Cinema is one of the youngest forms of art that exist but at the same time it's one of the most complex and interesting. At first, it might seem straightforward – it's just entertainment. But when you start thinking about it, there's so much to analyze. Music, frames, colors, dialogue.
You like to watch movies and took an interest in cinema, but you feel like you are missing something. You see reviews/comments from other people about movies you watched, and they seem to catch a lot more than you do. You are curious and want to know more. So how do you start? What should you pay attention to?
Well, first you just start by watching a shitload of them. Just watch movies and have fun. Learn which movies you really like and which ones you don't. Every movie is part of cinema history, so the more movies you watch, the better you will recognize the patterns.
When I watched a couple of hundred movies and decided to learn more about cinema, I developed a strategy. I started picking directors one by one and watched all of their movies in chronological sequence form their oldest (at least the oldest I could find) to their most recent one. This is really helpful to pick up patterns. This way it's easier to identify common themes between movies. It doesn't matter if they have different genres even, it becomes apparent that a lot of times the movies share a lot of ideas and sometimes even the actors are the same. It's also very interesting to see some of these ideas develop and mature between movies.
This strategy relates a lot to one of the most popular film theories – “auteur theory”. Without going into too much detail about this theory, the basic idea is that the author is the major creative force in a movie. So you should analyze a movie by trying to see it from the lens of said author. Generally, the author is recognized as the director, but there are some exceptions to this like the Marvel movies where the author is the producer (hence why “Marvel movies”) or the Mission Impossible franchise where you could argue that actually the author is the lead actor, Tom Cruise. Anyway, this allows you to recognize the patterns easier and understand that sometimes movies sort of talk to each other.
And that's why, in my opinion, you shouldn't ask a true cinema lover what is their favorite movie but rather what is their favorite director.
You like to watch movies and took an interest in cinema, but you feel like you are missing something. You see reviews/comments from other people about movies you watched, and they seem to catch a lot more than you do. You are curious and want to know more. So how do you start? What should you pay attention to?
Well, first you just start by watching a shitload of them. Just watch movies and have fun. Learn which movies you really like and which ones you don't. Every movie is part of cinema history, so the more movies you watch, the better you will recognize the patterns.
When I watched a couple of hundred movies and decided to learn more about cinema, I developed a strategy. I started picking directors one by one and watched all of their movies in chronological sequence form their oldest (at least the oldest I could find) to their most recent one. This is really helpful to pick up patterns. This way it's easier to identify common themes between movies. It doesn't matter if they have different genres even, it becomes apparent that a lot of times the movies share a lot of ideas and sometimes even the actors are the same. It's also very interesting to see some of these ideas develop and mature between movies.
This strategy relates a lot to one of the most popular film theories – “auteur theory”. Without going into too much detail about this theory, the basic idea is that the author is the major creative force in a movie. So you should analyze a movie by trying to see it from the lens of said author. Generally, the author is recognized as the director, but there are some exceptions to this like the Marvel movies where the author is the producer (hence why “Marvel movies”) or the Mission Impossible franchise where you could argue that actually the author is the lead actor, Tom Cruise. Anyway, this allows you to recognize the patterns easier and understand that sometimes movies sort of talk to each other.
And that's why, in my opinion, you shouldn't ask a true cinema lover what is their favorite movie but rather what is their favorite director.