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Feedback Friday: Do we hate fun? (Patreon)

Published:
2022-02-04 20:57:35
Imported:
2022-02
Tags:

Content

In an effort to streamline the podcast and encourage a little more conversation around some of the feedback letters we receive, we're putting some of them here and responding to them individually. This week, Brendan writes in with a question about Top 10 logic.

Caught up on your 10 best list episodes and had a question come to mind. Scott and Keith both referenced Barb & Star Go To Vista Del Mar as the most fun they had in the theaters in 2021, and Tasha cited In the Heights as her most fun film. Yet those movies didn’t ultimately make any of your top 10 lists. I’m curious why? I can see why fun alone might not earn number one, or even a top 5, but what keeps a film that provides purely fun at a high level quality from reaching your top 10? I’d love to hear more of what makes a movie top 10 worthy for each of you.And this is all only slightly because Barb & Star was also the most fun I had in the movies all year and in my own personal top 5.

———

Keith says:

For me it’s a combination of obvious greatness, instinct, and a desire to strike a balance. Every year when I set out to make an end of the year list there are usually at least four movies I don’t even have to think about including, and including high on the list. After that I usually start thinking about personal favorites because, honestly, in any given year I could usually fill the bottom half of my top five with 15 or so different movies and it would still feel pretty good. After that it’s a question of trying to balance the elements. If there are, say, three great delicate French dramas about mid-life crises in 2022, chances are only one is going to make the list in the interest of making a list that feels representative of the year. This is also a chance to consider potential blind spots. For me, that tends to be docs, but if at least one doc doesn’t make the list I feel like maybe the result of me not casting a wide enough net.

As for the movie you cite, these are great examples. For me, In the Heights felt like a very good movie but one I didn’t really consider for the top of the list. In the much longer, for personal-use-only list I made of 2021 movies it landed at #26, three spots below Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, which I love. From my perspective, however, I loved 22 films a little bit more. But it's also maybe a case of overvaluing a sense of greatness and undervaluing fun. When I reached out to Tasha about this she had a slightly different response. She replied:

My thought here is that there's while there's sometimes a crossover between movies that kick up our adrenaline and make us go "Yay!" and movies that we admire and respect, at other times, those movies can be pretty far apart. My excitement over a complicated, ambitious movie like The Green Knight is less visceral and intense than the joyful sugar rush of something like In The Heights. But I'm much more likely to think about a Green Knight over the course of the next 10 years, and I'm more likely to revisit or recommend it.

So there you have it. In short, it’s not science. But we each have our process, even if it looks like madness form the outside.

Files

Comments

Jonathan Anderson

I find even I'm having this discussion more and more as a result of the now evergreen "ARE MARVEL MOVIES CINEMA?!?!" discussions. I'm an MCU obsessive, but they're rarely if ever the films I think about as the best of the year. Thankfully, the group of people who really examine and debate my rankings at year's end number at most half a dozen, so the contentiousness dies off quickly.

Mark

I was going speculate something akin to Tasha's response, which, guessing how often you might rewatch a movie in the coming years (her line of, "think about in the coming years," is probably a better heuristic, since as it feels like it's hard to find the time to sit down and rewatch movies these days when there's so many new ones coming out (and that 2022 list of possible movies looks quite daunting). Which on the fun side of things, it can be difficult to guess which ones are going to stick around in your mind. Or "more difficult," I should say as people often probably don't have a perfect track record for the serious, high-minded movies either.

Brendan Hay

Thanks for answering my letter! I appreciate the peek behind the curtain re: your list making. For myself, the non-critic who loves making lists every year, I find myself trying to always include one or two purely fun movies in my top 10 akin to Keith's goal of trying to cast a wide net. Oh, and by the way, I enjoyed checking out the films from each of your Top 10 lists as I do every year. Thanks again!

Jamie Vann Struth

I just recently re-subscribed so catching up on everything I missed, but one point to add is what I want from a critic's top 10 list is very simple. What are the 10 movies you liked the most that year. That's it. Kind of like what Keith's private list sounds like. I don't need any single critic to curate their list to represent the whole year, as if that's possible anyway, and I would rather every critic just say what they like and the balance of all the lists out there gives a picture of the year. I like Genevieve's take on things. I would love to know what movies she liked the best, and I'm sad that people being assholes to her in the past has turned her off it (among other reasons, I'm sure, but I've heard her mention the nastiness). I follow you guys because I care about your opinions. Like, your real honest opinions. Don't not give them to me because you feel you need to "represent" the year as a whole or create balance of some kind. If your 6, 7 and 8 are all French dramas, so be it. That is all. (And glad to be back!)