A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
MY MOVIE GUIDE
Choose your destiny above.
There's a good chance that this is self-explanatory, in which case, pick a letter and go to town. Otherwise -- and if any questions should arise -- do take a gander at what's to follow here.
I'm going to start off by telling you what this thing isn't.
This is not, at the moment, a comprehensive guide, but it is designed as the beginnings of one. One thing for certain: it will never be finished. There will always be more, contemporary and otherwise, to add. As it stands now, the criterion was strictly that any film I consciously remembered having an opinion on would be included. At the moment, the total number of movies summarized here is 1,316. That's a bit short of the 10,000+ claimed by Roger Ebert, so we have a long way to go. If there is a major canonical hole, it's simply because I haven't seen everything yet. I'm working on that.
This is also not an attempt at serious criticism, by my standard or any. I became devoted to writing about movies only about a year and a half ago at this moment (July 2006), and what I considered quite intelligent essays on the topic then come off as stale and superficial now, so this is all a big learning experience, and in fact it is one wholly separate from the act of creating capsule reviews for this guide. This guide is largely intended as a "front" for the more extensive writing I've done about these films. It's the best way I know of to structure this section of my website -- by title, with a list of relevant pages attached -- and if I'm doing that, I may as well offer capsule reviews to liven up the drab lists.
Finally, this is absolutely not a stab at "objectivity," a condition of dubious merit in real discussion anyway. I am not going to constantly justify, for instance, my low opinion of LAWRENCE OF ARABIA by including some qualification in every sentence. "Well, I didn't like it, but of course, it's a classic." You won't find me saying that. "Goddammit, this movie sucks. It's a piece of total shit. Fucking useless." That's more like it, except of course, ideally that would come with justification, because the comment as delivered there does not promise to generate much of a productive response! My point is simply that it's my movie guide, my dumb opinions, and I take full responsibility for them and do not expect or want them to have anything at all to do with anyone else's.
All right, so what is this movie guide? Well, basically, as implied, it's a way of organizing my growing stockpile of movie reviews. But why bother with something like this if I don't have any aspirations of it being objective, canonical, therefore important? Mostly it's for fun -- duh! -- but also, something like this may help you decide whether you take my opinions seriously or not. If you love DANCES WITH WOLVES, hate VERTIGO, etc., you may not be able to rely at all on this, but my hope would be that you might still enjoy some of the writing included here. And if you find no correlation -- we're neither dramatically similar or radical opposites -- hopefully you'll be able to get some sort of insight that might lead you to some films you haven't seen which you may or may not like, or perhaps generate some inner debate and curiosity about the films you have seen. That's what I enjoy about the critics I read, and I can't claim to be any more ambitious than that in this respect. Reading about movies is a lot of fun (as is reading criticism in any field), but of course it's unwise to completely base things on any one person's opinion, so we all add to the field of information's available, and in this dark corner of the internet, I've been doing the same for a while now. But if you read a negative review I've written of some film you've been dying to see and it seems reasonable to you, this guide might give you a reason not to listen. If I hate your favorite movie, whether the review is good or not, it might be a good idea to seek out more opinions, not that I would assume to be your first stop in the first place, or a stop at all. But you see my point.
And why me? Why should anyone care about my opinion over that of anyone else's? Frankly, I don't think you should. I think it would be great if everyone set up a website and movie guide like this, but not everyone gets their kicks that way. I do not attach any kind of importance to this stuff I've done, because if I did that, I would feel more of a responsibility to make it all less raw and personal. The raw and personal ingredients are vital to me because I am really just getting started as a cinephile; the idea is that I'm discovering these movies at my own pace and responding accordingly, and if you're exploring along with me or nodding knowingly or shaking your head in anger or overcome with a desire to spit in my hair, that's lovely.
A big part of the thrill in investigating this territory has been my constant message that the "conventional wisdom" about what films are and are not worth seeing is of little relevance. What the AFI says, what Roger Ebert says, what the entire critical consensus seems to suggest is not The Truth. The only thing I dislike about the community of critics in all fields is the building of "critical mass" when it's practically taken as acknowledged Fact that this or that is weak or brilliant. It's far too often suggested that the common person is unable to distinguish good from bad, when in fact a given stance on what is good or bad has relevance to only the person who invents it. If you hate CITIZEN KANE (which I absolutely adore) or THE GODFATHER (which I hated), it's not because you're dumb, slow, young, or culturally illiterate. It's because you hated them and goddamn, you should talk about it. A lot. Don't try and be nice and make room for those who disagree with you; they have the ability to express themselves too. State your opinions as facts. Get pissed off. Go nuts. Just because your favorite film reference book says you should love something doesn't mean you can't hate it and go on and on and on about how much you hated it.
