Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Post
  • Reply
Uncle Boogeyman
Jul 22, 2007

the parts of Raw Deal that are Arnie strutting around in a pinstripe suit puffin on a stogie are pretty great

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

pospysyl
Nov 10, 2012



I thought 2020 was actually a very good year for movies. Independent studios and foreign distributors were able to get their films distributed digitally and independent arthouse theaters were able to explore a wider range of content than they usually do. I'm not sure what that means for those institutions financially, but I hope it's able to continue into 2021 and beyond. I think only a few of my top ten movies will hold up as all time favorites, but as a whole I saw a ton of great movies this year.

10) We Are Little Zombies - A cute Japanese film about four recent orphans who start an emo chiptune band. I loved how the movie balanced a consistently dark, violent tone with upbeat stylistic flourishes, and I thought the movie's structure made for a unique, unpredictable plot. Plus, the soundtrack is golden. (Available to rent on demand)

9) Identifying Features - This is a Mexican movie about a mother embarking on a journey to find her missing son who was last seen attempting to cross the border into the United States. This is a challenging film with a meditational pace. Director Fernanda Valadez and DP Claudia Becerril Bulos shoot the northern Mexican scenery beautifully, with awe-inspiring creativity in how they utilize light. There isn't as much focus on American immigration policy as I expected, instead focusing on how precarious life in the border regions has become. At its core, the movie is carried by Mercedes Hernadez's lead performance. Similarly to Yalitizia Aparecio's performance in Roma, Hernandez has a strong, expressive face that does so much work. If you liked Roma, I highly recommend giving this movie a look when it comes out in wide release (I saw it as a virtual film festival release.)

8) The Forty Year Old Version - An autobiographical film written by, directed by, and starring Radha Blank, a playwright seeking to reinvent herself before she turns forty years old. This is a wonderfully witty movie about the colorful subculture of black theatre in New York. It doesn't do much visually, but that just helps keep the focus on the engaging script. (Available on Netflix)

7) The Devil All the Time - A multi-generational crime epic set in Appalachia. If you know anything about this movie it's probably Robert Pattinson's ridiculous southern accent, which would give you an accurate impression of the groundedness and overall tone of the rest of the movie. That's by no means a criticism; there's nothing wrong with being a trashy, violent melodrama. The irascible voice-over narration given by the original novelist sells the movie as a tongue-in-cheek thrill ride. (Available on Netflix)

6) World of Tomorrow Episode Three: The Absent Destinations of David Prime - It's the latest Hertzefeldt release, obviously it's a masterpiece. Compared to the previous entries, this is the darkest installment. It's so ambiguous that it demands rewatching. (Available to rent or buy on Vimeo)

5) I'm Thinking of Ending Things - This movie's been discussed to death on this forum, but it truly is great. (Available on Netflix)

4) Sound of Metal - I think this movie compares well to Gus Van Sandt's more accessible work, like Good Will Hunting and especially Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot. Like those movies, Sound of Metal takes a difficult subject that's vulnerable to over-sentimentalizing (in this case, a musician recovering from sudden hearing loss), but by properly balancing compassion and artistic restraint produces an effect that's deeply moving. Riz Ahmed gives a fantastic performance and the movie's sound design is revolutionary. (Available on Amazon Prime)

3) Another Round - Thomas Vinterberg and Mads Mikkelsen's latest collaboration is an exploration of the pros and cons of alcoholism. The movie has a familiar plot of men emasculated by age and responsibility reclaiming their lost masculinity through self-destructive behavior, but the characters are so richly drawn and the thematic material so deftly woven that it delivers a true emotional journey, earning its dance party ending. (Availabe to rent on demand)

2) The Wild Goose Lake - This is a Chinese neo-noir about a gangster on the run from both the police and his own gang seeking to have someone turn him in so the reward money can go to his wife and child. This is such a stylish film. There are only about three action sequences in the whole movie, but they are some of the most memorable and intense such scenes that I've seen in years. The plot is complicated, full of twists and turns, which makes it challenging to watch as a foreign language film, but it's definitely rewarding, especially on a second watch. The characters are modestly simple, but every performance is nuanced and engaging. (Available on Tubi)

1) Sword of God - A Polish film about missionary Crusaders seeking to convert pagans on a north European island. Imagine if Rob Zombie had directed Silence (2016) with cinematography by Emmanuel Lubezki and you'd get some idea of what this movie is like. The pagans have a hardcore black metal aesthetic and the lengths the two central characters go to try to convert them are equally grueling. The title of the film refers to one of the missionaries, while the original Polish title Krew boga, translated as The Mute, refers to the other. Eventually, the movie becomes a philosophical struggle between each of these characters' religious perspectives, with an awe-inspiring conclusion. I first saw this movie last year at the Cinepocalypse film festival, but it was widely released in the United States this year with a new title. Upon rewatching, I can safely conclude that it still holds up. (Avialable to rent on Amazon)

