Everyone has different tastes. As a man obsessed with film, I’ve come to evolve certain tastes that I’ve been able to more clearly identify lately.

When I watch a film, I don’t want to be told everything. I want some level of mystery, confusion, and uncertainty in a film. I seek that type of movie because it provokes discussion, multiple points of view, and a high-degree of rewatchability. I don’t even know how many times I’ve watched Michael Haneke’s Cache in the last 5 years… maybe as much as Star Wars in my youth.

If I watch a film and it is chock full of clarity, exposition, and directness, I feel as though I’m just being beaten over the head with a story. Even if a movie like this reveals some deeper meaning after the credits have rolled, it won’t have lasting power with me.  I want a film that treats me like a person capable of complexity – not a child in need of a bed time story.

Interstellar is a movie that definitely reinforced my understanding of my current tastes. There were a number of times throughout that movie that I rolled my eyes in frustration. But the unfortunate part is that I found long stretches of that movie to be quite fantastic, but those were only to be undone by trite dialogue explaining practically everything.

I’ve come across a lot of these types of movies – otherwise great pictures that have too much exposition for my taste. If I could just have some magic editing-room powers, I would edit these films down, pulling out their overt descriptions and directness. I bet I could pair Interstellar down to a fantastic film with a 2-2:15 run-time. But then a movie like Transformers 4: Age of Extinction would probably only last about 30 minutes – definitely not a film for my editing.