Sight and Sound 2022 Top 20

Just about every film on this list has scenes that make me cringe from inappropriateness, silliness, and other instances of poor direction -- and that's okay.

I'm not a fan of it, but I think _The Godfather II_ is only 'finished' because everyone decided that _The Godfather_ itself was the appropriate the stand-in for the trilogy

I’ve never seen a Naomi Kawase film. There have been ample and consistent warning signs from the ones I trust

"Kubrick got a great crew together consistently too"

The difference with Kubrick is they were making stuff that was consistently bad.

Just a colossal folly for the studios to indulge him.

But that's not what you wrote -- it sounds as if you wrote that it takes a good crew to make good films. If you want to argue that Kubrick couldn't make good films because of his cramped vision or whatever, that's legit, because whatever else Kubrick was the one major director b/w 1957 and 1999 who had absolute control over what he wrote, directed, and organized.

Among Americans, that is, unless you include Woody Allen, which lol I'll agree with you

Often a good crew gets assembled under a director, they seem to go on a run of great films.

I am guessing Kubrick had a similar band, they all bought in on his vision, which I don't connect with at all xp

you couldn't be more wrong about Paths Of Glory imo

― calzino, Monday, 9 January 2023 bookmarkflaglink

I'll give it another watch someday.

All fair enough! Was just curious.

Re: feeling in Kubrick, at least in the latter films (post-2001) the feeling I get is his palpable anxiety about the world's capacity for violence, terror, and chaos (and in the last movie...the possible safe haven, or illusion of it, in domesticity...). The Killing is probably the thesis statement.

I am guessing Kubrick had a similar band, they all bought in on his vision, which I don't connect with at all xp

― xyzzzz__,

Fair. I don't either. He's part of the He-Man Crew recognized by cineastes younger than 21.

Paths of Glory is actually the one Kubrick film where the thesis statement (politicians make wars happen) gets backed up.

Yes. I think after 2001 he definitely enters in a "late period" kind of style where the motivating traumas are very much metaphorized or occluded (ie, the shining) and I can totally get why someone wouldn't like that but for me the indirectness is an attempt to get closer by other means--and a healthy skepticism about what art can do or say about such things in the first place.

(though I suppose it also doesn't get much more direct than a literal river of blood...)

Alfred: 2001 and The Godfather.

The Killing aside, I don’t think lithe suited Kubrick much

"Lithe" doesn't suit most filmmakers here for better or worse, Renoir and Denis and Wong excepted.

these last posts seem like gobbledegook

2001 is still the greatest movie of all time to me. It is detached and cerebral and pompous but it is also profound and moving and so beautiful to watch. It's still thrilling after after 55 years. Seeing it for the first time was one of the teenage experiences I will never forget. It was what got me interested in film.

Not being "lithe" is not an insult! Eisenstein, Tarkovsky, Ozu, Lynch, etc. aren't lithe at all.

Yep. Those who aren’t terribly into Kubrick tend to slightly overvalue his early quickies

"...he is only talked up because the US is insecure about great art. Really hope the work that's being done to take down this stuff down carries on. Like, Godfather II is finished now. The only way is up."

There you go again.

Godfather II don't even have that kind of muscle anymore.

"the work that's being done to take down this stuff down"--you actually do make it all sound like a conspiracy. And there's this undercurrent of "We've won, nah-nah, now pack up and go home" when you write about Kubrick or The Godfathers I find kind of juvenile.

Have a heart, clemenza! It must be hard on him to be on this board with so many inferior minds, especially after they laughed at him at the academy.

(xposts) Nice. Or "Kay, Kubrick's way of doing things is over -- it's finished. Even he knows that. I mean in 10 years, the Top 10 will be nothing but Chantel Akerman films."

singin in the rain for me

Probably for me too.

Nice to see it getting votes! It's amazing.

I wonder if The Searchers will get any.

SitR was the only one of these 20 films to make me cry multiple times in the last year for just how good it is

Godfather films are great (I even ride for 3 to an extent) but there’s maybe a sense that the culture had consumed them and spit them out in increasingly uninteresting ways and why give too much thought to them?

My one problem w/the trilogy is I’m not really moved by any of the characters, there’s amazing storytelling all over the place but I’m a little removed from it, for all the talk about Kubrick being a cold filmmaker I find these films a little cold deep down albeit superficially running hot. Might obviously be a michael thing, he’s an icy dude who’s hard to like even before he falls into a vat of familia and becomes Mobman.

