The Personal Canon

If you google "film canon," you'll like find a bunch of folks listing off pretentious movies as if these films are the best cinema has to offer.  In an effort to make themselves feel superior to us regular moviegoers, many of the films in peoples' canons will be foreign or made decades upon decades ago or be overly violent or edgy.  Now, personally I have nothing against foreign films or older films or edgy, violent films, and if you want to include them in your canon, that's fine with me (in fact, there will likely be some of each in my canon).

However, my personal canon is filled with films that perhaps may not have been groundbreaking in cinema, but mean something to me (for example, you won't find the mundane [story-wise] Citizen Kane here even though I fully recognize the very significant impact it made on the industry).  That's not to say that films that bring something new to the table wouldn't be in the canon, but I'm not going to include them simply because they were innovative.

Films in my Personal Canon will be films that mean something to me in one way or another.  Did they make me crack up?  Did they make me cry?  Did they make me think about something in a new light?  Did they make me appreciate the medium that is film even more?  The movies in my canon may not necessarily get the "A" rating, but they're films that even though they may be flawed, I return to again and again simply because I truly love them.  With rare exception, these are going to be movies that I've seen multiple times as it's oftentimes difficult (though not impossible -- see here) for a movie to jump into the Personal Canon after just one viewing.

So, within the next week, I'll announce the first film in my Personal Canon.  Several of the films may be expected (and may show up on those snooty film canons that pepper the internet already), but many others will be unique.

It's time to watch some good movies for a change...