That does bring us to some acknowledgements I need to make. In creating this guide I was assisted immeasurably by several books, websites, and critics, listed in no particular order: Error-filled though it may be, no one who studies movies can expect to be taken seriously without liberal use of the IMDB; no one who uses the internet for any kind of research can expect to run afoul of Wikipedia. Leonard Maltin's Movie and Video Guide is the best book about film on the market, the only attempt at "objective" criticism to date with any real merit, both because it's valuable in ways entirely separate from the views it contains and because those views are almost always reasonable and well-balanced. Katz's Film Encyclopedia is an excellent reference tool, especially for tracking down filmographies and obscure information about lesser-known performers. The Time Out Film Guide contains a heaven-sent director index that comes in handy when internet is not available. Roger Ebert's website is the best way to keep up with new releases, though his reviews are often anemic. Peter Travers (Rolling Stone) is a good movie writer I often agree with, Jonathan Rosenbaum (Chicago Reader) an excellent one I rarely agree with, David Edelstein (Slate) a good one loaded with refreshing vitriol, and Manohla Dargis (The New York Times) is my personal favorite film critic working today; her stuff is always a thrill. Finally, although it may seem a weird inclusion, I owe much of the style of my movie writing to the stunning book Hitchcock at Work by Bill Krohn; Krohn defines the Hitchcock methods and motifs in a way that allowed me to far better articulate what it is I adore and seek out in movies, and you will find me referring back often to its insights about commenting on the medium through direct communication with the audience, the trait I mark as the most important in cinematic technique.
If you feel I am generally too harsh, please note that this guide contains 672 positive reviews and 644 negative ones, many of those somewhat neutral. If you find that I am overly harsh on any director, performer, or film you enjoy, I really don't care. I would advise you, however, that nothing is meant to be unfriendly, and please don't take anything to heart. The biggest point there is to make and the reason for participating in projects like this is that any opinion is worth having, so long as it is passionately held. If you can't relate to the things I say, I'm sure you can relate to the vitriol and conviction. And feel free to spew out your own wherever you wish.
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It's time now to do a bit of technical explaining about this guide and the ratings. The rating system is fairly simple; I've abandoned stars in favor of letter grades to make everything a bit clearer. Grades go from A+ to F. There are less than a hundred A+ films, only fourteen that have received the F. Films in the A+ to A- range can be considered excellent (and a full list of them can be found here); anything with a B- or above is worth seeing at least once.
The summaries contained in the guide are freeform and mostly original. Some contain plot summaries, some don't. Some are long, some are short, some are very short; a couple are longer than the corresponding full reviews. If you notice a bit of repetition, note that in some cases I saw no reason to rephrase older comments and simply condensed the longer reviews in a capsule format. There is no rhyme or reason to why this was or was not done for a given movie outside of my own personal taste on the matter. Inevitably, the capsules can be considered rather rough, with much more consideration going into the content of the full reviews. However, as summaries, the capsules function very well.
Below many of the summaries you will find small links to every mention of the given film in my livejournal, from 2002 to now. Often, the relevant text is behind an LJ-cut, and if more than one post shows up behind the link, you may have to do a ctrl-F to find the passage you're looking for. Ideally, the first link (in all caps) will be to the full-length review for the film, followed in some cases by a review of the DVD. The rest of the links may or may not be more marginal in nature, sometimes with just offhanded references to the film. Your first question may be why this is relevant. Well, it isn't, not especially, but it's called indexing, and it can be a useful feature or even just a fun one. Your second question will be that yes, you understand why indexing is good, but why do the small links cover my livejournal and not my website at large? First of all, roughly 90% of the movie-related content I've generated is in the LJ. Second, the website is searchable via Google. The LJ is not. Your third question may be, okay, fine, reviews and certain marginal material is okay, but why bother with every single mention? And that's really a matter of convenience. It was far easier to just include everything than to spend time figuring out what was "relevant" enough to be included in the guide. Besides, it's interesting to gather a full dossier on each film. For me, at least. Maybe I'll be the only one who ever plays with it, but fuck it, it's there.
