ol' eddy wrecks

Oh, I'm a dark comedy person. So give me Dr. Strangelove (already on there), Brazil (is this one eligible?), various Coen Brothers movies (I'll take Fargo, Barton Fink, whatever you'll give me. Wait, maybe not so much O' Brother, The Lady Killers, or Intolerable Cruelty). The Apartment is already on there. I guess satire-wise, if we could argue Monty Python's Life of Brian is American (the argument, Terry Gilliam, being the director and is an American, probably wouldn't fly), I'd like that on there (though I did just list Brazil up above). I'd... have to rewatch Heathers before I could argue for it in good faith. Spinal Tap is a good call. I laugh hard at that one. I totally haven't been rewatching Duck Soup... ETA: If we want horror-dramedy, An American Werewolf in London. That came to mind seeing the Stooges vs Marx Brother line, because I wanted to say I never really got the Stooges growing up, but I did enjoy the hell out of Army of Darkness as a teenager, which is often channeling (or re-enacting) the Stooges. Or maybe I'm just making too much of one scene there. My favorite horror-comedy these days is Hausu (which is not eligible for this list), though it is on filmstruck/criterion for those who have it.

Looking over the list of comedies on the AFI, I think trying to strip out the movies that have something else, namely strong dramatic elements (or in the case of Singin' in the Rain or Toy Story, obviously on there for reasons besides the comedy (musical & dancing, technical advancement) would be interesting. I think it's... 18. THE GENERAL (1927) $ 22. SOME LIKE IT HOT (1959) 35. ANNIE HALL (1977) ? (it's been long enough, I don't feel comfortable classifying this one) 39. DR. STRANGELOVE (1964) +@ 60. DUCK SOUP (1933) 64. NETWORK (1976) +@ 85. A NIGHT AT THE OPERA (1935) 88. BRINGING UP BABY (1938) * I'm not sure what to think of The General (I liked Buster Keaton shorts more), but could also fall under the "well, hey, it's comedy that aged well." I'm not sure what to make of Some Like it Hot, since of the Billy Wilder movies on the entire list, it's the one that didn't really click with me. We've got 2 Marx Brothers movies (25% of these movies), 2 satires (Network & Dr. Strangelove; another 25%), and then Bringing up Baby, a screwball comedy. I was thinking looking at the list would indicate that straight comedies work best when they're some type of cerebral satire, but that's not really enough to say that either. If we scratched "must have aged well," we could probably scratch The General, the Marx brothers, and Bringing up Baby. So we're at 2 out of 4 comedies that satires, but that's such a small sample now, that's not really trust worthy. I guess that wasn't a very productive exercise. I thought I was going to get more out of that.

Being a little kid in the 80s and growing up in California, it was niners for me. And also televised golf. He was more of a, if a movie he recognized was on TV on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, he might turn it on. And then doze off on the couch. Maybe that's why he liked televised golf so much. For some reason I think he did like the big Hitchcock movies, but my memory is hazy and I don't have more recent memories to compare against.

There might also be an aspect of, "Well, this movie from a long time ago still can make us laugh, which increases our confidence that decades from now, we'll still be laughing at it, so it must be legitimately funny! We don't know if we laugh at Airplane because we grew up with it though. It might not age well."

Indeed it is! Though it's an amalgam of different genres. The plastics line is meant as comedy (and I'd assume social satire). There's a scene where they go into the hotel where it's comedy. Mike Nichols (the director) and Elaine May (which we mentioned in the previous thread) were a comic team. How much is comedy vs drama though, that's something to be debated. And also partially why it's included. Related to Cameron's point earlier, maybe it's hard for straight comedies to get onto these lists. Like, we're going to include comedies, but only if they're mixed with something else (or if it's a something else mixed with comedy). It's been a little while since I've seen The Apartment. I think that one's a comedy, but it gets pretty dark.

