I'm thinking of reading the first book (after seeing the movie).

The books are pretty good. Worth reading for sure but, dag, did he need a more thorough editor especially in the second book. So much repetition. The third book seems a bit better, so far, but there's still a lot of describing what happened a couple of chapters back. And details that have no bearing on the story.

Which ones??

This probably won't surprise you, but I really hate Forrest Gump, Trainspotting, Swingers, and Amelie. I dislike Slumdog Millionaire, Sideways, Fight Club, and Saving Private Ryan. And I think Schindler's List, Memento, Election, A History of Violence, The Hurt Locker, and Inglorious Basterds are way overrated.

But I was wrong to focus on things I didn't like before. I like or love many of the other movies, and even the ones that wouldn't make my list (like Swing Blade or The Sweet Hereafter, neither of which has aged that well) deserve some recognition.

I'm curious, Corwood. What is is about Trainspotting that pushes it into the "hate" category from "disklike"?

I have no objectivity about Trainspotting. I think, now, maybe it's a good movie? But I watched it while pregnant with Ben, completely hormonal, and got to the scene with the dead baby and flipped. out. like. a. mammal. So.

I saw 37 movies from that list. There are also about 15 or so on it that are on my Netflix queue.

I haven't seen Kick Ass.

What is is about Trainspotting that pushes it into the "hate" category from "disklike"?

I really hate the facile nihilism of Trainspotting or, for that matter, Fight Club, especially when that sort of adolescent anti-philosophy is glorified as if it were actually about something. I mean, there's plenty of movies like this, but few are made with such style that they give viewers the feeling that they're movies of substance despite that they have nothing to offer. It's one thing to raise style over substance, but these movies look into the face of the creeping nothingness of their character's lives and suggest, with only the barest grasp of ironic detachment, that this is all there is. To paraphrase a character in one of my favorite movies, say what you will about Triumph Of The Will, but at least it glorified its disgustingly wrongheaded protagonists for a reason.

You just described how I feel about Stanley Kubrik, Corwood.

I can see that, but I don't agree. I put Kubrick with the filmmakers who gaze into the abyss but find some meaning in the abyss gazing back. I mean, I think his movies are predicated on the notion that people are fallible and will almost always fuck things up, but there's a point to all this striving. He's the yang to Altman's humanist yin.

I enjoyed Fight Club, but never had any interest in Trainspotting. Looked like nastiness for the sake of nastiness. I tried to watch A Clockwork Orange, but it totally disgusted me and I had turned it off and headed back to the video store with it within about 15-20 minutes (this was in like 89 or so). I realize it's supposed to be disgusting, but it was too much for me. Ick.

I have such a great love for A Clockwork Orange that my lukewarm response to everything else Kubrick has done still doesn't chill me on Kubrick as a whole. I'm not entirely sure why it didn't turn me off, but it was one of those movies that I went to see every time they showed it at University. And that was about once a semester. Which puts it in my top ten most viewed list, now that I own the DVD.

I love what they did to the main character.

Trainspotting I'm kinda meh on. And I did close my eyes for the toilet scene, because who needs that, really?