Moving Pictures.

The art-deco staircase of my local cinema, the Rivoli, Camberwell.

In a comment to the last post, Crafty was skeptical about my stated choice in movies: "Non-violent, social issues, chick-flicks".

Now, my psychology training says I should not get defensive but should challenge her stereotype of men and why she thinks I should fit into it. But I wont. For the exercise I will get defensive.

First of all, I get no thrill from the testosterone genre, the Tom Cruise, Arnold Arnold Schwarzenegger style of “good guy takes on incredible odds using unlimited supply of bullets and wins” movie. They give me the irrits. Especially when they try to stereotype the enemies – notably Russians and, more recently Muslims – while pretending that they themselves are the purest of the pure.

I do not like the science fiction type that, to someone with a science back ground, are clearly wacky. When people head off to explode asteroids, re-rotate the earth, feed firelighters to the sun, my brain just goes into a shut down that even one of these well intentioned missions could not restart. I do enjoy the more plausible ones, such as Jurassic Park, or the totally farcical ones that are not trying to present reality, such as Star Wars. I loved the first Star Wars but rapidly lost interest in the sequels. An 8 year old boy can fly a fighter? Give me a break. I end up stewing over the logical inconsistencies in these movies.

My preference in humour leans to the clever rather than the slapstick. To give you a feel, while TV shows, not movies, I loved M*A*S*H and Red Dwarf. I do not like humour that is built on insulting and putting down others in a hurtful way or just plain weird. Consequently I never watch any Adam Sandler movies. Nor could I warm to Borat. I did, however, like the Simpsons.

I quite enjoy the various cartoon movies that have been about, such as Cars.

I cry at movies. I don’t mind admitting that. I take the view that if the producer has gone to a lot of effort to make something funny I will laugh, if he has gone to a lot of trouble to make things sad, I will cry. It is part of immersing into a film, to feel the emotion. I like moving pictures.

So what do I like to watch? Recently I liked Marie Antoinette, The Italian, Copying Beethoven, The Lives of Others, No Reservations and Amazing Grace.

Maybe not chick-flicks, but certainly from the low testosterone end of the scale.
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