Want to get this in before getting back to the re-watch: My standard list comparison post AFI (2007 | 1997): 60th | 85th BFI Critic's poll, 2012 (ranking, US filtered ranking, votes): 202(all), 89 (US), 8 votes BFI Director's poll, 2012 (ranking, US filtered ranking, votes): 546, 229.32* N/A (US), 1 votes IMDB (rank, rating): ??, 8.0 rating (it looks like number 250 on the list has a 8.0 rating) Metascore: can't find one TSFDT (ranking, US filtered ranking): 154th, TBD Oscar BP status: not nominated, winner Cavalcade Box Office Ranking* (rank, amount | highest grossing movie, HGM amount): Not close to the top, but I'm having a hard time getting reliable and consistent set of box office numbers for earlier films that it's at the point that I question the point of putting down the info (definitely dollar amounts). Sites seem to differ between Cavalcade and King Kong. *: 42 of the top 100 are US films, I'm extrapolating to guess its US-filtered rank Hot take on all of those: I don't know; lots of people like this movie? It seems to fit with Paul's thought of maybe spots 50-100 are good places for entertaining movies, because when filtering down to US films, that's where it seems to be landing on a lot of the lists.

Changing Bringing Up Baby to a rom-com and changing Philadelphia Story to Drama-Comedy. I have the vague recollection of having seen Bringing Up Baby as a teenager once as a type of fact (as in, it's an event I think happened in my life), but I have absolutely no recollection of the movie, itself. Like anything. At all.

So, by one note, you mean it lacks any emotional depth. I hear ya. I suspect most of the comedies on the list have something else going for them than just the superficial lols. I still need to rewatch Duck Soup though (in the process of it). I remember laughing pretty hard the first time I saw it though. Related to things Amy wanted on the list, such as Clueless or Fast Times at Ridgemont High (actually I'll just say Clueless, because my recollection of the latter is terrible at this point), I remember thinking, "yeah, but, rather than try to argue these should be on there instead of war movies, you might want to first tackle the topic of dearth of comedies on these type of lists if that's what you're trying to advance." Which is where the current conversation seems to be working itself around to (I think the When Harry Met Sally example you brought later though probably would stand a decent chance to make the AFI list behind it. Though so would Groundhog's Day and I feel like that latter has more of a following these days. Maybe because of the dramedy turn Bill Murray's career is where it's currently at, as opposed to Billy Crystal's or Meg Ryan's). A lot of the reasons why I think there aren't more comedies on these lists though are issues you brought up in later posts; namely if the movie only has laughs, then their rewatchability often feels limited. I suspect the surprise element of comedy has something to do with it. Though, with all that said, it surprised me tallying comedies on the AFI list, there's a lot more comedies on there than I expected (20, so... 1 in 5 movies could be considered a comedy). People can correct me if I missed any or am misrepresenting them as comedies (some I haven't seen). I do present it though for people to pick apart what type of comedies seem to make it onto this list. 5. SINGIN' IN THE RAIN (1952) ^* 11. CITY LIGHTS (1931) $* 17. THE GRADUATE (1967) +* 18. THE GENERAL (1927) $ 22. SOME LIKE IT HOT (1959) 28. ALL ABOUT EVE (1950) $@- 35. ANNIE HALL (1977) ? (it's been long enough, I don't feel comfortable classifying this one) 39. DR. STRANGELOVE (1964) +@ 44. THE PHILADELPHIA STORY (1940) & 54. M*A*S*H (1970) +& 58. THE GOLD RUSH (1925) $? 60. DUCK SOUP (1933) 64. NETWORK (1976) +@ 69. TOOTSIE (1982) ? 78. MODERN TIMES (1936) ? 80. THE APARTMENT (1960) @& 85. A NIGHT AT THE OPERA (1935) 88. BRINGING UP BABY (1938) * 90. SWING TIME (1936) ^*? 99. TOY STORY (1995) ! *: Romantic-Comedy +: Satire &: Drama-Comedy @: Dark Comedy $: Silent ^: Musical ?: Not Sure of classifications, probably haven't seen !: Early Computer Animated movie -: Arguably a comedy in a dark sense, like Fargo or To Die For. Though the comedy came primarily in the form of verbal barbs rather than situational absurdism.

With a medusa cocktail as a chaser? Or would you be afraid it'd just give you kidney stones?

