Dark comedy: It has the potential to address important issues (such as class struggle, murder, divorce) and present them in a brighter light. This can make for interesting contrast in the plot. I love to laugh, I love to learn. And if I were an auteur, I would explore dark comedies by linking gags and philosophy together. (I also love poetic realism)
I don’t realy have just one. I love film noir and Avant Garde. My Favorite film noir would have to be Double Indemnity.
Favorite Avant Garde: Eraserhead. Both for their style. I also love Noir ford it’s mood and fast paced diologue.
for genre, my favorite is probably the gangster film. because it contains elements of action, suspense, and stories that lend themselves to vivid visual expression.
Drama: drama
Can I be picky and say drama is a form not a genre? (But I know what you mean)
I have a real weakness for nature on the rampage flicks – great ones, terrible ones, killer bees, swarms, twisters, irradiated octopi eating the Golden Gate Bridge, you name it…
Likewise, New York Stories is somehing I have developed a great love for – it’s my fave city, so from the usuals (Scorsese, Spike, Woody Allen), to less famous films like Eat A Bowl Of Tea or Next Stop Greenwich Village, I’m interested.
I don’t know if its’ a genre, but I also love and seek out enlightenment films – characters having an aha moment, and it has to be realistic in its’ presentation, but of the kind, Yi Yi, after life and Moshen Makhmalbaf’s Silence are some real favorites…
When I first read this topic, I was trying to think if I even have a favorite genre. I think I do, but I don’t know if it can be boiled down into simple terms.
First, let me list a few of my favorite films: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Philadelphia Story, Amelie, Annie Hall, Stranger Than Fiction, Harold & Maude, The Royal Tenenbaums, Reality Bites… I could go on, but I won’t. In general, I tend to like the films of Wes Anderson, Charlie Kaufman, Woody Allen, Paul Thomas Anderson and Sofia Coppola.
Coming-of-age might be a good broad stroke, but I think I could also say that I like films that deal with basic human interaction, films that show quirks, how relationships work (or don’t), how people deal with the ups and downs of life.
I think I’m pretty similar to you.
Wes Anderson, Woody Allen, Sofia Coppola – some of my favourites there
Horror and almost anything w/ vampires(not Underworld that was shit)or people just going crazy and something that actually disturbs me(which is usually an Asian horror film) I love dark comedys and anything campy, those two combined make a perfect film in my world. Avant garde and surreal, basically anything non cinefiles would call “weird and fucked up”. OH and I love sweeping romantic films, like the English Patient/Brokeback Mountain.
My genre lies somewhere between the Midget Musical Western, of which there are woefully few, and the Obviously Unnecessary Remake, of which we’ll never have a shortage. Until I find my niche, just keep surprising me. That’s all I ask.
Horror. I love being scared. I love bloody violence. I just…love horror.
Metaphysical – a small genre, yes, but some great films in it: Anything by Tarkovsky, Last Year at Marienbad, Blowup, Don’t Look Now, Breaking the Waves – you get the idea.
After that, anything with lots of special effects – serves as a good contrast.
I’ve always hoped to make films that fit in between French New Wave and Akira Kurosawa, via Jim Jarmusch.
My favorite genre is Criterion.
I’m like Takashi Miike, I don’t think about genre. Genre is for the vendors and for the masses. Try to label a Takashi Miike film. You can’t.
Non-genre is my favorite genre.
I like acting movies, where there’s a full spectrum and the actors are handled with more care than the story. That genre.
Currently, French film noir: the films of Jean Pierre Melville, Riffi
All time: Black Comedy (something bleakly funny but short of nihilism, which is random, and I find unfunny).
My favorite film genre is “The Western”. Partly for medium specificity-related reasons. It’s not that there aren’t great western novels but the central question of the genre – how is life lived on the frontier between civilization and nature? – is one that lends itself to cinemamatic expression: it’s all about spaces and geography. And Westerns are also one of the best examples of a genre functioning as a dynamic conversation between artists & audience and artists & artists: in the way Rio Bravo answers High Noon, the way McCabe & Mrs. Miller revises My Darling Clementine (and other Fords), the way Once Upon a Time In the West creates a fantastical vision of the west out of images and characters from the entire history of western movies.
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I think an honestly emotional film that is also aware of itself as a film. Something that makes you think and feel at the same time. It’s more like an ambiance than a genre maybe.
I love Westerns, and its Eastern equivalent — samurai films. Maybe it’s a guy thing. I love the idea of loners out in desolate landscapes making a way for themselves; I love the idea of a gun or sword doing all the talking; I love the conflict between law/society and the individual; I love the absurdity of the environment and the bleakness inherent in stasis.
Existentialism and Minimalism
Michel Kesterson
I love to hear people describe their favorite genres. Oh, and why is it your favorite? If you were a filmmaker would your films fall under your favorite genre?