One-timers I worry won't hold up

The movie Juno came up for discussion on Filmspotting in a recent episode -- an episode I was listening to on my way in to work on Wednesday -- where they were talking about great father-daughter pairings at the movies. (I'm actually wondering about the wisdom of mentioning Juno in this context nowadays, considering that Elliot Page was clearly playing a daughter in that movie, but identifies as a man now.)

They played a clip that reminded me how much I liked that movie, having named it my #3 movie of 2007. And also how the writing was specifically one of the things I liked about it, something it's easy to forget since we all turned on Diablo Cody rather quickly.

But I haven't gone back to watch Juno again, in part because I'm worried that when Rainn Wilson calls Page "home skillet," it'll seem pretty cringey. Is that reason enough not to rewatch a movie that once made my top three for a year? Almost certainly not.

So I decided to go through my Flickchart and identify other favorite movies I've seen only once to see if fears like this are holding me back there as well. For the purposes of this exercise, a "one-timer" is just as simple as it sounds: a movie I've seen only once. I'm clarifying because sometimes we use that term to describe a movie we can bear to see only once because it's so confronting or triggering, even though it may be excellent.

I'll do ten, and I'll list them in order of where they appear on my Flickchart, with the number serving as the number this movie is ranked out of 6182 films. And just to make the project slightly easier, I won't exclude Juno from the group.

173. Rushmore (1998, Wes Anderson) - This remains one of the movies it's weirdest that I've never rewatched. It took what I thought I had discovered with Wes Anderson in Bottle Rocket and absolutely crystallized it. I still think of it as one of my top few Anderson movies. However, I've also turned on Anderson enough over the years -- specifically his last film, The French Dispatch -- that I'm worried some of his later fussy quirks might spoil my so-far pristine feelings about Rushmore, since I'll be confronted with the fact that they were there all along. There's still no excuse for not watching this again, though, so I probably will. I should be further encouraged by the fact that a recent rewatch of The Royal Tenenbaums actually turned me from a Tenenbaums hater (or disliker, at least) to a Tenenbaums lover.

353. Good Night, and Good Luck. (2005, George Clooney) - This ranked even higher than Juno, ending its year as my #2 movie, behind only Hustle & Flow. I'm not so much worried that this has aged poorly as that my affection for it was inflated to begin with. The fact that it feels like a chore to potentially watch it again is a good indication of how my thoughts may have changed on it -- though it's not like I'm always stumbling across it on streaming and choosing not to watch it. 

372. Face/Off (1997, John Woo) - This is another case, as with Rushmore, of later-developed feelings about a director likely ruining a film for which I had uncomplicated affection the first time around. When I think of John Woo today, I think "That's that hack who puts doves into scenes of slow-motion gunplay, no matter how ridiculous." Yes, there are incongruous doves in the climax of the Ben Affleck vehicle Paycheck -- even though that scene takes place underground. 

378. Oldboy (2003, Park Chan-wook) - I think I really like Oldboy -- at least I'm ranking it that way on Flickchart -- but am I sure? I am not sure. I think I may have constructed a narrative here. I do remember that when I was watching it a friend's house, we were into it, but we did find some things confusing. I also remember that another friend was in the room but was not reading the subtitles, and then complained that he didn't know what was going on -- which is sort of hilarious, because obviously. I worry that if I watch this again, the fact that Park has been more hit than miss for me in the past ten years -- The Handmaiden being the exception -- will make me realize we were right to be confused about the poor storytelling the first time.

381. Juno (2007, Jason Reitman) - Home skillet. As discussed. 

422. Mr. Nobody (2009, Jaco van Dormeal) - The extremity of my positive reaction to this the first time around -- I gave it five stars on Letterboxd -- is more why I'm including it here than me secretly thinking it might not be good, and avoiding it for that reason. I'm actually not avoiding this movie per se, and have a couple times considered watching it again. But I think it slips in and out of availability on streaming, and the fact that I'm not willing to pony up to rent a movie I gave five stars suggests I think there was some excess positivity in my response. 

434. A Beautiful Mind (2001, Ron Howard) - I ranked this movie in my top ten of 2001 and remember being genuinely moved by its climax. I'm now more ashamed of the type of movie it is, and having this reaction to a movie that seemed so pointed at Oscar glory, than I am doubting that I'd tear up again at the end of a second watch. A Beautiful Mind is not in the same category of regrettable Oscar winner as Crash or Green Book, but it's not something people regularly talk about today, and there's probably a reason for that. 

485. Erin Brockovich (2000, Steven Soderbergh) - Erin Brockovich was, until recently, my highest ranked Soderbergh film -- but you also know from this post that I don't tend to rewatch any Soderbergh. Out of Sight has now gone ahead of it, Traffic is just behind it, and I've also now rewatched both Side Effects and Full Frontal, the former confirming my affection for it, the latter dropping it significantly in my estimation. When I first discovered that Brockovich was my highest ranked Soderbergh, I instantly doubted it, because (like A Beautiful Mind) of the type of film it is -- a legal drama about an unlikely crusader. Does not seem as worthy as his other output, and I haven't checked again to confirm whether it actually is. 

