check it out, all my life I always thought Citizen Kane would be like The Manchurian Candidate, cause I was only going off the name. I was like, NO politics, NO brainwashing, I don't want to hear about any of it. I guess the Citizen made me think it was political and touching on the communist topic.
Then, just a year ago for my first film class in my new film studies minor, we have to watch it and I'm squirming in my seat ... and next thing I know I am so into it I don't know how much time has passed and I want to know about Rosebud and yada yada ...
But it's just too hard to choose the greatest movie of all time. All movies have flaws, no movie is perfect. To each person, a film feels different, so it may SEEM perfect, but to someone else ... Citizen Kane comes pretty close for me.
American Beauty ... weeell, Chris, maybe you should watch the whole film and give it some time/a chance. The thing is, I think the director was looking into the neuroses and dysfunctionality that are the stereotype of american perception today (internal AND external) and trying to look deeper. Saying hey, look yeah this is a country of estranged children and trash tv but there IS something worthwhile there. There IS beauty -- that's the main, very obvious point of the movie. There is an everyman, an underdog, who sleeps away under all this internal melodrama, and he might have remained clueless but for waking up and seeing that beauty and being content with his life however stupid and small and trashy it may have seemed in some instances.
I think the director explored this with utmost intelligence and tenderness; i do not think he sought to make us americans out as crap, and I don't think he went out of his way to portray the avg american family as screwed up ...
in other news!
a list of films I regard highly ...
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The Color Purple
The Shawshank Redemption
Schindler's List
Vertigo
All About Eve
The Usual Suspects
Terminator 2
La Femme Nikita (French Version)
Au Revoir Les Enfants
heheh, pretty jumbled list but if you haven't seen these you are mad! go rent them!!
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whatcha lookin' at? i got feathers for hair or what?!