Just read through the list that Lissener posted earlier, and while many of the choices, I found the list, as a whole, to be yet another in a long line of examples of a hipper-than-thou critic spewing contrarian twaddle.
But YMMV.
I like many old movies, though not some of the “classics.” Gone with the Wind and Sunset Boulevard have little interest for me. I’d love to look at some of the old George Raft “film noirs”. I like movies with snappy dialog, e.g. many Humphrey Bogart movies (or modern movies like Crash or Snatch).
But my favorite movie by far is Casablanca. This is partly due to my being a “sentimental fool.” The love stories, the fight against Naziism, the intrigue.
Plotholes? Perhaps a thread comparing the different types of disbelief different movies require us to suspend might be interesting, but most plots have fallacies of one kind or another. Those in Casablanca don’t get in the way. “Some snapping dialog” is a gross understatement; you can take any 2-minute segment of Casablanca and find more “snap” than in many entire modern movies, unless childish American-style “snap” is your thing. And I’m not expert on “wooden acting”, but I’d take Humphrey over many of today’s box-office actors.
I’m definitely with you two, choie and MTCicero. One really has to wonder about the difference in mindset.
Boring? 
One reason I love Casablanca is because it’s so fast-moving and exciting! Pay attention! It’s all in the plot and the dialog. Some movies you can nap while waiting for the next action scene, Casablanca isn’t one of them. (I’m afraid that may sound condescending, but “boring” is an adjective hard for me to grok in connection with Casablanca.)
Awesome. I, for one, was holding my breath, craving your imprimatur.
Fascinating and well reasoned as your opinion is, it’s pretty irrelevant to the actual content of the list. The movies on the list still carry their own value, regardless of any one individual’s armchair psychoanalysis of the motivations of its author.
That’s in addition to the obvious fact that if you were more familiar with some of the more obscure–sorry, hipper–titles, your opinion might well be different. Might even be a degree of grateful to the author for bringing some lesser-known masterpieces to your attention.
(What’s really funny is that it obviously makes *you *feel hipper to try to prevent people from giving the list a chance. Gotta wonder what that’s about.)
shrug It didn’t hold my interest. I found my mind wandering a lot and found it difficult to force myself to follow the film. This happens to me a lot with old movies. I think it’s the style.
True, it could have used more explosions. Maybe Michael Bay should have directed?
I’m not big into explosions movies. I just find the acting style to be hard to get into. I feel like I’m totally outside the movie watching something really fake. I prefer movies that let me pretend they’re real for a little while.
Well if it makes you feel any better, older movies aren’t my favorite either, haha. I can see your point about the culture of that time period being so different that it can be hard to put yourself in the characters’ shoes. I just couldn’t agree with them being categorically dismissed, that’s all.
Sorry. My tone wasn’t exactly calculated to keep the discussion moving forward.
But man, it cheeses me when someone can’t just say “not my cup of tea,” but instead has to justify their opinion by presuming to know what the author was REALLY thinking when he wrote the list. It’s nearly a universal truth that accusations of snobbery–or hipper-than-though-ness, or whatever other kind of dishonesty you’re accusing people of–is almost always more revealing about the accuser’s insecurity than the opinions they’re denigrating.
It’s entirely possible, MTC, that Rosenbaum sincerely, not posingly, believed that these films were more deserving of recognition than the list he criticizes. His attempt to bring to light a number of masterpieces that otherwise many of us might not have heard of is far closer to being an act of generosity–I’m certainly grateful for the films I’ve watched from that list–than an act of self-aggrandizement.
And it’s certainly true that the starting point for the article that accompanies the list–a detailed, reasoned critique of the AFI list–makes a lot of excellent points. My first impression of that list, which I saw well before I read the article, was that it seemed largely like a grand act of self-congratulation, validating ourselves for being smart enough that the best movies are also the most popular. And really, what’s the use of a list that is mostly things everyone has already seen? It’s telling that at the time the AFI list came out, all of the titles were available for rent at Blockbuster, one of the sponsors.
