1993's Best Movies: 30 Years Later

calendar or farewell my concubine or nightmare before christmas

naked: asks, can you sympathize with a rapist? then manipulates the audience by ending with a super-rapist that the protagonist rapist hates.

Out of the 16 I've seen from the top list: Age of Innocence followed by Valley of Abraham. I know I liked The Puppetmaster a lot but can't remember anything but the vaguest outlines. Didn't like Farewell My Concubine or Short Cuts.

it's very inside baseball and I wonder what international audiences make of it all.

Basically impressed with the aesthetic control and mood, but with a big question mark over my head, even after seeing it twice.

Calendar is my favourite Egoyan next to his debut Next of Kin, he's at his best on a smaller scale and with strict formal limitations.

I might actually prefer three of the six I've seen from the lower list: Whispering Pages, The Baby of Mâcon and Wild Reeds.

Probably my favourite film from even lower in the list is Lodge Kerrigan's Clean, Shaven.

I think if I gave CLEAN SHAVEN another viewing it would plummet to the lowest ranges of my esteem

What stopped it from getting there in the first place?

puppetmaster

I just have a backlog of disturbing movies I thought were profound back when I was 22 years old that, almost to a one, haven't held up on repeat viewings.

Then again, I was/am in my 40s when I loved Climax so maybe not.

It might well seem edgy now to no greater purpose, but I saw it as a psychological portrait of a troubled person. Also, I have to love an American film that shoots in Canada to seem exotic.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I’d put Tian Zhuangzhuang‘s The Blue Kite above most of these. Surprised that Germinal wasn’t included, either

Also, correct, The Puppetmaster, too.

I’m surprised that Joe Dante/Charlie Haas’ Matinee isn’t here

Voted Sonatine. Features two of my favorite shoot-outs of all time: the elevator scene and the climax - the final reel (wordless but with Joe Hisashi's score ratcheting up the intensity) is my ideal of Pure Cinema. It's theme of middle-aged burnout and grappling with mortality hits me a lot harder three decades later. Ditto how Kitano at the time looked to me like a cool old badass, and when I re-watch it now looks positively youthful.

Absolutely The Puppetmaster. (Wish it had a better U.S. title - I think the literal translation of its native title is actually "Dream Life" or "Also Like Life.") If I had a ballot for the Sight & Sound poll, it would 100% make it. I'm so glad it's been screened in NYC. I just wish it was possible for everyone to see it in good quality because the DVD is a piece of shit.

And yes, Matinee (my favorite Dante movie) and Egoyan's Calendar for that matter are sadly missing from this poll - they would both figure among my very favorites from this year.

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

Always found Groundhog Day overrated, so that result is fine by me.

Ah, Calendar WAS there. Pretty strong year, even what I guess would be my "second tier" picks have something great about them despite my reservations.

Personal ten favorites in descending order:

Hsimeng Rensheng ("Dream Life") [Hou Hsiao-hsien]
D'Est [Chantal Akerman]
Naked [Mike Leigh]
Calendar [Atom Egoyan]
Blue [Krzysztof Kieslowski]
The Age of Innocence [Martin Scorsese]
The Last Bolshevik [Chris Marker]
Matinee [Joe Dante]
Blue [Derek Jarman]
Sonatine [Takeshi Kitano]

Also special mention to It's All True: Based on an Unfinished Film by Orson Welles, essentially a two-part film where one part's a documentary on the aborted project and the other part is edited from the surviving rushes for one of the original film's three sections, “Four Men on a Raft."

Short Cuts gets worse for me. Altman imposes a sourness on the material that isn't there...Few things resonate (Tom Waits and Lily Tomlin absolutely do).

I still think it's a very good film, but sadly I kind of agree. It's frustrating because there are many things that seem great about it and I think Altman does a better job weaving all of these stories together than he did on his previous massive ensemble films, but on repeated viewing, after the intricate structure becomes very familiar, the film as a whole feels more and more uneven to me.

The way Jack Lemmon's imposed on the McDowell-Davison story about the kid in the coma is so ham-handed and cheap that it makes me question Altman's sanity so soon after The Player; or the way Chris Penn bludgeons one of those girls with a rock before the earthquake.

Yeah, not a favorite of mine. I know Altman was under no obligation to replicate Carver's tone, but he sure didn't. The hard edges without the empathy.