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[proximoception]

Movies I love but my fiancee does not:

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: apparently a not uncommon gender split?
The Big Lebowski: I think John Goodman's character annoyed her too much
eXistenZ: she admits it's objectively excellent but dislikes the ickiness
Titus: couldn't get over the nightmarish twig hands
Andrei Rublev: she couldn't get even halfway through because of the hurt animals
l'Avventura: she was too affected by it
Eyes Wide Shut: dirty old man issue
7-Up series: perhaps she's still too new to them, or I'd given away too much
Top Secret: go figure

She has little patience for Terrence Malick movies, though I suspect she'd like Badlands--and Days of Heaven, the print of which had audio problems, if she'd just give it another chance.

Movies I thought I loved but, after showing them to her, had to agree they really weren't such a big deal after all:

The Parallax View
Shadow of a Doubt
Hud

I won her over on Lost Highway and The Ninth Gate, which she'd seen ages before and disliked. We haven't yet watched AI together--she found it silly, like many did. We broke off The Wire, Season 1 against my will because it was making her too unhappy, despite her admiration for it. I think she had a similar reaction to The Edge, liking it but not wanting to remember it.

Among movies I intemperately loathe, she liked Juno, Dogville and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The Ladykillers (later) impressed her but left me pretty indifferent.

Point being, these are the only times I remember us disagreeing even a little. And I think I remember all of them: it makes us unhappy to not agree, somehow. Because of the rarity, or is the rarity because we reach for a middle ground of taste in order to avoid unhappy disagreement? Probably not so much the latter, is my feeling, especially on my end--my passionate reactions tend to be inflexible. And I think it's quite rare for her to agree with me just to shut me up, though not unheard of.

Some of her favorite movies are The Glass Menagerie (earlier), Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Chinatown, Scenes from a Marriage, Glengarry Glenn Ross, Dersu Uzala, Chicago, It's a Wonderful Life, Waiting for Guffman. I agree about all those--I did run out of interest in Chicago and Wonderful Life after the third or fourth viewings but can't deny they're very good. She loves Bergman, Kurosawa and Truffaut.

She introduced me to the sublimity of The Warriors and Watcher in the Woods, I her to Road House. We both already knew about Showgirls and The Doors.

Comments

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, love it.