meeting an old friend for the first time
a few last words on mildred pierce

what i watched last week

Both of the movies I watched were part of my Facebook Fave Fifty project, meaning the reviews are there. If you’d like to read what I thought of these films, and you aren’t already part of the FB group, let me know, in comments here or in an email, and I’ll add you to the group. To pique your interest, here are the selections so far. First, a recap of my own picks:

  • 45. The Lives of Others
  • 46. Evil Dead II
  • 47. My Family
  • 48. Sid and Nancy
  • 49. Tomorrow Never Dies
  • 50. Under Fire

Jeff Pike:

  • 45. Videodrome
  • 46. Last Tango in Paris
  • 47. Another Woman
  • 48. Marathon Man
  • 49. Close Encounters of the Third Kind
  • 50. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

Phil Dellio:

  • 45. Smoke
  • 46. Il Posto
  • 47. Hud
  • 48. Nixon
  • 49. The Sugarland Express
  • 50. The Heartbreak Kid

Each of us are offering up two picks a week, so there’s a new post every day except Sundays. We also include a few brief comments about each film, 300-400 words or so. And there is a comments section, which is often the best part.

Meanwhile, once again, the movies I watched this week:

The Lives of Others (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2006). #45 on my Facebook Fave Fifty. #34 on the They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They list of the top 250 films of the 21st century, and #581 on the site’s list of the top 1000 films of all time.

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (Cristian Mungiu, 2007). #44 on my list, and #23 on the TSPDT list of the top 250 films of the 21st century.

Comments

scott

Seeing these listed together here confirms something I already knew: just how beyond my moviegoing experience all you guys are. Of the 18 movies listed thus far, I've seen five. Two on Jeff's list (Last Tango, Close Encounters), three on Phil's (Smoke, Hud, Nixon), zero (sorry!) on yours. Of the five I've seen, I feel like I only really "know" two of them -- that is, I'm familiar enough with them that I could conceivably think of something to say about them in print: Nixon and Close Encounters. I'm sure the scales will tip somewhat in the other direction the higher up the list you go, but it's something I've definitely noticed, and it's an interesting counter-approach to the mix-n-mash top-and-bottom down-is-up approach of my song list. (Unfortunately, I can't imagine a reality for myself in which I will ever have time to see even half of what you guys list one of the pitfalls -- maybe that's the wrong way to put it -- of a movie list as opposed to a song list. I will have to pick and choose my targets carefully. From your list, I'm probably most interested thus far in Evil Dead II and Sid and Nancy.)

Steven Rubio

I think perhaps you and Phil were able to be a bit more playful with your music lists than we are with the movies. It seemed like you would often make a last-minute change, which was possible because, while listening to your intended choice, you'd be drawn in by another track, often by the same artist, and make the change. It's harder to just decide to watch other movies in case they'd fit my list ... I mean, this week's "What I Watched" is comprised solely of List Movies, I didn't have time to watch any others. So I spent a lot of time before the first post in the Facebook group winnowing down 100+ films to 50, once the damn thing started, those 50 were pretty much set in stone (I did change the James Bond movie). I'm stuck with these movies ... I might move them up or down the list, but I won't suddenly decide that a movie I just saw needs to be #12.

Also, as you note, these lists will likely get standardized, less esoteric, as we reach the top. I have no problem tossing Evil Dead II in at #46, even though it's surely not my 46th-favorite movie of all time. But, just looking at my list, there is nothing particularly esoteric about any of my Top 9 ... others will have different lists, but no one will say "I can't believe that movie is someone's 9th-favorite." (#10, as of this writing, is my last "goofy" pick.)

scott

Yeah, there's definitely a lot more wiggle room in a song list, just by the very nature of the respective mediums (thanks to my iPod, I listened and re-listened to everything I listed, in some cases dozens of times).

I'd be very curious, as you guys go along, to learn more about all your respective habits as moviegoers, and how that guides your choices. Frequency comes to mind as an obvious area of interest: do you tend to only pick movies you've seen several times? Would you say you've "overseen" any of your favourites? Etc. (This is not a formal request, btw! Just noting some of the chatter points that tend to draw me in to lists like these.)

Steven Rubio

There are stages to my movie habits over the years. In 1972-3, I was a film major. I saw at least half-a-dozen films a week, and got a very solid canonical education ... I usually explain this by noting we watched six weeks of silent Russian films. For a long time after that, we'd go to the movies once a week or so. In my dotage, I rarely go to the movies, but I have a big-screen HDTV, a Blu-ray player, and access to a gazillion movies via Netflix, Amazon, Comcast On Demand, and a pretty big home library. So I watch a few movies a week, now, with the only thing keeping me from watching more being that I'm more of a TV series guy than I used to be.

