Why Movies are Great

Going to the movies used to be one of the most popular places to go as a teenager but sadly this is rarely true anymore. For me, on the other hand, it is true. I love the movies. Movies are in fact a happy place. In college there are classes that are solely dedicated to watching movies. I happen to enjoy these classes because it opens my mind to movies I had never heard of. It expands my knowledge of a certain genre or even an event that has taken place in history. I took a class called, "Dark places of the mind." this class revolved around watching movies about psychopaths or people who were put in mental institutions. Movies like Psycho, or Girl Interrupted. Now I am taking a class called "History of Film: the Crime Film." This class will show movies about the mob or police films like the Godfather or Gangs of New York. Movies take people to a place they have never dreamed of or had them experience something that was completely foreign to them.

Some Educators believe that movies will do nothing for a student whose mind is always growing. They think that it is a waste of time and will accomplish nothing. In my opinion this is crap.

I studied abroad last year in England. I took many hard classes that really challenged me. We had to go to a lecture with our professor an then every other week have a tutorial with the same professor. My hardest class was Psychology. I could never wrap my mind around this subject and I struggled with understanding concepts but for our tutorials our professor would assign a movie for you to watch. These movies commented about certain situations that we had discussed in lecture. These movies really helped me understand what was going on in this class. I saw a German film called "The Wave" where a teacher creates a dictatorship out of a classroom and how pressure from peers could drive people to either join the dictatorship or stand against it and be ostracized. It helped me understand the social pressures that people faced.

If you take an English class and you are assigned a novel, most likely this novel has been turned into a movie and if a student is having a hard time reading it, the student should watch the movie version. In my experience reading Shakespeare is very hard on students but thankfully most of his plays have been made into movies and therefor easily accessible to a student struggling with the Elizabethan language.

Movies provide a way in. They can take you to a magical land or into a psychopaths worst nightmare or even back in time to a world we have only read about and never really seen. I don't care what people say about movies, for me they are a way for me to learn and grow. I will never stop seeing knew or old films. I think everyone should experience the something they are maybe not familiar with like a sci-fi movie or maybe into a romantic novel. Movies like "Milk" or Frost/Nixon" shows the youth what was going on before they were born. Movies are a great way to experience knew world, emotions, and realities. Hopefully you will be able to experience and enjoy movies as much as I do.