Films which you've never seen and really ought to have by now

[non capisco]

I've had 'The Diving Bell and The Butterfly' sitting unwatched on my hard drive for what must be three years now. I know I'll probably like it but I've never been in the mood for watching a film about someone who can only communciate by moving an eyelid, there's always been something else I feel compelled to watch first. It's built up its own formidable reputation in my mind as some great unwatched challenge, sitting there year in year out in the 'movies' folder where even shit like the A-Team remake gets absorbed and thrown in 'trash'. It's like when I procrastinated over watching a mate's box set of The Wire and ended up dreaming that it starred my nan and Bernie Clifton. Well, if I'm going to have a new year's resolution it might as well be that I watch 'The Diving Bell and The Butterfly' hungover on 1st Jan. _{i probably still won't.}

[HappyTree]

The Shawshank Redemption is a good example of the kind of "ought to" I meant.

It was loved by so many people and regularly voted as best film. I hadn't seen it so I felt I should, to see what the fuss was about. I wasn't forcing myself at gunpoint, but neither was I particularly champing at the bit. I just thought I might as well see it because I might enjoy it, it didn't seem to be one of the crappy films in life and I'd get to see why so many people rated it highly.

So I watched it and, well, it wasn't rubbish. It wasn't brilliant either. It was one of life's "meh" films. Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman were ok, not spectacular, and it seemed to drag on a bit. The best I can say about it is it passed the time.

So, mission accomplished. I still have no idea why so many people think it's so good but at least I can engage them in conversation about it from personal knowledge. I far preferred Escape from Alcatraz.

[Dead kate moss]

The Shawshank Redemption is the most overrated film ever. Fact.

[HappyTree]

Would you care to hazard a guess as to why? I mean, there must be a reason. Is it just a kind of Emperor's New Clothes scenario? Did someone important declare it to be great first, then the sheeple followed? I can't see anything in it that anyone could say was fantastic. It was okay. A Sunday afternoon kind of a film before your mum comes in and demands to switch over to watch The Antiques Roadshow. God I have nightmares about its theme music.

[Dead kate moss]

I think it was a bit of a sleeper hit, not doing well on first release. Then people with middle-brow taste decided to champion it. It's mawkish in places too, so that helps I suppose.

[El Unicornio, mang]

I don't think it's overrated at all. I've seen it about 6-7 times and always find it very enjoyable, and massively uplifting.

[Tiny Poster]

The worst thing about The Shawshank Redemption is that we're now supposed to think Frank Darabont is any good.

[Icehaven]

The Big Lebowski. I've been told by about forty thousand people that I'd love it, I really like a number of the Coen's other films and every review I've read of it makes it sound brilliant and just the sort of film I'd enjoy, but unfortunately we're like ships that pass in the night. I had it from lovefilm but ended up sending it back before I watched it, and I've almost caught it on TV a few times but I always seem to turn on halfway through or near the end. People go on about it so much that I know quite a bit about it, so sometimes I actually forget I haven't seen it. I will watch it eventually and it will inevitably be an anticlimax. 

[Dark Sky]

I think your brain needs to be wired in a particular way to enjoy Coen Brothers comedies. 

The Big Lebowski...I just don't get it.  I don't understand it, or why it's funny, or anything. 

I admire their originality and personality and distinct style, but I don't get them.  I don't enjoy them.

So saying, I do love Fargo and No Country For Old Men.

[vrailaine]

I don't like Lebowski at all, love Bridges, goodman and buscemi, usually like Corn Bros humour, but it all falls flat. Feels like one of those things where loadsa people decide they're gonna like it before watching it cos it sounds like it'll be great.

[ThickAndCreamy]

I don't like Lebowski at all, love Bridges, goodman and buscemi, usually like Corn Bros humour, but it all falls flat. Feels like one of those things where loadsa people decide they're gonna like it before watching it cos it sounds like it'll be great.

Agreed.

I've seen it three times now, and not once have I ever found it very funny or a great film. However, nearly all of the Coen brothers movies I've seen have left me cold. Barton Fink is a notable exception, as I thoroughly enjoyed it.

