Genres you struggle with
 

Hi, I've been working my way through the Empire Magazine 500 5 Star films (its several years old). I have realised I really don't get on with:

• Samurai films - They all seem overacted, but I LOVE the cinematography. I've tried Ran, Throne of Blood, Yojimbo, Seven Samurai. It's not an anti Japanese thing as I loved Ikiru and all the Ozu films I've seen .
• Westerns (older ones) - Many of the old "classics" seem cliched and poorly acted. I have not yet watched Man With No Name trilogy - fingers crossed that is better. I do like the more "alternative" or "neo" westerns as they avoid the cliches in most instances.
• Musicals (a couple of exceptions - I loved Dancer In The Dark; Umbrellas of Cherbourg; Singin In The Rain
• LOTR etc - leaves me cold!

Anyone else struggle with such films, or other genres?

Re: Genres you struggle with
 

Found footage horror mostly makes me yawn, it might not all be poor but most of what I've seen of it is imo.

I think there are always exceptions, but generally speaking, I second found footage, and also dramas tend to leave me cold (the typical ones where things generally end badly and there is little action/plot). Musicals also really irritate me.

Re: Genres you struggle with
 

The antidote to coldness or indifference towards a given genre or type of film almost always is just watching more films from the genre.

You might not like a specific highly-acclaimed film within a genre. But if you dislike an entire genre, there might be something you're doing wrong. Maybe it's your expectations? It's fine to prefer one genre to another but not finding a single great film within a genre sounds like you haven't seen too many films from that genre.

Either way, some film types are your jam right away. Others, you need to get intuned to, so to speak. I used to be indifferent to classic American westerns. I watched many Spaghetti Westerns and subconsciously expected a similar kind of entertainment from American classic westerns from the 40s and 50s. But these films are just different. After watching more of them, I learned to appreciate them. And I think some of them are incredible. Sure, I still prefer spaghetti as a whole. But now I love me some classic Western now and then!

The Samurai films of Kurosawa may seem overacted because they're inspired by Noh theatre. It's their style. It's a conscious artistic choice on Kurosawa's part.

Re: Genres you struggle with
 

mysteries. just about any movie where you're just waiting around to be told what's actually happening is a no for me.

Noir of the 30s, 40s & 50s. never really gravitated to. I've seen only about a couple dozen of them, but they leave me "meh". This just might be ban worthy...

I can't help but notice (as Minio did) all of the samurai films you've listed are from Kurosawa, and he's incorporating aspects of Noh theater into them. Personally, I've never grown accustomed to it myself either, but I've also seen elements of that in his other non-samurai films as well.
Have you seen Mizoguchi's Ugetsu? It's been 20 years since I've seen it, so I can't remember if it breaks from that style, but I'd suggest giving it a go.
Unfortunately all of the other examples I can think of, I can't remember how much they might fall into this style.
Oshima's Gohatto doesn't, but it was a lot more recent.
It's been occurring to me I need to give Shura (1971) another go, it's been a while and I remember bits and pieces now, but it's doing some interesting things cinematically.
Sword of Doom will probably be a lot easier to track down, but I remember that being more of a, "I enjoyed it," I wasn't trying to think of it as a potential all time great.
I haven't seen Samurai I, II, or III, so I can't comment on them.



I can't tell if by "classics" you mean "classic Hollywood" westerns or Spaghetti Westerns. The No Name trilogy (aka the Dollars trilogy) is Italian (Leone). (and fwiw, from Leone, I preferred Once Upon a Time in the West more than the Dollars trilogy.


I struggle with classic westerns more, but as Mr. Minio said, the more you watch the more you're likely to acclimate to the style. Everything you watch has some artificiality to it. It's just an odd question trying to figure out why some types don't square well with a given viewer. That said, I still don't love The Searchers, but it has grown on me on rewatches (I don't expect to ever love Unforgiven).
Maybe give The Oxbow Incident a shot if you haven't. There are lists of classic anti-westerns that might be more your thing. Personally I keep meaning to check out western-noirs. *Stares at Blood on the Moon on his watch queue*
(I'm not mentioning McCabe & Mrs Miller because it's from the 70s and wouldn't qualify as a "classic Hollywood western.")


I finally got to some Bob Fosse musicals this past year (Cabaret, All That Jazz). My prediction is you'll end up liking them.


I'm pretty sure LOTR isn't a genre.

Fantasy, historical, musical

But there are great movies from all genres

Biopics.
Not interested.

I don't struggle with genres, but I do avoid found footage like the plague..

