What Kind of Movies Do You Like?

What do I want? I don't know. What do I complain about? It depends on what's wrong with the movie, really - I don't focus on one thing, irrelevant of context. I can say, though, that I'm more critical of movies that somehow fall under my "good" limit. That probably means that they have not much to redeem them - plot, acting, writing, cinematography, etc. If I enjoy a movie, especially if it's not a really commercial one where I feel like I'm being pandered to, then I tend to withhold judgment. Especially since I think I should watch movies repeatedly before really having something to say about them, and often I don't get to. For example: I saw 'Baby Boy,' John Singleton's new movie, the other night and I enjoyed it quite a bit, thought it was an excellent movie. I've read some reviews that are critical of its plotting, and of its seeming a bit diactic at times, and though I noticed things like that I'm not sure I agree that the plotting was a problem, or that it was too didactic, though they seem like criticisms people are pretty likely to make. I'd prefer to see it more before being critical, though, because the positive experience I had of watching it was far more important than possible flaws.

So, I suppose a short way of putting that is that I approach movies a lot like I do music, except I'm a lot less experienced with movies.

Film I have talked abt most since saw preview two weeks ago = Pokémon 3: the Legend of the Unown. (Note rad spelling...)

I don't care about plot. Not in the slightest. I hate people who, after a film, say things like "That never could've happened, why didn't they just use the service elevator, and also did you notice there wasn't enough gas in the outboard motor" etc. Especially since half the time they're wrong, and just didn't notice some scene or other. Things with complicated plots bore me. I mean, does anybody with an actual life with stuff going on in it (not that I do, but really) CARE if Kevin Spacey is Keyser Soze? But the way people talk about it, figuring out these plots is the key to unlocking the mysteries of the universe.
Also, I truly despise the Coen Brothers. So who cares if you've seen every film ever? None of the films they're alluding to made a virtue of their own wacky brilliance, so the bros. managed to miss the point during all those hours of looking for stuff to plagiarise that was 'obscure' enough for students to congratulate themselves for their own superior taste upon finding, but well-known enough that your typical Joe Multiplex will also catch the references and delude himself into thinking he's smarter than he actually is, too.

Sorry - I don't mean to negatively caricature Multiplex customers. It's just that when people who normally like blockbusters watch a Coen film, they seem coerced into saying they liked it "Because it's really clever, with all the references. Did you catch that character's name? Also, the structure was unconventional. Real brain- twister, that one. The kind of film that makes you think!" And maybe I'm being fascistic about it but I just CANNOT believe these reactions are genuine.

Also, the Coen brothers appear to believe that people saying anything, now matter how boring or stupid or trite, is funny, as long as it is delivered in a regional accent of some sort. Even vaudeville audiences would find this a bit old hat, no?

More movies ought to have better scripts. Sit down and think where their script is going wrong. More movies ought to make some kind of sense. Learn by the mistakes of other movies.

That said I prefer films which are fatally flawed because you can bitch about them in the pub afterwards. Any film with dodgy science is a field day for me and my mate Lou (a blood scientist trying to invent fake blood so vampires can drink it - or something). I tend to like all kinds of films as long as they have been done with a degree of wit and wisdom.

Oh, I hate anything with Julianne Moore or Denzil Washington in them.

I barely watch movies. Like I have said a thousand times, I am film deaf in the same way that some people are tone deaf. Like, if someone explains a film to me, and why I should like it, and why it's good, and I will be able to sit through it and even appreciate it, but I very rarely seek films out by myself.

So my favourite kinds of films are:

1) Visually stunning yet intellectually abstruse, and therefore devoid of any sort of conventional plot that I would have to follow. Especially if these are "period pieces" from the 60s like Performance or Head or La Dolce Vita. I like things like Roeg and Goddard (shhh! Don't tell Momus) and Lynch and that Italian guy with the unspellable name, because I'm not *supposed* to follow along, I can just watch and get the sensations of deep and important things happening.

2) I like period films about stuff I already know. Historical dramas about English Queens, and adaptations of Jane Austen novels, again, so I don't have to follow a plot and I don't have to remember which actor is playing which person (I actually find this the hardest part of any film. I forget which person is playing which character.) because I already know them all.

3) Utter trash. Anything on Channel 5 or the Living Channel with lots of sex and violence and people sleeping with their teenage babysitters and killing their spouses. Again, because I don't have to follow a plot, I can just make one up.

