Happy endings only happen in the movies: 143 Reasons to Love Film

I've always loved films, and where many people can define periods of their life by the sort of music they were listening to at the time, my life is broken into films. Watching Ghostbusters instantly transports me to around the age of five, whereas The Jungle Book and Tron will forever be linked in my mind because they were both taped off the telly on the same video, circa 1989. Gremlins fills me with the same sense of giddy, naughty joy that it did when I was seven. Later, The Matrix defined my adolescence, and as philosophically simplistic as that film may seem now, it was in many ways an instrumental part of my formative years. High Fidelity has become a great friend when loneliness and heartache have set in, and despite never having watched it with them, It's a Wonderful Life reminds me of my grandparents. It's my birthday at the end of this month, so dear reader, I hope you'll forgive me whilst I indulge myself with a lengthy, sentimental and rambling list of some the reasons that I love films, in a format that I have stolen wholesale from here. Enjoy:

I love films because it just popped in there.

Because I'm fuzzy on the whole good / bad thing.

Because after nineteen films, the shark still looks fake.

Because Back to the Future: Part III ends on the day that I was born.

Because it can shoot the fleas off a dog's back at three hundred yards, and it's pointed straight at your head.

Because the original title of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly was The Two Magnificent Tramps. 

Because you're the son of a thousand whores.

Because this coffee is good, like my mother used to make it. Hot, and strong, and good.

Because you can talk, but can you play?


Because of Rocky.

Because Rocky IV is the most successful sports film ever made.

Because the training montage in Rocky Balboa elicited spontaneous unanimous applause from the cinema audience when I saw it with a friend.

Because Rocky III is the one of the funniest films I've ever seen, and openly laughing at it once got me in loads of trouble with someone.


Because when I slap you you'll take it and like it.

Because it's the stuff dreams are made of.

Because even Raymond Chandler didn't know who the killer was.

Because every one of you listening to my voice, tell the world, tell this to everybody where ever they are: watch the skies! Keep looking! Keep watching the skies!

Because It's Alive!


Because I hate being right all the time.

Because it wasn't the planes that did it. It was beauty killed the beast.

Because it's not the years, honey, it's the mileage.

Because it's too bad she won't live. But then again, who does?

Because she was giving me a look I could feel in my hip pocket.

Because Harry Callahan doesn't break cases, he smashes them.

Because of Harry Callahan's silhouette on the bridge.

Because of Indiana Jones' silhouette in the doorway of Marianne's bar.

Because of Batman's silhouette anywhere.

Because I'm Batman.

Because I'm Spiderman.

Because I believe in Harvey Dent.

Because the Joker won.

Because some days you just can't get rid of a bomb.

Because of smiling at the camera.

Because of John Williams.


Because of silence.

Because of chiaroscuro.

Because of the cuckoo clock.

Because of technicolour.

Because of Alfred Hitchcock.

Because of dream sequences.

Because of the Coen Brothers

Because this isn't 'Nam dude, this is bowling. There are rules.

Because it's y'know, for kids.

Because of Frank Capra.

Because only people of a certain disposition worry about dying alone at the age of twenty six. We were of that disposition.

Because no man is a failure who has friends.


Because I believe in America.

Because America isn't a country: it's a business. Now fucking pay me.

Because of a closing door.

Because ever since I can remember I've wanted to be a gangster.

Because we ran everything. We paid off cops, we paid off lawyers, we paid off judges. Everybody had their hands out. Everything was for the taking. And now it's all over. And that's the hardest part. Today everything is different, there's no action; I have to wait around like everyone else. Can't even get decent food. Right after I got here, I ordered some spaghetti with marinara sauce, and I got egg noodles and ketchup. I'm an average nobody; I get to live the rest of my life like a schnook.


Because of Martin Scorsese.

Because of Steven Spielberg.

Because of Sergio Leone.

Because of John Carpenter.

Because of Richard Marquand.

