a) There's literally no reason why anyone should care
b) A lot of these films I've either not seen in ages or - worse - never seen ever, despite owning for years
c) A film collection is a constantly shifting thing. There's already stuff in "A" that wasn't there when I started this.
d) I'm so lazy, there's no way I'll get to Z before I die.
But here we are anyway.
The Beyond
This is a super weird Italian horror film from the early 80s. That's my absolute favourite period for horror, and this film exemplifies exactly why.
It's batshit crazy, with a plot that makes zero sense, but it's so visually compelling and furiously inventive that you simply don't care. The imagery has this kind of austere bleakness: part art film, part documentary. The early 80s didn't seem to care where 'horror' fit in with the other genres. It just played by itself, doing its own macabre things.
As a result, it ends up having a sense of both absolute silliness and pervasive dread. Amazing.
The Bicycle Thieves
Well I hope you enjoyed all the things I had to say about that last film, because we're about to go through a phase of "I literally can't remember anything".
I watched this so that I could show it to some film students and say, "How would you like to study Italian neo-realism, everyone?" Their answer was silent, but definitive. They would not like to watch any more films like this, thank you, and god damn me for even considering it.
I was secretly quite glad. I didn't really enjoy myself watching this, and had my students liked it, I would have had to buy loads more films like it, with their total lack of spaceships or zombies, and they would sit on my shelves to this day, silently judging me.
The films, not the students.
No, I haven't watched it since. Why do I keep it? Because.. I don't know. It's art or something?
Big Night
Haven't watched it. Bought it because it was cheap. It looks good, and I'm sure I'd love it.
I pick it up occasionally, and think, "Yeah - I should watch this. I bet it would be fun."
But then I don't. Why don't I? Have I been subjected to some kind of hypnosis? It's the only possible explanation.
The Big Sleep
Film Noir is, I'm afraid, always going to be a historical period for me, more than a genre. It's films are documents of time, not things to be enjoyed in their own right.
I envy those who do enjoy them, and I can see why they are attractive. But I've never been able to emotionally engage with them. It's like jazz. I'd like to be one of those people who love it. But it looks like a lot of work to get to the point where it starts being fun.
Last time I tried to watch this I genuinely fell asleep. I feel sleepy thinking about it. It's the word 'sleep'. It's an excellent word, which really carries the essence of its meaning. Don't call films "Sleep" if you want me to stay awake during them.
Big Fish
I haven't watched this for a while. I seem to remember it being a perfectly enjoyable and visually pleasing piece of work. Is it Tim Burton? I'm going to go and check. You stay there. Don't do anything weird in front of Ewan.
It is Tim Burton. I had a feeling it was, but then another part of my brain kept saying, "How can it be? It's good."
He used to be good, didn't he, Tim Burton? Before he filled his veins with sticky, sweet CGI and became obsessed with putting Johnny Depp in an increasingly bizarre series of hats.
Billy Elliot
You'll be relieved and delighted to find that I've watched this quite recently. And I can report that I found it "good".
Looking back now, it seems like part of a mini genre, that sprang up around the mid to late 90s. Full Monty, Brassed Off, that kind of thing. Working class, socially active cinema that managed the neat trick of having some mainstream quirk without selling out its ideals.
The 'miners on strike' edge of it seems more sad than angry, and I found more relevance this time in the sexual politics of the thing. For the most part, the challenging of gender roles is done really well, and with some subtlety. It did stick out a bit that they gave him a camp, gay best friend, to point out how not camp and gay Billy was. But otherwise, pretty nuanced, and full of heart.
The Birds
It's been a while since I saw The Birds. I think every time I consider watching it, I just go, "Well, why watch that, when I could watch Psycho?" And so I watch Psycho.
I know. You can watch more than one thing. And I promise I'll get onto it. I can't remember most of the plot. Surely there's more to it than people going, "Oooh, that's quite a number of birds, isn't it? More than usual. Gosh, what a lot of birds!" and then being eaten.
Doesn't it end with them just driving off, slowly, so that the birds don't see them? That's the sort of ending you write when you've run out of time to finish your homework.
The Birth of a Nation
I've never made it all the way through this film. But it's not like all those others I've not seen, where I was just too lazy, or tired, or got distracted by computer games. No. This film offers many compelling reasons to leave it unfinished, namely:
i) It is nearly 3 hours long. No film is meant to be that long. 90 minutes is ideal, and I'll allow 2 hours before I start looking at my non existent watch, and coughing loudly.
ii) It is in black and white, and silent. Which means I get distracted and start doing my own dialogue. This entertains me, but does tend to mean I lose track of what's actually going on.
iii) It is super racist. It was made in olden times, when you could just be openly racist in films and everyone had to say, "Well, this seems fine." It is not fine.
Black Dynamite
I like the fact that this film lives next to The Birth of a Nation on the shelf. It's like a sitcom about a really racist DVD who finds that a black couple have moved in next door.
This is a film bought for me by my friend Andy, who is constantly trying to get me to look at new and interesting things, and stop just watching Total Recall again. I resisted for ages, until he became furious and demanded I watch it with him.
He was right and it's very good and funny.
Black Hawk Down
To my recollection, this is just a film about a helicopter crashing, and then everyone getting shot at for about two hours. I don't think anything else happens. It might be based on a true story, but that's not really an excuse for just hitting me with noise and editing for ages.
I think it might be trying to create sensation, rather than develop plot. You know, making me feel what it was like. Well, yes, if that's the case, well done. I did feel trapped and sad and assaulted. But I don't think my suffering really compared to that of any actual soldier, and I was mostly bored.