I've figured it out! I don't like plots! I just like pretty imagery and beautiful texture. Kinda like my taste in music... wow, something is finally starting to make sense!

Obscure foreign films, artfilms and the like. I seem to watch too many of them, and it's a pain when I'm at a loose end wanting to watch a movie. Sample situation:

Paul: Well, what shall we do Kate: We could see a movie! Paul: Ace! (goes over to video collection) Kate: What shall we watch? Paul: Ai No Corrida... hmmm, not that. Love and Human Remains... nah, not in the mood. The Tricolore series...? Maybe not. Kate: Do you have The Lost Boys? Paul: Hang on! Er... Eraserhead? That's fairly accessible... Kate: Don't you have anything easy to watch? Paul: Dancer In The Dark? Pi? Kate: Sod it. Chasing The Dragon is on C5 and we'll watch that. Again.

In fact, I have a depressingly pretentious movie collection. So much so that I'm going to have to stop at the video store and buy trashy movies on the way home...

Nevertheless, though, I really do like some of these films. Dancer In The Dark is one of the most moving films I've seen in ages... Not as good as Not Without My Daughter, as Kate will point out, but brilliant nonetheless.

Different films work for different days - which is possibly why I went to see Miss Congeniality a couple of months back (plus a dodgy is it paedophilic to go and watch Bring It On on my own). I have professed before though I am not a big fan of seeing films on video - except in a tag team take the piss kind of way.

Just as well I see four films a week to cover the bases.

I watch very few films but watch some over and over again. These being: Brazil, Vertigo, Darling, Desperately Seeking Susan, NxNW etc. And Fred and Ginger musicals, because they are glorious.

Bill

Humph!!!

Did Paul also fail to mention the fact that he invariably wants to see a movie at about 11pm on Friday night, when I am too tired (and often drunk) to follow ANY plot, let alone Pi or something? (Though I confess I do want to see Pi)

I guess he has to do something to make up for the fact that I take the piss out of him for, whenever I want to listen to Steve Reich or E.A.R or Warrn DeFever's Mystic Moog Orchestra Plays The Greatest Folksongs Of The Appalaichans, he whinges about wanting to listen to Belle and Sebastian or the Field Mice.

I like my movies with adult language, nudity, wanton violence and Gary Oldman. And Broadway musicals.

Bear in mind that the "mathematical" basis for Pi = fatuously bogus. I am the only person in the world that this bothered.

Am much more snobby about popular movies than I am abt popular music. Last film I walked out on: The Matrix.

No, Mark, it also bothered my friend's husband, who is a maths professor at RPI. And my dad.

I enjoy movies a lot, without any real knowledge of them. I like them b/c they're like novels. Just shorter and with people playing the charcters differently than you would imagine.

I cared that kevin spacey was kyzer whatever! :) What about 6th Sense? Was anyone else surprised by the ending? I can't profess to loving the Coen Bros. but Fargo definitely makes my top ten of all time. I'm dying to see O Brother Where Art Thou mainly b/c I love the soundtrack.

Want to see Baby Boy too. . .

H. wants to see Shrek, not sure about that one. To give him credit though he has also turned me on to the Bosnian director Emir Kostricka. The Underground, Time of the Gypsys, etc.

Great stories told well are simply great stories.

More movies ought to have Christian Bale in them.

To answer the question seriously...is there really any set guideline as to what a movie should have, what is satisfying, etc? I can't be the only person who finds certain elements satisfying in some films and not in others, or someone who thinks they find a certain thing unsatisfying (say, for example, gangster movies) and then gets floored by a really well done one that's different from the typical crap (Goodfellas). The only thing I generally really hate is films with way too much music in them, ie the music overpowers everything. I'd rather see films with no soundtrack at all than any number of Tarantino rip offs.

What about musicals Ally? But I know what you mean about manipulative scores.

I too was annoyed by Pi's maths - being a maths and philosophy boy this was right up my street. Oddly with a bit of jiggery pokery (and a slightly better grasp of Godel's Incompleteness Theorem) you could have happily used the premise ass a proof of the non-existance of God hidden by Hasidic Jews for a long time. Odd flick really, really unsatisfied by it at the time but big fan of trepanning movies so...

