The Don't-Watchlist
Putting my film degree to good use.
A Prelude:
First off, I apologize this newsletter is so long. If you’re reading this in your email, it’s going to be clipped.1 I got carried away, per usual.
Second, this week I’m taking a break from personal reflections and life updates to bring you a list2 I’ve not-so-lovingly titled the “Don’t-Watchlist.” At film school, I had the privilege of studying a lot of movies, but upon leaving SCA3 I found myself harboring all these opinions with few places to share them. Recently, I ranted to a friend about one of the films below, and she offhandedly said, “You should write a newsletter about that.”
Thus, this effort was born.
What you watch is your choice alone. If you love these movies, I’m happy for you and equally happy to disagree with you. Your opinion is just as valid as mine. I know it can hurt to have someone hate the things you love, and I’m not writing up my thoughts on these movies to be mean-spirited. I love movies and I love to love movies if that isn’t obvious.
I assembled this list because each of the following films was originally sold to me as part of the intellectual film canon. I was told that on some level I should like these movies and carve out time in my life for them. After viewing them, I disagreed.
Above all, my hope with this list is to remind you that it’s okay to dissent from all the critics, scholars, and tastemakers. Sometimes the masses get it wrong, and we shouldn’t be afraid to call them on it, instead of strapping ourselves to the theater seats, prying open our eyes, and forcing ourselves to find meaning and enjoyment in things we don’t like. At the end of the day, you, too, have eyes, ears, and intellect that allows you to recognize what’s worthwhile. You have taste. Whether it’s good or bad, the more important thing is that it’s yours.
So, if you think you share my taste, maybe I can save you a few hours.
Without further ado…
The Don’t-Watchlist
The Searchers (1956)
Sophia’s Summary: A man searches for his niece after she is taken by the group of Comanches that killed his family.
Plenty of Westerns spew a racist, sexist, or colonialist message.4 Honestly, a lot of those qualities are kind of baked into the origins of the genre. BUT of all the Westerns I’ve seen, The Searchers is simultaneously the most celebrated and the most vile.
I invented the “Don’t Watchlist” specifically for this movie.
A former professor pitched The Searchers to me as the film that John Ford made to make amends for the racism in his previous filmography. All kinds of scholarly articles and my copy of 501 Must See Movies agree with this reading. While watching, I waited and waited for a crumb of change or humanity from John Wayne’s Ethan Edwards. I could still be waiting since the centimeter he gives is barely worth mentioning. Looking at this film as a sort of apology is utterly baffling considering it is so deeply and overtly offensive.
You would think this film would be discussed with the warning and the trepidation that comes with something like Gone with the Wind. You can’t discuss Gone with the Wind without mentioning the film’s pro-confederacy leaning and racist stereotypes. Very few people would announce to a film school lecture hall these days, “Gone with the Wind is brilliant. You should watch it.” Full stop.
Why aren’t we holding The Searchers to the same standard? Why are we throwing a parade anytime the film’s final doorway shot is mentioned and ignoring everything that brought the audience there?
Both because of and despite its politics, this simply is not an enjoyable movie. Why do I care about this man’s search for his niece when he has no empathy for her or the man he’s searching with? He’s not a character I want to spend my time with. It’s a gorgeous film. The cinematography should be studied. But when you strip away pretty pictures, what’s left?
A whole lot of ugliness.
Four Months Three Weeks Two Days (2007)
Sophia’s Summary: A woman tries to help her friend get an illegal abortion in 1980s Romania.
I know I cannot review this movie objectively, yet I can’t stop talking about it.
One of my college screenwriting classes showed this film the same day as a campus-wide protest over sexual assault at frat houses. For my part, I’d spent the entire previous day gathering anonymous comments from students, many of whom were sexual assault survivors. I was in the midst of putting together a news story on the issue when I took a break to attend this screening. Therefore, I was in a raw emotional state when I unknowingly sat down to watch two women my age forcibly trade sex for a coat-hanger abortion.
Everything horrible that could happen to these women does. Their doomed journey towards ending an unwanted pregnancy sparked a visceral reaction in me that I’d never had before and hope I never have again. I cried. I thought I would throw up. I started shaking and realized I was having a panic attack. I wanted to leave, but I kept thinking this was a “good film.” This is something I should see. What would my peers think if I walked out? I’d have to push past half the auditorium just to get to the aisle. What if some brilliant scene was coming in just a few minutes? Isn’t a little discomfort less important than exposing myself to great art?
