Just Like The Movies

There are one two more posts left for ___ Makes Life Better.  This is the penultimate post for the campaign and it's on movies.  There has always been something magical about film, not just for entertainment purposes, but because there is something there that can carry our troubles away for 90 minutes at a time.  Movies make life better.

The hey day for movies was in the 1930's during the Great Depression because films distracted people from their struggles of daily life.  If inflation was taken into account, Gone With The Wind would still be the highest grossing movie ever made.  With all the costumes and stories that films bring into a darkened theater you can get so engrossed that everything else in the world disappears.

Movies have always been a coping mechanism for me.  When I was in the midst of my last depression, I went to see Silver Linings Playbook, which was mirroring my own life, but it gave me hope and it was the first time I was able to truly smile in a month.  That was the power of a film to make someone feel a different emotion.

Not all movies have to be good.  Sometimes it's fun to laugh at the bad ones that are just made for money (see Twilight).  Movies at the distraction that we all sometimes need .  We may only have a few hours escape, but in those few hours, all the cares in the world disappear. 

Even with the advent of TV, movies are still important.  It is something that cannot be interrupted.  There is just a movie and you.  The ultimate game changer.  It whisks you from the theater and can drop you in 16th century England or in a galaxy far far away or in your neighbor's house.  It doesn't matter.  What does matter is that movies make life better.