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Post by pacinoyes on Dec 26, 2023 20:54:10 GMT
The Night of the Shooting Stars (1982). Different from any other Taviani brothers movie I've seen. The harrowing experiences are still there but there's a bittersweet and heartfelt perspective that balances things out and it comes not as a random move, it has to do with perspective and memories and how one choses to assimilate certain events. I love it most of all in their work - and I love almost all of their work tbh - but Night of the Shooting Stars is just an audacious film.......has any other movie used such disparate elements to convey all the things this movie does? It's violent, yet also child-like and has I guess what you'd call "magic realism" (?) -which almost never works in film for me - and seems on paper a really bad choice.......but it works seamlessly, there's ingenuous camera choices on perspective - it throws realism away and yet not - it ebbs and flows......and leaves you feeling kind of elated tby the end oo. It's an amazing movie ........and it's also one that all ages can appeciate which is also really odd - it's a young person's version of an old person's movie or something.......
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avnermoriarti
Badass
Friends say I’ve changed. They’re right.
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Post by avnermoriarti on Dec 27, 2023 5:59:43 GMT
pacinoyes Magic realism is definitely the right way to describe it, there's something fairy-tale like in the middle of something Rossellini would've come up with. And if it all comes together it's exactly because of the perspective, we're watching the childhood memories of an adult, very much agree with the young person's version of an old person's movie I'm sure that was the effect they wanted to create.
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Post by Martin Stett on Dec 28, 2023 12:23:47 GMT
With less than a week to go in the year, this is my current slate of 8/10 or higher... best year of movie watching I've had since I started keeping records, I'm pretty sure. (Last year was probably the worst, so that balances out a bit.)
Alienoid (2022, Choi Dong-hoon) American Dharma (2018, Errol Morris) The Bad Sleep Well (1960, Akira Kurosawa) Bahubali: The Beginning (2015, S.S. Rajamouli) Bahubali 2: The Conclusion (2017, S.S. Rajamouli) Balnearios (2002, Mariano Llinas) Causeway (2022, Lila Neugebauer) Chicken House (2022, Cate Jones) Confessions (2010, Tetsuya Nakashima) Extraordinary Stories (2008, Mariano Llinas) Fast & Feel Love (2022, Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit) The Fifth Seal (1976, Zoltan Fabri) Flying Swords of Dragon Gate (2011, Tsui Hark) Himizu (2011, Sion Sono) The House (2022, Emma De Swaef, Marc James Roels, Niki Lindroth von Bahr, Paloma Baeza) Interface (2022, Justin Tomchuk) Life Without Principle (2011, Johnnie To) Lust, Caution (2007, Ang Lee) Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon (2021, Ana Lily Amirpour) Monica, O My Darling (2022, Vasan Bala) Princess Arete (2001, Sunao Katabuchi) Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva (2009, Masakazu Hashimoto) RRR (2022, S.S. Rajamouli) Scalpel (1977, John Grissmer) Strike, Dear Mistress, and Cure His Heart (2018, Mickey Reece) The Thin Blue Line (1988, Errol Morris) This Transient Life (1970, Akio Jissoji) Underground (1995, Emir Kusturica) The Unknown Known (2013, Errol Morris) Why Don't You Play in Hell? (2013, Sion Sono)
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Post by Pavan on Dec 28, 2023 13:14:37 GMT
I just checked my IMDb page and it looks i haven't watched any films in 2023 besides the ones released in 22, 23 and few old rewatches. So, no favorite first time viewings, dafuq?
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Post by Pavan on Dec 28, 2023 13:16:53 GMT
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Post by stabcaesar on Dec 31, 2023 18:25:49 GMT
Excluding 2022 and 2023.
