Another Ku-brick in the wall of film blogging.
From the high-brow history to the contemporary cavalcade in movies, and the eclectic episodes of the best TV around, Diegetic Digest is a site dedicated to any thought on film and television.
When deciding on a film to watch
you may be persuaded to opt for a shorter run time. The advantages are always
there: you can be entertained long enough whilst also having time for something
else. Running time seldom equates to quality though in many incidents, the
longer film is usually the better one. How about comparing 182 minute film The Deer Hunter to the 229 epic Once Upon a Time in America – the latter
does provide a 40 minute extension of value. So if you are planning on watching
a lengthy film, here are ten of the best to seek out:
Akira Kurosawa’s grand,
historical masterpiece is easily one of the top ten films of all time. It runs
at 207 minutes but never loses momentum. It is also one of the very first
action films, which became an inspiration for generations of filmmakers (Steven
Spielberg has it as one of his main sources of referral when making his
Beginning with a dialogue-free
show down at a run-down railway station, Sergio Leone starts his essential Western
with style and bravado. The 175 minute film is packed full of tension, gun
fights, and a mesmerizing score from Ennio Morricone. Many may argue Leone’s
Dollars trilogy with Clint Eastwood takes the trophy of the paramount western
though Once Upon a Time in the West is not only
the best of its genre but easily one of the greatest and coolest films ever.
This French romantic tragedy
revolves around the world of theatre actors. The main character Baptiste
(played magnificently by Jean-Louis Barrault) is desperately trying to win the
heart of an actress who is also loved by three other men. On the surface the
film may not sound enthralling but the 163 minute run time is expertly written
and crafted. It is a true cinematic pleasure with practically zero flaws.
The film that brought Al Pacino
and Robert De Niro face to face will always have its place in history. Not only
with a fantastic duo leading the film, Michael Mann’s writing and directing
propels Heat into an array of top
lists. As the tale of bank robbers and cops in chase draws to an end at 170
minutes you are disappointed to see the credits roll. It is surpasses any film
of the cops and robbers genre and helps mark the 1990s as the decade with the
most sublime crime films.
Breaking the rules slightly on
this list of top ten, Godfather 1 and 2 should not be separated; nor is it easy
to choose one over the other. With the first running at 175 minutes and its
sequel intensifying at 200 minutes, both may take up a lot of your time but you
can never argue that they don’t deserve it. With Part 1 deemed as the greatest
film by dozens of movie magazines and websites, and Part 2 named as the
ultimate sequel, these are two landmark films.
Another break in the rules of the
Top 10 (though, in this writer’s opinion, The
Fellowship of the Ring would be the deciding entry) yet deserving. Arguably
one of the jewels in the cinema-trilogies crown, and a time-consuming one at
that (1st film – 178 minutes; 2nd – 179; 3rd –
201), Peter Jackson’s adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien’s fantasy tale is a monumental
delight.
With a wealth of evidence
relating to the 1970 Zodiac crime case, David Fincher could have made an
inextricably long film. It’s a shame he didn’t (though there are a few more
scenes in the Director’s Cut) but with what he decided on story and
length-wise, he created a mysterious, beguiling and nail-biting crime classic. Actors,
aesthetic and authenticity all form the exacting director’s stunning 157 minute
vision of life during the Zodiac reign.
A thorn in a few movie fans’
sides due to it beating Scorsese’s Goodfellas
to the Best Picture Oscar, Kevin Costner’s tremendous Western Adventure still
deserves plenty of acclaim. 181 minutes
that never stops to thrill, engage or astonish its audience; it is a beautiful
vision of the American plains and life with the Native Americans.
Lawrence of Arabia has an immediate connotation of “epic” when
mentioned in discussion. David Lean holds an extremely wide-lens up to the
story of T. E. Lawrence and captures the sanguine spectacle of the Arabian
Desert as Lawrence marks his history on its sand. Another film that inspired
hundreds of filmmakers and one that never fails to amaze you. One of the most
intricate of cinematic biopics, Lean details Lawrence’s life in a hefty 216
minute run time.
