What makes a movie freak, and what is a good movie..?
I would consider myself a movie freak: I watch at least a couple of movies each week, either DVD rips on my computer (most often), DVDs on my computer (not as often as DVD rips), or at a cinema (unfortunately quite rarely lately).
I know some people will already think: “you’re not a movie freak at all, if you were you would go to the cinema more often”, and I totally agree that (most) movies are best if you watch them on a huge screen with good sound and in the atmosphere of a good cinema. What’s keeping me from going to the cinema as often as I’d like is mainly the cost. Seeing one movie would set me back a lot of money:
- Bus to the cinema: 20,-
- Ticket: 80,-
- Candy, popcorn (important), soda: 50,-
A total of 150,- is a lot of money, considering that I live in one of the most expensive cities in the world and have a poor salary. So I end up buying DVDs of my favourite movies so I can watch them over and over again.
Back to the original topic: what makes a movie freak? I think a movie freak is a person who is more interested in movies than most people, and who watch movies not only for the story, but also enjoy good cinematography, music etc.. I’m sure someone disagrees on this, so please write a blog about it and prove me wrong *grin*.
Gerdur has a great Movie Rating System (I don’t necessarily agree with all the example movies, but that a different story). Her system has 7 categories, ranging from “Waste basket material” to “Masterpiece”. I tried thinking of movies that I could put in the different categories, but soon discovered that my way of rating movies is very different, so I’m introducing my own scale: the Chill/”Please don’t” scale. Very often when I’m done watching a movie, I have a clear feeling of how I liked the movie, but I can’t always explain what made me like/hate a movie. The only thing I know my favourite movies have in common is that every time I watch them I get chills down my entire body, either because of a particularly well shot scene, music that’s just 100% perfect for the scene/movie etc.
The “Please don’t” part pretty much covers movies that I hate. My last example was King Arthur. Now to explain the “Please don’t” part of my scale: some movies can get away with clichés, other movies just can’t (King Arthur being one). What happens is that I catch myself seeing a really bad and misplaced cliché coming, and think “oh no, please don’t go there” (addressing the director in my head), and of course they do… Having too many of these moments in a movie really ruins it for me.
Actually when I think about it, Spider-man 2 had many of these moments too.. and I know that such movies shouldn’t be watched the same way I would watch a more “serious” movie, but I really thought the first movie was better… hmm.. must be something else that influences my subconscious opinion of my movie..
Guess I have to conclude my ramblings: my movie scale still needs work before I can make it official, or at least I need to figure out what really makes a movie good or bad for me (or maybe I should stop thinking about it altogether and just leave things as they are; some movies I really like, others I really hate – I just can’t explain why (but then again, why does it need to be explained?))…
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