tek's films index page

I've decided to use a tiered system for each category, though there are some categories which are not tiered, and some categories may skip tiers if I can't think of any shows that fit each tier's definition. The tiers are not necessarily about my estimation of the quality of a movie-- in large part they are, but other important factors include how much I just plain enjoy(ed) them and how well I remember them, etc. (You can be sure that if I chose to give movies grades, they would, in many cases, differ slightly- or wildly- from my tier choice.) If you don't find a movie you're looking for in the category you think it should be in, don't worry, it might still be in a different category somewhere. Also, I may occasionally move a movie from one tier to another, or even from one category to another, if I decide to reconsider my opinions and/or the structure of this project, from time to time.

Item 1a.: Tier Definitions.
Tier 1: My favorite movies.
Tier 2: My very well-liked movies.
Tier 3: My well-liked movies.
Tier 4: My fairly well-liked movies.
Tier 5: My rather liked movies.
Tier 6: My middlin' liked movies.
Tier 7: My kinda liked movies.
Tier 8: "Meh."
Please note: If I do include a movie here, you can be sure I felt it was worth mentioning. So please, I am begging you, do not underestimate either my enjoyment of, or perceived quality of, any movie just because it seems to be on a low tier. Even the "meh" movies aren't that bad, in my estimation. If I don't care for a movie at all, I most likely simply won't give it an entry on any tier. (Though there might be rare exceptions where I do mention a movie that I didn't really like, as well as some movies I do think are okay but for some reason chose not to write an entry for, anyway.)

Item 1b.: Genres.
Okay, I'm probably going to keep coming up with different categories, and never be entirely happy with any of them. And I often won't even be sure which categories to put certain films in, but I'll do my best.
Action/adventure is a pretty broad category which may also include disaster films and I dunno what all. I'm sure there'll be alot of crossover with other categories.
Anime & animation: see Item 1c.
Art films are also quite hard to classify, I think this may be the most subjective category of all, and in many cases could easily fall into other categories.
Classics are basically anything falling into an early era, especially old black & white movies. Though of course any of them would fit into other categories like comedy, drama, etc., and some I might even put in other categories instead of classics. It's hard to say...
Comedy isn't as easy to define as you might think, but it's still one of the easier categories here.
Comic books is quite an easy category, it's simply live-action movies based on comic books (or manga). Which will usually be about super heroes, but not necessarily.
Drama & dramedy I must lump together, because it's virtually impossible, sometimes, for me really to distinguish... almost all movies will have both drama and comedy, ergo I'm often not sure whether to classify something as "comedy," "drama," or "dramedy." But I'll lump dramedy in with drama, rather than with comedy, I guess. What really troubles me about this category is that it's sort of a catch-all for anything I can't think what other, more specific genre-category to put a film in. The vast majority, if not all, films in any category other than "comedy" would technically fit into this category.
Family is a category I'm not really all that comfortable with and will probably change my mind about quite often, moving films between this and other categories. It should mostly be movies that are G or PG rated, which can be viewed by kids (but not necessarily made specifically for kids). But then again I might put things here that you might not want young children to watch, I dunno.
Fantasy is trickier than you might think. Some films will be easy to classify as such, basic swords & sorcery type stuff, but other fantasy films may be anything that's just not really realistic, without fitting in a more (or less) specific category.
Film noir is a genre I've always loved the idea of, but I haven't actually seen many (especially the old ones, I mostly see neo-noir, but I want to see older films eventually). This is one of the trickier categories to define, I think, so I will include some movies I'm not sure I should or not. Also I think there's a good chance I won't like many specific noir movies as much as I expect to, or as much as I like the idea film noir in general.
Holiday movies is perhaps the simplest category, though I can imagine there'd still be some trouble with it. We'll see. It should include films which are primarily thematically linked to any given holiday (Christmas, Halloween, etc.), and not films that just have some vague connection to a holiday, or include a holiday as one part of the film's setting or theme(s).
Martial arts should also be fairly straightforward, but again, you never can tell. This category should also include wuxia. Of course, different movies here could fit into various other categories, as well.
Musicals is a pretty straightforward category.
Period pieces of course don't have to fit in any specific period, although chances are none of them are set in the present or the future. There will of course be plenty of films set in various points in the past which I include in other categories rather than this one, for various reasons. I would think this category would be mostly for literary adaptations, but it could also be a bit of a catch-all for things I'm not sure how else to classify.
Pulp is another very difficult thing to classify, I'd say. It should generally have a certain feel to it, as of old fashioned pulp novels and movie serials, but we'll see. There are several other categories I could have trouble choosing between with certain films. Such as action/adventure, film noir, ultraviolence, fantasy, and possibly others.
Quirky movies will be... I dunno, whatever I feel like calling quirky, I guess. Probably mostly dramedies, we'll see.
Scary movies may include horror, suspense, psychological thrillers, and possibly other genres. I don't necessarily need to find the movies scary, so much as their obvious intent being... to be scary. Some movies you might expect to find here will be elsewhere, most likely supernatural & paranormal.
Science fiction should be pretty straightforward, but I'd never take anything for granted. Might be some trouble with this as with any category.
Spy flicks should usually be simple, but occasionally I might put something here that isn't about spies. I dunno. We'll see.
Supernatural & paranormal may have some stuff that could seem to fit under sci-fi, fantasy, scary, family, possibly other genres. The basic criterion for putting a movie in this category is that it has as a central element something which is outside the bounds of everyday life (monsters, psychic powers, etc.), but which is set presumably in an otherwise normal world. I guess.
Teen movies are also harder to define than you might think, and I'll probably often be unhappy putting films in this category. But hopefully most of the movies I put here will fit reasonably well.
Ultraviolence is a category I have for the moment which I may or may not keep. The categories I'd most likely move anything here to would be pulp or noir, I think.
Weird is definitely a weird category, and again, I won't always be happy with putting films here. There are potentially any number of other categories I could put these films in, including fantasy, family, and perhaps others. Films in this category should generally include things which are impossible or at least quite improbable, without necessarily really being supernatural or anything. At the very least such films should have an odd, skewed view of the world. I'm not sure what else to say.