As for whether these are 2020 releases, I'm considering them as such for being widely released in the United States; I don't care about festival releases or foreign releases. I know that these criteria disqualify Identifying Features, but gently caress you it's my list.

banned from Starbucks
Jul 18, 2004




Lurdiak posted:

My grandma just passed away. :/

Sorry Lurdiak that's awful :(

X-Ray Pecs
May 11, 2008

New York
Ice Cream
TV
Travel
~Good Times~

Uncle Boogeyman posted:

the parts of Raw Deal that are Arnie strutting around in a pinstripe suit puffin on a stogie are pretty great

Whenever Arnold does his thing it’s great, and the action scenes are really fun and feature a lot of poo poo getting wrecked (when he knocks over the cars game the roof collapses and a bunch of mannequins fall to the floor, choice destruction), but anytime it cut away to the nigh impenetrable mobster politics my eyes started glazing over.

Anonymous Robot
Jun 1, 2007

Lost his leg in Robo War I

Escobarbarian posted:

I watched Tokyo Drifter last night and I’ve never seen such a huge gap between the quality of the visuals/aesthetic and the quality of the story

Yeah. Tokyo Drifter is a delight to watch, it’s one of my favorite films in fact, but you have to be down to accept that the storytelling happens almost exclusively visually, and is mainly there to service visual jokes and deliver exquisite images. Scriptwise, it’s a yakuza plot stripped down to its bare skeleton, which also occurs in Branded to Kill in a different from. Youth of the Beast is a little more substantial as a film on the same fixation with hypermasculinity and consumerism, and Fighting Elegy is as close to standard filmmaking as Suzuki gets, which actually makes its statement on masculinity and fascism kind of dizzying in how it’s so nonchalantly baked into a film that is narratively psychotic but formally very typical.

I guess what I’m saying is, as you move forward or back through Suzuki’s filmography, he becomes more or less preoccupied with stylistic formalist expression or telling a story.

Uncle Boogeyman
Jul 22, 2007

I like Tokyo Drifter okay but Branded to Kill is mind blowing. I feel like Jim Jarmusch had to have studied it intensely.

FreudianSlippers
Apr 12, 2010

Shooting and Fucking
are the same thing!

Tokyo Drifter and Branded to Kill were both supposed to be generic Yakuza thrillers like the sort that Nikkatsu pumped out in that era (sometimes entire series of films would be filmed all at once and released all in the same year. They were working that fast.) but Seijun Suzuki was bored of making those sorts of films and though he'd be getting more and more experimental in his work years before that he decided to just go hog wild on what would've otherwise been a by the numbers crime film and then go even crazier on Branded to Kill. Something which eventually lead to him being fired from Nikkatsu and blacklisted for "making films that make no sense and make no money".

Zogo
Jul 29, 2003

Tanya Roberts is alive again. :waycool:

AceOfFlames
Oct 9, 2012

Zogo posted:

Tanya Roberts is alive again. :waycool:

Nice to hear some “X is NOT dead” news for once.

Air Skwirl
May 13, 2007

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed shitposting.

Zogo posted:

Tanya Roberts is alive again. :waycool:

What the gently caress?

I mean, good for her, but seriously, what the gently caress?

CPL593H
Oct 28, 2009

I know what you did last summer, and frankly I am displeased.
I haven't watched a lot of movies in recent months because my brain is just fog and I can't engage them right now. This is also that time of year when I pretty much don't see daylight for weeks at a time so that6 can make you a bit screwy.

I watched Cronos a few days ago. That ruled. If you've got HBO Max check out Cronos.

piratepilates
Mar 28, 2004

So I will learn to live with it. Because I can live with it. I can live with it.



CPL593H posted:

I haven't watched a lot of movies in recent months because my brain is just fog and I can't engage them right now. This is also that time of year when I pretty much don't see daylight for weeks at a time so that6 can make you a bit screwy.

I watched Cronos a few days ago. That ruled. If you've got HBO Max check out Cronos.

do you live in the arctic? or just work a nightshift? 🤔

Zogo
Jul 29, 2003

AceOfFlames posted:

Nice to hear some “X is NOT dead” news for once.

Skwirl posted:

What the gently caress?

I mean, good for her, but seriously, what the gently caress?

:iiam:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OYd1iacvmo

CPL593H
Oct 28, 2009

I know what you did last summer, and frankly I am displeased.

piratepilates posted:

do you live in the arctic? or just work a nightshift? 🤔

No, it's just that my poo poo's all hosed and I sleep in the day time instead of at night. So in the winter I'll be waking up around the time it gets dark or when it already is. I have issues with hypersomnia too.

therattle
Jul 24, 2007
Soiled Meat

CPL593H posted:

No, it's just that my poo poo's all hosed and I sleep in the day time instead of at night. So in the winter I'll be waking up around the time it gets dark or when it already is. I have issues with hypersomnia too.

