April 2013 recap

39 new viewings (plus 20 shorts)
14 rewatches

 
Best new discovery: As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty
Worst new discovery: Nouvelle vague

With my wife out of town and losing my job, I had a lot of free time to watch movies this month.  Unfortunately, I wasted a lot of it, which is a thing I keep struggling with.  These numbers are high, but they could have been a lot higher.  However, it was a pretty good month.  I have my first top 100 contender of the year, and am seeing more recent releases thanks to joining a local movie club.  I made a reasonable dent in the TSPDT list, only 8 left to go (although one of those is nine hours long).  I’ve given up on alternating between new and rewatch… I think 1 rewatch for every 3 or 4 new viewings is an acceptable ratio.  The month of May will have some emphasis on musicals/music-related movies.

Yearly Roundup – 2006

The Cream of the Crop

Hey, it’s been a while since I’ve done one of these.  Due to its appearance on my top 100, it should be no surprise that my favorite of the year is Syndromes and a Century.  Pretty much everything by Weerasethakul is worth watching, but this one weaves a special spell over me.  Structurally playful, alternately mellowing and disturbing, always beautiful.  Sublime filmmaking from one of cinema’s most distinctive voices.

*

Slightly Less Creamy, But Still Tasty

It’s a year of excellent surreal nightmares, including three from my top 100.  Inland Empire is Lynch at his Lynch-iest, a slippery narrative loaded with moods.  Then there’s the deadpan dystopia of Jens Lien’s mysterious The Bothersome Man.  And a rather controversial (i.e., questionable) selections for a “top” list: Silent Hill.  I would be hard-pressed to defend this as a brilliant story, but its achievements in production design and commitment to its nightmarish tone does something for me.  And that’s not all from my top 250, there’s also Tsai’s I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone, probably his warmest film.  Gorgeous ending.

I recently watched Infernal Affairs and although I did enjoy it, I still prefer Scorsese’s The Departed, a highly entertaining and gripping remake.  Lastly, a pair of fine documentaries.  Inheritance studies the demons haunting Amon Goeth’s daughter, and An Inconvenient Truth studies the demons haunting our planet.

*

Also Love

Before We Fall in Love Again
Brand Upon the Brain!
Fireworks Wednesday
It’s Winter
Little Miss Sunshine
Offside
Still Life

*

Varying Degrees of Like

12:08 East of Bucharest
The Beales of Grey Gardens
The Bridge
Casino Royale
Children of Men
Climates
Colossal Youth
Exiled
Forgiving Dr. Mengele
The Fountain
The Girl Who Leapt Through Time
Inside Man
Invisible Waves
Jackass: Number Two
Jesus Camp
Jindabyne
The Kon Ichikawa Story
Letters from Iwo Jima
Lights in the Dusk
The Lives of Others
Love Conquers All
Madeinusa
La Morte Rouge
Old Joy
Pan’s Labyrinth
Paris, je t’aime
The Prestige
The Queen
Rainbow Song
Red Road
The Road to Guantanamo
The Science of Sleep
Slither
Ten Nights of Dreams
This Film Is Not Yet Rated
This Filthy World
Time
United 93
V for Vendetta
Volver
Woman on the Beach
Wordplay
X-Men: The Last Stand

*

Varying Degrees of Hate

Find Me Guilty
Happy Feet
Klimt

*

Some Notable Films In The Middle

Babel
Borat
Curse of the Golden Flower
Death Note/Death Note 2
For Your Consideration
The Good German
The Host
Idiocracy
Marie Antoinette
Miami Vice
The Namesake
Paprika
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest
Rescue Dawn
A Scanner Darkly
Scoop
Snakes on a Plane
Superman Returns
Tales from Earthsea
Thank You for Smoking

*

Uncharted Territory

Apocalypto, Blood Diamond, The Break-Up, Cars, Crank, The Da Vinci Code, Day Watch, The Devil Wears Prada, Dreamgirls, Flags of Our Fathers, Half Nelson, The Illusionist, I’m a Cyborg But That’s OK, Lady in the Water, Longing, Mission Impossible III, The Night of the Sunflowers, Paraguayan Hammock, A Prairie Home Companion, Rocky Balboa, Shortbus, Stranger Than Fiction, This Is England, The Wicker Man

March 2013 Recap

26 new viewings (plus 3 shorts)
15 rewatches

Best new discovery: The Mortal Storm
Worst new discovery: Empire

The month didn’t go quite how I planned.  I expected to watch more from the TSPDT list, more rewatches, and more movies in total.  But it was a pretty good month.  Nothing on the “Masterpiece” or even “Great” level, but quite a lot in the 82-87 range, which is not a bad range.  Don’t have any particular viewing plans for April, just gonna play it by ear.