[Steve Lampkins]

I watched Gone With The Wind, and it seemed like a parody... it's so well known and has been referenced so much, that you feel like you know the film as you watch it.

[alcoholic messiah]

Citizen Kane has been previously mentioned, and whilst it's a pretty decent film in its own right, its significance increases greatly when viewed in the context of what came before it. There are so many filmic techniques which we take for granted now that were pioneered in Kane. Its lasting reputation is in part a remnant of the leap in cinematic vocabulary that it represented. Of course, it's almost impossible for anyone born after the end of the black and white era to experience that same thrill now.

Nicked from here:

More importantly, the innovative, bold film is an acknowledged milestone in the development of cinematic technique, although it 'shared' some of its techniques from Hitchcock's Rebecca (1940) and other earlier films. It uses film as an art form to energetically communicate and display a non-static view of life. Its components brought together the following aspects:

• use of a subjective camera
• unconventional lighting, including chiaroscuro, backlighting and high-contrast lighting, prefiguring the darkness and low-key lighting of future film noirs
• inventive use of shadows and strange camera angles, following in the tradition of German Expressionists
• deep-focus shots with incredible depth-of field and focus from extreme foreground to extreme background (also found in Toland's earlier work in Dead End (1937), John Ford's The Long Voyage Home (1940), and Hitchcock's Rebecca (1940)) that emphasize mise-en-scene; also in-camera matte shots
• low-angled shots revealing ceilings in sets (a technique possibly borrowed from John Ford's Stagecoach (1939) which Welles screened numerous times)
• sparse use of revealing facial close-ups
• elaborate camera movements
• over-lapping, talk-over dialogue (exhibited earlier in Howard Hawks' His Girl Friday (1940)) and layered sound
• the sound technique termed "lightning-mix" in which a complex montage sequence is linked by related sounds
• a cast of characters that ages throughout the film
• flashbacks, flashforwards and non-linear story-telling (used in earlier films, including another rags-to-riches tale starring Spencer Tracy titled The Power and the Glory (1933) with a screenplay by Preston Sturges, and RKO's A Man to Remember (1938) from director Garson Kanin and screenwriter Dalton Trumbo)
• the frequent use of transitionary dissolves or curtain wipes, as in the scene in which the camera ascended in the opera house into the rafters to show the workmen's disapproval of Mrs. Kane's operatic performance; also the famous 'breakfast' montage scene illustrating the disintegration of Kane's marriage in a brief time
• long, uninterrupted shots or lengthy takes of sequences

[Harpo Speaks]

I really mean to rewatch Lebowski, as while I liked it, I was rather disappointed by it, something I largely put down to me hearing about how great it was prior to seeing it. That said there's plenty of 'classic' comedy films that I get round to and find I'm not laughing as much as I would have expected, or in some cases, not laughing at all. It's a very difficult genre.

I love a lot of the Coen's films, but wouldn't put BL up there with my favourites of theirs as it stands.

[Johnny Townmouse]

Citizen Kane has been previously mentioned, and whilst it's a pretty decent film in its own right, its significance increases greatly when viewed in the context of what came before it.

Context is everything when it comes to Citizen Kane. Context, because it is extremely difficult for us now to truly understand how innovative and ambitious the film was at the time. And context, because it now carries the heavy baggage of being the greatest film ever made, evoking issues of 'expectation' - a issue of reception for which I have considered starting a thread. It is an amazing film, and that neat little list barely scratches the surface of why it is truly great.

[Smeraldina Rima]

Still not watched Tampopo, with the egg yolk orgasm. I will though.

[The Boston Crab]

Just looked that up because it reminded me of a marvellous Japanese grot flick I once saw. That film sounds wonderful. Acquiring it as we speak.

[HappyTree]

Fargo is the only Coen Bros I've liked. Big Lebowski was ok I guess, but the rest of the Coen Bros is boring. I hated Blood Simple so much I couldn't even keep looking at the cinema screen. Only reason I didn't walk out was I was with other people.

