I went back and read your posts (for perhaps the third or fourth time- they are so dense, it's hard to respond to everything) again and there were a few more things I wanted to comment on. If you've just arrived, read the previous post to this first, please.
The reason I'm not interested in The Killer Inside Me is the same reason I'm not into torture porn horror so much anymore. Horror tends to be a step removed from reality due to its extreme and often unbelievable violence. I needed only to watch a few films like Hostel, Wolf Creek, and House of 1,000 Corpses to realize that they were cutting a bit too close for comfort to that line between real-life horror and fantasy horror and that I needed a break. I haven't yet seen Hostel 2 or Halloween 2 (or The Human Centipede, god have mercy), which may call into question my devotee status for Rob Zombie or Eli Roth, and their ilk. I've watched a lot more vintage than modern horror since then, with the exception being ghost and zombie films, which tend to stay more in their "fantasy horror" fences these days. It doesn't mean, though, that I don't respect what directors like Roth and Zombie are trying to do to add to the genre. I can just only take so much.
Incidentally, I was looking to see if Julien Donkey Boy was in the library system (sadly, it's not) but a book about Dogme 95 came up. I read a little about it (interesting movement- would make for a fun "watch all the Dogme films" project) and discovered that Cabin Fever is a Dogme film. This swings my Eli Roth pendulum (wow that sounds bad) once again towards the genius side. I maintain that he knows his film history; this seems to be more evidence of it.
Tell me more about Tall in the Saddle, John. My impression is that you would be more positively inclined towards an older movie without knowing much about it than you would a modern film, if you put the two side by side. Is this a true statement do you think? How much weight do you give nostalgia when considering a film? In what way is there "nothing comparable" to Tall in the Saddle being made today? It sometimes seems that you hold contemporary films to higher standards than you do Golden Age films. How might you might respond to that assertion, I wonder? I hope you don't take my questions/comments as being antagonistic; you and Brandon both seem to have a preference for older films, which I will admit I have not seen as many of. But it seems like it's almost too easy to eschew what's out there now for what came before. Just because something's stood the test of time doesn't make it a better film than one of equivalent quality made in the present, right? It just means it's an as-good film but for more years... You're just taking more of a chance that a film you're comparing to a classic isn't actually going to stand the test of time...
Finally, John, you overestimate my "love of The Phantom Menace." You hate it, while it is merely my least favorite Star Wars film. It does improve over repeated viewings, but it will always be a latrine for Empire Strikes Back.
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