Nolan’s contemporary classic
almost loses out on its place in the list, only just making in to the criteria
at 152 minutes long. A film that will forever be celebrated, not only for its Oscar
winning performance by Heath Ledger but for the majestic aesthetic that Nolan
impeccably constructs.
Plot: Ben
(Johnson), Chon (Kitsch) and O (Lively) all live free and easy thanks to a
thriving cannabis business. After reaping the benefits of fruitful dealings
they finally decide to head off to a foreign country to live life off the grid.
However, a drug lord named Elena (Hayek) thinks it’s better to keep Ben and
John around town and use their expertise and networks and holds O hostage to
make sure they keep their feet firmly planted in California. It’s now up to Ben
and John to do everything in their power to get O back and settle the score
with the ruthless drug baroness.
At one point in Savages a character discusses the
subject of motivation; he claims, “Like with everybody - there’s an incentive.”
Incentive is a word that best describes Oliver Stone’s directing career thus
far, as nearly all of his films offer a particular point of view or revolve
around a chosen agenda. Stone is always imploring the audiences to think about
matters he views as important and Savages
is no different. This time around the controversial filmmaker focuses on the
highs (no pun intended) and lows of the cannabis trade.
There have been a plentiful -
some may argue a superfluous – amount of films about drug trafficking in recent
years. Furthermore, with television continually chronicling the issue (though
few can complain about the standard of something like The Wire or Breaking Bad)
what more is there to say about it in popular entertainment? Stone financed
this film with the intention of providing more feedback and opinion on the
already vast subject. The director has been an advocate of the drug for decades
and his particular spin on weed does not always do him favours. Whilst he sets
up a story around a ménage-a-trois of drug-users and purports this image as a
divine existence, the dangers that those three face does obscure Stone’s vision
of pot-puffing your way to paradise.
By the end of the film the morals
and messages have be distorted in such a way you almost wonder if Stone’s
inability to stay focused is a result of some ill-effects from years of
drug-taking. Tackling the feeling of realism has never been one of Stone’s best
assets. Even when he attempts to match the sensation of being high with the
aesthetic of the film (perhaps more astutely practiced in Tony Scott’s Dominoor Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream) he seems incapable
of capturing a fitting tone. That has been the issue with many of Stone’s films
– the overly-kinetic and jarring editing/shooting technique – but thankfully Savages’ erratic style is less severe.
At the points where Stone eases back on flair it really becomes an interesting-looking
film.
Cinematographer Daniel Mindel
(who incidentally was director of photography on Domino) does provide some quite stunning shots. The visceral
atmosphere of Savages is not only
aided by Mindel’s work but also by the thunderous sound mixing. Every gunshot
and each entry wound are virtually felt due to the amped up volume. The
violence is shocking by its own merit (how it got a 15 certificate is a huge
wonder) but with a roaring sound design and frightfully realistic make-up and
special effects, it almost seems like a snuff movie.
In technical terms, the film is
rather impressive. It is because of some laughable dialogue (“wargasm”) and
banal character development that deems the film mediocre. One cannot blame the
cast for the problems (though Blake Lively always comes across as a bland
actor) as it’s the three-tier writing crew that deter any proper character growth.
Usually in films the appearance of Benicio Del Toro and occasionally John
Travolta would be enough to grab your attention. For Savages both actors are portraying incredibly dull and lifeless
characters and their scenes become the most aggravating. Salma Hayek, Aaron
Johnson and Taylor Kitsch make the film worth watching; even with Elena, Ben
and Chon having few interesting characteristics, the actors are talented enough
to make you forget that.
There are too many incidences in
the film where you begin to immerse yourself in the story only to have some
tawdry element interrupt it. Stone’s filmography reads like a broken polygraph
– indications of peaks in filmmaking and dips of disasters strewn all over the
place. Savages lies squarely in the
middle; it has more to it than an average popcorn movie (though I found it was
in terms of pretentious film theory, and the first ¾ has a lot to offer in that
respect) but to compete in the box office these days you require a
near-flawless edge which sadly it’s missing.