Re: Genres you struggle with
 

Superhero films. Virtually all of them either do nothing for me or don't give me any desire to rewatch them. RoboCop is the only one I've watched that matters a great deal to me.

Biopics. I'm mainly referring to the ones which show up around Oscar season as those are nothing more than well-acted and (sometimes) well-shot piles of nothing. Not what I want to see in film at all.

Indie dramas and comedies that are labeled as mumblecore, i.e., movies by directors like Noah Baumbach, Greta Gerwig, Lena Dunham, etc. I cannot relate to the characters in them and their problems do not interest me.

Modern horror films...yeah that's right, I'm completely 180 in my movie taste from most MoFos:cool:

My thoughts on OPs post:

• Samurai films: I love Ozu's films too, but I also like classic period Japanese Samurai films. Mostly for the cultural drama but the actual sword fighting I don't care much about.
• Westerns (older ones): Love these, many are really good, you just have to seek out the good stuff.
• Musicals: If someone loves Singin' In the Rain they can love other musicals too:yup:
• LOTR: Leaves me cold and bored too.

Re: Genres you struggle with
 

Rom Coms

Re: Genres you struggle with
 

I'm not sure I struggle with many, but I guess these are the two that came to mind when I read the title:

1. Horror. I want to be disturbed the right amount, but no more. A lot of modern horror veers into tasteless shock, even the well-made stuff, and if it goes a little too far towards outright doom or despair I turn on it completely.

2. Action-adventure. Just very hard to be effectively drawn-in to caring about an action sequence as opposed to a genuine plot or character development. This is largely because of CGI, I'm sure, and in particular the thing they love to do where they clearly just have an actor move around and animate the perils (boulders, debris from crumbling structures) around them to be constantly just missing them. It's aggressively boring.

Re: Genres you struggle with
 

I guess I'll throw in that musicals, like poetry, have such a fine line between Amazing and Terrible, and that even musicals I really like usually make me cringe with some forced rhyme or awkward number, just because it's obviously so freakin' hard to come up with half-a-dozen (if not many more) that are catchy, elegant, clever, and flow naturally from the story, all in one.

Musicals, Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Horror. All of them really strain my ability to suspend disbelief. Also, I really dislike the style of singing I've encountered in most of the musicals I've seen. Plus I often hate the songs themselves (looking at you "Shipoopi").

Clue was in the name ;)

I am all for the doom and despair. The Rule of Raimi "The Innocent Must Suffer" is a good one. However, I am rather over cheap jump scares. I cannot abide grossout material. Also, hope is an important component of horror. The thought that the boogeyman might get you only exists because of the uncertainty (he might not). Horror takes us into the unknown, which means that outcomes should be, to some extent, uncertain. This is why I find rule-obsessed horror to be rather ridiculous -- enter the gimmick premise monster -- replete with silly rationalistic rules about who it kills and why.

Re: Genres you struggle with
 

Musicals and Westerns, oh and documentaries highlighting musicians I don't care about their life i just want to enjoy the music.


Horror i don't mind but i get bored by pretty easily don't know why..

In my defense, I only suffered through The Music Man because it was a Hall of Fame nomination. Least favorite movie I've seen so far.

I've actually not seen either that or Shipoopi so aside from my silly lil remark I can't actually comment. I'm generally ok with musicals as long as they manage to engage me and the songs are ok tbh.

This is me also. The only ones I enjoy are the comedic ones, i.e. Deadpool, Guardians of the Galaxy and the like.

Re: Genres you struggle with
 

I avoid modern horror. I’m a big horror fan but a gore galore CGI fest makes me ZZZZZZ, so I now stay away. Many great horror films are gore free with an absorbing atmosphere. This seems vacant nowadays.

Shipoopi is a song from The Music Man and it’s horrible.

Ah gotcha, my bad I assumed Shipoopi was prolly a Bollywood fillum :o
(before anyone pipes up, I quite like a number of Bollywood fillums .... it just sounded like it might be a Bollywood musical type name)

Re: Genres you struggle with
 

Westerns - I'm another who has never liked westerns. I'm not sure why since I have a couple individual westerns that I love (High Noon, The Cowboys).

It may be because Hollywood glorified something that in reality was extremely boring. Unless you were on a vengeance quest against rustlers that stole your herd, murdered your family, kidnapped your daughter or burnt your ranch, life on the frontier was one of endless drudgery and monotony.

Horror - depending which type - I kind of love old monster movies, giant monsters, and psychological horror, but never got into the whole slasher craze.

