Top 5 Just Becauses- The Movie Edition

Raptor here.

5. Just because a Movie is French/Foreign, doesn’t mean its good:

Let’s start this off by saying I went to film school. I got my degree in RTF from the University of Texas. While there I came across many people, professors and students alike, who hated all things American and absolutely jizzed at the thought of yet another French Nouvelle. That’s all well in good if you have a good base in French or whatever language you’re watching or you get a copy of something with subtitles or (gasp) subtitles. But no many of these people took it to a ridiculous level of pretention.

I had one professor who made us watch and interview with a French director…in French…with no subtitles. Even this could have been ok had said professor known French. Alas, he did not and we were left with, “What I think he’s saying here is The sugar cube represents life and the coffee soaking into it and eventually sinking is representative of loss and how it overwhelms us all…” The director could have been saying anything. “Something like I put this shot in here to fuck with people. There is no significance to the shot, and I just wanted to fuck with pretentious assholes to see if they’d make up some bullshit metaphor.” Or , “The sugar cube represents your brain, and the coffee absorbing and sinking it represents the bullshit being fed to you that will ultimately make you a cynical barista at Starbucks.”

4. Just because I don’t like it, doesn’t mean I don’t get it.

Back to said professor. Unfortunately I made a mistake in that class by pointing out I didn’t like Breathless. I don’t. It might be groundbreaking. Sometimes I don’t like things purely to be contrarian, but I just didn’t like the movie. It was slow, full of 2D characters, stilted dialogue and failed to entertain.

His response is, “You just don’t get it.” Fuck you.

What’s not to get? The bad Humphrey Boggart homage? The fact that the girlfriend turns him in when she finds out he’s wanted for killing a police officer? The jump cuts? Oh I get it. It just fucking sucks.

Other things I apparently don’t get: Jackson Pollock, Carlos Mencia, and grape soda

3. Just because your movie is different from everything else before it, doesn’t mean it’s good.

Another big thing amongst the cinema bourgeoisie is the common misconception that different is good. In general I agree. No one likes to be fed the same crap over and over again. But being different just to be different is asinine.

Take the Dogme 95 films. My roommate made me sit down and watch the Idiots by Lars Von Trier. Words fail me. Suffices to say, it made sure you knew it was different, but lacked a defining reason for it to be different.

I’ll leave you with this. You know what other movie tried to be completely different from everything else I’ve seen? Freddie Got Fingered. (which is definitely on my list of worst movies I’ve ever seen, a list for another day).

2. Just because a movie is highly popular, doesn’t mean it’s crap.
OK. I may be slightly guilty of this one on some fronts, but everyone is allowed a little leeway in the hypocrisy department as long as they admit it. We all like to go against the grain a bit and make ourselves stand out some. That’s why when you name your top 5 movies in mixed company you are more likely to throw out a Casablanca or a Mr. Smith Goes to Washington into the mix and Movies like Top Gun or Raiders which actually are in your top 5 might get bumped out. You know something that’s a) critically acclaimed and b) slightly off the beaten path to give you street cred (ok maybe this is just me and other film students).

That being said, some people take this to an extreme. They think all Spielberg films are crappy commercial sell outs. This is inaccurate. There’s only one real Spielberg sell out (Lost World (and even then it was pretty re-watchable)). That’s not to say that there aren’t good examples of stuff being popular that suck. I think the third Matrix movie made a lot of money.

The reverse of this is true as well. Just because 10 people have seen it doesn’t mean it’s the most amazing thing to ever be put on celluloid. There is no popularity/greatness inverse proportion formula.


1. Just because you went/teach to film school, doesn’t mean you know crap about movies.

I’m not immune to this. With a very rare batch of exceptions, most of the people who make movies that people want to see, drop out of film school to make films. If you are teaching students to supplement your grad school, you probably suck as a film maker, and have made some horrible choices about your career path. If while showing us a film you’ve made, you feel it necessary to explain the reasons for each of your shots because it’s not evident by just watching your movie, you probably suck as a film maker.