Tag: Pulp Fiction

Friday Night Channel Surfing

Switching between “Quadrophenia,” “Pulp Fiction,” “Superman” and “Lethal Weapon.”

I wouldn’t recommend the habit of channel surfing when it comes to selecting an evening’s movie. Jumping into the middle of even a great movie and catching a few seconds of dialogue out of context can look mighty odd. It’s something that doesn’t happen with TV, which is often designed for people to jump in at any moment. I liken the sensation to listening to a random 30 second clip of a song on Amazon and believing you’ve got a full sense of what that track sounds like or how it is they got to that weird, minor key transition.

Regardless, I did not have control of the remote Friday night, and it’s amazing what you can pick up when you’re dividing your attention between an iPad and the TV.

Our family was fortunate enough to turn on the TV right as the ’50s diner scene of “Pulp Fiction” was starting. I commented that Buddy Holly was actually Steve Buscemi, and the DVR confirmed it. John Travolta asked what a $5 milkshake tastes like, and although AMC dubbed it to a “freaking” good shake, it prompted our own ice cream run. Tarantino’s movie is one you can jump into at any moment, and we would’ve remained there were it not for the dubbed swears and commercial breaks.

The next stop was the original “Superman” on HBO. My sister commented that Christopher Reeve is not as attractive as Henry Cavill by a mile, but I noticed that even the cheesy effects as the Fortress of Solitude grew and erupted out of the North Pole looked cooler, prettier and more compelling than the ugly gray shades permeating every moment of “Man of Steel.” Then Marlon Brando showed up as Jor-El and I knew that I was watching a real classic. Will Zack Snyder’s film have the same watchability 30 years from now?

Starting at just about the same time was the original “Lethal Weapon,” and we watched that up until the point that Danny Glover unironically said “I’m getting too old for this shit.” It’s hard to believe there was a time when these cliches seemed less egregious. It was at least interesting to see Mel Gibson in his prime. Too often I’ve caught one of the “Lethal Weapon” sequels on TNT and rolled my eyes at Joe Pesci being irritating or Glover sitting on a toilet rigged to explode. Continue reading “Friday Night Channel Surfing”

My Best (and Favorite) Movies of All Time

These are my 10 “Best” movies of all time, along with my 10 “Favorite” movies ever.

Any critic voting in the Sight and Sound poll that was announced yesterday (my coverage here if you care to compare lists) will tell you how impossibly difficult it is to select 10 films as the best of all time. Occurring every 10 years since 1952, this is really the only list that matters. They have to select with their minds and their hearts, and the two don’t always coincide. If you’ve seen all the masterpieces, how do you choose between all that is perfect? And how would you like to be the critic who finally displaced “Citizen Kane” as the best movie of all time?

I don’t have nearly as much pressure on my head (not yet), but it hasn’t stopped some of my friends from asking what are my all time favorites.

I tend to dodge the question (often pretentiously, I might add). “Well, how do you rank works of art anyway?” “Oh, you probably haven’t heard of them.” “I’ve just seen so much that it’s so hard to choose.” And then I’ll say something about how I’ve seen the Harry Potter movies a lot because they’re always on HBO and I have a sister with no qualms of re-watching stuff, so maybe those could be called some of my “favorites.”

Often, I don’t even like the word “favorite.” “Best” and “favorite” usually go hand in hand. If I called “Drive” the best movie of 2011, it’s because it’s the one I most want to see again AND because it’s the most important/best made/critic-y jargon bullshit.

There’s also the possibility that I just haven’t seen enough films. In fact, I know I haven’t seen enough. One day decades from now when my Excel spreadsheet of classic films to watch is completely marked up with yellow highlights, when I’ve written and read all I can about them and am looking back on my entire life of watching movies as opposed to looking forward to what’s coming out this Friday, then maybe I’ll make a decent list.

So for all those reasons and more, I’ve never officially made public what are my all time picks for best movies ever. I’ve always had titles in mind, but they’ve never been put on paper like this. It’s damned hard to do.

But I’ll concede that in this instant, “best” does not mean “favorite.” I’m not going to lie and pretend that some obscure foreign movie I’ve seen once two years ago means more to me than something I’ve seen dozens of times since I was a kid. At the same time, that movie I know by heart is probably not even in the same conversation technically or historically as that obscure foreign film.

It’s why I’ve decided to provide TWO lists. One has the movies I would call the most powerful and most significant movies ever made. The other has the titles that I could never forget. They define me as a critic and a person. Continue reading “My Best (and Favorite) Movies of All Time”