I watched The Breakfast Club almost every single afternoon of my freshman year in high school. Each day, my best friend and I would walk to my house, set up the weight bench and pop in my bootlegged copy of the finest Brat Pack film.

For the next 90 minutes, we would quote our favorite lines to each other, answering the questions asked on-screen before the characters had a chance to. Even the most serious parts became rolling-around-on-the-floor humor under our horrid impersonations. We loved it. Emilio Estevez before Mighty Ducks. Molly Ringwald before Lifetime Movies of the Week. Judd Nelson before Suddenly Susan. Anthony Michael Hall before oblivion.

A few years ago, I decided to relive some old memories. I dug out the old Breakfast Club tape and plopped down on the couch, ready to laugh and enjoy the nostalgia. But something strange had happened. The movie, once so fittingly funny at every turn, now seemed to aspire to something more than humor. For the first time, John Hughes' film was less about entertainment and more about making a "statement" of some sort.

I had never noticed it before, but now I realized that Hughes was actually trying to communicate with his audience. Hughes hadn't made a situational comedy-drama: He had made a social commentary on the idea that, in Hughes' words, "Once you get beyond the surface, [all teenagers] have pretty much the same problems and concerns." His movie was entertaining, to be sure, but it definitely had something on its mind.

As I think back on the year my friend and I enjoyed The Breakfast Club so much, I can see now that it affected our everyday mentality. We looked for opportunities to emulate Judd Nelson's rude and perverted character, John, especially quoting his sexually loaded lines. We relished the chance to make fun of other students the same way John made fun of Brian (the Geek), Andrew (the Jock) and Claire (the Prep).

In short, we totally missed John Hughes' point that all teenagers can relate through their struggles, and got caught up in the moral ambiguity, gross caricatures and lame sexual suggestions that were so titillating to us as ninth-graders.

Conventional wisdom says movies are made for entertainment. And in one sense, this is true: Armageddon was made so we could be excited and then cry, Stepmom was made so we could laugh and then cry, and Hope Floats was made so we could just cry.

An avid filmgoer, I admit that I'm often interested only in escape and diversion. There is little as entertaining as having your emotions relentlessly pushed, pulled and tugged for a couple of hours, and no medium creates those effects as deftly as film. But whether you realize it or not, when you sit in a theater (listen to music, watch a television program, or attend a play) you are doing more than simply being entertained: You are also learning. In ways both subtle and overt, movies teach audiences about life, love, religion, relationships, etc. In the absence of critical viewing, movies have the power to persuade the viewer, over time, to embrace a substantially different way of thinking and living.

Part of my struggle as a Christian has been to resist the subtle influence on my thinking while at the same time maintaining an open pursuit of culture. In his classic The God Who is There, Francis Schaeffer says, "The Christian has paid a very heavy price, both in the defense and communication of the Gospel, for his failure to think and act as an educated man at grips with the uniformity of our modern culture." The keys to locating that "uniformity" (or the general ideology of a culture) lie in studying the "art and literature of the past, and those things which help us to understand a culture." Film is one of the means of paying the "very heavy price." Cinema plays an ever growing role in culture — not merely as entertainment, but as an indicator of what the culture believes.

Everything I Need to Know about Life I Learned from Swingers

Not only is film entertaining (i.e. its fun visceral quality, its ability to make us forget about everything, its capacity to seemingly "transport" us to another place and time, etc.), it's also a very capable teacher. The great film theorist Christian Metz says that because film is so life-like, so entrancing, so seemingly real, it can truly create, even if just for a moment, an alternate reality for the viewer. In that moment, the film is as real as anything outside of the theater. It's no wonder the filmgoer may easily (and involuntarily) adopt the philosophical messages of the film.

A close friend of mine, Brandon, adores the movie Swingers. Having watched it together a couple of times, his appreciation of it reminds me of my own fondness for The Breakfast Club. Trent, his favorite character, is the smooth-talking hipster played by Vince Vaughn. Brandon has watched the movie enough to learn Trent's manner of speaking, and he likes to imitate Trent's voice in jest. In fact, since Brandon has Trent's exact build, a similar hairstyle, and Trent's preppy fraternity-member style of dress, the imitation is irritatingly accurate.

Pressed to the point, Brandon will admit that a part of him wants to see the world like Trent does. In the movie, Trent is carefree: he lives for the moment, goes around calling girls "babies," and has no relationship scruples whatsoever. Brandon knows that type of worldview doesn't translate well into the real world, but he enjoys the fantasy, and sometimes seems to have a difficult time separating the fictional dating paradigm in Swingers from a more realistic understanding of human relationships. He knows that Swingers is merely a movie, but he still tries to apply the "lessons" in Swingers to his life.

Thankfully, people don't usually treat movies as serious as that. When my friends and I go to a movie, we don't pay six dollars expecting to learn how to live better lives. We simply want to wile away a Saturday afternoon or enjoy the latest work from Tom Hanks and Stephen Spielberg. Regardless of intentions, however, it can be tempting to embrace ideas that are presented in cinematic form. Movies are enjoyable — the actors are attractive, the dialogue is witty and rhythmic, and everything always seems to work out in the end. While that makes for great entertainment, it also makes for subtle deception. Even if we aren't duped by the idealism on screen, it can be easy to shift our perspective unwittingly: we want "the best" in life, and the movies sometimes offer an attractive version of what it means to achieve that "best."

