Well, it could also mean you rarely give a film another chance if it seems too dense or chaotic the first time around. Or it could be that you don't treat the second viewing as any different from the first. Or that you just make up your mind about it the first time and don't want to change it. I'm not trying to be snarky with that last one, I'm just saying it's a possibility.

But really, you're still just a person. I think you're an intelligent person, and I have no trouble believing that you're a particularly observant person, but the idea that you catch everything of significance, particularly thematically, is impossible to believe, so we're left with one of the possibilities above, I think.

It can be more difficult to watch a movie precisely because you can watch it over and over. Filmmakers know this, and some take advantage of it, and paint all the way to the edges. Also, you can't "buy" a stage play the way you can buy a film on DVD, at least not usually.

Besides, people do watch movies over and over again, for whatever reason, so clearly the comparison doesn't work.

This is all nice (and pretty interesting), but listing examples of things you noticed outside of the movie itself is kind of beside the point, isn't it?

It's funny you mention The Godfather, because just the other day I was talking to my old man about the film, and how it rewards repeat viewing. He mentioned that while watching it the other day, after having seen it many times before, he realized that Sonny's brief interruption in the "I spoil my children as you can see"/"Don't ever tell anyone outside the family what you're thinking" scene could be taken as the reason Vito was killed; because it gave them the idea that the next-highest in the Corleone hierarchy was open to the idea, whereas Vito was not. It might have been the tipping point that made them decide to pull the trigger, literally and figuratively speaking, because there was a greater upside to its success.

I think you know what I mean by this a bit more than you're letting on. By this logic, why suggest any film to anyone? We do it because we want to share the art with others. This site, as you've probably noticed, isn't just a catalogue of people's opinions, it's a collection of reasons and elaboration about those opinions. There'd be no point to this if we were all truly indifferent to what other people had to say, or if we thought nobody could ever point anything out to us to enhance our enjoyment of a film. You've been here awhile; has anyone ever said something about a film you've seen that made you think "huh, I hadn't noticed that" or "that's interesting, I never thought of it that way"?

Back to your question, specifically: sometimes people watch films before they're ready to appreciate them, or without giving them a real chance. Some people, I'm sure, dislike Citizen Kane honestly. But I think more of the people who dislike it do so because they're approaching it the wrong way, or maybe inherently bored by older films, etc. People can dislike films for very superficial reasons, sometimes.

Anyway, let's cut through most of this: I think my most important question has been about age and/or life experience. Haven't you ever seen a film that made more sense to you after you'd experienced more? A love story that seemed less cheesy after you'd been in love? Even if you were the world's only perfectly observant moviegoer, you're not the same person in one decade as you are in another. I've seen you indicate many times that you're thankful for all the trials and tribulations of your life, because they make you who they are. That's a sentiment I think most people share, and if it's true, why would movies be an island? Why would that be one area where your own tastes stand apart from your life experience and all the changes you go through over the years?

We don't have to play "which is more likely?" because we can go through it case-by-case. Obviously, there are books and films that some people don't enjoy because they don't "get" it. The fact that this may be a convenient excuse for making a confusing or messy film doesn't mean it's never true.

Oh, come on now. Food is completely different. It's a physical reaction, for one, and it's a necessity, not an artistic indulgence (at least, not usually). I think you're being a tad disingenuous by using such strange and exaggerated examples. Also, nobody's talking about sitting through films that are utterly crappy, or beyond redeemable. I'm talking about films that contain a lot of information or themes, but are hard to process the first time around. Most films I don't like, I don't expect to ever like. But sometimes it's clear that there's a bit more going on. If you find Lawrence of Arabia boring, that doesn't mean it's boring in the same way Glitter is boring.

Re: books. If I'm reading a book and halfway through decide I don't like it, I make a decision based on what the book's about and what I have/have not liked to decide whether or not to finish it. Just like when I decide to watch a movie again.

Some people say that hard things are the only things worth doing. But I don't think we need to live by either extreme.

