Building a DVD collection update 1

[Non_Comformist]

OK to recap I am rebuilding my DVD collection.

The rules

#1. All DVD's (movies) are graded from 1-5 (5 being the best. 2.5 being the line between good and poor movie. Only movies that attain a grade of at least 3.0 are allowed in the collection. If a DVD is purchased sight unseen and fails to attain a minimum grade of 3.0 it must be disposed of a soon as possible and cannot be stored with the collection. This is usually accomplished by giving it away or trading it in for a different DVD.

2. When a DVD is purchased it is placed at the beginning of the collection. DVD's are watched in order (left to right) and this order is never broken. This assures that each DVD is watched equally and prevents movies from going "stale" do to over viewing. I call this the "good song on the radio syndrome." I think it is self explanatory.

I have also added the following which really is just common sense.

#3 Collection worthy movies can never be watched on TV if they are edited and/or interupted by commercial breaks.

Recent DVD's rated

1. Matchstick Men. Starring Nic Cage as a germaphobe con-man. Not bad but never really got me interested at any point. Worth seeing once but not again
Rating 2.5

2. SWAT. Colin Farrel, Sam L Jackson and one really dumb script. I felt dumber watching it.
Rating 1.50

3. Jackie Brown. Quentin Tararantino as always is a mastermind of superb dialoge and using music to actually enhance the story. However there was never really a point in Jackie Brown where I was completely drawn into the movie. Really tough decision but in the end just not enough.
Rating 2.90

4. Braveheart. Just an awesome movie with war, swords, tits and WWF style betrayels. In a word epic
Rating 4.5

5. Office Space. Having worked at a large accouting firm this film is more of a documentary than comedy. The use of a gangster rap soundtrack is priceless as well. I absolutely love this movie and it makes me thankful I quit my job to play poker after every time I watch it. Just hilarious
Rating 4.55

6. Predator. Back when action movies where action movies and men where men comes the Predator. It works as both a pure action movie and sci-fi flick. Bonus points for "I ain't got time to bleed."
Rating 3.65

7. Anger Management. Good concept, great casting, poor script that gets lost after the first 30 minutes. Should have been much better
Rating 2.60

That makes the collection currently as follows

1. Office Space 4.55
2. Braveheart 4.50
3. Training Day 4.35
4. Swingers 4.25
5. Die Hard 4.00
6. Meet the Parents 3.75
7. Catch Me If You Can 3.60
8. Oceans Eleven 3.45
9. Fog of War 3.30
10. The Recruit 3.25


I added most of the recommendations from last time to my wish list, so keep them coming if you think of more.

Thoughts, Comments on this batch of ratings?

[Blarg]

The ending of The Recruit seemed very stagey and unlikely to me. I find it hard to believe you would put it that much higher than Jackie Brown. Then again, I found the ending of Jackie Brown stagey and unlikely too, but it had so much more going for it. The Recruit was much more dependent on the "tricks" coming into line to make it an interesting movie, so their failure dragged the movie down quite a notch for me. The movie never really felt credible and the ending just exaggerated that.

Predator seems extremely over-rated. You must have a die-hard love of action movies completely overwhelming your judgment.

I'll agree on Braveheart.

I liked Office Space a ton...but wish I would have laughed more.

Haven't seen the rest, but it looks like you have a serious need to see some really good movies. Most of what you've picked seems unexceptional and extremely recent, and very much like a flavor-of-the-minute, almost like what a video store would put as an eye-catching promo at the end of an aisle. You need some solid classics in there, that are really labors of love and bear watching over and over. Especially as you're bound and determined to watch them over and over regardless of how you feel about them once you've kept them.

Try some good "oldies" -- The Invisible Man, Bride of Frankenstein, The Godfather, The Maltese Falcon, Rebel Without a Cause, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Seven Samurai, A Clockwork Orange. You can watch movies like that a dozen times and they're still great. Heck, they even get better the more you watch them.

Way better than haunting the "New Releases" rack.

[Topflight]

You've got a good system going here, and I pretty much agree with all your ratings so far.

What happens when someone comes over and wants to watch a movie that isn't in the front of the queue?

[johnnycakes]

My top 5:
Annie Hall
Manhattan
The Graduate
Dr. Strangelove
The Apartment

Oh, I just remembered I made this list. (http://www.ymdb.com/user_top20_view.asp?usersid=4200)

Also, I HIGHLY HIGHLY recommend the Freaks and Geeks Limited Edition Set (http://www.freaksandgeeks.com/dvd/index.html). It's the best DVD packaging EVER of the best TV series EVER. (Yes, it really was. Seinfeld is second.) This is NOT available in stores. It also comes with 2 discs of extras not contained in the retail store version. The "yearbook" is better quality than any yearbook I ever got in school.

[Evan]

[ QUOTE ]
What happens when someone comes over and wants to watch a movie that isn't in the front of the queue?

[/ QUOTE ]
That friend will no longer be stored in the collection, this is usually accomplished by giving that friend away or trading for another friend.

[MarkL444]

[ QUOTE ]
7. Anger Management. Good concept, great casting, poor script that gets lost after the first 30 minutes. Should have been much better
Rating 2.60

[/ QUOTE ]

i generally consider this to be the worst movie i have ever seen.

[Il_Mostro]

[ QUOTE ]
he Recruit was much more dependent on the "tricks" coming into line to make it an interesting movie, so their failure dragged the movie down quite a notch for me. The movie never really felt credible and the ending just exaggerated that.

