I don't know how to hate films

I love almost everything I watch. I can recognize beauty or value in everything, from blockbusters to obscure arthouse to trashy pulsating oddities from the other part of the world. I've never been much into articulating WHY a film is good or not because it always struck me that it's quite self-explanatory and up to intuition. I love great visuals but I also love vibrating and cheap visuals - MOVEMENT makes those great, which means no still image seems aesthetic, but when in motion, they're endlessly mesmerizing, which might make them MORE cinematic and BETTER than the eye-candy films screengrabs from whom circle the internet. Anyway, back to the topic, I'm unable to hate the film as a whole, and I rarely hate individual movies. I love the cinema way too much for that. I couldn't be a film critic who has to find faults and problems with movies - it'd be torture for me. I take each film as a complete whole, without the desire to take them apart (apart from those rare cases when I feel like analyzing the film, but it's not the kind of taking apart I'm talking about, anyway). I love cinema from all movements, genres, countries, and eras. I want to plunge into the endless oceans of film, into the infinities of analog madness, digital piety, sonic booms of immensity, and silently whispered dialogues of the tractless expanse of the universe. I want to feel, to experience, to be. Cinema makes me alive, it makes me love, and this sort of love is so immense, that there's no more place for hate, for scorn, for irony. If I think I won't like a film, I probably don't want to see it. But I watch many films, and I love many - like a multi-colored rainbow, each hue different, but all of them vivid and enticing.

But in all that love, I lose any semblance of criticism. I take everything at face value, employing my suspension of disbelief and baring my soul over and over again for the next thing to come. While I can articulate a thought or two about each film I've seen, I find that I'm rarely critical enough of them, especially compared to other cinephiles who seem to pick movies apart on a more regular basis, hating and sneering at films with a much greater ire than I could ever muster up. How do I become more opinionated? The obvious answer would be to take up film school and think about the many elements of the film and how well they play together, but I find this approach too stringent and limiting. The best films out there make it the very point to bypass the platitudinous way films are thought about and made. "Serve the story" is serving nobody. It's killing film, it's killing cinephile's passion for film as a sensory experience, not bereft of the story, but rather with the story taking a back ride, and the visuals and atmosphere taking the lead.

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Look, I'm not judging you - after all, I'm posting here myself, but maybe, just maybe, if you spent less time here and more time watching films, maybe, and I stress, maybe your taste would be of some value. Just a thought, ya know.

Mr. Minio,
I think you've managed to sum up precisely how I happen to feel about the experience of watching movies. And for that, I heartily thank you! Because time and again, I've often felt this vague sense of unease over whether or not I'm too "uncritical" of what I watch. (After all, just take a peek at my profile and raise an eyebrow at what my all-time favorite is! ) Yes, there are certain movies I like perhaps less than others. But to me, the only criteria for what constitutes a good movie is whether or not it sticks with or resonates with you. Does it move you? Shock or startle you? Make you laugh? Take you on a journey? Appeal to your rebellious side? Yes, I know that those are perhaps less than completely objective criteria, because each of us as movie viewers resonates on slightly different frequencies from one another.

There are many movies that I've completely forgotten about or which completely slipped my mind, and that fact is perhaps the only sort of implicit criticism that one could infer. Because if it doesn't resonate on my frequency, it really doesn't do anything for me and I won't find it memorable. On the other hand, sometimes I think we need to watch movies several times in order to properly assimilate them. The first time around, you're trying to get a grip on what's going on and who the major players are, what their relationships are and what their objectives are. In other words, you're processing it on a more straightforward narrative or "story" level. And sometimes the first viewing will be unsatisfactory because you're also carrying the baggage of expectation with you, judging a movie based on what kind of film it's "supposed to be," or expectations based on what its ostensible genre is. But the second or third time around, you already know what the surface-level narrative stuff is, so you're freed up to discover what else is going on, the thematic or subtextual elements. And if you haven't gotten to appreciate the film at that point, then maybe it's just not your kind of film! That's no crime. Maybe somebody else would probably appreciate it more, or even get a greater rewatch value out of it.

