Not Every Movie Can Be Your Favorite

Criterion Death Race #9-10, 14-16

Criterion Death Race Progress, July 18^th through 25^th, 2024

The idea of trying to watch through every movie in the Criterion collection carries with it the implication that every Criterion movie is worth watching, or at least as worth watching as any other movie that one might watch. But not every movie can be a masterpiece, and not every movie will work for every viewer. This week found me watching several movies that were okay but not really “clicking” for me. This provides a chance to think a little more abstractly about movies and different ways of evaluating them.

#9. Hard Boiled John Woo, 1992

#10. Walkabout, Nicolas Roeg, 1971

#14. Samurai I: Musashi Miyamoto, Hiroshi Inagaki, 1954

#15. Samurai II: Duel at Ichijoji Temple, Hiroshi Inagaki, 1955

#16. Samurai III: Duel at Ganryu Island, Hiroshi Inagaki, 1954

Most of the time when I really love a movie, it’s easy to articulate why. A few weeks ago I watched Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom (1960, #58), and was blown away by every aspect of it. It was very easy to articulate my lavish praise. It’s also not too difficult to write about movies that are bad. The Beekeeper from earlier this year, for example, was a pretty resoundingly bad movie, and I found it easy to break down its simplistic political propaganda content and failures as an action movie.

But the movies that fall somewhere in the middle can sometimes be tricky. A lot of the time when a movie is solidly average, I simply don’t have a lot to say about it. To use another recent example, I thought Richard Linklater’s Hit Man was totally fine and, aside from a few praises for the performances, I had nothing to say about it.

I find this complicated further when something is in the Criterion Collection. As is proclaimed on the back of each case, the Criterion Collection is “a continuing series of important classic and contemporary films.” Occasionally the Criterion Collection deems something important that the film world by and large does not—like Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (Meyer, 1970, #836) or Heaven’s Gate (Cimino, 1980, #636)—but, usually, it’s not difficult to see why the Collection would include a given movie even if it doesn’t happen to be a personal favorite.

I have no argument that any of these movies shouldn’t be included. They all have technical and/or historical merit that justifies their status. The Samurai Trilogy is particularly well regarded, and for good reason. An early example of Eastman color in Japan, it’s gorgeous to look at, providing crisp images of sweeping vistas and subtle interior spaces. The story is a compelling character drama anchored by typically excellent work for Toshiro Mifune and populated with a lot of interesting women. The three movies together are slightly under 5 total hours, and I’d rather watch them than Seven Samurai (though this is just personal preference).

All this is justified praise that makes it easy to see why the Samurai Trilogy is in the Collection. But I still didn’t particularly enjoy it, and that’s just me. As I’ve said before and will say again, action movies really aren’t my thing. This is equal parts epic character drama and action movie, and both are executed well, but I just didn’t like it that much.

This was true also of Hard Boiled. Last week I watched John Woo’s other film The Killer, and I think The Killer did basically everything Hard Boiled did but better. Hard Boiled is also a LOT more violent, but I didn’t find a lot of purpose in the violence. It will have its fans, and a few of the set pieces are really something to behold, but I didn’t enjoy it much.

Movies like these are a reminder that evaluating film is really hard. Understandably, and I think rightly, film criticism places great emphasis on technical merits and artistic accomplishments. I have no problem with this, but there’s also got to be a space for simple enjoyment. It’s difficult to balance. We all like different things about art, and people won’t all like the same thing. So when the technical merit exceeds the level of pleasure or enjoyment one got out of it, it’s hard to write about.

Roeg’s Walkabout is the last film to address this week, and it’s even harder to write about because, well, it’s a really hard film to write about. It’s very slow and doesn’t have a lot of plot, but it has stunning visuals and rich themes of growing up and the line between civilization and savagery. It reminded me a little of Targets (Bogdanovich, 1968, #1179) and If… (Anderson, 1969, #391). These are two sort-of coming of the age movies from around the same time that also feature violence and meditations on society. They’re also all movies that I think are going to grow on me. I’ve watched each once, but I suspect as time goes on, they’ll congeal more in my mind. Either way, Walkabout is not like most films you’re likely to see, or even like a lot of other films Roeg made, and I’d encourage you to check it out (It’s currently streaming on the Criterion Channel, and it was recently reissued, too).

This week was not exactly my cup of tea, but I suspect next week will be. It includes a couple Samuel Fuller movies I didn’t get to this week, a couple of pictures from great directors named David, and a Paul Verhoeven film you probably didn’t realize was in the collection. It should be a fun and strange batch of films. I’m also very behind on recent releases from 2024, so it’s possible I’ll only get to a couple of them in order to make space for new things. We shall see.

Until then!