I've just made myself a list. I love lists, and this one I thought about doing this morning, waking up on a hard floor in the middle of an empty living room, hoping I'd fall back asleep. I remembered the reason I initially had a Lovefilm membership (which I have not had for over a year, but do quite miss now I have free time to watch DVDs). The reason was to try watch all those famous / classic / highly regarded films that I never would think to watch. I got through a fair few, but today I actually tested myself.
I scrolled through the IMDb top 250 films and wrote down every film I haven't seen or can't remember much of. I wrote down 174 films. That means I have embarrassingly only seen 76 of the 'best films' of all time (arguably, depending which type of criticism one follows). Seventy six. That's pitiful. Especially considering just how many times I've watched some truly terrible films, I now feel like I have wasted a lot of film-watching time.
I did however watch Dear John and The Lucky One last week. These are both cheesy romantic films based on books by Nicholas Sparks, who also wrote The Notebook, which I've already seen. I now know how every story he will ever write will go. He chooses some interesting subjects, but the male lead is always part of a war, so goes away for some time, and the female tends to get engaged or have been engaged, so there is the third wheel, jealous-male type character, and their love is strong, of course, and they all enjoy spontaneous outdoor sex, and the men are also very handy people. In The Notebook he builds and does up a house for her, in The Lucky One he fixes her old boat, and in Dear John he charitably helps build a persons house with her. As much as Ryan Gosling, Channing Tatum and Zac Efron sold each of these movies, and someone has to keep making cheesy romance films to continue Tatum and Efron's careers, I really don't see any point in another adaptation of a Nicholas Sparks book. So stop, Hollywood, please.
In contrast to what I just said, there is this film buzz at the moment about The Paperboy, which has just premiered at Cannes, being a very successful and surprisingly good film, which stars Zac Efron. So I may have to eat my own words. But I hope whatever happens, he continues to bless my screen with his beautiful face / body.