February 2013 Recap

26 new viewings (plus 1 incomplete)
12 rewatches

Best new discovery:  Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment (honorable mention: Anzukko, In Vanda’s Room)
Worst new discovery: Cronos

My plans to alternate new viewings with rewatches fell apart when the new viewings started piling up.  Overall, kind of a lackluster month both in quantity and quality.  But that’s coming off a stellar January, so I can’t complain.  Just going to play it by ear in March, but I do hope to step up the revisits.  Which, if I stick to my rough schedule of watching them in order of my last viewing, will involve a lot of Kubrick and Herzog.

They Make Lists of Movies, Don’t They?

It’s that time of year, when the “They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They?” list has been updated.  I love making lists, something about organizing things and putting them in their place appeals to the little OCD monster in me.  As far as completing other lists, though, TSPDT is the only one I really care about.  It appeals to me because 1) it’s a long list and 2) it’s an aggregate.  No one person decides what goes on the list or what position to put each movie in.  It’s just math, taking all the other lists out there and smooshing them together.  Granted, there are some subjective measures… which lists to include, how to weigh old lists vs. new lists, and so forth.  But it’s about as “objective” a canon there can be.

This year’s update was highly anticipated because it comes after the Sight & Sound poll of 2012.  This resulted in the biggest shakeup of the TSPDT list to date, with lots of films moving up and down, and 124 replacements in all.  As I’ve done the past two years, I will be watching all the films I haven’t seen yet.  These are:

279. OUT 1, NOLI ME TANGERE (Jacques Rivette / 1971 / France / 729m / Col-BW)
436. NOUVELLE VAGUE (Jean-Luc Godard / 1990 / France, Switzerland / 88m / Col)
540. SICILIA! (Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Huillet / 1999 / Italy, France, Switzerland / 76m / BW)
562. NUMÉRO DEUX (Jean-Luc Godard / 1975 / France / 88m / Col)
601. BLACK GIRL (Ousmane Sembene / 1966 / France, Senegal / 65m / Col-BW)
610. IN VANDA’S ROOM (Pedro Costa / 2000 / Portugal, Germany, Switzerland, Italy / 170m / Col)
619. EMPIRE (Andy Warhol / 1964 / USA / 485m / BW)
628. CODE UNKNOWN (Michael Haneke / 2000 / France, Germany, Romania / 116m / Col)
638. FROM THE CLOUDS TO THE RESISTANCE (Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Huillet / 1979 / Italy, West Germany, UK, France / 104m / Col)
652. LAST BOLSHEVIK, THE (Chris Marker / 1993 / France, Finland / 120m / Col)
691. OUTER SPACE (Peter Tscherkassky / 1999 / Austria / 10m / BW)
713. SEASONS, THE (Artavazd Peleshian / 1975 / USSR / 29m / BW)
733. CIÉNAGA, LA (Lucrecia Martel / 2001 / Argentina, USA, Japan, France, Switzerland, Spain, Brazil / 99m / Col)
734. COLOSSAL YOUTH (Pedro Costa / 2006 / Portugal, France, Switzerland / 155m / Col)
741. TALE OF THE WIND, A (Joris Ivens / 1988 / France / 80m / Col)
753. TIE XI QU: WEST OF THE TRACKS (Wang Bing / 2003 / China / 551m / Col)
778. NUIT DU CARREFOUR, LA (Jean Renoir / 1932 / France / 73m / BW)
779. UNSERE AFRIKAREISE (Peter Kubelka / 1966 / Austria / 13m / Col)
782. INDIA: MATRI BHUMI (Roberto Rossellini / 1959 / Italy, France / 90m / Col)
800. GRIN WITHOUT A CAT (Chris Marker / 1977 / France / 240m / Col-BW)
806. EXOTICA (Atom Egoyan / 1994 / Canada / 104m / Col)
812. LATE CHRYSANTHEMUMS (Mikio Naruse / 1954 / Japan / 101m / BW)
813. D’EST (Chantal Akerman / 1993 / Belgium, France, Portugal / 107m / Col)
814. DEATH OF MARIA MALIBRAN, THE (Werner Schroeter / 1972 / West Germany / 104m / Col)
822. SILENT LIGHT (Carlos Reygadas / 2007 / Mexico, France, Netherlands / 136m / Col)
869. MAN’S CASTLE (Frank Borzage / 1933 / USA / 66m / BW)
871. ARNULF RAINER (Peter Kubelka / 1960 / Austria / 7m / BW)
878. MOVIE, A (Bruce Conner / 1958 / USA / 12m / BW)
880. AS I WAS MOVING AHEAD OCCASIONALLY I SAW BRIEF GLIMPSES OF BEAUTY (Jonas Mekas / 2000 / USA / 288m / Col)
887. DOOMED LOVE (Manoel de Oliveira / 1978 / Portugal / 260m / Col)
931. ART OF VISION, THE (Stan Brakhage / 1965 / USA / 250m / Col)
964. INTRUDER, THE (Claire Denis / 2004 / France, Korea / 130m / Col)
968. FANTOMAS (Louis Feuillade / 1913 / France / 314m / BW)

