Introduction
The screen.
Why do we go to the movies? Why do we sit in dark rooms, digging our fingers into popcorn buckets, hoping for transport to another world?
I recall watching a particularly good film earlier this year in a packed theater. I glanced about briefly and saw a couple hundred heads, all transfixed by the screen. For most, it’s like peering into a parallel universe, a place where their problems don’t exist. But for a very select few, it’s not just about escapism, it’s about searching. These people seek something more meaningful, they want to be inspired, changed, altered. They’re looking for that moment when a film touches them so deeply, it was like it was playing specifically for them.
I remember that moment in my life. It was a warm Ohio day (August 2nd, 2002 to be exact). My mother and I went to a small town theater that’s since been demolished. Plaza 8 at Chapel Hill. I’ll never forget that place. The film my mother took me to was Signs, directed by M. Night Shyamalan. Since it was late summer, there was a sense that fun was winding down. School would be starting soon and I wanted to squeeze every last drop out of my summer vacation. Evidently, many others shared the same notion, because the theater was packed to near full capacity.
The lights went down, and I was instantly taken by the thrilling musical composition of James Newton Howard, instructed by Shyamalan to create a piece similar in ferocity to Bernard Hermann’s opening theme for Psycho. The music warned me that something terrifying was coming, and the film kept its promise. In my fourteen years, I hadn’t seen a film that suspenseful, and I vividly remember peeking out over the tops of my curled knees during the “disturbing footage” scene.
As a child, movies were a humongous part of my life. I wore out my Star Wars VHS tapes so badly that no amount of “tracking” could fix the little bouncy white lines at the bottom of the TV. But it wasn’t until that warm day in the summer of ’02 that I had an epiphany.
Movies were made by artists.
Directors. Writers. Actors. Editors. Cinematographers.
Movies were shot and cut together by someone. A composer began writing music to seamlessly blend with it. Someone arranged lights and objects within a shot to create visual synergy.
I have a perfect memory of returning home that day and bounding toward our apartment while saying to my mother, “I want to do that! I want to make a movie like that.”
After seeing Signs in theaters five times, I became fascinated with filmmaking. I didn’t just watch movies anymore, I studied them. The shot structure, the moment where a character reaches their arc, how a clever editor can heighten the tension with just the right cut. Everything! I lived and breathed movies. My parents must have seen a kid who’d discovered his passion, because one day, a package arrived at home containing a small camcorder, which, as far as I was concerned, was the closest I’d ever get to being handed a dream, complete with bubble wrap.
The entirety of my teenage years were spent making countless short films with friends. If they weren’t around, I’d even make one by myself. It didn’t matter what the story was. If an idea popped into our heads, we just started filming it, sometimes without even knowing how it would end. It was blind inspiration, and a very wonderful time in my life. Of course, as we grew older, our films became more mature. One of my favorites was a tongue-in-cheek tribute to John Carpenter’s Halloween called The Marguerite Avenue Killings. Is it strange that with a title like that, no one dies in the short?
At the same time, my love for film as an art form began to evolve, with the creation of my first website called “A Critic’s Opinion.” Without internet at home, the library clerk saw me quite often during those few years. Mercifully, the free hosting provider shut down its services, and my novice site vanished from the net.
No matter what, my interest in filmmaking and movies never wavered. We tried our hand at two feature-length films, and to our credit, we actually completed a 70-minute film about a magical baseball diamond called Phenomenon Field, and an 84-minute horror film called The Woods. The latter took us two years to finish, and the lessons learned while filming was worth every minute spent.
It wasn’t until my early twenties that I had the idea of combining my passions. My love of film was glaringly apparent, and the hundreds of short films we’d created made my devotion to directing obvious. But I also loved analyzing film, studying the art form and trying to get in the head of the filmmaker. And, with the advent of YouTube, I suddenly had a place to express myself. My first video review was of Hayao Miyazaki’s Ponyo. Within a month, I had a small handful of subscribers, the majority being my very patient friends.
Seven years later, I have ________ subscribers, and growing. I’ve met countless film enthusiasts who share my passion, and I’ve been deeply inspired by their personal stories of self-discovery. Without them, I have no idea where I’d be today. To my sheer delight, I’ve had the opportunity to meet M. Night Shyamalan, shake his hand, and thank him for inspiring me. After telling him the story I’ve just told you, he gave an awestruck smile and said, “You’re gonna make me cry, man.”
What continues to inspire me today?
It’s the screen. That glowing, shiny rectangle.
I stare at it in awe, silently willing it to show me something incredible.
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Now, I’ve been given the immense privilege to discuss a handful of films that meant something to me, the majority of which I’ve had the opportunity to see in theaters. The following fifty films released from the year 2000 to 2015 are movies that absolutely must be seen, because they were evocative of their era, they spoke to our culture, or perhaps they’re overlooked gems. These films are presented in order of release date. This is not a countdown. Not only do I find lists superfluous, but this also eliminates the temptation to skip ahead to the #1 pick. The goal here is to discuss and analyze filmmaking, not to choose an order of best to worst. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, please sit back, relax, and take a journey with me fifteen years in the past, as we examine some of the best cinema has offered.
- Chris Stuckmann
