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

A bunch of us made some guesses on the Kael thread a year or two ago. Other than that one cage-match of a film-critics circle she belonged to, I don't think she ever dealt in awards or lists of any kind ever.

The thing that makes the "too many movies" problem manageable is that the contemporary American films that are lauded by the MSM are worse than ever, so you can skip most of those.

Sarris always participated (this time I don't know); Kauffmann did in '72 and I think maybe '82, then dropped out; Simon, never.

Well, Simon couldn't actually come up with 10 movies he even liked, so much loved.

he liked a lot of Bergman.

if Simon doesn't concentrate hard enough he can't help but imagine Barbra Streisand's nose in every movie.

Actually, he did compile a favourites list at the beginning of one of his first two collections...I'm willing to make the trip downstairs to retrieve it, if anybody cares enough.

Babs has a new film at Christmas. Maybe he'll blog about it. xp

wow, I've only seen one of those movies

guessing which one could be a poll

xposts and Liza Minelli's eyes and (lack of) jawline

I think Paulistas are the Libertarian wing of the Paulettes.

Haha, OK: proving my point that I'm not one.

In the introduction to his first collection Simon got pissy because Kael included The Lady Eve in her list of great American movies; it was merely "sound, solid entertainment...nothing to sneeze at," he wrote.

Confusing Paulettes with Paulistas is probably a sign of good mental health.

from a John Simon blog post on tennis in June. He is... the same.

Being a fan, for me, is definitely tinged with sexuality where women players are concerned. Steffi Graf was the great tennis star of my younger days, but all I could summon up for her was respect. Perhaps her nose was too big. She definitely lacked charm, though she clearly had intelligence. But Hingis had both. Lacking a powerful serve, the Achilles heel of many a female player, was certainly also Hingis’s, although she also lacked the brute force of certain current players, e.g. Serena Williams—and a good thing too....

But women’s tennis today is full of conspicuous athletes, and very poor lookers. Just try to feel sexual about Kvitova or Azarenka, let alone Kuznetsova. I would as soon dine on goat excrement. There is today only one woman player about whom I have strong feelings, Julia Goerges. She is beautiful and gifted, and has a terrific serve (125 miles), but not quite great. One rarely sees her on television, being German rather than American. If only she could be black or at least butch, but no such luck.

http://photoshopcontest.com/images/fullsize/84382039498619fe3bb45697d4bfc8fbe8ef12f166654.jpg

I hope I can keep my mind off eating goat shit when I'm 87.

TS: Christgau vs Simon, which critic is the most creepy?

By absolutely no popular demand whatsoever, John Simon's pantheon circa 1967 (from Private Screenings): Smiles of a Summer Night, Les Enfants du Paradis, Forbidden Games, Kanal, The Rules of the Game, The White Sheik, I Vitelloni, L'avventura, The Seven Samurai, The Naked Night, and, a sop to the rubes, Citizen Kane. Films I associate him with from subsequent books: Badlands, Swept Away, Melvin and Howard...I'd have to check back; he didn't go overboard very often.

Back to Rules of the Game... Kael put it well when she said that the thrill of this film is that it seems to unfold right in front of you. It's so spontaneous and alive that its formal perfection is dazzling to see. For me it's also about the perfect arrangement of the final scenes, from the furious energy of the party to the grace and melancholy of the ending.

the movie takes its cue from Dalio and the maid's performance: smiling, flustered, unable to be serious for a moment.

Effervescence isn't incredibly high up on my list of qualities I seek in movies, but Rules does it so impressively that, yes, it's clearly one of the all-time greats.

I have seen 37 of them. These I haven't seen:

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
L’Atalante
Au hasard Balthazar
Persona
Le Mépris
Ordet
Shoah
Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles
Sátántangó
Journey to Italy
Gertrud
Histoire(s) du cinéma
Ugetsu monogatari

pretty stoked to have seen exactly half!

I just biked to the library and picked up Singin in the Rain, Au Hasard, Stalker, Citizen Kane, and L'Avventura (and also Carrie, Andrei Rublev, Ma Vie En Rose, Streetcar Named Desire, and Feuillade's Fantômas). We'll see how many I can watch before they're due back in a week.

I think the only Ozu I've seen is Good Morning and I loved it so much; I don't know if anything else can top it.

Also, Who Are You, Polly Magoo? Is better than anything Godard ever wanked out.

My number went down by one this morning --
http://archive.org/details/ChelovekskinoapparatomManWithAMovieCamera

39

OK, I just realized my number is 30 because I am dummmmm -- one of the films I'd seen, but only knew it by its English title. Durrr.

Rented out Shoah today, so, with resolve, coffee, and another three weeks of vacation, I'll be down to seven. I'm going to knock them off my list one by one, like Jeanne Moreau in The Bride Wore Black.

I've seen about half of them, though I saw a lot of them a long time ago (i.e. in lolcollege) and don't remember much about them.

***Spoiler*** sled ***Spoiler***

***Spoiler***Russian People Doing Things***Spoiler***

That's another out the way.

I'll resist the temptation to go through the whole list, but you can have some fun with this.

***Spoiler*** ambiguous and enigmatic ***Spoiler***

That covers quite a few.

***Spoiler*** barn > cows > mud > barn ***Spoiler***

***Spoiler*** Jeanne drops a spoon on the kitchen floor. ***Spoiler***

***Spoiler*** Jeanne drops a spoon on the kitchen floor. ***Spoiler***

Damn it, I was going to watch that this weekend!

***Spoiler***Italian Chick Doesn't Get Back On Boat***Spoiler***

***Spoiler*** Singin' in the rain ***Spoiler***

hahaha

***spoiler***buster keaton looks sad***spoiler***

Surprised I've seen nearly all of them apart from:

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
Au hasard Balthazar
Le Mépris
Shoah
The General
Some Like It Hot
Play Time
Close-Up
Histoire(s) du cinéma
City Lights

'city lights' is probably gone from the top 10 forever, which is a total bummer for me.

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

― Trewster Dare (jaymc), Thursday, August 2, 2012 12:27 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4AeXMEIeNI

Seven months later, I'm inching forward--I've now seen Shoah, Satantango, and Playtime, with Mirror, Metropolis, Journey to Italy, Gertrud, and Close-Up still to go. I've still got another nine-plus years before the list changes.

I need to get back to this. I'm up to 41.1. (Didn't make it very far into Histoires du Cinema).

Okay--I'm dropping myself to 42.7 to account for parts of Potemkim, Contempt, and a few others where I nodded off for a time.

Contempt, i can't blame you

Potemkin is, like 69 minutes long cranked at 24fps, isn't it?

Potemkin is so good.

I've drifted off during eight-minute experimental films, and stayed alert for Berlin Alexanderplatz. It's often more to do with circumstances than the film with me.