Recently Rated Movies #54: A Truly Mind-Boggling Capacity for Dreck...

Is that what I have, O' Friend of Mine, who accuses me of such? A capacity for dreck that is truly mind-boggling? By what standard are we gauging the level of artfulness here? Is it by a merely standard James Garner comedy from the '60s or do you have a secret stash of Truffaut, Godard and Melville hidden somewhere, and thus, all other movies are instantly cursed to become suffused and laid low by the unearthly glow emanating from this golden treasure of cinematic holiness?

I ask because you have looked over my posts from the past year and somehow determined that I am trapped within a hell of my own making, watching an endless array of terrible films, and having no way out of the situation. You have said you wish to come here and "slap some class back into" me, but who is making the determination of class? And if there is a word that truly offends me in the English language, and a word and variety of definitions that I find to be the source of much of mankind's woes, it is "class." Or perhaps the definition of the word that is truly meant is "taste," and again, I would remind you that it is a purely subjective thing.

You are also forgetting (and you should know this well through regular perusals of this blog) that when I do choose to watch crap (and also don't forget that I do recognize most of this "crap" as exactly that), I do so with purpose. The Psychotronic project is as important to me as breathing, and even the worst piece of, er, dreck, can still have major importance to me research-wise. I will also point out that the one thing I do not do is determine a film's worth before I have seen it. It is only through watching the fucking thing that one can decide whether it is good or not, and oftentimes, one can truly be surprised. It's the only reason I watch films at all: the hope that I will be surprised by something I haven't seen or didn't expect to be any good.

Lastly, if you really look at the lists of the films I have watched over the past two years of this blog, one thing should be abundantly clear: I actually am one of the more well-rounded film viewers out here in the blogosphere. The films I catalog are from everywhere on earth, from every decade in film history, from every genre known to exist, and of many varied lengths, from shorts to features to silents to animation to film noir to... well, everything. I am only watching dreck if EVERYTHING is dreck. And if everything outside of a shortly defined period of time is dreck, well then, I say, let your mind be boggled! Because I am not going to stop...

The List:

Let's Go to Prison
Dir: Bob Odenkirk // 2006 [DVD]
Cinema 4 Rating: 6

Les Anges Exterminateurs [Exterminating Angels]
Dir: Jean-Claude Brisseau // France, 2006 [DVD]
Cinema 4 Rating: 7

Accepted
Dir: Steve Pink // 2006 [DVD]
Cinema 4 Rating: 5

Zodiac
Dir: David Fincher // 2007 [DVD]
Cinema 4 Rating: 8

Neptune's Daughter
Dir: Edward Buzzell // 1949 [TCM]
Cinema 4 Rating: 6

Fast Food Nation
Dir: Richard Linklater // 2006 [DVD]
Cinema 4 Rating: 7