As coronavirus has come to dominate our thoughts, conversations, actions and lives, it only follows that it would influence the movies we watch as well. At the beginning of the outbreak, pandemic films like “Contagion” and “28 Days Later,” among others, jumped in popularity. Maybe this was a collective morbid curiosity on our part, wondering what might happen in the coming weeks. Or perhaps it was a twisted kind of catharsis, a “better them than us” if you will. Either way, since I am stuck at home all day and cannot escape the ever rising death tolls and infection rates, disease movies aren’t really my vibe at the moment. I have always considered the movies to be an escape from reality (hence the name of this column “The Great Escape” – after the 1963 classic of the same name) so that is what I’ll be doing with this column: escaping from the world for a couple hours at a time. I must admit, though, that there is a bit of a gap in my movie knowledge and experience. I haven’t seen nearly as many classic films as I’d like. As a result I decided to start with older films and focus on the classics for the time being. That’s not to say I will never look at newer movies, we’ll get there. For now, however, I’d like to see what influenced the modern movies we know and love.