Movie Analysis, part III – Art

The next in my series of obvious conclusions is that movie critics like arty movies better than the general viewing public does. Take a look at the chart to confirm this if you feel a need. So what are “arty” movies? Again, very subjective on my part. Arty mostly refers to the art of movie-making, although I think there are a few movies where the subject matter of the movie is art or artists. I marked as arty any movie that seemed to use non-traditional (or formerly traditional but long out-of-favor) techniques (e.g. silent film, stop-motion, filming over 12 years or with 12 different directors), and movies that critics rather uniformly described as exceptionally artistically done. Since there aren’t too many, I’ll post the entire list at the end. Feel free to disagree with my label; it’s my blog so there’s nothing you can do about it. You can, however, contact me through the contact form on the “About the Author/Contact” link in the top menu. I’m obscure enough that I don’t hear much from readers, and I enjoy exchanging emails with those who do contact me. I used to allow comments on this blog, but 99% of them were spam, even with a spam filter, so I gave that up as a time waster.

I’ve marked a few outliers on the chart. For what it’s worth I liked Departures, My Left Foot, and All Is Lost. I didn’t like O Brother, Where Art Thou? I haven’t seen any of the other labeled ones. This will be the last movie analysis post for awhile, but I plan to keep adding movies and resume the analysis in future posts. There are still some surprises in store.

Here’s the list of “arty” movies:

My Left Foot

The Broken Circle Breakdown

The Commitments

Kon Tiki

The Tale of the Princess Kaguya

The Artist

Boyhood

Hugo

Force Majeure

All Is Lost

Birdman

Midnight in Paris

Nebraska

Coraline

The Spanish Prisoner

Life of Pi

The Tree of Life

Departures

Get On Up

Quartet

O Brother, Where Art Thou?

The Zero Theorem

My Winnipeg

Populaire

Song of the Sea

The Color of Time