Why I love movies (and why you should too)

Anyone who knows me knows just how much I love movies. At my peak, I used to watch one movie a day. So when people tell me that they rarely watch movies and hardly ever go to the theatre, well, it shocks me. Watching movies, and watching them in the theatre, is one of the most magical things this world has to offer. My hope is that by sharing this love in written form, it makes you reconsider your relationship with movies and experience it for all it can be.

• An unlikely source of friendship

• Honest conversations with yourself and others

• A perfect blend of visuals, sound and dialogue

• The universal ice-breaker

An unlikely source of friendship

I reckon there is a person, or people, we are all seeking at any point in our life. I myself haven’t done a good job at finding them, which sprouts feelings of loneliness. It’s in these moments that I have found the most solace in film.

Likely unintentionally, movies have shown me the possibility of people. Through cinema I have been able to visualise, spot and befriend some of the people I have longed to know. My most recent example of this being with the movie “The Supreme’s at all you can eat Earl’s” (The Supremes for short).

A few months ago, well, I was sad. Sad about a lot of things, but namely some things in my personal life and my health. I knew at that moment I needed a mix of things. I needed to cry, laugh, relate to someone else and receive some tough love. I needed a very specific form of sisterhood that I didn’t necessarily want to get from my actual sisters, and couldn’t get from my individual friends. So, I watched The Supremes, and for 2 hours and 4 minutes, I felt understood. I felt like I belonged to a sisterhood that had spanned 25 years of ups and downs, running so deep that they knew exactly what to do at that moment. This movie lent me a relationship I do not yet have, but very much needed.

It is a mistake to think that the only purpose of film is to entertain. There are people behind every character. Real experiences that give life to every scene. Things that, together, portray aspects of real life, put on screen for you to connect with. And to me, that is the basis of friendship.

Honest conversations with yourself and others

As with all people, there are sides of me I don’t share with anyone, including myself.

It’s hard to. People remember things. They judge you. Cinema, however, doesn’t. There is always a movie showcasing the worst of us, and it’s through these movies I have been able to quietly confront these parts of myself.

I did this with the movie Little Women (Greta Gerwig version). I had tried to watch it a few years back, but carried a prejudice whilst watching, so I couldn’t truly observe and connect. Then, a few years later, I found myself watching it again with full focus at my first film club. I was caught by surprise. Thoughts I believed suppressed to non-existence were suddenly at the forefront. There were scenes I saw myself in that made my eyes watery and my throat clench. Only someone who had felt the way I did could express such thoughts so perfectly. The idea that certain parts of me could not be shared with others, out of fear of shame, isolation and embarrassment, had suddenly come under reconsideration.

A perfect blend of visuals, sound and dialogue

There is a beauty to be found in music, art and good writing. Great cinema combines all three to create something no one thing can do individually. And to me, there is no better example of this than the movie La La Land.

—---If you haven’t seen La La Land, I highly recommend watching it in theatres. There is usually some re-run happening, and given that 2026 is its 10-year anniversary, it will most likely be holding even more screenings. —---

La La Land, to me, is cinema done right. It blends great music, visuals and dialogue to create an experience that makes you think “ I NEEDED to be in theatres for this”. It takes your personal feelings, magnifies the details of it all and presents it back to you as a solid thing that can be held and interacted with. Take, for example, the scene of Sebastian and Mia in the auditorium dancing around the tension they both feel, until they both just lean into it. Once they do, they begin to float and dance in this dream-like sequence until they finally kiss. To me, that scene perfectly captures the first time you are non-verbally reassured that the person you like feels the same way too. You feel light. The gravity of not being sure no longer weighs you down, and you feel a physical shift. You allow yourself to interpret things as special and become more daring with your moves, until you both fully cross the line, and make what has long gone unsaid, well known. Music, art and good writing can all tap into that feeling, but only cinema lets you grasp it.

The universal ice-breaker

Movies have been an ice breaker I have found to work well across all genders, races, class and backgrounds. You don’t have to be a movie person to have watched a movie. And you don’t have to be that into movies to have an opinion on a movie, even a strong one. Everyone has a movie opinion, and an opinion tells you something about a person. Behind every opinion is usually a memory, belief or value driving it. Talking about movies, I have found, is a safe, low-stakes way of getting to know someone without them having to be overly vulnerable.

How I watch movies (a slight recommendation)

To get the most out of movies, I try to align them with my current state of mind. I examine my thoughts and find a movie that best aligns with them e.g if I am feeling guilty about something, I might watch “A good person”, if I am feeling doubtful and exhausted of myself, I might watch “Tick Tick..Boom”.

The cinematic experience becomes a lot richer because I unintentionally become more observant of details, directly addressing my feelings. I recommend trying this approach at least once, to fully experience all the benefits of cinema described above. I am more than happy to help provide movie recommendations using this framework (feel free to email me!).

I also heavily recommend rewatching movies. Just as you might re-read a book 10 years on and find yourself seeing things you didn’t quite notice before, the same too happens with movies.