ILX All-Time Film and Morbsies Poll: RESULTS Thread for ILX's Favorite Movies, Films, Cinema, Flicks & Moving Pictures

I suspect Eric thinks Gertrud the scarier experience.

Truer =/= scarier, and I'm married now!

I suspect Eric thinks Gertrud the scarier experience.

Truer =/= scarier, and I'm married now!

― Milm & Foovies (Eric H.), Monday, November 1, 2021 10:03 AM (fifty-nine seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

How do you rank it relative to Master of the House?

I loved Transcendental Style in Film but still haven't actually watched this...

"43. SANS SOLEIL (Chris Marker, 1983, France) [825.25 points; 8 votes] -> Neither this nor La Jetée did much for me when I saw them (a long time ago now). I guess I should rewatch."

There's loads of amazing Marker if you don't get on with these.

It's hard for me to imagine recommending Marker to someone who doesn't like either of his landmarks, but give The Last Bolshevik a try.

Master of the House ain't no master in my house. (JK, it's really good.)

i imagined recommending cat without a grin to someone who didn't like sans soleil and lol'd

grin without a cat*

it's early

Cat Listening to Music (1988): a highbrow cat video?

You might want to check out Marker's Le Joli Mai, sort of his precursor to LaRue's "Street Beef."

I was actually thinking of some of the earlier ones like "Sunday in Peking" or "Letter from Siberia" to see his eye working and some of his writing but they may not be available on DVD.

They're streaming on Criterion.

I have not seen Sans Soleil.

Zootopia is another plausibility.

LOL Junktopia ... it's early.

I consider Passion of Joan of Arc to be one of the two great artistic achievements of the silent era, the other being Sunrise.

lmao eric

Le Joli Mai, his precursor to LaRue's "Street Beef."

Marker never got a crane shot though!

lol eric

42. STOP MAKING SENSE (Jonathan Demme, 1984, USA) [826.7 points; 10 votes; Morbs silver] -> this was fine, but don't really get why this is considered so much better than every other concert film

First, I think you have to really like the music; but if you do it also sort of tells a story about the band in some totally abstract way - by way of the introduction of of performers and the editing - that I've never seen another concert film do as successfully. It's some magic touch that Demme had for humanizing performers, as he does something similar with the video he directed for New Order's "Perfect Kiss."

the staging is also just incredibly rad

and David Byrne is a character

Also: one of the few concert films that shows a band having fun. Every time Demme grants Chris Frantz a close-up he's grinning ear to ear and it's not always b/c of the coke.

its easy to forget how many really terrible concert films were happening in that era, and how SMS was very specifically reacting against them

John Bonham wouldn't play a 35 minute long drum solo if it wasn't fun!

yeah, I like Talking Heads but don't rate them nearly as high as most people, maybe it's just that. I watched Stop Making Sense last year because I happened to notice it was streaming and had heard so much about it over the years so I went in with high expectations. I guess the fact that I've never enjoyed concert films even for bands I really like (not sure why, I like actual concerts) should have tempered my expectations.

I guess maybe I'll have to watch "Mad Max: Fury Road". I have fond memories of going to a drive-in double feature of "Thunderdome" and "Road Warrior" right after "Thunderdome" came out in the mid-80s. My uncle took us in his pickup truck, and we sat in the back and drank Cherry Cokes and got bitten by mosquitoes, but it was a memorable evening.

https://cansesclasseled.files.wordpress.com/2021/11/039-late-spring.jpg

39. LATE SPRING (Ozu Yasujirō, 1949, Japan) [835.45 points; 11 votes]
S&S: 29 | TSPDT: 80 | BOXD: 98

MORBS SEZ: "His family dynamic stuff reminds me of Henry James … All that gentility and subservience to your parents' will has got to exact a toll … Late Spring is the one about parents and adult children where Chishu Ryu goes 'mmmmmm.' right?"