Item 1c.: Anime & Cartoons (animation).
Most of my categories here are specific genres, or at least I try to make them so. However, I'm generally against considering animation a genre unto itself, cuz it just ain't so. Cartoons and anime can be made for any age group, they can be dramatic or comical, they can fit into any live-action genre you care to name. So why put them in their own categories, instead of spreading specific animated movies amongst the other categories based on genre? I dunno. Maybe just cuz I like them so much. I'm afraid I can't think of anything else to tell you.

Item 1c. II: Anime vs. Cartoons?
Anime is from Japan, right? Well, that's what the purist in me says. But what if it's made in a nearby Asian country like Korea? And what about someplace like France, where "anime" is simply a French word meaning "animation"? What about French anime which is in the style of Japanese anime? What about similar cartoons made in Italy? What about cartoons made in America, which are inspired by anime? Where is the bloody line? What, exactly, is and is not anime? My answer: I haven't the foggiest. But for the purposes of these pages, anything I don't know to have definitely come from Japan will go on the cartoon (animation) pages, even if it might actually be anime. Maybe. But some things I think are from Japan might not be, or I might go against this rule on a case by case basis, I don't really know. Hope you've had fun reading this pointless paragraph, kids.

Item Two: Links.
On the line below the title, I'll try to provide links to both official and unofficial sites, for reference. These may include The Internet Movie Database (IMDb), Rotten Tomatoes, and Wikipedia, whenever possible. I used to include Movie Tome, but I was planning to phase that out... and then it changed to FilmSpot, when it got taken over by CNET (which took over Movie Tome's sister site TV Tome a few years earlier and changed it to TV.com). Now I'm not sure what I'm going to do about that.... Other common links may include Absolute Anime and Anime News Network (ANN) for anime movies. And I might occasionally include links to Toonarific, but probably not nearly as much for movies as I would for TV shows. I may also occasionally include a link to a favored fansite. Official websites (by companies involved with a film's production, distribution, release, etc.) will sometimes be harder to find, particularly for older films. But I'll do what I can. Sometimes these will just be listed as "official website," other times I might call links "DVD site" or "theatrical site." I used to intend to sometimes call links by studio name, but I think I'll phase that out....

