The Films That Formed Us | Group Chat

The gang talks about dinosaurs, Julie Andrews, and watching The Phantom Menace twice daily for three weeks.

Note: From time to time, Cinemantic’s four main contributors — Tyler MacQueen, Graham Piro, Caleb Boyer, and Daniel Mitchell — will jump on a call to chat about anything and everything movie-related. This first of those conversations, on the topic of “Formative Childhood Movies,” was recorded on Friday, April 28th, and has been edited for clarity and conciseness.

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TYLER: I'm curious because the word “formative” is very broad and vague. How do you define it, and how did that influence your selection?

CALEB: I tried to stick with the movies that reminded me of my childhood, which defined some of the first interactions I had with film. I want to talk about formative movies that changed my thoughts about film itself some time. But for this, my formative movie picks were for sentimental reasons.

My first formative movie was The Land Before Time (1988, dir. Bluth), just because I was obsessed with dinosaurs as a kid. I mean, obsessed. I watched those movies over and over again. My love for them started because the dinosaurs and animation captured my attention.

My next pick needs some context. When I was young, we'd always watch Turner Classic Movies. I could not sit down as a kid, and my mom loves to remind me of that fact. I always loved the classic swashbuckling films featuring Errol Flynn and Gene Kelly. I’d play out the fight scenes in our living room and imagine fighting alongside them against the bad guys. It would get all my energy out.

Gene Kelly was awesome because he did many of his stunts, and his stunt work was often this strange combination of staged combat, slapstick, acrobatics and, of course, dance. So I love The Three Musketeers (1948, dir. Sidney), because Gene Kelly made me want to be d'Artagnan.

And Star Wars (1977, dir. Lucas) was so formative, of course. A New Hope was the first time I saw movie magic; I realized something special about cinema. And I love sci-fi now because of Star Wars, and I can't remember anything before it that got me interested in the genre.

TYLER: How old were you when you watched Star Wars for the first time?

CALEB: I wanna say I was five or six.

GRAHAM: On that point, not that I'm going to spoil my movies here, but I watched The Phantom Menace (1999, dir. Lucas) when I was four years old. I broke my leg in the summer of 2000, and when I was in traction for three weeks, I insisted on watching The Phantom Menace twice daily for three weeks. It was so much that we wore out the VHS that we had.

CALEB: Oh, no!

GRAHAM: So we had to get a new one. Similarly, it was my first entry into a new world, but it wasn't A New Hope or Empire.

TYLER: Daniel, what about you?

DANIEL: I probably watched The Sound of Music (1965, dir. Wise) first. It was a family movie that was one of our Friday night staples. I remember when we first bought a DVD player, that was one of the first ones we purchased. We bought that one, Singin’ in the Rain, Beauty and the Beast, and a box set of Roger and Hammerstein musicals. I remember we first had the two VHS tape set of The Sound of Music, and I feel like we always started the first one and never got to the ending, which is the best part: the suspense, the festival, and the escape. It's a beautiful movie that makes me want to go to Austria. Also, Julie Andrews, I mean, do we need to say more? We could talk for hours about her.

TYLER: Oh, yes. I mean, what a career: Despicable Me, Despicable Me 2, Despicable Me 3, The Princess Diaries: Royal Engagement.

GRAHAM: Aquaman!

CALEB: Can't forget about Shrek!

TYLER: Shrek 2, Shrek the Third, Shrek Forever After. The list goes on and on.

CALEB: It’s gonna take me forever to link to all of these.

DANIEL: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [Laughter] Sentimentally, that's probably one of my favorite movies. I watched it when I was sick. It just makes you feel better.

GRAHAM: The Sound of Music was my family's sick movie, too. Whenever we were home sick, my mom would put it on. So I've seen it five or six times but never without being sick at the same time, so I have some fascinating associations with the movie.

DANIEL: Baseball was my favorite thing as a kid. So to me, The Sandlot (1993, dir. Mickey Evans), a movie about baseball, was the coolest thing ever. I watched it with my good friend, who lived a block behind me, and we would play baseball in our front yards together. He was a Yankees fan, and I was an Indians fan in the 90s...

GRAHAM: Good man! He's got good taste.

DANIEL: He's a good guy, despite his fandom! [Laughter] But that movie is so funny, and it's a really good display of friendship, and the kids are hilarious. There's the mythology of baseball. I mean, the Fourth of July scene where Ray Charles is playing in the background is magical. I can't help but get emotional about it. 

GRAHAM: I will say, "You play ball like a girl" is probably the single greatest movie quote in my mind.

DANIEL: In a movie that's full of them! And the last of my three is The Prince of Egypt (1998, dir. Chapman, Hickner, Wells). Growing up going to church every week, we knew all the Bible stories. Seeing that story come to life on the big screen with the music, the whole animation style and the soundtrack was just incredible.

GRAHAM: One of Hans Zimmer's most underrated scores.

DANIEL: Truly. It gets me in my heart and chest whenever the first song starts. And growing up, you don't think about who's in movies. As you get older, you realize more about things, like the voice cast, and it's insane: Val Kilmer, Ralph Finnes,  Michelle Pfeiffer, Sandra Bullock, Jeff Goldblum, Martin Short, Steve Martin, Danny Glover, Helen Mirren, Patrick Stewart. I mean, for an animated 90s DreamWorks Bible story?

