So, this is how I decided that my grandmother"s love of life is directly related to the rise of Arnold Schwarzenegger as the number one action star of all time.

I was sitting at my grandparent"s kitchen table, discussing the ways of the world with my grandma, when it struck me: Movies. Most of our conversations involve one of us talking and the other listening, and then the listener invariably nodding or smiling or both. While there is certainly learning during this process, the entertainment value of conversations such as these is usually negligible. Being a devout hedonist, I think that every conversation should be fun for all, and that any learning that occurs should be completely an afterthought.

Movies, though. My Grandma loved old movies, and now that I had a few film classes under my belt, I felt like we could discuss some of the great cinematic achievements that she had the good fortune to see on the big screen, in all their original glory. How eager was I, then but a budding film snob, to hear how she received "Citizen Kane" when it was first released, without the clutter of hundreds of textbooks and deconstructions and feminist criticisms suggesting that "Rosebud" was a stand-in for Kane"s inability to relate to women who did not lie on their backs and slide down hills.

Grandma, I asked, you used to go to the movies all the time, didn"t you? Not only did she, but apparently, during the Great Depression, a potato could be substituted for the nickel admission. Oh, and she saw loads of Tyrone Power movies. He was very handsome. He was in this movie called "Thin Ice," which she saw with her friend Debbie Nausenblow, who died last winter. Tyrone was a skier who skied every morning, and the ski instructor fell in love with him. It was beautiful.

Ah, yes, I smiled and nodded, but do you know what I saw last semester? "Citizen Kane." I waited for her to gush about the brilliant camera work of a young Orson Welles, and how the studio had no call to screw with "The Magnificent Ambersons." "Oh," she replied, "I saw that one too. Did you ever see "Alexander"s Ragtime Band?" Tyrone Power was so handsome in that, I thought I was in love with him!"

I smiled and nodded.

My initial conclusion was simply that my grandmother, bless her heart, just did not appreciate good film making. She simply clings onto the flashy, overdone films of her childhood and cannot separate her feelings of nostalgia from the important art and visual discipline of film.

Wait, what"s that? Did you just say "Total Recall" is not the finest sci-fi action film ever made? That, possibly "Red Heat" didn"t transcend the buddy cop movie to study the relationship of Russians and Americans during the Cold War? That "Commando" sucked ass? Quit reading my column right now, I"m done with you and your clear lack of knowledge and respect for "80s- early "90s action flicks and their importance in redefining how we appreciate celluloid.

Yeah, so there"s the rub. My affinity for the movies of my youth is probably even more rabid than my grandmother"s. When I think about it critically, I can make an intellectual distinction between Robert Duvall"s performance in "Tender Mercies" and James Belushi"s wise-cracking-yet-tenderhearted American cop in "Red Heat." Why did crappy movies resonate more when we were children? If it were simply that, at such a young age, we had not yet completely comprehended terms like "hackneyed" and "trope" and "really stupid," then we would have outgrown these movies once we understood the true nature of their quality.

"Cloak and Dagger" (starring duel-role-action Dabney Coleman) and "The Last Starfighter" (starring, um, Robert Preston?), in my opinion, are the two greatest childrens" films this side of "The Goonies." I actually saw "Starfighter" in a drive-in with my parents when I was four-years-old, and even now that I understand it was a cut-and-paste affair, fusing elements from "E.T.," "Star Wars" and "Tron," I get the same thrill from watching my fuzzy VHS copy today. And don"t even get me started on "Batman."

Childhood is usually associated with innocence, and our love of films from a happy time is understandable. My grandma grew up during the Great Depression, and her life was not ideal, growing up in a small house packed full of kids and parents that barely spoke English. She has fond memories of films that allowed her to escape into beautiful places with beautiful people. I had a childhood full of toys and video games, with my own room and 347 different flavors of Kool-aid (though I was more of a Ecto-kooler man, myself). I enjoyed movies with lots of swearing and violence, where kids got to fire guns and blow up aliens. While their may be some deep-rooted sociological implications to this, I"m still determined that "Predator" may be the gnarliest movie ever made.

Lyle Henretty can be reached at

lhenrett@umich.edu