I left before the class discussion and was hysterical5 for the entire walk home. I was still shaking when I smoked a cigarette on my back porch. In my entire life, I’ve never needed a cigarette as badly as I needed that one.
The best sense I can make of my reaction and rage upon finishing this movie is that I felt manipulated, as the main characters are, into going through a painful experience because it is supposedly “good for me” or expected of me. This film was classified as high art, and I left it feeling exposed and like my fears were exploited for shock value. Learning the film was written and directed by a man and interpreting the final message as pro-life certainly didn’t help.
I was too upset to learn anything about great filmmaking, but I did learn that I shouldn’t put myself through that. There was no one I needed to impress and nothing I needed to prove. I would’ve been better off trusting my gut and walking out after thirty minutes.
On some level, I understand that the pain and horror I experienced were something the writer-director intended. Maybe making a film this traumatic was meant to wake people up to the social issue and improve conditions around abortion. BUT6 what is the line between exposing horrors and inflicting new ones? By making the images so graphic, it’s hard not to feel like someone is getting some perverse enjoyment out of all the suffering these women experience. Why show those things otherwise?
That was my reading. If you watch it, I’m happy to hear yours, but I think the fetus on the bathroom floor speaks for itself.
The French Connection (1971)
Sophia’s Summary: God, I don’t remember. The NYPD goes after a heroin smuggling ring, and Detective Jimmy Doyle bends the rules a bit.
Of all the moviegoing experiences that inspired this list, The French Connection is certainly the most confusing. It’s a film referred to as a classic, but at least in my film school, not that many people are actually watching it.
When I finally got around to this movie, expecting an exciting, gritty New York thriller, it just fell flat. It’s very indie, very 70s, and the car chase scene is cool. But I couldn’t find a reason to care about Jimmy Doyle’s story. He’s not a particularly interesting asshole. More of a run-of-the-mill asshole in my mind. To be honest, I’ve already forgotten what else was going on.
Is it possible I just missed the point?
Sorry, folks. There just wasn’t a connection7 with this one.
M*A*S*H (1970)
Sophia’s Summary: Army buddies cause as much trouble as they can at a Korean War field hospital.
“Suicide is painless,” but I can’t promise the same about the viewing experience of this movie.
God, this one hurt. It hurts me to dislike this movie because it’s iconic in the comedy canon. In general, I hate to see a comedy age like milk, because I love to watch and write for the genre. But occasionally time makes jokes turn sour.
There were moments of this film I found funny, such as the last supper motif and the film’s opening theme song referenced above. Unfortunately, in between those fleeting bright spots, there was a whole lot of sexism, racism, and homophobia. More than that, the humor is just cruel. I think people hold onto the great memories of seeing this film as a teenager or in a different political climate. I can easily see how it was a massive B-movie success. I wanted to laugh and join in on the shameless debauchery. But even when I tried to leave my politics at the door, it simply wasn’t that funny.
The longer you hang out with these guys, the worse they become. It’s like being on a date when the attraction peaks too early and the rose-colored glasses fade away. Once you stop believing they’re a misunderstood genius, their humor and philosophy become less impressive, and all you want is to hop in a cab back home.
Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961)
Sophia’s Summary: A young man becomes infatuated with his new neighbor, Holly Golightly, who has high social aspirations.
There are a lot of reasons to love this movie and a lot of reasons to hate it. I think the cultural memory of Audrey Hepburn in that little black dress makes it easy for many people to forget the egregious yellowface. After reading the novella, any desire I had to return to this movie disappeared. It’s been spoiled by the knowledge that Capote’s book is simply so much better.
Martyrs (2008)
Sophia’s Summary: A girl discovers some torture victims and then is tortured herself. For the whole movie. That’s it.
Most of you will probably not find Martyrs on your radar anytime soon. The torture porn fanatics can have this one, and I have no interest in trying to take it from them. BUT if extreme torture is not your kink and you ever find yourself at a friend’s house where they happen to suggest Martyrs for your chill Netflix wine night, this is your warning to RUN.
This film was two hours of my life that I will never get back. The premise seemed interesting, but the friendship that was supposed to be at the root of the story disappears almost immediately. All you’re left with is brutality.