When I told my mother
the other day that I was writing an article about A Serious Man,
she thought back to the film and told me that she had enjoyed it, but
something had rankled with her, before concluding there was something
unsatisfying about it. For some who have seen the film, this will be
an understatement. At it release in 2009, it baffled many. It
alienated others. For some, it was simply un-engaging. The Coens pile
tragedy upon tragedy onto their protagonist, Larry Gopnik, and then
it just ends. For me, it was one of the Coen brothers' finest films,
working both as a hilarious black comedy but also a daring formal
experiment. When a film leaves virtually everything in its narrative
ambiguous, what does that do to film analysis?
The following essay
will be exploring the film in-depth, meaning it will not only be
spoiler-heavy, but also probably quite incomprehensible to anyone who
is not familiar with the film. As with all of the Coen brothers'
films, there's a lot to be gleaned from repeat viewings, and it's
from these details I'll be trying to construct a more pleasing whole
of a perplexing and disjointed narrative (at least initially).
Part I - A Theory
Let's start with one
of the crazier ways to slice the film, and say that Larry is dead,
and the events of the film are his judgement. At the risk of sounding
like a Lost-fanboy conspiracy-theorist (which I was,
incidentally, but I'm totally over it now), perhaps a less
inflammatory way to put this would be that Larry's primary struggle
throughout the film is to reconcile a parade of apparently senseless
punishment in the context of a fair and righteous God, and what this
means in the context of his mortality. It's certainly fair to say
that a strong part of the film is a meditation on God's punishment,
the afterlife and the notion of cosmic justice. The key piece of
evidence for this assertion would be that Larry is staying at The
Jolly Roger, a motel which bears the skull and crossbones on its
sign. Exiled for the sake of the children, this is the first of
several times that Judith's (his wife) new lover Sy Ableman marks
Larry for death.
Another key clue can
be found in the film's prologue, set in an Eastern European shtetl,
in which Traitle Groshkover, a house-guest, is suspected of being a
“dybbuk” (a malevolent possessing spirit) by the wife of the
house. She is convinced of her suspicion when he turns down dinner,
due to her belief that “a dybbuk doesn't eat”. Larry, too, is
seen abstaining from food, even when the rest of the family eats in
an early dinner scene and when meeting Sy Ableman and Judith at a
diner. These two pieces of evidence are put together when Danny asks
“Isn't Dad eating?”, and Judith replies with “He's at the Jolly
Roger.” Whether this is to be taken literally or metaphorically,
these details appear to suggest that Larry is somehow marked for
death, judgement or destruction.
It's particularly
fitting that, when asleep at the aforementioned motel, Larry's dreams
almost always centre around death. In two separate dream sequences,
Sy Ableman speaks to Larry from beyond the grave, the second time
nailing the lid on his coffin. Another dream sequence sees Larry
sending his brother Arthur off to Canada. The location in this dream
alludes to Sy's eulogy, when Nachtner refers to Olam Haba - the
Jewish afterlife - as being “not a geographic place certainly, like
Canada”. Of course, before Arthur can reach the promised land, he's
shot by Larry's blue-collar, emphatically Gentile, hunter neighbours,
shortly before they turn on him too.
Indeed, this sequence appears to crystallise something of persecution
complex Larry seems to harbour. He notes that these same neighbours
appear to be intruding on his lawn inch by inch to build a boathouse.
His daughter wants to get a nose-job in apparent shame of her Jewish
heritage. For a man who clings desperately to his past (“What was
my life before all this? Not what I thought it was”), this is a
source of great torment.
"There's another Jew, son!"
The feeling that the
Jewish people are being marginalised is not just some paranoid
fixation of Larry's, but built into the infrastructure of America
itself. As illustrated by the film's prologue in Eastern Europe, the
Jews are fundamentally exterior to the United States, and as such,
not written into their law. The “get” is dismissed as “not a
legal issue”, and everyone in a position of social authority seems
weirdly dismissive of Jewish culture. When two policeman interrupt Sy
Ableman's shiva (an extended period of mourning) to warn Uncle Arthur
about his gambling, they seem unwilling to pass through the
separating screen door, merely saying “go back to your... thing”.
As a people perpetually in exile, the Jews are displaced and
outsiders even in their own country.
Of course, the
greatest persecutor of the Jews was not the Gentile world, but God
himself. Rabbi Nachtner illustrates the difference between Judaism
and Christianity when he says that “we
are not promised a personal reward, a gold star, a first-class VIP
lounge where we get milk and cookies to eternity”, emphasising that
the afterlife is not a factor in the Jewish punishment/reward system.
