The oddities of my childhood are perfectly personified by the movies I loved as a five-year-old: Nine Months, Lion in Winter, and Big Rock Candy Mountain. As a child, I was oddly obsessed with pregnancy, as well as Hugh Grant.  Thus, Nine Months was a perfect choice. Lion in Winter, which I could recite lines from at five, stars Catherine Hepburn as the vindictive wife of King Henry, Eleanor of Aquitaine. In the movie, she commissions her sons to murder their father, and I have to wonder why I thought that story was so delightful. The least “adult” of my favorite movies is Big Rock Candy Mountain (no hyphens or commas), and I can’t quite remember much of it. I think there was something along the lines of a Wonka’s Chocolate Factory vibe to the land of Big Rock Candy Mountain, where tea cups were candy that grew on trees and such, but my most prominent memory is of a dirty rabbit being sung “For He’s a Jolly-Good Fellow” by his animal friends, and then the memories cease…perhaps this eclectic assortment of favorites is also indicative of my weirdness today.

My favorite movie as a child was How the Grinch Stole Christmas, the movie based on Dr. Seuss’s book. The movie is about a strange, animal-like little boy who lives in the town of Whoville. He becomes evil after he makes a Christmas gift for a girl, and it goes very wrong. He then moves to the top of a mountain overlooking the town. One Christmas, he steals everyone’s presents and goodies because he hates Christmas so much. At the end of the movie, the Grinch lightens up, becomes loveable again, and returns everyone’s presents! This movie had a very positive impact on me because, though I am Jewish, I love the decorations, music, and happiness that come along with Christmas. This movie combines all of those things into a magical setting. After Thanksgiving every year, when the Christmas tinsel and lights go up around town, I always secretly wish it was up all year round since I love it so much!

One of my favorite movies of all time is Love Me Tender, and not just because Elvis Presley is in it. Though Elvis is why I watched it the first time, the plot is what kept me coming back. The movie is about a man who returns home from the Civil War only to find that his girlfriend has married his younger brother (who is played by Elvis). Tension builds in the family, culminating in the eldest brother deciding to rob a train. After he returns what he stole, a fight with the police breaks out and ends with the death of Elvis’s character. Though Westerns are usually my least favorite genre, the shortage of shootouts and romance combined with black and white film makes for a Western even I can enjoy. The simple story line of love and a tinge of violence creates a movie that always leaves me satisfied.

Alice in Wonderland became my favorite movie after I emerged from a Disney haze in which aloof princesses met insubstantial fates at the hands of evil aunts and were saved by their respective princes. Alice in Wonderland broke this  cycle most notably through a series of wild antagonists and my favorite Wonderland natives, the Cheshire cat and one hookah-smoking caterpillar. Though my love of Lewis Carroll from a young age probably affects my objective critique of Alice, the Technicolor charm of a work from 1865 transformed into an original 1951 cartoon was a breath of fresh air for me. Because of my affinity for Carroll and subsequent craving for all things whimsical, Alice in Wonderland was my favorite childhood movie.