Dennis Castro

Looking for some direction

I am a budding movie buff. I have loved movies my whole life. It's only recently that I have discovered how much. I have found that I enjoy film on a different level than most of my friends. After I finish viewing a film I love to discuss the technical aspects and the script and how I might have approached it and stuff like that. This discussion usually leaves my friends bored to tears.

I would like to take it to the next level from having a more than average knowledge of film to a well versed one. My problem is that until Netflix came along I never really had been exposed to a lot of the classics. I am aware of them and their influences but I have only seen a few of them. Also, I just watched a great documentary on the filmmakers of the sixties and how they influenced the filmmakers of the seventies such as Scorsese (which happens to be my favorite). This exposed me to names such as Godard and Felini in which I'm excited about checking out.

The problem is that when I go on Netflix there is so much I get overwhelmed. It's like a sensory overload. I guess what I'm saying is that I want to get past the mainstream and get down to the meat and potatoes of it all. It's just where do I start?

I have been checking out this place for a while and it seems like a knowledgeable yet nurturing environment, a place where I can grow and learn. I have faith that the members of this community can guide me in the right direction.

Andy Olivera

Though I'm no connoisseur of the classics, I think my method would work in that category, too. When you see a film you like, check out the other films of that director. Then when you've seen all or most of his work(or enough to know that one film you liked was a fluke) check out someone else. That'll make the selection much less intimidating.

A warning, though: don't watch a film if you don't want to. Never watch something just because it's a classic or just so you can say you've seen it, because nine times out of ten it'll be a totally empty experience. I speak from experience.

\"It is not, and never should be, the policy of the law to require the protection of the foolhardy or reckless few and therefore to deprive, or interfere with, the enjoyment by the remainder of society of the liberties and amenities to which they are rightly entitled.\" -unknown

\"As a society, we tend to believe that every opinion is valid, that there are often no wrong answers, and that self esteem is more important than knowledge. So we grow more confident and more ignorant.\" -Stephen W. Stanton

DVD Count: 205 / LD Count: 51 / My Top & Bottom 20 Films Of All Time

Holadem

I disagree. You owe it to yourself to watch acknowledged classics, even if it can often be a painful experience. The goal is not so much to like them as to appreciate them, meaning to know why they are considered so grand.

Placing them within the context where they were created and released is key to that appreciation, as I find a great many of those films have considerably aged and are NOT timeless even if that word is thrown around all the time. Psycho scares no one today, but Casablanca will still make you fall in love.

Do not be intimidated in pretending you like'em, and feel that you have to sing gushing praises for everything you see. But DO see everything and form your own informed opinions .

The AFI and S&S lists are good starts. Should take you a couple of years.

I would start with more accessible directors such as Hitchcock, Wilder, Kurosawa... Nothing like an Andrei Rublev to disgust you from classics forever!

Have fun.

--
Holadem - a fellow film history novice.

Scott D S

Check out this thread.

A month or two ago, I found myself in a similar situation. Basically, I thought I was a fraud because everyone I know refers to me as the "film guy" and it is the career I want to pursue but I haven't seen many classic films.

Thankfully, the members of this forum pointed out more than a handful of good films and my Netflix list is now packed with goodies.

Good luck!

Dennis Castro

Hey thaks!

Sounds very similar to me. I write reviews for my friends web site but you won't see them here. Right now they are rather amateurish. I'm very hard on myself. I figure the more I write, the more films I see, the better I'll get. I'm going to be taking classes in January that will gear me towards film and writing.

george kaplan

I would disagree with this also. You'll never know if a film is one you'll enjoy or not unless you watch it. And you can get plenty of surprises. Lots of films you think you'll love, you won't. And some that you don't think you'll like, you will. I watched a film by a director who had made the film I most despise. And yet this film turned out to be great.

Being a film buff is all about having seen (or wanting to see) the great classic films, even if you don't like a lot of them. I would never watch a film I didn't like a second time, but that's a different story.

"Movies should be like amusement parks. People should go to them to have fun." - Billy Wilder

"Subtitles good. Hollywood bad." - Tarzan, Sight & Sound 2012 voter.

"My films are not slices of life, they are pieces of cake." - Alfred Hitchcock

"My great humility is just one of the many reasons that I am vastly superior to everyone else." - Ramrod Clerk

DeeF

One thing I've discovered only in the last 2 years: it's important (to me, anyway) to have a large enough TV to really see the film. (The original aspect ratio plays into this, as well.) Many films which I originally saw on television, in horribly edited and faded versions, I didn't like at all, despite general critical praises.

One must actually see the picture, with details intact, in order to appreciate it.

I own 1000 DVDs, mostly classics and foreign films, and a large assortment of comedies and musicals from the 40s and 50s, my particular favorite movies.

My television is a 50" widescreen plasma, perfect for watching and enjoying movies at home. It is a great compromise between theater viewing (too large for a home) and TV viewing (too small to really see the movie).

Jason Seaver

While this is, of course, true, I have found that I seldom truly enjoyed a movie if I was seeing it out of some sort of sense of obligation - "Well, Chicago is nominated for all those Oscars, so I should probably catch it before the awards in three days" or "The Hidden Fortress is only at the Brattle tonight and everyone says it's a classic".

Jay's Movie Blog - A movie-viewing diary.
Transplanted Life: Sci-fi soap opera about a man placed in a new body, updated two or three times a week.
Trading Post Inn - Another gender-bending soap, with different collaborators writing different points of view.


"What? Since when was this an energy ball movie?" - Overheard during a screening of Takashi Miike's Dead Or Alive
"What the hell religion are you people?" - Overheard during the Captain Marvel serial at SF/29
"If I feel even one bullet hit me, I will rip your lungs out through your nostrils!" - Ron Silver as himself, "Heat Vision And Jack"

Lew Crippen

Check out the Sight and Sound and Sound (2002) Greatest Films Club. This has a ranked listing of 341 films that represent all eras of cinema and most of the film making countries.

While there is almost no chance thet you (or anyone) will like them all give some (perhaps even some obscure ones) a try. As George and Holadem have already suggested, watching even the ones you turn out not to like, has a great deal of value, plus you will likely get some unexpected pleasures.

¡Time is not my master!

Tim Raffey

True, but I can distance my experience of watching a movie from my retrospective view of it. Case in point: Nostalghia--the first Tarkovsky picture I'd seen, perhaps not coincidentally--was agonizing for me to watch a couple years ago. However, when my view of what art can/should do changed, so did my view of that movie.

\"Kids today are scum. They haven\'t invented cigarettes, or bluejeans--nothing.\" - JLG

Chad A Wright

Just for the record, it is a classic at least in my book. In the last year or so, I have been exposed to so many classics and even foreign films that I never would have given a second thought before. Now these are some of the most prized films in my DVD collection. All of them have come from watching something I wouldn't have normally seen, but is considered a "classic". I believe that this has given me a greater understanding of the art of film, and has broadened my horizons greatly.

I also agree that oar viewing is the key to it all. I too have seen many movies in my childhood that were just on TV, and never really liked. As I've gotten into DVD, widescreen, and cinematogrophy, it has changed the way I look at films.

I never truly appreciated Jaws until my first oar viewing of it on the current DVD. It is now my favorite film of all time. Things change a lot when seen on the widescreen pallete they were intended.

My advice to you is to take in as much as you possibly can. I too have started by checking out directors that are considered to be great, and then working through their films.