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Dmitri Russkie, go with Dersu Uzala. Kurosawa always a solid bet (after 1945 I gather, anyway). Time for me to join! I promised myself I'd post in here once I finally saw The Godfather and Citizen Kane -- they were too large sources of shame to justify posting in here before watching  -- and finally knocked them both out this week. I have a tendency to lean towards more recent films so hopefully this is a good way to rectify that  A Fistful of Dollars - Completely unversed in westerns. Closest I've come is No Country for Old Men or, uh, Back to the Future 3  (And for the record, I love Yojimbo -- my favourite Kurosawa, in fact)The Godfather Part II - Since I saw Part I this week haven't yet had time to go further than that Spirited Away - My only Ghibli, and indeed anime as a whole, experience so far is Princess Kaguya. (Feel free to recommend a different Ghibli if you think there's a better starting spot!) Vertigo - Woefully underversed in Hitchcock Tokyo Story - Seen a few Kurosawas and plenty of recent Japanese cinema, but no other pre-90s director Ordet - Very, very intrigued by what little I've heard La strada - 8½ was pretty spectacular, but my only Fellini Raging Bull - Scorsese's yet another big blind spot Cries and Whispers - Been a while since I watched Bergman. Seen the big three The General - LOVED the two Keatons I've seen so far
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Nov 23, 2015 02:00
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 03:10 |
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TrixRabbi, I've only seen one of your list but wasn't particularly enamored with it, whereas Yi Yi is one of the things I most want to see. Go with that and who knows, if you love it, maybe make me watch it some day... ------------------ Spirited Away: Lovely lovely lovely. Just a really absurd level of charming. Surreal and childlike (in a good way); reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland in that respect. Art style's very pretty, although the animation feels a bit... choppy at times? Not as smooth and continuous as Princess Kaguya. There's a scene where No Face jumps several stories into the water, and it looked like he was just skipping down 5 feet at a time. Weird. But whatever, nitpicking, because where else am I gonna find flaws The start reminded me of Inside Out, as both consider what it's like for a child to have to move home, leave behind what they know, start over, and all against their fledgling judgement. But the similarities stop there, really: that's a story of sentiment and psychology, this of adventure and sociology. Rather than an exploration of pining for what's lost, we get what it's like to grow up in a world without your parents -- that one constant after such a big life event -- where you're thrust into a society which expects work and commitment, a sacrifice of childhood. Excess was the dominant theme throughout for me: Chihiro's parents' gluttony sparks her odyssey; No Face exploits the greed of everyone bar Chihiro to achieve its aims; the desecration of the river god via entirely man-made means; you could even compare Yubaba's palatial bathhouse to Zeniba's modest home -- is it any wonder they can't get on? and through it all, it's sacrifice, modesty and love that helps Chihiro back to her old life. It's not just a good film, it's a film about goodness. That warmness and sincerity in telling a story with that message is something I really, really appreciate in film these days, too. Finally: god bless that ending. It's way too easy and too common to write off stories as just a child's imagination. Let that imagination BE reality. Definitely looking forward to more Ghibli. Helluva film. 8.5/10. A Fistful of Dollars - Completely unversed in westerns. Closest I've come is No Country for Old Men or, uh, Back to the Future 3 (And for the record, I love Yojimbo -- my favourite Kurosawa, in fact)The Godfather Part II - Since I saw Part I this week haven't yet had time to go further than that Vertigo - Woefully underversed in Hitchcock Tokyo Story - Seen a few Kurosawas and plenty of recent Japanese cinema, but no other pre-90s director Ordet - Very, very intrigued by what little I've heard La strada - 8½ was pretty spectacular, but my only Fellini Raging Bull - Scorsese's yet another big blind spot Cries and Whispers - Been a while since I watched Bergman. Seen the big three The General - LOVED the two Keatons I've seen so far Nanook of the North - I love documentaries, and this is the highest one on Sight and Sound's list of the greatest ever that I've not seen (except for Shoah, which is too long to book in here, need to find a ton of time to dedicate to something like that) De-shamed: Spirited Away (8.5/10) | [Total:1] Allyn fucked around with this message at 03:27 on Nov 29, 2015 |
