What the Hell Makes Me Such a Know-it-all on Films? I Try to Explain -or- A Cinephile Explains Himself

Images from Bergman films

In an email last week a friend asked me if I’d seen a recently released film as he was curious what I thought of it. I watched the movie the next day and emailed back detailing all the problems I had with it. Afterwards I wondered why I hadn’t just said, “didn’t care for it” and left it at that. Who the hell am I to go on so about a film?

Over the past twenty years, friends, relatives and co-workers have solicited my opinion on movies and asked for recommendations and suggestions. I’ve gladly obliged, happy to share my knowledge and opinions. But what makes me such a know-it-all? I’m not a professional film critic. I’ve never worked in films. I wasn’t a film studies major in college. Yet I often pass myself off as something of an authority.

The fact is that I do have a certain expertise and am far more film literate than most people. How did I come by this?

First of all I watch a helluva lot of movies and have done for decades. During the pandemic I average about nine to eleven movies a week. In semi-retirement it was five to eight films and while working full time three to six. The more exposure you have to a certain area the more you’re going to know about it.

But I don’t just watch movies, I contemplate them and read about them. Once I finish a film — assuming I liked it, and even sometimes when I didn’t — I read about it. I check what IMDb and Wikipedia have to say and I read reviews via Rotten Tomatoes. If there are essays available I’ll read those too. The Criterion editions of films I own all have accompanying essays. If the movie is on DVD and there are special features I watch those.

I also read about films in general or about particular directors or genres, or eras, or actors or studios. I’ve read a lot of books on films and watched a lot of video essays. I thus know a tremendous amount of trivia about films, directors, actors et al and more importantly understand a lot about how films are made and what makes a great film and what to look for to appreciate films. I’ve learned to appreciate how a film is made, the use of lighting, camera angles and positions, the framing of shots, colors, set designs, musical scores and more. Certain familiar films I'll watch without paying much attention to the dialogue focusing instead on the way it was shot (John Ford films are particularly good for this). I've also benefitted from conversations with Italian director Germano Maccioni who is partners with my oldest niece. He knows and understands films a couple of hundred times better than I do.

From The Stalker by Tarkovsky

I’ve also developed my expertise by writing about films. This very blog you’re reading used to focus almost solely on films. When you write about something you’re obliged to think about and you develop critical thinking skills. I still often watch movies as if I’m going to write about it afterwards, which causes me to look at the film critically, searching for themes to explore.

So is my opinion about a movie more valid than anyone else’s? Of course not. You either like something or you don’t. It is not empirically verifiable that a film is good or bad. You cannot tell someone a movie they love stinks anymore than you can tell someone that the strawberry they are enjoying tastes bad. There are general consensuses about a lot of movies but that should never influence a person to like something they don’t. (It may influence you to try a movie that you hadn’t planned to watch and indeed that is the benefit of a critical consensus.)

Since I’ve gone this far I might as well discuss the types of films I like and the kind I don’t like.

This may come off as me being silly but….I like good movies. Some I like are westerns, some are film noir, others are Swedish or Italian or French or Russian or screwball comedies, or from the Seventies or from the Thirties or are recent or are silent or are in black white or are in Technicolor, some are indy films, some are big budget studio films, some are war pictures others are gangster films or message films or slapstick or obscure or laden with awards or defy easy classification. Just so long as they’re good.

I’m much more interested in who the director is rather than who the leads are as I am great believer that auteur directors tend to make the best films. I think the star or stars of the film are no more important than who the cinema photographer is. A great actor giving a brilliant performance cannot save a poorly directed film or one with a mediocre screenplay.

A disproportionate number of the films I love were made in the 1970s. Why were the ‘70s so good? In brief: 1) the old censorship strictures were gone. 2) The studios were giving directors more freedom. 3) The desire for blockbusters as driven by marketing and corporate heads hadn’t taken hold. 4) There was a strong influence from the cultural changes brought on during the Sixties. 5) In America alone there were a lot of excellent directors working, many doing their best swork (Hal Ashby, Robert Altman, Roman Polanski, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, Stanley Kubrick, Sidney Lumet, Woody Allen and Sam Peckinpah).

Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby

Also many of my favorites are foreign language films. Ingmar Bergman is my favorite all-time director and I also admire Federico Fellini, Roberto Rossellini, Michelangelo Antonioni from Italy, Finland’s Aki Kaurismaki, French directors like Francois Truffaut, Louis Malle and Jean-Pierre Melville, the two best Japanese directors Akira Kurosawa and Kenji Mizoguchi many Russian filmmakers especially the great Andrei Tarkovsky etc. etc.

Mostly I like films that are not formulaic. This is a problem with many films dating back to the start of cinema that seems particularly pronounced today. Action films and romantic comedies are particularly prone to having a paint by the numbers quality.

I’m also not always invested in plot lines. I love pictures such as Barry Lyndon (1975), Elevator to the Gallows (1958), Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019) and Stalker (1979) in which what is going on is subordinate to how it is being told. With some films, being concerned about a plot is like needing to understand all the lyrics before you can dance to a song or wanting a linear story line in poems. I love movies that create a mood, a feeling. As Bergman once said: “Film as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls.” Tarkovsky's Stalker is my second favorite film of all time and there's a lot about it I can't make heads nor tails of.

