Fear and pedantry...and the movies

I've never been what you might call a 'film buff'.  Probably because I have an irritating "all or nothing" sort of personality which dictates that I must get involved in a film, or else it's a waste of time.  I'm the same with books, but books require a certain amount of commitment over a certain number of days, and sometimes weeks or even months.  You can't help getting involved on some level, even if the story's rubbish, and because you're acting it out in your own head you can make basic directorial changes and casting decisions yourself.  Films don't give you that sort of autonomy, and they only take a couple of hours out of your life, so they've got to mean something for the time spent to be at all worthwhile (I told you it was irritating!).

But it also might be because I grew up as the biggest scaredy-cat on the planet, and most films frightened the life out of me even if that wasn't its initial intention (the 'Care Bears Movie' for example).  Fear and pedantry have been major bugbears in my life so far anyway, but they're bloody awful traits to have when you're watching a film.  I have since apologised to my sisters, who had to grow up with me crying in cinemas at the first moment something vaguely scary or sad happened, like the opening scene of 'The Never Ending Story' in which a horse dies.  I couldn't cope with that and had to be led out of the cinema in tears, while my two younger sisters carried on quietly watching the film.  They had to reassure me that the horse came back to life at the end...to this day I still don't know if they were lying, as I still haven't seen the film!

It was the same with 'Ghostbusters'; the first bit with that ghost in the library gave me nightmares for months afterwards.  It still does now (I admit shamefully); and then there's 'Ghostbusters 2' with that terrifying painting, and the bit that freaked me out the most - all those ghostly passengers coming off the Titanic.  Horrible!

And then I got older, and the fear turned to pedantry.  I remember a school friend telling me the plot of 'Pretty Woman' when I was about eleven because I hadn't seen it; she told me about it in honeyed romantic tones but all I could think was "how could a film about a man paying a prostitute be at all romantic?" I'm almost ashamed to admit this, because 'Pretty Woman' is such a 'girls' night in' sort of film and it's only supposed to be a bit of fun, but I still do think that, and I hate the film.  I also hated 'Mamma Mia' with a blood-boiling passion; it was so stupefyingly awful I got up and left the cinema before it finished.  I'd gone with a group of friends so I sat outside eating peanut M&M's until they came out, breathlessly saying it was the best film they'd ever seen.

But there are some films and bits-of-films I like, and ironically they're not the best-written or the best-acted.  I grew up idolising Grace Kelly in 'High Society' (I've never wasted my time by wishing I looked like someone else as a rule, but Grace in her white 'swimming costume dress' in that film is my eternal exception).

And then there's my "most romantic bit of a film EVER"...that bit in 'Shall We Dance?' when Richard Gere's gliding up the escalator with a rose for Susan Sarandon (that made up for 'Pretty Woman'!)

All just personal taste at the end of the day, innit?