That’s 33 in all.  However, I refuse to watch Out 1: noli me tangere since I’ve already seen Out 1: Spectre, which was long enough, thank you very much.  If the longer version happens to come out on DVD, I’ll check it out.  Otherwise I’m not going to bother.  My sense of completism only runs so deep.  Also, I don’t expect to be able to find The Art of Vision, but as always, I’ll keep my eyes peeled for it.

I’ll watch all the other ones, though.  It was suggested that I could watch the hour-long version of Empire and that would be good enough.  I’m undecided, and will probably research it a bit before choosing.  There’s an awful lot of incredibly long films here… I haven’t looked into it yet, but I suspect that TSPDT added a couple of “very long movies” lists to their formula.  I’m also greatly annoyed that I have to watch two more by Godard and two more by Huillet/Straub, but I’ll try to be a good sport about it.  As for the others, several were already on my watchlist and there’s a few I’ve never heard of.

Now for some lists of my own.  First, my 10 favorite new additions to the list.  By new, I mean movies that have never appeared on the TSPDT list before.

1. The Tree of Life
2. The Turin Horse
3. Syndromes and a Century
4. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
5. Cairo Station
6. Hoop Dreams
7. The Match Factory Girl
8. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
9. Rosetta
10. Le bonheur

Half of these are in my top 100 list.  How has Woolf never been on the list until now?  As for my least favorite new additions, I’m not very fond of A nos amours, Stardust Memories and especially Possession.

And now, the “We’ll Meet Again” list… 10 movies I’m sad to see fall off the list:

1. An Actor’s Revenge (Revenge of a Kabuki Actor)
2. Limite
3. Murder By Contract
4. Sleeper
5. The Heiress
6. Kanal
7. Babe
8. The Organizer
9. Night and the City
10. Gold Diggers of 1933

Especially downtrodden about the Ichikawa, which is one of my top 20 of all time.  Murder By Contract was the movie that sparked my film noir obsession.  And Babe is one that took me completely by surprise, I probably would not have watched it if it hadn’t been on this list.

Lastly, the “Good Riddance Club”… 10 movies I won’t miss at all:

1. The Age of the Earth
2. The War of the Worlds
3. Dead Poets Society
4. The Bridges of Madison County
5. In Praise of Love
6. They Died With Their Boots On
7. Samson and Delilah
8. A Man for All Seasons
9. The Unknown
10. Gunga Din

Some of these I would have never sat through if they hadn’t been here.  There are still some real stinkers on the list, but that’s the beauty of TSPDT… it doesn’t reflect any one person’s tastes.  It’s an excellent place for any budding cinephile to jump in and make some exciting discoveries.  Hopefully I’ll find some gems among the new additions I haven’t seen yet.  Watching of those should start in the next week or so.

January 2013 Recap

35 new viewings (plus 1 short)
18 rewatches (plus 1 short)

Best new discovery: Peacock
Worst new discovery: Criminal Lawyer

A really stellar month for me.  Besides Peacock, I have to give honorable mentions to The Organizer, Peppermint Frappé, Offside and Leila.  All of those would have qualified for my best discoveries of 2012 if I’d seen them a month earlier (as would A Separation if it wasn’t such a recent release).  About a third of my new viewings ranked in the Very Good/Great range.  In February, I’m going to try to divide my time more evenly between rewatches and new viewings.

December 2012 Recap

35 new viewings (plus 2 shorts)
8 revisits

Best new discoveries: Home of the Brave, The Rock-afire Explosion
Worst new discoveries: The Blue Planet

I had a few real stinkers, but overall it was a pretty decent month.  It was fun getting into documentaries.  Next month will be dominated by revisits.

YEARLY TOTALS:

388 new features
54 new shorts
122 rewatched features
6 rewatched shorts

If I keep up the same pace in 2013, I should be able to burn through half my current watchlist and rewatch everything I own but haven’t seen since 2008.

