This past weekend I took in two very different but pretty terrific films: J.J. Abram's Super 8 and Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris. Both films deal with the past. One film pays homage to what some would call the golden age for one of our greatest filmmakers, and the other film deals with the very concept of a golden age, or if such a thing even exists. After Allen's film, a friend and I began to recall our own histories, talking about films that got us into movies in the first place and films that continued to have significant impacts well past our childhoods. Together, films like There Will Be Blood, E.T., J.F.K., Bottle Rocket, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Die Hard, The Social Network, Jaws, Punch-Drunk Love, Star Wars, The Thin Red Line, Pulp Fiction, and Magnolia were mentioned. These were films that stayed with us for one reason or another. They've affected us in significant ways and helped fashion what we love about the medium. We got to talking about the independent film movement in the late '80s-early '90s and how exciting it was when films like Drugstore Cowboy, Sex, Lies and Videotape, Reservoir Dogs, and even Clerks were popping out and how that excitement has kind of dwindled. Those were the good ol' days, right?

I've always felt nostalgia could be a nice crutch in life. I'm not talking about living in the past. I'm not talking about a lack of perspective. As we get older we get more analytical, more guarded, and with good reason. Through experience we have gained perspective as we shed ourselves of our more naive skins. Practicality and then cynicism looms over our jaded selves. When cynicism gets out of hand, it can make us a lot less happy, enjoy less. It can be toxic. We may even become cynical a-holes (in fairness, the The Zookeeper can do that to anyone). So when I say nostalgia can be good, I mean it helps remind me of where I've come from and how I came to be the person I am today; I'm talking about the reflective acuity the past allows for the present, or even the future. I believe it's good for the soul.

Some circles have accused Super 8 of using nostalgia as a crutch, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense. You can't direct nostalgia. What is nostalgic for me may not be nostalgic for you. But the common thread of nostalgia is innocence, or at least a perceived innocence or a perceived purity. It can be an innocence of the mind (childhood, past relationships, old locations) or of a medium (types of films). What you can do -- and what Abrams I feel does very successfully -- is take everything he loved about Steven Spielberg's Old Testament offerings and try to share that with the rest of us. If it works, it perhaps evokes feelings of nostalgia for an individual as it reminds us of the types of films we used to get from a master of cinema. But it can't actually be those films for me because I'm not 8 years old anymore.

Admiring what Abrams accomplished isn't a case of living in the past either. That's too easy a dismissal and more than a little condescending. It's the difference between celebrating what we love from those more innocent times and wishing, say, Hollywood would simply "Make'em like they used to." In Super 8's case, it's about paying homage to early Spielberg. In Midnight in Paris, however, Owen Wilson does wish they made it like they used to, only he's referring to life. He pines for the days in Paris when giants like Hemingway, Scott and Zelda, or Cole Porter could be spotted walking out of the Moulin Rouge. Here is a man who literally would like to live in the past. We sometimes look at our own pasts through gold-filtered lenses, and Allen says it is perhaps even more dangerous to harken back to a time you didn't even experience. In life, in real life, romanticism leaves in a hurry. It is not only unhealthy to live in your own past, it is unhealthy to pretend you can live in any golden age. More to the point, there is no golden age. There is always struggle and there is always pain, and we will never have the benefit of a future perspective in our present reality.

With the experiences that life affords us, however, you can choose to engage in the spirit you still treasure of that past time. Abrams engaged in this spirit. And at the end of the Allen's film, Wilson's character chooses Paris not because he is a fool or duped into thinking he can relive his youth. He is fairly collected and clear-headed. He understands life throws curve balls and that he even may be making a mistake. But he also understands that if he doesn't try to live the kind of life he always wanted to live, if he doesn't try to be the person he always wanted to be, he will continue to be lost and he will continue to be disappointed and he will continue to wonder.

In Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia (one of those impact films mentioned earlier), there is a very foreboding message repeated in the film: "We may be done with the past, but the past isn't through with us." I've always understood the darker connotations in this message, but later it inspired a different reading; that it is just as much a positive assurance as it is a threat (the film's many outcomes are further evidence). As a guy who tries to use my past failures and successes to an advantage today; who will continue to assess who I am and why I am; who will always love Spielberg's early films, who will always treasure all there is to treasure from the all the "golden ages" from which one could choose, be it Paris in the '20s or the Nintendo era of the '80s, it's a pretty comforting thought.