Due to the absence of Hell in the Jewish faith, it's not in the
afterlife that damnation is doled out, but rather punishment or
reward is delivered in life. The Old Testament God is a vengeful God,
not beyond the use of floods, famine, pestilence, and storms to
punish sinners. What's so puzzling then, is that
there's nothing obvious that Larry should be punished for. The events
of Larry's life are not hellish, but rather purgatorial; he's being
tested.
Forever navigating
his way between two choices, Larry is a man defined by his inaction
and his absence, as evidenced by the scene in which Larry is told
he's gotten into debt with the Columbia Record Club for “doing
nothing” and the frequent “While You Were Out” slips,
respectively. He does everything he can not to decide anything or
take any course of action. Schrödinger’s cat, which Larry teaches
his class early in the film, serves as the central metaphor for this
dynamic throughout the film. For those unfamiliar with the famous
thought-experiment, the theory goes that there's a cat placed in a
box with a flask of poisonous gas which has a fifty-percent chance of
being released due to a random event (for example, the decay of some
radioactive material). According to the Copenhagen
interpretation of quantum mechanics, the cat would exist in a
state of simultaneously being alive and dead until observed as being
one or the other by a third party.
This not only mirrors the
prologue's central question (is Traitle Groshkover dead or alive?),
but also the question of whether Larry's Korean student, Clive, left
him money to bribe him to change his grade (as Clive's father
hilariously tells Larry to accept the bribe, or risk a defamation
lawsuit). In just about every
aspect of his life, Larry does just about everything he can not to
“observe the cat” for as long as he can. It's only when he makes
the sinful choice to take Clive's bribe that his judgement comes
swiftly and mercilessly in the form of his doctor delivering some
ominous test results. It seems he's been a dead man/cat walking the
whole time, and just didn't know it. And it's not just Larry who's
damned. In an emphatically Old Testament turn, judgement comes to
destroy Danny's school in the form of a tornado (the same disaster
that followed Job, whose story A
Serious Man
follows loosely). One student points to the American flag, noting
that it's about to be “ripped right off the flagpole”, as
if the whole community is about to be exiled from America once and
for all.
At
this point, I'd like to step back from my own theory because I'm not
even convincing myself of its validity. This way of looking at the
film, even if you feel it does hold water (and I doubt I've convinced
everyone), does not really reconcile all the various elements of
film, many of which are contradictory. For example, it could equally
be theorised that Sy Ableman is a dybbuk. We are told in the opening
story that Traitle Groshkover became a “dybbuk” because his
family did not observe shiva, and left the body. Danny, at Sy
Ableman's wake does the same thing to watch television, leading one
to surmise that perhaps Sy too has become a dybbuk. Could this
explain the persistence of the defamatory letters to the university
even after his death?
Even more
strangely, the film could be argued to take place entirely within the
mind of Larry's son. The first shot of the film's main narrative
begins inside Danny's head, tracking toward the circle of light,
slowly becoming visible as the earphone nestled in his ear. This is
followed by a scene in which Larry's own ear, or perhaps the contents
of his head, are being examined. Isn't it strange that it would
Danny's subjectivity that is evoked rather than Larry's, given his
less prominent position in the narrative? We are also presented with
the image of brain in a vat on one Danny's sci-fi shows, another
indication that the film's reality may be a manufactured one.
Moreover, this theory I've been outlining primarily addresses only
half of the distinct binary between science (chaos) and religion
(order) the film follows; a dichotomy which skews the viewer's
perception of the film according to emphasis they accord to each
element. It also doesn't take into account Mrs Samsky, Danny's
marijuana sub-plot, Uncle Arthur, Marshak and many other elements
besides.
The
film itself deals with the concept of theorisation. In a dream
sequence, when Larry writes up Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle on
the blackboard, Sy Ableman approaches it with scepticism: “I'll
admit, it's subtle, it's clever. But is it really convincing?” Any
attempt to figure it out starts looking like the Mentaculus, the
reconciliation of its disparate elements a virtually impossible task.
