Favorite Movie Genres

There's a social media prompt going around that starts "My favorite [movie] genres are:"

Mine are:

1. Heist
2. Siege (protagonists trapped in small space, unknown number of enemies outside)
3. Cops and criminals? Not so different
4. Protagonist has > 100 words of dialogue (in a non-silent film)
5. Jason Statham

What are yours?

Ooh, it's hard to got wrong with revisionist westerns. Also a fan of pretentious philosophical sci-fi.

1. Nuclear war
2. Folk horror
3. Sad European people doing nothing for hours on end
4. Surrealist fuckery
5. Is it real or is the protagonist insane ooooooOOOOOooooooOOOOh

1. It's summer vacation and we must talk about our lives

1. Moody road films
2. Meticulously-executed procedurals (Zodiac, All the President's Men)
3. Sunshine Cinema (a genre I'm presently inventing--the original Heartbreak Kid, The Sterile Cuckoo)
4. '70s American films where, unnamed, Richard Nixon lurks somewhere in the shadows (Nashville, Welfare)
5. Movies about sad-eyed, aimless young men with starry-eyed crushes on unnatainable young women (except in the movies they're not--The Graduate, Il Posto, Masculin Féminin, Adventureland)

1. bad decisions have the worst possible consequences
2. seemingly solid institutions and traditions fall apart
3. rain, snow, mud, floods
4. main character wanders about as if in a dream
5. everything changes but nothing has changed in the end

I like your choices, clemenza

1. stylish probably-toxic masculinity (Michael Mann, John Wick, Jason Bourne)
2. grimy science fiction
3. low stakes, lots of talking
4. grimy horror
5. grimy crime

1. Cleric or other religiously-minded person agonises over the possible non-existence of God (or that He hates mankind if He does)
2. Japanese genre spoofs
3. Overuse of fisheye lens
4. Robert Mitchum's one step ahead of everyone else
5. Mutation

this is a great thread

There’s nothing like a good Caper Gone Awry movie, especially when the bodies start piling up.

I also like a good Siege movie, where a group of mismatched strangers band together in a strange setting to ward something or someone off.

And if course the Loser Fucks Up in the Big City and Has to Move Back Home movie, wherein you know they will kindle a romance with a very unlikely person from their past.

that is the premise of all Hallmark Christmas movies

Oh, and also the Past Isn’t Past movie, where the successful protagonist’s life is turned upside down by long forgotten events/transgressions from the distant past.

Xperia the Hallmark movies don’t really lean on the Fucking Up part to get the lead character back in the small town setting. It’s usually a business person making a sales pitch and then gets snowed in. Not like I would know.

Xperia = xp, don’t know how that came out

"It’s usually a business person making a sales pitch and then gets snowed in. Not like I would know."

lol

they're not my favorite movie genre, but I love Christmas movies

Michael Mann movies I might categorize as movies about Doing the Job (and the pride/honor/sometimes personal cost of doing a good job). I'm also a fan of Man vs. Nature movies, which can include everything from "Jaws" to "The Thin Red Line."

“As far back as I can remember I always wanted to be a gangster”

spycraft
multidisciplinary hand-to-hand action trash
shomin-geki
processing, and failing to process, trauma that's too big
noir

Neon psychedelic melt
It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World alikes
Existential road movies
Theme park/carnival/Halloween haunt horror

satan ooze
new face
gay
special appearance by (band), as themselves
mechanical ballet

1. animate objects and/or talking animals
2. basically asmr, but with meaning
3. zany comedy that starts off coherently enough but devolves into unstructured sequence of hollow gags (the duck soup special)

1. society is the real villain
2. the boringness of crime
3. evil book
4. perfect plan goes wrong
5. emotional stage performance/practice

70's political thrillers, preferably European, with bummer endings

the boringness of crime

1. Noir
2. Teen
3. Gay

I like plenty of movies that aren't any of those things, but I could happily survive on a diet of just those if I had to.

1. bad decisions have the worst possible consequences
2. seemingly solid institutions and traditions fall apart
3. rain, snow, mud, floods
4. main character wanders about as if in a dream
5. everything changes but nothing has changed in the end

― Halfway there but for you

This is a great list, hits a lot of things I like myself. I was going to say that I wanted to see a film that does all of them, but I bet I have at some point.

Neon psychedelic melt
It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World alikes
Existential road movies
Theme park/carnival/Halloween haunt horror

― Judi Dench's Human Hand (methanietanner)

On the other hand, I definitely haven't seen any films that are a mix of all of these, but I really really REALLY want to.

new face

Like, Rock Hudson in Seconds, or just "fresh faces"?

Submarine. Lots of red lighting.

- Spies, but the quiet smart seems-boring-on-the-surface kind of spying

- Godzilla! In all forms, even the boring stuff I dont like

- Action movies that are smart & well-directed & ideally shot on location, or set-pieces in unique locations, like To Live & Die In LA, or Ronin, or John Wick

- technicolor Westerns

- Noir movies shot in Bunker Hill

- World War II movies. Good ones! i really hate the bad ones (and there’s a lot) but I’m enough of a sucker i’ll at least try them

- co-sign emil.y on Folk Horror. Absolute “shut up & take my money” always

Storybook Union Gradually Unravels Until It Becomes a Horror Movie (Revolutionary Road, The Nest, War of the Roses, etc.)

related:

Madcap Romance Takes Dark Turn (Something Wild, Betty Blue)

Action/Adventure
Drama
Thriller

I don't know any of you in real life, I only know what I can glean from your interactions here, but this thread tells me more about you somehow in a language I understand and it makes you all more interesting to me

Like, Rock Hudson in Seconds, or just "fresh faces"?

yeah, i was thinking of Seconds. Dark Passage, Face of Another, Phoenix, etc.

^^ Johnny Handsome

some that come to mind:

Giallo
Time dislocation, déjà vu, dream/reality confusion (Jesús Franco good at this)
Vintage screwball comedy, if characters not too irritating
Lesbian vampires
Ancient world costumers in Cinemascope
not an actual genre, but movies in which Elizabeth Taylor is bonkers (eg Boom!, Secret Ceremony, The Driver's Seat)

* also can't forget '60s/'70s biker films, pref with lots of dirty bikers drinking beer from cans

not an actual genre, but movies in which Elizabeth Taylor is bonkers (eg Boom!, Secret Ceremony, The Driver's Seat)

liz-sploitation! one of my favorite genres as well
also:
costume dramas w crazy elaborate sets and natural lighting
campy 80s weirdo comedies
sci-fi with douglas trumbull effects
french new wave
stylish b&w noir w expressionist photography
heist/robbery/grifters

60s-70s weird British black comedies (Bedazzled, The Magic Christian, The Ruling Class, The Bed-Sitting Room)

I stand by my answers from BlueSky earlier:

1. Hour-long cutesy buildup to gut-wrenching parting.
2. Hot person fights injustice, quippily. (Bonus points if the actors do not go on to disgrace themselves by turning out to be cannibals or similar.)
3. World ends fast.
4. World ends slow.
5. Shah Rukh Khan, or, as Daniel_RF describes it "what if a guy was awesome"?