Re: Genres you struggle with
 

Despite liking the western genre, I find myself having to force myself to watch most of them since a lot of them are super typical.

Re: Genres you struggle with
 

Superhero movies - as a child of the Silver & Bronze Ages of comics and a rabid comic book fan, I sort of felt it was my duty to view all superhero movies (I've since gotten over that compulsion). But when they were few and far between, it was easy to do & I felt compelled to do it.

In many (but not all) cases, I ended up seeing my childhood heroes & villains dismantled by Hollywood which led to much disappointment & anger - something else I've let go of now that I realize if I want to view my characters & stories as they once were, I need to seek out reprints as opposed to seeking out the theater.

Re: Genres you struggle with
 

This is a great idea for a thread so here are my choices :

Superhero - Unlike Captain Steel said, I never read comics but like him, I do not like what companies are doing with them. I enjoy some of them like Iron Man, Captain America, and the Spider-Man Trilogy(the Raimi one, not that forgettable one with Tom Holland). As far as these movies go, I got sick of and still am of everything that comes out being a superhero movie. Martin Scorsese probably throws huge tantrums about this in his bedroom.

Spy - I was not a fan of the Daniel Craig-era Bond movies since I was rather bored with them. I like Casino Royale and Skyfall while NTTD and QoS went all over my head. I saw one Mission Impossible movie(Ghost Protocol) and found that one was weaker than any of the Bonds. I reacted more positively to The Bourne Identity movie though. I still want to see an episode of the Mission Impossible TV show from the 60s and also a few Connery Bond movies to see if I like the ones from the past.

Fantasy - Split into the lines with this one... If it is something like The Labyrinth or The Never Ending Story, I am all into it. But if it is something like Lord of The Rings or Game of Thrones. Nah. I could not get into either of those. With FotR, I watched for an hour before getting bored, watched the end of the second one, and watched an hour of RotK. I only saw Game of Thrones when it was running in the background and from what I saw, I am not too interested in it either. I usually do not like anything too serious and prefer things that are sillier.

War - These usually go over my head. Platoon, Saving Private Ryan, and Patton are three examples. I do not even know what even happened in any of those. I disliked Black Hawk Down. I liked Full Metal Jacket but for the R .Lee Ermy scenes and not the war scenes.

Re: Genres you struggle with
 

Superhero films. i just don't care. I have seen some that I liked but I never really cared to see the sequel or the series.
I saw the first Superman movie with a friend and I found it rather lackluster. She wanted to stay for the Raiders of the Lost Ark. I had to be convinced because the first movie felt so lame. I am so glad I did. Raiders was such fun.

As for musical genres(music not musical movies) here are some:

Metal: Too heavy for me. I find Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, and Deep Purple to be fine groups, but they lean more toward hard rock than metal. It is groups like Dream Theater that I can not stand most groups where everybody is a virtuoso because they usually play really well but rarely come up with good musical ideas I like. Not that I do not completely dislike such musicians, because I usually get hyped over jazz fusion groups.

Rap Music: I respect this music, but I would never listen to it when I am sitting by myself in a room. Maybe for a party or a drive then yes I would listen to it.

Period romances.

There's nothing romantic about menstruation.

Ever heard Agalloch, then?

Spaghetti Westerns. They’re just not my jam.

Despite being a huge Horror fan, I'm right there with you.
With a few exceptions, maybe one or two per year, I consider them... well, I just don't consider them.
Drives my friends crazy as they want me to watch the great new Horror movie and I just won't but I want them to watch The Black Cat or Messiah Of Evil.

Man, you are singin' my song.

Haha! I learned to like "Shipoopi" (since The Music Man is not only my favorite musical outside of Rocky Horror, but one of my favorite movies, period), but I feel ya.

I have not yet found a movie that I hate more than The Music Man and "Shipoopi" was probably the worst part of it.

Sorry never hear of ‘em.

l do like William Castle horrors. Think I've seen just about every movie he made.

Check em out, then:



https://youtu.be/gDH-YCCeL3c

That's because you don't eat spaghetti with jam. You eat it with sauce.
Used to be a huge fan. My enthusiasm has since waned.
Vampires disagree.

I don't like horror moves, especially the gory movies like slasher movies. I also don't like the horror movies that feature bugs, spiders, and other nasty creatures. I'm okay with older horror movies and psychological horror movies that focus more on scaring the viewer without showing much on screen, rather than shocking viewers with blood and gore.

I'm not a fan of war movies that focus on the battles, but I'm okay with war movies that feature a romance that takes place during wartime, and don't focus on the soldiers fighting and/or dying in the war.

