Everybody Loved Them; I Cringed

I believe an experienced and talented critic can give one a lot of insight into a film -- why it works and why it doesn't work. Of course, there may be something in a film that one connects with and then sometimes no matter what a critic may write it's not possible to connect with a film for one reason or another. Kael was a gifted writer (why she never got the Pulitzer is a shame -- it seems she should be given the award posthumously). Roger Ebert is actually the only film critics who has received the award. I don't always agree with his reviews but he always seems fair and, after all is said and done, it's offered as his personal opinion and recommendation. I find the best reviewers help me enjoy a film even if I read them after I've seen it and definitely on making a point to see it again.

I also sometimes feel that some people approach a film with a bias not to like it because it's been so universally lauded and that this preconceived notion can often break their concentration and involvement with the film.

Of course, there are films that audiences and critics love and I just don't get it. "Apocalypse Now" is likely the one that always comes to mind as a highly regarded film that I just could never get into other than some incredibly realistic and atmoshperic scenes which I do appreciate. I've tried many times to sit through it and try to get involved with what is happening on the screen but it just all seems too distant and ambiguous.

Everyone should enjoy films for what they are and they don't have to be well versed on film history, the technical aspects or the construction of the art.

Last Samurai? I don't know about it. Am a little chary, as I really appreciated certain classic samurai movies, classic now that is.

Well, here's a gripe from me - re revisions of older films

Why don't they re screen the gems of old. Why oh why the many times stupid replays?

ok, money,
and then money,
and then new roles with tried and true stories
and more of the same, but still,
it seems a waste to see the gems molder and coarse replays
show up.

Just when I thought Apocolypse Now was about to get good Marlon Brando's character shows up. From there it hits a brick wall for me. I finally dozed off before the end.

There were signs the cohesiveness of the AN was falling apart in the middle of the film after the "I love the smell of Napalm in morning scene." The Redux made if veer off here and there without a design in the storytelling. It's just simply not "Heart of Darkness," it's more like "Heart of Murkiness."

It is in color and wide screen with stereo sound (though the score written for the film is just mediocre beeping sounds, suppose to be avant garde but more like some questionably talented college music major's first piece of music).

It has more to technically impress than "Citizen Kane" with its innovative direction and a score by Bernard Herrmann, arguably the best film score composer of all time. Here's the user review (not a professional film critic) opinion on IMDb:

(QUOTE)


For all of those who feel The Godfather is the greatest movie ever, give yourself a knock on the head with a blackjack. If it wasn't for Orson Welles lavish and sometimes eccentric film, none of the conventions used in this film would have ever been utilized elsewhere. Citizen Kane not only changed the face of Hollywood with a story that encapsulated a grand story into two hours, it also helped usher in a whole new perspective of looking at film, discovering different forms which never would have been conceived. Not only was the story engrossing, the technical aspects of the film proved to be a cut above the rest, still looking contemporary in this world of split second edits and explosions. No film has ever captured a self actualized person like Kane, a man who has everything and can do virtually anything he wanted. In a way, it is a telling tale of our current media ills, allowing one person or one organization to own too much, creating his own slant on the news for his own wishes. It's a shame Welles had to wait so long before receiving acclaim for this film.

The film, thanks if part of Hearst's campaign against it which nearly ended in the film being destroyed save for some brave Hollywood executives, was a box office failure, so perhaps it doesn't belong here -- not many people did like it, so I would expect there would not be many people who like it today. Even the IMDb rating of 8.9 for viewer ratings is likely those who specifically go to that film to enter a rating -- I doubt there are any who go there who specifically want to vent something against the film and rate it low.

Just to give everybody something to aim at (think dart board). Here's the IMDb poll winners of the top ten films of all time:

1 Godfather, The (1972) 9.0/10 (81778 votes)
2 Shawshank Redemption, The (1994) 8.9/10 (102902 votes)
3 Godfather: Part II, The (1974) 8.8/10 (47327 votes)
4 Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, The (2002) 8.8/10 (61045 votes)
5 Casablanca (1942) 8.7/10 (48032 votes)
6 Schindler's List (1993) 8.7/10 (71073 votes)
7 Shichinin no samurai (1954) 8.7/10 (19833 votes)
8 Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The (2001) 8.7/10 (107271 votes)
9 Citizen Kane (1941) 8.7/10 (45010 votes)
10 Star Wars (1977) 8.7/10 (102260 votes)

7 is, coincidentally, "The Seven Samarai."

I guess one has to be as old as the hills to notice how often one's taste changes. Really. So I'd be unable to make a hard and fast list of favorites or bests and at the rate the world produces movies, even if I could it would be damn hard to keep the list updated! So nothing on that extraordinarily ethnocentric list moves me to stand up and cheer though a couple of them are terrific films... Just to be even more curmudgeonly, I'm not sure "best" is necessarily something chosen by the most votes.... Focus group favorites maybe?

Apropos of nothing in particular, has anyone else seen that little film, "Strangers In Good Company"?

Yep, Tartarin, my tastes change too. I used to love Casa Blanca and not it seems sad & tired, over-used. I guess I'm jaded. When you don't like to watch violence it is hard to find a lot to love in Hollywood.

On that list, LightWizard, the only one I loved is Shawshank Redemption and somebody else has already said they didn't like it (I forget their reasons).

I guess it depends on why one goes to the movies. I watch a film so that I can be entertained, possibly edified and even uplifted in some positive way. I don't want to be antagonized, confused, horrified, frightened or bored.

Haven't seen it since it was released in 1990 and always feel that the small films can easily turn out to be favorites -- even the less successful ones are better for the spirit than the boom and bang you're dead Hollywood popcorn movie. A respectably 7.4 on the IMDb viewer rating:

http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0102993/combined

Time to revisit that film -- thanks, Tart. I do generally like Canadian films, one of my favorites being "Outrageous," a film about real people with real problems and not the usual soap opera melodrama.