1. The New Land (1972) 2. The Children's Hour (1961) 3. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945) 4. McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971) 5. Only Yesterday (1991) 6. All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) 7. Sounder (1972) 8. All About My Mother (1999) 9. Le Silence de la mer (1949) 10. Unforgiven (1992)
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Post by DeepArcher on Jan 1, 2024 3:38:36 GMT
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Post by Martin Stett on Jan 1, 2024 13:01:23 GMT
Okay, so I'm gonna try a top 10. Honorable mentions are listed in my previous post, along with two extra TV shows: Andor and The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance. (Andor totally rocks and I have very little negative to say about it, and Age of Resistance has such highs that I'm willing to forgive the wonky pacing of it all.) Let us begin... 1. RRR (2022)Maximalist euphoria. The dance scenes, the fight scenes, the political stance, the awkward romantic comedy - ALL of it is committed to 100% at every stage of the film. But if the core story wasn't so damn good, this wouldn't be near my top ten of a very strong year. The brotherhood and friendship of our heroes is tested over and over, becoming increasingly tragic and painful with each twist of the knife. That dramatic heart is *enhanced* by the maximalist intensity, so that there is so much more to the movie than its surface pleasures. 2. Extraordinary Stories (2008)It's not about the destination, but the journey. In many movies, that is true... but the detective mystery is VERY MUCH about that destination, of putting the puzzle together and revealing the perpetrators of the perfect crime. Unless your detective mystery is Extraordinary Stories, which spends more than half of its four hour running time in digressions and tangents that have *nothing* to do with anything and encourage the viewer to soak in its world and appreciate its people... before ending in a series of increasingly elaborate shaggy dog jokes. And it is all MAGICAL. Maybe more than any other movie I've seen, this is a world and experience I could immerse myself in, to flow with its many stories, its psychotic bank robbers and foolhardy soldiers and lovesick farmers and heartbroken abandoned animals. These stories may or may not help solve the core mysteries our detectives investigate (some of them do help, most do not), but these Extraordinary Stories are not about the destination. 3. Underground (1995)Foregrounding a love triangle against a backdrop of Yugoslavia's history as a nation, this Palme winning epic perfectly blends its large scale history (the film takes place over 50 years!) and its small scale drama. This love letter to Emir Kusturica's home country easily could have become an earnest and dour award grab (and the Oscar goes to the history lesson of a now dead nation!), but this is an often hilarious celebration of Yugoslavia and what it represents to Kusturica. 4. Why Don't You Play in Hell? (2013)Nobody loves movies the way Sion Sono loves movies. This is such a joy to watch, an innocent love letter to imagination and creativity, a call to never starve that inner child amidst the grown-up cares and worries. Fuck Bombers forever. 5. Himizu (2011)So many movies want people to follow their hearts and chase their dreams. What Himizu understands - and so many other films miss - is that for some people, the strongest dream they have is to live a normal life where they don't hurt anyone. Sono understands the pain of suicidal thinking, the inescapable guilt of things you can't take back, the fear that you are fundamentally broken and can never give a good life to someone else. But he also understands that we don't need a movie wallowing in misery - that by showing people helping each other and loving each other, he can help us imagine that normal life. Even if we say it is out of reach, not realistic, not possible... Just imagine it. It sounds so perfectly happy, doesn't it? 6. Scalpel (1977)The best way I can describe my reaction to this movie is "compulsive cackling." Scalpel is a deliriously deranged, deliciously depraved psychosexual southern gothic soap opera that plays like Brian De Palma filming a Tennessee Williams script... but with more sleaze and more fun. Co-stars Robert Lansing and Judith Chapman are clearly HAVING A BALL all through this twisted yarn, and their enthusiasm is infectious. 7. Bahubali 2: The Conclusion (2017)Spectacle. That word meant one thing before Bahubali 2, and meant something very, very different afterwards. 8. Confessions (2010)Confessions has a vision of the world much like Lord of the Flies... without any of that comforting distance LotF gives us. There is no sheen of polite civility here: almost every character is purely awful down to the roots (the best of them are dangerously naive). And yet, the film gropes for a kind of humanity, trying to find something, anything, good in people. Heartbreaking and horrifying in equal measure. 9. This Transient Life (1970)A horror film in which the dread doesn't come from some killer or monster, but yourself. The fear of Hell and of guilt and the fear that there is no Hell, that this transient life is all there is, that no God or Buddha is there to pass judgment on your sins, that all of these religions and laws are meaningless and made up because we're afraid of the unimaginable nothingness that awaits us all. Debut director (not that you'd know it - this could be the most technically accomplished debut ever) Akio Jissoji perfectly captures the horror of not knowing which is worse. 10. Fast & Feel Love (2022)I've said it before, I'll say it again: Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit is the voice of Generation Z. Nobody understands the ennui of young people today like he does (Joachim Trier can fuck right off). So imagine my surprise when his latest film was a full-blown action comedy spoof (referencing everything from the Taken to the Fast & Furious franchise to a wonderfully conceived Parasite gag). Although this is his most accessible and funniest movie - not that he was ever inaccessible like some European arthouse clowns - it is also filled with his usual preoccupations. By pushing the protagonist's inability to "adult" to an absurdly comedic limit - just read this movie's premise if you don't believe me - he allows us to laugh at our failings and gently encourage the kids in adult bodies that there is room and time to grow, and that it is okay to screw up along the way.
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Post by Joaquim on Jan 3, 2024 2:51:09 GMT
My final top 20, including 22/23
1. Oppenheimer (2023) 2. Babylon (2022) 3. The Great Dictator (1940) 4. Killers of the Flower Moon (2023) 5. Do The Right Thing (1989) 6. Casablanca (1942) 7. RRR (2022) 8. My Man Godfrey (2022) 9. The Third Man (1949) 10. Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989)
11. Thief (1981) 12. Le Gai Savoir (1969) 13. Margin Call (2011) 14. BlackBerry (2023) 15. Computer Chess (2013) 16. Aftersun (2022) 17. Tar (2022) 18. Pearl (2022) 19. Europa (1991) 20. Saltburn (2023)
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