I don’t watch Marx Brothers films to be told a story, I watch them to laugh. When I watch an Alfred Hitchcock film I don’t worry about what he called the Macguffin (an object or device in a movie or a book that serves merely as a trigger for the plot) I watch the way he weaves the story.

I also prefer character-driven stories with good dialogue which is why Woody Allen is my second favorite director. But at the same time I can be happy with a film like 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) in which the characters are uninteresting (save the computer, Hal) but the story and the way it is shot is compelling. Two films like 2001 and Annie Hall (1977) represent completely different styles but they are both original and, in their own ways, great fun to watch.

I like movies that make me think and I like movies that I don’t have to think about but reach me viscerally.

From Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom

I love the distinctive look of Wes Anderson’s movies and the bravura story-telling talents of the Coen brothers and the originality of Jim Jarmusch’s movies. I like the humor and pathos of Charlie Chaplin and combined wit and silliness of Preston Sturges films and Cary Grant in screwball comedies.

I love both On the Waterfront (1954) and Animal House (1978). I love both Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941) and Goodfellas (1990). I love both La passion de Jeanne d'Arc (1928) and Mean Girls (2004). I love all those films because they were thoughtfully made and true to their intended purposes. I like honesty in art (which cinema is) and telling a story in way that is interesting and not compromised and not modified to please audiences. Filmmakers should have a vision and follow it.

I'm developing a greater appreciation for female directors such as Lynne Ramsay, Kelly Reichardt, Sofia Coppola and Joanna Hogg.

As to what I don’t like….I join Martin Scorsese in reviling what is called the Marvel Universe and all the comic book movies that are being mass produced to line the pockets of corporate bosses and sell-outs like Robert Downey Jr. Great art is created by people with a vision, a message and a desire to tell a story or create a mood. So many movies today are created solely to make lots and lots of money. That's not art, it's capitalism.

I don’t tend to like horror movies (with notable exceptions such as The Exorcist (1973), The Shining (1980), The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), The Thing From Another World (1951)). Most of them simply aren’t scary and if they are that’s all they’ve got going for them. I don’t like the overwhelming majority of romantic comedies because they are entirely too predictable. I’m not a fan of musicals. I’d rather watch the 1948 version of Oliver Twist than the 1968 musical version. I don’t like a story suddenly being interrupted by a big song and dance production. I don’t like the Gene Kelly musicals in large part because Kelly’s personality rubs me the wrong way. I’m not a fan of Singing in the Rain (1952). I do like the Astaire and Rogers musicals, silly and vapid though they may be, because Fred Astaire is so charming and the dance numbers are magnificent.

But I don’t like to dwell on movies that I don’t like. The last thing I ever want to do is hear someone tell me a movie I admire sucks or to read a negative review of a movie I like. I don’t want to dwell on what’s wrong with certain movies or problems with the film industry (legion though they may be). I’d rather focus on the films I love and discovering new ones to admire.

From John Ford's The Searchers

I try — perhaps not successfully — to not come off as a film snob but I do like people to know that unlike 99.9% of subjects you can name, when it comes to films I know a lot. Mostly I know what I like and what I don’t like. But more importantly I know why and can articulate my feelings. I’m always delighted when I person sees a film I recommended and likes it and am always happy to offer suggestions.

Sorry if, as in the email to my friend as I was long-winded. When it comes to movies I have a lot to say.

(Here's are my favorite films of all time.)

Appendix: I had a very good friend — now departed from this world — who it was terribly frustrating to discuss movies with. This was an intelligent man, a success in his field, well-versed in topics of the day and an authority on baseball. But he would judge a movie before seeing it based on the title or who was in it. He derisively dismissed the Coens’ wonderful debut film, Blood Simple (1984), reasoning that based on its title it must be another slasher film. He noted one film that co-starred two actors who’d previously been in a movie together and complained, “didn’t they already make this movie?” Unable, perhaps, to believe that two actors could be in two films that were unalike. Similarly when Saving Private Ryan (1998) and The Thin Red Line (1998) came out around the same time — both World War II movies — he complained, “aren’t they same movie?” No more than Casablanca (1942) and Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) were. He took everything in films literally, objecting to Pulp Fiction (1994) because of the accidental death of one character. He often saw violence in films as a celebration of murder rather than part of a story. He seemed to like only films that had what he thought of as positive social messages and had no appreciation for film styles. He thought the Academy Awards were sacrosanct and took their judgment of films as if they were the Oracle of Delphi. Often the first question he’d ask me about a film was, “is it Oscar-worthy?” I finally started answering: who cares?

Listening to his comments on movies was like talking about soccer with someone who don’t regularly follow and doesn’t fully understand sports. It’s frustrating and you can feel condescending when you have to set them straight about basic facts.

But I had to endure my friend’s ignorant and ill-founded opinions and complaints because we spent a lot of time together and most of the rest of our conversations ranged from interesting to scintillating. Today I’m often reminded of some of his tone deaf comments on films. In a way they endear me to him as they were just one part of a large and engaging personality. But they also remind me of how much I know and understand about movies and how it is a gift to be appreciated and cultivated.