Sight and Sound 2022 Round 8: 161-180

Right now I'd vote Charulata. But I need to see Exterminating Angel, Letter from an Unknown Woman, Where is the Friend's Home, and Gospel According to St. Matthew before I vote.

My top 5 would be Black Narcissus, The Exterminating Angel, TGTBTU, Red Desert and Where Is the Friend's House? Will probably vote for Kiarostami.

TGTBATU is one of the best-paced three hours movies you'll ever see, it's a pretty leisurely told story but it moves along so swiftly and before you know it they've crossed the river and are entering the cemetery. The civil war stuff is weaved into it so beautifully and movingly, too.

Voted for Black Narcissus tho, its power sneaks up on you.

I know I’m too hard on Movies For Guys Who Like Movies™, but TGTBTU is genuinely pretty great

it's a classic™. But actually, it really is great!

One of the few good man films.

The stuff w Tuco's brother gets to me, and that moment w Blondie when they hit the road again after. Tuco lying about how it went down between them and Blondie passing him the cigar to share it. Leone got a lot of unexpected emotion out of that story and those characters.

so here for classic emo action movies

this one is really tough tbh but i'm going to have to go with my favorite almodovar

I first watched Red Desert in college, and saw it again recently. It is about a woman’s existential worries and her succumbing to an undefined malaise in a dreamlike version of a 1960s industrial society. It is set to a very strange electronic score. In retrospect it feels futuristic. It has colorized scenes that still seem unique

“Michelangelo Antonioni’s first film in color, from 1964, is his most mysterious and awe-inspiring work….Vitti’s mask-like look of blank dread is the vanishing point for the polluted landscape of roaring machines; the metallic river, the riotous tangle of tubes and pipes, the yellow poison gas and orange flames that spout from smokestacks, and the smoldering fields of debris” - Richard Brody

Eric, I thought your description of the narrative details of Last Year at Marienbad was perfect

“A woman simply known as A (Delphine Seyrig) somnambulistically rebuffs, reconsiders, and recoils from the romantic intimations of a man called X (Giorgio Albertazzi) as the two navigate the rococo hallways and gardens of a resort chateau. While M, A’s maybe husband, grifts equally zombified socialites in the salon, X tries to convince A she promised last year (… in Marienbad … my edit) she would run away with him when they met again this year. He struggles to remember the specifics of their brief encounter, but the more he successfully jogs her lagging memory, the closer both come to facing an unspeakable, repulsive realization.

… By the movie’s end, you’re not even sure whether the main characters know each other, whether they exist in the same era as their surroundings, or even if they’re alive at all. Beyond Seyrig’s fashionable sarcophagus of haute couture Chanel and the movie’s self-referential games and rituals, Resnais’s film is a stark, elegant horror film about the dread we spend our whole lives trying to put off contemplating until next year.”

Seen all but four of these, and they're all at least good except for Amarcord (which I hated) and Symbiopsychotaxiplasm which is an interesting experiment with barely adequate execution.

I'm pretty sure I wrote an essay comparing Black Narcissus and Red Desertin school, and I'll vote for the latter, but I know that City of Sadness was great, even if I can't remember a single detail.

Every Resnais film is impressive, only ones that I love are Muriel, maybe Love Unto Death.

If I feel like some Duras or Robbe-Grillet, I'd prefer to watch their own films rather than these.

Not a sentiment you hear every day

The key sentiment was "If I feel...", I'm only occasionally in that mood.

red desert and exterminating angel are my favorite movies from their respective directors. hard to choose between the two

exterminating angel is like a twilight zone episode (complimentary)

^otm

Wow! Anyone who hasn't seen the Kiarostami should try to asap! It's amazing!

I'm watching it tonight.

The Exterminating Angel will probably get my vote. Red Desert will definitely earn a laff (I adore L'Avventura and L'Eclisse but when Antonioni goes sour for me I can't stop being amused).

"exterminating angel is like a twilight zone episode (complimentary)"

lol, that is completely correct

I always think of the rich rotter laughing as they conclude that the damage done to the window was by "a passing Jew." That's perfect to describe this milieu.

I'd like to give Memories of Underdevelopment recognition, but I regret I haven't watched it yet

― fair but so uncool beliefs here (Eric H.), Friday, May 12, 2023

Watch it.

It’s good

More than for its Godard-indebted tricks, the film was useful for showing what Cuba looked like in that interzone just before and just after Castro declared himself a Communist.

OTM

Didn't realize I'd given this one such a long lead

The fix is in.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I forget what I voted for in the end.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Sad that Red Desert only got my vote, sadder that City of Sadness got none.

I was going to vote for it, but forgot to vote. I think it is much better than BN

Surprised to see such a landslide

I feel like Nóbile in The Exterminating Angel.

Sight and Sound 2022 Round 8: 181-200