Top 20 Discoveries of 2012

This is why I watch as many movies as I do. Because every now and then, you come across a new delight, something that grabs hold of you and becomes a new favorite. Not all of these 20 films have worked their way into my personal collection (most of them have) but all left a strong impression and were exceptionally rewarding and/or surprising. Note that recent releases (for example, Mysteries of Lisbon and This Is Not a Film) are not included. The idea is to highlight those gems that I could have, and should have, discovered before now.

 

1. Thirst for Love (Koreyoshi Kurahara, 1966)

“Constantly jolting you with cinematic surprises, a kind of quiet wildness suitable for Etsuko’s simmering emotions.”

2. Waiting for Happiness (Abderrahmane Sissako, 2002)

“This is the type of film that keeps me searching out for new avenues to explore.”

3. Xanadu (Robert Greenwald, 1980)

“The rare treat of a movie so eager to please that it actually succeeds.”

4. Sparrow (Johnnie To, 2008)

“With a light touch, To brings warmth and comedy and sweeping romantic eloquence to the tale, where every moment is a delicious surprise and every shot is some sort of cinematic magic.”

5. Elippathayam a.k.a. Rat-Trap (Adoor Gopalakrishnan, 1981)

“Certainly one of the strangest Indian films I’ve ever seen, one that is begging to be decoded but also entrancing when appreciated on a surface level.”

6. Jazz on a Summer’s Day (Bert Stern, 1960)

“A fantastic, highly enjoyable and visually captivating document of the music, its performers and its audience.”

7. Un homme qui dort (Bernard Queysanne, 1974)

“I can think of few films that provide a purer depiction of depression and alienation.”

8. Noriko’s Dinner Table (Shion Sono, 2005)

“By the end, personalities have been turned upside down and inside out, and identities have flipped.”

9. Cocorico monsieur Poulet (Jean Rouch, 1974)

“Wildly unpredictable, often hilarious, loaded with charm and with just enough strangeness to keep it interesting.”

10. Salaam Cinema (Mohsen Makhmalbaf, 1995)

“Both harshly cynical and warmly humanist, full of wonderful little surprises and a thoughtful new angle around every corner.”

11. Routine Pleasures (Jean-Pierre Gorin, 1986)

“There’s such a wonderful humor and freedom to it.”

12. La Promesse (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, 1996)

“Slowly draws you into the drama, doling out information at a pace that never leaves you feeling either overwhelmed or lost.”

13. Duck Season (Fernando Eimbcke, 2004)

“These four young actors really play wonderfully off each other, and the relationships between the characters are a joy to watch take shape.”

14. Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Diary (Guy Maddin, 2002)

“It’s often stunningly beautiful, with ultra-soft focus and blown-out lights and expressionist angles.”

15. The Threat (Felix E. Feist, 1949)

“A tight script that sports some clever business and a fine build of tension as the situation gets more and more desperate for everyone.”

16. Streetwise (Martin Bell, 1984)

“These stories are as riveting as most fictional narratives.”

17. Female on the Beach (Joseph Pevney, 1955)

“I never quite knew where it was going next.”

18. A New Leaf (Elaine May, 1971)

“A sterling romantic comedy, managing to achieve a rare warmth without betraying the underlying cynicism.”

19. Home of the Brave: A Film By Laurie Anderson (Laurie Anderson, 1986)

“Original and highly enjoyable, showcasing Anderson’s unique sensibility and marvelous talents.”

20. Edvard Munch (Peter Watkins, 1974)

“We get an astonishingly complete portrait of the man.”

Honorable mention: Lenny, The Rock-afire Explosion, Time Regained, All the King’s Men, The Staircase, The Two Mrs. Carrolls, Shield for Murder, The Big Night, Be Pretty and Shut Up, Intimidation, The Idiots, They Drive by Night, Nine Lives, Blues in the Night, Hanyo, The Devil Thumbs a Ride

And the 10 worst discoveries of 2012:

1. The Blue Planet
2. The Age of the Earth
3. American Psycho
4. The Girl in Black Stockings
5. Cat-Women of the Moon
6. Two Tons of Turquoise to Taos Tonight
7. Iron Man 2
8. Far and Away
9. Out of the Fog
10. Klimt

Not Another Best of 2012 List

Now is the time when bloggers the world over start tallying their best movies of the year.  Not just best movies, but best performances, best scripts, biggest surprises, saddest disappointments, best lines, most righteous explosions.  Folks are noting recent trends and forecasting the upcoming year.  There’s a lot of summing up going on.  Bloggers are reflecting on what 2012 has brought in the world of cinema.

