Having been raised to give some serious respect to Thumper’s Rule, I spend a lot of time silent. People who know me a little might be shocked to hear that, because I certainly don’t seem shy about complaining. People who know me well realize I keep much more of my rampant disgust and dissatisfaction to myself.
So, I thought I’d try some posts about things that I actually like.
But first, I’ll start with the negative.
I have the shittiest luck in movie theaters. I can go to a matinee show of a film that has been in theaters for 8 weeks, and I will still have a shitty experience. When I go to the movie theater, one of the following will occur:
- people will bring their 4 children ranging from infant to 8 years old to see an R-rated movie and let them run around screaming the whole time
- people will let their child sit behind me and kick my seat the entire movie
- people will answer their cell phone and talk to the person during the movie “nothing… just watching this dumb movie”
- people will make-out stretched across the seats with their head almost in my lap
- people will have belching contests and laugh hysterically at how cool they are
- people will have blue flame contests and laugh hysterically at how cool they are
- people will change their baby’s shitty diaper seat next to me and then leave the diaper sitting there
- people who get off on violent rape scenes will sit next to me and become extremely and noisily excited during them
- people will threaten to kill me because I ask them to be quiet
- people will vomit and just continue sitting there
- people will leave their young, unruly, poorly behaved, unsupervised, rude, snotty (usually literally) children to watch the film I am seeing, and go watch a different movie themselves
Often, more than one of them occurs.
It isn’t that I hate movie theaters, just people.
Because movie theaters don’t work well for me, we use Netflix, and I find it a reasonably painless way to rent movies. Prior to Netflix, I hadn’t rented a movie in at least five years and was instead supplying any film watching desires with an out of control DVD purchasing addiction. Netflix did a lot to help soften the addiction. What is with the rating system though? 5 stars? Who can make any meaningful rating and comparison of a movie with a measly 5 stars. I need at least 10, and I really want at least 20 points on the rating curve to measure things effectively.
They only give me 5 though, which makes some of my ratings come out a bit odd. There is always the quality factor to consider, as well as the enjoyment factor. Plus, how difficult am I to please in a particular genre? If I tend to hate movies in a genre and then enjoy one, it deserves a different boost to its rating than a movie that has everything going for it as far as my personal taste is concerned and yet only manages to not be disappointing. Even though at the end of the day I might think the second movie is better.
Favorite is too strong of statement and I don’t use it often. I can’t even imaging trying to narrow it down to a favorite movie. I am just going to list a random 5 (not in order, nor necessarily the top 5) by genre, that I gave 5 Netflix stars to.
Foreign: La Femme Nikita, Cinema Paradiso, The Wedding Banquet, Battle Royale, Amelie
Animated: Bambi, My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki’s Delivery Service, Nightmare Before Christmas, The Iron Giant
Comedy: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Heathers, Swingers, Dazed and Confused, Bring It On
Drama: Dangerous Liaisons, The Shawshank Redemption, Dogfight, I Am Sam, Dead Poets Society
Horror: Nightbreed, Scream, An American Werewolf in London, The Lost Boys, Something Wicked This Way Comes
Action/Adventure: Thelma and Louise, Die Hard, Indiana Jones, War Games, Young Guns
Thriller: Killing Zoe, Falling Down, The Usual Suspects, Death and the Maiden, Closet Land
Romance: Garden State, The Man in the Moon, Before Sunset, Say Anything, Sliding Doors
Sci-Fi/Fantasy: Serenity, Empire Strikes Back, Blade Runner, Highlander, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
So there, some things that I liked in some fashion for a wide range of reasons I am not going to detail out.