During my senior year of college, I needed to take an elective to reach the necessary number of credit hours to graduate. I was excited when I saw a class that was focused on the films of Alfred Hitchcock. I loved movies and had recently started recording classic films off of TCM, including some Hitchcock. So, how great would it be to have a class where I would just watch even more movies?
Turns out, not great. I did not enjoy that class.
Sure, it did not help that the professor loved talking about how “banal” everything was, especially the comments of practically any student courageous enough to speak up during class. But the act of watching films critically to write essays about them for an assignment wasn’t the same as (or as fun as) just watching them to enjoy them.
(Don’t get me wrong; I still got an “A” in the class, despite never speaking during any of the class discussions. I guess my final paper about the use of different colors in Vertigo wasn’t so “banal,” even though I was just making things up to reach the page requirement.)
Why am I telling you this? To brag about my grade in a class I didn’t like? Maybe a little, but it’s mostly because I wanted to tell you that I don’t particularly like watching movies to analyze and write about them.
Oh, and in completely unrelated news, I’m going to start watching a bunch of movies so that I can analyze and write about them on this website. I decided to do this partly to give myself a reason to watch all of the movies I own. Also, what is the Internet, but a venue for people to post their unsolicited opinions about anything and then convince themselves that doing so is performing a necessary service?
Honestly, because of that class, I have no intention of ever being a film critic. I will also never claim that my opinions about a movie are more correct than anyone else’s.
I just love stories, especially ones that make me feel things. So, I’m going to watch some and then write about what they made me feel.
Join me.
Collections/Series
- Best Picture Nominees
- James Bond
- Marvel Cinematic Universe
- Pixar
- Star Wars
- Walt Disney Animation Studios
Directors
- Akira Kurosawa
- Christopher Nolan
- David Fincher
- James Cameron
- Kevin Smith
- Martin Scorsese
- Quentin Tarantino
- Ridley Scott
- Robert Zemeckis
- Stanley Kubrick
- Steven Soderbergh
- Steven Spielberg
Christian Yost 