Requiem For A Dream however is a masterpiece. So Aronfsky = good (even better he equals interesting). Annoyance with Coens may possibly stem from annoyance with ethos. The Coens do not appear to be trying to say anything with their movies but entertain. Yet we smart folks are wary of things which just entertain. That's my theory anyway - I like the Coens and find dislike of them similar to the dislike people have for St Ettienne or The Auteurs (ie pop which is supposedly trying to be too clever).

As I may have said elsewhere, ages ago, if the Coen Bros were a pop group they would be the abysmal WEEN - ie: 'wacky' exercises in genre coupled with general snootiness towards folk with 'crazy' regional accents. Gah!

I like films which feature: a) people dressed up like bears (regle de jeu) b) dinosaur skeletons (bringing up baby, one of our dinosaurs is missing) c) french people singing (les parapluie de cherbourg, une femme est une femme) d) philip seymour hoffman

I must admit, I watched Pi, thought it was okay, then watched it with a director's commentary and thought it was outstanding. Maybe I needed to be helped through it a bit, I don't know.

I really like Coen Brothers movies though. Especially The Big Lebowski. It's just so, well, silly. Terry Gilliam is great for similar reasons, and Brazil is one of my favourite films of all time. Worried that I relate so strongly to the lead in that film. Yikes.

Big Lebowski has Julianne Moore in it so is rubbish (since today appears to be my day of Dissing Ms Moore). Gilliam is a perfect example of flawed movies being more interesting than good ones.

I see what you mean about Ween Stevie. Does that make Barton Fink their Push Th'Little Daisies? (ie A film based on just one joke).

I don't like musicals, besides Naked Boys Singing. I decided that for good this weekend.

I like movies about lonely people in unusual situations ("The Last Emperor", "Harold and Maude"), thwarted dreams ("Angel at My Table", "Taste of Honey", "House of Mirth"), fighting oppressive societies with quiet dignity ("Before Night Falls"), subtly dysfunctional families ("You Can Count on Me"). Movies about misfits, basically. How sad, I know. It helps if they're visually stunning, like "Last Emperor" or "Before Night Falls". That scene in BNF where they're driving through Manhattan in a convertible, laughing and staring up at the skyscrapers through the falling snow-so beautiful. It reminded me of Television's "Venus".

Just saw AI, and it had its ups and downs but Spielberg *really* blew it with the tacky tacked-on coda w/ extraterrestials. Otherwise, it would have ended on the perfect note --sad, lonely and beautiful, yahoo.

I also like campy/goofy movies that get that smart aleck gay sensibility right, like early John Waters and Paul Morrissey. Or Bruce La Bruce. And recently, I saw "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" (the movie) at a preview. Loved it!

And I agree with whoever said up there that what they want from movies is better scripts. Not more dialogue/less dialogue or more plot-just better scripts. And more male frontal nudity.

Kind of agree with Tarden about the Coen Bros., especially with regard to the hick accents. But I did like "The Great Lebowski", maybe it was the charm of the title character. Or Jeff Bridges. And Ween have some really gorgeous, lush pop songs that are very far removed from their wacky side. Still don't think I could ever spend money on a record of theirs, though.

And "The Wizard of Oz" has everything you'd ever need from a movie, except cute guys.

I never quite liked Pi, though a girl with a broken arm bought me popcorn and fed it to me throughout. To me Pi was an overlong proof for the equation "genius = doomed to pain", a formula that they didn't manage to interest me in. The guy wasn't Icarus, he wasn't even necessarily a genius; he was a paranoid schizophrenic whose "friends" mysteriously never noticed that he desperately needed help.

Re: Cohens: all their movies are about other movies, or about the expectations that a lifetime of movie-watching can put you in. This works really well for me when their movies are set in the present - a very self-reflexive, hyper-commentated time. When set in the past, their heightened ironic style jars - Barton Fink, Hudsucker Proxy, O Brother. Never complained too much about the regional accents until this last one which hit way too close to home - and nobody even came close to getting the accent right! We expect so little of our actors these days!

More movies ought to help you notice details in your life, or in others' lives, that you may have missed. Yi Yi by Edward Yang does this very effectively. When I walked out of it, I noticed other people entirely differently for a few minutes, like there were invisible threads between us; no one spoke, feeling gauche, no one wanted to break the spell. So it's no surprise my fave directors are John Cassavetes, Terence Malick, Bunuel, etc. Is my pop cred finished?

