.  However, one of the few movies after which I specifically remember crying is Primal Fear, simply because its melancholy life lesson affected me so deeply (I will not give away the details – I believe that spoiling a movie negates the significance of the message it is trying to convey).  For me, movies like Primal Fear cause realizations about life and the nature of people and introspection with surprising results.  And even when movies are not so philosophical, they many times leave me with various morsels of information that have been quite helpful in numerous situations.

In my childhood, I was chastised for spending my time with characters on a screen, but I now say, without any hesitations or shame, that a vast portion of my knowledge derives movies.  This knowledge has generated unexpectedly high test scores, stimulating conversations, favorable outcomes from compromising situations and a generally more logical, rounded view on life.  Some may say that movies present one with a warped sense of reality, but with countless opposing combinations such as Chinatown’s pessimistic cynicism and Super 8’s childlike fantasy, the exaggerations of individual movies seem to balance out when their influences are lumped together in my mind.

The more I experience, the more I will learn and take my own advice.  But, as much as I regret to admit, I am young and inexperienced, so learning lessons from movies does me no harm.  In fact, the little personal experience that I do have has proven that my philosophies evolved from movies actually do me a world of good.