For Rittster (re: Birth of the Blues), I usually pull the music after a few days, bad things start happening when I don't. I don't know why. It's available on you tube though. I was cleaning my house last week as I am known to do on some occasions and in going through a bookcase, I found my movie/book journal from 1990-93. I discovered some truths about myself.
I saw 66 movies at a theater that year (think of the money I could have invested in GM). My lowest rated movies were BIRD ON A WIRE and COUP DE VILLE. 3/10
My highest rated movies were ENEMIES, A LOVE STORY (can't even remember it), MONSIEUR HIRE, MY LEFT FOOT, THE KRAYS . All 8/10s.
But get this-the movie I rated the highest in 1990 was GODFATHER 3. I gave it a 9/10. I apparently loved GODFATHER 3. Huh?
I've told myself for years I didn't much like this movie and here was the truth in my own writing. A nine. So I think I've since been influenced by the tide of bad reviews that came over the years. I wonder if the reviews at the time were as harsh. I'm going to go look. (So-s0 reviews. Ebert liked it and others did, too).
What changed my mind? Public opinion, distance, styles. How are we impacted by these things?
Has your opinion of a particular movie changed over time and if so why?
29 comments:
You were likely taking meds at the time.
You're probably right.
Maybe it's age or generational. When I was a boy, Jane Russell was the hottest siren around. A few years later, poof.
How refreshingly honest of you to tell us that, Patti. And yes, I definitely think our opinions change over time.
Not a movie, but...we saw A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC in previews before it opened on Broadway (original production) with a friend who hated it and kept making negative comments all through it. I definitely think it colored our view.
We saw it again later on and really appreciated it a lot more, and have seen it several more times over the years.
On the other hand, there are things I hate so much (STAR WARS episode 1) I would never consider giving them a second chance.
But yes, there are things I look back on and think, "what was I thinking - that stunk! How could I have liked it?"
Jeff M.
Lots of times it goes the other way. A movie I don't like at the time grows on me. I see things I didn't the first time. But this one and Moonstruck stick with me as movies I liked too much. Nic Cage and Cher lost all their luster over time, too.
GODFATHER 3 certainly pales in comparision with GODFATHER 1 and especially GODFATHER 2 (which I consider the best movie of the trilogy). I think expectations were so high for the film that critics roasted GODFATHER 3 when it couldn't top the previous two movies. But, I think it's a good film (but not great).
I keep a movie log too, which includes movies seen in a theater as well as things seen on video. No review, just a date, the director, the title, and an A-F letter grade. The list goes back to 1997, and what amazes me most looking back over it is how many of the movies I have absolutely no memory of whatsoever.
As for movies I've changed my mind about, "The Shining" really stands out. I'd read the novel just a couple of weeks before the movie came out, and just loved it. The differences between the novel and the movie really irritated me and I really disliked the movie despite being a confirmed Kubrick fan. I saw the movie again on video months later and realized I'd been totally wrong about it. The movie worked as a movie and the book worked as a book, and the differences between them were completely irrelevant.
I had the same reaction to THE SHINING. At the time, I thought Nicholson had mugged his way through it. But he's one actor whose performance must be seen more than once to appreciate, I think.
Getting some distance on the zeitgeist of specific years, decades, helps. Sometimes a movie speaks to a specific time and is fine in that context, but doesn't translate into the future. If I had a scissors, lots of indulgent "Late '60s flavored scenes" would be cut from my favorite movies of that era. For example, the ending church scene in COOL HAND LUKE. An excellent movie with a dopey, heavy handed ending that maybe seemed deeply relevant to someone at the time?
It's a hard to nail the landing, isn't it?
Time can certainly color one's perspective. Maturity I guess. I know watching films now that I remember liking way back in my long lost youth just don't seem as relevant now.
Your mood at the time might have something to do with it as well. Happy or sad, depending on the movie, can cause a skewed grade that later might cause you to say "WTF?"
And yes, I watch old movies all the time that I know I've seen before and everything seems new. Couldn't be senility could it?(on my part I'm talking about).
The Godfather isn't a bad movie. It's just inferior to the previous 2.
Bird On A Wire-Love the scene in Detroits Chinatown(e don't have one) and the characters taking a ferry from Detroit to Wisconsin.
I guess the assumption is that every city has one. If we do, it's out in Troy.
In my youth, I loved slap stick - Abbott & Costello, the Marx Brothers, the Three Stooges, you name it. Now I can't stand it. It's a Mad, Mad. Mad, Mad World with Spenser Tracy came on the other night and as much as I wanted to see all those comedy stars again, I couldn't watch it. It was silly and stupid.
