Overlooked Movie Marathon 3: Week 1

For the past two years, September has become the month where I spend much of my movie time catching up on some of the big blindspots I have when it comes to watching movies.  I would spend the month watching the classic movies that had somehow passed me by.  This way, I would no longer have to say I hadn’t seen these popular movies from decades past when people brought them up.

The first year I did this was 2012.  I chose one movie from each decade that motion pictures have existed.  I went from the first decade of the 20^th century until the first decade of the 21^st.  It was a marathon of movies that led me to see movies such as The Jazz Singer, The Usual Suspects, and 12 Angry Men.  I saw a lot of great movies and a lot of movies that changed the film industry.  It inspired me to do the same thing the next year.

In 2013, I repeated my marathon, albeit with different films in the lineup.  Once again, I wanted to go through the history of film and watch classic movies that I had not yet had the opportunity to see.  But I changed up how I made the lineup for the marathon.  Instead of going with one movie per decade, I asked the people on Twitter to give me some suggestions for the greatest movies of all time.  With those suggestions, I picked out a wide range of movies.  I chose different genres and different decades and came up with twelve movies to watch during the month.  I got to see movies such as Metropolis, Harold and Maude, and City of God.  And with that, I knew that the month of September would forever be a month in which I focused on seeing the must-see movies that I had yet to see.

This year, I was looking forward to September for a few months before it.  This was especially true considering the dire June and July I had for my first time watches.  They weren’t months that I was entirely happy with.  August turned that around a little bit, but September was where I knew things would be good.  It was a month where I was going to make sure I saw a lot of good movies for the first time.  But how would I make my choices this year?

In late 2013, Marcelo J. Pico created the Tweet Film Society.  It would be a collective of Twitter users who loved movies, coming together to discuss film.  In 2014, the name would be changed to the Talk Film Society, but the idea would be the same.  Film lovers talking about film on Twitter.  In early 2014, the society put out a survey asking people for their 25 favourite movies.  Marcelo was putting together a Talk Film Society top 100 list.  These would be the top 100 films of all time, as voted by the people of Twitter that were involved in the Talk Film Society.

When the results were revealed, it was shown to me that there was a good chunk of the list that I had not seen before.  In all, there were about seventeen movies that I had not seen that made the top 100 list.  I decided sometime in August that I was going to use my September to watch as many of these seventeen movies as possible.  And so I began working my way through the list.  Where would I find these movies?  Netflix Canada, my collection of films, and other means if necessary.  I began with Netflix Canada, which had two of the movies.

Chinatown

First up on Netflix Canada was the Roman Polanski classic, Chinatown.  It was a 1970s noir film.  I wasn’t that into it in the beginning.  However, by the end of the movie, it was kicking my ass.  That ending hit me so hard that I couldn’t believe what I had just watched.  I had at some point become so invested in what was going on that I was shocked and emotionally traumatized the way that Jack Nicholson’s character was.  And when I thought “What just happened!?!?!?” I heard the line “Forget it Jake.  It’s Chinatown.”  And then it ended.  I wanted to watch it again.  I didn’t.  But I really really wanted to.

After Chinatown, there was one more movie on Netflix Canada that had made the Talk Film Society Top 100.  That film was a drastic shift in tone and genre.  It was in another language.  It was decades newer.  It was another great addition to the list of movies that I have watched and another reason that I love my dedication to great movies in September.

Pan’s Labyrinth

I had only seen one Guillermo del Toro directed film prior to seeing this one.  It was Pacific Rim, a movie that I thought was great spectacle but not a lot of substance to it.  Pan’s Labyrinth was so much more than Pacific Rim.  It was visually stunning, just like the other movie, but it came with an emotionally heart-wrenching tale.  The childlike whimsy of Ofelia’s adventure and the violent reality of the child’s life made for a roller coaster of sadness, despair, and downright agony.  It was a brilliant feast for both my eyes and my feels.

With those two movies down, I had run out of movies on Netflix Canada.  I had to choose a movie based on another quality.  I decided to go with the one that I most wanted to watch.  That’s how I landed on the next movie.  It was one that I had to go through less respectable ways to watch.  I wanted to watch it though.  So I did.

The Big Lebowski

I said a while back that everyone’s favourite Coen Brothers movie is the most recent one they watched.  Although I wouldn’t consider The Big Lebowski my favourite right after watching it, I could see myself loving it more on a rewatch and holding it in as high a regard as some of their other movies that I love.  It’s a great movie.  The story plays out expertly well with very little flaw to it.  Jeff Bridges brings some of his best work to the character of The Dude and John Goodman brings what I feel is his best performance to Walter.  It’s an entertaining crime comedy that deserves almost the beloved status that it has.  I’m not sure it deserves a religion though.

And with that, the first week of my September of catching up on Talk Film Society Top 100 movies has come to a close.  I am three movies closer to the hundred percent status.  I have a little way to go in getting there.  Next week, I will return with some more movies that I caught up on, and more movies that I have loved seeing for a first time.  This is going to be a great month for me and movies.  I can feel it now.  I’ll see you next week.

The Talk Film Society can be found at @talkfilmsoc on Twitter.  Marcelo J. Pico can be found at @marcelojpico on Twitter.  I can be found @JurassicGriffin on Twitter.  And the Talk Film Society Top 100 can be found here.  Thank you.