Pulp Fiction Made Me the Man I Am Today

I used to think that many filmmakers, even the ones from Hollywood, were geniuses of cinema and literature. I thought they understood the theories behind viewership (i.e. what happens to an audience while watching a movie) and that they were in tune with all the philosophical implications of their work. I thought the reason they got into filmmaking was that they wanted to make an impact on the world. I couldn't have been more wrong. The most frustrating part of all this is that some filmmakers don't seem to know the power that they possess.

The most accessible example of this is Quentin Tarantino, writer/director of Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown. Tarantino's crime-life films are strung with witty dialogue (loaded with profanity), frenetic performances and deft photography all purposed to capture characters whose lives are tarnished by drugs, illicit sex and violence. For many audiences, his movies are pure entertainment (see the "Tarantino Web Ring" for proof of his rabid following), and the film industry typically credits Tarantino for the rising success of independent film.

For someone with such a massive following, you'd think Tarantino would be aware of the impact his movies have on audiences; you'd think he'd be aware of how audiences are affected by his characters' moral ambivalence and the way drugs and violence are made to look pretty in his films. You might even think he had something important to say. I did. But what I found is a man who's out to entertain. Period. He isn't preaching a message; he's just trying to make cool movies. When asked by Playboy whether he embraced the idea that his films have the "potential to instruct" viewers, Tarantino said, "Anytime you try to get across a big idea, you're shooting yourself in the foot. First, you need to make a good movie. And in the process, if there's something in it that comes across, that's great."

Despite Tarantino's claim to the contrary, his movies bear his worldview. And as my friend Brandon proves, that worldview can easily find its way into the head of the audience. "The really dangerous thing," says Francis Schaeffer in Escape From Reason, "is that people are being taught ... without being able to understand what is happening to them."

This brings to mind a roommate of mine from my third year in college with an uncanny knack for memorizing movie lines. Whenever we would go see a movie together, he would walk out quoting all his favorite lines verbatim. If Billy Crystal said, "That, my friend, is a dark side," my roommate would perfectly imitate every word, every motion, every voice intonation. He was hilarious.

The longer we lived together, though, the more I noticed something odd about his movie memorization: even when he wasn't actually quoting one of his favorite characters, he often seemed to be thinking like them. One of his favorite movies was Pulp Fiction, and he was so infatuated with Vincent Vega (John Travolta's character) that he had learned all of Travolta's lines. It was funny at times, but I can remember more serious conversations with my roommate about his relationships when he would start to sound just like Vincent Vega. He often said, "It's just like in Pulp Fiction where Vincent Vega ..." and so on. He wasn't just watching films and learning good joke material — he was watching films and learning about life.

Many filmmakers are able to locate the larger cultural implications and philosophical or personal influences embedded in their work. Independent filmmaker Whit Stillman (The Last Days of Disco), for example, noted that he doesn't "want the audience leaving the theater and getting a negative impression of what it means to love. " Others, like Oliver Stone (Platoon, Nixon), Woody Allen (Annie Hall, Manhattan) and Stephen Spielberg (Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan) understand that movies can be purposeful and meaningful, and that they can influence culture.

Seeing Things Your Way

Despite the director's intentions, I try to watch all movies with a critical eye. And when the credits roll, I spend time thinking about what I just saw. It's amazing what you find out about a movie when you ask "So what?" afterwards. Did you notice that Adam Sandler's movies (The Waterboy, Happy Gilmore) are really about accepting outsiders and daring to be different from the crowd? Neither did I, but a friend of mine enlightened me. Whether you're watching a mindless Sandler movie (matinee material) or the riveting Saving Private Ryan, asking "So what?" will cause you to think more critically about the film's ethical premise and philosophical underpinnings.

Be discerning about which movies to watch. I struggle with this a lot. It's often tempting to attend any movie under the guise of being "culturally informed." A verse in Philippians about reflecting on "whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure ..." comes to mind here, for I know that watching depravity on-screen makes it difficult to reflect on things right and pure. I must admit the best films sometimes contain content I would rather avoid.

Typically, when I give in, I regret it. For example, after a long debate with myself, I went to see The People vs. Larry Flynt. In addition to realizing that the movie was extremely overrated (the director, Milos Forman, has done much better work, such as Amadeus), I hated leaving the theater with Larry Flynt's (or, more accurately, Woody Harrleson's) voice, Larry Flynt's morals, and Larry Flynt's version of meaning in my mind. It disturbed me for days.

As a rule, I try to avoid anything gratuitous — movies that have violence for the sake of violence or sex for the sake of sex. But since I can't always judge the gratuity factor ahead of time [editor's note: Plugged In Online was not available at the time this article was written; it is now], I try to make a subjective decision based on a standard I have set for myself.

This doesn't mean narrowly discounting any film with questionable content; but practicing discernment. If I know that the content in a certain movie may cause me to stumble, then I avoid it. No matter how much I'm interested in Vladimir Nabakov, you couldn't convince me to see Lolita (a movie about an older man having an illicit affair with a 14-year-old girl), and even though I love movies about the 70s, I've been avoiding Boogie Nights like the plague. I know it's unfashionable to strive for innocence, but in this area, I'm willing to commit a faux pas.

Near the end of The God Who is There, Schaeffer admonishes Christians "to be whole people and ... open the doors with integrity to the works of art and knowledge of men." The hard part of this admonishment is not to open the doors, but to know how to open them with integrity. How do I maintain purity and innocence while at the same time equipping myself with an understanding of culture? The answer, I think, is to try. Use discernment both in selecting movies and in reflecting on them. See the movies for what they are: a business of entertainment as well as cultural indicators.