What are you favourite films and why?
I am self-confessed obsessed…with what?
With film! Have you ever asked someone what his or her favourite films or
directors are, and sneered or gawked in horrified response due to your complete
disagreement? I basically judge people on their ability to impress me with
their film expertise. I’m not boasting that I myself engage in the art of
filmmaking, nor do I even practice in any professional media making industry,
but I have made it my job to learn about the creation of film and justly
critique it.
There’s my brand: Sophie Booth – “What the
F**K does she know about film!”
Usually when I ask “Hey you! What’s your
favourite film?”, I usually hold out for a recital of the IMDB top 10. “Oh yeah I really liked that ‘something Redemption’ movie, you know the one?”….
yes, you fool, I know the one.
These films, although stunning and epic and
timeless and genius and whatever else are so generalized now as ‘the great
films’ that they have almost lost their greatness. In fact if someone answers
my “what’s your favourite film” with an IMDB
quintessential, I am more often than not a little let down. To be a film
enthusiast these days is to know a great, for its ‘ungreatness’.
A low budget ‘indie’ flick with a genius
script and different perspective is more likely to throw me a-back than a wide
angle Oscar-buzz season hit, simply because I am surprised by it. Both may very
well be equal in quality, but the ability of the film makers in a low budget flick
are obviously higher as they are equipped with more innovation and creative
intellect.
Similarly, the success of a director can
often undermine the ‘greatness’ of one of their films; take for example the
Coen brothers. Raising Arizona (1987)
is a fantastic film, one of Nicholas Cage’s finest, yet now, in a present day
setting, the overwhelming success of Fargo
(1996), The Big Lebowski (1998), O Brother Where Art Thou (2000), and No Country for Old Men (2007) (and many
more) has stuffed earlier films into a corner, where they generally seem far
less appreciated. Not to say that afore mentioned films don’t deserve the wrap
they get, I only want to highlight the effects these films have on the vintage
Coen collection. 
Having said all that I recently read on an FILM JUNK article (see link below) the ten
favourite movies from some of Hollywood’s most successful directors. I made a
note of reoccurring trends and added them swiftly to my watchlist. As a
consequence, my ‘films-to-watch’ is now filled with filled with Italian and
French classics spanning the 20’s, 30’s, 40’s and 50’s. These films are the
greatest, even the big wigs say so, and little 20-year-old me hasn’t seen them.
I could probably count on one hand the amount of people I would know that have!
How are these so great, yet so unheard of? You don’t need to be a genius to figure
it out…they’re old and they’re foreign.
I have made it my personal mission to watch
my entire watchlist over the summer and educate myself (and whoever gets caught
in my movie watching web) in the subject of the real movie greats. WILL
SHE DO IT???? I surely hope so.
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