Which--or at Least How Many--of Sight and Sound's Top 50 Films Have You Not Seen?

I liked Werckmeister Harmonies enough that I'm anxious to see Satantango. I'll force myself to wait for a Lightbox showing.

32

Morbs I fucking hate westerns/John Wayne cliche machismo bullshit. Like its not that I find it offensive per se but it's just so corny to me

Have yet to see any Leone though so maybe that'll change shit up

so westerns/cowboy hats = unalloyed machismo? not true at all

Wayne gave a number of rather sensitive performances. Maybe you should see his last one where he (and his character) have terminal cancer.

I think the majority of The Searchers votes are indulgences in tokenism; people who are passionate about Ford have a much wider scatter of favorites.

My default response to westerns is boredom too, but there are definitely exceptions. Among them is The Searchers.

It might be tokenism, but I can safely say the only western that would've even come close to making my ballot is Assault on Precinct 13.

In the shamefully omitted Red River, John Ireland and Monty compare their guns.

http://www.kevinpratt.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/13195770.png

Overrated both as a western and as a gay classic.

Well, the latter at least. Don't have much investment in following hierarchies for the former.

I like Red River less now but as a guy who resisted westerns in the early nineties it was a good gateway

the Stewart-Mann westerns are good entry points too.

Who gives a flying fuck what's overrated and underrated?

"I saw Ride the High Country. I'd love it, but damn, not enough other people do."

Red River as a "gateway Western" makes a good deal of sense if the intention here is to force Stevie to like westerns, tho.

I've not seen half, but since I plan to live to age 84 I'm right on track:

8 1/2, L’Atalante, Late Spring, Au hasard Balthazar, Mirror, L’avventura, Le Mépris, Battleship Potemkin, Ordet, Wong Kar-Wai, Andrei Rublev, Stalker, Shoah, Jeanne Dielman 23 quai du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles, Sátántangó, Journey to Italy, Pather Panchali, Some Like It Hot, Gertrud, Pierrot le fou, Play Time, Close-Up, Histoire(s) du cinéma, La Jetée.

I'd love to be able to see Singin' In The Rain for the first time! The 20 minutes of Persona that make sense are awesome and La Dolce Vita is fun if only because it provided so much pop imagery of Italy. In general this list skews boring/beautiful.

If you want to hasten the aging process, Stalker's the one to see.

Maybe I'm revealing myself as Captain "All I Know About Cinema I Learned From The Canon," but I truly believe the overwhelming majority of the films on this list are way closer to beautiful than boring.

xpost OK, Stalker is a little bit of both.

Great ending, I'll give it that.

I'd love to be able to see Singin' In The Rain for the first time!

So true. For me, this is one of the very worst things about getting older.

A lot of these are beautiful but I mean anyone who actually earnestly thinks La Dole Vita isn't a bloated snoozefest is totally fronting

I did like Stagecoach fwiw

I have never seen Singin' In The Rain! Maybe I should

xp wait until older really kicks in and everything will be new for the second time.

really, I rewatched Solondz's Happiness recently and had forgotten 80% of it.

Did the #51-100 listing appear somewhere? Maybe Lubitsch & Sturges showed up there.

le mépris
jeanne dielman, 23 something something
pierott le fou
histoire(s) du cinéma

I haven't seen Singin' in the Rain yet! TCM has it on the 23rd, will watch.
xposts

Probably won't ever forget Camryn Manheim tearing into that tulip sundae while talking about castrating the rapist doorman.

Or, rather, dismembering him without touching "that."

I'd love to be able to see Singin' In The Rain for the first time!

Yeah, that's def one of the ones I haven't seen that I'm most looking forward to.

Seeing these films in theaters is clearly the way to go -- I should probably be more alert to screenings.

Man this list makes me feel terrible about how much I haven't seen! I've only seen 14 of these.

yeah I blocked out Camryn Manheim as much as possible.

Aren't you two guys in Chicago? What are the rep theatres like there?

I may be wrong, but it seems like a lot of those theaters around here have been more focused on "cult" stuff from the last 20-30 years than the older canon type stuff.

haven't seen 23, don't feel too terrible about it

That's what Toronto's reps used to be like, then they all went out of business in the first half of the 2000s as rental stores ascended, before they started reopening in the past few years as primarily second-run houses. So mostly it's canon-type stuff at the Lightbox now, and documentaries at the Bloor. (xpost)

I love early godard but breathless is not a film I'd recommend to anybody unless they had an interest in film history

some entries on this list just seem like bowing to icons

I may be wrong, but it seems like a lot of those theaters around here have been more focused on "cult" stuff from the last 20-30 years than the older canon type stuff.

Yeah, I think that's fair. The 11:30 AM weekend screenings at the Music Box are often a good bet, though.

Tbh though, I haven't paid attention since my son was born last year, my chances to go see movies in a theater are much less now.