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Nov 29, 2015 03:24
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TrixRabbi, go with Faces. Cassavetes is pretty tight. ------------------ Caught Vertigo yesterday, and I've been stewing on it since. It's certainly a visual treat, a work of immense craftmanship -- what else would you expect from Hitchcock? The mise-en-scène is wonderful throughout, the landscapes stunning, and I've never seen the Golden Gate look so imposing. There are wonderful touches throughout -- spirals as a motif throughout, whether in the intro, or spiralling through the city through those descents and turns which are so emblematic of San Francisco, or the heightened paranoia in the incredible nightmare scene, the most wonderful evocation of grief as filtered through our own personal pains and traumas... But I never truly fell in love with it. Perhaps that it's just that it was a first watch. Perhaps it's that old cliché of Hitchcock being a better technician than dramatist (or lacking in heart, or however you want to phrase it). There are moments which do capture that special sensation of empathy in the way cinema does best -- when Judy is trapped in this lie, trying desperately to make this man love her for her, yet torn apart by the knowledge that he really loves the illusion of another woman, in particular -- but there weren't quite enough of them for me... I felt much the same way with Psycho (the only other film of his I'd seen), but I'd chalked that up to being a dumbass 16-year old when I saw it for a school assignment. Just a little too cold. But there's still plenty in there to make it a really good film. 7/10. A Fistful of Dollars - Completely unversed in westerns. Closest I've come is No Country for Old Men or, uh, Back to the Future 3 (And for the record, I love Yojimbo -- my favourite Kurosawa, in fact)The Godfather Part II - Since I saw Part I this week haven't yet had time to go further than that Tokyo Story - Seen a few Kurosawas and plenty of recent Japanese cinema, but no other pre-90s director Ordet - Very, very intrigued by what little I've heard La strada - 8½ was pretty spectacular, but my only Fellini Raging Bull - Scorsese's yet another big blind spot Cries and Whispers - Been a while since I watched Bergman. Seen the big three The General - LOVED the two Keatons I've seen so far Nanook of the North - I love documentaries, and this is the highest one on Sight and Sound's list of the greatest ever that I've not seen (except for Shoah, which is too long to book in here, need to find a ton of time to dedicate to something like that) Shawshank Redemption - Ah, the good ol' IMDB #1 De-shamed: Spirited Away (8.5/10), Vertigo (7/10) | [Total: 2]
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Dec 13, 2015 20:30
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Wyllt, go with The Double Life of Veronique. Kieslowski's my favourite director so I feel duty bound to pick him (plus it's my second favourite of his) It took me a long-rear end time to get round to watching Shawshank. I was kinda trepidatious, in fact. IMDB's list is filled with so much corny or overblown (or both!) bullshit that I was worried it would be the epitome of that. Fortunately, that's far from the whole story: sure, the score is way too overblown, and the direction can get too Hollywood sentimental, but for the most part it's just a wonderful story, really well told. King and Darabont found some rich thematic veins to mine: fraternity, integrity and hope are all beautifully evoked. And as much as the narration feels dated, the fact it's Morgan Freeman in expectedly superb form softens that. Once the escape starts, Roger Deakins turns on the style: the combination of shape and darkness he uses is astonishing. It was a wonderful surprise too, as I had no idea it contained anything so jaw-dropping... but I guess that's my fault for second-guessing one of the greats. The scene with Mozart playing over the loudspeaker to the prison was the real highlight for me. Pure cinema: surveying everything and everyone coming to a standstill to enjoy this one cathartic moment of bliss amongst a life of often brutal captivity. Really, the only reason I never fell truly in love with Shawshank is there weren't enough similarly transcendent moments. But it is, no question, still a very, very good film. 7.5/10 During my several-month-long hiatus from this thread I also caught a couple of others from my list: A Fistful of Dollars, while beautifully set and shot, I felt little emotional