Whilst on holiday in Florida last month, I purchased a cheap copy of Citizen Kane. This will come as a surprise to some people because I have repeatedly said that I consider it to be a horribly overrated movie, though I do still consider Welles to have been a horribly talented man, I've never thought much of his much-vaunted debut. However, I bought the DVD because a) it was cheap, b) it was a version you can't get over here which boasts a commentary by legendary film critic Roger Ebert, and c) because I really felt like I needed to give the film a second chance.
So, following this logic, I've decided to start a feature whereby I watch films which I have previously dismissed as overrated or terrible and post my thoughts on them having sat down and watched them again. This is a rather good feature as far as I'm concerned because it allows me to have my cake and eat it. If, on second viewing, I decide that the film is fantastic and reappraise my original view, I will have had agood experience and be able to wax lyrical about the merits of the film. If I decide that I was right all along and the film is overrated or terrible, then I get to smugly lecture people about how I am right and they are wrong.
To counteract this, I will mix it up so that I will also watch films I have raved about after seeing only once and childhood favourites so that I will be forced to face my worst mistakes. I imagine this will be particularly bitter when I have to review X-Men 3, which I wrote a moronically positive review of when it was first released and which, so far, hasn't come back to bite me in the arse yet, so I'll pre-empt it by watching it in a few weeks time.
First up, though, will be Citizen Kane since it was the impetus for all of it and I'll post back about that sometime in the next week.