I never realised, but I don’t really like films

Talking to our wee Scottish friend last night I realised that I don’t really like films. I have known problems with actors: I can’t tell the difference between Al Pacino, Robert de Niro and Dustin Hoffman leading me to be really confused when coming across ‘Meet the Fockers’ as I couldn’t understand why the Dad kept changing clothes. I don’t recognise most actors, so if they have slightly different hair, clothes or accent, I can’t make the connection with the person who I have seen before. But, even apart from the fact that I have no recollection skills, there’s something about the format of films that makes me want to know whether it’s going to be good before I watch it. If something’s not going to be great I want to know, and if it’s not going to be great then I don’t want to waste my time watching it for two and a half hours. When the Boy Wonder wanted to watch ‘Lord of the Rings’ I refused to go to the cinema (although he wasn’t that keen either, what with the hating people, crowds, shops/shopping centres and all) so we ended up watching it on the small screen at home. I didn’t expect to enjoy it, but everyone kept going on about how good it was and I felt quite optimistic when we sat down in front of the gogglebox. However, after an hour (the Boy Wonder claims it was only half an hour) I was beginning to lose the will to live. Fortunately the Boy Wonder was feeling the same, and he was the one who actually called a halt to our watching when he said ‘God this is boring isn’t it?’ to my immense relief. Nothing had happened in that whole time, and I was buggered if I was going to waste any more time on a film which had been spun out not only over three hours, but over three more films apparently for the purposes of leaving huge segments where no plot was required. I would have to be very drunk before I sat in front of that again. But it’s not just really long films, any film which is predictable and has an ending which I can predict from within half an hour riles me. As do films which rely on CGI and impressive special effects rather than plot – I will never understand how people can say ‘The plot was pretty crap, but it was worth seeing for the special effects’ because as far as I’m concerned, you shouldn’t even make a film if you can’t portray scenes properly, so no allowances made for that. And films which don’t adequately explain what’s going on piss me off too – I sat through the whole of Transformers only to discover that the big show down was a fight scene in which it was almost impossible to work out who was good and who was bad. I also hate films where the plot is based on an entirely flawed premise, and they spend so much time not mentioning the huge hole in the storyline that you assume it’s because there’s some kind of brilliant twist only to get to the end and find out that it was just a really poorly thought-out set up for the action, which retrospectively makes no sense if you actually spotted the point at which they deviated from sense. However, I watched Lucky Number Slevin over two years ago, in Canada and really loved it, to the point where I not only remember who was in it, but also what happened, and I would still watch it again. That’s about as good an endorsement as any film has ever had from me, and being as Spinal Tap is the only other film I can think of that falls into that category, that gives some idea of how exacting my standards are. Or possibly just that my interest is only piqued by clever voilence and immature humour - whichever makes me sound deeper.