Tag: cinema

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Summer is finally here. While many of us still have to keep “adulting” at our day jobs or other responsibilities, it does usually mean a little more time for leisure. The summer blockbuster is one American summer tradition. This year brings us Wonder Woman, Baywatch, The Mummy, Despicable Me 3, Spider-Man: Homecoming, and a number of other big budget, mostly mindless, “good fun” movies. Typically films released over the summer don’t generate much award interest; they’re provided to give our brains a break from the year–to help us relax.

But whether you are going to see a light summer blockbuster or an Oscar-nominated drama over Christmas, when you walk out of a movie, the first question asked by your companions is usually: So what did you think???!

How do you experience this question?
For me, usually my group has barely exited the auditorium when the question comes and I am still trying to readjust my eyes to the blaring fluorescent lights of the theater corridors—let alone figure out how to articulate my thoughts to this question. At that point, somebody else in the group will pipe up with how they feel and then their response usually shapes how the rest of the conversation goes.

If one person walks out exclaiming about how delightful the movie is, the entire group then has to recalibrate their opinion about the movie in relation to that first declared opinion. If you hated the movie, you might hesitate to express that and begin to question your own experience. Or perhaps you might respond with immediate shocked disbelief and a feisty discussion could ensue structured around the two most extreme perspectives.

Of course neither might happen and you might have a perfectly productive conversation, but I started to notice that I had social anxiety about the after-film dynamics. No doubt, this is probably because I am a filmmaker and thus really care about how I process each movie-watching experience.
So instead of feeding the anxiety, I channeled it into contemplating how people think about and talk about their movie experiences.

First, we tend to talk about “liking” or “not liking” a movie, but as Facebook has taught us, the act of “liking” can mean so many different things. What do you really mean when you say you liked Life of Pi? Are you talking about that feeling in your chest when you left the auditorium: the devastation; pure joy; heart-pounding adrenaline; apathy? Or are you trying to express that you thought the filmmakers did a masterful job of storytelling? Or maybe you are simply trying to communicate that you were glad you saw the movie and felt like it was money and time well-spent?

Maybe it is a little of all three?

Rather than trying to make the word “like” encompass all those different meanings, I would recommend we start using a collection of different verbs to talk about our movie experiences. Using a variety of verbs will allow us to speak more specifically about what we mean when we say we “like” a movie. I am going to propose three sets, including my suggestion of how the term “like” should be used, but I’d love to hear if you have other verb suggestions.

1) To Appreciate
This verb choice identifies your recognition of excellent filmmaking.
E.g. “I really appreciated the filmmakers’ use of color in Hero.”
“The performances in The Perks of Being a Wallflower were incredible; they really captured the tone of high school, and I appreciated that about the film.”

2) To Enjoy
This verb choice identifies the level of pleasure you experienced while seeing the film.
E.g. “Mad Max: Fury Road was a blast! I enjoyed every minute of it.”
“Watching Lawrence of Arabia was an exhausting experience; I did not enjoy those three hours.”

3) To Like/To Love
Overall how would you rate this film? This is the hardest verb category to explain: it takes into consideration both how you objectively would rank the film and subjectively how you experienced it. This verb also provides space for moral/ethical judgement. The two verb choices (like/love) reflect the degree of how strong your opinion towards the film is. (Examples below.)

This last verb option builds upon the previous two. Sometimes you will instinctively know that you really liked a movie, but often you will need some time (whether 30 minutes or 3 years) before you decide how you comprehensively feel about that film. This form of “like” is the product of both thoughtful reflection and gut emotional reaction.

