A Passion Project: Movies and Me

What this is all about

First of all, I just want to tell you that this blog isn’t for you. Sure, I’m excited that you are reading it, and however you ended up finding it, awesome, but this is a project for me. Now you are probably curious about a lot of things, and trust me, we’ll get into a lot of them, but one of them is probably, “who is this random guy, and why is he writing a blog about movies?” That is a totally fair question, and yes, I am just a random guy, but I think that is part of the appeal of this crazy expedition I am taking on here. You see, film is one of those areas of life where it feels like there is a complete separation between what is “popular” and what is considered “good.” Just watch any of the various awards shows that come in the first couple months of the year, and you will understand my point. Normal guys don’t decide what movies are “good,” and that’s what I’m hoping to change. 

For a long time, I’ve watched and enjoyed movies. I have even watched and enjoyed movies that compete for some of these uppity awards that nobody seems to understand. I have also watched movies that I thought were awesome, just to find out that they are considered “bad” by people who “know better.” So, that leads me to my little project here. I want to watch some of the greatest films of all time in order to gain a better understanding of what film critics are looking for, and to see if any of these great films are actually “good” movies. 

So, with that said, I had to pick which great films I was going to watch, and honestly, this is really how this whole idea came along in the first place. The American Film Institute released its (first) list of 100 greatest American movies to celebrate 100 years of film in 1998. Now, it is important to note that this was the first list, because they released a 10 year anniversary version of the same list, to update it with some more current releases, and to remove some…we’ll call them problems (much more on this later). The even more interesting thing is how much the AFI itself tries to direct people to the updated version as its real list. The first hit on Google is the updated list. When you do follow the link to the original list, you get a pop up trying to redirect you to the updated list. You may be wondering, “why not just use the updated list?” and to that I say, no way. As of the time I’m writing this, we are coming up on 25 years since the original list was produced, and I want to see just how this list holds up 25 years later to the average, everyday movie viewer who can now watch all 100 of these movies without leaving their house.

How I’m Judging

You may not believe this, but I am neither a writer nor a movie critic by day. My normal job is as a high school English teacher. As you may imagine, I grade a lot of essays. You also might imagine that this is not a very fun thing to do. Since it is not a fun thing to do, I try to make my life easier by using rubrics to score different parts of the essay to give myself a standardized way of giving fair grades. This seems to work out pretty well for me in my normal job, so I thought I’d do something similar for this little project, and create a little 10 point rubric that will help me “rate” each movie out of ten. I broke this rubric into five separate parts, with each section being worth two points. As you’ll see, these are by no means tied to anything that an actual film critic would consider, but this is a list for normal people.

1. Entertainment Value

This one is pretty easy to explain. I’m going to basically give between zero and two points to each of these movies based on how entertaining they are, based entirely on my taste. I will also take into consideration if there is just a killer acting performance, because that usually at least makes the movie watchable. (This list is filled with some of the absolute best acting performances of all time, so I want to make sure I have a place to talk about those when they come up.)

2. Correctness Score

Just by looking down this list with the basic understanding of the history of film that I possess, there are some movies on here that I’m honestly nervous to watch because I’m afraid that just by watching them I’ll get canceled. Writing about some of these will be more difficult than watching them, but here’s my place to go off on some of the racist trash that people used to think was ok. Basically, a movie will get a score of 2 here if there is nothing problematic about it from a 21st century lens, and a score of zero if I catch anything at all that is racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist, or just in poor taste. I know there are films where addressing these issues is part of the theme of the movie, but that’s not what this category is for. This is for the literal KKK propaganda that I will have to watch to complete the viewing of every movie on this list. (Yeah, we’ll get to that).

3. Influence Score

Just as there are films on this list that the makers of the list are trying to walk back their approval of, there are movies here that literally started franchises that are still cranking out stuff to this day. There are also other ways a movie can be influential, and I’ll be addressing that on a film by film basis.

4. Rewatchability Score

One of my favorite podcasts, and one of the ways I get introduced to cool older movies is The Ringer’s “The Rewatchables” podcast. Basically, they just talk about movies that you can go back to again and again, and it’s generally a pretty fun listen. I wanted to pay homage to that in this category where I’ll simply rate a movie based on how likely I am to watch it again (and again).

5. Technical Score

Again, I’m no movie expert. I didn’t go to film school. My experience with this stuff is basically limited to an understanding film course and a critical theory course I took in undergrad. So I’m probably not the person to talk about the intricacies of the craft of movie making. But, I do know when stuff looks cool, or sounds cool, or if the music just works perfectly for the moment. This is my chance to try and talk about those moments, even if I’m not the right person for it. 

“Ok, cool, so when do we get to actually read about movies?”

Here’s my plan: every Sunday from now until the post about Citizen Kane (which is number 1, spoiler alert) I will be posting my reviews of each movie on the list, starting with the 100th film, Yankee Doodle Dandy.

If this is something you are interested in, great! Please subscribe so you are on top of each review as they come out (plus any other writing I decide to put on here). If you aren’t interested, that’s fine, but please subscribe anyway because you like me, it would mean a lot.

Hasta luego,

Josh

Next up: #100 Yankee Doodle Dandy