Watching Movies

Kishore (March 2002)

In my article 1 Year in US I have mentioned the fact that we watched lot of movies in one year. 

My movie watching preferences are:

 

1. Movie should be entertaining

2. There should be a message in the movie

3. It should not exhaust you emotionally

4. You should be happy at the end of movie (don't become a pessimistic but become an optimist)

 

Psychology of watching movie: Long time back I remember reading an article by director Mahesh Bhatt in "The Screen" magazine: "People  like to identify themselves with the actors and events in movies. A person enjoys the movie and experiences the emotions as if he is living those things.". I felt this is true.

 

The movies we enjoy reflect our 'emotional state' at the moment. Sometimes you will not be able to appreciate a movie which someone enjoys a lot because of this difference in emotional state. We generally enjoy watching heroic movies because the hero is doing things we would like to do. Many times we wish things in movies can happen to us also in real life. If you think back and analyze all the good movies you liked then you will understand this simple fact. 

 

If I rent a movie which does not suit my taste I just switch it off. This article will give a brief summary of movies I watched and what categories I watch. 

 

I watched mostly comedy, family, animation movies with occasional special interest movies

 

Category 1 - Animation:  Animation movies by Disney became my favorites. I started renting these movies for my daughter and soon they became my favorites too. I have watched lot of Disney movies. It is fun to watch these movies with family.

 

Category 2 Action + Comedy: I liked action and comedy movies. Jackie Chan movies fall into this category. Once I never watched his movies because I thought they are 'martial arts' movies like Bruce Lee. But his movies are action with comedy. I liked watching them

 

Category 3 - Family Movies: These are movies that you can watch with family. I consider movies which inspire and encourage us to lead happy life and movies that contain a message as family movies. Movies with lot of violence and emotional scenes (negative) do not fall into this category. 

 

Category 4: Special interest: There are lot of movies I wanted to watch long time back but now I had access to them. They are some special interest movies that included: BenHur, Ten commandments, Guns of Navarone, Sound of Music, Driving miss Daisy etc. Most of such movies are Oscar winning movies. 

 

Category 5: Indian Movies: We also watched lot of Indian movies Hindi and Telugu. We tried to avoid movies which are not good to my taste. If by mistake we rent such movies, my wife ends up watching them alone while I am at work. Some of the movies we watched are repeats but still it was OK.

Following is a list of movies I would recommend you to watch if you have already not watched. I plan to write some detailed movie reviews on some of them when I get time and link them to this page. I have added links wherever I have already reviewed the movie. Click the link to read more. 

(I will continue to add/update this page in future)

List of Movies  (last updated March 2007)

English Movies