Reservoir Dogs (1992)

There's something comforting/inspiring about revisiting the first film of a favorite director. The distance of time grants a whole new perspective on things. You get to see and appreciate what will eventually become recurring images and themes back when they were in their raw and rough infancy. You also get to notice all of the amateurish stuff. You notice when a technique they appropriated from another filmmaker doesn't quite land. You can also tell when something is deliberately put in there as a "shout out" to a friend and can chuckle at some of the naive attempts at being deep.

Famously, Stanley Kubrick was so embarrassed by the amateurishness of his first film that he successfully suppressed it from exhibition for the rest of his life. As if the mere existence of Fear and Desire would somehow cause people to suddenly write off his later masterpieces. So what if your first film isn't Citizen Kane? A flawed early film allows viewers, critics and film students to see that even great artists started out small. Let's not forget that at its root, the word "amateur" means "lover of". Here's to the amateurs!