So
without much hope of constructing a coherent view of the film's
events, what can one do with A
Serious Man?
As it turns out, the intra-textual questions are really just the
beginning. Look at the larger framing outside of the narrative, and
the film becomes a more interesting and complex beast. It seems far
more likely that rather than trying to code in one specific “real
story” into A
Serious Man which
can be neatly tied up,
the Coens use the film as an interrogation of the function of
narrative, and an attack on the gospel of authorial intent. It is, in
this way, a rather subversive take on how a film usually functions.
Part
II - Are the Coens Basically Fucking With Us?
Yes and no. For
starters, the Coens have been on record as saying that they don't
necessarily have a definitive idea of what their films
are supposed to mean. They often claim to not make creative decisions
with concrete reasons necessarily, but often go with what “feels
right”. For example, in The
Making of Joel & Ethan Coen's The Big Lebowski,
William Preston Robertson posits that the
Western-themed opening to The Big Lebowski,
“is
really about the chauvinism of Westward Expansion, and, indeed, the
absurdity of the pioneering American masculine mystique itself”,
only for Ethan to reply:
"The
Western theme's just another thing that has nothing to do with
anything but just seemed right next to the other things... We can
supply stuff in retrospect... I mean, in terms of what was right to
us about the Western theme, but that might not be what in fact seemed
right at the time. I'm saying my speculation about why we liked it
wouldn't be any more interesting or valid than anybody else's
speculation... I mean, even the things that don't go together should
seem to clash in an interesting way".
Granted,
not everything that comes out of the Coens' mouths (or the mouth of
any other director for that matter) can be taken at face value, but
its certainly a believable working method in the context of this
film. A Serious Man is nothing if not provocative in the range
of ideas it presents to us, encompassing everything from religious
parable to scientific theory, from nested narratives to dreams,
supernatural mythology to sci-fi hypothesis and a myriad of cryptic
exchanges and guttural noises, inviting comparison and juxtaposition,
never to be fully worked through into a unified whole.
That's
not to say that this is all empty provocation on the part of the
Coens. It's rather fitting, given that the film is arguably, at base,
about the fact that “we can't ever really know what's going on”.
A Serious Man depicts the horror of a world become unreadable,
no longer obeying the laws of semiotics we rely on to live a
functional or meaningful existence. In what may be termed a
“breakdown of signifiers”, the film is riddled with
incomprehensible chalkboards of equations, indecipherable Hebrew
scripture, and of course Arthur's Mentaculus, a “probability map of
the universe” expressed in a flurry of unintelligible symbols; each
one of them as dense and resistant to interpretation as the film
itself. Conversation too becomes a stumbling block to communication.
Clive's accent renders the phrase “mere surmise, sir” into a
garbled series of syllables, secretaries let out random phlegmatic
barks, and Jewish vocabulary is perpetually misunderstood.
If
this weren't alienating enough, the Coens pretty much disregard the
notion of cause and effect as the dominant narrative strategy over
the course of the film. Early on, Larry asserts that “Actions
always have consequences”, but this is proven not to be the case.
Larry and Sy's simultaneous car crashes are considered to be related
by Larry (“Is Hashem trying to tell me that I am Sy Ableman?”),
but there is no direct causal link between them. Similarly, inaction
is shown to yield unexpected reactions too. As previously discussed,
Larry protests that he “hasn't done anything” (as he does at
various points) to the Columbia Record Club, only to be told
“[t]hat's why you've received the monthly main selection”. Much
of the film in fact hinges on a lack of action, from Judith's claim
not to have “done anything” in relation to her fidelity, to
Arthur's claimed innocence of the sodomy and solicitation charge, and
Larry's failure to publish and thereby secure his position of tenure.
Inaction has consequences too, it seems. The film is by and large
episodic, and trying to connect coherent strings of cause and effect
between the events of the film is a difficult task.
Part
III – The Role of Narrative
The
reason that A Serious Man works is that it addresses
the question of the function and role of narrative itself, before
completely disregarding it. In the film, the use of narrative in
Jewish culture is described by a friend of Larry's:
“It's
not always easy deciphering what God is trying to tell you. But it's
not something you have to figure out for yourself. We're Jews. We've
got that well of tradition to draw on to help us understand. When
we're puzzled, we have all the stories that have been handed down
from people who had the same problems.”