[/ QUOTE ]
I consider The Recruit to be the worst movie I have ever seen when it comes to credibility. The story was just sooo dumb. The only redeeming feature of the movie was that my job bought us the tickets and we all saw it. 35 engineers all sniggered toghether whenever somehing new, silly, stupid thing happened.

The only movie I know to be worse than that one is Tears for the sun, which not only was bad, it was also deeply disturbing and extremely racist.

[KowCiller]

Are you using some sort of movie purchasing agency, like Columbia House or BMG or whatever? I've always wondered if those things are worth it, and if they are, it might be a good way to rebuild your collection (if you're not already using it).

Anyone had positive/negative experiences with companies such as these?

KoW

[Nick B.]

I have my list of dvds on my site. It hasn't been updating for the last 6 movies. I haven't gotten around to writing reviews for them. http://nickbouyea.com/DVD.html

[Ed Miller]

Two great movies to try:

The Sting
The Killing

Great "easy watching" movies... both very well-made. Only mentioning it because I just ordered these two myself. /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[deacsoft]

Movies I own and Believe would be superb additions to any DVD library...

Pulp Fiction- Tarantino's crowning achievement. Excellent cast.
Requiem for a Dream (Director's Cut)- Darren Aronofsky's follow up to Pi. Features great cinematography and an outstanding preformance from Ellen Burnstyn
Traffic- Steven Soderbergh's best 4 time Acadeny Award winning film. Outstanding preformance by Benicio Del Toro and overall great cast.
Memento- A film with a story line like no other. Guy Pearce is great.
The Big Lebowski- IMO the greatest Coen brothers film. Very funny and John Goodman's finest big screen preformance. Another great casting job.
Natural Born Killers (Director's Cut)- Written by Tarantino and directed by Oliver Stone. Two unique minds together for one movie. It's out there a bit, but can be appreciated for what it is.
Scarface- I believe no explanation is needed.
Apocalypse Now (Redux)- Francis Fird Coppola's masterpiece. Brando, Sheen, Duvall, Fishburne, Hopper, Ford... WOW.
Godfather (trilogy)- No explanation needed.
Star Wars (I, II, IV, V, & VI)- The holy trilogy.

A side note: I own in the neighborhood of 500 movies. After seeing so many films; many of them tend to become predictable and very clichÃ. So movies the stray from the norm tend to be of more intrest to me, because I haven't seen 30 movies like it before.

[oddjob]

i was about to say these are all great, until i got to the bottom of the list. star wars 1 & 2? i consider those to be the biggest mistakes in movie history. i think i would have been better off never seeing them as they have tainted the star wars universe for me.

episode 1 displayed how lazy and uncreative lucas has become. he just copied the entire ending from his own return of the jedi. all the elements are the same. lightsaber fight, fighter battles, and the oh so cute indigenous people defeat the much more technologically advanced bad guys. give me a break, come up with something new.

episode 2 showed us how lucas was able to bring out the worst acting in some good actors. also his dialogue is about as natural as styrofoam. and weren't you excited to see a large group of jedis in action after 20+ years of only seeing a couple? boy it just looked like a bunch of people swinging lighted sticks. a little personality in the fighting would have been nice.

i haven't completely given up on episode 3, but i suspect since it will since it will have the same bad acting, bad dialogue, and lucas has trapped himself into writing a plot he may not want to anymore. i think he'd be better off getting peter jackson to ghost direct it for him.

ok, done with my star wars rant.

[astroglide]

the teaser for ep3 actually looks good

[nolanfan34]

[ QUOTE ]
the teaser for ep3 actually looks good

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, so did the teasers for 1 and 2. I remember getting chills seeing the teaser for 1 in the theatre for the first time. Seemed like there was no way it wasn't going to be awesome. Little did I know Lucas had hired the worst child actor of all time.

Sorry for the thread hijack, back on topic, I second the nomination of "The Sting" if you haven't seen it. Classic gambling scene with Paul Newman in it.

[Non_Comformist]

[ QUOTE ]
You've got a good system going here, and I pretty much agree with all your ratings so far.

What happens when someone comes over and wants to watch a movie that isn't in the front of the queue?

[/ QUOTE ]


A girl friend tried to pull that once. I think it was some type of control thing. In any event, she didn't get her way and I eventually broke up with her.

[Non_Comformist]

Im working off thee memberships right now. I don't have any complaints.

[Non_Comformist]

I was a bit constrained by the initial selectiosn offered by Columbia House but I do have the Godfather triology and it's currently on deck.

I've always been interested in seeing Seven Samurai, I'll put it on too get list now.

The Recruit worked for me, in a fun way. Not sure why it just did. I didn't expect much realism I guess.

[deacsoft]

[ QUOTE ]
The Recruit worked for me...

[/ QUOTE ]

IMO, The Recruit was Training Day in a different box. /images/graemlins/frown.gif

[Non_Comformist]

Honestly I just have a thing for CIA movies and have always had a fascination with them. Undoubtedly stemming from my father having been an agent. Interestingly enough he pretty much hates all the CIA type films. Too unrealistic.

[cockandbull]

good list, i'd check out these if you havent already-

human traffic (not sure if this will cross the pond well or not)
amelie
american history x
trainspotting
true romance
nine queens
la haine
scratch - (if you like hip hop)
amores perros
city of god
don juan de marco
donnie darko

enjoy /images/graemlins/grin.gif

harry

[deacsoft]

[ QUOTE ]
...i'd check out these...
american history x
trainspotting
true romance

[/ QUOTE ]

I would 2nd these nominations.