DVDs weren't out yet, so please ignore my box set

[sovay]

The hundred movies meme was even harder to assemble because I spent far more of my childhood and adolescence immersed in books than in movies and therefore many of the films on this list were not so much formative as illuminating once I finally started paying attention to cinema as an art form, and/or they wired themselves instantly into my brain and are quoted regularly to this day. A list of favorites might overlap significantly but not identically, I imagine tilting more heavily toward sff and noir. I feel it may be a much more mainstream list than my formative books, although still full of meaningful absences. (I sacrificed a number of classics as well as movies whose circumstances were potentially more important than their content, but just glitched on The Medium (1951) and Katerina Izmailova (1966), both of which I even own.) I find it very difficult to try to winnow accurately. I may just not be designed for this format of meme.

Comments

[mrissa]

17, and the thing that's interesting to me is that I mostly was looking at the ones I haven't seen and thinking not that I should see them but that I should poke around and see what you've written about them.

My grandmother held the belief that she liked the top 0.01% or so of books and the rest of us liked the top, say, 30%, and that was why we'd read so much more, we just liked more books. And this was totally wrong (Janette Oke would not be widely agreed to be in the top 0.01% of authors, I don't think) but there is a grain of truth in it: I just like books better than I like movies, I like books better than I like most things. I don't dislike movies! But. Well.

[sovay]

17, and the thing that's interesting to me is that I mostly was looking at the ones I haven't seen and thinking not that I should see them but that I should poke around and see what you've written about them.

Enjoy! I have not written formally about all films represented on this list, but I have usually said something, even if it was twenty years ago and incoherently. I can also answer questions.

I just like books better than I like movies, I like books better than I like most things. I don't dislike movies! But. Well.

I still read more books than I watch movies! I just don't mostly write about the books. I'd never get anything done.

[mrissa]

Yes, even with my book notes posts being much, much more abbreviated than your movie essays, I still sometimes think, "Why do I do this to myself?"