Personally, I'm quite responsive to the otherworldly, visionary adventurism of John Boorman, the emotionally fraught angst of Ingmar Bergman, the traumas and mutations of David Cronenberg, the politicized shock factor of Liliana Cavani, the measured, drawn-out sense of epic confrontation in the work of Sergio Leone, the coolly empathetic distance and precision of Stanley Kubrick, the wildly flamboyant irreverence of Ken Russell, the counter-mythic town crier shout of Oliver Stone, the finely crafted suspense of Alfred Hitchcock, the chaos and defiance of Sam Peckinpah, the knowing sense of cool of Quentin Tarantino, etc., etc. Those are just some of my frequencies, often operating on extremely different levels from each other. Some of those may be yours... and some of them may not.

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"It's what people know about themselves inside that makes 'em afraid." - Clint Eastwood as The Stranger, High Plains Drifter (1973)

"pulsating oddities"???

He must have watched Videodrome recently.

Anyway - Minio and I disagree on many films, but his love for the art form is clear.

Cool post!

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In other words, you're a very positive person.

Anytime.

Most great cinephiles go by the vibe when assessing a film, so you're in good company.

Sure, but there are some films that feel so cold, and you know they're supposed to, that it works. They resonate with you by not resonating with you!

I forgot many films I watched 10+ years ago, including those I rated 5/5, so if you forget them right away, that's fair criticism, but there's a point in time after which you forget practically everything that happens in the film. Then again, sometimes you still remember about THE film.

Yeah, rewatches can be enlightening, but I rarely rewatch films since I have so many to still see.

Something like this:



Only saw it once & wasn't a fan.

I'm very amicable. It's YOU who's disagreeing! :P

That I cannot deny. Maybe that's the key. The many cinephiles I talked about in my first post are very bitter and depressed in real life, too, which arguably translates into their movie-watching!

There has long been the stereotype(not unjustified) of the art critic being difficult to please and more likely to dislike something than to like it. A person who puts rigorous intellectual discourse before both instinctual and genuine love for the medium they are critiquing. And I think a lot of critics very deliberately try to live up to this caricature as if this is some kind of avenue towards being taken seriously as a thinker. A person of exquisite taste. But, at what cost?


Frankly, I find those critics and wannabe critics who are consistently difficult to please to be missing the point nearly as much as the unlearned popcorn munchers. Basically, they are both loathsome in their own ways, but sometimes it is important to push back on the notion that art needs to first be decoded before it can be truly understood or appreciated. Personally, I think the vast majority of films, even those considered to be living up to the highest of High Art credentials, can be understood well enough on an instinctive level. And I definitely believe those that come across more movies they loathe than love, probably don't understand much about movies at all, no matter their academic bonafides.


The more one understands what art is, and all the many ways it can succeed, the more one should begin to love MORE art, not LESS. Just because one might learn to understand why someone like a Fassbinder matters so much, does not mean they should suddenly forget the simple joys of a Spielberg crowd pleaser. Or the idiot humor of a Adam Sandler film they loved when they were younger.


It's important to always grow as a lover of film, but to also embrace all of your past incarnations of who you've been as a watcher of movies over the years. All movies are important. To pretend otherwise is to lose not only something about the movie going experience, but also something about yourself as well.

What I've found throughout my film watching journey is that, though I'm not a fan of every style of film there is, I find it easier to find things to appreciate about them after enough exposures, even if this doesn't always translate to enjoyment. For instance, you watch Satantango, hate it, and suspect that slow cinema isn't for you (I like the film a lot, btw). The next time you watch slow cinema, though you likely won't be a fan by the time of your second exposure to the style, you'll at least know what to expect from it and won't be caught off guard. Then, after your apathy cools off some more, it might open the doors of you finding various things to appreciate about the style, regardless of how major they are. For instance, though I wouldn't say I'm a Pedro Costa fan yet, my recent experience with Horse Money went much smoother than my experience with Colossal Youth a couple or so years ago. This isn't to say everyone should be required to be a fan of every kind of film eventually, but by the time of the fifth exposure to a certain type of film, if you're still getting the same takeaways you had with your first exposure and aren't learning or feeling anything new, I consider that to be a failure more on your part rather than the film. Though you may never become a fan of a particular style you dislike, I can't see how your initial reservations towards those films wouldn't be complicated after you've seen a dozen or more of them.

