For post-2008 movies, click here. This is not perfectly separate from the below.
2013
Movie Critic
Obviously, I am not a (real) movie critic. (I like the late Roger Ebert's tastes the most.) These are opinions about the movies I like and the movies I do not like. I tend to watch movies on a large projection screen (Bluray or DVD) a few months after they come out—I hate movie theaters with neighbors munching or communicating on their cellphones during the movie.
Bluray: Unfortunately, the studios are doing everything in their power to kill Bluray: from long notices about all sorts of irrelevant stuff, to the inability to continue where one has just accidentally hit the stop button, to the inability to stream a disc directly to other home devices like the ipad, to the inanely long, useless, and complex HDMI handshake which sometimes fails when one starts the equipment in the wrong order. Some commercial bootleggers have hi-res setup that shoot frame by frame with high accuracy. With a one-time $50,000 expense, anyone can make a practically perfect copy 1ms after the video reaches the screen rather than 1ms before. And once the first digital copy is out, the genie is out of the bottle. A much better and more intelligent system would have been a simple handshake over the internet, at least when available, that informs customers whether their copy is legal or illegal and offers them a legal alternative. Such a system shouldn't even have to block such copies—in case the server is down, do not aggravate your customers! But you can assume that most customers would prefer to pay a modest amount and ask a pirate reseller for a refund; and, as importantly, the studios could pinpoint the origin of the false copies and trace them back. The studios are simply stupid. It is only their monopolies on their specific content that has saved them so far.
TV vs Movies: These days, I tend to watch longer TV series. They have to an extent assumed the mantle of most interesting story-telling vehicles from the movies. I like the fact that they engross the audience in longer and more complex stories. This is because they are less predictable than 99% of Hollywood movies. The Wire is indeed so good, it would make the A1 movie list below. Foyle's War, The Forsyte Saga, Downton Abbey (1st Season) Battlestar Galactica (3rd and 4th Seasons), Sons of Anarchy would make the A2 list. I am still working my way through Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, and Homeland. (For the same reason, Roger Ebert is correct that video games will probably never rival the movies as story-telling vehicles. Even the best games are only modestly more complex than a 5 minute trailer.) There were also some more episodic good shows, such as Homicide, but this page focuses on longer story arcs.
What qualities make a great movie? Not a secret: A great script. If the story is historically correct, it is much better—reality is often more interesting than fiction. To be an interesting story, you as the audience must not know in advance what will happen next (and you want to learn it), and characters must be self-aware. It must transport you and engross you. No, the secret is not the actors, director, producer, music or cinematography, although all of these can help greatly. And good scripts are the opposite of what sells in Hollywood movies: Save the Cat! scripts, which are so utterly ridiculously predictable.
Frankly, I am a little envious. I have been as successful in my career as I could have ever hoped for, but I would have loved to participate in telling engrossing stories to larger audiences.
Early on, this document is well organized. The further down you get, the worse it becomes. Apologies
Some Great Movies Post 2008 or so
click here. This is not perfectly separate from the below.
Some Great Movies Pre 2008 or so
Many classical movies were great in their time, so great that they have been imitated many times. Unfortunately, it is for this reason that many of these classics have been outdone by their imitations. Thus, they are no longer on my A1-list of films to watch. Many Black-and-White movies fall into this category, for example the terrific Citizen Kane or The Searchers or The Manchurian Candidate, but also films like All About Eve and many Hitchcock classics (e.g., Psycho). (Heck, even Shakespeare's comedic formula was obsoleted by its many sitcom descendants. He invented it.)
The followup movies were not as innovative or important, but my list is about movies that I would recommend to friends to watch today, and not to a film-critic or a film-historian. Of course, many of the originals are still very good films and worth watching, but just not A-1.
To change ordering, click on table header.
- A1-List:
-
When I started adding notes to the list below, every one of my notes contained "fantastic story"...obviously. so I deleted this particular comment again. Sci-fi flicks are listed separately, even if they are A-1 (like Bladerunner, 1984, 2001, Gattaca, etc.)
- A2-List:
-
The separation between A1 and A2 is arbitrary. The distance between many of the A-1's and A-2's can be tiny. The distribution of movie quality is probably Gaussian normal (bell-shaped). Thus, there are many more A2 movies than there are A1 movies.
- Close to or Almost A2-list:
-
Maybe Drive (2011).
- A-List, Science-Fiction:
- I love science fiction, so I
have grouped science fiction movies separately. Unfortunately, most Sci-fi
movies are dread awful. Here is my selection of better choices:
Reasonable: Monsters, Inc. I have not seen "2046" or "The Man from Earth" or "The Host" or "The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya" or "The Adjustment Bureau" or "Super 8" or "The Fountain" or "A Scanner Darkly" or "The book of Eli" , or any Transformers or "Looper" or "Timecrimes" or "John Carter" or "Cloud Atlas" or "The Arrival" or "Underworld" or "In Time" or "The Island" or "The Dark Knight" (on Netflix Instant:) "Troll hunter" or "Vanilla Sky" or "Thor" or "The X Files" yet. I did not like Donnie Darko. I thought Star Trek (2009) was just ok (but better than most ST films, which does not mean much), just like Avatar (2009) which is a copy of Dances with Wolves in space, Equilibrium (2002), "I Robot" (2004), Solaris, and "Pitch Black" (2000). Tron has not aged well. I did not like later Terminator films, "V for Vendetta" or Stargate or 2010. I am not sure what to think of Starship Troopers.
- A-List, Comedy:
- Interestingly, it appears that while most people can relatively easily agree on what is a good drama, tastes diverge greatly when it comes to comedy. I personally like the British sense of humor, but it is definitely not to everyone's tastes.
* if you are <15, you might like the Rocky Horrow Picture Show. If you can laugh, read the Rocky Horror Review, a Christian Analysis of the movie — though they have not yet figured out https (only http)..
- To see or resee:
- Maybe The Replacements.
- Some Star Ratings
Neglected
Everything below here has been neglected for many years.
Movies Still To See
My selection is influenced by Roger Ebert, because of all the movie critics, my tastes are closest to his. Amandla (SA Music) (2003)
maybe: Chloe (2010) All Good Things (2010), Somewhere (2010), Greenberg (2010), Secretariat, (2010) Everlasting Moments (2009), Sin Nombre (2009), Ballast (2008), The Dark Knight (2008), W (2008), I.O.U.S.A. (2008), Terri (2009), Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011), Arbitrage (2012), Rogue Trader (1999), Boiler Room (2000), Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005),
Unorganized
- Books:
-
- J.B. Bury, The Invasion of Europe by the Barbarians
- A great history book on the fall of the Roman Empire. Easy to read and informative.
- Matt Ridley
- Genome
- SciFi Books
- Greg Bear: The Forge of God, Anvil of Stars, Eon,
Eternity, and Blood Music, are among my favorite sci-fi readings. I do not
like his later work as much. Gibson's Neuromancer is also terrific (but not
the followups). Other great authors: Orson Scott Card, Vernor Vinge, and
Jack Vance.
Among Sci-Fi Shorts: A.E. van Vogt's The Battle of Forever (1971?), is an absolute sci-fi classic, and unfortunately largely forgotten (as seems to be van Vogt). George R.R. Martin's Sandkings (1981) is easily among the five best scifi shorts ever written.And here is a forgotten great one: Mike Resnick, Birthright: The Book of Man. Give yourself a treat.
- Wear Sunscreen
- Interesting lyrics, funny urban legend.