Masterpiece no more

The Lord of the Rings rocked my world the first few viewings of each film, and I thought they would pretty much last forever for me. Then, at some point in time, I just couldn't watch them anymore. First time I bailed out on a Fellowship viewing I felt like I betrayed the movie somehow. Then I realized I might just have killed it for myself, from all the viewings. I never doubted that they were still masterpieces, it's just that I've had my fill of them.

Now I make it a point not to rewatch most movies if I can help it, out of fear of killing them.

I just popped in my old fave Basic Instinct for the first time in 15 years & had to turn it off 20 minutes in. It was irredeemably stupid.

Aside from all the characters behaving & sounding like meathead juveniles, the undercurrent of hostility between the detectives & the lesbian girlfriend was laughable. The fucking movie actually relies on the audience's thinking of the lesbian character as a dangerous "other" in that one scene. From there, it didn't get any better.

Jerry Goldsmith's score is still as lush & wonderfully mysterious as I remember it being but that didn't do much to cover up Sharon Stone's "acting". But damn did she look good naked.

All said, I think Joe Eszterhas may be functionally retarded.

On the other hand, I do think there are certain movies that are somehow immune to this. No matter how many times I've seen it on cable or wherever, I have never gotten sick of watching the Blues Brothers. God help me if I ever kill that movie.

It's possible that your friend's view of the movie soured your own? Did he/she dig it?

I've been in situations, and this has happened to me more with music, where I rave about something, then when a friend is totally unimpressed it somehow affects my view of the same band/album/film. Or at least makes me question it a bit. "Was I way off? Does their taste suck, or mine?"

I think this is more akin to the phenomenon where you say a word so many times that it starts to sound stupid. Not to say that you may have a soft spot in your heart for some films that are legitimately bad (like say, BASIC INSTINCT), but some movies just shouldn't be watched a million times. 

Escape From New York. An indisputable classic.

It had been maybe 10 years since I last saw it & upon a recent viewing, I was surprised how little action there is. Not that that's a bad thing but my memory of it was of this atmospheric action EPIC. I found it to be a surprisingly small film. Still love it like tits, though.

For me it's JFK. When I fist saw that about ten years back in high school, it blew my mind. Not just because of the subject matter, but as to what film was capable of being.

The last two times I've tried to watch it in the last five years, I couldn't get through it. It's made me unable to revisit any of Oliver Stones other movies from around that time which I used to rank among my favorites, such as Natural Born Killers, out of trepidation that I'll have the same reaction.

As to films that always hold up - no matter how many times I rewatch LA Confidential, it never fails to amaze me.