494. Argo (2012, Ben Affleck) - Another questionable best picture winner that made my top ten in the year of its release. I assume I would still actually like Argo, but it feels like a strange best picture winner in retrospect -- not a film anyone hates, but a film we all kind of forgot won. If you were recounting the best picture winners from the 2010's, this is the one you would forget. (You wouldn't forget Green Book, even though it's a worse movie, just because of how mad it made you when it won. Argo didn't make anybody mad. In fact, I'm not sure it inspired great love or great hatred in anybody.)

503. Away We Go (2009, Sam Mendes) - A friend of mine was the one who gave me doubts about this one. I really embraced this movie, again ranking it in my top ten for the year, but a friend had a wildly different reaction to it at the time, as I wrote about here. Apparently I have secretly wondered since then if he was always right. 

That's ten.

And yet an argument can be made that if I am ranking a movie in my top 500 on Flickchart -- Away We Go is the only one of these that (narrowly) misses that cutoff -- it's something I do really like. Or at worst, I should watch it again to ensure it deserves its lofty ranking. If it doesn't, I should begin busting it down to where it really belongs in my rankings. (A fate that befell the aforementioned Full Frontal, among other that spring to mind, such as Igby Goes Down.)

Given then I've already identified ten and it would be easy enough to come up with two more, it might make for a good monthly series one of these years -- except that I've already done something like this with what was then a weekly series in 2010, conducted over a couple months, called Double Jeopardy. At that time I subjected such films as Disney's The Kid, Click, U-Turn, Alpha Dog and Bedazzled to a new viewing to confirm my previous affection. But in none of those cases were the films ranked as highly as these are. (However, the series also helped boost two others into this rarefied air, as it made me realize my love for The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou and The Story of Us were intense enough to call them legitimate personal favorites.)

For now it's useful just to have identified this list. That way, if I have a random night where I can't figure out what to watch, and one of these titles appears before me on Netflix or Amazon, I'll remember I have this unfinished business. 

Disagreements hurt

The best high -- one that comes naturally from discussing film, that is -- occurs when you discover that the other person loves a certain film just as much as you do. If you love the movie for the same reasons, even better. Sometimes, I'll admit it, I even get goosebumps.

The same can happen for films you both hate with equal intensity. I've always thought that my best friends were people who hate the same things I hate. As long as you agree, it can be intoxicating.

Unfortunately, the reverse is also true.

When you disagree vehemently about a film -- especially with someone who usually shares your tastes -- it can feel like you're "breaking up." It can feel like you'll never again be able to find common ground on future movies, and may make you hesitant to even discuss certain films for fear of further heartache.

I should know. I've been in two sizable film disagreements with the same person inside of two weeks.

This in itself is not "newsworthy," in the sense that I felt like I needed to come write about it in my blog because it was so shocking. I've disagreed with this lifelong friend plenty of times before. We've called each other idiots (jokingly, of course) and moved on. Disagreement is inevitable when you watch as many films as we do, and feel as passionately as we do.

However, for some reason, the last two disagreements have carried a particular edge to them.

About 10 days ago, I finally saw Rachel Getting Married, one of my friend's favorite films of last year. Not only did I not like it as much as he did, but I of course felt compelled to dissect its problems in ways that verged on the sarcastic. Hey, I'm a writer -- I'm not accustomed to blunting my own tools. I usually say what I feel. Unfortunately, in a quick email analysis forged during down moments of the workday, I probably didn't show enough sensitivity to the fact that he loved the movie, and would obviously not be convinced by my quickly tossed-off nay-saying, which only half-said what I really wanted to say.

Then this week, I saw Away We Go. He liked Away We Go about as much less than I did as I liked Rachel Getting Married less than he did. Which is to say, we both liked the other's movie, but had definite criticisms close to the surface, just scratching and clawing to get out. And so it was that I was still on my bubble of entrancement after seeing Away We Go, when my friend's pointed critiques popped that bubble.

This last was actually quite a valuable experience for me. The way it worked out, his criticism of Away We Go came within only an hour or two of my seeing it. (I came in to work early but then learned I had to work late, so I took off at lunch to see the movie in order for my hours to work out correctly). And so it was that I got to feel how my wife feels when I can't hold my tongue whenever we exit the theater.

The most natural instinct for people upon leaving the theater is, of course, to talk about the movie they just saw. This works out great when you both loved or both hated a movie -- or even if you both felt lukewarm about it. But when there's a decent discrepancy in how you felt, and you still feel compelled to discuss it, someone's going to get their feelings hurt.

And so it is that about once every couple months, I harsh my wife's buzz after we see a movie she liked better than I did. This happened for us most recently with Up. Instead of allowing her to float out of the theater on those balloons in the movie, I quickly popped a couple of them with my complaints about it. "Why is that guy still obsessed with finding that extinct bird if he's invented a dog collar that allows dogs to talk? Why did they spend half the movie walking around with the house lashed to their backs? Wouldn't it have been better to spend more time navigating to South America? How come the 3-D wasn't better?" I wanted answers to all these questions. She just wanted to bask in the afterglow.