I don't know if I need to respond to this, since others have already pointed out how very literal it is. Suffice to say, I'm not talking about some guy in the background of a shot. There are certainly details like that in all sorts of films, but I'm thinking broader, and more thematically. I'm not making this out to be some weird science where I assign quadrants to the screen and run through each one.

You don't. But freed from the constraints of having to follow the primary events in literal ways, you often notice things over time. I can't explain how, but it obviously happens.

No, I'm definitely not talking about spotting continuity errors. I'm talking about noticing that one character's arc parallels another, or noticing a subtle reference to an earlier scene, or a motivation you hadn't picked up on before, or realizing that such-and-such physical object is really a metaphor for something emotional, or any one of the million other things that make good movies good.

Re: Appreciating movies
 

Just some more reading material for rufnek and a kind of reply to Yoda's WoT too.

>people seldom go back to
>see a live play expecting
>to see something they didn't
>spot in the first attendance

People go back to see plays performed by other people, or performed in a slightly different way. Theater is a constantly shifting medium. Plays are remade and remade over and over. You can never see the same play twice, you know.

Film, on the other hand, is a fixed medium.

>additional info
>from the book

"Info" is not really the problem. Or tiny details hidden in the frame. It's about reevaluating the meaning of the work as a whole by choosing to focus on a different set of details. For example, as Yoda said, you could focus on the double meanings of a single character's lines. You could wonder where or what that character was doing in the time he wasn't on frame and then use these conjectures to reinterpret what he does on frame.

>Now this is where I differ the
>most with other folks in this
>forum. Why would I hope
>someone would like a film I like?

It's pretty clear that there is no high/low art or good/bad art or anything like that anymore in our postmodern mindset. I don't grieve about this, I view it as being utterly true. Nevertheless, we DO think some things are better than others. This is true for absolutely every aspect of life.

I absolutely agree with Yoda's statement about films as a universal catalog of the human condition. Really, they are made to be shared. Even if we each watch it alone we are connected that we watched "the same" thing. Not to throw subjectivity out of the window, but it is a "lesser" subjectivity. A "more" communal experience than simply living life. Even at a party, each participant is an individual subject. However, if we watch a film at a party, each participant is that individual subject ONLY THROUGH the aspects of the film. In this way films are normalizing and lay down that "single point" Archimedes ruminated about needing if he were to move the world.

>"get"

There are, theoretically, endless interpretations of any work of art. For any individual movie on opening day there are millions. The key is, again, to find the normalizing attitudes. Afterwards we can even subvert those. Then, ironically, we can return to the original with a new found humor. This era of irony is the postmodern era.

>are you gonna sit there and
>savor it hoping that if you just
>give it a chance you may find
>something of quality

Yeah, what Yoda said. Food and literature are entirely different. Film is all about CONTROL. That's why I think it's the highest art. It controls everything. It is a literal depiction of reality, even if that reality is highly subjective and surreal. It is a literal depiction of that irreality as such. When you enter a film, you enter its grasp. It controls you for that brief period. No other medium is like this beside the performing arts. If you walk out of a film, you've written it off as art. If you stop reading a book briefly, you're tired and want to go to bed. Film cannot be paused in the middle. That's television and its designed to be split up. Film has to be watched in one sitting or written off entirely as a whole.

>I'm gonna bail rather
>than waste my time on it

The rehabilitation of ideas and works of art previously seen as failures is a great project of mine, so I guess we're sorta opposites. I think in our postmodern world, this is one of the more profound sorts of investigations.

And if you haven't heard the word enough already: postmodernism. There.

Since I know nothing about Persona, I doubt if I called it anything.

Jesus H. Christ, I said in one of my posts I've seen plays by different casts, so this portion of the lecture is pointless.


>Now this is where I differ the
>most with other folks in this
>forum. Why would I hope
>someone would like a film I like?

