24 Hours of Movies: Happy Birthday Charlie!

by Patrick Bromley

My favorite boy turns 17 today. 

It's hard to believe that Charlie Bromley is 17. He was pretty much a baby when FTM began 15 years ago and has grown up along with the site. In that time he has been through 11.5 grades, has learned to swim and to drive, has taken up drums and become an extremely accomplished jazz drummer, has fallen in love with both football and basketball, and has sat through countless movies with Erika and me. What better way to celebrate him than to program 24 hours of some of his favorites?

Take us there, Skitch.

10 am - That Thing You Do! (1997, dir. Tom Hanks)

Let's start with one of Charlie's all-time favorites, and not just because it centers around a jazz drummer (Tom Everett Scott) who joins a 1960s rock band and experiences a meteoric rise to pop stardom. Not a day goes by where he and I won't quote some obscure line from Tom Hanks' endlessly quotable screenplay (real throwaways like "Oh...I never do...") or reference the events in some way. It means so much to me that this movie means so much to him because it's one of my favorites too, and I love that he and I are able to share it together.

12 pm - Catch Me If You Can (2002, dir. Steven Spielberg)

Ask him on the right day and Charlie will probably name this as his favorite movie. I think it was the combination of Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg that led him to this one -- I know it's not one we've shown him -- and he immediately fell in love with the tale of con artist Frank Abignale Jr. (Leonardo DiCaprio) trying to evade the FBI. I think there's something about the bouncy '60s vibes and the John Williams score that speaks to his sensibilities. At least, I hope that's what appeals to him and not the fractured relationship between Frank Jr. and his father, played by Christopher Walken, because I couldn't stand the thought that Charlie relates to any aspect of their dynamic. I would rather he fake being an airline pilot.

2:30 pm - Cars 2 (2011, dir. John Lasseter)

I know people mostly don't like Cars 2 because it puts Larry the Cable Guy's Mater front and center and because it all becomes a big spy comedy, but it will always hold a special place in our hearts because it's the first movie we ever took Charlie to see in a theater and because it's the movie he watched the most at home when we went and bought the Blu-ray the morning it came out (some days he would just watch the menu cycle on repeat, that's how into this movie he was). I recognize that most of my affection for the sequel is nostalgia, but sometimes we watch movies the same way we listen to songs -- to be transported back to an earlier time, to who we were when we first heard or saw it. I can't hear Michael Giacchino's incredible score for this one without immediately thinking of Charlie at age 3, transfixed by a movie for the first time. It means everything.

4:30 - F1 (2025, dir. Joseph Kosinski)

This is technically not a favorite because neither Charlie nor I have seen it yet despite it being the movie he wanted to see most this summer. We could never get the family schedules to line up enough for all of use to get to the theater and see it, which is one of my great failures as a parent (I have had many failures as a parent). This feels like an extension of his love for the Cars movies, right? I want to rectify Charlie's disappointment by programming it as part of his marathon. This spot was originally slotted for Top Gun: Maverick so we're really just swapping one Joseph Kosinski vehicle porn for another.

7 pm - Whiplash (2014, dir. Damien Chazelle)

Sure, maybe it's a cheat to program another drummer movie (maybe the drummer movie?), but I couldn't devote a marathon to Charlie without playing this one because it helped foster his love of jazz. We just got the chance to see the movie screened with live jazz accompaniment by some of the best musicians in Chicago and Charlie has already played with three or four of them, which is insanely cool. That was my first time seeing the movie in 10 years and it played much better for me this time than it did when Erika and I watched it as a screener in 2015. It's a tense and biting study in obsession and perfectionism, and while I've never had a teacher who was anything like Fletcher (JK Simmons in an Oscar-winning performance), I know that people like this exist. I just hope Charlie never has to study under one.

9 pm - Companion (2025, dir. Drew Hancock)

I wanted to include something from this year because it's when Charlie and I really hit our stride seeing movies together, sometimes knocking out 2-3 a week. This is one of my favorite movies he and I saw together this year, featuring a star-making performance by Sophie Thatcher and a great turn by Jack Quaid, cannily weaponizing his niceness in ways I don't want to spoil. I'm bummed that the marketing gave so many of the film's reveals away without a second thought because it's a movie that plays better the less you know going in. I love sitting next to Charlie in the theater while he has his mind blown by stuff like this.