Just saw "Late Spring." I think this film had a profound effect on Paul Schrader, Wim Wenders, et al and thus has a lot to do with how Ozu is understood in the West now. There are many joking references to the infusion of American culture in postwar Japan (and in the figure of the Chishu Ryu character, a reference to Japan's ongoing rapport with the West--at one point we see the old professor packing a book by Nietzsche in his bag) but we also have some very Japanese motifs, from the long concert performance scene to the scene at the Kyoto temple, and references to various Japanese superstitions etc. We also have that puzzling shot/reverse/shot of Noriko looking sadly into the distance after her father has gone to sleep, and the vase sitting restfully out in the hallway (?) somewhere, a shot that eventually became a kind of white slate on which people could inscribe their sundry interpretations of the supposed stillness in Ozu's films. But if anything the three shots seem striking for being a series of images whose spatial and other relationship is unusually ambiguous for Ozu. Anyhow, as I am coming to realize again, Ozu excels at making movies where the poignancy doesn't necessarily reveal itself in full until the end, where it sneaks up on the audience almost suddenly. Here it's particular well-drawn, the longish scene where Chishu Ryu begins peeling an apple and then hunches over in sadness.
― amateur!st (amateurist), Monday, November 24, 2003 3:20 PM

I think Late Spring is Ozu's peak for me
― jmm, Friday, January 19, 2018 11:12 AM

it was lovely to watch Late Spring with the parents over Xmas.
― xyzzzz__, Friday, February 17, 2012 4:36 AM

Halfway through the film Setsuko Hara's smile becomes unexpectedly ghoulish.
― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn (Alfred Soto), Monday, May 15, 2006 1:09 PM

Late Spring is my favorite of the Ozu films I've seen. Especially if you subscribe to the theory of Yasujiro Ozu living his experience through Setsuko Hara's resistance to heteronormative practice (i.e. marriage).
― Eric H. (Eric H.), Monday, May 15, 2006 1:18 PM

FUCK AN OZU! BAD BOYS ROXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
― scott seward, Friday, June 15, 2007 3:10 PM

SMS really benefits from being seen with an audience and a great soundsystem. Last time I saw it was at a screening at a big park amphitheatre and they used the venue's concert PA, which was WHOA...

My favourite sound-era Ozu is Early Summer, where Chishu Ryu plays a nasty brother instead of a kindly old man. It's sort of the sardonic Three Colours: White of the Late Spring to Tokyo Story trilogy.

Next up has to be Bresson to complete the Schrader triad.

I've only seen one Ozu, "Tokyo Twilight", which I watched at Film Forum with my Dad, who's a classic film buff. It was a good movie, but I think I have to be in a particular mood to want to watch something that deliberately paced.

I might slightly lean more toward the both-sides-now-ism of An Autumn Afternoon, but I figured that would happen the older I get.

Halfway through the film Setsuko Hara's smile becomes unexpectedly ghoulish.

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn (Alfred Soto), Monday, May 15, 2006

No actor has ever discovered so many variants in a smile.

Here’s an excellent Twitter follow:
https://mobile.twitter.com/ozuexteriors

2 devastating movies in a row

ah lovely, voted for late autumn over late spring, former seems to stick more strongly in my mind. might be the more female centred story, or might just be the colour. think autumn has more laughs in it too.

My favorite Ozu.

mine too

There's an old Martin Skidmore post where he complains about never being able to tell Ozu films apart because they're all named something to do with seasons and times of day - I think that post planted the same problem in me, had to look up the plot to remember which one this is. It's great!

Ha, I'd say you can't even look up plots because so many Ozu films are like "Old dude stars wistfully at unmarried/widowed daughter, hoping she gets married/unwidowed but not as much as he hopes she stays and takes cares of him when he gets drunk for the 400th time that week"

haha true

the ones I can keep straight are Tokyo Story (obv) and The Flavour Of Green Tea Over Rice, not just because of the title but also because that's the one that has a sign for a snack bar called CALORIE HUT in it.

My Ozu votes went to An Autumn Afternoon and Tokyo Story, one or both of which I expect are still to place, but yeah there's a degree of interchangeability with his films

SMS is a documentary?

― Heavy Messages (jed_)

If Documentary Now! feel able to lampoon it then that’s good enough for me.