I'd be curious to see Portait of Jason (I guess I should have watched it while it was screening here last year. I guess I should watch it while filmstruck still exists) and Wanda. Actually I need to rewatch Killer of Sheep and Bless their Little Hearts, since the sound wasn't too good and I had a hard time making out what they were saying. In terms of Blaxploitation, which probably won't hit any best of lists, though probably still worth watching, I'd be curious to see Superfly and Ganja and Hess. Girlfriends (1978) is Claudia Weill's only film so it probably won't make any best of list either, but if you've seen Frances, Ha, it was basically a remake of this. I do wonder if Weill had a larger body of work, if it would have more acclaim (coincidentally this is also on filmstruck. I saw it years ago. Apparently Kubrick really gushed about it). According to my notes, Kiler of Sheep and Wanda are numbers 221 and 222 on the BFI critic's poll (filtering out non-US films, that makes them 87 and 88) If we're expanding out to movies that focus on well fleshed out female characters, then there's a lot more movies (John Cassavette's A Woman Under the Influence, starring Gena Rowlands for example. Faces and Opening Night, both also good. I haven't seen Shadows and don't know of it fits in on this topic or not). In their list of best movies of type, X, there is this: https://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/features/30-best-lgbt-films-all-time Though, I'll say, while I love Mulholland Drive, which is on that list, it doesn't really spring to mind as an example of LGBTQ+ cinema. (Guy Maddin's Brand Upon the Brain feels more appropriate, though for the sake of this conversation, that is Canadian, not US). ETA: for Elaine May, I've only seen A New Leaf. I liked it. Do I think it's top a 100 type of movie? Not really. But I feel that way about The Graduate as well. The think The Heartbreak Kid might be the movie that's supposed to work in direct relation to The Graduate from what I've heard/inferred, fwiw. I do wonder, though this topic showed up in this thread if it would have been better in the create your AFI list thread. Just so that in the future, it's more findable, logically speaking.

I think I fixated on the miracle explanation part. With you pointing out that original ending though, playing it out in my mind, it's hard to deny that was the original thematic arc (and its DNA wouldn't be completely scrubbed from the ending because the studio decided the movie stars should live).

Why do they have to be active now? Most of the directors who were active before 1980 and are on the list aren't active now, are they (Scorsese and Spielberg being the two exceptions I can think of). Anyhow, you left off Elaine May, whose comedy partner, Mike Nichols has a movie (The Graduate) on the list. If you expanded to independent cinema from the 70s, I think you have a few more options (I'm guessing it's still not a lot), but if John Cassavettes can only get one movie on the ballot, but not on the list, I don't know how much hope those have. That's restricting ourselves to American films though.

I think I just don't expect them to answer that question definitively; and that's for a variety of different reasons. So, I just take the show on your micro-level with the overall premise being a recurring thought exercise and set of discussion topics. As well as the root organization of what movies to review - as opposed to recent releases. The format of the podcast is also very casual, not a formal one. So I'm not extremely disappointed or angry when they deviate from the does it deserve to be in the greatest list (or go down avenues of assessment that I kind of roll my eyes at). And the one I said I chew on a lot, it doesn't deny that for a movie that seems great as a result of all this examination isn't actually great, but rather, what about the other movies you've watched only once. Something that feels even more relevant as I've gotten older. With less time to watch movies as a whole and as the ability to see so many different movies at one's fingertips has arisen, the ability to make time to rewatch movies has in many ways gone quite far down for me. So what ultimately gets to decide which movies I rewatch? I'd guess mostly first impressions from a first viewing. The exception maybe being a movie where my first impression was okay, but maybe not "Great," that things like critics or a these type of lists tell me there's a "there" there. This podcast wouldn't address that type of bias, because some of these movies they're watching effectively for the first time (i.e. not evaluating in terms of repeated viewing), and they aren't reviewing movies that aren't on the list (e.g. the other 300 movies that were on the ballot). If that all makes sense. It's also a question I wrestle with for myself and don't really expect to hear a podcast answer for me.

Briefly back to the topic of backstories and the AFI list, I did want to mention, at some point I said, these lists can often be viewed as the product of a few components. One of them was who's voting for them. I was thinking more in terms of tastes (e.g. looking at the two BFI lists (critics vs directors), you see historically canonical doing better on the former. And movies that are what I'd think of as being more cinematic (also possibly skewing more towards the 70s than pre-70s) doing better on the directors list. Imdb's list is everyone on imdb, which is the "general population," so unsurprisingly, blockbusters do better there (which, by definition, are movies that sell a lot of tickets, so presumably a lot of people like it) and recency bias there means favoring a movie because it came out in the past year, rather than on the BFI/AFI lists where it seems to work in the other direction. "We don't know how it's going to age, let's give it another decade first"). Amy seems to have taken the inside baseball track for evaluating the AFI list (namely, friends-and-possibly-daughter-of-director-of-film are the people voting). Which, I don't know. I mean, I literally don't know who makes up the voting members of the AFI. Maybe that isn't a wrong mindset for assessing why certain movies are where they are on the list.