resonance here. Especially with Yojimbo as my favourite Kurosawa, the Man With No Name felt significantly less engaging than Mifune's Sanjuro, whose playful manner worked with the conniving, double-crossing nature far better for me. 6/10 The Godfather Part II, which didn't quite take root like the first part. The Vito half is wonderful -- the genesis of this archetype, and the American dream being simultaneously realised and bastardised -- and the split narrative works wonderfully, but too much of the early Michael stuff felt underwhelming relative to that which followed. Nonetheless, the crescendo towards this climax, with this cruelty having completely corrupted Michael and alienated him from near-everyone not from the family was terrific. 7.5/10 Tokyo Story - Seen a few Kurosawas and plenty of recent Japanese cinema, but no other pre-90s director Ordet - Very, very intrigued by what little I've heard La strada - 8½ was pretty spectacular, but my only Fellini Raging Bull - Scorsese's yet another big blind spot Cries and Whispers - Been a while since I watched Bergman. Seen the big three The General - LOVED the two Keatons I've seen so far Nanook of the North - I love documentaries, and this is the highest one on Sight and Sound's list of the greatest ever that I've not seen (except for Shoah, which is too long to book in here, need to find a ton of time to dedicate to something like that) The Godfather Part III - Let's finish the trilogy up, eh? One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Uh, it's One Flew Over Chungking Express - Been wanting to see this for a while De-shamed: Spirited Away (8.5/10), Vertigo (7/10), A Fistful of Dollars (6/10), The Godfather Part II (7.5/10), The Shawshank Redemption (7.5/10) | [Total: 5]
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Apr 11, 2016 23:45
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IM_DA_DECIDER, go with Citizen Kane, it's like the ultimate fodder for this thread (P.S. I'm glad you loved TToL, it's my absolute favourite. Makes me feel like nothing else.) Chungking Express was pretty lovely. It feels beautifully weighted -- almost feather-light, which makes the potentially slow pacing a non-issue; it [i[never[/i] drags. Reminded me of Kieslowski in how it portrays connections we miss, those we make, and those we miss then make. Curious thought that this would come out the same year as Three Colours: Red (one of my absolute favourites); they feel strangely similar to me, a shared universe with the tiniest overlaps, yet they're contemporaries -- but it's purely coincidental. Some wonderful thoughts in the first section ("must everything come with an expiration date?"), it's witty (the overlapping meanings of May, with one leaving as the other arrives, felt particularly cute), some really straightforward yet beautiful cinematography... When I finished, I wasn't sure how to reconcile these two halves, but Criterion's essay provides some historical context. And it's since coalesced in my mind, too: first we get these total opposites who find some strange unspoken, inexplicable, almost functional bond, who come together for this changing of the guard before parting forever; then, these total opposites, full of whimsy and absurdity, who overlap and overlap and overlap without quite colliding but might, just might, ultimately come together. They're loosely similar situations, coming to inverse conclusions, yet both come to this beautifully optimistic view of the future. A difficult, but really well managed dramatic balance. Faye Wong's great as this proto-manic pixie dream girl, and Tony Leung's as wonderful as ever, although, if anything, he feels far too cool to be playing this lovable loser. But I think more than anything else, that soundtrack! Not just California Dreamin', but that cover of Dreams? (I didn't even realise it was Wong singing until afterwards -- god drat.) And the pinnacle for me, that recurring lo-fi reggae track from Dennis Brown? It's been stuck on my mind all day, as much as the film itself. "It's not every day we're gonna be the same way..." -- and sometimes it's the people we meet who begin that process. The more I've thought about this the more I've realised that, y'know what? I do kinda love it. And I can only see it going up from here on repeat viewings. 8/10 Tokyo Story - Seen a few Kurosawas and plenty of recent Japanese cinema, but no other pre-90s director Ordet - Very, very intrigued by what little I've heard La strada - 8½ was pretty spectacular, but my only Fellini Raging Bull - Scorsese's yet another big blind spot Cries and Whispers - Been a while since I watched Bergman. Seen the big three The General - LOVED the two Keatons I've seen so far Nanook of the North - I love documentaries, and this is the highest one on Sight and Sound's list of the greatest ever that I've not seen (except for Shoah, which is too long to book in here, need to find a ton of time to dedicate to something like that) The Godfather Part III - Let's finish the trilogy up, eh? One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Uh, it's One Flew Over Schindler's List - Make me cry a bunch De-shamed: Spirited Away (8.5/10), Vertigo (7/10), A Fistful of Dollars (6/10), The Godfather Part II (7.5/10), The Shawshank Redemption (7.5/10), Chungking Express (8/10) | [Total: 6]
