I did Cinema Studies during the second half of the 1990s and every semester there were various types who often popped up at screenings and tutorials. I thought I'd take a lighthearted attempt to list some of them and I'd be curious to know if such types are still around:

1. There was always somebody who would comment 'that director was clearly on drugs' whenever they saw any film that was surreal, absurd, psychedelic or simply imaginative in a way that can't be comprehended by somebody who lacks imagination. Annoyingly, sometimes they were right.

2. There was always a huge Simpsons fan who laughed uproariously and yell 'The Simpsons!' every time they saw a classic film for the first time that had a moment in it that they recognised from a gag on The Simpsons. I swear that sometimes they didn't realise the film came first.

3. There was always an Engineering student doing Cinema Studies as their single Arts elective because, 'watching films should be a bit of fun'. By week 2 they would dominate the class, complaining about reading too much into films. By week 3 they had swapped into something else.

4. There was always the English major student who felt adaptations of books were inherently inferior, described films they liked as 'novelistic' and were completely incapable of analysing visual style. They usually finished the subject, but got an average mark and were outraged.

5. There was always a film purist who was smug, had seen a lot of films, but somehow didn't understand basic concepts like homage. They would love to make declarations like 'The Untouchables totally ripped off Battleship Potemkin man'. They really hated remakes.

6. There was always the Political Science major who had just discovered class politics and couldn't reconcile that a Hollywood film might contain subversive elements because 'Hollywood is so capitalistic man'. They also wrote off entire films if they contained product placement.

7. There was always a nihilistic pseudo-intellectual who thought that every film with a happy and/or romantic ending was a cop out and absolute trash. They also laughed as loud as possible in screenings during scenes of violence and trauma. Often made films themselves. Bad ones.

8. There was always the defensive horror and/or science-fiction fan who felt their genre of choice never got enough attention. They often misused the term 'genre' to only describe horror and science-fiction, and without irony or self awareness rubbished people who liked rom-coms.

9. There was always somebody who during any discussion about gender thought they could successfully shut down all feminist film theory by saying, 'But what about Ellen Ripley and Sarah Connor? Boom!' And they would then look so pleased with themselves.

10. There was always somebody who never did the reading and rarely attended screenings, but would have a go anyway by randomly saying stuff like, 'The Empire Strikes Back. Aliens. The Godfather Part II. Sometimes sequels are as good - if not better - than the original. Boom!'

11. There was always an arthouse connoisseur who felt that constantly trashing everything from Hollywood, or anything otherwise perceived to be mainstream, would get them better marks on their essays. It never did. They also assumed that anything with subtitles was arthouse.

12. There was always a popularist film lover who claimed people could only dislike a film that had massive commercial success to instead embrace 'foreign language and weird stuff' was because they were elitist. Loved to quote box office figures. Had seen fewer than 100 films.

13. There was always somebody who was very concerned about what 'the masses' might think. They understood subtly, satire, irony, subtext and ambiguity, but believed all the other dummies who watched films do not, and they therefore found a lot of films very problematic.

14. There was always somebody who had developed a critical approach to film that they would not waiver from. They would often tie themselves up in knots trying to justify why they liked or disliked a film according to how well it did or didn't confirm to their preferred theory.

15. There was always the twit who thought they were the only person to have ever loved Blade Runner, Twin Peaks, Stanley Kubrick and David Lynch. They thought they were clever using Lacanian theory in one essay and probably annoyed a lot of people but were mostly harmless I hope.