What does one do when their favorite movie now stinks? (1 Viewer)

[Colin Jacobson]

I also hated Adaptation but ended up really liking Eternal Sunshine, so who knows?

 

[Colton]

Fight Club
The Color Purple

- Colton

 

[MarcusUdeh]

Hav Plenty 1997 favorite movie

 

[Jeff D Han]

Marcus-

I don't think I have any films that I say I loved
way back when, and don't like now. I have alot of
music tastes that fall into that category. 20 years
ago, I used to love heavy metal and hair band music.
Now I think most of it is garbage, so my tastes in
music have radically changed.

Favorites-

Pulp Fiction
Seven
The Godfather
Sunset Boulevard
Great Expectations (1946)
The Cider House Rules
Monty Python And The Holy Grail
The Great Escape
Tootsie
Raging Bull
This Is Spinal Tap
Wag The Dog
Vertigo
The Producers
Mystic River
The Shawshank Redemption

 

[Leo Kerr]

I suppose this is something like a lot of people I know... where every week they're coming out with,

"Oh, I loved that! That's my favorite (movie/book/play/boyfriend/food/whatever)!"

Do these people really shift their absolute favorites of all time as often as they change their clothes? It makes me nervous....

I often sympathize with Sir Galahad the Chaste: "Blue. No, yellow! Arrgh!"

I used to say Bladerunner. But now, I'm not so sure. Scott did a lot of things right in/with that film, and as a textbook on lighting, it's kind of hard to top. But oddly, if it's being surplanted by anything, it may very well be My Neighbor Totoro. Kind of a pretty odd shift, hm?

Leo Kerr

 

[Colin Jacobson]

When I was a kid - maybe through the age of 14 or so - I used to change my favorite movie a lot. Every year I'd have three or four new all-time favorites. It stabilized after that - ET was #1 for a while, but eventually I landed upon Aliens, which has been my stock answer for about the last 10 years.

If kids change frequently... that's to be expected. But adults? That seems odd...

 

[Adam_S]

This comment is very telling about our culture.

 

[Eric Peterson]

I don't think that it's odd at all. So far this year, I've watched approximately 60 films that I've never watched before and am shooting to pass 200. What if one of those films is a NEW favorite?

If all you do is consistently re-watch the same 100 or so films, then I guess I'd agree that you should settle on a favorite, but otherwise there are just too many options.

 

[DavidBC]

When I was 8, my favorite movie was The Accidental Tourist . For the life of me, I don't know what kind of weird 8-year-old I must have been. While the other kids were watching The Goonies or Indiana Jones or The Little Mermaid or whatever, I was repeatedly watching The Accidental Tourist and loving it. My mother must have thought I was insane. Then when I was a teenager I saw it again and thought it was deadly dull. And then I thought I'd try it again when the DVD came out last year and I love it again! I think it's so moving. The 8-year-old me was on to something that the 16-year-old me missed out on. So I guess the point is that maybe a few years down the road you'll love the movie again (especially if you were a kid with strange tastes).

 

[Colin Jacobson]

For one, you're an exception - when I replied to the original comment, I referred to the average person who doesn't see anywhere near that many movies a year.

For another, I still think it's odd for an adult - at least an adult in their 30s+, so I don't know where you fall - to change his/her mind frequently about their favorites. I see something like 300 movies a year, but it's tough to budge the favorites. When you get to a certain age, you can find things you like, but it's tough for them to mean as much as things that have been with you for years and years.

So while I don't think it's BAD if someone changes his/her mind two or three times a year about his/her favorite, I do still think it's unusual...

 

[george kaplan]

I have to agree with Colin about it being unusual to change favorites as an adult frequently.

At least in theory, if you were to see all films ever made, you'd have an order of them, and the one on top would be your favorite.

Now, presumably, the one that's currently your favorite is the highest one on that list that you've actually seen. For it to be supplanted by a new favorite, you now have to see a film you hadn't before, which ranks higher on the list.

It certainly seems that the odds of finding a movie higher on your theoretical list that you haven't seen should get smaller and smaller as you've seen a large number of films (which presumably you've done if you're an adult and on this forum).

Of course, as we change, we might have our theoretical ranking reordered, but again, presumably, adults aren't going to be changing all that much in terms of their taste in movies.

That's not to say that a new favorite is particularly odd, but a frequent shifting does seem very odd to me.

