The Movies Someone's Older Brother Made You Watch

Yeah, I remember the VHS tapes my buddy's older brother used to bring into the basement and show us. They were Girls Gone Wild. This isn't an article about that.

This is about my other friend's older brother, the one who was more of a nerd and really concerned we all liked better movies. You know, classier ones with nudity, like Y tu mamá también.

Today, I want to talk about those kinds of movies, the ones that felt ubiquitous to all of us in our youth. The ones we watched too early that still turned us into the cinephiles we are today.

Let's dive in.

5. Run Lola Run (1998)

Dir. Tom Tykwer

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This movie rocks. For a lot of people my age, this was their introduction to foreign film. You have a frantic story: A woman named Lola receives a phone call from her boyfriend, who lost 100,000 Deutschmarks belonging to his mobster boss. She has 20 minutes to secure the money and sprint across Berlin to save his life. Go.

The Older Brother Pitch

"Dude, it’s basically a video game come to life! She dies, the timeline resets, and she tries again. Plus, her hair is bright red, and the techno is relentless."

The Filmmaking Lesson

Tykwer turns a simple high-concept premise into this display of some of the best editing you've ever seen. Every cut is there to ratchet up the tension, and the more the audience understands about the mission, the more we cut to new things and find ways to raise the stakes.

Every time Lola bumps into a stranger, Tykwer inserts a rapid-fire series of still photographs forecasting that stranger’s entire future life based on that micro-interaction. The ripple effect keeps us guessing and is so interesting.

4. Requiem for a Dream (2000)

Dir. Darren Aronofsky

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This one came to me from a DVD lent to me by a guy I worked with at a pharmacy counting pills. So you know...it kind of makes sense. We get the story of four individuals living in Brooklyn who spiral into drug addiction. It's not fun!

The Older Brother Pitch

"Dude, you will never touch a drug for the rest of your life."

The Filmmaking Lesson

Aronofsky transformed cinema into an empathetic nightmare. I think the thing I learned most from here, aside from avoiding drugs, is the cool ways he did montages.

You get these ultra-fast cuts of dilating pupils, snorting lines, and sizzling pans and crazy sound effects that make you feel the addiction... but not in a dangerous way.

3. Reservoir Dogs (1992)

Dir. Quentin Tarantino

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Tarantino's breakout hit, the movie that announced him to Hollywood and the world. You get a simple jewelry heist that goes terribly wrong, and the surviving criminals assemble at a warehouse and suspect that one of them is an undercover cop. Plus a lot of blood and a really messed-up torture scene.

The Older Brother Pitch

"We'll start with the Like a Virgin scene, and you'll want to keep watching; I guarantee it."

The Filmmaking Lesson

I think this is a great movie to study. If you're writing a spec, a contained thriller, or a genre deconstruction, it's a great idea. Tarantino is showcasing his voice, and you can feel the energy from every scene. He's homaging the classics with his own pastiche.

2. The Matrix (1999)

Dir. Lana & Lilly Wachowski

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This was a movie I was dying to see in 1999. Everyone in 7th grade was talking about it, and I got my Dad to take us. So not an older brother, but sometimes parents can be cool. And my life changed when I watched a computer hacker join mysterious rebels in a simulated reality controlled by cybernetic machines.

The Older Brother Pitch

"Bullet time will blow your fucking mind, dude."

The Filmmaking Lesson

The Wachowskis didn't just make a sci-fi hit; they constructed this beautiful action movie at the same time , and pushed the boundaries of tech they understood. Notice how the film uses a sickly green tint inside the Matrix and cool blue tones in the real world. That kind of color theory really pops.

1. Y tu mamá también (2001)

Dir. Alfonso Cuarón

- YouTube www.youtube.com

Yeah dude, did you not have anyone cool showing you a foreign film with a ton of sex in it? This is a rite of passage because I truly didn't know this movie was really good until I saw it as an adult, because as a kid all I remembered was the nudity.

This is a movie about two hormonally charged teenage boys who take an older, sophisticated woman on a road trip to a fictional beach and explore heartbreak and sexuality along the way. It is muy bueno.

The Older Brother Pitch

"You guys think American Pie is funny? No, man, this is actual art."

The Filmmaking Lesson

Cuarón and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki turned a coming-of-age road comedy into a sociopolitical snapshot of Mexico and of coming of age. There are so many things to appreciate, but I like how the camera routinely strays from the main characters to hold on local workers, police checkpoints, or roadside funerals, showing us the things that these people are absorbing and not commenting on that may affect what they say and do along the way. It's beautiful.

Summing It All Up

We might joke about these movies being forced on us on a random summer night in a basement, but they were our true entry points into cinema. They taught us that movies could be bold, unconventional, and deeply adult.

So, if you had to recommend a film to a group of kids who are too young to watch it, what would it be?

Think about it, go watch it, and then give it to someone.