I moved my laptop further and further away from me as I was watching until it was all the way across the room.
And the big message at the end is that young women endure torture better just because…??? I would like to submit my reaction to this movie as proof that we don’t all make excellent martyrs.
The Do-Watchlist
Another Prelude:
I put a lot of thought into the best way to complement the list above. What I’ve settled on are not my favorite films or classic films I think the critics got right. Instead, I’ve compiled a list of movies I love that are inherently flawed in some way. In other words, they’re my problematic favs.
Still, I’m willing to go to bat for these movies because I believe they are complex and layered enough that the thorny, disappointing aspects of them are worth dealing with. Most of them have rich potential for analysis, and I even wrote papers about a few of them. These are the movies I love thinking about even if my thoughts aren’t always positive.
Billy Wilder, one of my favorite filmmakers, once said, “If people see a picture of mine and then sit down and talk about it for 15 minutes, that is a very fine reward, I think.”
These are the movies I think about all the time.
The Wild Bunch (1969)
Sophia’s Summary: A gang of outlaws is pursued by one of their former members amid the Mexican revolution.
How fitting to start this list with a film that directly responds to everything I found wrong with The Searchers.
At the time of its release, The Wild Bunch was criticized for being the most violent film ever made. Not simply the most violent Western. The most violent film. Period. Released a year after Hollywood’s self-censoring production code was demolished, the film introduced audiences to a different idea of what the Western could be. Instead of John Wayne and idealized, old-world masculinity, The Wild Bunch presented its leading men as selfish, morally corrupt relics of a bygone era.
The characters making up the film’s titular gang are not heroes. They inflict more damage and pain than anything else. But instead of wanting to turn away from all the ugliness, the film makes you dive in. Director Sam Peckinpah presents a delicate sort of bloody ballet that’s as beautiful as it is brutal. There’s no redemption or return to the old West after the destruction of the film. Characters live and die by their contradicting codes, giving in to their impulses. It feels like a fitting end for the cowboy colonizers who know the Wild West they created was never theirs to begin with.
All that said, I also can’t help but root for these anti-heroes. With all their faults, you’ll still find me laughing and cheering for the stacked cast as they give the performances of their careers.
Every time I see The Wild Bunch, I find some new angle for analysis. Not every movie needs to be that layered, but it’s amazing when you find something you can love more each time you see it. The film has so much to say, even when it jumbles the words.
The Handmaiden (2016)
Sophia’s Summary: A young pickpocket is brought into a scam to seduce a wealthy heiress out of her inheritance.
98% of this movie is astounding. It’s just the last five minutes that fucks it up.
It was kind of heartbreaking to think I’d found a new favorite movie in The Handmaiden and then have the final image undercut everything I’d thought the movie was about. The messages about sex, exploitation, gender, and manipulation in this film are fascinating, and I HATED the way the filmmaker undercut a lot of it in one final, gratuitous scene.
I’m left to question whether five minutes ruins two hours and twenty minutes. In the end, I feel it was still two hours and twenty minutes well spent. Even though I felt betrayed by the filmmaker, it was a feat that he made me trust and admire his work in the first place.
As for why this movie is so great, I can’t tell you anything. I went into the film knowing almost nothing, and I believe that’s the best possible way to see it. You’ll have to trust me that there are great twists, layered characters, suspense, drama, and sexual tension. When you watch enough movies, you get good at making predictions, but I never knew where this film would take me. Look at me, I’ve already said too much!
All That Jazz (1979)
Sophia’s Summary: A Broadway director/choreographer spirals down, dragging the women in his life with him.8
I often complain about films that glorify the monstrous artist, but this one made me eat my words. I think it’s the fact that Fosse seems fully aware of how flawed his self-insert protagonist is at every moment. He doesn’t give himself a redemption arc or change for the better. Instead, he puts on a dance number for each fault and bombards you with talent and extravagance at every possible opportunity.
Maybe I give him too much credit. He may just be my favorite monster of the many Hollywood has given us. Roy Scheider’s performance certainly helps endear me to the character. It’s also a damn well-made movie that captures the indescribable essence of Broadway and live theater. I’ll risk being cliché to say it’s unlike anything else I’ve ever seen.
When Joe Gideon announces “It’s showtime!” he means it in every possible sense of the word, and I can’t help but marvel at someone so devoted to leaving every last ounce of his being on the stage.