My favorite has stayed constant for many, many years (The Apartment), and it's very unlikely it'll be replaced in the near future. I recently saw a film I'd never seen before - The Incredibles. The best film I've seen in quite a while. So good, that it made my top 100 - it's #95 on my all-time list. It's rare for a film to make it to my top 100, but it happens. No film has broken into my top 25 since 1999 (Toy Story 2 at #23), and my top 10 hasn't changed since I first put together such a list many years ago. I certainly don't expect to see #1 supplanted anytime soon.

 

[MarcusUdeh]

If it matters I am only 22.

 

[Joe Karlosi]

I find it extremely hard to find a "#1" favorite film. At best, I can come up with a Top Ten List or something. It includes BEN HUR (59), THE STING, JAWS, FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN, AMERICAN GRAFFITI, WESTWORLD, KILL BILL (the whole saga) and THE OMEGA MAN (remember - I'm talking "favorites" here, not necessarily "best"!)

If I'm understanding this right ...

 

[LanieParker]

I see absolutely nothing wrong with adults changing their favorite anything. As you grow, your taste in things change and I don't find that odd at all.

 

[george kaplan]

We're not talking about change, we're talking about frequent change.

Wouldn't you find it odd if an adult were to tell you that their favorite music was Beethoven. Then, the next day, they've just heard some new music that's their new favorite - The Beatles. The following day, they've got a new favorite - Louis Armstrong. The next day, they've heard some new music, this hip hop stuff - a new favorite.

 

[MarkHastings]

Kids tend to change their minds so much because (to them) "new" is always more exciting and thus they immediately relate this excited feeling to being their 'favorite'. This is why kids jump all over the latest/greatest sports team (i.e. band wagon jumping). The excitment of a recent victory gets equated with favoritism.

As adults, we understand that this 'newness' isn't as important as 'substance', which is why we don't immediately take something new and replace it with an old favorite. We also realize that this newness can quickly fade, so while we tend to get excited and love new things, we are more cautious (or less impulsive) about claiming it to be an immedate change in favorties.

Whew! That was a mouthful.

 

[LanieParker]

Nope I still don't find it odd.

When ESOTSM came out I loved it and it was my new favorite movie...than I saw Garden State and loved that more. So GS was my new favorite movie.

I still love both films, but I watch GS more and think it's much more wittier than ESOTSM.

I still have my old favorites, but new things happen all the time and one day I may like something and another day I'll like something else.

 

[george kaplan]

Well Lanie, if your favorite film was ESOTSM, which replace some film released shortly before that and which then got displaced by Garden State as your favorite, which is likely to soon give way to some other new film coming out as your favorite - and we're talking here about the favorite film that you've ever seen, then either

a) you haven't seen many classic films

or

b) you have very, very, very different taste than me.

In 1977, Star Wars was my favorite film (I hadn't seen that many films at that point, being a teenager), and it did give way over time as I saw more and more films. But it only dropped from #1 to #6 where it currently sits, which means that my absolute favorite film of all time only changed 6 times between 1977 and today. And none of those were new films, they were older films I finally saw, such as The Godfather, Rear Window, etc.

 

[Eric Peterson]

In general, I agree with Joe & George after reading your later posts.

Here's a further breakdown of how I go about determing my favorites. In general, I keep two lists "All-Time Favorite" (This rarely changes) & "Modern Favorites" (Last 20 years & changes frequently). At the point that a movie becomes approximately 20 years old, and I still enjoy it tremendously then it will move over to the other list.

Here's approximately how the lists would look right now.

All-Time Favorites

• The Apartment
• The Wizard of Oz
• Rear Window
• Touch of Evil
• Double Indemnity
• Ace in the Hole
• Young Frankenstein
• Bringing Up Baby
• etc....

Modern Favorites

• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
• American Beauty
• Lost in Translation
• Magnolia
• Wonder Boys
• Shawshank Redemption
• The Big Lebowski

 

[Doug_H]

I tend to break mine into all time favorites which almost never change and my favorites of the year, decade, ETC. I thought ESOTSM was an amazing movie and I can understand why it would go to the all time list for some, it only made the year list so far for me. Garden State is another great movie that I am currently into. I have a feeling the affection I hold for both of these will likely faulter with time however and that is not what makes a film an all time favorite.