My daughter is at an age where she can mostly follow a full-length adult movie. She’s one week from 11 years old. As I always tell her, hoping my words will one day blossom into a great story of her own, ahem, narcissist that I am, she began going to the movies on an almost weekly basis since she was around 6 months old. Back then and until she was around 4, I could time her afternoon naps to the film I wanted to see and most of the time she slept pretty well through. She would sometimes wake up at the end and it would be a challenge to see the film’s ending with babbling baby or complaining toddler. I’m not admitting that there were many films’ endings I never saw. I’m not admitting it. But if it did happen, it happened back then. The end result was that it didn’t really matter much. Sure, I’ve been writing film reviews that long, almost ten years, and so I’m sure in some circles there are ethics involved. What, me worry?

Now, she is old enough to really take to the movies. We have a little routine. On Saturdays or Sundays we drive down to this really awful part of town. Okay, so it’s not so awful to us – but it’s like Panorama City/Van Nuys inerds. I mean really deep into the valley where it is hot as Vegas almost always and where there are outlet malls yawning into the landscape. It’s so far out that it’s mostly past the Hispanic suburbs. There is a little mall there with a theater that plays first run films every hour on the hour. So we can go and have lunch – Emma always gets a smoothie with boba and goyoza. I like to test out various things but I’m sort of fond of the spicy ramen. Then we walk over to the multiplex, a relic of the ’80s, and sit in a mostly empty theater, the kind I would have died for back when she was a babbling toddler.

She was totally wrapped up in both recent viewings of Star Trek and Angels & Demons, but the latter had her on the edge of her seat – it’s a cliche for a reason. She kept whispering to me what was going to happen next. The beauty of being so young and pure that predictability in a film is actually fun! And the truth is, it’s an okay film. It’s perfect for an 11 year-old. Me, I slept through the first part and agreed that the second part wasn’t so surprising. Now Emma wants to read both the Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons. Anything to replace her repetition of the Twilight books. Anything.

Angels & Demons is worthwhile for one reason: the footage of Rome. In many ways that made the film even more unrealistic to me; trying to imagine secrecy in these really familiar places is difficult. But it’s thrilling, nonetheless, to just to re-imagine being there. This year, on our trip to Italy in August, we won’t be going to Rome, unfortunately. Though I’ve decided it’s officially my favorite city (having never been to Paris or London or Vienna). We’ll be flying into Milan and seeing the country from the top down as we head to Rimini for a ten day stay.