Everything, Everywhere, All At Once - The New Movie Night Experience

In a recent bonus episode of the podcast we lamented the death of the video rental store and the subsequent cultural hole left in our movie-watching lives. The absence of that physical place, that curated library of excitement and colour. We’d make plans to go there. The Friday evening tradition of selecting a film and cradling it in the car as we travelled home via the Chinese takeaway.

I’ve been trying to recreate the movie night experience for my 9-year-old daughter recently. Her preferred mode of media consumption is to watch her favourite horse influencers livestream on YouTube, a hobby I’m trying my hardest not to complain about for fear of turning into one of those pearl-clutching parents moaning about a moral panic of their own invention. But Ella doesn’t watch TV shows, cartoons or movies. She has no experience of traditional television - everything she’s seen has been chosen, watched, discarded and forgotten about from a streaming service library.

I say forgotten about because she seemingly has no memory of the shows and movies she used to enjoy as a three, four and five year old. Her watching Daniel Tiger, Toy Story and The Lion King on repeat are my memories, not hers. 

I wonder if that has something to do with the disposable nature of these things - everything Ella has ever watched has been selected on a whim from the TV in our living room. The only travelling she’s done is digitally, between menus. No appointments to keep. No store return deadline. Whatever you want to watch, whenever you want to watch it, with a pause button and an off switch at your mercy whenever you get bored.

And so I’ve taken it upon myself to make movie nights a thing. Every weekend we sit down as a family with popcorn, drinks and a film hand-selected by me or my wife - some movies we loved as kids, some modern classics - that we’re hoping Ella will form lasting memories of. It’s not just what you watch. It’s how and where you watch it and who you watch it with. These are the films we’ve seen so far.





Paddington (2014, dir: Paul King)

We’ve actually seen the entire trilogy now but for sake of ease we’ll just go over the first - a joyous romp through a dreamlike rendition of London that’s as wholesome and hilarious as it's possible for a film to be. There’s nothing better as a parent than watching a film that both delights your kids and is also layered with clever touches for adults and Paddington excels here. In particular I’m thinking about Hugh Bonneville’s delightful turn as Mr. Brown - the scene where he and Paddington escape the Geographer’s Guild as Simon Farnaby’s security guard yells ‘stop that sexy woman!’ had us all howling.

Remarkably the second film is, in my humble opinion, even better. Hugh Grant playing a villainous, exaggerated version of his own public persona is a stroke of genius, as is Brendan Gleeson playing a grumpy prison cook.

And while Paddington in Peru doesn’t hit the same heights, there’s an undeniable magic to these movies - homely and familiar without being twee, a London that’s like a childhood bedtime story brought to life. 

Ella’s favourite bit was when Paddington cleaned his ears with a couple of toothbrushes, something we’ve since had to dissuade her from trying in real life. 



Jumanji (1995, dir: Joe Johnston)

I remember owning this on VHS when I was a kid - I’ve probably seen Jumanji 30 times. I was curious how it would hold up watching it as an adult, particularly since I didn’t hate the Dwayne Johnson re-imaginging a few years back. Surely this will have aged badly, I thought. But you know what, there’s a distinct 90s charm to even  the dreadful CG monkeys I couldn’t help but enjoy and the entire film is still an absolute hoot from start to finish.

A few delightful scares thrilled Ella - the lion stomping across the piano before slowly appearing out of the darkness caused the popcorn to pause for a good three seconds on its journey from bowl to mouth - while Jonathan Hyde is a riot as the impossibly moustached hunter Van Pelt.

Seeing Robin Williams always makes my heart ache - he’s a once-in-a-lifetime actor who brings a unique warmth to everything he touches, and watching him sprint around his family home shouting for his Mum and Dad as a man who’s spent over 20 years trapped inside a board game anchored this otherwise effervescent fantasy with a jolt of grounded humanity. 

This was the first time I’d watched Robin Williams alongside Ella. I think she preferred the monkeys, and Peter and Judy were her favourite characters (the latter a young Kirsten Dunst knocking it out of the park) so I’ll show her Hook and Mrs. Doubtfire next. And maybe Flubber if I have to - she will like Robin Williams. 

Anyway, she declared Jumanji ‘the best film I’ve ever seen’ and she’s seen at least 17 films. 