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Apr 18, 2016 01:12
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Magic Hate Ball posted:This is a great connection, Chungking Express is almost like a photo-negative inversion of Double Life of Veronique. Man I hadn't thought of it like that. I'd made the connection to Three Colours: Red, but not to Double Life: as very similar people, but not necessarily as perfect reflections of themselves in one another, albeit here just tantalising out of reach. That's beautiful. Wyllt posted:As for me, I was give The Double Life of Veronique from Allyn which he said is his second favorite Kieslowski. And holy poo poo I can't wait to see what would be his top favorite! This movie was an incredible experience and I am still working a lot of it out. I loved the entire color palette and how it would change drastically. The story turns and weaves but I was constantly engaged. The performance by the main actress is magnificent and there was so much emotion in some of the scenes. It will definitely take some unpacking to do but I loved the way this movie dealt with the loss of something dear, even if you are unaware of what that something is. All in all I am not too good with getting my thoughts out properly (half of why I wanted to join back in here, to get the practice) but I am so intrigued by Kieslowski and the control he has over cinema. Truly a unique experience. I know what you mean, both about Double Life's strange, inexplicable metaphysicality, and the difficulty of writing about it (film generally and Double Life specifically). I do think this thread's helped me, in terms of refining my thoughts, and how better to write and express them. Hope it does do similar for you. (P.S. my favourite of his is Three Colours: Red, also starring Irène Jacob. It leans very heavily on Double Life but manages to go slightly on a tangent from there... I really adore it. One of my favourite 5 films.)As for your next film, looks like you're geared yourself up for watching Mirror, so yeah go with that! First, a little on my Scorsese history: when I added Raging Bull to the list, I'd previously seen Taxi Driver many years ago, as a teenage dumbass (don't remember much, only that I didn't love it), Shutter Island (Lehane adaptations all leave me with the exact same response, regardless of who makes them: derivative, tedious ephemera, built so tightly around twists that I always see coming) and Wolf of Wall St (smug and exhausting, and not in a manner which enhanced the satire; instead, it felt utterly condescending and actually quite irritating). "Scorsese's yet another big blind spot," I wrote, but I had actually somewhat fixed that recently, with GoodFellas and The Departed in the past 6 weeks. Having felt so unimpressed with those other recent two, I went in hoping these would be the ones to work. So I went into GoodFellas, this pantheon of modern American cinema, expecting greatness... and came out incredibly cold. Yes, there is great filmmaking on show, and that final day of paranoia was wonderful, but so much of the rest did absolutely nothing for me. Worst of all, I can't even express why that is, it's just this strange emptiness. Then The Departed, and finally I had a film of his I liked -- hell, loved. This terrifically tight, tense piece, reworking that classic mole vs mole narrative, but so expertly threaded through a piece of American modern history that it resonated perfectly. And so we come to Raging Bull, and what a god drat frustration it is that I feel exactly the same as with GoodFellas. There are moments which do evoke this all-consuming, sadistic and masochistic, destructive power of anger, but not nearly enough. And as with GoodFellas, there are moments of great beauty (that montage at the end of the first act, holy poo poo! Probably the best one I've ever seen), and the fight scenes are incredibly well shot and edited, creating something genuinely still visceral. But as a whole package? I feel completely disconnected from it. And again, this complete inability to understand or express why: it's just this vacuum, this absence of reaction to it. How god drat frustrating that is. At least with Shutter Island and Wolf I could put my finger on exactly what it was I disliked; with these two, I've no idea. One of the greatest American directors in modern history and I just feel nothing while watching some of his seminal works. I'm either missing someting or missing out. Fuuuck. 