I don't find my opinions changing too much over time when I revisit things, except perhaps for those things which I found marginally diverting (SPEED RACER, GILLIGAN'S ISLAND, Whitman and William Johnstone media tie-in novels) at age five or eight are at best bad laughs now. The good stuff pretty much remains good stuff...glad somebody enjoyed THE SHINING, which I didn't, though the two modes Kubrick seemed to most enjoy in his actors, over the top hamming and wooden underacting, was never better done than by Nicholson there except perhaps by several in DR. STRANGELOVE (as opposed to the bad hamming of, say, Anthony Hopkins in, well, everything, at least since THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS). I chose, as an Italian-American, to take MOONSTRUCK for the insult it was.
or even One of the two modes Kubrick favored...and the Marxes, at least, weren't all slapstick...nor A&C, though they moreso.
I don't think I even realized how insulting it was to IA until years later. Both performances were so mocking.
Yes, comedy is not timeless. So much of it is in the moment. Abbott and Costello now seem fairly ridiculous.
Some comedy is more timeless than others, to paraphrase a very grim comedy (and tragedy). The Marxes' DUCK SOUP holds up pretty darned well, even if THE COCONUTS doesn't.
Slapstick less well perhaps? I am almost afraid to revisit them.
MP - I've had a similar problem with old movie lists. Back when we first got a VCR and then cable tv, I went through a period when I'd watch pretty much anything and everything, the trashier the better at times. I made lists of movies I wanted to see and crossed off many of them.
The high point (or low, depending on point of view I guess) was 1984, when I saw an astonishing (to me at least) 535 movies!
I rated them from BOMB to ****.
There were a lot of bad horror movies in there.
Jeff M.
Chuck, we agree - when I first saw MAD MAD WORLD as a teen I thought it was great but can't watch it now.
As a kid I watched Abbott & Costello religiously; now, rarely. If I were to watch one today it would probably be my wife's favorite, the very atypical The Time of Their Lives.
Jeff M.
Well, THE COCOANUTS (1929) is just horribly stiff as one of the first gen of all-talking, all-singing films, and the fact that it was based on stage "revue" didn't help it as film that much. The Marxes mixed a lot of banter and more and occasionally less clever puns, etc., in amidst their physical gags, and they were better clowns than A&C or certainly than the Stooges. Or the Ritzes...though I should probably look at HELLZAPOPPIN' again to see how much I'd enjoy that Olsen and Johnson film these days. A&C MEET FRANKENSTEIN holds up OK, too, or did when I saw it...wow, some years ago...
Certainly IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD was always kind of tiresomely overblown, even to me when I felt similarly about THE GREAT RACE and its imitators but was always game to sit through them. (Heresy time: some of Billy Wilder's more unsubtle and overblown films wear on me similarly...notably SOME LIKE IT HOT.)
What George said. Oh, I remain a fan of MOONSTRUCK (hey, it was one of early date movies with my future bride). If I liked the film then, I tend to like them now. Actors careers/lives going off the rails are an entirely separate thing for me, I guess. Thanks, patti.
The first film I saw with my husband was some Fellini picture-it seemed brilliant at the time. He hasn't held up so well, but it takes me back
so I forgive it.
HIGH NOON has lost some of its luster for me, as I've come to see Gary Cooper as an incredibly wooden actor with absolutely no range. Everything else about the movie was great...the cast, the photography, the clock on the wall...but Cooper just mouthed his lines as though he were reading them, like he did in all his movies.
The most embarrassing of his performances was, I think, THE FOUNTAINHEAD. Hollywood attempted to film the Ayn Rand novel, but couldn't deliver the goods, largely because of Cooper's stiff performance. Rand insisted that Howard Roark's lengthy courtroom speech be in the movie, word for word, and it was. But as Cooper was delivering the speech, it became painfully obvious to me that he had no idea what the speech was about. He was completely unable to invest the emotion, the fire, the conviction that Roark so obviously had.
I got a little off the subject here, Patti, but HIGH NOON would be my choice, followed closely by THE BIG SLEEP.
I kind of liked Bird on a wire. I don't even remember any of the others I don't think, except for The godfather 3, and I haven't seen it.
I might also mention my own tendency to try to like a film I've made the effort to see in a theater. Though I genuinely despise a terrible (WANTED, THE BLACK DAHLIA, CRASH--I'm leaving out the films I was dragged to, such as STAR WARS "1" and "2" and THE HOUSE BUNNY) or even resent a very disappointing (O BROTHER WHERE ART THOU?, MOON) film I see thus.
Todd-have you been getting me emails. Maybe the address is wrong. Send me an email.
There was some controversy here in Finland when a major newspaper critic wrote that Capra's IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT has dated badly. He also wrote that he thought Capra's best film was ARSENIC AND OLD LACE.
Me? I take any old Marx film over anything. Even though I just watched couple old Bugs Bunny cartoons with my kid - laughed my ass off. Good timing never goes out of style. (Even though it's largely unfashionable these days when no one knows anymore how to time gags.)
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