Have you considered sleeping at night and being awake during the day?

fenix down
Jan 12, 2005

Roth posted:

Watching Yojimbo. This reminds me a lot of one of Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns, though that may just be samurai and westerns having a lot in common.
I'm guessing you liked it? :D

Roth
Jul 9, 2016

fenix down posted:

I'm guessing you liked it? :D

Yeah, was thinking about getting a new avatar since Christmas is done, and thought a Toshiro Mifune gif would be chill.

Simiain
Dec 13, 2005

"BAM! The ole fork in the eye!!"
Oh hey, if we're talking our movies of 2020 then the standouts for me I think are probably The Relic and WolfWalkers. The former because I'm not sure I can remember a horror film ever making me cry before. I want to recommend it to a friend of mine, but he and his family are currently going through the same dilemmas around elderly care that the movie describes and the film does such a horribly brilliant job at knitting the experience of dementia (from the points of view of the sufferer and their family) to its 'horror-movie' premise that I worry it might be a bit much right now.

Wolfwalkers is just a wonderful bloody movie. It is its own movie, of course, but it brings to mind Miyazaki in examining the spread of a rationality or reason (in this case the protestant ethic, steamrolling its way across Ireland courtesy of the Brits) that disenchants and tames spiritual wildlands, and how this enchantment nevertheless lingers in the minds of children, so a lot of people have compared it to Princess Mononoke. It has one pivotal and extended scene, reminiscent of The Snowman, that is utterly transporting and rhapsodic and the song that goes with it has been on pretty heavy rotation whenever my kids are in control of the speaker.

fenix down
Jan 12, 2005

Roth posted:

Yeah, was thinking about getting a new avatar since Christmas is done, and thought a Toshiro Mifune gif would be chill.
It's very chill! I was thinking about it recently because of the homage in Mandalorian.

Kharn_The_Betrayer
Nov 15, 2013


Fun Shoe

Lurdiak posted:

My grandma just passed away. :/

Condoléances...

CPL593H
Oct 28, 2009

I know what you did last summer, and frankly I am displeased.

therattle posted:

Have you considered sleeping at night and being awake during the day?

I have a lot of problems with this because my poo poo's hosed. I sort of have cycles where I'll be operating on normal people hours and then it shifts back and forth over and over again. Plus this time of year makes my poo poo even more hosed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdeidjtU3vw

Cacator
Aug 6, 2005

You're quite good at turning me on.

Simiain posted:

Oh hey, if we're talking our movies of 2020 then the standouts for me I think are probably The Relic and WolfWalkers. The former because I'm not sure I can remember a horror film ever making me cry before. I want to recommend it to a friend of mine, but he and his family are currently going through the same dilemmas around elderly care that the movie describes and the film does such a horribly brilliant job at knitting the experience of dementia (from the points of view of the sufferer and their family) to its 'horror-movie' premise that I worry it might be a bit much right now.

Yeah it's a very effective way of visually conveying the horrors of dementia, I found the ending particularly gut wrenching. If you want to go waaay deep down the rabbit whole of dementia themed media check out Everywhere At the End of Time which was the most terrifying thing I've intentionally exposed myself to last year.

CPL593H
Oct 28, 2009

I know what you did last summer, and frankly I am displeased.
I can 100% say that I'd rather die than end up with dementia or Alzheimer's disease.

Simiain
Dec 13, 2005

"BAM! The ole fork in the eye!!"

Cacator posted:

Yeah it's a very effective way of visually conveying the horrors of dementia, I found the ending particularly gut wrenching. If you want to go waaay deep down the rabbit whole of dementia themed media check out Everywhere At the End of Time which was the most terrifying thing I've intentionally exposed myself to last year.

Holy poo poo, thank you for this. I'm going through a period where I'm thinking a lot about memory and time and lost sounds and the power of audio and audio art to speak to all that, so this kind of thing is currently right up my alleyway.

Escobarbarian
Jun 18, 2004


Grimey Drawer

Uncle Boogeyman posted:

I like Tokyo Drifter okay but Branded to Kill is mind blowing. I feel like Jim Jarmusch had to have studied it intensely.

This is one of the main reasons I watched Tokyo Drifter first (that and Tokyo Drifter has a UK Criterion release). I’ve heard from people who watched Branded first that Drifter has less impact in comparison. I’m excited to get to it!