Because Luke almost loses it.

Because of Irvin Kershner.

Because I know.

Because of George Lucas before he lost it.

Because of Howard Hawks.

Because of John Ford.

Because of David Lean.


Because they're coming to get you, Barbara.

Because of Hollywood in the 1970s.

Because of Warner Brothers studios in the 1930s and 40s.

Because of the Universal Horror cycle in the 1930s and 40s.

Because of James Whale.

Because of Boris Karloff.

Because of Bela Lugosi.

Because I never drink wine.

Because of Hammer studios.

Because Dracula is Dead and Well and Living in London.

Because I'm twelve, more or less.

Because of Sean Connery.

Because of George Lazenby.

Because Nobody Does it Better.

Because of Matt Damon.

Because of Paul Greengrass.

Because of Daniel Craig.

Because of Michael Fassbender.


Because of Bill Murray's smirk.

Because of Paul Newman's eyes.

Because of Lauren Bacall's voice.

Because of James Stewart's voice.

Because of Al Pacino's loud voice.

Because Robert De Niro doesn't need a loud voice.

Because of Jack Nicholson's mischief.

Because of James Cagney's delivery.

Because of Anne Bancroft's smoulder.

Because of Bruce Lee's discipline.

Because of Humphrey Bogart.


Because of Disney.

Because of the Disney renaissance.

Because of Ghibli.

Because of Pixar.

Because authority should derive from the consent of the governed, not from the threat of force.

Because of holding hands with no dialogue.


Because of 28 Weeks Later.

Because of Let the Right One In.

Because of The Secrets in their Eyes.

Because of The Artist.

Because of Changeling.


Because of Dumbo.

Because of pink elephants.

Because of Tron.

Because Tron still looks amazing.

Because of The Jungle Book.

Because of the bare necessities.

Because of Pete's Dragon.

Because of Raggedy Ann and Andy.

Because of The Land Before Time.

Because of trying never to hate a movie, even Paul WS Anderson ones.

Because I still hate Lord of the Rings out of all reasonable proportion.

Because if you don't like Back to The Future, you probably don't like films.

Because of the Bechdel Test.

Because of the Hays Code.

Because of Great American Cinema.

Because of British films.

Because of forgetting that you're reading subtitles.

Because it's worth paying to see re-releases even though I've got the DVD at home.



Because of a beautiful friendship.

Because of stuff that she likes.

Because I agree with the second part.

Because I'm on top of the world, ma!

Because the world is yours.

Because James Bond will return.

Because Optimus Prime will return.

Because of The End...?

Because life moves pretty fast.

Because of smuggling in Pick and Mix.

Because of Pearl & Dean.

Because of turning my phone off.

Because of the trailers.

Because of the BBFC certificate.

Because of the lights going down.

Because of the curtains going back.

Because of feeling weird when it's still daylight outside.


Because of going when I'm on holiday.

Because of going with people.

Because of going by myself.

Because being a Ghostbuster still seems like the coolest job in the world.

I could probably go on, but you get the idea.

Organise! The Story of One Man's Obsessive Journey through Film

The organisation of one's media collection of choice is a tricky business, particularly for the obsessive individual. After one's film collection reaches a certain size, the organisation of DVDs (or Blu-rays) seems necessary in order to keep track of all the delightful goodies that have accumulated over the years. This also applies to a music collection, an obsession no better commented on than in Stephen Frears' High Fidelity (currently occupying space number 213 on my DVD shelf), in which Rob, the owner of a record store, rearranges his music collection in autobiographical order as a way of recovering from a nasty break up. I can personally recommend re-ordering your stuff in this way as a glorious tonic for all sorts of crises. Curiously, I have never encountered anyone who organises their book collection as obsessively as Rob does with his records, or I do with my films. Perhaps it has something to do with the relative newness of the medium of film, or the primacy of film and pop music over literature as the dominant cultural outputs in modern society.

