Strictly Ballroom - 1992

This is one of those films you either love or turn off in the first 15 minutes. An over the top look behind-the-scenes of ballroom dancing, this movie had me smiling from beginning to end.

Scott Hastings is a champion caliber ballroom dancer, but much to the chagrin of the Australian ballroom dance community, Scott believes in dancing "his own steps". Fran is a beginning dancer and a bit of an ugly duckly who has the audacity to ask to be Scott's partner after his unorthodox style causes his regular partner to dance out of his life. Together, these two misfits try to win the Australian Pan Pacific Championships and show the Ballroom Confederation that they are wrong when they say, "there are no new steps!"

Scent of a Woman - 1992

"Just call me Frank. Call me Mr. Slade. Call me... Colonel, if you must. Just don't call me "Sir.""

As a huge fan of Al Pacino I have to include this movie. A very young Chris O'Donnell joins him in a funny and heartfelt film about the characters and their relationship. Also look for a very young Philip Seymour Hoffman as a fellow student of O'Donnell.

Hoping to earn some extra cash during the Thanksgiving holiday, poor prep-school student Charlie Simms (Chris O'Donnell) agrees to look after blind -- and cantankerous -- Lt. Col. Frank Slade (Al Pacino, in a tour-de-force performance). Though the callow student and jaded colonel are mismatched, their relationship grows as Simms follows Slade around Manhattan on a string of wild escapades, and Slade is unmasked as a sentimental romantic.

Frank's bizarre habit of yelling "hoo-wah!" is an actual United States Army battlecry, although he is saying it wrong. He places far too much of a "W" sound on the second syllable. The real version is closer to "hoo-ah!"

"Hoo-wah" is a military acronym (usually yelled by Drill Sargents to Boots) from the acronym "HUA" which is often pronounced "hoo-ah" or in this case "hoo-wah." HUA stands for "Heard, Understood, Acknowledged." Over the years, in the US Army this phrase has taken on many meanings including "Understood?" "yes" or as a general exclamation of "I'm motivated!"

C.R.A.Z.Y. - 2005

This movie was crazy good. Both a coming of age and a coming out movie that fed me the full range of human emotion. The father/son relationship in this film is dealt with in a very honest and heartfelt way.

There are five boys in the Beaulieu family -- Christian, Raymond, Antoine, Zachary and Yvan. But Zac (played by Emile Vallee and Marc-Andre Grondin) is the only one who's gay. That's why growing up in Montreal alongside his heterosexual brothers and his strict, emotionally distant father (Michel Cote) proves especially challenging for the blossoming outsider, who finds solace in the music of Pink Floyd, the Rolling Stones and David Bowie.