Movies that changed how I saw the world.

First "old movie" I saw where a woman wore "men's" clothes because she wanted to be herself. So many pieces of me begged to be that powerful and confident.

I had "come out" the year before this movie was released. Having read the book, I was disappointed in the ending; but how Shug and Celie changed my life was nothing less than monumental. That people like me still had to be mindful about how we walked in the world was a hard way to grow up, but nothing like the women in the film. And it gave me a sense of my own white privilege before I went to college. See it, and forgive Steven Spielberg for messing with Alice Walker's masterpiece; he was just trying to make a movie in 1985 - and that was no easy sell when your movie had two women of color in love ...

Until I saw this movie and the next one (Baby Doll) (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048973/?ref_=nv_sr_1) at a film festival, I never really understood what all the ruckus was about Tennessee Williams. SEE these movies. Just watch them with an open mind and an appreciation for the writer and you will have the opportunity to understand the mind and the heart and what it is to tell a story, not because it is easy and you can, but because it is dire and you must. Stephen King once said he wrote to get the stories OUT of his head. And while Mr King is prolific and terrifying, his stories tend toward the supernatural. The terrifying part of Mr Williams' writing is how horrifyingly, terrifyingly, uber natural. His was the realm of human frailty and love and strength and brokenness so that no ephemeral beings need be proposed as villains. Humanity is god and devil. The weather, humidity and heat can break a human mind and lust and fear can alternately save you or destroy you, depending on the day. There is no one in my not inconsiderable reading who writes/wrote the human condition more powerfully, more tragically, more beautifully, more brokenly than Tennessee Williams. Every movie I've seen made from his work is worth seeing - usually more than once. And his characters, even those not in his more well known plays, are portraits of complexity we almost never see anymore - in film, on the page, or in the theatre. Blanche DuBois is the quintessential Williams character, along with Stanley and Stella, in A Streetcar Named Desire, and actors both stage and screen will be judged on their embodiment of these creations. But Baby Doll and Dr Shannon are equally as profound as mirrors for our broken selves and we need to see them all, take them apart and put them back together to see who we are; and then hope beyond all hope that there is a way to find redemption.

Please see review for The Night of the Iguana.

I can't even begin to tell you how this impacted my life. It was the first film I ever saw in the theatre that recognized me as a full human. It wasn't perfect, (not even close); but what it was was honest. Helen Shaver was no small time actress, she was a star (was later in The Color of Money with Paul Newman), and Patricia Charbonneau was beautiful and in her own way "butch" enough to make me feel like I had someone in the movie who might be a bit like me. And it was hard, hard to be sitting alone in the seat in a theatre hoping there were others like me there, but not knowing for sure; and quite nearly dying the moment Vivian walks back into the bedroom and finds Kay undressed and under the covers. It is a brilliant move. It is a brilliant moment in film and I will be forever grateful I saw it in a dark theatre since I'm sure I turned 10 shades of red and was overwhelmed by the intensity of the love scene. It was also one of the first (if not the first) to give us an idea that there could be a happy ending, not certain; but what in life ever is?

Horrible production values, but one of the best film renditions of the story of Arthur and his knights. ever. A very young Helen Mirren is Morgana and Nigel Terry is King Arthur. All my knowledge of the Arthur legends started with this movie. I found the sword and the story and it gave me the impetus to follow the tale as far as I might. Eventually, it took me to the road where I met The Mists of Avalon written by Marion Zimmer Bradley and the feminist retelling of this most famous story. I never would have cared had it not been for this movie.

Is there any more perfect vehicle for teenage angst than Sylvia Plath in all her brilliance and *beep* up mental glory? I saw this, The Children's Hour and Slaughterhouse 5 in a three movie marathon in the middle of the night on my television... before Cable. I don't know how the programmer for that channel made the decision to include 3 of the most disturbing movies ever in a 6 hour overnight late show dramafest, but I'm guessing they were fired for their culpability in several suicide attempts not long after airing. These three movies are some of the darkest, most intensely emotional films ever created and I was probably 14 when I saw them, all in a row, like three bullets standing in line gleaming their deadly promise. The books are powerful enough, but the film representations are downright disturbing, especially for an already fragile creature with a traumatic history and a bleak future. Watch them, see the brilliant film structures; see the unrivaled acting; see the heartbreaking emotional desolation; then go to your therapist and ask for some mighty fine happy pills, because you will never have needed them more.

See the notes for The Bell Jar above.

see the notes for The Bell Jar above.