As High Fidelity's Rob would certainly attest, at one point or another the obvious and frankly amateurish alphabetical method of DVD organisation will simply no longer cut the mustard for the obsessive collector, and a more obscure method of organisation must be adopted. For example, one associate of mine  asserts that organising films by studio is the way to go. Certainly, not only is it aesthetically pleasing to see all the little 'Warner Bros.' and '20th Century Fox' logos all lined up together, but also, you get a sense of the kinds of films that those studios produce. For the film obsessive, this is a fine way to organise your movies. However, it is not quite sufficient. Nor is organising by director, actor, or other single creative entity, as the titular alphabetic pandemonium ensuing from placing Raising Arizona (written and directed by the Coen brothers) before The Birds (directed by Alfred Hitchcock), is simply not an acceptable aesthetic proposition. Even worse, the logical conclusion of such a filing system would mean splitting up film series that were not always made by the same people, for example, Alien (directed by Ridley Scott) and Aliens, (directed by James Cameron) or Superman: The Movie (Richard Donner) and Superman II (Richard Lester). No, no, no, this aesthetic violence will not stand.

My solution, therefore, is to return to the classic alphabetical system (by title), but cross-referenced by director, cross-referenced by franchise, cross-referenced by studio, and if I'm feeling particularly sexy, cross-referenced by producer. Or, to put it less like a madman, my DVDs are allowed to sit in eye-pleasing alphabetical order but only on the strict condition that they take into account the main creative force or forces behind the film. No, wait, that still sounds mad. Right, listen: we start with letter 'A', so The African Queen might come first. But then we look at the director, which in this case is John Huston, so he gets to have his films The Maltese Falcon and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre next. They still nestle happily under 'A', like disc-shaped cuckoos fooling their surrogate mother alphabet, whilst simultaneously satisfying their own urge to cluster with their directorial kin. So now we've put Huston together, we can move on to the next film in alphabetical order, let's say Alien. This is followed by Aliens, even though they were made by different directors, because splitting up a franchise would be fucking mental. When the franchise is complete, then, and only then, do we return to the director, so we now get Blade Runner (Scott), and then The Terminator (Cameron). Are you following me? Excellent, then I'll continue.

Usually, a director is the main creative force behind a film, directing, as you might expect, most of the major decisions that are made during the film-making process. However, sometimes other entities, like writers, producers or even studios are as, if not more important. A good example of this would be the Disney studio. Films made by Disney are one of the most recognisable, and iconic, types of movie in the world, transcending the usual distinctions of genre, director or actor to become, simply a 'Disney Film'. Off the top of my head, I can't think of a single director or writer from any of the myriad Disney films I've seen, but we all have a clear understanding of what a Disney film is. In my catalogue de films triomphante, it makes far more sense to group Disney films together and more or less disregard their directors. This leads to other, lovely little crossroads where creative auteurship is not so clean-cut, like the spate of gangster films that Warner Bros. produced in the 1930s, or the classic Universal horror pictures such as Dracula, starring Bela Lugosi, and Frankenstein, starring Boris Karloff and directed by the legendary James Whale. These groups are fascinating (no honestly, they really are) because, while they belong to the horror and gangster canons that Universal and Warner Bros. studios fostered, they also belong to the separate, but contiguous, canons of their directors, writers and stars, not to mention the stylistic canons of their historical periods. It's good to be a bit obsessive about how you organise your movies (and music and books, for that matter) because when you are all these little connections are forced to surface. They pull at each other and fight for dominance. They all demand attention like two interminable, simultaneous itches, and it's essentially impossible to satisfy the demands of each. What is particularly fascinating about films is that the creative process is such a collaborative effort, perhaps more so than in any other artistic medium. Organising your films properly is a way of revealing that lovely big, aesthetically pleasing, cacophony of order. The process exhumes the collaborative, thematic and historical links that tie films together in a great big, interconnected spiderweb of cinema. Plus, it's an evening, ain't it?