Over the past few weeks I’ve decided to give myself a goal of watching at least 200 movies for the year, as I have a deep love for film and have been trying to catch up with all of these movies I haven’t seen yet. 

Now my love for film has never left, but it is rare (kind of) that I feel so strongly about a movie to the point where I think about it for days on end. 

Recently, I watched Punch-Drunk Love by Paul Thomas Anderson, and it felt like I had discovered something that I had once forgotten, yet loved. A cinematic gem. A sense of joy that is just so comforting it feels like whatever you are watching is something you are so familiar with, yet it is the first time you are interacting with it. 

Since then I have been trying to find a way to put this feeling into words and I got some help from NECC students to tell me what movie had them feeling this way. 

Throughout this journey I have watched a lot of amazing movies from Dune 2, Anatomy of a Fall, and even older ones like Cruel Intentions and Videodrome. Some would even say that most of the movies I have watched recently are arguably better than Punch-Drunk Love, but none have made me feel the way that this movie has. 

This movie is just beautifully shot, while having an amazing soundtrack that just fits so perfectly and it’s about a salesman who is struggling with mental health while going through so many events that shake up his life, one of which is finding love. 

The best way to describe this feeling of joy is like you have stumbled upon something you loved as a kid and it feels exactly how it did the first time, or rediscovering an old song you had forgotten and loved so deeply. 

It just puts a smile on your face like nothing else can, regardless of the context of the movie. 

Curiously, I went around campus trying to find other students who have felt this way about movies before. 

After trying to explain this feeling to them I had the chance to ask three students, “Have you felt this way before with any movie? and If you have, why do you think this one movie stands out?”. 

Lucas Bermudez said, “I think the movie for me is La Haine, just because the message of the movie takes place in such a specific time and place in France its themes and characters relate exactly to how the world is right now, like La Haine translates to hate. The youth of the movie are the main characters but they don’t hate people, they just hate the position they’ve been put in, the position to push back. In a strange way the movie made me feel empowered, like the movie had me saying “Man this is always going to be the way it is these systems are always going to be in place to try and tear people down and I can either accept that and live in this world or fight to change it in a meaningful way,”. 

Another student Matthew Scharn said, “Yes I have with Back to the Future. I don’t know, it has this element about it that speaks to love and family, while touching on all the heart strings while still being able to be a sci-fi movie that just blows you away. It still holds up to today’s standards, the combination of the soundtrack with the way the movie is shot is just perfect.”

Lastly, Rashid Afife said, “The most recent Batman movie changed my perspective on how I view superhero movies, changing how future comic book movies can put a superhero in a real life setting and my expectation of them from now on. The plot was phoneomenal, and the characters’ personalities went along perfectly with how it was written, adding more depth to the movie. I loved the way I felt walking out of that theater.” 

So now I just have one question for you:

What’s your cinematic gem?