John Sayles pays up.

[mrissa]

If one's affections can be bought and sold, it's good to know the price. For example, George Lucas could totally have had my movie love if he had only included a girl Jedi character in the new Star Wars movies. I would have suffered through the midichlorians and Jar-Jar Binks and the whole nine yards, and I would have watched them again and again--if there had been a girl Jedi who was an actual character with a name and lines of dialog and actions taken, and no, it doesn't count if you think you remember something about someone in the background or maybe in a comic or novelization or other related work. It's like Wil Wheaton and the last Next Gen movie: it does not count as having Wil Wheaton in it if you cut his scenes. Girl Jedis, like Wil Wheaton, like most things really, do not work in homeopathic quantities.

Today I found another way in which my movie love can be easily bought, and it is this: give me David Strathairn and Mary McDonnell shooting 1920-appropriate guns at bad people. Even Strathairn cleaning his gun: such a happy sequence there. So very fine. I theorize that a movie with David Strathairn and Mary McDonnell shooting 1770-appropriate guns or 2005-appropriate guns at bad people might also work. But possibly not as well as 1920.

Here is the thing about John Sayles movies so far: I do not always finish them and say, "Oh, wow, that whole movie was great." But so far he has always given me at least one scene, and usually more than one, that makes me go, "Heh. Awesome." When people talk about loving things for their virtues instead of for their lack of flaws, I am now going to think about John Sayles movies, I think. We will get more and see what an expanded data set will do.

Comments

[laurel]

I've been trying to catch up with the Sayles movies I haven't seen via Netflix (particularly their instant view option).

I hadn't thought to apply the "well there's always at least one awesome scene in it to make it worthwhile" thing to Sayles movies, but it fits. His also tend to have a certain atmosphere or mood that I enjoy, even if the film as a whole doesn't rock my socks.

Wim Wenders is a director whose work I kindof love for this same reason. He's the one I always point to as someone whose films have just enough awesome in them that I'll forgive or overlook their slow pace or other things that don't quite work. (His Until the End of the World is one of my all-time favorite movies, flawed though it may be.)

I have a weakness for movies with good ensemble casts and/or a certain feel to them that may have some big flaws in them, but I love 'em anyway. (This explains why I own Hudson Hawk on DVD-- a perfect example of a movie with all sorts of potential and interesting bits that just didn't work really. But I enjoy the bits enough that I don't care.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I am a big fan of the good ensemble cast, too. I have difficulty mentally isolating people anyway, so I like movies better that don't try.