However, within the
film's narrative are various nested narratives, told with the
intention to illustrate but which serve only to confuse things
further. The film's prologue, a sort of Yiddish folk tale, is
ambiguously linked to the main plot (the “cursed Jews” could be
ancestors of the Gopniks, some have theorised), and the “Goy's
Teeth” sequence fails to give any guidance or meaning beyond
“helping people, couldn't hurt”. “Why even tell me the story?”
Larry complains when no answers are forthcoming to the various
questions the tale has raised. Are narratives only worth telling when
they provide closure or objective truth? A Serious Man would
prove an equally frustrating viewing experience for Larry. The
failure of narrative throughout the film to elucidate, to impart
wisdom, to illustrate truth, to create a coherent world out of one
which is often too complex, unjust or unfair to comprehend; this
flies in the face of everything we rely on narrative to do to salve
the problem of an existence without any organising shape, theme,
message or objective truth. We crave a God because it gives our lives
a narrative. There's someone writing our destinies. There's a
coherent value system, a cosmic cause and effect. There's some hope
of a happy ending. There's meaning, not just some stuff that happens.
Perhaps we rely on Gods in the same way we rely on artists – for
narrative.
Therefore, it may not
be too far to say that the Coens are a tangible presence in A
Serious Man. If you replace every instance of “Hashem” with
“the Coen brothers”, we might be getting somewhere. Larry's
struggle would be largely the same if it was about his sudden
awareness that he was a character in a film; that sudden
self-awareness and wanting to know desperately that somebody
responsible is in charge is not unlike Will Ferrell's character in
Stranger Than Fiction. The
authors are the creators. They control fate. They punish or reward
their characters. While this is true of all texts, what makes A
Serious Man
different is that the Coens both constantly draw attention to their
own reigning influence over the narrative while at the same time
completely renounce the power of their authorship. They create no
objective truth, shape no meaning, and refuse to lead the way. They
create ambiguity and mystery with no interest in resolving it. They
are not creators of meaning, but tricksters who suggest that there
may be no meaning to be found at all. Roland Barthes'
essay “The Death of the Author” (published in 1967, the year in
which the film is set, interestingly) is perhaps a good way to
understand this. In this essay, Barthes argues that the intentions or
biography of a text's author should not be taken into account when
analysing a text. He states that:
“by
refusing to assign a “secret”, an ultimate meaning, to the text
(and to the world as text), liberates what may be called
anti-theological activity, an activity that is truly revolutionary
since to refuse to fix meaning is, in the end, to refuse God”.
The Coens utterly refuse to assign a secret meaning to the film,
preferring instead to leave chaos in their wake. The
Coens challenge us, the audience, to construct a narrative around the
unresolvable contradictions of the film. This is the process of
artistic creation; to take raw reality and whittle it into something
meaningful. This impulse is inherently anti-theological.
A Serious Man
is a daring film because the Coens throw down the responsibility of
the director to set down a meaning - any meaning - for the events of
their film. To step down from that position of authority can only be
seen a populist gesture. For this reason, the film is truly a
collaboration between audience and artist, as we all take a role in
the process of creation. As with Schrödinger’s Cat, the
narrative's ambiguities will co-exist, super-imposed, endlessly
unresolved until observed. It's up to the audience to complete the
reality of the film with their own analysis, or else “accept the
mystery”. Perhaps this explains why the Coens would choose to start
a film such as this inside a boy's head being pumped full of pop
music, and to end it with a cyclone, the earphone still dangling from
his ear. Life, media or chaos can only find significance through the
filtration of a consciousness. Human consciousness, the audience,
completes the illusion that there's any meaning to be found at all.
Unsatisfying? Perhaps. But in that impulse, the Coens may have
captured something quite true of human existence.
Whether you have alacrity when it
comes to deciding on a movie or just the basic need to be entertained and pick
one on a whim, there are countless titles to choose from. The process of what
type of genre you’re in the mood for, the length, the appeal of the film, and
maybe even the stars attached to it can all become criteria of deliberation. With
certain movie websites that choice is increasingly made easier and the “if you
liked this, try this” recommendations, cleverly compiled lists, and hundreds to
thousands of reviews, all aid with the erosion of lengthy consideration.
