The project continues. 14 imdb movies watched since my last posting, in order by my rating:
Pan's Labyrinth
A
Good Will Hunting
A-
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
A-
Amélie
B+
No Country for Old Men
B+
Fargo
B
Rashomon
B
Rebecca
B-
The Godfather
B-
Paris, Texas
C
Platoon
C
The Godfather: Part II
C-
Goodfellas
D
Once Upon a Time in America
D-
Two observations:
1) Godfather I & II, Godfather, Scarface, Once Upon a Time in America - people seem to really, really like gangster sagas.
2) I really, really do not like gangster sagas.
Without exception, I find all of the "gangsters" totally boring and uninvolving. I don't care if they live or die, succeed or fail or anything else. That's not true, actually - usually I want them all to shoot each other already so I don't have to watch them be tedious assholes anymore. (You can add Sopranos to this list, too).
It doesn't help that each of these films follows the same basic structure - guy becomes successful and powerful by being an asshole, but in the end he is sad, boo hoo. Citizen Kane and Raging Bull are two more mega-beloved classics also follow that same trajectory and, unsurprisingly, I think both of those movies suck too. I'm calling it
The Rise and Fall of the Asshole trope and apparently film lovers can't get enough of it but good lord am I sick of it already. As I said elsewhere in a mini-review of Scarface, "All these classic movies about tough guy machismo bullshit, I find it all so tiresome. I'm sorry but your manly quest for power or whatever is dumb and boring and I don't care."