Chris Nolan's Dunkirk tried a similar thing. I cunningly did not buy it, having learned my lesson here.
The Black Hole
Now we're talking!
The Black Hole is very odd. It is, in almost every sense, a kids Disney space film, with cute robots and exciting space battles. That's why I went to see it in 1980 and I very much imagine it came into being entirely as a way to grab the attention of Star Wars obsessed child geeks like myself.
However. While it is all of the above, it is also, somehow, a trippy, existential journey into the screaming void of madness. It's like Event Horizon for kids, or Heart of Darkness with lasers. A madman commands a ghostly space hulk, manned by living corpses! A man is torn apart by spinning knives! They get sucked into hell, possibly!
It's amazing, and a bit rubbish, and beautiful. I had all the toys, and loved making them fight, but I was also drawn to the sheer darkness of a film where the heroes struggle against the terrible pull of the universe itself, and fail.
BlackKKlansman
This is a super great film and I was very much in love with it when I saw it. Did it win the Oscar? I bet it didn't. It's too good. I've not seen much Spike Lee, and that's something I need to rectify.
I very much liked how brazen the politics were. At first you think, "Oh, this is a clever, de-contextualised way of discussing the issues of race that have come to the fore under the Trump administration". Then the film says, "I am talking about Trump! Donald Trump. He is racist! I mostly mean him! Trumpy Trumpy Racisty Trump!"
I feel very woke for liking it, obviously, but am also consumed with fear that I have accidentally transposed the photo for this with the one for Black Dynamite, and that I am secretly racist.
Black Panther
A film I've watched very recently, as part of a full Marvel watch-through. Yes, that's what I do when I should be watching Big Night and educating myself in Film Noir and Italian Neo-Realism. I watch superheroes hitting each other.
Well I've no defence, really. I like 'em. And this most recent viewing of Black Panther came, as chance would have it, on the day that Chadwick Boseman - the eponymous King Cat himself - passed away. This had the unavoidable effect of making the whole thing much more poignant.
It's hard to know if things like this should be disassociated from a film or not. A film should stand on its own, really. Black Panther was already in an impossible place in that regard, of course, bearing as it did the weight of First Black Superhero Movie (even if it wasn't, really). It is a really good film, but it will never be just a film. Certainly not now its young and beloved star died so young.
We're kidding ourselves, of course, if we think any film can be divorced from its context. And I'm impressed with Black Panther for grasping the horns so comprehensively, and going "I am about race and the historical context of identity! Deal with it!" I just feel like I'll never quite *see* this film.
Black Sheep
I can't remember if it's any good. I've seen it once, quite some time ago, and I seem to remember liking it. But then I get very giddy about zombies, so am not necessarily the best judge of quality in this regard.
Black Swan
One of those films that I will watch only very occasionally, but very much appreciate every time I get down to it. It's a very peculiar tasting film. Bitter, and with flavours that don't seem to go together. Like if someone put garlic on a Curly Wurly.
This is a very powerful and scary piece of work, that makes great use of the medium to play games with your brain. It's quite a trick to make you unsure what you just saw, but still invested in the outcomes.
It's about ballet, but otherwise good.
Blade Runner
When I first saw Blade Runner I did not like it.
Same for the second, third and fourth times. Did. Not. Like. But, somehow, I knew I was wrong. That's weird, isn't it? Most of the time when I dislike a film I'm in no doubt about who is to blame. It's the stupid useless film's fault for being boring or too long or suggesting there's going to be nudity and then not having any.
But even at 14 or thereabouts, I sensed that Blade Runner was good, and I was dumb.
In my defence, it was widely advertised as "That guy who plays Han Solo and Indiana Jones chases robots in flying cars!" Which doesn't really prepare a young man for the ponderous arty concoction of owls eyes, enhanced photos and a villain who is defeated when he decides to give up, sit down and ramble on about the Shoulder of Orion.
It's a film that grows in stature every time I see it, and I love it very much. Well done young me for persevering.
Blade Runner 2049
A film that breaks many rules. It's really long, but it earns its length. It's a belated sequel to an outright classic, but it manages to build on the original without cheapening what made it work. It stars Jared Leto but it isn't a horrible stupid test of your patience and will to live.
I'm a big fan of this film for many reasons. The colours. The humour. Ryan Gosling's adorable little jump when he's surprised. What I like best, though, it the way it skilfully subverts audience expectations and deconstructs the kind of hero myths that we take for granted, but probably shouldn't.
The Blues Brothers
Finally, for this little run, is another film I used to watch a lot as a child.
We must have recorded this off the TV, onto the family Betamax. I watched it endlessly. It's one of those films that's not-very-good-really, for lots of reasons, but also perfect, for exactly the same reasons. I get the feeling it's not very beloved these days, probably due to endless annoying people quoting the lines, and also middle aged men dressing up and doing bad covers of the songs.
Plus it's not really a film, but an exercise in showing off famous people in little set pieces. I still don't quite get the genre of "Look, it's people from Saturday Night Live - are you not entertained?" It seems a bit self satisfied.
As a kid, though, none of that mattered. I didn't know who these comedians were. I didn't really know that the musicians were famous, either, or that I was meant to be impressed just by them being there. And I certainly didn't care about structure. It was just a cool film about lots of funny things happening to some guys.
Wouldn't it be nice just to see a film, and enjoy it without context?
Well, that's it. Thanks for sticking with me through this nonsense. See you next time, if you can stand more.
