It’s even worse than I could imagine.
But the comments are priceless!
To make a fair criticism, it isn’t necessary to film every boring moment of a day to convey the idea that the character lives a boring life, just like it isn’t necessary to show, say, James Bond paying motorway tolls and standing there gassing his car for five minutes just to let us know superspies deal with the same drudgery as the rest of us.
Most people watch film to escape real life, not reinforce it.
No Arsenic and Old Lace? No Blazing Saddles? No The Big Lebowski?
I’ve noticed these lists of greatest movies often ignore comedies. The same is true when awards are handed out.
I remember taking a film interpretation class as a freshman in the early 1980s. One of the films we studied in class was Rules of the Game. The prof had us spend three entire one hour class periods devoted to analysis and discussion of this film. Mind you, I signed up for this elective with the intent of having an easy and fun couple of credits. I recall seeing it initially and thinking it was an okay, flick, but after three hours of torturing what seemed to me the most contorted and obviously unintended allegory on the film maker’s part, I was content to never see the film again in this lifetime.
I was glad I watched Jeanne Dielman. I found it an immersive experience. I get that it’s not for everyone, but the film was well crafted and made an emotional impact (IMO).
The critical obsession with “The Searchers” remains a mystery to me.
As an undergrad, I signed up for an English Department elective called “Satire” because the professor was a relatively well known author and I thought it would be fun. He stressed during the first class that it was intended for English majors only, and if anyone wasn’t they should drop the class.
I kept quiet, got an A, and had a paper I wrote published in the department’s magazine. The professor approached me after the last class to let me know he’d investigated me and now knew I was a biochemistry major. He laughed about it.
The next term I took a Physics & Science Fiction elective that was an upper level physics course. I thought it would be fun. It was the most difficult course I ever took, more work than Organic Chemistry.
When I was in film school, Harvey Keitel came to speak to us and the film he brought was Theo Angelopoulos’ Ulysses’ Gaze. Which is about three hours long and contains probably fewer than a dozen camera setups, pretty much no action, a paucity of diaglogue, and (as it was the mid-ninteies), a long lingering shot of Keitel’s wedding tackle. It was the very definition of interminable torture. Roger Ebert gave it one star and called it “a numbing bore” and “almost unendurable” so I knew it wasn’t just me. My parents made fun of me for years after I rented Paris, Texas, which I found enrapturing (honestly, either that one or Wings of Desire should be on the S&S list) but they complained about its pace; that film was practically Armageddon compared to Ulysses’ Gaze.
No Paddington 2?
Just one opinion, but I have to agree. I find the plot offensive, and the “Sven and Lena” interludes are a real WTF? for me. And I like John Wayne movies!
I like Mulholland Drive. Mind you, I don’t understand it, but then, I don’t think Lynch does, either.
I’ve seen most of these and I love all manner of film, but this list is pretentious. It dares people to disagree, which is annoying.
That’s the one where I thought to myself, I think I’ve seen it but…uh…ehhh
So I left it as a no; but the probability is that I have seen it, and it made zero impression on me.
j
Heard of twelve, seen nine.