One of my favorite movies of all time is Toy Story. I actually went to see it before I had any children, that's how much I was looking forward to it. And I loved it so much that, after I had children, I watched it over and over with them. I probably saw it a hundred times, and was amazed to find something new with each viewing.
Well, my oldest daughter Sophie is now a teenager and just started high school. And with last year's Slumdog Millionaire, she officially graduated from kids' movies to grown-up fare. So I figured it was time to introduce her to a new set of classics, now that she knows The Wizard of Oz, Toy Story, and Mean Girls backwards and forwards.
This, then, is our project -- we're going to try to watch two movies a week together over the next year. One hundred movies. Movies that I think can form the basis for her to be cinema-literate. And, in the spirit of Julie & Julia, I'm going to blog about it, getting her reactions and seeing how well these movies hold up for me after all this time.
One hundred movies is not enough to cover every cinematic base. Not when you consider the Hollywood classics, the foreign canon, independent cinema, all the great directors, and the quirky choices that don't fit into any of those categories. So how to choose? Especially since I have my own idiosyncratic tastes that don't include some films and directors that others believe are essential (paging Quentin Tarantino!).
Well, for starters, I can't go wrong with with the movies I love, regardless of their place in film history. So let's start there and see where we go...
