During my first year in college I discovered utorrent, started to download movies and stored them in cd's. I noticed Imdb and the notorious top 250, and started to cherry-pick the movies I watch according to their ranks. If you asked what are my favorite 3 movies in March 2009 my answers would be Forrest Gump, Seven and American Beauty.
Of course storing movies in dvd's was not practical for collection purposes so in October 2009 I bought my first external hdd and this time I was more serious about movie watching. I started with the movies I took much time to watch: Last of the Mohicans, Dangerous Minds, the Zeitgeist documentary. Along with those three, the Insider and Citizen Kane were on my list. I recall checking the clock for the first time while watching the Insider (probably was a bit long for me then) and it took me almost one month to complete Citizen Kane
Understandably it didn't grew on me that much, plus I watched every episode of Oz, Lost and Coupling during that time.From October 2009 to March 2013 I watched about 750 feature films, ranked about 500 of them (since July 2011). After completing shows like the Wire, the Sopranos and Deadwood non of the tv series doesn't do it for me anymore so I'm all about movies and mini-series since April 2011 after finishing Six Feet Under.
I don't if I was fed up or wasn't taking pleasure as I should from watching movies anymore I decided to have a go at it again. I considered about it for some time and decided it's for the best.
And that takes us to now. I decided to start with 10 movies, each are among the most prominents from their respective countries:
1. Citizen Kane
2. The Rules of the Game
3. Tokyo Story
4. 8,5
5. Battleship Potemkin
6. Persona
7. Ordet
8. M
9. Pather Panchali
10. In the Mood for Love
It's not hard to see why Citizen Kane is regarded as the greatest. As for the Rules of the Game I didn't remember so much of it despite I saw it less then a year ago. I rated it 6 back then, now my ranking is 7. My favorite movie of Fellini is probably La Strada, not fan of his dreamy movies, of course that doesn't mean he didn't dish up those exceptionally as well. To me the most important aspect of 8,5 is basically it's an autobiographical movie of one of the greatest directors.
I don't know why people view Battleship Potemkin as boring, only 90 minutes and pretty captivating for me. Now I know Persona is regarded among greatest works of Bergman but I don't see it, easily I can name 5 better Bergmans for my part. Ordet is an odd movie, I find it unnecessary to put emphasis on the events occurred in the movie as I'm aware of Dreyer's obsession of religious themes (not a jab on him, that's his way, nothing for me to do but respect that he made great films). M is still great, I believe it came in top 5 on ICM 2013 poll.
Pather Panchali was a sad one and the only movie I saw from this list for the first time. The situation of the mother and her daugher teared me from inside and Shankar's simple score was perfect. Interesting to learn that it was Ray's debut after viewing it, what more interesting was Truffaut's criticism, look it up if you don't know, it's a strange one.
In the Mood for Love is still great as well, it's bit confusing at times but leaves no question in mind after it ends. Not with many movies you can tolerate the same music rolling over and over again but this one's an exception of course. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypY9OaKCfRU
Umm yeah, so that was a brief narrative about my interest in movies and the first 10 movies I decided to watch after starting over
