Movies I Love I am a big fan of streaming movies. Before they were available, I collected movie DVDs. When I stopped, I had about 1400 plus movies, some of which I recorded off of the television and some of which I bought. I found I could buy movies very cheaply if I went on to Ebay and bought them used. When I got the first ones delivered, I was surprised to see they were brand new and still in plastic and some of these I only paid $1.00 for. Apparently, movies from rental stores which were overstocked made it to the used category at the time. Other times the used DVDs were open but looked like new. I never got one that was in poor shape. My regular readers probably guessed one of my favorite movie types is science fiction. Star Trek ranks right up there with the best. There are all types of sub-categories in science fiction such as space travel, time travel, alien contact, alien attacks and others. I have noticed a recent trend in science fiction in two areas. One is in the time travel category and the other in the virus category. It seems movies just keep getting churned out in different ways in that virus category. Sometimes the virus causes people to turn into brain eating zombies after they die, something like the show The Walking Dead. Other times they are turned into alien creatures who either resemble humans or do not. Again, this usually leads to a lot of violence and death. The humans land up shooting them but they don’t stop until shot in the brain or stabbed there or even have their heads cut off. I have to say there is probably too many of these movies. So many were made, they seem to have flooded the category of science fiction. I watched a time travel movie the other day, where the absurdity was so bad even if we had time travel it seems impossible for the events predicted could ever happen. I don’t want to give the plot away so if you want to skip this paragraph I understand. Anyway, it was about a man who had both the sex organs of a woman and man but thought he was a woman and got pregnant which destroyed his female sex organs and science rebuilt his male ones. It seems when he was a man he went back in time and got himself pregnant when he was a woman, but even more confusing is the baby was really him. I do have to admit one thing, this was probably the most complicated time travel movie I ever saw. Even though I thought it was ridiculous, I had to watch it all the way through because it had the fascination factor. Time travel movies usually have the commonality of travel back or forth in time. Sometimes they are limited to a specific number of years and the travelers cannot go back before the invention of the time travel device. I really don’t see what difference travel before this time would make, since the device was already being used. There was a great story about time travel which allowed tourists to go back in time but they had to stay on a specific path. One stepped off and crushed a seed. That seed would have grown into a tree which bows, arrows and spears would have been made and since it never grew, wars were lost which would have been won and the future was changed. The machine still existed and try as they might, the operators could not get things back to what they were. I also like a good war movie. I have found some of the oldies are the best in my opinion, but there are some good newer ones. The Guns of Navarone is one of my favorites, Paths of Glory another. The Guns of Navarone is more of an adventure film with a group of men being sent out in World War II to destroy two huge naval type guns which the Germans were using to stop ships coming into a harbor. The Paths of Glory is more political but has its war moments. It shows the disregard for life in the French Army in World War One. One movie which is not new but newer, is Saving Private Ryan which is a great war movie. Recently Hacksaw Ridge was put online and is also a great movie. Not to forget the oldest one I am talking about is the Gary Cooper movie, Sergeant York. It is the true story of how one man captured hundreds of German soldiers in World War One. He became the most decorated soldier of that war. Sometimes a good mob movie comes out and the three which I think were the best were all the Godfather movies, Scarface and Good Fellows. The acting was incredible and gave you the feeling this was how thing really were in the mob world. Brando was at his finest in the Godfather and so was Al Pacino. Joe Pesci gave one of the greatest performances of all times in Good Fellows and certainly got across how dangerous his character was. Another category which seems to be losing steam is the western. I have always liked a good western, but there are not as many available anymore so it seems not many others feel the way I do about them. The ones I liked the best, probably have never been heard about by the younger generation. I liked the Magnificent Seven. That was about gun slingers who couldn’t get work anymore because the west was changing and who decided to work on the cheap to protect a Mexican village from bandits. Eli Wallach played one of the best Mexican bandits I ever saw. The cast was star studded with Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, James Coburn and others. Since the movie is from 1960 many may not have heard about it. There were many great westerns in the past and I am only listing a couple I really liked. Shane is considered the best of the lot. It starred Alan Ladd in a very realistic adventure where he helps a homesteader resist cattlemen trying to take his farm by driving him out. The movie The Searchers is considered one of John Wayne’s best. Wayne and Hunter hunt for Wayne’s niece who was captured by Indians. Another was a film with John Wayne again, Jimmy Stewart and Lee Marvin, it was The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Stewart is a lawyer and Marvin a gun slinging and whip wielding bully who tries to get Stewart into a gun battle and Wayne protects him. There is nothing as enjoyable to me in entertainment as a good movie.
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