2015 poll

[rischka]

if anyone wants to watch birdboy (psiconautas) let me know



it's basically animal crossing...in hell

[cinesmith]

I've seen 190 films from the 2015 releases

1.Microbe and Gasoline (Gondry)

2. Dheepan (Audriard)
3. Son of Saul (Nemes)
4. My Golden Days (Desplechin)
5. The Lobster (Lanthimos)
6. The Brand New Testament (Van Dormael)
7. A Bigger Splash (Guadagnino)
8. Slow West (Maclean)
9. I am a Hero (Sato)
10. Demon (Wrona)
11. The Club (Larraín)
12. Chronic (Franco)
13. Men & Chicken (Jensen)
14. A Perfect Day (Arama)
15. Rams (Hakonarson)
16. Tale of Tales (Garrone)
17. Requeim for the American Dream (Hutchison)
18. Call Me Lucky (Goldthwait)
19. High Rise (Wheatley)
20. Cosmos (Zulawski)

Still need to see these but I don't expect to change my roster:
Eisenstein in Guanajuato (Peter Greenaway)
Love (Gaspar Noe)
Victoria (Sebastian Schipper)
Right Now, Wrong Then (Hong)
Mountains May Depart (Jia Zhangke)
Taxi (Jafar Panahi)

[sally]

I was really into Son of Saul as I was watching it but it left me with the sourest aftertaste. Maybe cuz it felt like The Holocaust: The VR game?

i can't watch violent/horror films, i just don't understand why people maybe sit down of an evening and think something like this which is obviously going to be horrific would be a nice film to put on. do they burn themselves on the oven beforehand for fun? maybe pour acid on some exposed skin as a chaser? is it for catharsis? (if you're watching fictional auschwitz films for that seek help) why do these films even get made? if it's to explore some kind of moral problem, the fact that you have to use what may be the most extreme limit of human historical experience might suggest that it's inappropriate as some general mankind quandary, like using the realest thing ever to construct a fairy story...

i mean i watch films that do that as well sometimes, but i don't really know why. is it masochism? do i understand the world any more after a false needless suffering for it?

dammit modern films giving me a 'what is cinema crisis' already, when are we polling 1925 again?

[St. Gloede]

1. Knight of Cups (2015, Terrence Malick)

Victoria (2015, Sebastian Schipper)
The Lobster (2015, Yorgos Lanthimos)
Lu bian ye can / Kaili Blues (2015, Gan Bi)

The Revenant (2015, Alejandro González Iñárritu)
Krisha (2015, Trey Edward Shults)
The Forbidden Room (2015, Guy Maddin & Evan Johnson )
Mustang (2015, Deniz Gamze Ergüven)
Anomalisa (2015, Charlie Kaufman & Duke Johnson)
Spotlight (2015, Tom McCarthy)
Évolution (2015, Lucile Hadzihalilovic)

Riaru onigokko / Tag (2015, Sion Sono)
El abrazo de la serpiente / Embrace of the Serpent (2015, Ciro Guerra)
Mad Max: Fury Road (2015, George Miller)
The Invitation (2015, Karyn Kusama)
Aferim! (2015, Radu Jude)
Saul fia / Son of Saul (2015, László Nemes)
Sarmasik / Ivy (2015, Tolga Karaçelik)
Shan he gu ren / Mountains May Depart (2015, Zhangke Jia)
Bella e perduta / Lost and Beautiful (2015, Pietro Marcello)

[MrCarmady]

Ex Machina is 2014 according to IMDB, would've made my list as well otherwise.

[greennui]

i can't watch violent/horror films, i just don't understand why people maybe sit down of an evening and think something like this which is obviously going to be horrific would be a nice film to put on. do they burn themselves on the oven beforehand for fun? maybe pour acid on some exposed skin as a chaser? is it for catharsis? (if you're watching fictional auschwitz films for that seek help) why do these films even get made? if it's to explore some kind of moral problem, the fact that you have to use what may be the most extreme limit of human historical experience might suggest that it's inappropriate as some general mankind quandary, like using the realest thing ever to construct a fairy story...

i mean i watch films that do that as well sometimes, but i don't really know why. is it masochism? do i understand the world any more after a false needless suffering for it?

dammit modern films giving me a 'what is cinema crisis' already, when are we polling 1925 again?