5/10. Tokyo Story - Seen a few Kurosawas and plenty of recent Japanese cinema, but no other pre-90s director Ordet - Very, very intrigued by what little I've heard La strada - 8½ was pretty spectacular, but my only Fellini Cries and Whispers - Been a while since I watched Bergman. Seen the big three The General - LOVED the two Keatons I've seen so far Nanook of the North - I love documentaries, and this is the highest one on Sight and Sound's list of the greatest ever that I've not seen (except for Shoah, which is too long to book in here, need to find a ton of time to dedicate to something like that) The Godfather Part III - Let's finish the trilogy up, eh? One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Uh, it's One Flew Over Schindler's List - Make me cry a bunch Nostalghia - One of the three Tarkovskys I've got left De-shamed: Spirited Away (8.5/10), Vertigo (7/10), A Fistful of Dollars (6/10), The Godfather Part II (7.5/10), The Shawshank Redemption (7.5/10), Chungking Express (8/10), Raging Bull (5/10) | [Total: 7]
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Apr 19, 2016 23:47
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Zogo, go with Woodstock The most striking thing about Tokyo Story is Ozu's mise-en-scene. These homes feel totally authentic and lived-in, beautiful in every scene. Ozu uses these spaces to great effect: whether it's the grandparents' relatively spacious home in the countryside vs. one of the cramped Tokyo houses amplfifying this quiet inter-generational frustration and disconnection, or Noriko and her mother-in-law bonding in this tight, intimate space, it's really beautiful. Setsuko Hara's face lights this film up in places, particularly towards the end, striking this beautiful balance between optimism-in-the-darkness and pathos. The story's really quite run-of-the-mill, but Ozu injects it with depth, working both as slice-of-life family drama and probably as allegory for the emerging tensions in post-war Japan -- I don't know enough about the era, but I'd imagine the ongoing economic miracle inflects many of their interactions. Indeed, I'd imagine many Japanese idiosyncracies underscore much of what's here and yet flew over my head, but nonetheless it still rings completely true: inter-generational angst, sibling frustration, hopes and dreams vs. the reality you end up with... all still very timely, especially in the light of every tedious millenial op-ed. I imagine there's far more to pick up from this, too. I imagine it looks and feels very different when you're closer to the grandparents' age than Kyoko's. 7/10 I also watched One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest as it was burning a hole in my DVR, and it's like Shawshank for me: another American classic that just feels like a solid film with a few moments of magic trying to pull it up higher. It's functionally good -- in particular, it does a great job balancing the comedic tone against the darker side it's showing -- but only rarely hit me in some profound way. Chief was one of the lovelier characters I've seen on screen recently, though. 6.5/10 Ordet - Very, very intrigued by what little I've heard La strada - 8½ was pretty spectacular, but my only Fellini Cries and Whispers - Been a while since I watched Bergman. Seen the big three The General - LOVED the two Keatons I've seen so far Nanook of the North - I love documentaries, and this is the highest one on Sight and Sound's list of the greatest ever that I've not seen (except for Shoah, which is too long to book in here, need to find a ton of time to dedicate to something like that) The Godfather Part III - Let's finish the trilogy up, eh? Schindler's List - Make me cry a bunch Nostalghia - One of the three Tarkovskys I've got left High and Low - Gimme some non-period drama Kurosawa Fight Club - I love Fincher but somehow have yet to see his most famous of all De-shamed: Spirited Away (8.5/10), Vertigo (7/10), A Fistful of Dollars (6/10), The Godfather Part II (7.5/10), The Shawshank Redemption (7.5/10), Chungking Express (8/10), Raging Bull (5/10), One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (6.5/10), Tokyo Story (7/10) | [Total: 9]
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Apr 29, 2016 23:55