TYLER:  It's such a good cast! Would you be Steve Martin or Martin Short? Or Sandra Bullock?

CALEB: Oh, you'd be Sandra Bullock.

DANIEL: Sandy, obviously. But Ralph is also scarier playing Rameses than he ever is Voldemort, in my humble opinion.

TYLER: It also has one of my favorite music drops in movie history when Moses parts the red sea. I get chills every time. Sometimes, I listen to that music just to get hyped for a run. It's also my go-to Easter movie.

DANIEL: Mine too! And another brief anecdote about the movie: Mariah Carey and Whitney Huston sang “When You Believe” for the ending credits, I think, and they performed it at the Oscars that year. That was the first time I remember watching the Oscars and being interested in it because a movie I knew was on it!

TYLER: That's a good list! Graham, what about you?

GRAHAM: So because I already talked about The Phantom Menace and my repeated viewings, I'm going to swerve. The movie that probably impacted me the most in terms of how I look at horror movies is Spider-Man 2 (2004, dir. Rami) solely because of the scene where Doc Ock kills the entire hospital, which I have trouble watching to this day because of how horrifying it is. And now that I know Sam Rami’s other movies, he shoots that scene like an Evil Dead movie where he uses POV from the tentacles as they go around killing all the doctors. That was the first movie to give me nightmares, and it still does.

The second is Tomorrow Never Dies (1997, dir. Spottiswoode), which isn't the best Bond movie, it's a mediocre Bond movie at best, but it's the first Bond movie I saw. So, we texted about this, but I wasn't allowed to watch Bond movies when I was young, but my dad and brother would sneak me downstairs so I could watch the Brosnan Bonds. And Pierce Brosnan was everything I wanted to be in a man: suave, sophisticated, and never lost his cool. Jonathan Pryce is a fantastic villain, and Michelle Yeoh is tremendous.

And the third is my favorite theater-going experience, which is King Kong (2005, dir. Jackson). I loved The Lord of the Rings but vividly remember watching King Kong in theaters. Similar to Caleb, I was a giant dinosaur guy growing up. I was transported and engrossed by Skull Island and terrified by the scene where the millipede drops into Naomi Watts’s mouth when she’s fleeing the dinosaurs. I mean, I cried at the end of the movie — even though I knew what was going to happen. And I still try to watch it once a year, although it's long. There are tons of problems with it, but I will always adore that movie.

TYLER: Did you watch the Peter Jackson version before you saw the original?

GRAHAM: Yeah, I only watched Jackson’s version because I knew that he directed The Lord of the Rings.

TYLER: It’s funny because one of the movies I picked also had a traumatic scene involving bugs: Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971, dir. Stuart). Remember that tunnel scene, where the centipede crawls on that woman's face? Genuinely creepy to this day! But Willy Wonka is one of those special movies, along with another that I'm going to get to, that has this potent mixture of playfulness and sentimentality with moments of genuine horror. The other movie is The Wizard of Oz (1939, dir. Fleming), which, when Graham first recommended the topic, was the first movie I thought of. They have a lot of similarities.

Both are morality plays disguised as these fantastical fables for kids. Sure, they have great songs and colorful characters, but they scare you enough to learn a lesson. It's the reason I loved them growing up — the songs, the settings, the characters, the lessons — but I also think it’s the reason for their endearing legacy through the years. I’m really not surprised that The Wizard of Oz was named the most-watched movie of all time by the National Film Registry.

The third one for me is Toy Story (1995, dir. Lasseter). I don't think that anyone born in the 90s can't not have a relationship with that movie. I had the Buzz and Woody toys. I slept with them. The idea that toys come to life when we aren't around is the perfect elevator pitch for a movie. A little story: When my mom would get off the phone with friends and family, she often said, "I'll give you a buzz." I was so obsessed with the movie that I thought she had an entire drawer of Buzz Lightyear toys that she would give people! And I was pissed that I never got one! [Laughter] But, also, in a more genuine way, I grew up with this franchise more than any other. I was able to learn important lessons about life and friendship and growing up through these back-to-back-to-back-to-back masterpieces. So those are my three.

TYLER: Going around the horn real quick, what are your honorable mentions? 

GRAHAM: I have my three: Peter Pan, The Empire Strikes Back, and Jurassic Park.

TYLER: Peter Pan, The Parent Trap, and The Prince of Egypt.

DANIEL: It’s a Wonderful Life, The Wizard of Oz, and Beauty and the Beast.

CALEB: I remember The Ten Commandments. Oh, my gosh! Charlton Heston played a Jewish prophet, and Yul Brynner played an Egyptian prince. It was great.

And Tyler, we talked about this over Christmas, but I remember distinctly being at my grandfather's house and watching the original King Kong. It was so otherworldly and creepy, and I couldn't look away.

GRAHAM: You know, I showed my grandfather the 2005 King Kong cause I was obsessed with it, and he told me, "I remember being in the theater for the original and thinking it was the most mind-blowing thing." And I thought the same thing about the '05 version, so those movies made for this nice generational bridge.

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Reader, what are your top 3 formative movies? Comment below with your picks!

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For the full list of films that we talked about during this Group Chat, head over to Letterboxd.

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