I Am Lame (The Film Version!)

I’ve seen one movie on Film Comment’s list of the 50 Best Films of 2013. One! It was Gravity.

My moviegoing is pretty much limited to things I’ll watch with either my wife or my son; or, more and more rarely, both. My wife can’t watch violence, because she finds the modern portrayal of it in films or television to be morbid and sadistic (though she’s usually fine watching people throw punches or shoot each other in the less visceral pre-80s style where there’s no crunching bones and jets of blood and graphic taunts). I admire this, really, but it limits our movie-watching to a surprising degree. She also has no interest in science fiction.

My son, meanwhile, has pretty typical tastes for a 13-year-old: he likes comedies, action, and science fiction. Will Ferrell shows up a lot. Superheroes show up a lot. If Will Ferrell plays Ant-Man, we’ll probably watch it.

In addition, I rarely watch movies on my own. If I have time to myself, I generally use it for bookish stuff like reading or writing (or this blog). There’s a whole slew of movies I’d like to watch but I can’t quite justify the time to myself, so it’s generally something I do when I can justify it as a semi-social family activity.

Given all that, there’s some films I’d definitely like to see here. Realistically I won’t get to the foreign-language films, which is a shame. I miss subtitles, but I’ll give myself a bit of a pass on that one as I watched plenty of films in German while living in Munich.

So here’s the list of potential watches from Film Comment’s list:

Me + Wife:

• Before Midnight
• American Hustle — might be a bit of tough sell for moments of violence
• Blue Jasmine

Me + Son:

• Upstream Color — probably in a few years, once we get around to seeing Primer as well

Me + Wife + Son:

• Inside Llewyn Davis — both wife and son like Coen Bros. movies, thankfully
• Gravity — re-watch, wife hasn’t seen it but might like it
• Her
• All Is Lost
• Captain Phillips

This is all a pretty far cry from my 20s, before I was married, when I’d burn through Criterion Classics laserdiscs at an alarming rate. (Yep, owned a laserdisc player. CAV vs. CLV! Kurosawa! Kubrick! Antonioni!)