In his Critique of Judgment, Kant prolifically and Germanically grapples with the experience of a human consciousness encountering and evaluating aesthetics (beauty, the good, the sublime). His work is concerned with the notion that human beings form “subjective universal” judgments — opinions that seem purely subjective yet are made in the hopes that everyone will agree with them. He thought there was something sufficiently interesting about this seeming paradox that he spilled over 76,000 words on the topic.

In my own personal interplay between emotional and intellectual responses to art, I would describe myself as 60% intellectual and 40% emotional. A work has to engage my brain as well as my eye, but my brain’s opinion wins out. Hence, I “like” a fair amount of ugly, atonal, emotionally-lacking, structural stuff because I can appreciate the idea behind it. However, if a work is mostly “idea” (like a lot of avant-garde or experimental cinema, music, and painting) I don’t like it if it also lacks the emotional impact and connection.

Take, for example, Michael Snow’s 1966 avant-garde “masterpiece,” Wavelength, which mostly consists of a 45-minute long slow zoom from one side of an apartment to the other. On the intellectual level, I can appreciate how the film plays with the audience’s expectations of narrative and foregrounds the control of the camera’s fixed position, blah, blah, blah. But the emotional side of me says: “I want that forty-five minutes of my life back, you pretentious art-house wanker!”

When I sat down to determine my list of Top 25 Movies (see Jim's Top 25 Movies: Intro), I needed some criteria for evaluating which movies should be on the list and how they should be ranked. My intellectual and emotional responses needed to be quantified, but I also realized that, despite my aspirations toward anti-establishmentarianism, I really do care what other people think, so I needed to also factor in whether a particular movie was critically well-received or not. Kant would refer to this as Geschmack, or the community of taste.

I settled on the following formula to determine my list. Each film gets 1-10 points in each category, and the categories themselves are weighted from more to less important.

1. Objectively Good: In my considered and degreed opinion, is this a “good” movie — well made, well-acted, well-written, intellectually challenging and stimulating.

2. Important: In the annals of filmdom, how groundbreaking is this film? Was it critically acclaimed and inspirational? Does it define its genre?

3. Enjoyable: This is the more subjective ranking. Do I actually like watching this movie over and over again? Or is the experience more like working out: I know it’s good for me so I just need to power through it?

First, I note that my personal enjoyment is considered less important than the other two categories. Maybe this says something about how screwed up my brain is and that I really don’t “like myself.” Whatever. Second, I applied these rankings to a list of 50 or so movies, and I was surprised that a number of ones that I really liked fell off the Top 25 list. I agree with the overall results, but am disappointed that I don’t get to write about some of them. Maybe I’ll add an “honorable mentions” category of the end of all this.

So, here are films 25-21 according to my convoluted system.

Continue reading "Top 25 Movies: Part 1 (25-21)" »

I have a Master’s degree in film studies. Hey, I heard there was a lot of money in it! Seriously, my three-plus years dissecting not only films but film itself with my fellow graduate student eggheads effectively crippled for many years my ability to enjoy movies. I would cringe whenever someone asked me what my favorite ones were because my film-theory-addled head just couldn’t reduce the answer to something as simplistic as a few actual titles. “Well,” I’d sheepishly reply, “it’s rather complicated.”

But lately I’ve been giving some thought to the matter of “my favorite films” and what, exactly, that means. I’m beginning to feel, for example, that it will be Very Important for me to provide Ray with a well-rounded cinematic education. I have this vision of me staying up late one night with an older version of the boy. The room is dark but for the bluish glow of the TV. We are armed with an enormous bowl of popcorn and we are watching something like Double Indemnity.

“But why did she double-cross him, daddy?” he will ask.

“Because dames are nothing but trouble, my son,” I’d reply sagely. “Nothing but trouble.”

What films will I insist that he watch with me? Will they be my actual “favorite” ones, or movies that I feel are “good” or “important,” or what? And what’s the difference? Shouldn’t the fact that I really like a movie mean that it’s somehow “good?” Why is it that I don’t actually like watching a lot of the really “important” ones? Should he see those nonetheless?

See what I mean when I say “It’s rather complicated.”

Over the course of the next few weeks, I’ll try to work this all out and write a bit about the 25 movies that rank highly for some combination of “my favorite,” “important,” and “good,” and that will therefore constitute Ray’s Essential Movie Viewing List for when he hits an appropriate age. (And for something like Double Indemnity, I’m thinking no younger than 5. Maybe 6.)