10:45 pm - Secret Admirer (1985, dir. David Greenwalt)

Because Charlie isn't into Italian horror (or much horror at all, though he'll always go see a new horror movie with me because he's the best), we're going to go into the overnight section of our marathon with a trilogy of movies starring Lori Loughlin, his number one celebrity crush. I love that this is in Charlie's Top 5 favorite movies because it's one he found entirely on his own and tries to introduce to all his friends whenever he has them over. I get the Lori Loughlin crush but let's not pretend that the movie doesn't also star a 1985 Kelly Preston, Charlie. This is a better-than-average teen sex comedy in part because of a major subplot about the kids' parents that manages to function as farce but is also kind of sweet. I don't know any other teenagers in 2025 who count this among their favorite films. 

12:45 am - The New Kids (1985, dir. Sean S. Cunningham)

We continue the Lori Loughlin block with this nasty bit of teen exploitation, which Charlie still considers the scariest movie he has ever seen (for the record, he has seen way scarier movies but isn't as affected by them as he is by this one). I have to assume he's terrified of blonde James Spader, playing the leader of a high school gang that terrorizes a pair of recent transplants to the school (Loughlin and Shannon Presby). I know it doesn't have the cultural impact of Friday the 13th, but this is the best movie that Sean Cunningham ever directed even though reviews were bad and the writer took his name off the finished film. Spader is at his evil, demented best and Cunningham leans into the trashy exploitation elements, escalating the violence to wacky places. The mere mention of this movie upsets Charlie so I thought we could have him confront his fears while being totally sleep deprived. What could go wrong?

2:15 am - The Night Before (1988, dir. Thom Eberhardt)

We'll close out the Lori Loughlin block with a super underrated One Crazy Night teen comedy from writer/director Thom Eberhardt (Night of the Comet, Without a Clue) starring Keanu Reeves as a geeky teenager who lucks into a prom date with the most popular girl in school (Loughlin) and then accidentally sells her to a pimp and has to get her back despite not being able to remember anything about the night. Keanu is his usual affable self and Eberhardt is great at subverting pretty much everything we expect from an '80s high school comedy, willing to be weirder and darker than most of his peers while still retaining a basic sweetness. I wish it would get a Blu-ray. I'd even settle for a widescreen DVD.

4 am - Fun Size (2012, dir. Josh Schwartz)

I know Halloween is over, but this is about as horror-adjacent as we're going to get courtesy of another of Charlie's crushes, Victoria Justice (who, now that I think about it, looks a little like '80s Lori Loughlin), a former Nickelodeon star making her feature starring debut. Like The Night Before, it's another "one crazy night" movie about a bunch of teenagers, this time on Halloween, written and directed by the O.C. creator Josh Schwartz. Justice acquits herself just fine, but it's really future star Jane Levy who steals the show as her best friend. I love it when we introduce the kids to a movie on a lark and they adopt it as one of their own. That's such a gift.

5:30 am - Snoopy, Come Home (1972, dir. Bill Melendez)

I want to program this one here in a "Saturday Morning Cartoons" kind of way, but also because it was a DVD favorite for little Charlie. The Peanuts have always been big in our life as a family -- we have a whole Christmas tree decorated only in Peanuts ornaments -- so they should be represented somewhere in this marathon. Also, that picture of Linus reminds me so much of baby Charlie, who had blankets he carried around with him everywhere and slept with every night. It will be amazing if I can get through this one without breaking down.

7 am - Avengers: Endgame (2019, dir. Joe Russo & Anthony Russo)

We'll close things out with another favorite and the movie that helped Charlie get back into movie theaters after Avengers: Infinity War freaked him out and upset him so much that he wouldn't go to a movie for a year. I get it. He was 10 and watching a lot of his favorite superheroes die on screen fucked him up. The triumphant sequel -- a much more upbeat and "fun" movie -- had the opposite effect, reinvigorating his love of movies and of the theatrical experience. I know he's never going to love movies as much as he loves other stuff like sports or jazz and I know he's never going to love movies as much as I do, but I love him for trying. 

Happy birthday, Charlie. You're the best drummer, the best movie buddy, the best kid. You're my favorite boy and I love you more than anything.