I, Butthole
Jun 30, 2007

Begin the operations of the gas chambers, gas schools, gas universities, gas libraries, gas museums, gas dance halls, and gas threads, etcetera.
I DEMAND IT
My city's art gallery cinematheque program is back in full swing for 2021, and they're showing Funeral Parade of Roses and Pistol Opera as a double feature, as well as Diary of a Shinjuku Theif and Tetsuo. They also have standalone screenings of Hausu. It's gonna rule.

therattle
Jul 24, 2007
Soiled Meat

CPL593H posted:

I can 100% say that I'd rather die than end up with dementia or Alzheimer's disease.

My mother’s parents both got dementia and my mother says that if she gets it we should shoot her.

Davros1
Jul 19, 2007

You've got to admit, you are kind of implausible



My mother has dementia ... and it's rough. And it's came on so gradual that you just find yourself adjusting to all the little changes before you realize one day that it's far too gone.

We're at a point right now where it's hard to get her to watch anything on TV, because she thinks it's all real.

The Klowner
Apr 20, 2019

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS
I'm 100% sure I am going to get dementia or alzheimer's

Gripweed
Nov 8, 2018

ASK ME ABOUT MY
UNITED STATES MARINES
FUNKO POPS COLLECTION



I'm glad that the only problem that runs in my family is mental illness. You start in your twenties and can live with it just fine to age 90

Boz0r
Sep 7, 2006
The Rocketship in action.
This coronavirus stuff got me thinking how many studies have been made about popular media after world events. Like the type of movies that was influenced by the cold War, Vietnam War, 9/11, and probably coronavirus soon. Anyone know something like this?

Gripweed
Nov 8, 2018

ASK ME ABOUT MY
UNITED STATES MARINES
FUNKO POPS COLLECTION



Boz0r posted:

This coronavirus stuff got me thinking how many studies have been made about popular media after world events. Like the type of movies that was influenced by the cold War, Vietnam War, 9/11, and probably coronavirus soon. Anyone know something like this?

It's not a study, but here's a pretty good video about how 9/11 changed the depiction of disasters in movies

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KioF1sTQFtE

MacheteZombie
Feb 4, 2007

Davros1 posted:

My mother has dementia ... and it's rough. And it's came on so gradual that you just find yourself adjusting to all the little changes before you realize one day that it's far too gone.

We're at a point right now where it's hard to get her to watch anything on TV, because she thinks it's all real.

I'm very sorry to hear that. My great grandmother had it and watching her suffer was really hard on me and my family. No one should have to suffer that fate.

Spatulater bro!
Aug 19, 2003

Punch! Punch! Punch!

My grandpa was always an introverted guy but was a fantastic storyteller, so anytime he'd begin talking during family gatherings the room would go silent to listen to him. Well he developed severe dementia in his last few years (he died last year), but he would still attempt to tell interesting anecdotes. We would listen intently to his story (which may or not have been totally coherent), laugh/react accordingly, and then less than a minute later he'd begin telling the exact story again. I've never felt such a weird combination of awkwardness + grief.

feedmyleg
Dec 25, 2004
For a project I'm working on I put together a dramatization of Kenneth Arnold's 1947 UFO encounter which set off the flying saucer craze:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpIQhE-v1GI

I tried to emulate the whole 8mm vibe of the Patterson-Gilmin bigfoot footage or Zapruder film. I think it turned out pretty good! I especially enjoy the implication of radiation on the film stock when they're nearby :3:

feedmyleg fucked around with this message at 21:35 on Jan 5, 2021

X-Ray Pecs
May 11, 2008

New York
Ice Cream
TV
Travel
~Good Times~

CPL593H posted:

I have a lot of problems with this because my poo poo's hosed. I sort of have cycles where I'll be operating on normal people hours and then it shifts back and forth over and over again. Plus this time of year makes my poo poo even more hosed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdeidjtU3vw

I'm glad someone else knows something from the first couple Human League albums. I obviously love Dare, but those two are very different but also great in their own ways.

Detective No. 27
Jun 7, 2006

So, after her prematurely announced death and retraction yesterday, Tanya Roberts did in fact die today.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/tanya-roberts-70s-show-star-dies-65-day-after-her-n1252839

Air Skwirl
May 13, 2007

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed shitposting.

Detective No. 27 posted:

So, after her prematurely announced death and retraction yesterday, Tanya Roberts did in fact die today.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/tanya-roberts-70s-show-star-dies-65-day-after-her-n1252839

Are they sure this time?

FreudianSlippers
Apr 12, 2010

Shooting and Fucking
are the same thing!

Drugs are Nice by Suckdog is a pretty far out album.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Zogo
Jul 29, 2003

This goes without saying but there are so many thousands of knuckleheads on YouTube comments.

Yesterday there were dozens of comments with literally thousands of upvotes with the sentiments of "This was a publicity stunt done by the boyfriend!"

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply