Exceptions in your taste

What are some exceptions in your film taste? Meaning, you generally love a genre of film but dislike a particular subgenre, or you love a type of film, but abhor a particular subtype of it, or love a type of film but dislike it (or like it less) if a particular actor and/or director stars in it/made it etc.

Here are some of my exceptions:

• I love Hong Kong cinema but I dislike Jackie Chan.
• I love melodramas but I dislike Douglas Sirk.
• I love Hong Kong cinema but only up to 1997. After 1997, only select movies are good and all the rest is usually indigestible.
• I like American cinema, but I dislike many contemporary mainstream American directors.
• I love Lettrist Cinema but despise Situationist Cinema.

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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.

I love modern Scandi cinema but hated 'Another Round'.
I love French new wave but struggle a little with Goddard.
I love Lee Chang Dong but didn't like 'Burning' much.
I like Alex Garland output but struggled with 'Annihilation'.
I love sports, but I hate sports films.
I hate musicals but I loved 'Dancer in the Dark'.,

I think "I normally hate X but I liked Y" is one of the most interesting things to ponder. I think those kinds of wrinkles are huge opportunities for broadening our tastes, or at least understanding something about ourselves and why we do or don't like things. And I think that's important. Taste should be a jumping off point, the start of a discussion rather than its end.

My version of this usually involves Magnolia but I would struggle to encapsulate the type of film it is fairly for the first half of the formula. I suppose it'd have to be something like "really long, ponderous, melodramas" or something but even that sounds kind of pat.

The idea for the thread is more like "I normally love X but I hated Y" instead of "I normally hate X but I liked Y". But the latter is acceptable to post here, too, of course.

Magnolia is probably my favorite Anderson film. The guy is pretty hit-or-miss for me. I hated Magnolia on my first watch but loved it on my second watch. I'm scared to watch it again, fearing I'd hate it again. LOL.

My taste was wrecked by long Covid, so I now love everything on Netflix and abhor the Criterion Collection. Have Mercy!

Wow. Just when I thought I couldn't hate Covid even more.

Off the top of my head, I love Godard, but I only thought Alphaville was ok.

I like Italian Giallo and horror films, but I struggle with Fulci.

I like watching Spaghetti Westerns but find I don’t enjoy many of them.

Alphaville is my top 3 Godard. What are your top 3 of his?
I've seen The Beyond twice and still don't like it (the soundtrack is masterful, though), but there are multiple Fulcis I do like, including but not limited to Don't Torture a Duckling, Four of the Apocalypse, City of the Living Dead, and The New York Ripper.
I loved Spaghetti Westerns right away. It did take me some time to start enjoying American Westerns, though.

I’m still not going through his films, which is admittedly pretty massive, but I’ve barely touched even ten of his films yet. So at this time, I’m not prepared to name a top 3. I want rewatch Alphaville as well sometime as I may have just been not in the right mindset.

As for Fulci, of those listed by you, I haven’t seen Four of the Apocalypse yet, but the ones I have o thought were only ok or bad.

I dislike Covid but enjoy the number - 19

I adore Godard but I don't adore Breathless.


It might be my least favorite of his prime 60s period (I've never seen Carabinieres or Petit Soldat)

Here’s another from me:

I love the Coen Bros, but I don’t like Fargo, Raising Arizona or Barton Fink.

I hate sports but I love sports films

I hate sports and hate sports films... Unless it's about a Japanese high-school girl sports team. Then I hate to love it. If it's American schoolgirls, I love to hate it. Did I cover all options?

Same here.

I've explored this a little and have come to the conclusion that sports films are usually fables of sorts - they have a lesson to teach and a perfect structure in which to teach it (since the competition of sports is often a microcosmic allegory to various aspects of life).

Now compared to real professional sports these days, it's mostly about money & business & manipulating the masses - not that any of that can't also encompass allegories for life, but sports stories derived from those aspects come from a different direction (as opposed to the lesson of say, how good sportsmanship & fair play is more important than winning).

I prefer films grounded in reality, with ultra real performances and no bombastic showy stuff. So I liked Moneyball because there was hardly any sports action in it.

I'm quite happy to sit through an entire weekend of Formula one racing or a San Francisco Giants baseball game.

But I hated the film 'Rush' with a passion, even though it was a true story. The hammy acting and over the top fast paced scenes were too much for me. And I think I turned 'Trouble with the Curve off' it was so bad.

I liked most of 50s Kurosawa even though I normally can't stand japanese stuff. Especially Ikiru, I think that's as good as they're gonna get. The same goes for jewish directors and Evil Dead 2, Spidey 2 and Alexandr Nevskiy, as well as creatives from Zagreb and H-8 (1958).


Despite being a fan of Aleksei Balabanov, his film Cargo 200 left me rather cold.


I'm not a fan of 90s hollywood, especially late 90s, but Dark City and The Truman Show were pretty awesome.


Kaya, I Will Kill You and Come and See are rare examples of good ww2 films for me.

Um...

What? They're very distinct, no matter the country or time period.

100 Greatest Jewish directors

A lot of my favorites there...and I'm sure there's a whole bunch more that could be added to that list.