The Movies We Love Are Really About the People We Watched Them With

Think about your favorite movie from childhood. Chances are, you don't just remember the film. You remember the room you watched it in, the couch you sat on, the snacks, the weather outside, and, most of all, who was sitting next to you.

That simple, universal truth is the heart of Robot Dreams and Suburban Nightmares: A Memoir of Movies, Monsters, and a Mom of Steel by Chris Bujold. For Bujold, every chapter of life begins with a movie. Every film unlocks a memory, and together they tell the story of a boy growing up in suburban New Hampshire, a young man finding his place in an imperfect family, a husband and father, and finally a son facing an unimaginable loss.

At the center of the book is the woman who first taught him the magic of the movies: his mother. It was her love of film that became his, and it's through the films they shared that he remembers her as he faces the heartbreaking experience of saying goodbye. That's what gives the memoir its emotional power. It's a love letter to cinema, but even more, it's a love letter to the person who handed him the ticket.

If that sounds heavy, don't worry. Bujold writes with the wit of a lifelong cinephile, and the book is often laugh-out-loud funny. There are disastrous family vacations, neighborhood adventures, awkward teenage years, and all the chaotic, embarrassing, wonderful moments that make up a real childhood. He moves between affection and grief with a light touch, revisiting life's happiest moments alongside its most painful ones, and trusting readers to feel both.

For anyone who grew up in the 1980s and 1990s, the book is also a nostalgia machine. This was the golden age of the family movie night and the neighborhood video rental store, when choosing a tape was an event, the new releases wall was a battleground, and a single film could be watched so many times that the whole family could quote it. Bujold captures that era beautifully, and readers who remember it will find familiar reference points on nearly every page.

There's a fascinating reason those memories feel so vivid, too. Psychologists have long noticed something called the "reminiscence bump": when people are asked to recall the most important memories of their lives, a disproportionate number come from their teens and early adulthood. The music, movies, and experiences from those years seem to lodge themselves more deeply than anything that comes later. That may be why a scene from a film we loved at twelve can bring back an entire afternoon in perfect detail decades afterward. Bujold's memoir is, in a sense, a guided tour of his own reminiscence bump, and it will send readers straight into theirs.

What makes Robot Dreams and Suburban Nightmares special is how it uses something so fun to explore something so deep. Movies are the doorway, but the real subject is how the stories we watch become bound to the people we love. Long after the credits roll, the films stay with us because of who we shared them with. When those people are gone, the movies remain as a kind of time machine, and Bujold shows us how to step inside.

Chris Bujold writes about film, popular culture, family, and memory, and his essays and creative prose have appeared in publications including Twenty-Two Twenty-Eight, The Audacity, and Wayfarer Magazine. His voice is warm, self-deprecating, and deeply human, the voice of someone who has loved movies his whole life and understands exactly why.

This is a perfect book for film lovers, for children of the '80s and '90s, for anyone who has lost a parent, and for anyone who has ever found comfort, meaning, or escape in a darkened room with someone they love. Read it, and then call the person you used to watch movies with.

Robot Dreams and Suburban Nightmares: A Memoir of Movies, Monsters, and a Mom of Steel by Chris Bujold is available now in paperback.