Sight and Sound 2022 Top 20

touché

Just wait until we talk about Andrei Rublev.

There's like 15 more of these to get through - someone post something snotty about Cléo

Starchild grew up to be a Starman iirc. Then fell to earth.

And started a war

lol clem

There's like 15 more of these to get through - someone post something snotty about Cléo

The never-made Madonna remake would have owned.

xyzzz, there'a way to have a conversation without constantly using variations on "You're wrong" and "Not correct." I'm sure I'm the only one who agrees -- and I don't even like 2001.

― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 10 January 2023 bookmarkflaglink

That's a bit weird. I gave my take on why I thought it wasn't doing it for me. I don't really like art that says "there is something better out there than this".

Hmm, not a correct take, sorry.

― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, January 10, 2023 4:09 PM (three hours ago)

Well, you should know

― عباس کیارستمی (Eric H.), Wednesday, 11 January 2023 bookmarkflaglink

You haven't watched The Last Samurai. Please.

Never mind the seven of them.

someone post something snotty about Cléo

The silent film pastiche is poorly observed and executed - Godard never did anything else half as embarrassing. Vagabond rules much harder.

the thought of anyone trying to adapt HdW's The Last Samurai fills me with both intense joy and despair, don't think anyone could pull it off

set it in space. Ludo is the real starchild

DeWitt would sue that stupid idea, it would never get off the ground.

Rewatched La règle for something like the fifteenth time. It is insane how good it is. Just wonderful acting on every level, even the smallest roles.

I was introduced to it in possibly the worst way, in an aesthetics class where we only watched a snippet of the costume party sequence alongside a reading from Bazin - basically just focusing on formal aspects, the way the camera moves, depth of field. I don't think the magic of it exactly came through. The film does so much to build up this crazy world of love and secrecy and shifting alliances. You watch the whole thing and it's like... a battle as intricate as Seven Samurai.

Yes indeed

gotta rewatch that one

The way Renoir begins with Jurieu, seemingly forgets about him, then re-centers the film around his dumb clueless presence for the denouement are examples of good screenwriting (despite how much he said he and the cast improvised) and choreography. The one most committed to obsolete class prerogatives has to die to snap everyone back to reality.

There’s only 4 of these that I have any specific memory of how they go. Probably 2 or 3 others that I believe I’ve seen but have no memory of. I guess I shouldn’t be allowed to vote, but voting anyway, for SitR which is the only one I’ve rewatched recently and which I thoroughly enjoyed.

I'm not gonna poll the directors' list because too much overlap but might be nice to have it here:

1) 2001
2) Citizen Kane
3) The Godfather
=4) Jeanne Dielman
=4) Tokyo Story
=6) Vertigo
=6) 8 1/2
8) Mirror
=9) In the Mood for Love
=9) Close-up
=9) Persona
=12) Taxi Driver
=12) Barry Lyndon
=14) Beau Travail
=14) Seven Samurai
=14) Breathless
=14) Stalker
18) Apocalypse Now
19) A Woman Under the Influence
=20) Bicycle Thieves
=20) Rashomon

Big outlier here is the Cassavetes, I think?

SiTR would be an extremely sensible pick for the greatest movie ever made, imo.

2001 kind of a perfect choice for directors since it probably represents their greatest dream: full control over a big studio budget, major cultural impact, personal/ambitious/uncompromising.

Big outlier here is the Cassavetes, I think?

Yes, that's interesting. It's almost surely the least scripted film on the list. I suppose it's because he was able to get such stellar performances from Rowlands and Falk.

Rewatched La règle for something like the fifteenth time. It is insane how good it is. Just wonderful acting on every level, even the smallest roles.

Nora Gregor's terrible!

Depends how much French you know to spot her rotten accent.

I'm not straight and am not inclined (ok maybe a little inclined) to connect with romantic films about straight people, but In the Mood for Love is an amazing film. As I mentioned before it is a compressed, complicated story that advances in largely shorthand scenes with unexpected moments that are suddenly intimately dilated. it is beautiful to watch

good posts abt regle de jeu. one of the most movie movies ever, a pleasure to watch be a movie. i like that in addition to being a “sumptuous farce” and having passages of terrifying gesamtkunstwerk stuff like the symphony-of-death hunting scene it also has classic instructional fun-w-yr-friends indie-filmmaking moments like the shot of someone fanning some smoke from out of frame left while renoir staggers up a nondescript hillock clutching his hat like wow what a terrible car crash!! great stuff.

du, lol.

Rules was for several years the required text in my film course's capstone project, but, alas, my students Just Didn't Get It. The last three semesters I've used The 400 Blows.

is that a Wilt Chamberlain biopic

Oscar Wilde biopic

Many will disagree, but I feel like the big Altman ensemble films do what La règle du jeu does while reflecting a social milieu closer to my own. La grande illusion is the only Renoir I've really loved throughout.

What other Renoir have you watched?

Watching the '30s films reissued by Criterion in the last decade (Toni, La Chienne, The Crime of Monsieur Lange), never mind Boudu and La Bête Humaine, have considerably enhanced my appreciation. He was already mastering deep focus for the sake of depicting characters interacting with freshness; he's one of those directors who captures the smell of air and grass.

Other than the two we're discussing, I've seen La Chienne, Une partie de campagne, La Marseillaise, La Bête Humaine, and The River, but it's been so long I had to look it up. I was bringing it up relating to reasons why your students might not respond to his films.

one of those directors who captures the smell of air and grass

I know what you mean, but from his films I remember a few minutes of nature and then long scenes of fairly theatrical dialogue in stuffy sets.

Which Altman films do you have in mind? I'm struggling to think of one where I, personally, relate to the social milieu but maybe I'm blanking on something obvious

the rough and tumble port life as depicted in Popeye

I was bringing it up relating to reasons why your students might not respond to his films.

Oh! Yeah, for sure.

I remember a few minutes of nature and then long scenes of fairly theatrical dialogue in stuffy sets.

What I love about Toni, Une Partie de Campagne, and La Bête Humaine is how often the characters lie on hills, sit by rivers, while his camera's alert to the sun and clouds.

gosford park borders on remake in places, but assume that's not the milieu in question

hard not to find yourself in nashville tho even if fleetingly

he's one of those directors who captures the smell of air and grass.

Yes, this is what I love about A Day in the Country. You could probably do a whole piece just on rivers in Renoir films.

Sesonske’s writings on these films are good – he likes finding mythic and pagan themes in Renoir, e.g. Marceau in The Rules of the Game as a Pan type who invades the castle and then retreats to the woods in the end.

or Boudu.

Nora Gregor's terrible!

lol, okay that's fair, I wasn't really thinking of her. I was more thinking of Lisette, Robert, Marceau, all the party guests (how common was it to have a sympathetically portrayed gay character in this period?)

Even so, the film is able to absorb her performance. Christine is supposed to have a conspicuous accent and be a bit out of her element, someone who doesn’t seem to possess much guile, which is why they all think they can keep the affair between la Chesnaye and Geneviève from her. She turns that to her advantage a few times. I love how everyone is delighted by her little speech where she declares that she and Andre spent so many afternoons "sous le signe si rare de l'amitié" while meanwhile Dalio is mugging like crazy right next to her.

mugging with relief and terror

I don’t think there’s a director with a fuller trove than Renoir. Boudu, M. Lange, Day in the Country, Rules, the River, Le petit theatre … even something like Grande illusion, which I love about as much as I can possibly love a war movie

Buñuel and Ozu maybe, yes

I've watched Elena and Her Men three times in the hopes that it'll click. I know it will.

I managed to totally forget Golden Coach and French Can Can … what a career

french can can is a riot