Pulp Fiction
― Saxophone Of Futility (Michael B), Wednesday, 5 April 2023 12:47 (one year ago) link
Probably going for Parajanov but a couple of other considerations.
The Colour of Pomegranates (Sergei Paradjanov; 1968)The Ascent (Larissa Shepitko; 1977)The Seventh Seal (Ingmar Bergman; 1957)
Not seen:
Only Angels Have Wings (Howard Hawks; 1939)It’s a Wonderful Life (Frank Capra; 1946)Children of Paradise (Marcel Carné; 1945)
― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 5 April 2023 15:39 (one year ago) link
I've not seen this either
Trouble in Paradise (Ernst Lubitsch; 1932)
― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 5 April 2023 15:40 (one year ago) link
have fun!
― the very juice and sperm of kindness. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 5 April 2023 15:43 (one year ago) link
https://capsule98.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Sopranos_Out_Of_Context_11.png
― Chris L, Wednesday, 5 April 2023 15:45 (one year ago) link
this is actually the first section of the list where there's none I have a strong personal connection too
― ryan, Wednesday, 5 April 2023 16:04 (one year ago) link
fanny and alexander is so incredible but i will prob vote for the slightly dearer to my heart johnny guitar
― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Wednesday, 5 April 2023 16:08 (one year ago) link
The coincidental sequence here of Johnny Guitar-Umbrellas-Pomegranates is quite the visual feast. (I suppose you could add The Matrix there too, but ... nah.)
― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Wednesday, 5 April 2023 16:14 (one year ago) link
would be interesting to end on The Ascent, which does so much with the color white
― rob, Wednesday, 5 April 2023 16:23 (one year ago) link
regarding All That Heaven Allows - the incredible expressionist coloring of the film especially at the end, the camera frames, the uptight family and melodrama of a small town scandal about an older woman and younger man, the fairytale ending - I try to imagine what people at the time thought of it
― Dan S, Thursday, 6 April 2023 00:39 (one year ago) link
Do people like Johnny Guitar more for being in the Almodóvar movie? I think I do.
― Beatles in My Passway (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, 6 April 2023 00:43 (one year ago) link
Meanwhile: I'm rewatching _The Color of Pomegranates_. Every early MTV director stole a medium shot and visual effect.
― Beatles in My Passway (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, 6 April 2023 00:44 (one year ago) link
― Dan S
if the movie had ended with Wyman entombed with the TV set bought by her children, it might've been the American equivalent of Dreiser or something
― the very juice and sperm of kindness. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 6 April 2023 00:46 (one year ago) link
Ha!
― Beatles in My Passway (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, 6 April 2023 00:47 (one year ago) link
I still have a blind spot on that one, maybe because I haven’t really watched it enough times or even watched it properly once. Magnificent Obsession I’ve seen enough to like, to name the most adjacent film of his.
― Beatles in My Passway (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, 6 April 2023 00:49 (one year ago) link
all that heaven allows is such a pure paean to unashamed desire and love of self and it has shades of everything that tugs at my own desire and sexuality, even as it's somewhat aware that those things are often seen as foolish by everyone else and that it can't help but be a somewhat unreachable fantasia in the end. i saw it first in college, the first time i'd seen rock hudson in a movie, and he made a big impression on me lol. you have to really have a soft spot for like thoreau and whitman to really fall for it imo. it also helps to be somewhat familiar with what it's like to be a closet case. i'm very emotionally attached to it and i'll be voting for it in this poll.
― ꙮ (map), Thursday, 6 April 2023 01:12 (one year ago) link
it's also a deeply american film that's kind of about moving out west even if no one in it actually moves anywhere. maybe i just like to imagine that idk. it's a huge 'comfort food' movie for me. also agnes moorehead is such a supreme best friend and jacqueline dewit as mona is so purely detestable, i love both of them. i don't recall seeing a movie that shows just how contemptible one's own adult children can be and i love it for that. idk maybe these things are more standard soap opera romance archetypes than i imagine, it's not like i know much else in this genre, but they're just perfectly handled in this movie.
― ꙮ (map), Thursday, 6 April 2023 01:19 (one year ago) link
those are great posts map, which really describe the film for me
― Dan S, Thursday, 6 April 2023 01:32 (one year ago) link
on another front, Aguirre is about a harrowing journey over the Andes and down the Amazon by conquistadors in search of El Dorado. Aguirre, the second in command of the expedition, becomes obsessed by a vision of great achievement and goes insane. The scenes toward the end of him floating down the river by himself are haunting
― Dan S, Thursday, 6 April 2023 02:05 (one year ago) link
True, and I'm glad the movie continued after that just as I am that A.I. continued after the Blue Fairy sequence.
― fair but so uncool beliefs here (Eric H.), Thursday, 6 April 2023 13:21 (one year ago) link
I particularly love the arc that Cary's daughter goes through, from the overly analytical stick in the mud to the very-much-still-a-teen child to the one, of the two, who realizes the mistake she's made.
― fair but so uncool beliefs here (Eric H.), Thursday, 6 April 2023 13:31 (one year ago) link
Wyman and Hudson are genuinely touching together.
