Movies that "fill in the blank" and Lists

This forum just fills up constantly with threads like "Movies that offended you" and favorite movies where a character eats marshmallows or something like that and I rarely post in them because...

I just don't have the mental capability to cycle through all the movies I've seen! How the hell do you people do it?! I own over 2000 films/TV shows on DVD/bluray (that includes kids movies) and that's only the tip of the iceberg of films I've watched in my life. How the hell am I supposed to remember every movie that had a cat scare in it or whatever obscure thread you guys come up with?

This thread is about movie memory. The Battleship Pretension podcast did an episode about it a little while back and you can listen to it here.

This doesn't just apply to movies that did whatever, it also applies to lists which I know film geeks are overly fond of making. I just plain don't do top ten lists because almost every year there are films that I love that I just forget to add to the list. I know that sounds silly, like why would I forget about a film that I loved but, it's not just that I forgot that I saw it, but I also forget when I saw it. A good example this year is The Lego Movie. I loved that movie but it came out way at the beginning of the year and if pressed for a top ten of 2014 I'd totally forget about it.

And, before you say "read a list of films that were released", http://www.imdb.com/search/title?yea...moviemeter,asclook at this freaking thing! That says over 12,000 titles released this year!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WTF?!?!?!!??

And if you asked me to make a top 50 of all time or top 100?!?!?! **** off! Seriously, never going to happen ever! How do you Rain Man people do it?!?!?!

So, please, tell me I'm not alone. Have you ever heard someone talk about a movie and realize it's something you've seen and forgotten all about? Have you ever loved a film and realized you left it off your precious list of "favorite films where a character wears flip-flops?" How is your movie memory?

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I forget all the time about stuff.


Questions is a prime example.


Someone will ask about a film and I think, "nah, I've never seen anything like that"... then Mark will post the answer and my memory will kick in that I have in fact seen it... and saw it like 3 days ago.


Other times my memory will ping and I remember something totally random about a random film that someone has asked about in Questions.
Like you said, "I remember a film when they guy wears flip flops and has a mole on his knee" and for some reason I'll get it.

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I did forget to put Steven King's IT onto my top 100 a couple weeks ago though. Derp.

No, you're not alone. Very often, I'll read one of the movie questions where someone is looking for a movie from the description, and it sounds familiar to me, and I'm sure that I've seen it, but for the life of me, I can't figure out the name of the movie. Sometimes I'll get lucky and I can picture a specific scene in my head, and that will lead me to an actor's name, so I can go to IMDB and figure out the name of the movie, but that's rare.

And the top 50 or 100 movie lists are near impossible for me. I've been trying to compile a top 100 list for a couple of months now, and I think I may have it narrowed down to about 300 or 400 movies that I want to include on my list, but I don't want to remove any of them, and I have no idea how to figure out the order. Depending on my mood, the order changes from day to day.

That's why I'm better online than in person, because I have time to think or look things up. When Phillip Seymour Hoffman died, several people asked me what he'd been in, and after a few films my mind would go blank. But I've seen him in dozens of movies and I love his work. I guess I just hadn't cataloged his movies in my mind in the same way that if someone had asked me what movies Scorsese or Eastwood or the Coen brothers had directed. That I can answer off the top of my head without thinking about it, because I've already spent a lot of time thinking about it.

And besides if I tell the average person my favorite starring role of Phillip Seymour Hoffman is Synecdoche, New York I'll get a blank stare, so it didn't help also having to think about what movies of his they might have actually seen or heard about.

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I may go back to hating you. It was more fun.

Oh, all the time. I didn't remember what War Games was the other day for a tournament. A movie that I've seen multiple times.

I don't know how many times I've put a movie on for the first time only to realize that I had seen it before.

I write everything down in documents in such a way that I can easily track the information (about films that I've seen) that I'm looking for.

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Cobpyth's Movie Log ~ 2019

This. I rank and rate every movie I watch and sort them by year.

On one hand I agree whole heartedly, on the other I disagree completely. I find it very hard to remember small details about movies unless I have watched them multiple times which happens with a very small percentage. I do remember my initial reaction and characters pretty well. I also have a very weird knack for remembering where I saw a movie and who with.

Now where I really differ is I love making lists. I have really just started doing so in the last couple of years though. Around the same time I started keeping a diary of what I watch. It is certainly an imperfect science, but for me it is fun to make them, remake them, and tweak them.

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Letterboxd

Wow, that's so NOT me. But it's cool that you do that. For me, I don't have the time or energy for list.

You should compare notes with Cob.

Me too on both those points. I could only have an in depth discussion of a movie IF I seen it the night before. Even after a week all I remember is, if I liked it or not.

The guy over the road started doing noting down every film he rented when he got a video back in the 80's. I thought it was weird.

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5-time MoFo Award winner.

Yep, that's why I don't really post in this subforum much except for the "Rate the Last Movie you saw" and "Movie you're Watching Tonight." I have a horrible memory and takes me a week to perfectly remember a single phone number.

Also while well made "Movies that (fill in the blank)" are enjoyable to read I see the format being used by members wanting to make threads but don't have any good ideas for them, including the fact that the format it very easy to recycle. This lowers the quality and especially originality, because no matter how well you recycle it gets repetitive.

If anyone wants to start the "Best cat caused jump scares" thread, I say go for it!

Winter break of my freshman year of college, one of my high school friends suggested I join him and some of his college friends in listing my top ten movies for every year (true story: years later when I met one of his friends for the first time in person, the first thing he said to me was "do you have a copy of your movie list?" I try to keep one on my person wherever I go now, just in case, but it's never come up again).

After the hard work of recalling movies I'd seen before I started my list was done, it pretty quickly became second nature for me now to just incrementally add movies shortly after I see them (usually whenever I post to the Movie Tab). I'm sure it's helped my memory of movies somewhat, just seeing titles I wouldn't have otherwise thought of every few days or so, but of course the main thing it's helped out with is remembering what years movies were released.

I review the vast majority of the films I watch for my website, it is easy to scan back through reviews and jog memories with the details and pictures. That said I have got films on there I genuinely do not recall anything about and comments comparing some films to others that I wrote five years ago that would not mean anything to me now.

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@MondoEsoterica - an insight into my world of seriously obscure cinema.