The site wants to know my Top 10 Favorite Movies… In no particular order: Fight Club, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Pulp Fiction, Lord of The Rings (for sure, Return of the King, maybe both others), Star Wars Episode 8: The Last Jedi, Point Break, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, The Avengers, The Big Lebowski. That’s 9 or 11, depending on the first 2 LOTR movies. As I think about them, they are all there for different reasons.

I’ll admit Point Break is not the best movie any of us have ever seen, but I did see it probably 10 or 15 times in a theater during the summer between my 10th & 11th grade years of high school. It makes me think of my friends… Later on, you don’t usually have friends like the friends you have in high school. Maybe that’s because everything that happens to a teenager is in neon or caps lock. Everything seems so intense and meaningful, because we are all exposed nerves trying to figure out how we’re going to live our lives. We’re bulletproof AND totally fragile. We’re FBI agents AND surfers. We live in a suspended hyper-reality. It makes me think of my friends.

The Avengers is a great time, it’s just a really fun time. It isn’t deep or affecting, it’s awesome. It’s spectacle, relationships, conflict, good v. evil, sacrifice and victory. Pulp Fiction is fun AND a Brilliant, Great Film. It’s probably the best film on my list. You don’t need friends to love it, it stands on its own, above and away from context. Eternal Sunshine broke my heart – I remember crying to the Angel afterwards, holding her so tightly, desperately, promising no one would ever take her (or her memory) from me.

You know, I just wrote a post for my other site (bridgefaithcommunity.com) about presence and the inextricable tie between love, pain, and gratitude. I wonder how much this film cemented my 2 hands philosophy. The pain of loss was so great, he chose to erase her from his memory. In the beginning, it was fine, the memories went in reverse, so eliminated first was the destruction of the relationship and the heartbreak. But as the memories worked backwards, the wonder, beauty, the love, he didn’t want them to go and desperately tried to hold on to them. He couldn’t, they took all of her. It was devastating. Love hurts. Big, real love can hurt more. It’s worth the risk.

The Big Lebowski is hilarious with one of the best characters in modern cinema, we all sort of want to meet the day as the Dude. Everybody hates The Last Jedi, and they’re all wrong. It has the 4 best scenes in the Star Wars universe. Luke dies, the Rebellion/Resistance lives. It’s perfect. The Winter Soldier is the movie you make your friends watch that think superhero movies are dumb. Fight Club is The Most Spiritual Movie Ever.

I have no idea how much impact these films have actually had on me, if they were truly integral in building the Chad that I am. What I know is that my life would not have been as cool without them, and I am thankful.