And it's not a genre, but I have my own issues with foreign language (non-English) movies because I hate reading subtitles. I have a hard time focusing on the movie itself if I'm trying to read the writing on the screen throughout the movie.



I love "Shipoopi", but it's probably a nostalgia thing for me. My father was a big fan of Buddy Hackett, and I have great memories of my father dancing around the house singing "Shipoopi" when I was a kid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHZTeC-DDEg

Re: Genres you struggle with
 

Maybe the Family Guy version will be more popular... OR make the original look better! ;)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_O1eOnhIKE

I'm curious if you like old 1950s sci fi horror, like Them (1954) or The Monster That Challenged the World (1957) ?

I hate real war but I do like war movies, especially war movies that gives a feeling of what it would be like to be in a war.

Some of my favorite movies are foreign, but when there's a foreign movie with lots of characters and lots of fast dialogue I can't keep up with who is saying what. All I can do in that case is stare at the bottom of the screen and read the subtitles, which takes me out of the movie. The flip side of that is I've watched foreign movies and when the movie was over I swore I 'heard' it in English because the story was told with fewer characters and less dialogue. I wonder how many people that is true for?

I love The Music Man (the original with Robert Preston. Shipoopi isn't my favorite song though.

I've never seen (or heard of) The Monster That Challenged the World (1957), but Them (1954) is a bad example for me because, (if I remember correctly), it has giant ants, so I wouldn't like that movie.

But I like some of the old sci-fi horror movies like The Thing from Another World (1951) and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), but nothing with bugs, spiders, or other creepy crawly creatures.


Usually when I watch a foreign movie, I get so involved in reading the subtitles that I forget to watch the movie. Then I end up having to rewind the movie and try again. By the time I finish the movie, it's usually taken me about twice the running time to watch the movie.


Yeah, "Shipoopi" definitely isn't the best song in the movie, but it's still a fun song.

I don't avoid them intentionally, but I find that I'm very often *not* drawn to them.

I do agree with the thought, but my favorite horror film also happens to be found footage; Noroi The Curse (it's a Japanese film, FYI). Most are eh, but that one is awesome. I won't type anything about the story since it's best approached blind. It is freaky, so if you like horror, you're in for a treat.

Re: Genres you struggle with
 

This isn't a genre, but a place; I can't stand any French films, and I've never liked any German or Italian films, aside from Leone's westerns.

I am incredibly picky about my comedies. If it's a modern American comedy, I will probably hate it. I don't much care for other cultures' humor, either (it's hard to translate across cultures), but I can stand most of them (unless they're French) (then they automatically suck).

Re: Genres you struggle with
 

Musicals



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I don't like most Korean films that I've seen, too violent...they're like Tarantino on crack.

What's interesting about that is my favorite country for movies is South Korea. I won't go down a path of destruction over our difference of opinion. I just wanted to share that little tidbit of information.

One thing about Korean films is the bad guys, more often than not, meet their comeuppance. A lot of American crime films, like Godfather and Goodfellas, the bad guys (they're bad despite being the protagonists) get away with everything. In Korean films, and not just the crime films, 99% of the time the good characters (even if they're the antagonists) end up coming out ahead.

It's not completely cut and dry, but both nations follow those trends pretty much all the time. The major difference is the Hayes Code era and film noir. That is my favorite genre, in part because of how it's a product of its time while still being accessible now. In the Hayes Code days, the good guys always had to win. Once the MPAA started, that trend got bucked, and now the villains usually get away with it.

Not surprising then that I like movies from the Hayes Code era much more than movies made today. I liked your post, very informative and I didn't realize the difference between the bad guys getting away with it in modern U.S. films vs S. Korean films having the bad guys lose. Thanks for posting that.

I allude to the Hayes Code, but Japan and South Korea have similar ideas of how stories are to be presented. For them it's making sure the bad guys lose. They don't mind content as much, at least from my experience, but the villains have to lose somehow.

One of my favorite Korean shows is Bad Guys, where three criminals of various skill sets that are currently in prison that are asked to bring down a group of even worse criminals. I don't know how to explain it without a spoiler though. Last I saw it's on Netflix if you're interested. It is violent, but it's a lot tamer than a fair share of their (heh) movies.

Re: Genres you struggle with
 

Fear of watching horror movies, but I struggle with it, I only show interest because of the plots of these movies.

Couldn't you just not watch them then? I understand wanting to see a horror films (I love a good horror) but if it's a struggle for you, I'm not sure why you'd continue to watch them. What am I missing here?