I'm starting to have a to bite my tongue when people feel they can compartmentalize everything. For example:
OK, this is a serious question, not intended as a flame or to rattle your chain or pick a fight, OK? Just two guys talking. I just wonder why you would even care if someone likes, dislikes, or doesn't even want to see a particular film? I mean you're smart about films but there are probably even films you don't like.
Actually, I've had no problem compartmentalizing things in my life far more important than movies.
1. I don't like certain genres, so I won't watch them.
As I've said before in this forum, because of certain experiences I generally avoid blood and gore films like Jaws and slasher movies. They make me uncomfortable so I just don't want to see them. Sometimes I go anyway like to
Sweeney Todd, because the stage play wasn't that gory. But I ended up regreting it.
Generally, I don't like martial arts films.
Seven Samuria is one thing, Steven Segal is something quite different. I've found I don't enjoy Chinese martial art films where they hang in the air kicking hell out of each other and throw knives like curve balls and dodge volleys of arrows. I rather take my fantasies in the form of
Lord of the Rings and
Harry Potter. But Chan makes me laugh at how he works everyday objects into his kung-foolery.
Doesn't mean lots of other folks shouldn't like those films, but I'd just be wasting time and money to see them because I know I won't enjoy them.
2. I don't like certain personalities, so I won't watch their films.
I don't think much of Jane Fonda as a person, but I like her performances in
The Tall Story,
Period of Adjustment, and
Cat Ballou. But I never did like
Klute, and
Barbarella,
Rhinestone Cowboy, and some of her later efforts.
Don't think much of John Wayne, either, but he's great in
The Quite Man and was worthy of an Oscar in
Sands of Iwo Jima. Lots of his later formula films sucked swamp water, however.
I've just never cared for Travolta starting way back in his TV series, and every movie role I've seen him in since. For whatever reason, I just don't find him believeable no matter what role he plays. So based on past experience, I generally avoid his films.
And that goes double in spades with Tom Cruise. The only Cruise film I ever was able to sit through was
Rain Man, and that was because I had Hoffman to watch. Now I know he's the berries to other folks, and that's fine but I just don't see it myself.
Seems to me that saying someone should watch movies with people and situations they generally don't like is like insisting that a kid who hates beets eat a big plate of beets because he may learn to enjoy it. The odds simply are against it.
3. I know what I like, so I won't watch something I think I won't like.
I've gone to films I was afraid I wouldn't like. Discovered to my surprise I liked
Midnight Cowboy. But usually I leave the theater wishing I'd gone with my gut feeling after sitting through something like
The Towering Inferno.
4. I know it's a good film but I don't like it. (How do you know it's good then?
People keep telling me 2001 is a great film, but it rolls off my knife.
5. I know it's bad, but I like it and I'm proud of it. (How do you know it's bad then?)
If I like it, it's good. I don't need anyone else's validation.
. I like to make quips telling others that they're wrong about liking certain movies.
Doesn't apply. I'll tell you what I don't like about a movie, and I'll listen to what you like about it. But I've never tried to
persuade anyone to change their minds and I've certainly never said they were wrong for liking or disliking any film. You like it or you don't. No skin off my nose either way. I'm not out to convert anyone; simply expressing my opinion which is usually out of step with most of this forum who are less picky than me.
Now, I'll admit that you could probably rewrite all these statements into their inverses of a conditional and it would probably describe a film buff. So go ahead and shoot me for being a film buff and teaching geometry.
You teach geometry! Oh, no!
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