I still wanna do Citizen Kane, because as is well known to me, Brian hates it. It's sad, really.

Right?

He really, really hates it. I can't get him to come around. Maybe you guys can.

Hate? Like active dislike? Not like "eh, that's overrated" or whatever, but hate?

How can you hate something that's, like, objectively good?

Welcome to my world.

Ugh, I bet 80% of the people that like Citizen Kane like it because it's Citizen Kane. Can any of you explain why it is so amazing to you without saying "it's a classic!!!!"? I find it slow, boring, and random, and have seen it over five times in college with different teachers perspectives each time and I never once completely enjoyed it.

*sigh*

Yes, I don't nearly hate Citizen Kane as much as Teague was attempting to joke about.

It's a classic, yes, and it's really excellent craftsmanship, yes. But greatest movie ever? Part of it is a rebellion against the whole notion of "greatest" anything. Every movie sets out to do it's own particular thing in it's own particular way. How can you measure Citizen Kane against Star Wars? It's like mangoes to grapefruits.

I much prefer the "perfect movie" criteria: A movie sets out to accomplish something and it either succeeds or it doesn't. That's a much more valid yardstick to measure movies by, in my opinion. And under that criteria, Citizen Kane is certainly a perfect movie.

Part of peoples' exaltation of it is how revolutionary it was. But my problem with that idea is which revolution do you then hoist above the rest? Is Citizen Kane more revolutionary than Metropolis? Or Pulp Fiction? The Matrix? Avatar? Which revolution of cinema is the most revolutionary? It's important to consider all works of art in the context of the time they were made and declaring any single movie "the greatest ever" automatically removes that consideration.

Also, I find it hard to swallow that Citizen Kane was the greatest movie ever made when Orson Welles didn't even consider it his strongest movie.

And what the hell is that supposed to mean?

I love Orson Welles, but Citizen Kane does nothing for me beyond the early newspaper scenes and the aside about catching a glimpse of a girl decades before.

But I love genre films, and it's a pure drama character assassination of a real person. The only way to get further away from films I'm interested in is to go to, say, a heartbreaking tale of a teenage girl rebelling against her mom.

Dude. "Hackers." It'd be perfect.

Yeah, see, the SOTRY of it doesn't do much for me. It's fine and all, I just don't see how it's the greatest SOTRY of all time.

Now the STORY, on the other hand, I will grant you, is pretty great.

I prefer a SOTRY with a fringe on top.

I like SOTRY, but if there's too much it just gets grating and annoying.