Church on the Corner

We had an interesting debate at Monday night football last night - what do you think are the worst film genres?

These are purely my thoughts to start us off:

- “Zany” comedies, especially those with Jim Carrey or Adam Sandler
- Vietnam films, and predicting the way the world is going, future films about Iraq
- Fourth films, should really end leave the series as a trilogy
- Horror / Slasher films
-History films that are portrayed as factual but only if all the books you read have pictures in them.

And yes, in my mind at least, those really are all genres not just a collection of films I didn’t like much.

Funilly enough, we were having a chat about films last night after football (second defeat on the trot and confidence is low, cracks beginning to appear in the side etc etc..), and being blokes a lot of our discussions condensed into lists, so here are a few I made earlier…

Top 5 films I saw in 2007 (which doesn’t mean they were released in 2007…):

1) The Lives of Others
2) Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter…and Spring
3) Return to Goree
4) Nuts in May
5) Madame De…

Bottom three, most hated genre of films:

Bottom) Western
Second Bottom) RomCom
Front Bottom) Big Blockbuster film-by-numbers with no development but sells loads cos there’s lots of explosions and special eff…zzzz

Top Five Sunday Afternoon Films:

1) Jean de Florette
2) Amelie
3) Cinema Paradiso
4) Life is Beautiful
5) Il Postino

Top 5 Slow-moving-but-very-rewarding-films:

1) Celine and Julie go Boating
2) Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter…and Spring
3) Ikuru
4) Etre et Avoir
5) Playtime

Ok I think that’s enough lists for now. I am also looking forward to watching next either An Autumn Tale by Eric Rohmer or Life is a Miracle.

Does anyone have a favourite Director? At the moment mine is Eric Rohmer but it changes the more films I watch..

So the latest is that Film clubs goin down this Friday.

Is that correct? What’s the film?

Tom. I cannot believe Westerns are at the bottom am am crying into my ginger beer now about that.

I can see I need to see some of what you’ve seen you see?

Aren’t we gonna watch dirty pretty things this friday?

I hate American comedies with Adam Sandbox in.

Sooooo agree with you on that!

Yeah slashers are cack too!

Vietnam… Mmm… Some are well done but I think in general we could say the genre is fairly well covered, couldn’t we?

Forth films?! In my opinioon there are few good third films let alone forth’s.

Tom,

Transformers is good though right?

FILM CLUB IS THIS FRIDAY (1ST FEB 2009)

Film - Dirty Pretty Things

See you there

Bring booze and pizzas etc

I fancy a hubbly bubbly too… Anyway fancy bringin’ one?

where and when? looking forward to it already.

and 1 feb 2009???!!! are you teasing us we have to wait a whole year?!

i believe film scheduled to start @ 8.30pm. Therefore no overzealous rustling from 8.29pm. Tho from past experience I have found that you can rock up at 10pm and still find that the film is yet to start and there is pizza to spare. So don’t let Jimmy Smooth’s dogmatic itinerary put you off.

oh, and venue: home of said Jimmy Smooth.

Tomaso, your favourite film selections are beyond pretentious. But then I would expect nothing less from you. I am [obviously] less achingly hip because I like films that a) make me cry (though I have been known to cry at Question of Sport so this is not really confined to films), or b) make me laugh or c) make me think about something differently. If a film can combine all three then that is perfect. Although, Pretty Woman and Dirty Dancing will always be great movies and they only fulfill catagories a & b. I often wonder if they are only great because I first watched them when I was 14 and they have come to mean something much more than just the sum of their parts… you know, how Top Gun, Hunt for the Red October and Star Wars have also acheived a kind of iconic, untouchable status for you boys (can I be this sexist? I think yes) because when you watch them they reference every other time and place you’ve watched that moment unfold on screen.

I also LOVE proper old movies, in particular these two:
the red shoes
an affair to remember

sorry, 7.30pm at mine and I meant 2008 der?!

Tom, you are a film facist are you not?

I love a film that makes me cry, I must confess to it happening a lot. Mmm, I agree Ellie a laugh or seeing things differently is good. Pretty Woman and Dirty Dancing?!?!?! I am goin to vom!

