Day #11 of the 30 Day Film Meme

[shadowkat]

Day #11 of the 30 Day Film Meme - A Film You Like From Your Least Favorite Genre

Also easy...since I like very few films in this specific genre.

Watch on YouTube

I saw this on the plane from NY to Seattle in 2018 and I was crying halfway through. It's thoroughly charming and held my interest - which is hard to do on a plane flight. There's so many distractions.

Comments

[cactuswatcher]

This is a difficult prompt. Unless you have someone you watch with who has very different tastes, you just aren't going to watch genres you don't like.

So I picked film noir, a genre in which I can often tolerate a movie but rarely think twice after I've seen it. The movie I like, often said to be the first film noir is The Maltese Falcon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3a9YU1SVbSE

[shadowkat]

Ah, not a noir fan? Well, that's also why you disliked The Third Man - it's noir.

The Maltese Falcon is interesting - it's a book written by Dashielle Hammet, and one of the tightest written, and the screenplay was written by mystery writer/noir writer Raymond Chandler - who wrote the Phillip Marlow novels. And, it had an amazing cast.

It's one of my favorite films.

Noir film is a weird category - since the characters for the most part aren't necessarily "likable".

[cjlasky7]

I have to admit, I'm not a big fan of Westerns. I don't really hate them, but the genre's tropes are so set in marble by now that I find it difficult to care about anything happening in the story. (I can discuss the artistry of a John Ford/Sergio Leone/Clint Eastwood, but not with a lot of passion.)

I guess the only thing that would truly interest me would be a complete deconstruction of the genre by a comedy genius.

Hey, we've got one of those!

https://youtu.be/cNCNp61wQL8

"You have to remember that these are simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know... morons."

"Mongul only pawn in game of life."

[shadowkat]

I'm beginning to think Blazing Saddles is for people who don't like Westerns?

We rented that movie along with 2001, Tom Jones, and Death Trap when we got our first VCR. And my family - who LOVES Westerns. (I took a class in college - "Cinema:The Western" - Joss Whedon and I have that in common, we both studied Westerns, and slasher flicks in college, along with a few other film tropes. I wrote a paper on the Wild Bunch, and had a test on Red River (my mother's favorite film - she knows the song and score, and had the DVD and VHR tape and never grows tired of it - mother is from Liberty Missouri, daughter of a cattle farmer, and her parents toured the West, she grew up watching Westerns), and wrote on Jeremiah Johnson. I've read the shooting script to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. I am kind of an expert on the Western trope. I even read all the Louis L'Amour books.)

Also in my humble opinion the best Western parody/comedy made is "My Name is Nobody".
Hilarious and fun.

My love of westerns has to do with my parents who loved them. We watched them every Saturday night. And if a movie came out - rushed to it.

Blazing saddles was funny, we enjoyed it, but it was a bit over the top for me. I think? Also, it is very much a New York take on the Western.

It may be that I prefer subtle wit - and that's not Mel Brooks, a master of over-the-top in your face parody and satire. With one joke firing after the next one. Even the characters are jokes or parodies of the trope.

[mtbc]

Ah, thank you, I'd completely missed this with being in the UK in recent years.

[shadowkat]

Very welcome. ;=)

[petzipellepingo]

Not a fan of horror films, especially any of the current ones but this is nicely atmospheric.

[atpo_onm]

With the caveat that for me, there's no truly least favorite genre, just ones I find mostly uninteresting in the main for various reasons. Those would be Westerns, Military films, Documentaries, and Horror films.

Inevitably, though, some talented people manage to make exceptional efforts in these categories, and when they do, I have no hesitation in saying so.

Horror movies, in particular, rarely interest me, especially the more recently popular "torture porn" types or ones where there is relentless blood-spattering and gore simply for a gross-out effect, a big appeal for some that eludes me.*

A truly good horror movie works because it build suspense, and/or evokes some primal fear common to nearly all humans.

This one is superb at that. Caution-- if you are claustrophobic, or phobic-ally fear things like being buried alive, keep the Youtube window in the smaller mode, or skip it altogether.

The Descent (2005)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iw_KYXVNBqo

*Exception to the rule in my case--

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTt8cCIvGYI

-- which to be fair is a martial arts / revenge flick, not truly a horror film. Besides... Tarantino is Tarantino, what can you say?

[shadowkat]

Horror movies, in particular, rarely interest me, especially the more recently popular "torture porn" types or ones where there is relentless blood-spattering and gore simply for a gross-out effect, a big appeal for some that eludes me.*

Same.

I can't watch 65% of horror films. Mainly for that reason. I don't like gore. There's a reason I sucked at biology and avoided anything that involved blood and guts.

A truly good horror movie works because it build suspense, and/or evokes some primal fear common to nearly all humans.

Also builds on characters or is character driven. If you don't "care" about the characters - how can you be afraid for them, or feel "horror" at what happens to them?

Psychological horror I can watch for the most part, along with most films by Guillermo Del Torro - although it depends on the film. I don't watch horror at all right now - mainly because why bother - I feel as if I'm trapped inside a horror film.

I have a love/hate relationship with horror. One of my favorite horror films is Robert Wise's The Haunting of Hill House, and Andromeda Strain. He was a master at minimalism and psychological. I also like Jaws - because it's more psychological build up, than real gore. And Jurassic Park.

I couldn't watch The Descent. I tried. Too scary for me - it's a trope I struggle with, within the horror genre. (I'm claustrophobic.) But, I have seen The Vanishing,the Danish version - which is...scary as all get out and probably worse.

Like I said, love/hate relationship.

Oh, I adore "Kill Bill". Tarantino did about three really good films - Kill Bill, Pulp Fiction, and Resevoir Dogs. Everything else...felt kind of redundant.

[atpo_onm]

Here's one of my solid picks for a top 10 of the last decade, supposedly just a science fiction film, but one that hasw many elements of horror mixed in perfectly to great effect.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYGzRB4Pnq8

You know a story has really played with your head when it ends and you feel both afraid because of what has just been unleashed into the world, and yet feel this enormous empathy for that possible future cause of humanity's destruction.

[shadowkat]

You're the second person who has rec'd this film to me. The first was Breaking Bad coworker (who got me to watch Breaking Bad) and is a frustrated screenwriter and Yoko Ono fan.

So I may have to check out Ex Machina at some point. Thanks.

ETA: Oh by Alex Garland...he's an interesting writer and filmmaker. I watched Annihilation which is a fascinating sci-fi horror film. Creepy, plays with your head, and beautiful all at the same time.