OK, so I'm finally ready to make a ruling on my first pair:
Slacker (1991)
vs.
The Virgin Suicides (1999)
Slacker I'd never seen this movie before, so I was really curious as to how it was going to match up with
Virgin Suicides. Overall, I liked the movie and was really impressed with it, considering it was made for something like $23,000. My main problem with the movie was that, because there wasn't really a "story" and was instead just a collection of moments with random people, the level of interest I had in the movie fluctuated depending on how interesting the character on screen was. I guess inconsistent is the word I would use to describe the movie, but I don't mean that to be harsh, because I really did find a lot to love in the film, it's just that the flaws were obvious and some of the acting was hideous.
The Virgin Suicides I've seen this move probably 4 or 5 times since it came out, but not recently. Even so, I decided not to rewatch it because I wanted to go with what my lasting impressions of the movie have been and also because I knew that if I re-watched it, my experiences with
Lost in Translation and
Marie Antoinette would wind up coloring my view of Virgin Suicides. All of that just means, please bear in mind that this is from memory. A little background... When I saw this movie I was 18 and a freshman in college living in L.A. At the time, I thought this was the most profound movie I had ever seen. For me and my friends, the movie was representative of our own angst (Yes, I was young and very dramatic). In retrospect, I think we were stupid
and I know that we didn't really understand as much as we thought we did. Having seen the movie again since then, I came to realize that I didn't really love it as much as I thought I did. The movie is beautiful, in fact much of what I remember about the first time I saw it was the beauty of the actual images on the screen, the colors, the styling, the way it looked like a Sunday afternoon to me. Once I moved past the imagery, however, I ran into some problems. I realize now that I never liked the Lisbon sisters, the parents weren't as horrible as Coppola wanted me to believe they were, and the whole movie just strikes me as overly dramatic. I know that a lot of people will say that's the point, heck, even my 18 year old self thought that was the point, but I grew up, and this movie, for me, represents an attitude and perspective that I had to shed along the way to do so.
Ruling:Well, I know that I basically said I hated
Virgin Suicides, but it still wins.
Slacker was great fun, but even though I don't love
Virgin Suicides, it's a movie I've thought about a lot in the years since I've seen it. I can't say that I'll think much about
Slacker 7 years from now. So the nod goes to the movie that I'll never be able to get out of my head...
Sofia Coppola's The Virgin Suicides.