The Parent Trap (1998, dir: Nancy Meyers)

This is my guilty pleasure movie, one of my all time childhood favourites. I can’t quite put my finger on why I’m so attached to this film about two siblings teaming up to reverse their parents’ divorce and all live happily ever after as one big family, but there you go. 

Lindsay Lohan is brilliant here - effortlessly switching back and forth between twin sisters Annie and Hallie (we named our first dog Hallie) and watching Parent Trap as an adult made me wish a) I was 12 again and b) that Natasha Ricardson and Dennis Quaid were my Mum and Dad. 

Simon Kunz as Martin steals the show however. When Hallie reveals herself to her Mum, he dramatically sobs “I’ve never been so happy in my entire life” - a line that’s played for laughs but makes me cry every fucking time I see it. I saw Simon Kunz on the District Line once, near Richmond station. I made eye contact with him and he gave me a look that said ‘that’s right. It’s me. The butler from Parent Trap.’ I regret not telling him how brilliant I think he is.

Ella’s favourite bit was when they rode the horses through the Californian vineyard. If a movie has horses that’s always her bloody favourite bit. 


Men In Black (1997, dir: Barry Sonnenfeld)

Another film I adored as a kid and watched multiple times, Men In Black is, I’m sad to say, not anywhere near as good as I remember it. I could feel Ella’s attention fading away as if she’d been zapped by one of those memory devices.

There are still some iconic moments - the bug pulling up the face of his ‘Edgar suit’ (“There. Is that better?”) and Tony Shalhoub’s alien growing back his head after being blasted by K (“do you have any idea how much that stings?”) but otherwise I felt MiB has suffered the fate of many a sci-fi movie in that its cutting-edge CG, once a selling point, is now what makes it feel old. 

Admittedly there are a bunch of ideas in Men In Black that I still found interesting - the integration of benevolent alien life on earth, the idea humanity isn’t quite as important as it thinks it is (that glorious end shot revealing our universe to be encased inside a marble that’s one of many marbles being played with by a race of unknowable extra terrestrial beings is a standout) and of course the tiny alien piloting a human avatar - but I’d told Ella she’d love Men In Black and instead she spent the majority of this particular movie night very obviously bored.

She was scared of the bug too, which didn’t help. ‘Tell me when it’s not on screen any more’ was the recurring instruction. 


The Mask of Zorro (1998, dir: Martin Campbell)

The definition of swashbuckling 90s action adventure, Zorro has the lot - a villain you love to hate (Captain Love with his leopard print saddle pad and smug face), gloriously-choreographed sword fights and a cast of heroes as charismatic as they are beautiful. Anthony Hopkins is the original masked vigilante and hero of the people - all charm, elegance and piercing stares - while Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta-Jones are simply two of the most beautiful people you’ll ever see on film.

To think we had these two and Brendan Fraser alongside Rachel Weisz in The Mummy not 12 months apart - there must have been quite a few bisexual awakenings going on in the late 90s.

This was a massive hit with Ella mostly due to the horse chase scene, but also because it’s just really bloody good fun. I’d forgotten there was a bit where Captain Love presents Alejandro with his brother’s head in a jar - probably shouldn’t have shown that to a 9 year old. 



The Witches (1990, dir: Nicolas Roeg)

“I want to watch something scary” Ella declared recently. There was only one film I was going to show her - The Witches (1990) traumatised me so much as a kid I still consider it one of the scariest films I’ve watched to this day. And my god does it hold up - the opening sequence where young Erica is abducted and subsequently trapped inside a painting while her family is forced to watch her live out her life imprisoned in canvas is utterly terrifying. The image of her father’s face as he sees her for the first time has never left me.

Then there’s the witch with the glaring purple eyes who corners Luke while he plays in his treehouse: “she can’t hear you” she mocks as Luke desperately calls for his Grandma. 


What I’d forgotten was how raucously good fun the rest of the movie is - the last film the great Jim Henson ever worked on is a fitting testament to his legacy, the characterful mice puppets infinitely more likable than their 2020 CG counterparts in the Robert Zemeckis remake.

I’d also forgotten Rowan Atkinson was in it (“Mr. Bean!” yelled Ella as he appeared) but of course the standout performance is Anjelica Huston as the Grand High Witch, who somehow manages to be both terrifying and disconcertingly sexy at the same time. Without her there would be no Lady Dimitrescu, I’m sure of it. What a film!