"Hmm, this blank DVD case sure is interesting"
The option of reading a review
for a film, and allowing that as an indication as to whether it is worth your
time or not, can be both helpful and damaging. Reviewers have their own unique
voice and certain tastes when it comes to films. So, if you were a fan of the
popcorn flicks of Michael Bay and you read a review from a Michael Haneke enthusiast
you will indubitably be told to avoid the boisterous action director. Depending
on how open you are to becoming informed of style and substance when it comes
to films there are obviously varying parties with likes and dislikes. For
example, Heat
magazine, The
Sun newspaper and Cosmo
are regularly fond of those quaint, formulaic rom-coms as well as other usually-trite
movies. You can then read the thoughts from reviewers from publications such as
Little White Lies, Sight & Sound, Empire, and Total Film, all of which give economic
opinions on every release. The latter group are arguably the better choice to
go with if you want advice on what to watch – purely because they want to
direct you toward the best quality movie choice and not just the huge-budget,
“popular” attractions (at least in most cases).
Reviews can sometimes sully a
movie experience with given away too much plot or perhaps over-thinking certain
details of the film. Personally, I am always interested in hearing someone’s
musings on a movie but I wait until I’ve seen the film and seek out the reviews
afterward. If you were to choose this approach you can still become educated on
the films to watch as reviewers habitually reference other movies, giving
informed, insightful suggestions. Even with recent criticism
over rating systems, it is a good way to assess a recommendation by the star or
numerical rating. At a mere glance you can garner decent feedback on a film
without having to read over (possibly “spoilerific”) reviews. The Imposter’s poster, painted with “5
star” accreditation, was enough to sell the movie to me and a few others I
know. Once I watched the film I searched for those reviews and indulged in an
array of opinions, all of which were interesting as post-screening reading. Overall,
I would recommend the review system for deciding on a film but only using the
“thumbs up/down”, “X% rating” or “X stars” to begin with, and then the perusal
of the entire analysis.
When it comes to buying or
renting films most internet retail and rental websites include a “Why not try
this?” (or something in a similar vein) based on your
viewing/purchasing/renting choices. Using codes and algorithms the website
crafts a profile on you from your previous browsing habits. Debate over the
ethics of this advertisement ploy all you will; it can at times being a hugely
helpful system.
Perhaps the habit I endorse the
most is the list arrangement. If you type in to an internet search engine “best
films” you will be greeted with over 1 million results. Over the years I have
been using “ICheckMovies” – a
website built on the idea of tallying your movie viewing and awarding your
viewing habits. Not only is the website very fun in its incentive but it
includes both fan made lists and ones created by critics, theorists, directors
and institutes. I now base what film to settle on largely on the films entered
in these eclectic collections. The most popular (not only on ICheckMovies but
the internet in general) is the IMDB
Top 250. Although the list is shaped on more popular movie choices, there
still remains a wealth of classics and intellectual inclusions. Using the IMDB
Top 250 as a prime indicator into film choices is certainly beneficial; film
discussions will expectedly include the mention of at least one or two included
in IMDB’s chart.
Whether it is the epoch of
cinematic releases or the genre of the film that sways your vote, ICheckMovies
caters to all areas. For the latter, ICheck breaks down each genre and lists
the best of those particular styles. The site advances every day with more
users and regular updates so your knowledge of new films and where they stand
in terms of ranking is always refreshed. It is by far the best way to find a
film to delve into – not only showing you the most appreciated and acclaimed
films but also by correlating centuries of shorts and features and their
extensively evolving genres. By Piers McCarthy. Also posted on Live For Films.
The film that brought Al Pacino
and Robert De Niro face to face will always have its place in history. Not only
with a fantastic duo leading the film, Michael Mann’s writing and directing
propels Heat into an array of top
lists. As the tale of bank robbers and cops in chase draws to an end at 170
minutes you are disappointed to see the credits roll. It is surpasses any film
of the cops and robbers genre and helps mark the 1990s as the decade with the
most sublime crime films. 
