Some of my favourite memories of childhood is the films I watched with my parents. My mum let me watch things like Alien, Kill Bill, Pulp Fiction, Leon, The Ring, while my dad showed me The Godfather part 2 (I then watched the first one with my mum), Scarface, Casino (and much later Goodfellas), Seven and Apocalypse Now.

A lot of people would think that I was probably too young for a lot of those films when I watched them, around 10 years old. I remember watching Aliens and my younger brother coming downstairs, at that point he would have been around 8 or 9, and getting scared so we had to turn it off and continue it later. I don’t think I was too young, I enjoyed watching them a lot. Some of them are among my favourites, but more importantly it is the memories that I still think back on fondly now.

The first time I remember being ill at my dad’s house we watched About an Boy and Forest Gump on the TV back to back. More age appropriate, but still my first time watching either. I loved both and have seen them multiple times since. The first film that I remember giving me nightmares was The Ring. I still have faint memories of the dream. A girl locked in a chest that was carried up a lighthouse, she would stay alive as long as no one let her out. I don’t remember much more, but I know it scared me at the time. I can still feel that deep fear inside when I think about it. These are important memories to me.

I will never forget my mum showing me all of Tarantino’s films, including True Romance and then Luc Besson’s Leon and Ridley Scott’s Thelma and Louise shortly afterwards (It’s probably a bigger span of time than I remember to be honest, but that doesn’t matter). To me these films are all linked together like some kind of tapestry of 90s action films that I discovered in the mid 2000s and I will never forget watching them with her.

There was one night, when my mum was going to bed and Hot Shots started on some channel. I’d never seen it, and mum told me to watch it, it’s good. So I did and loved it. I then got a DVD double pack of both films, which I watched and re-watched. This led me to Airplane! 1 & 2 as well as The Naked Gun series. Hot shots 2 and Naked Gun 3 are both 2 films I will never grow tired of.

Watching an endless amount of war films with my dad is something I will never forget. From Apocalypse Now to Saving Private Ryan and Platoon. With how many we watched, it almost feels like we could share war stories.

I don’t miss much from my childhood, but I do miss watching my parent’s favourite films with them for the first time. Those are memories that mean the world to me.