The Rewatch Project
Submitted by AJDaGreat on Thu, 12/25/2008 - 02:53
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- So part of the reason behind the conversion to all letter grades is because I want to work towards finally creating a top 100 films list. I have avoided doing so since I started posting at Listology because I wanted to make sure I had seen all the top contenders for the list, and I think my movie viewing has pretty much reached that point by now. So now I also have 175 films that I've graded as A's which I can shape into a manageable list.
- Of course, now I need to go back and re-examine some films. What follows are some films I ought to rewatch before I make the list. Some of them I know I love but I'm not sure where to place them in the list; some of them are right around the cutoff point for the list and I'm not sure if they make it; and some I just anticipate ranking high on it, and I feel I should be more confident in this high ranking.
- Granted, I don't mean to imply that I'm going to watch all these again soon, especially because I still plan to watch movies I haven't seen before. I might not finish rewatching all these before I make the list, but I almost definitely will for the ones in the "More Important" column.
- Feel free to make suggestions for this list, if you feel that I should re-evaluate my opinion on any film I've ever seen.
- More Important:
- Hail the Conquering Hero (1944)
- Lenny (1974)
- Toy Story 2 (1999)
- Less Important:
- The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)
- Viridiana (1961)
- The Long Goodbye (1973)
- Being There (1979)
- Once Upon a Time in America (1984)
Author Comments:
Luckily, I have a lot of these on DVD.
I look forward to your Top 100 list. I hope it includes mini-reviews, even if they're just pasted from your viewing log. Even after these years, I still don't feel like I have a handle on what makes you grade a film highly - or at least it's less obvious than my own criteria which are heavily weighted toward invention and inter-departmental stylistic agreement.
Above all, have fun with this!
I'm sure the list will include reviews of some sort. I think my criteria will always remain more nebulous than yours, though; yours are very clear, whereas mine are fuzzy by design.
I've been thinking about this lately too, actually. I once told AfterHours that my criteria were (1) what the film [or other work of art] is trying to accomplish and (2) how well it accomplishes it. Which is about as general as you can get but also about as accurate as you can get.
I guess if you want to get just barely more specific, you could say that I think a great film does what it does differently from other films or does what it does better than other films, or both. Where the latter is of course a very subjective judgment call of how well the film works, and the former is slightly less so but still fairly subjective.
I've come up with a number of weaker, more problematic theories as to nailing down my criteria, including (1) it's all about how good the story is and how well it is told, but without implying that I shun abstractly told stories like Persona; (2) great movies should either be realistic, or heightened in a stylistically interesting way; (3) great movies should just interest me and that's about it, however they want to do that is fine as long as they're interesting; (4) with many exceptions, I prefer movies that are either comedies or about crime, love, sex, or film itself; etc.
I don't think my criteria would ever have the ability to be anywhere near as objective as yours. I feel like I could try to impose that on myself but ultimately I would need some part of it to be based on what I personally think works and what doesn't. Which may be intellectually unsatisfying, but alas.
I am having fun with this though. Probably too much fun. I need to get out more. :-)
If I ever thought my criteria were objective, I certainly rejected that position long ago. I'm currently an aesthetic relativist, until someone tells me why I shouldn't be.
Right. Sorry, I didn't mean that your criteria are objective as in the films you praise are the paragon of objective quality. I meant "objective" as in your criteria seems to be less based in personal feelings and more based in qualities that can be measured, assuming one knows enough about film and is able to analyze it. I feel like your praise is less based on an ambiguous feeling of what is good and what isn't.
If you called Weekend at Bernie's the greatest film ever made based on your criteria, that wouldn't make sense, and one could make legitimate arguments as to how Weekend at Bernie's doesn't do anything unique and perhaps you would see error in your ways. Whereas if I called it the greatest movie ever made and said that every scene just clicked for me perfectly, many people might think I had bad taste but there's not much else one can say.
Gotcha.