Clomping down the history of man's social nature still doesn't explain why I should give a damn if you don't like a film I like or I don't like a film you like. Too many people in this forum go ballistic if one offers an opinion different from theirs.

Archimedes aside, I've yet to see a film or a film audience move the world.

To me, films are like people. If I encounter one I don't like, I'm not anxious for a second encounter. It's very hard to love someone who doesn't love you back, and most of the films made today--especially the romances, comedies, and romantic comedies, the hack and slash films and monsters in gruesome make-up, and remakes like 3:10 to Yuma are made for young males 15-30, not for me. Hollywood doesn't even know people my age are still alive, so why should I embrace their product?

No, I've never claimed I caught everything of significance in a film in one or even more viewings. That would be a foolish thing to say, and I'm not a total fool yet. What I said is that I don't remember spotting anything of significance in later viewings, certainly not something that changed my whole assessment of that film.

I've never had lessons in how to watch movies, so I'm not sure what you mean about thematically--likely not what I would think it represents. But that's a good example of "I don't know what I'm missing if I don't know what I'm missing." I've never been much on symbolism, although I can tell when a director is trying to beat me over the head with it.

Lord, I don't mean any disrespect to your dad or anything, but first time I saw that movie it couldn't have been plainer if they had painted a lightbulb suddenly turning on over the would-be drugrunner's head, the way he and his partner look at Sonny and then each other. In fact, a little later in the film, where they are releasing Tom after hitting the Don, the drugrunner says to Tom something like, "Sonny was hot for my ideal, wasn't he?"

That's a basic with Southern families. My brother, cousin, and I would fight like dogs with each other, but if an outsider braced one of us, all three of us would kick the chit out of him. You never side with outsiders against family.


I wasn't talking about just opinions. Personally, I'm always interested in peoples' reasons for liking or not liking a particular film as well as their opinion of it, and several times I've learned things about a film and different viewpoints, although I don't rush home and view the movie again that same day. What I'm talking about, Yoda, are those people who accuse one of peeing on their favorite film just because the person says it's not among his favorites. You and I both have seen this happened several times in this forum--I've been the target several times and I'm sure you have too. And this is the thing I don't understand. You and I can sit down and discuss films and their pros and cons and various aspects. But if I think it's the best film ever made and you say you've seen better film on bad teeth, what would be the point of me getting angry at you because you don't like a certain film? I mean, it's not like I was personally involved in making the film nor am I collecting royalties from the DVDs sold, so if you don't like it, it's no skin off my nose. You have one viewpoint, I have another. I'm not going to abandon the film because you don't like it and you're not going to add it to your collection simply because it's my favorite. I'm not going to demand of you, "Just how many films by that director have you seen?" I'm not going to say you don't understand it thematically or that you obvious don't get all of the symbolism in it. You don't like my favorite film? No big deal. It's still my favorite, so why should I care if you like it or not? I'm saying "you" hypothetically--you have always conversed about films on a higher plane than that. But there are some who will go after a critic like a pit bull simply because I dislike this or that about a certain film.

Yeah, people can dislike films for very superficial reasons sometimes. But there also are films that just don't interest a particular viewer from the get-go. And it's not just me--saw in the Wall Street Journal today that Hollywood romantic comedies are bombing abroad because viewers overseas just don't appreciate the American sense of humor. It said Hollywood will be tailoring those films more to international tastes in the future. Maybe they'll also show some original French farces in US theaters instead of doing so many dumb remakes of them.

I've had a lot of exposure to more experiences in my life than some. I've been in the Army and wore the uniform properly and learned to salute and march, and about cover and concealment and spacing out when pm the move so as to not make too big a target, so it bugs the hell out of me now to see some actor in a film doing all of this wrong. Guess you might say I learned from my experience what I was expected to do while in the military and it's hard to tollerate some actor blithely breaking all the rules.

I've seen a lot of dead bodies and pools of blood, so I don't go see any of the Jaws films with blood billowing in the water or aliens popping out of one's stomach.