The Warriors (1979)
Sophia’s Summary: The Warriors must make their way from the Bronx to Coney Island with every gang in the city chasing them for a murder they didn’t commit.
Where to start with The Warriors?
I’d already missed the opening of this film when I sat down with my dad to watch it on cable, but I became almost instantly hooked. The exaggerated 70s New York streets of The Warriors are simultaneously dangerous and hilarious with baseball gangs, roller-skating gangs, and evil lesbian gangs, but the emotional stakes of the film about a group of teenagers simply trying to get home never buckle under the weight of the theatrics.
The use of New York geography is nothing short of brilliant. Better yet, it’s accurate. The Warriors is by far my favorite depiction of the New York City subway system, and many moments that still ring true over forty years later. Union Square will forever be a perfect Manhattan meeting place.
Of course, there’s a decent amount that doesn’t age well. My primary problem is with the leading lady, who veers nearly unwatchable at moments. It makes me sad to have to recommend this movie with an asterisk, but to me, everything original and interesting about the film outweighs its tragically typical Hollywood problem.9
The West Wing (1999-2006)
Sophia’s Summary: An inside look into the lives of White House staff members.
The West Wing10 is as well-loved as it is dated in today’s political climate. The idealism and patriotism of Bartlet’s White House make the show almost feel like fantasy, but that’s exactly what makes it so enjoyable. It’s fun to imagine a world where our leaders are this well-intentioned and all parties can come together for the common good. Even if it’s not true.
There are a lot of political debates that seem quaint or ridiculous by today’s standards. There’s also only one character of color. Still, the character growth in this series is top-notch, and Sorkin’s writing is at its absolute finest. The show’s depiction of post-traumatic stress and deception by a public figure in Season 2 are fascinating, and if I think about it too much, I’ll have to rewatch the Christmas episode “Noël,” or the season finale.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t admit my love for this show is intertwined with the fact that it always came up at the “friendsgiving” I attended with actors who came of age in New York in the 90s. Not one year passed without someone admiring the show’s walk-and-talk performances. The West Wing always reminds me of that specific group of people and all their wonderful opinions on it.
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994)
Sophia’s Summary: Three drag queens go on a road trip through the desert.
Here is yet another entry where I am completely biased. If I’m honest, recommending this movie makes me uncomfortable, because I hate its extremely racist characterization of an Asian mail-order bride. The language the characters use around queerness is also quite dated. I don’t want to defend or minimize these issues in any way, but the film still occupies a very important space in my personal canon.
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and the musical adapted from it were a key introduction to queerness for me. I related so deeply to these characters, and they directly inspired me to dive into the world of drag, camp, and disco. This was over a decade ago when queer representation was far less ubiquitous.
As a cis-woman, I can only relate so much, but even at eleven years old I recognized myself performing femininity all the time. Puberty hit me early and I built my ideas of the womanhood I needed to embody around a lot of the same influences as these characters. Once I saw this movie, I also started building my gender performance around drag queens. That confidence, the fantasy, and those clothes were what I wanted to express. Instead of having the expectations of a particular gender forced on you, this was a way to embrace, redefine, and poke fun at the narrow binary. People were taking my impulse and making it art. I continue to love the idea of using an outfit, a makeup look, or a wig to become an enunciated version of myself. Whether that means a hyper-feminine ideal, an androgynous one, or dressing in a way that’s straight-up strange, I am inspired to be a little braver in my expression every year I’m alive. And drag is the most daring form of self-expression I know.
The glamour these characters create in the Australian outback is what makes the film so fun, while the prickly complicated people underneath the sequins add depth to the adventure.
My Fellow Cinephiles: What is on your Do and Don’t Watchlist? Share your hot takes in the comments below!
Note to the reader: There will be no outfit or recommendations for this era because this whole thing is recommendations.
I never got to write a dissertation, so I’m making up for it.
A best and worst list feels fitting for January.
The School of Cinematic Arts.
The Searchers hit the trifecta!
I do NOT use this word lightly.
You knew one was coming.
Haha. Get it?
No summary I can write will do this one justice.
Even the extended cut of Apocalypse Now falls victim to this by hitting pause on cinema history making anti-war action so Martin Sheen can be seduced by a French woman in the most boring way possible.
Sorry for breaking my own rules and adding a TV show. Please note, I’m only endorsing seasons one through four.