You don't want to censor yourself and keep your true feelings about something a secret. There's nothing less interesting to me than a person who nods along with everything you say for fear of bruising your fragile ego. But there definitely has to be some kind of balance, not to mention a brief moratorium on unwanted criticism that lasts for at least the first hour after leaving the theater. There are ways to criticize a movie without making it seem like an act of war.

And so with my friend these past two weeks, we probably hauled out heavier artillery than we really needed. We like to express ourselves, and it goes without saying that we think we've made astute observations. But these observations also have the power to cut, and sometimes we have thinner skin than we like to imagine we do.

But I'd like to vow to make my own skin thicker. If someone doesn't like a movie I liked as much as I liked it, it doesn't mean they're calling me a bad person. Except we take it that way, don't we? We think the other person is implicitly saying that only an idiot could like the movie as much as you liked it. It's like they're saying that if you missed such obvious flaws, your whole ability to render judgments has now been called into question.

But it's not true. We film fans are a strange bunch. We like and hate things for totally bizarre reasons. It seems to me that the really important thing is to agree on the really important films. But then again, who is to say what fits into that category? Is there a film out there that's so unquestionably good, or so unquestionably bad, that if someone disagreed with you on it, they would lose all credibility with you? Okay, to take an extreme example, if someone came up to me and said that Citizen Kane was a bad movie, I'd probably have to say that they were stupid. And I'm sure there are plenty of other Citizen Kanes out there that would inspire the same reaction in me. To list them here would miss the point.

The important thing, really, is to love film -- to love talking about it, to love watching it, and to love the reasons you love and hate it. The biggest enemy of the film fan is not the film fan with different tastes -- it's the non-film fan. The person who can't appreciate the medium in any way, shape or form. That's a person I really find myself incompatible with.

So love what you love, hate what you hate -- just never stop talking about it. And if you do that, I'll always be interested to be on the other end of that conversation.

Vacation tease

Away I went on vacation this past weekend, and didn't see the following movies:

1) Away We Go. My mom was the one who actually suggested seeing a movie on Saturday afternoon, and I quickly agreed. She was also interested in the movie I nominated, Sam Mendes' Away We Go. And we had a good five hours before I needed to leave for my dinner plans. However, her boyfriend, a noted outdoorsman, pointed out that the sun was coming out for the first time in weeks, and we should do something outside instead. We ended up walking around Walden Pond -- you know, the place where Henry David Thoreau went and thought deep thoughts. Her boyfriend was "right" in many senses -- doing an outside activity is probably both more social and more memorable for most people. Why, then, did he proceed to try to get me to use that same time to watch Kingdom of Heaven on his iphone? Because a) he's an eccentric old goof, and b) he looooooves his iphone, and demonstrating just how handy it can be. I don't know what would have happened if I'd said "Yes, indeed, let's do that -- let's sit here for 2 hours and 24 minutes squinting at this epic movie on the small screen of your cellular phone." Half of me wishes I'd attempted that particular social experiment.

2) Is Anybody There? The wedding I attended on Friday afternoon broke up earlier than I was expecting, and it was too early to begin the drive across New Hampshire to Portland, where I would be spending that night with my dad and his wife. (I'm sure they would have loved it if I'd arrived early, but what they didn't know wouldn't hurt them, I figured.) On my drive up through New Hampshire on Route 16 the previous night, I'd spotted the Michael Caine movie Is Anybody There? at a one-screen theater somewhere south of North Conway -- though I couldn't remember exactly where. (And I still can't determine that, as a brief internet search came up empty). I love these old single-screen theaters to death, so I made a note of the times on the marquee as I was passing -- just in case. I made a pretty good push for the 5 o'clock show, but when it was about 4:50 and I determined I was not within two or three miles, it was time to give up the quest.

3) Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian/My Sister's Keeper. There was a theater in quaint little downtown North Conway itself, but I passed through about 15 minutes after the twin 4:30 start times of these two movies.

4) The Proposal/Year One/Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen/The Taking of Pelham 123. When I realized I would not make Is Anybody There? on time, I knew I had a fallback option for a late-afternoon movie. It wouldn't be nearly as romantic as the single-screen theater, but it would be something -- the six-screen theater at the Mountain Valley Mall, also in North Conway. In fact, I didn't even know what movies were playing, but I figured there'd be a better-than-average chance of one I hadn't seen starting at 5:15 or 5:20. Nope. All six movies started between 4:10 and 4:40, meaning the lobby was deserted when I got there -- a bad sign to be sure. Even Up and The Hangover, which I refused to see a second time just to fulfill my desire for a vacation movie, wouldn't have been possible contenders for me.

Oh well.

The thing that makes vacation movies so great, in addition to the cineaste's thrill of seeing movies in unfamiliar theaters, is that they are also so unlikely to be possible. If you have only a four-day trip back east, for example, you don't expect that you'll have the time to waste on something so frivolous -- family and friends should come first and foremost.

What was brilliant about this past weekend was that I had a legitimate open window on Friday, as well as a chance to see something as part of my friend/family-visiting on Saturday. But neither worked out.

What a tease.