I've seen murderers and their victims, and I know Hitchcock's murder plot in Vertigo wouldn't have worked because it was too complicated and depended on everything happening as planned, which never works out that way. (Actually, I figured that out when I first saw that film as a kid, long before my years on the police beat.)

As for love and romance, I've been in and out of love, affection, lust, marriages and affairs so many times that practically every week marks the anniversary of some kind. I've also seen a lot of romantic movies, and the only one I think even came close to the real thing is Two for the Road, with Albert Finney and Audrey Hepburn with all the flash backs and flash forwards to various stages of love and marriage. In general terms, it was right on the money, but it doesn't much match any of the loves I've known.

Well, I told you I wasn't much on symbolism--I didn't mean a literal comparison of food and film. No, I was referring to taste in general. Whether it's food, drink, films, books, or political slogans, I'm not gonna consume something that offends my taste. And in the case of film, I'm sure as hell not going back for a second bite.

Again, this isn't about some kind of moral obligation, or what's "fair," or whether or not it's your responsibility or the director's/studio's/whoever's to meet you halfway or not. I'm just talking about whether or not there are ways to get more out of movies in general. Obviously, I think there are. Whether or not anyone should expect you to is another matter.

But surely even this is an incredible statement, unless you either a) almost never rewatch films that don't interest you the first time, or b) only rewatch them the exact same way you did the first time, not endeavoring to see it from another perspective.

Since you likened films to people, allow me to ask: what would you think of someone who made up their mind about each person they met the first time they met them, and never changed it? Would you think each person had shown all they had to offer and were being judged fairly, or would you think the person doing the judging was being hasty and unwilling to change their minds?

Just watching movies is the best lesson about how to watch them, I'd say. But surely you are well aware of symbolism, and how certain things that happen can have meaning beyond the literal -- sometimes they can apply to some current event, or sometimes they can illuminate something else in the film, or at least cause us to consider it in another light. You've clearly seen quite a few films, so I think we're probably both on the same page when I use a word like "thematically."


Well, no disrespect taken, because he's pretty brilliant, so the odds are better that I'm just misremembering his observation.

Well, whether or not you see it again the same day, or whether or not you rush to your home before doing so, is kind of beside the point. The fact that people have said things which made you consider a film in a different way, and that this may have caused you to watch it again to see this new perspective, is exactly what I've been talking about this entire time.

Yeah, and it can be silly. I know this is what you're talking about, but I can't say it's what I am. You said this in response to my hypothetical question about what you would say, if anything, to someone who didn't like Citizen Kane. The point was that some art needs time and focus to be appreciated. The fact that some people can beat others about the head every time they disagree is true, but I'm not sure it sheds a lot of light on what we're talking about, because even in my hypothetical I wasn't suggesting you become that kind of person. There are a million ways to argue for a film without arguing against a person who doesn't like it.

Absolutely. Remember, I'm not arguing that every film is worth a second look, or benefits from being seen more than once. I'm saying that some do.

As you say, people can dislike films for very superficial reasons. They can dislike them (or like them, as well) simply because they're young and/or haven't seen many. There's no way to say that without sounding pretentious, I suppose, but it's obviously true. And if that's true, there's no reason that this can't be true of other people: for example, older people who are more likely to write off newer or faster-paced films simply because they don't resemble the old ones. We all know this as the "they don't make 'em like they used to" school of thought, which is almost always simultaneously usually true and almost always unfair.


Let me preface my reply to this by saying that I like your stories about life, and I like the way you write them. I honestly do. I liked reading the above. I like the perspective it gives me, and I like how honest it is.

Now that I've said that, I feel I can say this without it being taken the wrong way: none of the above really answers my question. Or, if it does, it would seem to agree with my insinuation: your life experiences change the way you view things in movies. You've seen real death, so movie death seems less shocking than it would. And really, that makes the point I'm trying to make. Unless you feel you stopped growing significantly as a person at any point, then there are any number of films in the past that you would bring new experiences and understanding to if you were to see them again.

