There are many movies that I didn’t watch because the topic and the protagonist didn’t appeal to me. Often because they were female-oriented. They just didn’t push enough buttons for me to be excited about. That they won Best Picture mattered not.
A lot of these great movies I saw accidentally.
- Nothing better on the plane
- It was free (plane/tv)
- A group scenario (backpacker hostel lounge / peer pressure)
And now, semi-boredom and wanting to tick boxes before cancelling Foxtel.
Spielberg clearly has a skill. But his skill is not transparent like so many directors. Here’s my go, untested on other movies of his, just from Schindler’s List:
- Uses trickery sparingly and intriguingly – red dress, camera movement
- Clear good guy / bad guy
- No “what the heck” twists
- Bad guys are slightly larger than life, in the direction of super-villians
- Bad guys have a moment when you think they will be nice, then they double down
- A cast of regular Joes, like a framework of reality
- Regular Joes being defiant or standing up bravely to the villians
- A lot of brief extras with personality
- Occasional extreme violence, shocking relative to the rest of the film
- Occasional sexuality, unusual relative to the rest of the film
- Family members in the periphery
- Children existing in the story
- Subtle colouring (or black and white)
- Not too many main characters, not confusing
- Pace – I know that is editing but the story has a faster pace than similar dramas
- Movement. A known known. Don’t have talking heads, have moving talking people
- Lessons learned from the silent era – expressions
- Rare use of two heads on the screen, talking
- Voice of one while looking at the other
A lot of these sound obvious as I write them, but I think the skill is to do all of them. No egotistical flourishes, just getting everything correct, by the book. Plus a whole lot more, obviously.