Now that I've watched the film, I now feel like I might need to re-listen to the episode, because she seemed about as puritanical as I was expecting her to be. Basically sheltered, hadn't lived life. Never had known the physical pleasure of... *ahem*, steering a boat through some rapids. I guess she wasn't as evangelizing as they expected? She doesn't pour out his booze until he goes back on his promise. Up until that point, she (and her brother), display discomfort at his behavior, but try to politely ignore and accept it. Which is a type of depiction of Christianity I feel showed up in classic films a lot. For everything else (except for the rain), I feel like the movie foreshadowed a bit*, so it felt like it could have been just as likely as a "no coincidence, no story," type of narrative progression. My gut feels like Paul felt it didn't make sense because he had the outside knowledge of how it was originally written, and through that lens, them surviving seemed less... plausible. *: The sniper getting the sun in his eyes was stated as something working in their favor by Hepburn beforehand. Hitting the torpedo, they said those Germans all be like, we got to maintain order and procedure, so we're going to maintain our patrol (which would have been in the path of where the African Queen sunk). The convenient timing is just narrative tension and resolution. Something that hasn't left script-writing even today.

In terms of buying the romance though. After the German base when they kissed, I really needed some witty exposition from Hepburn. Say her pulling back and saying, "I have to warn you, I've heard relationships based on intense experiences never work." After all, they were both stuck on a boat that if it dropped below 5 miles an hour, German conscripted soldiers would shoot their explosives and blow their boat sky-high. I assume the real reason the German sniper didn't hit bogie wasn't because of the sun, but rather because he was missing a thumb. There's a backstory between Bogie and that sniper, I'm sure of it. Speaking of which, doesn't Speed 2 belong on the AFI list? I mean, it's another woman and (insane, crazy) man on a boat movie.

I think one doesn't necessarily judge a first time director or shoe-string budget more favorably, but rather, differently. It can be a bit like, evaluating a movie on what it's trying to be, rather than what you want it to be. Though in practice, I guess that differently does become a more favorably. That said, related to the rear projection and the model figures on the miniature boat in The African Queen (I finally watched it), it does bring to mind of another movie podcast (unnamed because non-earwolf podcast) I listen to when they reviewed King Kong. On the thought exercise of one of the hosts "I wonder what it must have been like to be an audience member in 1933 going in to see King Kong for the first time. It must have been amazing," one of the other hosts replied,"I can actually answer that because I dug up some reviews from 1933." And the ones he had were very disinterested. They called out the herky-jerkiness of the claymation even, which, after eliciting a deflated sigh from the first host, did raise the notion of, know matter when you watch a movie, there is always an aspect of having to give oneself over to the film (as they would say). Which is also kind of my thought to those scenes in The African Queen. Some scenes seemed impressively immersive for the time. Some of the others, less so, but seemed like they were needed for editing together the cohesive narrative/progression through the rapids (blue screen scenes were, well, blue-screen with outlines. But if you notice the river seems overly wide for them, so if they stuck there, it kind of dislocated the viewer, I think, and thus called for a shot of the boat in the river as a means to re-establish their progression through the river). And I guess because you guys talked about how distracting those were for you, so much, it kind of prepared me mentally of, "okay, there are some scenes that are just not going to work to modern eyes as well as others," which kind of allowed me to forgive those shots (in favor of the stronger ones). Overall on the movie, I enjoyed it while watching, but was kind of "eh" now that it's over. I liked the sound design when it was recordings of animals instead of music though. I don't know the history of jungle/forest sound design though and am lacking other movies from that era and before to compare it to. On the related topic, why are great movies considered great, how much of it is because other people talk about them being great? And that sounds silly because I don't think anyone would say 'yes' to it when phrased that way, but conforming to a crowd is a known psychological phenomenon (though, that knowledge came pre-replication crisis in the psychology field, so who knows what's true psychological knowledge). Or to put it a couple of other ways it might manifest itself, and especially in the case where there's a ballot of 100 greatest movies, you have two movies that are barely going to make the cut for your list. One is considered great by many other people, the other has its admirers, but isn't really on many all time great lists. You're mostly luke-warm on both, but that's where you're at when it comes to selecting number 100, and honestly, you could go either way. Do you defer to the wisdom of the crowd and just say, "yeah, this great movie, I kind of enjoyed it, though mostly it was appreciated its greatness. I guess it makes sense to put it in the final spot." Or do you go with, "Eh, movie A isn't that great and already gets lots of love. Movie B could use more votes (even though it's kind of throwing the vote away if it doesn't make the top 100 normally)." Then there's also the habit I think, of people conflating talking about something a lot and familiarity with it to mean it's something good. Which, as correlation, I don't think is entirely unfounded. But it's a thing. I think. It seems like it's a thing. The explanation Paul thought of in terms of the drop in the AFI rankings seemed rooted in that notion. And more realistically, even for top 10 lists, movies that are considered great, might be the benefit of repeated viewings and having their strong points repeatedly highlighted. There might be a movie out there that you now consider great, but you didn't love the first time. And maybe in a world where other people didn't consider it great, it would have still stuck with you enough to devote more time and thought to, but maybe not. And in those repeated viewings, you came to appreciate things that you didn't pick up on during the first viewing, or sensed there was some theme going on you weren't getting, but then saw it crystalized because someone else made it explicit by writing it out and then everything clicked. And in that repeated viewing, the subtle details became richer, and you appreciated it more, you savor it more. And that would not have happened if the catalyst of everyone saying it was great wasn't there. That last one I chew on a decent amount.