Item Three: Apologies & explanations.
Believe me, there are a great many things about this whole project for which I feel the need to apologize. I think I've already done a fair bit of that in Item One. Now let's get to a few other specifics:

Item 3a.: I suck.
Yeah, I'm no good at writing reviews. The most useful thing you're likely to find here is which tier I put things on, and as I've already mentioned ad nauseam, I'm rarely even sure about that, so even that's probably not very useful. So why do I bother with this whole project at all? Two words: obsessive-compulsion.

Item 3b.: Opinions.
Of course, anything I have to say about these movies (including but not limited to my tier placement), is merely my opinion. You all are completely entitled to your own opinions, which in fact I actually hope will often differ from mine, so that they come closer to matching a movie's objective quality than my opinions sometimes do. You may completely disagree with some or all of what I have to say here. I don't mind, and I hope you won't mind, either.

Item 3c.: Memory.
Since I don't trust my memory at all, I will generally try to refrain from making entries for many movies here unless I've seen them recently. Which is just as well, because I haven't the time for doing much work on this section of my homepage, anyway. So I'm afraid it'll be a long time before there's much here....

Item 3d.: Content.
These pages will include movies which debuted in theaters or on video, to the best of my knowledge. (Except for short films, which I don't know where the heck they debut, and I probably would only see on TV, but... whatever, okay? I'm putting them here.) Anyway... for TV movies, please see my TV reference pages. I may sometimes be mistaken about where to put a film, but I'll do the best I can. And then there's the question of OVAs (Original Video Animations). Some of them I'll put in the TV section and some in the movie section. I may not even always know if an anime was originally made for TV, theaters, or video. The most important thing is whether it's in series format or movie format, but most anything I see, I'll see on TV anyway. So I may get things wrong sometimes, but as I say, I'll do my best. It's just that it's generally more a bit more complicated a decision with OVAs than other types of direct-to-video.

Item 3e.: The royal "we."
I should say that I sometimes attempt to convey that I find some of the actresses or characters (including animated ones) in these movies attractive by saying that "we like them" or words to that general effect. Note the use of the royal "we" instead of "I," for no apparent reason, other perhaps than that I sometimes might like it to be clear that I am (or IMHO should be) far from alone in liking them. Or perhaps it's more that I feel guilty about even mentioning it, because it's so unimportant and not really part of what actually makes me like a movie. (In fact, it should also be noted that I may in some cases actually dislike a character, or even hate them; so saying "we like" them should never be taken too literally or personally.) ...Anyway, saying "we" instead of "I" is perhaps my little attempt to distance myself, to impersonalize my own attraction to somehow convey that, as I said, it doesn't matter. In fact if a movie is more about eye candy than anything else, that will tend to turn me off and make me like it less rather than more (although attractive characters can help me appreciate a movie a bit more, on a trivial level, provided generally- but not necessarily always- that their attractiveness is not terribly overt, and that it's essentially subordinate to other aspects of their character, and particularly to the story in general). And anyway, I'd hate to give the impression that I objectify women in any way. Because I don't. At all. Still, it's human nature to find people attractive, and some part of my psyche forces me, almost against my will, to make note of that fact, even if I try to distance myself from it in this odd manner. I should also note that usually if I say "I" like someone, it isn't about any kind of attraction, just... y'know, liking. Or whatever. Now leave me alone.

Item 3e. II: Disturbing myself.
Like I said, I think saying "we" just sort of comforts me, in dealing with what I happen to find to be an uncomfortable situation (um... being human). I'm not comfortable with attraction in general. But while that may be bad enough, what's worse is that sometimes I find myself vaguely attracted to a character that I don't think I should be. Perhaps they're a bit too young, or perhaps it's an animated character that's somewhat crudely or unrealistically drawn (and possibly too young, as well). Whatever... it can disturb me even more than attraction to characters (live or animated) that I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with being attracted to. Of course, mere attraction never means I have any interest in actually doing anything with anyone.... Sorry to ramble on, and to disturb you... But then, sometimes I just won't even bother mentioning that "we" like someone in my entries, in which case this entire paragraph is super superfluous. Sorry.

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