Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Greatness Barometers

Taxi Driver is the most critically acclaimed movie we've picked so far.  It's universally regarded as a capital-G Great movie.  My question for you guys is how you decide what falls into that category.  Is a great movie great because you personally love it, or does critical validation inform part of that classification?

I do think about that kind of thing a lot.  For me, the number one authority on Great movies is Sight and Sound magazine's once-a-decade list.  Critics vote on a list of 250 movies, and directors vote on a list of 100.  FYI, Taxi Driver is #5 on the director's list and #31 on the critic's list.  The film snob in me plans on watching most of the stuff on that list, though I'm sure a lot of it is pretty impenetrable.

Metacritic is also a pretty solid barometer for Great movies.  The top ten rated films for any given year are surprisingly accurate IMO, compared to Rotten Tomatoes which is not the case.  Reliable film critics and their top ten lists.  A lot of sites did best of the decade lists in 2009 that I've pored through.

Award nominations have gotten better in recent years, but the actual winners rarely hold up.  AFI's lists are not reliable either, for me.

What do you guys think?  I might be a film snob, but The Bicycle Thief was pretty great.

6 comments:

  1. Kissel, did you hear about The Bicycle Thief on the podcast Bald Bryan does? They love that movie too, and it's the only other place I've ever heard of it. Looking at a lot of what you've watched gives me the impression you're a listener.

    As for movie greatness, I actually don't pay a lot of attention to actual lists. I go more by hearsay. If I hear an older movie talked about a lot in random places, I'm going to assume it's pretty good. Older movies are a big blindspot for me in general, so this should be a fun one for me personally.

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  2. Rotten Tomatoes ranking is a little off based on how the number is created. If 10 out of 10 critics say it's a B they will give it 100% because everyone liked it. But if 5 say A+ and 5 say C- it's 50%. They should have 2 sets of ratings for the tomatometer- both what percentage liked it and what is the GPA.

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  3. I use ratings to determine what to watch or rent, but it's no measure of greatness. Chel and I tend to think that many award nominated movies are terrible. Gravity comes to mind pretty quickly.

    Much like video games, I think critics tend to huddle together in their thoughts and opinions. Is there a site which can match my ratings to a critic's ratings?

    My very short measure of greatness is whether I'd watch it again and whether I'd buy it. The whole buy it part probably needs to go now that streaming is so readily available. Maybe I'll switch that to watch again and watch it without doing something else. When I watch Game of Thrones and Parks and Rec I stop everything I'm doing and watch. The Goldbergs is approaching that level and Michael Scott in The Office were that way because I didn't want to miss anything.

    That being said, Taxi Driver hooked me from the beginning. The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly was close but I'd get so bored 3/4 of the way through each scene.

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  4. But to answer your question, I absolutely have to like it to consider it great but I also have to think it carries some kind of significance- whether that means historical significance or something that feels groundbreaking in that we havent seen something like this before or even something that is familiar but is so perfectly made that it stand out against its peers

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  5. Lists are basically the only way for me to find older classic movies. I sat down and put together my all-time top 50 a couple months ago, and about 50% of it is from the last 15 years, so it's pretty heavily informed by recent releases. Gotta broaden that shit out.

    I heard about the Bicycle Thief from a podcast but not the one you mention. Filmspotting, yo. Good stuff there.

    The number one movie on the Sight and Sound Critic's List is Vertigo, which I thought was fine. I don't really get what was so great about it, so yeah, just universal acclaim isn't enough. I also have to really like it for it to be great.

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