An Introduction

Before I begin this blog, I guess I should introduce myself. You may just call me Amok. I am, at this time, twenty seven and one half years old, and for the past eight years I have been watching movies. That isn't to say I only started doing so then! I'd watched movies since I was very little, and there are still several from my childhood that I still love to this day. But the beginning of the year 2002 is when I truly began to fall in love with cinema, and it grew from being a hobby to replace my recently (at the time) loss of interest in video games; a need to fill a vacuum in other words, to a love and an obsession that knows few boundaries and whose limits I am constantly stretching and breaking. In this blog; this journal of mine, I will be posting my thoughts...quite often...on the movies I watch, usually in the form of reviews.

I have a high school education only; with a mostly forgotten and rather unpleasant first year of college, so there should be no question of my reviews being of professional quality. Jonathan Rosenbaum I ain't. But I can guarantee a few things, in so far as quality...firstly, that the films I see do not follow many patterns. Sometimes, I will go through a period of watching a certain actor (usually in the case of comedians, like Will Hay or Bela Lugosi) or director's work, but I try to space this out over several weeks, rather than watch all of these films in a row, to give me time to reflect, or just watch something else. Secondly, I'm almost always watching something different, so feel free to be surprised if I watch Venom and Eternity, The Golden Earrings, and Oh, Mr. Porter! in the same week. Seeing how I live in the sticks in the United States, a good theater is far away, and there are even fewer opportunities to see the movies that interest me on large screens...so, alas, most of my movie watching activities are done at home, on DVD and, as of May of this year, Blu-ray. In my reviews, I will also comment briefly on the quality of the video edition I am watching.

I also try to put a degree of thought into my reviews, though I can definitely ramble, and I am partial to having emotional reactions to movies and struggling to express those feelings satisfactorily. Also, and this is perhaps the most unfortunate thing (but something I'm not about to dispose of), I have a system of scoring; one which is (for now) on a 100 scale...with a score of 100 being about the highest I will give; and films of 97 and up being very nearly that level of perfection. Don't expect many of those. Films in the range of 91 to 96 are what I would call 'masterpieces' to various degrees, with films of 86 to 90 being 'truly great films', 81 to 85 being 'very good', and 75 to 80 being 'good'. When it gets below 75, its varying degrees of above average, average and bad, and my scores will be in increments of 10, because its kind of dull to do much thinking about a score for a film about which you don't have much positive to say.

One particular quirk of mine is that I have trouble watching movies when I'm not watching them alone; so if I mention that I saw Julie and Julia with my mother, and noted that it was a very good movie, don't be too disappointed. And, of course, if I feel absolutely wretched, I may just skip reviewing a film entirely. With that said, I hope you enjoy reading my journal.