[quadraspazzed]

From 'The Pile':

Blood Simple
Lolita
Control
Hunger
There Will Be Blood
The Departed
What's Eating Gilbert Grape?
Moon
Chinatown
The Big Heat
The Naked City
Blood On Satan's Claw
Night of the Hunter
Teeth
The Devils' Backbone
Pan's Labyrinth
Mesrine
A Prophet
Che
Der Baader-Meinhof Komplex
Divine Intervention
A bunch of Kurosawa's
A bunch of Ken Loach's
A Jimmy Cagney box set
A James Stewart box set
Dr Parnassus
Tideland (tried once, fell asleep - not a reflection on the film)
Big Fish

I should really just stop buying/downloading films and just watch what I have!

EDIT: On the plus side, I did get around to watching Bad Santa and Black Death last night, both of which weren't bad, but not amazing either.

[alcoholic messiah]

Still not watched Tampopo, with the egg yolk orgasm. I will though.

Tampopo is fucking ace! Having not seen it in about 20 years, I tracked down a cheeky copy a few months ago, and was pleased to find that my fond memories of it were fully justified, and hadn't been artificially inflated by the passage of time.

What's not to like about a film that tells the story of a zen cowboy trucker guiding a widow as she attempts to create the ultimate fast-food noodle experience, with added sexy food scene cutaway broth?

[HappyTree]

I haven't seen The World According to Garp. Should I? I once almost went out with a girl whose favourite film was this. On reading a synopsis of it perhaps I had a lucky escape!

[SavageHedgehog]

It's OK, not essential viewing by any means.

[Marty McFly]

I really mean to rewatch Lebowski, as while I liked it, I was rather disappointed by it, something I largely put down to me hearing about how great it was prior to seeing it. That said there's plenty of 'classic' comedy films that I get round to and find I'm not laughing as much as I would have expected, or in some cases, not laughing at all. It's a very difficult genre.

I love a lot of the Coen's films, but wouldn't put BL up there with my favourites of theirs as it stands.

I think it takes a few viewings - two, at least - for someone to really 'get' The Big Lebowski. It's one of those films where you pick up on the little things on repeated viewings, and it's those things that make it.. the Seinfeld-like circular dialogue, especially, I didn't notice until I'd seen it twice.

[rjd2]

Blue Velvet. Any good?

[Marty McFly]

If you like Dennis Hopper huffing laughing gas and raping Isabella Rossellini, then yes

[Johnny Townmouse]

Blue Velvet. Any good?

Kyle MacLachlan and Laura Dern are awful - Hopper, Rossellini and Stockwell are fucking great. A fantastically unpleasant film that has moments of cinematic brilliance. I adore the opening few minutes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nM975_Ld9S0

[uncle_rico]

It's a Wonderful Life... even though I bought the Blu-Ray about a month ago and promissed myself I'd watch it before Christmas...

It's New Year's Eve and I still haven't seen it.

[lipsink]

From 'The Pile':

Blood Simple
Hunger
There Will Be Blood
Moon
Chinatown
Night of the Hunter
Teeth

I love all these. You're in for a treat!

[Groodle]

I've only seen two films by Tarkovsky despite liking them very much. Same with Buñuel. Similarly seen few of Kurosawa, Ozu, Renoir. Although I've viewed a number of films by Orson Welles I've never seen Citizen Kane.

I have no desire to watch certain movies everyone else seems to have seen - Avatar, for instance. A lot of well-liked movies like that I tend to only end up watching if I'm visiting a friend or similar situations.

[Glebe]

I consider myself a movie buff, but there are tons of famous and much-lauded films I've never seen... including Citizen Kane. The only Kurosawa film I've seen is Rashomon, which impressed - I've had Ran sitting on a DVD/Blu-ray pile unwatched for yonks. Not to mention Metropolis and Battleship Potemkin (both free with papers), which (like Metropolis) is getting a restored re-release soon. Alongside those I'd say - off the top of my head - Eraserhead, The Conversion, M, Bicycle Thieves, Wild Strawberries, Schindler's List, The Third Man, Touch Of Evil, Chungking Express, Nausicaa Of The Valley Of The Wind... the list could go on and on and on. There are a lot of big, popular movies (Braveheart, for example) that personally I couldn't be too bothered with, but almost feel I need to see as an all-round 'film fan'. RE: Big Lebowski, I know it has a big, cliquey following, but I do really like it... it's funny, inventive and irreverent.