Sunday, April 10, 2011

Stubs (A look at older films) - Introduction

I’ve been asked to write reviews of older movies, so I thought it might be helpful to let you know what movies I favor, to at least have a starting point for further reviews. My favorite films are ones that when they are on TV or showing in a theater I can’t help but watch. I’m not professing that these are necessarily earth shattering films, or added something meaningful to lexicon of cinema. In fact, that’s a little too high brow for me. I had the misfortune of studying what was then called the New Discourse at USC years ago, which attempted to read things into movies that I never thought were there. The result of taking this sort of Film Criticism frankly made movies less enjoyable. Hollywood films, with their seamless structure and dream-like qualities were pooped upon and films that pushed the viewer out of the film, that is made you aware you were watching a movie, were praised. This seemed backwards to me. The qualities that had drawn me, and millions of others, to movies were wrong? But while I was being fed this load of drivel, I was also allowed to watch many old movies in history classes. 

Depending on how good the professor was the more I was able to learn, appreciate and enjoy them. I have been a film lover for most of my life and I hope that by sharing my love of these movies I might inspire you to seek them out.

Coming up with a top ten favorites list was hard. There are so many films to choose from and I’m certain that what I list as favorites now is subject to change over time. So far my list looks like this:


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