I'm pretty stumped, then. You seem to agree with all the reasons you should give more films another chance (we miss things, others can give us new perspectives, we change as people and view movies differently as a result), but not the conclusion they suggest.

(In response to my remark that I don't remember spotting anything of significance in subsequent viewings of a movie, certainly not something that changed my whole assessment of that film.)
Yeah, there are lots of films some folks rave about in this forum that I'd never watch a second time. For instance, I thought Reservior Dogs was interesting, kind of in the same way that a distant head-on collision on the highway or a jumper finally leaping after standing on the edge of a building for a couple of hours is "interesting." But that's not the same as being entertaining, and I'll never watch it again because I didn't like the way it made me feel after seeing it the first time, like I needed to go wash the muck off my brain. A very unpleasant feeling.

Saw Avatar on a DVD. It was better than I thought it would be but far short of all the hype. Not something I'd care to watch again--too cartoonish. Saw the latest Alice in Wonderland at the movie. Hadn't been for the grandkids, I'd probably have walked out. Come to find out, they didn't care much for it either. Guess they were too young and I was too old.

As for re-watching a film from another perspective, I'd have to stand on my head because that's about the only way I can think of to change my perspective. It's the same me watching the same film. Oh, there can be some small changes--when I was middle-aged and a father myself, I was more sympathetic toward Jim Baccus as James Dean's dad in Rebel Without a Cause than I was when I first saw it at 17. But Natalie Wood's dad in that film was still a jerk who didn't know a damn thing about raising a daughter. Other than that, I still liked the story and the acting. But I've never encountered an earth-moving sort of change in perception over that or any other film.

Well, I've seen both sides of that. Films are more static than people because they have the same characters, the same dialogue, the same script everytime you see them. Rarely do they turn into The Purple Rose of Cairo (which I did like, but don't think I ever saw again). So yeah, a person can change and can become more interesting. Certainly my ex-wives changed, but they became less interesting. On the other hand, I had an ex-brother-in-law that made a bad impression the first time I met him and although I was married to his sister for years and there were several times he did things to help us out, I just never could warm up to the guy. Didn't hate him, but if he hadn't been an in-law I'd have stayed away from him. Several years ago when I went to my 20-year high school reunion, the people I had liked in high school I still liked and the ones I thought were jerks were still jerks. Of course, I had 4 years of almost daily contact with those people, so I knew their good and bad points pretty well.

Well, I know fireworks went off and trains roared into tunnels every time Cary Grant got lucky in a Hitchcock film, but anything much deeper than that is probably wasted on me. :)

Now I have thought about this before. I'm really not an old foggie who in everyday life goes around talking about the good old days. I've embraced most of the changes that have happened in my life. But I don't care for what passes as rock or the "new" country music these days. And I don't care much for the MTV type of editing that has gotten into movies or the way car chases and special effects have replaced good scripts and good acting. I don't think many of today's young stars have the star-power or the longivity or the range of the Clark Gables, Jimmy Cagneys, Bogart and Spencer Traceys of the past. It seems England is producing better actors today than the US because so many of their best people are grounded in live theater whereas in the US many of the stars crossed over as stand-up comics on TV. Yet if a really good film or really good actor comes along, I can recognize it

