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In Which I Confess to Cinema Ignorance
I’ve got a bit of a confession to make. As much as I know and love movies, there is a tremendous gap in my experience when it comes to classic films. I can’t really pinpoint why, but for some reason or another, I haven’t seen a few movies that many consider to be among the all time greats.
Naturally, this results in a lot of balking and the “What?! You’ve never seen (movie that everyone claims is mind-blowing) before?! And you call yourself a movie buff?!” line of questioning that just makes me want to hammer punch people in the throat before they can finish the sentence. I think some day, some poor soul’s utterance of these words will finally make me snap, and then things will get very real.
As a result of this, my good friend Chris inspired me with something that he’s been attempting recently. You see, he dove headfirst into Flickchart’s 100 Greatest Movies of all Time List. He is now watching all of the movies he hasn’t seen in order to get caught up.
I believe the challenge has been accepted, good sirs. It’s a bit daunting, but here are the movies I have yet to watch from that list. Do not mock my shame too much. Because of the aforementioned hammer punches.
Goodfellas
The Godfather Part II
Black Swan
Drive
Fargo
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Rear Window
Let the Right One in
Taxi Driver
Apocalypse Now
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
American History X
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
City of God
North by Northwest
Casablanca
Chinatown
Yojimbo
Clockwork Orange
Oldboy
Citizen Kane
Raging Bull
So I guess that can be a pretty good goal for me in 2012. Where should I start? Which of the movies on the list have you not seen?
Discussion
7 comments for “In Which I Confess to Cinema Ignorance”
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Of the ones that I have seen, I would recommend the following:
City of God
Taxi Driver
Apocalypse Now
Dr. Strangelove
Black Swan
Drive
Dr. Strangelove in particular is VERY enjoyable.
Thanks! What’s funny is I’ve probably seen all of Apocalypse Now in bits and pieces on TV, just never all at once. I also keep hearing excellent things about Drive, although I’m surprised that it’s already been voted into the top 100 movies of all time list on Flickchart.
Drive is a simple yet very well executed film. I seriously doubt it will have any staying power in a list like this.
Black Swan on the other hand is well executed, and has some really good substance worthy of study and analysis. Aranofsky’s films are definitely worth viewing to study and understand the art of filmmaking.
A lot of people give it a bad review, but I can’t recommend The Fountain highly enough, I just love that movie unconditionally.
I’ll spare you the tedium of copying your list nearly verbatim (sans the Hitchcock and Kubrick films), but as we’re in confession mode, I’ll add my own egregious misses:
Inception
Fight Club
The Godfather
The Social Network
Reservoir Dogs
Alien
Star Trek (gasp!)
As for what to watch, I’d recommend North by Northwest and Rear Window. I found them to be much more engaging and enjoyable than I had expected for some reason. As for me, time to sit down with the wife and figure out which ones she’ll be up for watching.
As someone who has had the aforementioned “What???” exchange with you at least 10-15 times, I can say I’m glad you only learned Krav Maga recently. You’ve got some great movies on that list – enjoy!
I completely understand Eddy, I’ve been running through movies I’ve missed over the past year and man I’ve found some great ones. Some ones on that list that stand out that I’ve only recently seen is Goodfellas, Drive (it’s really good), and Apocalypse Now. Fargo is particularly enjoyable if you like Cohen brother humor. I’ve never seen any of the Godfather’s, so I get that infamous “What?!” often.
Wow, I can relate to this article so well! I majored in Film Studies in college, so I saw a lot of really good movies. But I think the teachers just assumed that you had seen most of the contemporary classics, so I missed out on a lot that trigger the “What?!” response among my friends. I’ve been trying to go through IMDb’s Top 250, starting at the top. My wife and I have recently watched The Godfather Part II, Black Swan, and Apocalypse Now. And we’re getting Casablanca from Netflix next. As for those on your list I’ve seen, I highly recommend “Let The Right One In” and “Black Swan.” Both have a really creepy, otherworldly vibe to them (but in very different ways). Taxi Driver and Oldboy are two that I’ve seen that I was unimpressed with. Taxi Driver just seemed boring, and I just ended up making fun of Oldboy with my sister the whole time because we couldn’t understand what anyone’s motivation was (which, looking back, I guess is somewhat the point of the movie…)