Dilemmas of a Film Fan #FilmFanProblems

Are you a Film Fan?

Are you a Film Fan?

There are people who watch films for fun, and there are people who watch films to engage their brain and nitpick about it to their friends. Basically, there are people who think Batman’s weapon arsenal was cool, and those who assess how the “Dark Knight Rises” villain, Bane, can eat food with a giant outward-facing vacuum cleaner over his face. You may be a die-hard film fan if you’re DVD selection takes up a whole room, if you are planning on using Black Friday sales this year to completely re-do your home into a theater, or if you can recite IMDB by heart. Alas, this passion comes with it’s headaches. Being a great film fan takes practice and a lot of time. It requires people to sit through the latest Transformers movie at close to three hours so they can make cohesive arguments on why it is horrible on message boards. There are dilemmas in being considered a real film fan, and these are things that film enthusiast’s battle every single day. Read more about it ahead…

 

M. Night Shyamalan is a Hack Who Makes More Money than You

Photo by johnantoni via Flickr

M. Night Shyamalan has had fantastic success with some of the most contrived and awful movies of the last decade. 2002’s “Signs” made over $200 million, and the critically lauded “The Last Airbender” miraculously scraped $131 million, reports Box Office Mojo. The fact is, this untalented hack director makes more money than film enthusiasts can even comprehend, and yet nearly all his movies have been film travesties.

Black and White Films Are Not Inherently Dated

Films from are quite fantastic, but the common consensus is that they are black and white and thus not worth looking at. This drives film fans crazy. Hitchock’s “Psycho” is a thrilling masterpiece, and Orson Welles’ “Touch of Evil” is a bizarre spiral into insanity. BlogCritics isolates the science-fiction wonder “Metropolis” as a premiere example of the German expressionist movement. None of these films should be ignored or considered dated, for films from much earlier eras offer fantastic insight into the culture of the time. The dilemma film fans face is trying to convince regular movie-goers that these films have amazing merit.

You Want to Be Accurate and Knowledgeable

Film enthusiasts are constantly battling the issue of learning about movies beyond just small little things. They know the screenwriters, they know the film’s tones and messages, they know the director’s other films and career trajectory. Darth Vader never said “Luke, I am your father,” he said, “No, I am your father.” This matters… for some reason. “Goodfellas” is based on a true story, but it is considered quite inaccurate— this is important. For film fans, these things matter. For everyone else, it does not matter in the slightest. This is frustrating.

 

You Have to Like Things Because You Are Supposed To

Being a real film fan requires admitting that Woody Allen is incredibly talented and possibly one of the best directors of all time, but ignoring that he was writing the same film for close to four decades. If you want to be considered a real film fan, you have to sometimes admit that something is great because you are suppose to.

“Citizen Kane” is considered one of the best films of all time. This 1941 masterpiece encapsulated an era, and it astoundingly has a 100 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. But what happens if you, ahem, didn’t actually like it? Admitting that you did not like “Citizen Kane” is worse than admitting you find Martin Scorsese a fraud director. You simply can not do it. And if you do not like “Citizen Kane,” you are dumber for it, and that is just not fair.

 

The Objective Dilemma: Some Films Are Objectively Fantastic

There is a matter of opinion in the world of film that can never go away. But film fans face the dilemma of clarity. Some films are clearly amazing, and no opinion should say otherwise. The IMDB famous top 250 highlights the below five films as the best rated of all time, by fans.

  1. “Shawshank Redemption”
  2. “The Godfather”
  3. “The Godfather Part II”
  4. “Pulp Fiction”
  5. “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly”

There is no argument available that can say these films are not all phenomenal, even though people somehow try every day. This does contradict the “you are supposed to like it” angle, but this is the dilemma of film fans.

 

BTM Guest Author: Kathy Lively / Kathy is a film teacher and critic. She loves weird B films, silly romance flicks and pugs.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “Dilemmas of a Film Fan #FilmFanProblems”

  1. Jennifer Smith says:

    Totally fun article, Kathy! I agree with the “You have to like it or else” part, I didn’t “get” Casablanca for YEARS (and felt stupid because of it) and I do not think Garbo is attractive or even all that interesting. So there!

    Write more of these! So true!

Leave a Reply

Powered by WordPress