Red shoes is top notch!!! I have it on DVD if some want to borrow

I feel I must respond to two scathing attacks on my film character…

Firstly, i’m not a film fascist - I just CANNOT STAND westerns!!! sorry, but probably for the same reason that I loathe and despise that book ‘wild at heart’. They just don’t connect with me on any level. Sorry just my preference.

Secondly - about the ‘beyond pretentious’ remark…I fully accept it for my ‘top five slow-moving…’ films, but hey what can I say? I like odd foreign films with strange unravelling plots, I find it an enjoyable way to spend a few hours.

But the other lists? My top 5 sunday afternoon - I toyed with bugsy malone but remembered il postino. and besides, what’s pretentious about them?? they may all be foreign but they are all beautiful and sweet stories that have the capacity to make me laugh and cry. so there.

As for my top list of films I saw in 2007….they just happened to be the best ones I saw last year. Nothing pretentious about that, just the best of the bunch that I watched. So there. And if it’s pretentious to like films in foreign languages, then i’m pretentious. Big deal.

If you like, i’ll mention a few films people might of heard of that I like (but where’s the fun in that? Maybe if people recommend films no one’s heard of others might check them out and be pleasantly surprised? just a thought.)

so how about…The Shawshank Redemption? About a Boy [one of my all-time faves]? Pirates of the Carribean [1st one]? The Jerk? Airplane? Anything with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers? The list goes on. Yah boo sucks to you!

:-p

oh yes p.s. James I haven’t seen Transformers so can’t comment.

I saw Jean de Florette over Christmas - a gloriously slow French film. Nothing wrong with a slow film on a sunday afternoon, my favourites being A Straight Story and The Station Agent.

And speaking of contentious films, has anyone seen The Fountain? Apparently it was booed at Cannes, but I saw it at the weekend and thought it was the most life-affirming thing I’ve seen in ages. It’s about death and resurrection, and its stunning, although admittedly barking mad.

Ahh A Straight Story! I LOVE that film! Watched it in an open-air theatre in the South of France and was totally charmed by it. Would recommend it to anyone whether they like slow fillms or not! Very touching.

Ok so here’s a question - which film has touched you the most, emotionally, and why?

Films I can remember touching me are:

Lorenzos oil, cinema paradiso, les enfant de pont neuf, the mission, mosquito coast, the new world, days of heaven, its a wonderful life, the red shoes

Terrence Mallick’s approach to film generally gets me though it seems to bore the pants off most people.

PS I’m defining touching as uncontrollable emotional outbursts, often meaning copious amounts of tears

I like the sound of those films Jeremy, very much

Tom, re the slow-moving-but-very-rewarding-films genre. I haven’t heard of most of them - do you have them on DVD?

There is a glaring obmission from the top 5 though: The Apu Trilogy - Bengali films from the 50s directed by Satyajit Ray who was a genius. Plus you can cheat and count the 3 films as 1 on the list.

There’s also The Grapes of Wrath which I would have right up there. Kylie hates it and thinks I’m joking when I say it’s one of my favourite films ever. But a Steinbeck story and Henry Fonda in the lead role - how can that not be good?

And as for westerns. Have you watched The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada? I think you’d be plesently surprised.

Do you have the Apu films (do they have anything to do with the Kwick-E-Mart??)? Maybe we should do a awap. I own the first two on my list and my bro has the third, tho that’s not really much use as he lives in Bristol.

Etre et Avoir is more of a documentary about a rural French primary school, and Playtime is a Jaques Tati film, with hardly any dialogue, but something I find roaringly hilarious.

I’d forgotten about It’s a Wonderful Life; maybe that’s because it’s on every Christmas, but yeah it’s a great film, especially that line about the moon and the lassoo!

Steve M….. very dissapointed!

Vietnam Films - Apocolypse Now, Platoon, Full Metal Jacket…. I think you are wide of the mark saying these Vietnam films are poor.

Sandler Flicks - Come on….Happy Gillmore is one of the funiest films to come out of the States ever

Presto - I agree with you, Westerns are over rated.

Jim - Good call on Transformers…. I have it on DVD if you want to borrow it!