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Samuel Clemens posted:What is the first great movie? A Trip to the Moon? For me yeah. The Great Train Robbery should also get a shoutout but came out a year later
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Jun 20, 2017 21:20
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 03:10 |
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Hey bitterandtwisted, watch Tokyo Story. I had it deshamed here, time to pass that along It only took me 3-odd years to get round to watching High and Low but hey, I finally did it the other day! And it's really good! And not at all like I expected, really. Before the drama even begins, we're mired in tension: as we overlook the crowded Tokyo skyline, the credits are crammed in, obscuring most every inch of the concrete jungle; there's no space to move here. Then, by contrast, a huge, modernist, minimalist Tokyo apartment plays home to an almost theatrical drama. Kurosawa's everpresent hero Toshiro Mifune is Gondo, a wealthy businessman, grappling with whether to pay a ransom for his chauffeur's child, after a kidnapper mistook the child for Gondo's own son. Paying means the collapse of his elaborate business machinations, and financial ruin for his family; refusal means the blood of a child on his hands. This dramatic fulcrum is a rich vein for Kurosawa to mine, and a prism for his look at (then-)modern Japanese society, and its ingrained hierarchies, with their often absurd senses of obligation. Then, we switch to a forensic police procedural. We watch as dozens of detectives hold meetings to update their bosses on their progress. The attention to detail is what really sells me here: we hear of the schedules of streetcars, of payphone sightlines, of methods for procuring anaesthetics. For people just standing around explaining things, it does a great job of demonstrating just how they're trying to put the jigsaw together. It's not built on twists and turns; instead, it's taught, honest, forensic filmmaking. Then we get the crowning jewels, two really terrific set pieces: first, a bustling surveillence scene in a dancehall (apparently the influence for the diner scene in Pulp Fiction), then a languid, hazy trip to a drug den (which reminded me SO much of De Niro's opium den scenes in Once Upon a Time in America; I can't find anything about whether it was actually an influence, but we know Leone loved Kurosawa, given his reworking of Yojimbo, so I wouldn't be surprised). The class politics are still deeply rooted in this half, too, but reframed; it's no longer about one isolated incident as allegory; it's the pervasive, inescapable poverty. And even though Gondo is staring down the barrel of losing everything, he'll still never feel poverty like it. "It's hot as hell down here. An inferno." Suffice to say the finale is a stunner, although the less spoiled of it the better. Also at some point in the gap since my last post, I watched Fight Club, too. Twice, in fact: once on my own, and once with friends. I'm... not a fan. I'll grant that its big strength is its satirisation of a specific breed of man, who takes something which is overwhelmingly targeted for his benefit, and contorts it into evidence of his own oppression... But I've just grown so incredibly tired of Fincher's aesthetic, and the overarching narrative I find ultimately tedious. While probably a victim of its own success and the cultural osmosis it's inspired, the twist is a total nothing for me, much as it is for The Game; it's not some staggering epiphany demanding a total re-examination of everything that came before. The whole thing is just a big, murky soup of nothingness. (Also, as a depressing aside, shoutout to the weird guy on Letterboxd who I felt compelled to unfollow after I saw his review mentioned he and his frat "would totally have been members of Project Mayhem". Yikes.) Since it's been so long, I'm changing up my list a lil bit because man, it had too much stuff that I'm not truly that interested in catching at this point in time... Hit me: The Red Shoes The Night of the Hunter Ordet The 400 Blows Cries and Whispers Alien The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover Schindler's List Amores Perros Roma De-shamed: Spirited Away (8.5/10), Vertigo (7/10), A Fistful of Dollars (6/10), The Godfather Part II (7.5/10), The Shawshank Redemption (7.5/10), Chungking Express (8/10), Raging Bull (5/10), One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (6.5/10), Tokyo Story (7/10), Fight Club (4/10), High and Low (8/10) | [Total: 11] Allyn fucked around with this message at 17:49 on Feb 15, 2020 |
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Feb 14, 2020 23:40
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