Obviously, nothing has made my list that I haven't already seen. I intend to watch every movie at least once more before I post to the group, and so far I've been able to pull that off. (I could probably have ignored that for my most recent pick, since I cut-and-pasted much of what I'd written about it on this blog a few years ago, but I didn't know that in advance.) In a few cases, I've chosen one movie over another based on its availability for re-watching. I don't have a hardcore opinion re: how many times something should be watched. I buy Kael's "I only see 'em once" notion, but I also know I get pleasure from watching some movies multiple times. Of my first 7 picks, the last two I had only seen once before re-watching, I'd only seen the James Bond movie once all the way through but have often watched snippets when I came across it while channel flipping, and the others, I've seen multiple times.

scott

Kael's see-'em-once approach is interesting, for sure. I get the feeling it was part of her own way of staying true to her responses as a critic; I think she said that too many critics have a tendency to fall into the trap of second-guessing their initial responses to movies, based on box office hype, critical hype, etc. I think she believed that doing so could muddle a critic's responses to a film. That makes some sense to me, and clearly it worked for her, but my two counter-responses to this would be:

1) Second-guessing your response to a movie is sometimes -- often -- a good thing. An unavoidable thing, if you're human, I'd say. Responding to other people's responses -- and letting those responses influence your own response -- seems perfectly natural to me, and it in many ways enlarges the frame of the movie itself. (There have been occasions where I've seen a movie, somewhat dismissed it, then listened to or read a more reasoned response to it, and was actually quite pleased to have my mind opened up to it. Then again, I'm not approaching this at all as a working movie critic, where I think Kael's argument probably does make a little more sense.)

2) It just seems odd to me, the idea that if I see something I really love that I would rather confine that experience to my memory bank and not actually view the thing again. That's just a difficult point for me to fathom... though again, it seemed to work for her. (Phil takes this to much further extremes than I do. I'm sure at some point he'll mention how often he's seen some of his favourites -- upwards of a a couple dozen times, I'm thinking. There are very few movies I've seen more than five times, and I do tend to reach burn out points. I think I've seen Taxi Driver more than any other movie. On the 11th or 12th or whatever it was viewing, I actually started to not enjoy it as much, and I promised myself that I would wait at least another decade or so before viewing it again (a promise I've held, though I think my number on that one's up pretty soon).

Steven Rubio

You know what movie I might have seen more than any other? Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. I watched it every time I found it in the TV Guide when I was a kid. Same thing with King Kong, which is more reputable.

scott

Well, I *did* wonder if maybe mine was *Wizard Of Oz*, which was definitely a yearly TV ritual in our household, but I still think it capped off at probably seven or eight (and I guess I was thinking more consciously in terms of movies I set out to see in the theatre... but point well taken).

JPK

Well, speaking for myself, it's been a little humbling in the early going. I haven't seen half the titles mentioned by Steven -- am only vaguely aware of My Family. And Phil has so far picked movies I'm pretty sure I've seen (except Il Posto and Nixon, which I know I haven't, and Smoke, which thank God I know I have) but made so little impression on me that I'm just not sure. All of these gaps I'm going to get to eventually, though whether that's within the time frame of the countdown is harder to say.

Like Steven, I have most of my list pretty well locked in, though a few things are still shifting around and even shuttling in and out. Most of them I've seen at least once in the past couple of years; those I haven't I am planning to look at again. I've seen all of them more than once. One criteria I use for ranking, and often a tie-breaker, is how often I've seen something, which I think speaks to how much I like it and how well it stands up both. What's harder is judging movies I've seen more recently -- 4 Months, 3 Weeks is a tough call for me on that basis. I liked it a lot, but I've only seen it once, and it's still too new for me to develop any long-term sense for how it will wear. Even so, I do have a few from the past 10 years, one of which, from 2006, goes up tomorrow.

For me, I don't understand seeing movies only once, especially the ones I like best, though I mostly share Steven's suspicion of things that only "make sense" on multiple viewings (that seems like a kind of sophistry to me). But with so many things I see for the first time, both new releases and highly touted older titles, so often so disappointing, I need to revisit known quantities fairly often, at least once a week, or I tend to get discouraged with the whole enterprise. (Seeing Vertigo at a theater tonight, for example.) This also works for me with live music, although there's no equivalent fall-back. When I see a few bad shows in a row, I start to wonder why I even bother.

Phil Dellio

There's a lot here, not sure what I want to add...I've written about Kael's one-time-only rule (which I don't necessarily believe; she must have cheated all the time) before; conceding that it worked for her, I can't think of anything in her critical philosophy or whatever that I disagree with more strenuously. Kauffmann's approach makes much more sense to me: he was always revisiting films, because, as he would explain, you're always changing as a person, and your reaction to things change along with that. If I shared in Kael's approach, I'd still be telling the world The Poseidon Adventure's a great film because I loved it as a 12-year-old (an extreme example, but I loved a few films at 18 that were pretty questionable too). I mean, all those films from the '30s that Kael wrote so rhapsodically about--would she have felt as strongly about them in the wake of all those American films of the early '70s she loved?

My list is relatively locked in right now, but I know there's going to be a case or two where I sit down to write about something and suddenly think, "I'm just listing this because it used to be a favorite of mine, and I always mention it when I start rhyming off my favorite films, but the truth is I wouldn't want to watch it right now, and I don't have anything left to say about it." And I'll substitute something else at the last minute. But yes, overall this is a much less capricious undertaking than the song list.

Phil Dellio

Which is not to say that (as Scott has hinted at above) seeing a favorite film for the 15th time isn't a really stupid thing to do--it most definitely is. I've got four or five of those films on my list, and I have to decide whether they stay or go.

Geoff

I want to know if all the rest of Steven's movies on the list will have 10/10 ratings.

Steven Rubio

Good question, and I'm not sure.

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