<<rockism is not akin to liking old european experimental art movies, because classic rock and its modern imitators are in no way the same as experimental / art music>>

Yes! I'm not a film rockist! (Filmist? Cinesnob?)

<<also there is nothing in music really equivalent to either marvel superhero movies or generic Oscar bait, thank god.>>

Probably not the place to debate this but... I'm having trouble coming up with music's Marvel superhero movie equivalent (although for some reason, the Black Keys keep popping up as a possibility; "real" rock 'n' roll as a franchise?). But there's plenty of corollaries to generic Oscar bait. Sting, Billy Joel, Paul Simon, Nanci Griffith, Patty Larkin, Patti Griffin, Suzanne Vega, Judy Collins, etc.

I voted for Early Summer but could've voted for Late Spring, Equinix Flower, Early Spring....

An Autumn Afternoon is the only Ozu I've watched multiple times so I guess that makes it my fave

Turns out I actually like more musical Oscar bait than movie Oscar bait.

https://cansesclasseled.files.wordpress.com/2021/11/038-singin-in-the-rain.jpg

38. SINGIN' IN THE RAIN (Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly, 1952, USA) [841.82 points; 11 points]
S&S: 27 | TSPDT: 12 | BOXD: 105

MORBS SEZ: "I've liked Singin' fine since I was a kid, but Donald O'Connor grates occasionally, as does Kelly's robotic smile in closeup … the MGM musical for ppl who don't like actual great musicals … oh, the dancing's great obv -- the component of musicals that least interests me."

It's one of those rare films that seems to have no detractors. I'd just been putting it off due to my previous experience with musicals. Anyway, I went into this not really knowing how I'd feel, and found myself stunned on more than one occassion. I realize that my attitude towards musicals has been as condescending as most peoples' towards horror movies, and though I don't think I'll ever be a true connoisseur of the genre, I gotta admit - this movie kicks some serious ass.
― Anthony (Anthony F), Tuesday, January 18, 2005 10:31 AM

As far as movies are concerned, both "Singin' In The Rain" and "South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut" are bona-fide classics.
― Dan Perry, Thursday, May 3, 2001 7:00 PM

Singing In The Rain is a movie with one great song and a couple more good ones. It's a really fun movie, and maybe even the best "movie musical" (at least before the recent Bollywood-inspired wave). But that's because it was fundamentally a movie, not a musical.
― Vornado, Friday, September 2, 2005 9:53 AM

It's strange--if I met [Donald O'Connor] on the street I'd probably hit him with a stun baton until he stop breathing. But I loved him in this film.
― jay blanchard (jay blanchard), Thursday, March 10, 2005 10:56 AM

Tom Cruise, reprising his Oprah role, as Cosmo Brown in Singin' in the Rain
― gabbneb, Wednesday, January 30, 2008 1:40 PM

is Cosmo gay Y/N
― If I was a carpenter, and you were a douchebag (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, December 27, 2012 3:27 PM

I carry an umbrella all the time. It's a huge one with the music to "Singin' in the Rain" on it. I'm pretty sure it makes me look rather camp.
― Johnney B (Johnney B), Monday, August 16, 2004 2:35 AM

The 50 Best Musical Numbers in Movie History
Poll Results
30. SINGIN' IN THE RAIN, "Make 'Em Laugh" (1952) 5
22. MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS, "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" (1944) 5
01. SINGIN' IN THE RAIN, "Singin' In The Rain" (1952) 4

fn hate singing in the rain, gene kelly is such a sleazeball
― plax (ico), Wednesday, April 10, 2019 2:04 AM

An anarchist watches singing in the rain

Then a cop turns up and ruins it.

— Don't trust cops. (@MediocreDave) December 25, 2020

― xyzzzz__, Friday, December 25, 2020 8:27 AM

musical Oscar bait can sound pretty, actual Oscar bait is usually hard work as well as vapid

I think SITR's reputation is well deserved, I've watched a shit ton of MGM musicals hoping that more obscure selections would live up to or surpass it and so far no dice (The Band Wagon comes closest, not an obscurity of course).

It does do that MGM musical thing of introducing a totally artificial point of conflict right near the end and then resolve it immediately.