In honor of Sunday night's Academy Awards, here's a list of movies I love, followed by a list of movies I hate.
Movies I love:
All About Eve, Babette's Feast, The Best Years of Our Lives, Bride and Prejudice, Casablanca, Cinema Paradiso, Diva, Dr. Strangelove, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, From Here to Eternity, Guys and Dolls, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Igby Goes Down, Lawrence of Arabia, The Manchurian Candidate (1962 version), Mary Poppins, Network, On the Waterfront, (all six hours of the 1995 version of) Pride and Prejudice, Pride of the Yankees, The Quiet Man, The Seventh Seal, Sid and Nancy, Singin' in the Rain, The Sound of Music, Strictly Ballroom, Thoroughly Modern Millie, The Unbelievable Truth, Without You I'm Nothing, Zorro the Gay Blade.
I like old movies and will watch (almost) anything with Jean Arthur, Marlon Brando, Cyd Charisse, Gary Cooper, Irene Dunne, Judy Garland, Audrey Hepburn, Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, John Wayne.
When I was very young, my favorite movies were Mary Poppins and True Grit.
I dig old musicals (anything by Rogers and Hammerstein, and all kinds of other things as well), old war films (All Quiet on the Western Front, Battleground, The Big Red One, From Here to Eternity, The Longest Day, etc and have no patience with recent war movies like Saving Private Ryan and The English Patient that end up being even more moralistic and simplistic than 1940s films designed to build morale–Casablanca, after all, is a war film, written, filmed and released while World War II was far from decided), old westerns (back when I had cable, I would watch anything with cactus in it, and I dig High Noon, Rio Bravo, Stagecoach, etc--this is not to say I've never seen a bad western, but I'll sometimes watch them just for the scenery).
I'm fascinated by films from the first go-round of Ealing Studios: I'm All Right Jack, Kind Hearts and Coronets, The Knack, etc.
Movies I hate:
A Clockwork Orange, Dances with Wolves (I don't care that it came in at 75 in the American Film Institute's list of the top 100 movies ever--someday the world will recognize what shallow tripe that movie actually is), The English Patient, Last Tango in Paris, MASH, McClintock! (this is the second-worst John Wayne western ever! It's almost as racist and far more sexist than even Red River!) Napoleon Dynamite, Nashville, Quills, Seven, Shakespeare in Love (good god, could they mention that lame joke about "Romeo and Ethel the Pirate's Daughter" or whatever it was one more time?), Short Cuts, Signs, The Thin Red Line (a.k.a. Forrest Gump Goes to Guadalcanal, a.k.a. The Passion of the Marine), You've Got Mail (like I really want to watch Meg Hanks and Tom Ryan--or whatever their names are--stutter and smirk their way through roles previously played so well by Judy Garland and Van Johnson?)
Half the movies in that list I knew I wouldn't like but someone insisted I see them anyway.
For what that's worth.
Holly: Satisfy my curiosity. Why didn't you like "Short Cuts?"
Are the movies listed in order (both preference or hatred)??!! I see Bride and Prejudice listed before Casablanca and even before the 6 hour version of P & P (this is the one with Colin Firth, right?)???? Just curious
:-).
Sukanya--the movies are in alphabetical order: "All About Eve" to "Zorro the Gay Blade."
Hattie: I generally LOATHE Robert Altman--you'll also see "MASH" and "Nashville" among the movies I hate. OK, I found "Gosford Park" pretty watchable, and I didn't entirely despise "The Player," though I can't say I liked it. But I hate the way Altman so often has all these competing stories and then the only way he can figure out to end them is to have someone die. I thought most of the characters in "Short Cuts" were vile people, and I didn't like spending time with them. (I'm not a huge Raymond Carver fan to begin with.) So friends drag me to this movie I didn't want to see in the first place, and I'm thinking about "Nashville," and I think, "The only way he can end this is for someone to kill someone--even though there's already been plenty of death in this movie"--and sure enough, about five minutes later, the Chris Penn character just randomly murders someone.
Yuck, yuck, yuck.
You make good points. "Short Cuts" did not remind me much of Carver's stories, which I happen to like, although I prefer Toby Wolff in that line of fiction. And, as you say, his technique is not really good for storytelling. However, Altman does something with ensemble that no other movie maker does, and that's what interests me.