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IMDb
Letterboxd

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110216..._nm_3_q_junior

Try this one.

Could be you have the brain of a kid. And, no I am not actually trying to insult you. Compare the Netflix originals on the Kids section and the normal accounts. All the adult films are always having swear words and boring bland music and are the most depressing things ever.


The kids section has shows that think on the positive side of life.

Wow, the harshest critique of the elitists I've seen in some time plus I agree that you should love more films, the more you see.

Lol, by saying positive I didn't mean it in such a blatantly straightforward way.

Sorry, not in the mood to spew out a 250 page essay about why Mr. Minio loves the art of film.

Two words for ya @Mr Minio Charlie's Angels.

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5-time MoFo Award winner.

Load the DVD into a wrist rocket and shoot something hard with it.

I don't think this is a problem, but insofar as it is, I have a similar problem.

I don't love everything I watch--far from it--but the more I watch and the more I think about what I watch, the harder it is to find something totally irredeemable. It's just too easy to envision a better version of the thing, to see what they were going for and imagine how it could have worked, to isolate good bits from it and try to extrapolate a better final product from them.

I've said this like a dozen times already, but @Slappydavis and I always talked/joked on the podcast about how we couldn't separate the times a film was being thoughtful from the times we were being thoughtful for it, finding unintended themes or depth or whatever. And then of course there's the obligatory concession that maybe there shouldn't be a difference between the two art is just about creating those situations whether specifically intended or not. For the record, I don't go that far, but there's a muddiness around the question, at least.

As others have hinted at already, I think this shows a genuine love for, and appreciation of, an art form. I think the only real place virulent criticism has, most of the time, is as a form of disappointment over missed opportunities. A think criticism is at its best when it's advocating on behalf of a work of art, by which I do not mean liking it no matter what or cheering it on just because, but instead going into trying to find out what it wanted to do and always imagining how it might have done it best. I think that slight shift in posture is important, even if the end result might end up being, in terms of pure substance, similar in result to the harsher critic who comes at the work from a more pessimistic place.

All that said I doubt we'd agree on the "story along for the ride" stuff. If someone likes cinema for its visual and audio qualities first and foremost, that's fine, but I don't think it's a purer or inherently better reason for it. I actually think of it as a false dichotomy, since those tools are explicitly and expertly used to enhance the impact of story beats all the time.

But I suspect this is just another one of those things where nobody really disagrees (you don't think story is unimportant and I don't think pure aesthetics are, either), we just have something we care more about around the margins, something that moves us more than all the other things in the medium. For me, the story is that thing, and I tend to appreciate all the other things that go into filmmaking most when they exist in service of that, rather than an end in and of themselves.

FOUR WORDS. Rumble. In. The. Bronx.

Dude, I'm at a point where I might dislike a film in its restored form but love it in its unrestored form. Or love a VHS or LaserDisc but hate a Blu-ray. Especially since they often tend to change the color grading for Blu-ray releases, with that mania of trying to make every old film look modern and sterile (therefore worse). The same film can be a completely different experience depending on the format you watch it in.

Those who consider the story as the paramount element of a film may not truly love cinema, but rather just love storytelling. This is akin to viewing the lyrics as the most crucial part of a song. Regardless of the quality of your lyrics, if your instrumentals and vocal performance are subpar, your song is whack. A movie encompasses much more than just the story, and anyone who fails to recognize this might not be suited to engage with any form of art. The idea that films are merely vehicles for storytelling can lead people to underestimate the full potential of cinema. If your sole pursuit is what is deemed a good story, you risk overlooking many films that excel in other aspects. This approach is rather restrictive. The story constitutes only a small fraction of filmmaking. Therefore, by concentrating solely on this aspect, you’re not critiquing the film as a whole, but merely its story, as if it’s the only component that matters. Aspects like editing, lighting, and shot composition deserve more critical attention. The story is the least significant aspect of filmmaking. You can make a great film out of a bad story if other aspects are great, but not vice versa. I’m increasingly convinced that focusing on stories is doing more bad than good in cinema.