I first saw Shadows a couple years ago, before the Criterion set came out. I wanted to see if I liked his style. Here's what I wrote about it in my old blog:

Saw Shadows the other night. Kind of torn about it. I thought the plot was pretty well-written, and it was actually well-performed, with plenty of emotion. Some parts just dragged on though, and the plot took too long to actually get started. But that's just me. Have to see something else before I decide on the Criterion uber-set.

After that, I checked out The Killing of a Chinese Bookie later on, and I didn't like it in the least. It seemed far too long, drawn out, boring, and self-indulgant to me.

The reason I bring up Cassavetes is because I've got copies of Opening Night and A Woman Under the Influence sitting here, waiting to be watched, and some history between me and Cassavetes is in order. I've been reading more about him, and maybe I just wasn't attuned to his style back then. So we'll see how it turns out.

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I've only seen two Linklater films, but I liked neither of them. Waking Life, which many consider an incredible masterwork, I thought was a pretentious bore. It would be served better to be read in some dude's blog, rather than being spoken by characters in a 'film'. School of Rock, I guess I just don't like Jack Black. I wish my feelings on one actor didn't have as much of a bearing on an entire film, but in School of Rock, it's hard to enjoy anything else in the film if you're not a fan of Jack Black's humor. He's constantly overshadowing everyone else in the film. If somebody does anything of interest in the film, you can bet Black is about half a second away from jumping in front of the camera and doing something loud and obnoxious.

I'm checking out Slacker soon, so we'll see. The Sunset/Sunrise movies look interesting, and like they'd be right up my alley, but that's what I thought about Lost in Translation...

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Robert Altman is a running joke between Luke and I. Luke doesn't like his films at all, yet can't stop buying and watching them. I've only seen MASH, which I really liked but seems extremely overrated, and Short Cuts, which I didn't like. But, I'm willing to keep trying him, as 3 Women, Tanner '88, Godford Park, Secret Honor and McCabe and Mrs. Miller all sound pretty good.

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What a neat idea for a post, me whining about directors I don't like, but whose work I will keep checking out. Just trying to give some background on why some of the flicks I'll be watching soon are of importance. More accurately, why my opinions on said flicks are important.