For me, the key sentence of the whole article is this one: “What does matter is the rise of corporate cultural initiatives bent on selling and reselling what we already know and have, making every alternative appear more scarce and esoteric, and not even attempting to expand or illuminate the choices made in the process.” If you read into that evidence of the dishonesty of the author–that he doesn’t really hold those opinions, secretly he’s a *Dances with Wolves *fanatic, he just made the list up to appear smarter, or hipper–well, in my opinion you’re wrong, and your Rorschach needs examination. Because to me, it reads like the obvious truth.
Again, a current “fad” in moviemaking. “Realism” and “movies” have been two entirely separate ideas for most of the history of film. People didn’t want to go to the movies for real life; how ridiculous is that? Real life is what happens *outside *the theater. Why would anyone want to pay for that? Attempts at realism in movies was an entirely new thing when the Italians invented it after WWII. And it took more than 20 years for that realism to find its way to America, through France, when it became the fashion in filmmaking in the 70s. We’re currently stuck pretty firmly in that rut, although how someone can enjoy a movie like ***Avatar but turn up their nose at say Duel in the Sun ***because the style is not realistic enough, I’ll never fathom.
I like I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang.
That is all.
Ha-ha! I get it! I disagree with you, so I must be wrong!
But seriously - Rio Bravo, but no Godfather? Hell, no Godfather, Part II? And did he really say he prefers Kundun to fucking Taxi Driver?
No, the guy’s not some hipster douchebag. Not at all. :rolleyes:
Well, we’ll just have to agree to disagree.
Seems to me he’s trying to rewrite the film canon, and in the process remind the plebs just how erudite he is concerning film, and how wonderfully esoteric his tastes are.
And, seriously, the guy listed The Nutty Professor as one of his hundred favorites. Have you actually seen that movie? While it’s not awful, it certainly shouldn’t be included in a list of the 100 Best Films of All Time, especially not when you’ve left out such true masterpieces as The Conversation (which he admitted that he loves, but left off his list anyway; why? Because it’s not obscure enough. And you’re still insisting that this guy’s not a contrarian hack? Dude, you need to lay off the Armond White.) and Dog Day Afternoon.
But again, this is just my opinion.
Actually, lissener, I also think Rosenbaum was trying too hard to be hip. He seemed more concerned that people would be impressed by his opinions over the movies than he was with what people would think about the movies themselves. He doesn’t want people to be impressed with those hundred movies; he wants people to be impressed with him for having selected those hundred movies.
Riddle me this: why aren’t television stations showing so many of these “great” classics others have mentioned in this thread? The local PBS station shows classic movies, but whenever I flip by it it’s either something British, a musical, or a scene of a grand dame of Manhattan society descending a staircase or something similar. On other channels, it’s the same war, western and Three Stooges movies.
I don’t have a problem with the list but the massive screed preceding it is just too long. Yes, he’s afraid people will regard the AFI selections as the only worthwhile American films (even though not all of them are American–a good point). Yes, our government should contribute more to the arts. Blah, blah, blah. One might miss the fact that he admires some of the AFI selections; he just chose to create an alternate list with some of his favorites. (And he tells us how his background has influenced his tastes.) I do wish he had told us why he selected each film.
Personally, I think any list of faves makes a better springboard for discussion than Fundamentalistical Gospel Truth. I’ve seen most of the AFI list; not a true film buff, I’ve been alive longer than many here. These are (mostly) significant & (mostly) enjoyable films. So far, I’ve avoided Forrest Gump & Raging Bull, among others.
There’s fine stuff on the Alternate List: The Barefoot Contessa, The Scarlet Empress & Love Me Tonight are some of my personal favorites. But–he chose An Affair to Remember, perhaps because it’s the less saccharine inspiration for Sleepless in Seattle. Didn’t he know that Love Affair was the less saccharine inspiration for Affair to Remember?
And the Alternate List included Intolerance, which I saw in a class where we also read the novel. Definitely of historical importance, I would exclude it from any list of movies that I enjoyed. And the OP was asking whether she was alone in not enjoying old films.