Of course, Piff, I find I have to be in the proper mood to see something like "The Shawshank Redemption" or even more it's not too distant relative "The Green Mile." I would rather watch "Singin' in the Rain" for the umpteenth time before I might want to concentrate (which one has to) on "The Seven Samarai" or, say, Bergman's "Wild Strawberries." Sometimes films that appear to be downers are uplifting even with an unresolved ending. The recent "Monster's Ball" was like that. I've seen it twice and it's addressing an American character flaw in the most illuminating and ultimately uplifting way. It's true that if a film has a message, it had better handle it in a insightful, meaningful way or it won't communicate but just bore or even antagonize. I just disagree on which films those are.

I went to "Titanic" expecting exactly the film that was presented, didn't mind the chick flick storyline borrowed right out of Dickens, and on the screen I saw it on it was pretty overwhelming even if one knows the ship sinks. Of the disaster genre, it is the best of the lot (look at some of the way more pretentious, silly drivel it's up against, however).

The worst disaster film was "When Time Ran Out...," another Paul Newman vehicle by the king of disaster, Irwin Allen. It cost 20M and box office was 1.7M. Again, a critical (!) and box office disaster (sic), so it doesn't qualify for this topic. Time sure did run out...for Irwin Allen, that is. So it doesn't really belong here.

You won't find "Shawshank Redemption" on any critic's poll, even in the top 100 films, but neither would you find the two "Lord of the Rings" film. The last film due out in December could again oust "The Godfather" (the first LOTR, in fact, did for nearly a year).

I guess it's futile to figure out what the public ends up liking and what the critics like -- I would, out of the top ten critics list of last year, tell everyone to definetely rent "Tokyo Story," a poignant and effective film that has some real spirit. It is, of course, subtitled but I always wonder about those who don't like subtitles. Can they read and do they read?

Yup. I find violence almost impossible to take. Maybe TV is worse when it comes to violence. You can tell from the audience and the title (and the actors) whether a film will be full of it. I used to hate channel-surfing and coming across it.

"Strangers" is a little gem. Haven't watched it lately.

One thing which makes me turn off/walk out of a film is when the whole thing takes place in California, identifiably California, though it's supposed to be Vietnam or Afghanistan or South Africa! Nothing against California. In fact one of the things (aside from Mitchum's performance) which makes me still love that old film noir, "Out of the Past," is the California-Nevada border country.

And the California of "Paris, Texas" grabs me (not to mention the Texas of Paris, Texas"!)

"Out of the Past" was filmed literally all over the place at the correct locations:

Acapulco, Guerrero, Mexico
Bridgeport, California, USA
High Sierra Mountains, Nevada, USA
Lake Tahoe, California, USA
Los Angeles, California, USA
Lower Twin Lake, California, USA
Mexico City, México D.F., Mexico
New York City, New York, USA
(background shots)
rko Encino Ranch, Encino, Los Angeles, California, USA
Reno, Nevada, USA
San Francisco, California, USA
Sequit Point, California, USA
Sherwood Lake, California, USA
Sierra Nevada Mountains, California, USA

A TV movie or small budget film is not going to travel to Vietnam or South Africa and I think it's out of the question that any film crew would be sent to Afghanistan! It's even virtually off limits for any documentary crew (figure that one out for yourself). To California's credit and why the movie moguls decided to move out here is the varied landscapes and milieu of California.

Light -- what a treasure trove! Do you know of a website which gives movie locations (I've been looking for one)?

Actually, Afghanistan has been the scene of some recent films, but I can't give you the titles. One I've been waiting to rent...

Also, I lived in that part of Spain which became known as Little Hollywood -- where the spaghetti westerns were filmed (Eastwood), and Cleopatra and Rat Patrol which I worked on, and Lawrence of Arabia, and god knows how many since then...

But speaking of Vietnam, one of the startling things about "Scent of Green Papaya" was that the whole thing was shot in a sound stage in Paris. Really hard to believe...

Tartarin, www.imdb.com gives movie locations, though they're not necessarily complete. "Film locations" is listed under Other Info on each film's page.

Here's the page for Lawrence of Arabia -

http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0056172/locations

Yes, I think I know that site because I was madly trying to find an exact map of the trajectory in Y Tu Mama Tambien, back when I first saw it...

If you're a trees, grass, soils, and water sources nut like me, I CAN'T STAND being told they're ridin' their hosses through West Texas when, in fact, it's California AND I RECOGNIZE THE CALIFORNIA BUSHES AND TREES!!! See? It's a problem for landscape addicts...

(You shoulda seen them propping up the palms for Lawrence of Arabia along a Spanish beach...)

IMDb PRO gives very detailed info about a film but you have to join (it's not free). Just ask me if the question you have is not in IMDb -- that's what I'm here for!

I'll look up "Y Tu Mama Tambien" -- I know I looked up the itinery of "Central Station" one time and was happy to find it.

"Full Metal Jacket" was filmed in the outskirts of London with potted, too obviously scorched with blow torches. How much further could one get from Vietnam (and Kubrick refused to travel). I think he made a gross mistake and was glad he gave up on Nostromo because he also didn't want to travel to South America.

(London even doubled for NYC in "Eyes Wide Shut" but it was truthfully hard to tell).

I don't know if "everybody" loved it, but Eyes Wide Shut definitely made me cringe.

Sorry, no map for "EYMT," but these are the filming locations:

Huatulco, Oaxaca, Mexico
Mexico City, México D.F., Mexico
Mexico
Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, Mexico