Just because you like a film, doesn’t mean you necessarily appreciated or enjoyed it as well. What do I mean by this? Here are some examples to illustrate:

  • “I really appreciated the attentiveness of the filmmakers in Forrest Gump, but I found the film to be tedious and boring. I wouldn’t say I hated it, but I definitely did not like it.”
    • Here the viewer is able to appreciate the film but not enjoy or like it.
  • “Beverly Hills Chihuahua isn’t a great film in terms of story or technical prowess, but I still had a blast watching it because I love talking animals. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I liked the movie, but I certainly didn’t dislike it either!”
    • Here the viewer is able to separate out their enjoyment of the film from their perceived value of the film. In this scenario, the movie could be likened to a ride at an amusement park—good fun and not much else!
  • “Wow, Steven Spielberg really killed it with Schindler’s List. The performances were gut-wrenching, the cinematography was beautiful, and you could tell how intentional the directing was. I had a rough time getting through the full movie because the story was so depressing, but I am glad I watched it. That was a good movie.
    • Here, the viewer is able to appreciate and like the film even as they were not able to enjoy the movie due to the nature of its content. In these scenarios, it can be harder to use the word “like” (it can feel wrong to like a movie about the Holocaust), so other terms like “good” often get used even though they’re also vague.
  • “I think The Fountain is an absolutely stunning movie with incredible performances, and I really enjoyed watching it, but at the end of the day, I had serious concerns with the worldview portrayed and what I perceived as a problematic appropriation of Eastern spirituality.”
    • Here the viewer acknowledges a difference in how they experienced the film and their recognition of its cinematic quality with their personal beliefs about what the film was trying to do. The viewer appreciated and enjoyed it, but ultimately didn’t like it because of what they perceived it was doing.

As you can see, we don’t always actually use the words like/love/appreciate/enjoy when we talk about movies, but those different ideas are built into our conversations.

So to close, here are my tips for your next movie outing:

Social Guidelines for a Positive Post-Cinema Experience
1. Ask the group to wait to leave the theater till the end of the credits, so you have time to process through some of your thoughts and feelings about the film. (And to pay your respects to the many people who helped make the movie!)

2. Pick a public space like a coffee shop or restaurant to go and discuss the film afterwards as a group. Wait till you get there and are settled in with your drink/food orders before opening up the conversation.

3. Before asking if people liked the film, try teasing apart the above categories and discuss if and how each person was able to appreciate and enjoy the film.

4. After a productive conversation, let everyone reflect on how much (at that moment) they liked the film and would rate it. Remember this opinion might change later upon further reflection!

You can also use this process with movie nights at home. At first it might seem awkward and formulaic, but after practice, you’ll find yourself relaxing into a natural way of thinking and talking about movies!

Share your tips for watching movies with friends below, and pass this on to anyone you think might find it helpful! And of course, tell me how you have enjoyed, appreciated, liked, loved, or hated this year’s summer blockbusters.

Featured image captured by: Jake Hills

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I’d hoped to get this post out before the end of January but then life happened, so it was a scramble to watch as many 2016 films as possible, get this written, and also turn in my homework on time. I’m largely happy with the representation of films I saw last year, but if down the road I stumble across something new that captures my heart, I’ll be sure to let y’all know.

Before I start with my own list, every year Letterboxd posts their own Year in Review, complete with stats, quotes, and reflections about last year’s cinematic offerings. Always included is a beautifully edited montage sequence of David Ehrlich’s tribute to his top 25 films of the past year. It’s a great way to remember 2016 and then add some more films to your “to-watch” list.

But finally I bring you my own favorite films of last year and my last reflection list for 2016:

1. Captain Fantastic
While I don’t think this was the “greatest” film of last year, Captain Fantastic was certainly my favorite. Viggo Mortenson plays a father determined to raise his children outside of the reach of society’s rampant materialism, narcissism, and coddling. The children grow up in the wilderness, learning to raise and hunt for their own food, while also studying the humanities and sciences at a university level. The kids are brilliant and self-sufficient, but when they come into contact with their family and others from the “outside”, it’s a serious culture shock. The movie is beautiful, sad, funny, and a profound reflection on life, death, family, and humanity’s constructed ideas about societal norms and expectations. (Also if you happen to be a grad student….there are lots of wonderful nerdy references that will make you laugh a little too hard.)

