Recommendations required - top ten films (no wait - come back!)

craner

Beast of Burden
I reckon Hannah and Her Sisters is the best Woody Allen film and it probably should be in my 10 rather than Algiers. The Dusty/Frederick scene is a great little Art Market satire, almost as good in its brevity as the whole of Tony Hancock's The Rebel. "I've got this great Frank Stella. Big! Weird! If you look at it too long the colours just seem to float." "I don't sell...my...work...by the yard."
 

rubberdingyrapids

Well-known member
* And thinking more about this, maybe cold 'admiration' is a way to prevent oneself from realising that one doesn't really think these things are all that good. .

high brow film critics just see emotional (hollywood) filmmaking as the easy norm, and intellectual cinema as an opposition to that, hence better. what it does vs how it makes you feel/what it does to YOU etc.

im not sure if just cos a film isnt that good on the 2nd viewing that it isnt good (you have to leave quite a bit of space between viewings i think). melancholia turned out to be a whole lot of surface when i saw it again, but the first time i thought it was a brilliantly painful/awkward look at depression and a clever play on the world-is-about-to-end genre, not totally clear on whether the world really was ending or if the main character was just having a serious breakdown.

i didnt vote scorsese as it seemed obvious. but goodfellas (best pacing ever), taxi driver, mean streets are all amazing. hes fallen off quite badly though.
 
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baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Which is why 70s Hollywood and other key eras are so amazing - that freedom to mix it up.

After I found Haneke's films, I think, my appetite for von Trier began to die. To me, Haneke does everything that von Trier does well, but it doesn't feel vampiric upon the viewer's emotions. He's just a lot more real (through his films, at least).
 
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craner

Beast of Burden
I presume you are all, like me, waiting with bated breath for Idlerich's list of esoteric curios?

Last time we did this, Owen Hatherley produced a list that actually made me feel ashamed of the schlock I chose -- a lot of Russian and Eastern European art house masterpieces I'd never even heard of. I promised I'd never write another list again, and now that I have it hasn't improved all that much. I still haven't watched Daisies or any Tarkovsky.
 

rubberdingyrapids

Well-known member
i heard andrei rublev is good but i found solaris ponderous and meandering. im going to embarass myself and say i prefer the soderbergh remake.
 

allegiant

Evenly Distributed
Bit clueless when it comes to horror, but I've had a go.

Vampyr (Carl Theodor Dreyer)
Kuroneko (Kaneto Shindô)
Eyes Without a Face (Georges Franju)
Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock)
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene)
Suspiria (Dario Argento)
Tetsuo, the Iron Man (Shin'ya Tsukamoto)

A general list's far easier to populate, but much more difficult to narrow down to 10.

Le samouraï (Jean-Pierre Melville)
The Fire Within (Louis Malle)
Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock)
Un homme qui dort (Bernard Queysanne)
Ugetsu (Kenji Mizoguchi)
Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky)
Werckmeister Harmonies (Béla Tarr, Ágnes Hranitzky)
The Seventh Seal (Ingmar Bergman)
Rififi (Jules Dassin)
Army of Shadows (Jean-Pierre Melville)

Ponderous, contemplative silliness in abundance, I'm afraid. Would've liked to have linked my lists from mubi/the auteurs, but the profile's in private mode atm.
 

Immryr

Well-known member
in no real order:

Le Samourai
Night of the Hunter
Mauvais Sang
Stalker
Videodrome
The Thing
Martin
The Serpent's Egg
The Conversation
Blue Velvet / Mullholland Drive

that's my general list, although a lot of it has at least some kind of horrifying element to it. and of course I've probably forgotten about lots of things I really love. i'm surprised no one has mentioned the brood yet in their horror lists particularly. great film!
 
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craner

Beast of Burden
Bit clueless when it comes to horror, but I've had a go.

allegiant, I like the way you led with this tentative caveat, and then immediately followed with a sublime, super-stylish, cinephile list of horror movies. That's the way to do it!
 

luka

Well-known member
do you lot not all feel film is something dead? like organ grinding or tv rentals. when you go to the cinema its like a time warp. its the 90s again. I don't like films and I don't watch films and I don't see the point of them. go into a blockbuster store, that's what film feels like in 2013.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
film will never die

Blockbuster is eerie these days though. I think streaming has opened up whole new worlds of film to lots of people who wouldn't have been able to get hold of this stuff before without shelling out £17 for a bloody Artificial Eye DVD they'd only watch once - I'd say film is more relevant than it was. TV is obviously in a stellar period too (and before HBO and its progeny, I think lots of people would have predicted a slow death for that medium), which has more than a little to do with making series more cinematic (BB is obvious example) while simultaneously offering the character progression that cinema can't
 
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luka

Well-known member
the tv thing is completely overblown. none of those shows are actually that good. the wire is hammy and overblown, breaking bad has that mechanical script writing machine, etc. we are in game world now and I cant wait to see how it develops. I wouldn't have the slightest interest in writing for tv or film but would gnaw a leg off to write for games. in fact im going to write to all the games companies and ask them for work.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
I'm glad you said that about the Wire - no-one's ever said anything about it that made me want to watch it. Reminds me of the furore around the Sopranos, which I found fine but no more. Very well made. Oz too - although briefly it threatened to be truly interesting and mould-breaking, too quickly it settled back into boring caricatures.

I love Six Feet Under - blows everything else out of the water imo.
 
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rubberdingyrapids

Well-known member
people just like box set TV cos its like film but without having to do the work they would have to for a film (well certain kinda of film). its stretched out for hours. its easier to watch. (also the other reason people go on about these shows is that it gives them the smaller kinds of movies that you dont get that much of in the cinema)

but i think film going isnt what it was - mainly cos of streaming, youtube, lovefilm etc etc. theres no real respect for it anymore. i think people still like films, but its exactly the same thing as music, its just not that important a part of pop culture anymore. its just another thing to do. just sitting there. expectations for what a film can do for you are pretty low for most people i think. it doesnt really 'mean' much in 2013.
 
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craner

Beast of Burden
You are correct, Luke. I notice most of the films I watch got made in the 1960s and 70s and it's the same with TV shows. The box sets I want to buy are Elio Petri and The Sandbaggers.
 

rubberdingyrapids

Well-known member
thats a certain type of person, def not the norm. the charts on lovefilm tell me the vast majority of people still want to watch the latest hollywood release or something like breaking bad or girls rather than the singing detective or the prisoner.
 

Immryr

Well-known member
Er, you cheated.

you're right of course, here is a horror list.

The Thing
The Brood
Martin (does this count?)
The Wicker Man
Susperia
Dawn of the Dead
Peeping Tom
Don't Torture a Duckling / House by the Cemetery
The Exorcist
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
 
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