Actually, it's a matter of logistics. When I first was old enough to understand going to the movies in the 1940s, there were few stars and films I liked. By the 1950s, there was still a relatively small number of new movies and new stars that became my favorites and were added to the best of those from the 1940s. Also, television happened in the 1950s and that exposed me to some of the movies, actors, and comics from the 1930s or earlier. In the 1960s, TV widened my scope where I was watching future directors like Peckinpah and future movie stars like Steve McQueen. And even more old movies that I had missed or forgotten about. Meanwhile, I picked up more favorites from the movie screens in the '60s, including a smattering of foreign films. And so on through the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, adding a few new films and faces each year to the growing accumulation from earlier years. So starting from the films of 1930, I've got 70 years worth of favorite films and actors by the start of this decade. No wonder films and actors seem so much better from the past--I've got so many of the very best movies and stars from 70 years to remember. I've added some more from this decade but probably not as many in any year as in the 1950s-1960s when I saw more films in more genres, because it's true that a lot of the comedy, a lot of the adventure films, a lot of the dramas and damn near all of the horror films made made today are aimed at a very different audience than me and just don't engage my interest. So most of the films I've seen are all skewed to a much earlier period when computerized special effects were not possible. That's a major reason so many of the latest films folks in this forum like today seem alien and uninteresting to me. And multiple viewings of those films are not likely to endear them to me, no matter what my perspective.

Re: Appreciating movies
 

Titanic
Anaconda

You just posted this in the Most overrated movies thread...
Ladies & Gentlemen, I think we have a spammer in the making.

How is that spam though? Unless kane02's James Cameron.

+1 rep.

/hijack of best thread ever

Watchmen --This was a movie full of terrible conflicts for me. On one hand, this was possibly one of the greatest ****ing movies I've ever seen. On the other hand, it was also the worst movie I've ever seen.

On the other hand, I was blazed during the entire movie, thus perverting or enhancing the entire experience, so neither conclusion is clear.

This is one of those one hit wonders; you can watch it one time, and then you're done. Watching it more than once causes shame and severe abdominal pain. [edit]i've watched it maybe 3 times so far. i don't feel the shame yet. it may have been hearsay.[/edit]

And yet, this is one of those movies I'll have to see again. And maybe (MAYBE) one more time. And then once more after that to appreciate all the succulent nuances permeating the entire film.

When a film opens and the photography is ****ing stunning as ****, I know something is going to happen to change the very ethos of cinematic history. This film was that.

It ****ing... woke me up.

And I don't get woken up easily.

This ****ing film had a few ****s get pwned. And I mean PWNED... And that's still the least of your appetite's romantic, vicarious, slaughtering indulgences.

There's time play.

Yes, there's Momento. And then there's time play. I've battled more coherent cat's cradle-strewn webs of time swimming upside down on acid in the middle of orange clouds on Mars-- the time roared. It ****ing had it's hand up your dress the entire night. You were seeing double before double was invented. You were feeling the impact of in medis res before the greeks and the Greats even had a chance to unroll the yet-to-be-aroused parchment.

****ing Time left the clock, said an eerie incantation in the form of slower than motion photography and brought itself to life in spite of its own difficult manners.

People and events often fight each other for a foothold in what we like to refer to as chronology. People want to mean something while events could care less about the recognition and more about the simple Medal of Accuracy; as a cause of laughter, they wish to be recorded and then go unregarded.

This is the charting of maps and the beginnings of patterns. This is wooing of destinies by the calloused, potent hands of circumstance, plain, without the perfume of sentiment.

This film paced itself, set its own course and let its pitiful 20 & 30-something crew believe it had come to see a common spectacle of mundane gladiators. And by the end of the film, no fresh green eye-shaped leaf could resist the silent tarnish brought about by the Pied Pipering voice of Autumn. We drifted together down the drain to the very end of time. And we were washed as we were washed away.

I... There were intrusive scenes of candy-coated affection. The rotting stench emanating from a sterile construction of middle class passion couldn't help but justify the eager budget concerns of those on land yelling to those at the helm, enough to put your nuts in harm's way... And "The Owl" could better be renamed "The ******"... These meteors alone destroy the earth underneath the nimble feet of this once-upon-a-midnight-blaze movie.

But see it once.. And then see it once more. And reel…. in the narrative. Soak....in the displacement of clocks, watches, and naive notions of recording what will stay in spite of your desire to hold it.

Is it any coincidence that the clocks moved forward on that unassuming day in March... You be the executioner. Let the jury close its eyes instead and shed duty like a youthful obligation from the reptile's back.