2. Moonlight
Moonlight is the film that most film critics put at the top of their list and that most agree should have swept the awards this year. In some respects, the film is your typical “coming-of-age” narrative: we watch protagonist Chiron grow into a young man through three key episodes in his life. But the typical ends there. I really have no idea how to describe this film because it is like nothing I have seen before. Josh and I left the theater in awed silence. It is truly a masterpiece. Just go see it.

3. Jackie
I’m going to share the review of Jackie that I posted on Letterboxd here: “Two exhausting, painful and beautiful hours that offer just a glimpse into the lonely burden that was Jackie’s complicated grief. A powerful and historic performance from Natalie Portman, and absolutely brilliant and insightful editing. I’m going to need a few weeks to process this one.”
It’s a few weeks later . . . and I am still processing.

4. Always Shine
I saw Always Shine at the Denver Film Festival last year, and I posted about it then. Here’s what I wrote: “Always Shine is a psychological thriller starring MacKenzie Davis (Halt and Catch Fire) and Caitlin Fitzgerald (Masters of Sex) as best friends whose relationship has recently come under strain. Both women are actresses trying to make it in Hollywood but with unequal success. In order to try to restore their friendship, they plan a weekend retreat in Big Sur; however, the weekend quickly falls apart. 
One might expect a cliché film capitalizing on the tropes of “female friendship drama”; however, the film brilliantly and directly tackles those tropes in the narrative. From the beginning, we see how the women are operating inside a world constructed for them by men, where the lines they speak either on set or in daily life are interpreted and understood from the male perspective. As the tension builds, the viewer quickly realizes that the struggle in the film is not between the female characters but, in fact, between the women and the patriarchy which tries to dictate their story. Takal cleverly plays with the traditional elements of the horror genre, subverting our expectations of the “virginal” and “promiscuous” characters. All this takes place against the perfect backdrop of the creepy but beautiful Big Sur forests and oceanscapes.”

5. Knight of Cups
The final of my top five is Terrence Mallick’s latest piece, which I was lucky enough to see at its Los Angeles Premiere at the Ace Hotel Theater. Knight of Cups in true Mallick tradition is an abstract, visually poetic piece that doesn’t follow a clear-cut narrative but rather draws you into an emotional journey through compelling cinematic landscapes. The backdrop to Knight of Cups is Hollywood and its dysfunction, but it tells a much larger story about the struggles of making art and wrestling with tragedy. If you like your films to fit an understandable structure, this is probably not the film for you, but if you want to try something that will ask you to let go of your preconceived notions about what “cinema” is and just go for a ride, try it out. At any rate, you’ll get to spend the whole time with Christian Bale, which is never time wasted. 😉

Special Mentions:

  • Silence: Martin Scorsese’s exquisite retelling of Shusaku Endo’s famous novel about Jesuit missionaries venturing into a feudal Japan determined to eradicate Christianity from the land. It’s complicated, painful, heart-breaking, and insightful. Not an easy one to watch, but one that should be watched. This is easily one of his greatest films.
  • The Lobster: This is a dark comedy starring Colin Farrell and Rachel Weisz about a dystopian world where everyone is required to have a romantic partner. If you end up single, you get sent to this hotel to try make a match. If you fail, you get turned into the animal of your choice to try again for a match in the animal kingdom. Quirky, weird, and wonderful.
  • Rogue One: I can’t finish this list without a nod to the marvelous new Star Wars story, featuring my favorite actress Felicity Jones as Jyn Erso, a hero of the resistance. It was an amazing addition to the Star Wars canon, greatly enriching the narrative of Episode 4: A New Hope.

What were your favorite films? Shocked something didn’t make my list? Think I may have missed a fantastic film from 2016? Let me know in the comments and as always be sure to subscribe!

