I’ve seen loads of films, honest! However, there are bunches of pretty famous films I’ve never bothered with for various reasons. One reason being that these apparent gaps in my viewing really wind up other people, and I’m a little evil that way. Suddenly having a fair amount of spare time on my hands due to lockdown, and a bit of spare cash due to not needing to travel to work while furloughed, I thought I’d start plugging those gaps. The results probably aren’t all that pleasing to some people though. 

I’ll start with the positive stuff, then you can opt to stop reading about the stuff that I wasn’t that impressed with and it need never taint your view of my tastes in movies. 

I had never seen Jaws. I was always under the impression it was going to be a bit of gorefest and not to my taste at all. I’m not a big fan of scary movies, jump scares etc… Turns out this misguided notion had kept a fantastic film off my radar for far too long. I bloody loved it. I could hear my heart thumping away at some of the more tense moments, in between marvelling at the structure of the film and the characters. It was not what I expected at all. I may even write a longer piece on the film as I will be watching it again and can take a few notes along the way. 

Another one I will definitely be watching again is Alien. Like Jaws, I’d lived with the perception that this was far too jumpy and horror-based for me to enjoy. Once again I discovered a film that was character-driven, pretty much perfectly constructed and delivered with great skill. I knew more about stuff that happened in this film but there were still a couple of surprises. I went on to watch Aliens and Alien 3 and while they were good, they were a little bit more “guns blazing” type stuff. I have been informed that I didn’t watch the best version of Alien 3 so I’ll have to sort that out at some point. 

I’ve had Mad Max Fury Road in my digital library for ages. I wanted to watch it but never felt in the mood. Perhaps it was because I like the original film franchise and didn’t want to be disappointed. I needn’t have worried. I watch it when I needed a dystopian, take your brain out, comic book type violence film and that’s what I got.  It has however created a need to revisit at least 1 and 2 of the original series of films, so they are on the “to watch” list now. 

Let’s see – I enjoyed the original Japanese version of Godzilla and the 1956 version of The Invasion of The Body Snatchers. (I haven’t seen the 70s version yet, but it’s on the list). The Prestige was pretty good too. My niece has been watching some Studio Ghibli stuff and I caught My Neighbour Totoro, I need to check out more of these films at some point.

I wasn’t overly fond of Catch Me If You Can, felt a little pedestrian to me. Toy Story 4 was a disappointment in many ways too. Perhaps the most controversial thing though is that I felt Jurassic Park and Gremlins were a bit of a waste of my time. Great ideas, but too poorly executed for me. I totally understand that they are favourite films for other people and it’s just my personal taste in preferring films where I don’t feel the need to yell at the screen while watching them. 

I still have a list of things to watch for the first time but have been erring towards comfort films lately, which I’ll cover in another post soon.