Oh I'm moved by Fredo. "I can handle things! I'm smart! Not like everybody says!" is a big part of my vocabulary. As for Michael, being better at "the business" than even his father at the expense of the family is a tiny bit sad if you're moved by that sort of thing.

the iciness being the tragic flaw, i guess.

There are many moments in the first two GFs that move me, but you might be on to something there, I don't know.

I'm positive, though, they will never go away. Maybe GFII has slipped for the strategic reason that's been mentioned, but I don't believe it has anything to do with the film itself. There are always going to be young critics who see those two films for the first time, and--I believe--many of them will be as overwhelmed as I and countless others were.

Nice to see it getting votes! It's amazing.

I wonder if _The Searchers_ will get any.

I’m not feeling like they’re totally ice cold and I’m not sure it’s a major flaw in the movies, it’s an almost admirable decision to have a lead character be that kind of bastard. I feel like in G3 one of the drawbacks is actually making him a warmer version of the guy.

Ok I guess I might say for a moving character, to me it’s probably Frank Pentangeli, for some reason. Fredo is also moving yeah to me for his fear and Michael’s implacable desire to kill him no matter what he does. But it doesn’t really make me feel for michael at all, and I’m not sure that was the intent either.

The thing that moves me about Michael is when you see him in the early scenes, knowing where he's headed. And also seeing Pacino, and knowing where--"Who-ah!" or however that goes--he's headed.

As far as Kubrick goes, I don't see anything to suggest he's going to disappear. It didn't win like some people thought it would, but he's got the #4 film right now, plus two or three others in the Top 100, I think. So I don't know what xyzzzz's talking about there.

Kubrick has three on the big list and three on the director's list, four different films in all. Is that better or worse than last time? I don't know, but it's still pretty damn good. He and Hitchcock and Godard will continue to place numerous films all over the place.

cannot get past the racism in the searchers

Just today I knuckled down and watched Jeanne Dielman. I didn't hate it, but I voted for Man With a Movie Camera (if it hadn't been that, it would have been Sunrise).

cannot get past the racism in the searchers

I thought The Searchers was the only western still on the list because it is seen as, on some level, "dealing with" the racism. I don't like the film enough to make that argument.

It is pretty far from the only vintage American western to deal with the racism, is my understanding, but it’s certainly the most visible

I used to be a non-believer in The Searchers but now I think I can safely say, like Hank Worden’s Mose Harper, “I’ve been baptized, Reverend, I’ve been baptized.”

I've seen all twenty. I like John Ford and Chantal Akerman. But my personal favorite on this list is Beau Travail. (Though Sunrise is right up there.)

2001 is still the greatest movie of all time to me. It is detached and cerebral and pompous but it is also profound and moving and so beautiful to watch. It's still thrilling after after 55 years. Seeing it for the first time was one of the teenage experiences I will never forget. It was what got me interested in film.

― Dan S, Monday, 9 January 2023 bookmarkflaglink

I get that it's beautiful to look at on the big screen (and the soundtrack is the best thing about it for me; I couldn't not see it after looking at the music choices). But I don't see anything very profound in HAL, and what engages your intellect in this?

"the work that's being done to take down this stuff down"--you actually do make it all sound like a conspiracy. And there's this undercurrent of "We've won, nah-nah, now pack up and go home" when you write about Kubrick or The Godfathers I find kind of juvenile.

― clemenza, Monday, 9 January 2023 bookmarkflaglink

Stuff like Dielman has been pretty much belittled or just isn't seen by film criticism outside of S&S. And like Omar says the end result of Godfather is greatest ends up in a an uninteresting place.

And like I said to you in the other thread, there ought to be an element of gaming in this particular poll. Rather than worrying about whether nonsense like 2001 will keep its place why can't we get really great films like Makavejev's W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism in the top 20 in future editions of this poll?

In the first two Godfathers there is lots of interesting stuff in it. This is a story of Italian migration into America.

I voted Ozu, I think in the end because his work as a whole is what I'm most sympatico with at this point in my life

It is pretty far from the only vintage American western to deal with the racism, is my understanding, but it’s certainly the most visible

Yeah, classic Hollywood westerns deal with racism more frequently than people think (which is not the same as saying they do so as often or as deeply as they should have). People assume they never did and so when they see The Searchers, whose discussion of racism doesn't go much beyond Heart Of Darkness imo, they hugely overinflate its credentials in that department.

I highly recommend: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Way_Out_(1950_film)

Also: those Anthony Mann westerns addressed w/out much fuss the relations b/w whites and the indigenous populations.

yeah (as i was tempted to point out several times on the Avatar thread) that kind of stuff was part of the standard toolkit for tons of Hollywood westerns at least since Broken Arrow in 1950