Top 5 Best Films 1) Stand By Me
2) Lord of the Rings Trilogy
3) Dead Poets Society
4) Shawshank
5) Toss up between Karate Kid,
Pump up the Volume and
The Longest Day (3.5 hour
Black and white war film)

Woo Hoo, down with Westerns!

Have you seen that film Out of Africa… oh I love that film.

Yeah transformers is great.

Pedro Almodovar has done some good films too, Live Flesh being one.

While I remember I love Flight of the Navigator, an 80’s sci-fi film about a kid who gets abducted by an alien ship. I have the soundtrack recorded on cassette recorder placed next to the tv. I mention it because I doubt anyone else is really bothered about it but would be pleased to find someone who does.

Oh yes. I saw Flight of the Navigator at the cinema. Loved it… my brother and I recreated it every Sunday afternoon for the next few years using mattresses and blankets to recreate the spaceship.

You’re all wrong on Westerns though… although I’ll freely admit there is mucho rubbisho going on there. But hang on: The Outlaw Josey Wales, High Plains Drifter… come on!!

The worst kind of films are definately chick flicks & romantic comedies (with some exceptions- the slightly more avant gard ones like Lost in Translation are great!)

But you know the ones I mean. The Miss Congeniality, Legally Blonde kind of “women have to look a certain way and have a man in their life before they are worthwhile human beings” brand. Much as I’d rather like to have a man in my life, I certainly don’t need one, and as a self-confessed liberal feminist those kind of films really piss me off!

Roll on the sci fi and the action!

I have always loved westerns… The sense that anything could happen at any moment. You could be dead literally at the drop of a hat. The wild frontiers and harsh lands, natives unknown, a whole world to explore and you have to do it on a horse… Man time warp me there now!!! Oh that’s science fiction!?

Chick flicks rom coms, ruth im with you… A pile of ol’ S***.

I may be setting myself up for a laugh here - but to be honest i love a bit of chick flick action! I’m quite happy not to inflict them on other people if they don’t like them - but I for one do!

Wouldn’t the world be a boring place if we all liked the same sort of films!

Yeah! I love Chic Flicks too!!!

Oh alright… I hate them.

Nothing happens on this blog for weeks and then you look away for a few days and it all goes crazy.

After reading through the lists above I was about to write some scathing comment about cotc being thoroughly pretentious and out of touch with the real world (I mean, come on Garmon, Indian films from the 1950s, that even makes Preston look mainstream).

But then I started to list some of my favourite films - Little Miss Sunshine, Tsotsi, Life is Beautiful, Das Boot and then realised I too have become what I once despised.

So in a bid for redemption, and being a bloke the only thing that beats a list is a list with a qualification, I propose to list my top 10 films that most other people might actually have seen:

In no particular order:
1. The Empire Strikes Back Star Wars V)
2. The Two Towers (Lord of the Rings II)
3. Reservoir Dogs
4. Spiderman
5. Borat
6. The Italian Job (original)
7. Rocky
8. King Kong (2005)
9. Vertigo
10. The Incredibles

And if it wasn’t quite so close to the knuckle Life of Brian would have made it on there.

Sure I’ve forgotten some fairly obvious candidates off there so happy to revise based on what other people have to offer.

I’m gonna have a word with Brian about film when I see him as he has probably seen more films than any person on the planet!

Steve, I am dubious about some of your selection, King Kong 2005 - If ever a set of wooden performances existed; that is it. I will not dispute the empire, genius…

Incidently where were you on Friday? Honing your pancake flipping skills? Fine tuning batter recipes?

Reservoir dogs seems to be so covered in blood I could see no further than red.

Stand by for the film night write up from guest cinematic aficionado Jon Osbourne.

Soon to follow will be an exhaustive list of the next nights viewing potentials which is up for discussion, addition or general input from all.

I will just add that i don’t only just watch chick flicks! I would never get away with that living with matt! And he does really hate them!!!

Sorry couldn’t come on Friday night as I was out drinking pints. Good old fashioned, proper beer, in a glass with a handle…No, it’s no good, I can’t keep this facade up no longer.

I was actually at the Champagne Bar at St. Pancras indulging in a few glasses of bubbly. With a selection of olives to nibble on.

What has Church on the Corner done to me?