For a few years up until last October, I wrote a blog which was filled with over 500 posts worth of stuff about different topics including Films, Games, Music and Godzilla. Well after doing my 500th post, I started to run out of stuff to write about, plus stopped enjoying myself as it felt more like the blog was controlling me, than I it. So, I stopped. But now am back. Hello.
One of the things I used to do every now and then were Top 5 Lists like this one. They were fun posts to write and were among my most viewed postings. They were just ways of expressing the things I liked without excluding other things that I liked to. Films is one of my major interests, and every year (from 2012 onwards) would do a Top 5 Post to say what my favourite films of the year were. This got me thinking though, as 20 years ago I didn’t have a blog. I was a small child who went to the cinema with his parents and would watch a movie. That was all I really did when it came to watching films and would let my parents know if I liked it or not based on if I liked it or not when they would prompt the question as to whether I liked it or not.
The times were very different 20 years ago though. The internet was very different and the only access to it that we had was on my Dad’s PC at Church which required the use of a modem and made those famous whirring and bleeping noises that modems used to make to connect to the internet. The internet had been around for decades, but the World Wide Web which is what the internet is used for these days was still young. There was no Facebook, Wikipedia, YouTube or Twitter, and for the most part we used it to look at small games available on the Blue Peter Website, or just look up things about things. Oh, and it was also slow too and we had to keep an eye on how much time we spent on it, because that was how you paid for it. It was a much different time, and I was a lot younger; I mean I found it super interesting and fun when I discovered my Dad’s PC had a calculator on it.
When it came to films in 1998, there was only one film I wanted to see. Given that I grew up watching Godzilla Films, and had learned a few years previously on a TV show that there was going to be an American Godzilla film in 1998; when 1998 came along, I was super excited for it. When I saw it, I loved it! Did for a few years, but as time passed and as I got older, I saw the film for what it truly was: An enjoyable American Giant Monster Movie with a famous name attached to it that didn’t live up to what it should have. Still a pretty decent and enjoyable, but there are many other Godzilla films better than it (Shin Godzilla being my Number 1 Favourite).
But that’s the thing about time, because as time has passed, not only has my opinion changed, but as I have grown older, it has given me opportunities to watch other films I didn’t watch in 1998 for other reasons; either because I was too young for the certification; (12A certification didn’t exist 20 years ag; if you weren’t 12 or older, you couldn’t see it), or I just didn’t get a chance to go. I did see other films such as Babe: Pig in the City, A Bug’s Life and Barney’s Great Adventure (I know), but films such as The Truman Show, Blade and Armageddon were out of reach as either my family had no interest in watching them, or in at least the case with Blade, I was too young to watch it.
Now however, I am 20 years older, and with time, I have seen far more films than I realized had come out in 1998, plus, age restrictions don’t hold me back; I have now seen Blade. 20 years does feel a long time ago now, and while I could still do lists of my favourite films from this year (so far it’s The Shape of Water), last year (Colossal), next year (Have a guess and take it to Ladbrokes), I thought it might be fun, just to look back on a time when blogging for me simply didn’t exist and would have thought that you spelt ‘bogs’ wrong.
I won’t do it now though, because this is already a long-winded blog post, and it maybe perhaps better that when I do post the post that it is slightly more to the punch quicker, than if I was to do it now. So, watch this space for more to come. But, for a little teaser, here are the standout films I have picked out from Wikipedia’s list of films released that year which are currently fighting for a place in my Top 5 1998 movie heart, hope to see you here again soon.
- Armageddon,
- Saving Private Ryan,
- Godzilla,
- A Bug’s Life,
- The Truman Show,
- The Mask of Zorro,
- Blade,
- The Waterboy.
Things I Like 