― the very juice and sperm of kindness. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 6 April 2023 13:45 (one year ago) link
TMI
― fair but so uncool beliefs here (Eric H.), Thursday, 6 April 2023 13:49 (one year ago) link
too little information
― the very juice and sperm of kindness. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 6 April 2023 13:55 (one year ago) link
Trouble in Paradise, with Fanny and Alexander and Pulp Fiction being other contenders.
A Day in the Country -- watched it recently. The P-A Renoir look I didn't care much of, but that ending is a gut-punch. Criterion special features indicate that it was always intended as a short film.
Only Angels Have Wings -- sorry, cary grant's character is just a conservative prick, letting employees die to make a little more money.
― formerly abanana (dat), Saturday, 8 April 2023 21:34 (one year ago) link
That's a reductive reading of what his character suffers when Thomas Mitchell dies or earlier when Joe dies (the "Where's Joe?" sequence is masterful in nailing a certain American attitude toward death), not to mention that he's not sympathetic at all. The film's on Jean Arthur's side.
― the very juice and sperm of kindness. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 8 April 2023 21:59 (one year ago) link
compassionate conservative, then -- he cares, but does nothing
― formerly abanana (dat), Sunday, 9 April 2023 02:11 (one year ago) link
I want to say that I don't really get how someone could love Taxi Driver and hate Raging Bull--there's such a continuum there for me--but Kael felt exactly the same.
― clemenza, Tuesday, April 4, 2023 10:57 AM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink
Late to the party, but Taxi Driver is easily a top ten film for me and I don't even put Raging Bull in my top ten Scorsese films. As much as I really really like it, I think it's beautiful and well-done and acted in ways that take me out of it, it's kinda of a cold movie for a movie with such hot blooded emotions running thru the characters. I also probably find Travis' slow hazily outlined descent more compelling, the way DeNiro manages to create such a multifaceted character who is at war with himself and everyone else, who is in some scenes such a good guy and in others a nightmarish stalker figure, and he seems like a "walking contradiction" but like many irl reporting later, he's just a quiet nice guy a lot of the time who keeps to himself. It's just that no one knows what he's thinking or planning.
It does help that it's beautiful to look at, w/a really remarkable soundtrack (frighteningly off-kilter when it's not achingly beautiful), and mesmerizing in the way an insomniac might see the world at 3am. Idk the cinematic intelligence it took to create this is just sky high.
So yeah to sum up TD is immersive and I could watch it once per week for life, RB is I think largely brilliant but in a way that keeps me on the outside looking in, which is not the case w/my preferred Scorsese jams. Also should add in TD I feel like I'm watching Travis Bickle, in RB I feel like I'm watching what is genuinely an amazing DeNiro performance.
― omar little, Friday, 14 April 2023 19:41 (one year ago) link
Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.
― System, Sunday, 23 April 2023 00:01 (one year ago) link
Fanny and Alexander is an incredibly beautiful and very dark Christmas film, with resonant scenes of childhood in relationship to ritual, family secrets, religion, and the theater.
I mentioned elsewhere that I read that maybe Bergman neglected focusing on Fanny in the film because of his fraught relationship with his sister, but that is just speculation
― Dan S, Sunday, 23 April 2023 00:24 (one year ago) link
Nice of him to give her first billing, in any case
― fair but so uncool beliefs here (Eric H.), Sunday, 23 April 2023 00:39 (one year ago) link
I can't embrace it totally because Franny interests him not at all
― the dreaded dependent claus (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 23 April 2023 01:56 (one year ago) link
it is a movie like all other movies with completely arbitrary characters and titles that sometimes don't make sense
― Dan S, Sunday, 23 April 2023 02:44 (one year ago) link
Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.
― System, Monday, 24 April 2023 00:01 (one year ago) link
I’ll take it
― fair but so uncool beliefs here (Eric H.), Monday, 24 April 2023 00:07 (one year ago) link
Nice. I expected to be the only Children of Paradise voter, glad I'm not! This is stacked list, though, so many great movies.
― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Monday, 24 April 2023 00:08 (one year ago) link
I’ll take it too.
― The Lubitsch Touchscreen (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 24 April 2023 00:17 (one year ago) link
Johnny Guitar deserved a vote, tho
― fair but so uncool beliefs here (Eric H.), Monday, 24 April 2023 01:21 (one year ago) link
Thought the same.
― The Lubitsch Touchscreen (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 24 April 2023 01:25 (one year ago) link
it is a great film
― Dan S, Monday, 24 April 2023 01:40 (one year ago) link
Nobody warned me about the ridiculous fart gags in Fanny And Alexander.
― piscesx, Monday, 24 April 2023 06:43 (one year ago) link
Maybe you should have expected it after reading the directorial credit.
― The Lubitsch Touchscreen (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 24 April 2023 11:26 (one year ago) link
what if fanny & alexander fought the farting kids from Ozu's Ohayu
― Daniel_Rf, Monday, 24 April 2023 11:30 (one year ago) link
Loool!
― The Lubitsch Touchscreen (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 24 April 2023 11:53 (one year ago) link