Here comes the good part...

i have a confession to make.  I've never seen Hotel Rwanda.  To make matters worse, i have never finished Schindler's List.  and as it stands right now, i shan't watch them. ever.  If you are thinking this is about to be a blog about my white-hooded hatred for oppressed peoples, please read on.  

The driving force that elicit's this confession is the same that will sentence me to 5-10 years of graduate work -- an honest and sincere passion for disenfranchised peoples, and a desire to do something about it.  It isn't the plot of those films that leads me to insist to netflix that i do Not want to see those movies, and stop recommending them to me, dammit. Because netflix knows.  It knows that every time i see President Niballa tell President Bartlet "my people are dying" i burst into tears.  But i cannot bear violence in film.  not anymore.

During my freshman year of college, there was an onslaught of films about war.  Black Hawk Down, We Were Soldiers, Windtalkers...you name it, and i saw it.  I don't think it was my genre of choice at the time, but nevertheless...Some time between 2001-2 and now, I became world's biggest violence wuss, and now Bryce and I won't see a movie that isn't more or less about magic, happiness, and good-natured humor. Tonight I asked Bryce why he thinks we can't abide violence in the movies, and he said that film is the wrong genre.  He doesn't want all of his senses to be exposed to such horrors (hope i'm paraphrasing you okay, boo).  well, we are book people.

I agree with this assessment, but I have a few theories of my own I'd like to throw out:

1. I'm just an ol' softie: not solely in the apparently-built-from-cylindrical-marshmallows sense, either. I've lost any tough exterior I once was able to maintain.  I basically employ one, very mushy, pattern of speech around the house now, my "bear" voice, whom I call "baby bear" often as not, and Bryce now thinks I'm losing my nerve and probably my mind.  This voice is an apt symbol of the wimp within.

2. Naseau: its not easy to stuff [massive] fistfulls of popcorn into one's mouth while watching someone's face being blown off.  I'm from the Cookie-monster school of movie snacking (the old cookie monster, before kids got so fat that he had to start pushing moderation on his viewers and eating an apple between nibbling on a bite-sized cookie...the sellout) 

3. nightmares: see post number two about my desperate need to avoid all that is scary.  And, if you ask Bryce, he will attest to the fact that the things I will not watch before bed, all of which fit under the heading "scary", include movies with battles, bad accents, religious fanaticism, weapons, mean people, bad people, ugly people, monsters (not to be confused with fantastic beasts, with whom i have no quarrel), death, depression, or an even remotely ominous soundtrack. 

4. I'm turning into my mother: Her name is Heather, her nickname is Feather, and not just because of her spindly appearance and the fact that i've knocked her over on more than one occasion with my wild storytelling gesticulations. The only movie she's been known to watch that included violence was The Last of the Mohicans, and you'd countenance violence too for shots of Daniel Day Lewis's naked torso and a good bit of old fashioned romance if you were married to Paul.

This being said, I'd like to proffer a short list of films that are welcome into my west-wing player at night, or really any time. 

1. O Brother Where Art Thou. "i'm the goddamned paterfamilias" = ecstatically happy.

2. Stardust.  If you haven't seen it, or have been passing it up at the movie store because the cover looks like some remake of an 80's Willow-esque tragedy (i know some people like it.  well, i don't like them) then stop passing and just get it.  there's magic, there's romance, there's Robert De Niro playing a delightful cross-dresser. 

3. Stranger than Fiction. so beautifully shot. so delightfully humorous.  maggie gyllenhaal plays a law school dropout who runs a bakery. my heart overfloweth. 

4. When Harry Met Sally: In 1989, the protagonist of a film was able to proposition sex in the first five minutes, then go on to be crass and crude for 85 more minutes, and still win our hearts.  hooray. 

5. Charlie Wilson's War:  some may say, whoa, whatabout the bad accent clause of the nighttime contract-- i say, you haven't lived in Abilene, TX. Charlie Wilson is a treat, and the fact that it is written by Aaron Sorkin (god of West Wing writing) means it is absolutely unmissable.  

All of the aforementioned get better with repeated viewings, allowing me to declare at intervals, and with all the alacrity of President Bartlett viewing Dial M for Murder, "here comes the good part!"