Amadeus

Without a doubt my biggest movie white whale. When I was like 12 I watched a lot of The Nostalgia Critic on YouTube, and at some point I watched Doug Walker’s video of his top 20 favorite movies. Somewhere high on that list was Amadeus, and it was his opinion that the Theatrical Cut was far superior to the Director’s Cut, but the Theatrical Cut had not been readily available in decades. For whatever reason, that stuck in my head and I decided that the first time I watched Amadeus, it had to be the Theatrical Cut. I tried to find that version through every legal and less than legal means I could think of. You couldn’t stream it or find it online anywhere. I got scammed buying a 1997 DVD on eBay that was supposedly the last widely distributed copy of the Theatrical Cut, but the disc didn’t work. I tried contacting people on defunct film fan edit forums that had removed the additions to the Director’s Cut, but got no response. So to finally get to see the Theatrical Cut, and through a new 4k restoration in an actual movie theater on a big screen with a crowd, was not only a great experience but a very satisfying one as well. It’s hilarious and smart and sad, and F. Murray Abraham seems like he was born to play a sniveling worm. Salieri’s only problem is that Salieri had no problem, so he had to create his own.