I think I'm going to use this space to post personal film reviews. I would have used my livejournal for this, but most of my friends on there wouldn't care. Here, at least, no one has to read my blog if they don't want to. Plus I have very few human friends on here.
So, I guess I'll lay my ground rules and reasons out on the table. That way, I can call myself out if I'm not following my own rules, or I can look back at this to make sure I'm pursuing my original goal.
First: What kind of movies?
As the subject line states, mostly b-movies. Independent horror films (with lots of gore), sci-fi/action and sci-fi/horror films. Cult classics of the late 70's and 80's. Blockbuster hollywood monster movies. Stuff that a lot of people stick their noses up at.
Not every movie is Fight Club, and thank goodness for that. Movies like that have allowed a host of people to pretend they like film when they really don't. They'd rather discuss what basically amounts to a book they never read. Such a realm of snobbish cultural illiteracy is not for me.
So, what won't I review? Movies I did not see, for starters. Which would include teeny-slasher flicks, dramas, romantic comedies, academy award winning movies (with the exception of The Lord of the Rings), artsy indie movies and other stuff that I would never set out to watch, or that I see by accident or stumble across through other people.
Not to say I don't like those kinds of movies. I just usually don't pay money to see them. They're not my passion, I guess.
So, rules...?
I probably won't include extensive reviews of movies I didn't like. Since the internet is a place where people use thousands of characters and waste tons of hard drive space to spew vitriol, I think I'll probably refrain. It seems to me to be a waste of time to write a ton of words about something you didn't care for. I'm not going to go out of my way to troll for movies I won't like. I'm not exactly sure how people end up seeing some of the movies they review, but I notice a lot of the negative reviews (especially the user reviews on Amazon.com) are written by people who tend not to be fans of the genre. I don't know where they get both the time to watch movies they don't generally care about, and where, on top of that, they get the time to wax eloquent in their assault on such films...?
It seems like commenting or reviewing or opining is just an excuse, most of the time, for dick-wagging and venom-spitting for the sole purpose of feeling superior to something for two internet seconds in front of a bunch of anonymous internet people. Who has the time for that kind of dishonest and uninformed monologing? (not really a word, I suspect)
I like to think I don't have that kind of time. And because, also, one of my informal life philosophies is to generally ignore things I have little interest in, what I will do is limit myself to reviewing a disliked movie in 3 sentences or less. That makes sense since pretty much the only reason to dislike the kind of movies I'm going to be reviewing here is that they lacked some element necessary to make a movie of that kind good. Much better analyses of these elements will be found in my positive reviews. Negative reviews will simply state what was missing.
Simple as that.
My goal will really be to turn people on to movies. I'll mainly be writing the reasons I think someone should see a particular film. These reasons may or may not be good enough to convince most people. Since none of the aforementioned films will be on par with Apocalypse Now, etc. they probably won't be to everyone's taste and thus my reasons for liking a film may be the same reasons someone else would dislike it.
Not sure where to start with reviews just yet. Next post will probably begin this blog in earnest. I'll try to stay away from reviewing movies I think everyone has seen. So, as much as I love The Terminator, I probably don't need to wax eloquent as to why. A movie like Scanners, on the other hand, or Bad Taste, or Lifeforce, or Slither...well, there you go. I think you'll get the idea.
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