Have not seen 16 of these.

I was also ready to bitch about the fairly poor state of rep screenings here as opposed to some of the other places cited itt, but looking over the list now I see that many of the films on it I have seen (and some I haven't) I either saw for the first time or had the chance to see or rescreen in a theater over the past several years.

i've seen 31. most of the 19 i haven't are "foreign" films, including a number i'm embarassed to admit i've avoided over the years:

8½
Battleship Potemkin
L’Atalante
Late Spring
Au hasard Balthazar
Mirror
L’avventura
Le Mépris
Ordet
Shoah
Tokyo Story
Bicycle Thieves
Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles
The 400 Blows
La Règle du jeu
Journey to Italy
Gertrud
Histoire(s) du cinéma
The Battle of Algiers
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
Ugetsu monogatari

oh man – what I'd give to watch The Rules of the Game or Sunrise for the first time.

I try not to fetishize first screenings of anything, because a lot of my favorite movies were "meh" on first watch.

True but not those two I mentioned.

certainly the case with Tokyo Story though

love a lot of the films people are taking shots at itt. the searchers is fantastic, one of the most visually striking and flat-out entertaining westerns i've ever seen. i prefer bande a part to breathless, but the latter's still pretty damn great. la dolce vita is kind of exhausting, but that's clearly the point, and it's so spectacular, strange and colorful that my attention never wandered.

satantango is a chore though.

I saw Rules of the Game a couple years ago. Good movie, but it didn't wow me or anything.

Just looked at the upcoming screenings at the Siskel Film Center and the Music Box, and now I'm excited to catch Celine and Julie Go Boating in a couple of weeks.

I try not to fetishize first screenings of anything, because a lot of my favorite movies were "meh" on first watch.

This is a good point -- I'm too hardwired to follow surface-level plot/text, and don't get into subtext, context and interesting technique until repeat viewings, though I'm trying to train myself to be a better film-watcher.

life's too short not to see some of these as many times as possible

i have a feeling i'm never gonna be in the mood for 'satantango.'

Feel the same way about Seven Samurai, which is I'm positive always going to be the highest ranking movie I've never seen in its entirety.

This sounds odd to me, because despite it's length SS is not really "slow movie", and it's pretty entertaining from beginning to the end. What's the thing that has stopped you from watching it all the way through?

those picks for iranian gateway films are crazy imo the one you want is jafar panahi's Offside - quite fast, gently funny, extremely accessible. & it's a suberb film

itt Matt P coughs up his regularly scheduled hairball

the lex (eric h)

I have never once caused half a kitchen to go up in flames by opening up a can of soda.

What's the thing that has stopped you from watching it all the way through?

Sometimes fast movies are more boring than slow ones.

Oddly of the ilxors whose tastes I’ve been able to get a bead on, Lex is my polar opposite while Eric is probably most similar to me.

I've seen 12, haven't seen 38.

I thought 'gateway' -- if we're talking about the recent output of AN ENTIRE NATION -- required it actually be 'great' as well as relatively accessible. Offside is a good film but some '90s Kiarostami might do just as well; I really don't think most of em are impenetrable or difficult w/o context of other films (excepting maybe taste of Cheery).

itt Matt P coughs up his regularly scheduled hairball

― I Don't Wanna Be Dissed (By Anyone But You) (WilliamC), Wednesday, February 20, 2013 5:34 AM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

just for you sweetums

fwiw i was taking the piss. i have a deep and undying love for this list, dr morbius, clemenza, and especially pauline kael. eric h can eat it though.

^lol

Offside has a bunch of characteristics that appeal about (and was marketed to us thru festivals as) "iranian cinema"―unforgettable non-actors, mixing documentary & fiction in startling ways, political issues & that great advantage of all "world cinema": simply a window on an unfamiliar world.

so seeing it should stand one in good stead i think for, say, this is not a film, the apple (sib), thru close-up etc., back to a moment of innocence. and in truth i think it stands in this company, tho i can show it to non-cineastes when putting on the wind will carry us would be gauche.

(i agree films like moment of innocence, the apple & even close-up are not especially difficult watches, but as much as i may imagine through the olive trees or TWWCU has a trancending universality, slow 90s kiarostami is sort of what i think someone who can't get into iranian film knee-jerks against.)(i also think this cinema is particularly helped by an actual cinema.)

but on a different tack, here's nanni moretti's slow wry 7 minute short The Opening Day of Close-Up, maybe as good a gateway as any, in which close-up looks intriguingly beautiful

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNDI4MzI3OTEy.html

eric h can eat it though.

Right up there with the best of them.

the apple is as rewarding as any film i can think of but is def a difficult watch imo, just wrt the first 20 minutes. i can imagine people turning off. what's satisfying is how the air in the room changes as this progresses, though, as the humour surfaces, as it becomes almost playful. really feeling your exemplary post btw so only being picky here.