If the LJ index weirds you out a little, I'll go into a bit more detail. (If not, skip this bit.) A few examples are in order. THE INCREDIBLES has the longest list of links of any film in the database. Its very first mention is in my Simpsons page, not indexed here. Using the index, you can see my pre-release anticipations and predictions about the film, my hyped-up reaction, my complaints about the press the film received, several rants about the lack of seriousness with which animation was considered in the awards race of 2004, numerous offhanded mentions of the film, my review (not in the LJ), and an anecdote about facing obstacles on buying the DVD. So on this recent release, you get a full picture of both the reaction to the film itself and of the surrounding media blitz and the personal feelings about cartoons as a medium that it awakened. A few other new movies that generate lots of material are THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY (a film in which I had a considerable emotional investment years ahead of release), CARS (first mentioned in 2004, not released until 2006), and BROTHERS GRIMM (long-awaited and hugely disappointing). But the involved use doesn't end with newer films. You can track a total turnaround of opinion on THE SECRET LIVES OF DENTISTS; watch how inarticulate awe at SABOTAGE turns into a sense of profound respect and finally a glimpse at the teasing, playful subtext; track my many pleas for DVD releases of I WANNA HOLD YOUR HAND and LIFEBOAT and check out my reactions to the discs when they finally came; witness DOUBLE INDEMNITY and BARRY LYNDON seen for the first time then added to the permanent lexicon of Standards to Strive For; and witness me looking forward to JULES AND JIM, practically assuming it to be wonderful, only to find that I absolutely despise it.
Now, a quick note about the regular reviews. I review every film I see for the first time (as well as many I see for the second, third, or millionth time) and I have been doing so with no exceptions since March 2005 after toying with the idea on and off for about a year. The first film to really be part of the cycle was DOUBLE INDEMNITY; at the time, I thought that was an in-depth essay. Now it looks rather childish, but that's because this has all been me learning "live on the air" how to write about movies and, in a sense, what I think about movies to begin with. The full-length reviews are accessible in alphabetical order via the main guide or in chronological order in this complete listing of them.
I try to write my reviews fairly soon after seeing the film. About half the time, I take notes while watching and work from that, but some movies simply aren't worth the trouble or are screened at a point when I am in the mood for more passive viewing. Although I am good at defining my feelings about each film (usually after a good night's sleep), I do not try to decide on my cut-and-dried opinion of it until a bit more time has passed. As such, I do not assign grades to the movies immediately, and usually not until some time after I see them. Rather, they are gathered in a list that builds over a period of about three months, then I post a file in the journal called "movie summaries" in which the films seen recently are rated. A few days later, they will be added to the online film guide. (The LJ links also will be updated at those points, rather than every month like the other sections of this website.) This may seem slightly protracted and ritualistic, but this is a mammoth enough set of files that I know I would get myself in trouble if I tried to be any more regular than that.
A couple more questions you might have on perusing the guide: Why the frequent contradictions? If you look, for example, at DUMBO, you will see me in my full-length review casting some doubt on its pedestal, whereas my capsule is enraptured in the movie's perfection. Well, I changed my mind. I'm afraid I have no better defense than that! And I don't apologize for having a lot of conviction about opinions that end up changing, because that's life. Not to dwell on cartoons, but an more interesting example of this problem can be found in relation to THE SECRET OF NIMH. In a brief mention of the film from 2004, I called the source material, Robert C. O'Brien's Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, "excellent," whereas it's drubbed in the summary. In fact, I read the book again shortly after taking my current job on a series of very unhealthy and hot lunch breaks while eating chicken. And I discovered that, to be frank, the book is not excellent.
Finally, I feel a need to address the inconsequential nature of some of the LJ links. As mentioned above, indexing has the effect of presenting a deluge of information that is offered in the interest of completeness, no matter how trivial the relevance may be. I have tried to compensate for this by putting the entries of major interest at the front, followed by entries that include the film in a "list" of some sort, then "related" links (reviews of films by the same director, etc.), and finally, mere "mentions," which sometimes can just be name-dropping of movies or sometimes have some buried insights about the film in question. You never know, but I hope the separation and the link text is helpful to you.
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One last point is that a big project linked with this one is the cross-referencing of the capsule reviews. These files are linked both here and on the front page. At this moment, there are only two, but a third (the AFI 100 list) is forthcoming, with many others to follow. The cross references (save the full-length review list) contain the summaries from the main file and links to full-length reviews (updated at the same rate as the Guide), but they do not include the other LJ references. (A separate file collects DVD information and reviews, linked on the main movie page.) Here are the cross reference lists.
FULL-LENGTH REVIEWS (complete chronological list)
ALFRED HITCHCOCK FILMOGRAPHY
Choose your destiny.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Contact me: poisonmail@aol.com
All materials © 2002-2006 Nathan Phillips except as noted.