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For my job, I am currently gathering research on US high schools that provide opportunities for their students to study film theory and/or learn film production skills. This research entails hours of navigating through (usually poorly designed) websites, trying to find a course catalogue or extracurricular activities page. When those resources do exist, my next task is to determine how that particular school classifies film as a subject. The typical categorizations include “technology/computer skills”, “practical skills”, occasionally “the arts”, or typically the nebulous “other”. Very seldom do I see film considered alongside the other traditional fine arts, let alone within an arts classification at all. Visual arts (drawing, painting, ceramics), music, dance, and theater occupy this realm but usually film is not included.

If you take a look at the Webster’s dictionary, you’ll see 3 definitions of fine art:
1a) Art concerned primarily with the creation of beautiful objects–usually used in plural.
1b) Objects of fine art.
2) An activity requiring a fine skill.
Like the term art itself, fine arts leaves much up to individual interpretation, but the narrative which excludes film from the fine art world does exist in a larger cultural context.

Film was invented at the end of the 19th century, but it really came into its own during the beginning of the 20th century, paralleling the rise of modernism. Among many other things, modernity emphasized the notion of a mass culture, distinguished from that of a high culture. Raymond Williams writes, “Masses is the modern word for many-headed multitude or mob: low, ignorant, unstable” and he later notes that “mass market was contrasted with quality market” (195). Thus fine art became associated with high culture, the upper class, and the idea of quality creative work, while popular entertainment was associated with the “sheep-like” masses. This binary has resulted in many a controversy over how various creative products are classified. For instance, science fiction has traditionally been labeled as popular entertainment and denied the label of literature. In a similar fashion, film was dropped into the mass culture bucket and has largely stayed there, despite the fact that today one can receive a Master of Fine Arts in Film Production.

The original classification of film likely has much to do with cinema’s original construction. In its early years, movies primarily captured everyday activities such as workers leaving a factory or a couple kissing. 

Though modern film seems to be an evolution of the theater, early 20th century audiences didn’t see cinema that way. Rather people went to see moving pictures to marvel at their novelty . . . to ooh and aah over technology’s progress. Films were likened to carnivals, what Tom Gunn describes as “the cinema of attractions”. It took time for filmmakers to get comfortable with the medium and for film to develop into what we see today. Even now, cinema continues to evolve as it is influenced by other media such as the Internet, television, and video games.

Today, however, it’s easier to see that film can and should be regarded as an incredible collaboration between the traditional fine arts–literature (screenplay), theater (acting), visual arts (production design), photography (cinematography), music (score/soundtrack), along with the various other elements of graphic, visual, and sound effects. But even then, as with most art forms, film manifests itself both as fine art and as popular entertainment. The most simplistic form of differentiating between the two is typically considering the role of money: creative productions for profit tend to be considered as entertainment or pop culture rather than fine art. But indeed, the line between fine art and mass entertainment is blurry. Fine art demands a profit for sustainability, and who is to say that a movie or song that appeals to the “masses” is not artistically masterful?

Ultimately, the binary of fine art versus popular entertainment is inherently problematic, drawing a distinction that imposes socio-economic classifications onto creative works. That raises the larger questions of how then should we differentiate between good and bad art or maybe even more basically, what is art itself . . . both questions I’m not even going to try tackle here. Instead I’ll conclude with this: though these classifications are problematic, they are still utilized frequently as I have noted during my research of high schools. While they exist, it’s valuable to remind our educators that while film may have initially been merely spectacle, today it fully deserves a place within the ring of fine art. In fact, it is probably the most influential of all contemporary practices of fine art.

Works Cited:
Gunn, Tom. “The Cinema of Attractions: Early Film, Its Spectator and the Avant-Garde”, Wide Angle, Vol. 8, nos. 3 & 4 Fall, 1986.
Williams, Raymond. Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. New York: Oxford UP, 1985. Print.

A Note:
My intention is to publish a new post every Tuesday or Wednesday. I’m a bit late this week because I’ve been traveling back from Europe and battling jet lag. Hopefully this post makes some coherent sense.

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