Am very interested in Mark S.'s take on Pokemon 3 though the conversation will be rather one-sided since he's probably only one who's seen it. I saw A.I. yesterday and am armed and ready for total critical destruction of all Spielbergian gloss but I will stand down since y'all prolly haven't seen it yet.

The math stuff in Pi was horribly wrong, but I tried very hard to ignore it - the focus was him being fucked anyway, the math didn't actually matter.

As for Coens = Ween - I am appalled. Ween can suck it. The Coens make movies to entertain. Ween make records so they can afford to buy more glue to sniff. Plus: despite all the other stuff, I think the heart of Big Lebowski is the relationship between the Dude, Walter, and Donnie, and that is superbly done.

Ally - so if you hated gangster movies and then liked Goodfellas, isn't that a complaint of yours being answered well? What was the complaint? Where did Goodfellas succeed where the others failed? Certainly not in subject matter - same movie Scorcese's been making for years - soundtrack was good blah blah - so what was it?

I like films that keep me interested in what's going to happen next. But not in a pointlessly convoluted murder mystery whodunnit way (like when smug gits say afterwards "You must have seen that coming a mile off!" and I'm like "No, sorry. I was too busy watching the fucking film"). Thinking about films is a total dud, I mean, aren't writers/directors/producers paid to do the thinking for you? Action sequences/Eye Candy/Stunts/Technical Greatness have very little appeal to me. Sorry. Short term brainless cliffhangers for me: Is he gonna die? Will she ever find her long lost third cousin? Will he escape from impossibly complex fortress/lair/sinking ship/alien kidnappers? Will she get her norks out? Trashy movies like the Channel 5/Living ones Kate mentioned fit me perfectly (making up a more interesting story than what really happens makes you fell so gosh-darned clever), and an equally rich seam can be found on BBC1, midnight weekdays.

I have no recognition of what good and bad acting is, with the obvious exception of the impossibly bad Ashley off of Eastenders.

Films I seem to watch every time they're on even though I know they're crap and pointless and excruciating and I've seen them a million times before: Short Circuit 1+2, Back to the future 1+2+3, Honey I Blew up the Kids 1+2, Flight of the Navigator. And so on.

I'm a sucker for war films, but only decent ones, none of that Kelly's Heroes rubbish.

Tracer: Simple fact is that it was well made and not romaticised. It felt "honest" to me, whereas the Godfather and its ilk are nothing more than fairy tales. Convoluted ones at that.

Well then there you go... Although I liked the Godfather. But I'm a sucker for all that "old country" stuff, Pacino in paisano gear roaming the Sicilian countryside. And there are great moments in that film, small glances that destroy. In general I agree abt stylized romanticism tho -- not only in gangster movies but in any period piece where each shoelace looks like it cost more than my house. If you went by the movies you saw you'd think that everything in the past was very expensive and well-groomed.

'Godfather I' was a fairy tale (no less good for that), 'Godfather 2' was an ice-cold dissection of the American century blah blah, but 'Goodfellas' was the most wildly overrated film ever - sure, loads of fantastic bits, but didn't the story arc just kind of...fizzle...("Johny was in prison upstate, Pauly was somewhere else...I don't know..." - I know this was supposed to illustrate how 'normal' being inside'n'outside was to them, but who wants to see a 'normal' working day on screen? Especially since it immediately afterwards into the apocalyptic cocaine paranoia - I mean, come on! Helicopters? This is out of a 60's Richard Rush film, with Bruce Dern! Marty exorcising his lost weekend with Robbie Robertson, why not use "Stage Fright" instead of "Monkey Man") Anyway, for the supposedly quotidien counterblast to 'Godfather', he did a FAR better job with 'Mean Streets', earlier on

Hey, I like Ween! I can see what people mean though. I think the difference is, when Ween is on you can program the good tracks and do the dishes, whereas with film you have to sit in one position and watch the brothers jerk off for nearly two hours.
If Coen bros=Ween, then does David Fincher=Korn?

i rather like trite films. but archly stylistic piles of toss are just as good...

Trying to think of an archly stylistic pile of toss which is also trite : I know Absolute Beginners. You'd love that Gareth.

um, hated absolute beginners, sorry pete...