Maybe we need more lists!
Good point. And I see that I failed to finish a thought in the post of mine that you quoted. It should read “while many of the selections are good to very good (even a couple examples of filmic excellence,…”
Anyway, we are in agreement: More lists!
I don’t understand the point of your question. TMC, A & E, Fox Movie Channel all show older movies. If you mean that none of the movies mentioned here can’t possibly be classics because you don’t see them on television, that’s silly. It’s like saying the Godfather can’t possibly be any good because NBC doesn’t show it 24/7.
Besides that though, what’s wrong with PBS airing a “British movie” or a “musical” or a movie with a “scene of a grande dame of Manhattan society descending a staircase”? Have you watched any of these movies? How do you know they aren’t terrific without actually watching them? Or even if you don’t like them, is it that surprising that there are people in this world who might enjoy something that doesn’t interest you?
My belief is simple: Watch whatever you enjoy. If you like old movies better, watch old movies. If you like new movies better, watch new movies. Don’t feel you have to convince other people that you choice is the right one.
It’s like arguing about your favorite color. Just because I like green, doesn’t mean you’re wrong to like red and I need to convince you green is actually the better color.
Yeah, because my exchange with every other of the many persons I’ve disagreed with has taken the same tone.
You didn’t disagree with me. In order to undercut an offering I made to try to help people cut through the garbage and find some great movies, rather than take responsibility for your own opinions and explain why you personally disagreed with the list, you justified it by character assassination. By mindreading, and telling us the secret motivations of the list’s author. As the rest of this thread will show you, I have zero problem with civil disagreements.
And then, you accuse me of a personal attack based solely on my disagreeing with you, right after you disparage Rosenbaum’s motivations solely because you disagree with him.
As far as calling him a contrarian based on this article, did you read the article? It is acknowledged to be contrarian in nature. It’s offered as an alternative to the AFI 100–it’s specifically a list of films that did NOT appear on that list. And as far as his excluding the Godfather films, did you read the article? He said that since he agreed with the inclusion of a number of films on the AFI list, rather than “approve” those, he’d simply create his own list. How much more pompous would it have been of him to OK some of the films, then add his own? To “correct” the AFI list, rather than simply offer an alternative? It seems to me his motivations were the opposite that you ascribe.
But still, for you to dismiss him as dishonest and contrarian simply because you hold different opinions on some of the films is far worse on your part than anything you’ve accused him of. You don’t like The Nutty Professor? For what it’s worth, it took me a couple screenings to get an inkling of what he valued in it. But even then, my opinion of that movie is probably closer to yours than to his. Do I disagree with him on some of the titles on his list? Of course I do. How unlikely that ANY movie buff would agree 100/100 with anyone else’s list?
Your need to turn this negative, seemingly for roughly the same reasons you accuse him of, rather than simply saying “Well I don’t like a lot of these, and I wish he’d included these others,” and made it about your own opinion rather than your diagnoses of his motivations, is childish.
It’s too bad you don’t have the confidence in your own opinions to defend them on their own merit, but must instead attempt to undercut the character of those whose opinions you disagree with, because you’re obviously intelligent and experienced enough to have interesting opinions.
Bottom line, dude, that was just rude. I offered a positive attempt to give people a starting point in exploring older movies. And instead of saying “I disagree with this or that choice, but . . .” you had to undermine my “offering” with ad hominem reasons to dismiss the entire list as without value. That seemed extremely rude to me, hence my personal reaction.
Now I vote we put this hijack to sleep.
“Seemed more concerned”? “Wants people to be impressed with him”? What kind of mindreading bullshit is that? And even if it were true–which, if you’ve read enough Rosenbaum to get his tone, you’d know it’s not–it’s irrelevant to the content of the list. The list itself is a treasure trove of titles you just don’t see mentioned anywhere else.
(Another example of how tone is valued over content at the Dope. The value of what you say here is completely irrelevant unless you can say it in a way that will make each individual who reads it feel warm inside.)