To answer the question at hand... I haven't really been ranking them as we've gone along like other people have. But in general, when I do compare for ranking movies, difficulty of shooting doesn't really factor in much. [About to state reasons why... oh wait, the melatonin is kicking in]. ETA: Waking up a bit now. I can imagine situations where knowing the difficulty of a shoot might enhance the appreciation of a scene. But that's usually something after you already like a movie. In situations where it matters, it seems like because of its difficulty, you shouldn't get many movies that do whatever this hypothetical difficult shoot is supposed to be doing though. I'm thinking, for example, in Fitzcarraldo, they actually dragged that boat over a mountain. However, the scenarios I gave is the difficulty is inherently tied to what you're getting on screen. The, "yeah, the reason why you don't see this on film too much is because it's really difficult to do," which that rarity is probably already affecting my opinion of a film (and more-so than it being a difficult shoot). I think Amy and Paul, when going this line of thought though seem to put the difficulty before the film itself as the reason why people like it so much, it feels like they're probably missing the real appeal of the film or at least, why it appeals to the people it appeals to.

I was going to be a bit more generous and say that because the organizations (talking the Academy and the AFI here) who include film makers*, I could imagine they can appreciate the difficulty in the craft (and backstory) more and that can understandably alter their opinions. But your take is probably more realistic a lot of members. *: Which is why when referencing the BFI lists on this topic before for Apocalypse Now, the BFI critic's list is made up by polling critics, not film makers. The BFI director's list is made up by polling directors.

I feel like this is the appropriate response.

Filmstruck is shutting down at the end of November, so we might want to check which top 100s are on there now so people can binge them if they so choose.