Sadly, or not so sadly, I will not be contributing to this storm of remembrance of the past year.  Because — as regular readers already know — I just don’t get to the theater that often.  Three times this past year, to be precise.  I acknowledge the benefits of the theater experience, and it definitely can be neat to be at the forefront of discussion, but the cons outweigh the pros to me.  I prefer to catch up on DVD, from the agoraphobic comforts of my couch.  And even though I’m usually late to the party, it’s kind of nice to play clean-up, commenting on a movie after the dust has settled.

Even stretching it to include some arguably 2011 releases, I wouldn’t have enough for a satisfying top 10 of 2012 list.  Instead, I submit a list of the movies I most want to see before I begin to put together a “best of” list.  I’ve probably forgotten a few, and I’m open to suggestions.

Argo
Amour
Beasts of the Southern Wild
The Bitter Buddha
Cloud Atlas
The Comedy
Django Unchained
Flight
From Up on Poppy Hill
Headshot
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
Holy Motors
I Wish
The Imposter
Jobraith A.D.
Kahaani
The Land of Hope
Lincoln
Looper
The Master
Mekong Hotel
On Death Row
Photographic Memory
The Queen of Versailles
Red Hook Summer
Rent-a-Cat
Rust & Bone
Samsara
Searching for Sugar Man
Sexy Baby
Silent Hill: Revelation
Tabu
To Rome With Love
Wreck-It Ralph
Wuthering Heights
Zero Dark Thirty

Yearly Roundup – 1959

The Cream of the Crop

I apologize for the missing links in this post.  Our office has implemented all this new security stuff which has the weird side effect of preventing me from adding hyperlinks to posts I make from work.  I tried it in IE, Firefox and Chrome.  Weird.  I may edit in some links when I get home later… or I may not.  It’s kind of a pain in the ass, to be honest, and I don’t know if anyone even uses them.  You can always use the index to find the reviews.

So, 1959.  Mighty good year.  While there’s nothing currently in my top 100, there are two that were in the previous edition, and two more that come damn close.  The 400 Blows is deservedly canonized, a cornerstone of the nouvelle vague, and just a damn good slice of entertainment with one of the best child performances of all time.  Odds Against Tomorrow is gripping noir, part heist film and part racial commentary with brilliant tension between Belafonte and Ryan.  The World of Apu caps off Satyajit Ray’s trilogy in fine form, as Apu (played this time by the wonderful Soumitra Chatterjee) gets put through the wringer once more but emerges with a ray of hope.  Few rays of hope to be found, however, in Ichikawa’s relentlessly bleak — but also darkly comic — Fires on the Plain, a harrowing anti-war film.

Slightly Less Creamy, But Still Tasty

Oh, did I say “relentlessly bleak”?  Feast your eyes on Human Condition I, kicking off what is probably the most depressing trilogy ever.  I want to revisit the films, but can’t bring myself to do it.  The Letter Never Sent is a masterpiece of cinematography, and has a solid, engaging story as well.  Pickpocket is yet another winner from Robert Bresson: quiet, stripped-down drama.  Rio Bravo is one of the best times you can have with a western… an extremely rare case where I actually enjoy John Wayne.  And Imitation of Life is one of Sirk’s best works, melodrama with a subversive, progressive undercurrent.  Juanita Moore knocks it out of the park.

Also Love

The Crimson Kimono
House on Haunted Hill
Human Condition II
North By Northwest
The Sign of Leo
Some Like It Hot

Varying Degrees of Like

Anatomy of a Murder
Ballad of a Soldier
The Beat Generation
Black Orpheus
City of Fear
Compulsion
Floating Weeds
Il Generale della Rovere
The Ghost of Yotsuya
La grande guerra
Hiroshima Mon Amour
The Indian Tomb
Kapo
Nazarin
Our Man in Havana
Plan 9 from Outer Space
Sapphire
Suddenly, Last Summer
The Tiger of Eschnapur

Varying Degrees of Hate

A Bucket of Blood
Cat’s Cradle
Sirius Remembered

Some Notable Films In The Middle

The Atomic Submarine
Ben-Hur
I’m All Right Jack
La Fievre monte a El Pao
First Man Into Space
Good Morning
Kaagaz Ke Phool
Ride Lonesome
Shadows
The Tingler

Uncharted Territory

Date With Death, The Diary of Anne Frank, Face of a Fugitive, Gidget, The Horse Soldiers, Journey to the Center of the Earth, The Last Mile, Last Train from Gun Hill, Libel, The Mouse That Roared, The Nun’s Story, Odd Obsession, On the Beach, Pillow Talk, Room at the Top, Sleeping Beauty, Take a Giant Step, La tête contre les murs, Time Stood Still, The Trap, Virgin Island