not at the movies

[calimac]

An article a month or two back about the forthcoming outcrop of fall movies - the serious films, you know, that succeed the empty-headed summer blockbusters - had me so excited, I'm sorry to say, that I was writing premiere dates in my calendar. Now they're starting to come out, and whaddaya know, they're turning out to be lousy. I shouldn't have been surprised. Winner for snarkiest review so far goes to Dana Stevens on The Changeling, citing "an interrogation that will lead to revelations so shocking they will cause the investigator's cigarette ash to fall to the floor in slow motion."

That, plus having to have a Godfather II reference explained to me (I've never seen it, having found Godfather I so bad), prompts me to polish and present my list of categories of "good" movies I will no longer go see. (So this is leaving aside all the superhero cash-ins, all the horror movies, all the films with "III" in the title, etc.)

1. Boxing movies. Sorry, but I see nothing heroic in two men - or women - standing on a stage punching the crap out of each other. Exception (a movie, with boxing in it, that I liked): Mighty Aphrodite.

2. Gangster movies. Sorry, but I also see nothing heroic, or believable, or identifiable, in gangs killing each other off at such a rate that they ought to have all been dead before the movie started. Yes, I mean The Godfather. And what was with that scene with the bloody horse's head? The sheer logistical implausibility of this just ruined the entire movie almost before it got started.

3. Movies about corrupt cops in Los Angeles. Enough already. True, I enjoyed L.A. Confidential, though I only watched it because I was stuck in an airport hotel one evening with nothing else to do, but: enough.

4. Biographical films in the form of blackout sketches of highlights of the person's life. I like a good bio-pic [and please, use the hyphen: "biopic" looks like it should be pronounced "bi-opic"], but I couldn't stand more than about 5 minutes of Pollock or Hilary and Jackie. That's why I'm skipping Oliver Stone's W. Please, don't let Milk turn out this way.

5. Steven Spielberg movies. Can you say, "crassly manipulative"? Also, his penchant for lovingly framed shots of naked people being totally humiliated (Amistad, Schindler's List) is more than mildly disturbing.

6. Albert Brooks movies. His oeuvre is a cellarful of bottles of expensive whine.

Comments

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

It doesn't try to be heroic. It doesn't justify its character's actions to make them appear so.

And that makes it better?

I have really not made myself clear if I gave that impression.