I've been putting off watching the movies until after the podcast because I haven't been able to predict where the conversation is going to go, so it allows me to keep more of an eye out for the discussed parts. Which is a long way to say, I haven't gotten to the movie yet (and it's one I haven't seen before), but will probably get to it Friday or Monday. With that said, my standard list comparison post: My standard list comparison post AFI (2007 | 1997): 66th | 17th BFI Critic's poll, 2012 (ranking, US filtered ranking, votes): 894(all), 346.872* (US), 1 votes BFI Director's poll, 2012 (ranking, US filtered ranking, votes): N/A, (all) N/A (US), 0 votes IMDB (rank, rating): ??, 7.9 rating Metascore: 91 TSFDT (ranking, US filtered ranking): 613th, TBD Oscar BP status: not nominated, winner An American in Paris Box Office Ranking* (rank, amount | highest grossing movie, HGM amount): 7th, $4,300,000 | Quo Vadis, 11.9 million *: 97 of the top 250 are US films, I'm extrapolating to guess its US-filtered rank **: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1951_in_film#Top-grossing_films_(U.S.) Note - getting box office info for older movies has thus far resulted in getting the data from different sites, so the flat numbers between different movies on the list are probably not comparable because we don't know the metric by which they're counting the money or how inflation is factored in. In case anyone really cared. My thoughts - I can't comment too much at this point since I haven't seen it yet, but this one is a lot more erratic than the other movies. I'm not surprised to see it didn't do well on the BFI, classic hollywood seems to do a lot better on the AFI list than the BFI list (as do the epics and blockbusters). Something about the apparent divergence between Metacritic and the imdb score (I haven't really looked too closely at these before, but the other ones on the list seemed to have them similarly aligned. Since imdb includes the metacritic score I've been including it since it was an easy copy & paste). The drop on the AFI list (and the previous position on the list), really has me going, "huh." I remember when that was covered in the episode and Amy was surprised at the previous spot, and I have this weird feeling I'm going to also be going "huh" at that 17th spot even after seeing it. I was also thinking that some of the stronger episodes have been where one of the hosts (usually Amy) isn't too fond on the movie and then the other host (usually Paul) kind of argues and drifts their opinion towards a more positive light. I wonder if that's just a symptom of having someone who likes the movie is arguing for it. Which relatedly, I was hoping the person who submitted their BFI post for it had comments; sadly they did not. All I have is, it is a critic named Bill Warren (US-based), and this was their ballot: 8½ 2001: A Space Odyssey African Queen, The Godfather: Part II, The grande illusion, La King Kong Seven Samurai Singin' in the Rain Treasure of Sierra Madre, The Wild Bunch, The https://www.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/sightandsoundpoll2012/voter/760 Which consists of movies that are not out of the ordinary for the BFI (I guess outside of the African Queen. I'd have to check Sierra Madre and The Wild Bunch). I tried some initial googling to see if I could find a review from them of The African Queen, but I could not.

Btw, while I've known in the past that you could look up the BFI votes to see who voted for a movie, and also their ballot to see what else they voted for, some of them have comments on them. All the ones that listed Raiders did (though the director only had the line, The ten films that most shaped me as a director.) https://www.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2b75ef0b3a/sightandsoundpoll2012 It won't necessarily shed light on the AFI voting results, but it's at least interesting to see how people think through some of these (and what were some of their other listed movies). I contemplated copying and pasting their comments, since there were only three critics, but they did write some lengthy comments, of which their comments on Raiders don't look too lengthy.

I remember Crystal Skull being... not good. But I wasn't the target demographic for it. I suspect that the fridge scene gets hate because it's easily tangible in its absurdity. In terms of how it's shot, even if you ignored getting vaporized by the heat, that fridge landed hard (at least as my memory goes), unlike the raft-parachute in Temple of Doom. Which was another absurd scene in the franchise I saw people point to defend the fridge scene as not being out of place. This may have required adults, who watched Indiana Jones as children, to suspend their disbelief more than they now could - which is less than what they could as children. And it's easier to point to something like that than explain why poor writing is poor. But that's just throwing conjecture-darts at the wall there. Hmmm... how do you two feel about Star Wars OT vs Prequels? Asking as more time has passed, I feel like I've heard more adults come around to the prequels. But that's more just sampling bias.

The shot appears to start off as a still frame and switches to real time as it pulls out (you can see Janet Leigh's eye barely twitch at one point - unless that was an optical illusion or my imagination). The emptiness of it all is, just, very powerful. Even realizing it looks like it starts off as a frozen image (which I don't think you're supposed to notice) adds another layer to it, in a similar sense to how Night of the Living Dead ends with its still shots. One thing that caught my attention in this episode that I don't think was mentioned was the guest talking about how we love flaws in our art and people can't reproduce flaws. It's similar to something an instructor said in a drawing class (because adults with spare time will take drawing classes in their evenings), about how we like a hand drawn line for its imperfections. Anyone can go into paint and draw a straight line, but there's very little beauty in that. The reason why it caught my attention is related to the topic of movies that are groundbreaking and are the first to do something - and also that I enjoy watching low budget, cult, b-movies*. And I think in both cases, they're both trying to do something, but they don't really know how to do that thing, so they're still grappling with the material and trying to figure it out. And this somehow shows through in the movie. Particularly if it's an emotional state of a character, then it's in the form of showing the rough edges of nuance as opposed to a more polished, of course this is precisely how the character will act. So it's interesting hearing it phrased as maybe it's just imperfections I respond to. *: Granted, a more push-back interpretation on the b-movies of a past era is that they were formulaic but now that the era has passed, we're in an era of different formulas, and so they now appear less derivative of everything else.