I guess there's just an inherent fascination with the morbid. When I was a kid I had a book of UK centered mysteries, filled with stuff like Jack the Ripper, Spring-heeled Jack...spontaneous human combustion, the disappearance of Leslie Howard/Lord Lucan, ghosts and whatnot. It would always creep me the hell out and I ended up hiding it away, went to play with my cat and watched something feel good to get in a better mood, promising myself that I wouldn't read it again, but I kept coming back for more...Just the other day I read an article about an old Arizona Jane Doe that had been identified. Naturally I ended up on that dreaded /unresolvedmysteries for a good while, after that I went to play with my cat and watched something feel good...

[St. Gloede]

Ex Machina is 2014 according to IMDB, would've made my list as well otherwise.

Thank you.

[nrh]

I was really into Son of Saul as I was watching it but it left me with the sourest aftertaste. Maybe cuz it felt like The Holocaust: The VR game?

was son of saul widely acclaimed? it got into a bunch of major festivals, as is probably pre-ordained for this kind of thing, but i remember nothing but the harshest criticism from critics and friends after it released. maybe that is just selection bias...

[greennui]

I was really into Son of Saul as I was watching it but it left me with the sourest aftertaste. Maybe cuz it felt like The Holocaust: The VR game?

was son of saul widely acclaimed? it got into a bunch of major festivals, as is probably pre-ordained for this kind of thing, but i remember nothing but the harshest criticism from critics and friends after it released. maybe that is just selection bias...

Won the Grand Prix at Cannes and The Guardian loved it, that's pretty much where I caught wind of it. Claude Lanzmann rated it highly iirc.

[sally]

was son of saul widely acclaimed?

The Guardian loved it

LOL!

i didn't want to start a big debate about son of saul, i haven't seen it, it's just that i've been so immersed in silent cinema lately, this is all rather jarring. & there's almost 20,000 films from 2015 listed on letterboxd, how can you even negotiate that

[Abe]

I was really into Son of Saul as I was watching it but it left me with the sourest aftertaste. Maybe cuz it felt like The Holocaust: The VR game?

was son of saul widely acclaimed? it got into a bunch of major festivals, as is probably pre-ordained for this kind of thing, but i remember nothing but the harshest criticism from critics and friends after it released. maybe that is just selection bias...

Won the Grand Prix at Cannes and The Guardian loved it, that's pretty much where I caught wind of it. Claude Lanzmann rated it highly iirc.

It was a critical darling. Metacritic has a score of 91/100 out of 49 reviews, but I think it’s grossly overrated. As with most films about the holocaust, it overwhelms with its sentimentality even while trying to appear otherwise, and it is completely unnecessary. The subject matter is horrific enough, there’s really no need to dress it up in a sentimental narrative. I was reminded a lot of The Pianist which I disliked for much the same reasons. I’m deeply sceptical of any fictional holocaust film. Night and Fog on the other hand is one of few films that moved me to tears.

I’m struggling with 2015. There’s a very small handful of films that I’d rank as worth seeing but I still have some to make my way through. Of those mentioned that I haven’t seen, Happy Hour and Bulanti interest me the most, but five hours is a long time to find and in Bulanti’s case, I started watching a youtube rip but the auto-translation subs were so painful I had to abandon it.

[greennui]

LOL!

It was a different time...that was before I knew that Peter Bradshaw gives 5 stars everytime the sun rises and sets.

[greennui]

Ï'm kinda intrigued by Angelina Jolie's By the Sea. Seems like an auteur work that was completely ignored, only a few people I follow on letterboxd has seen it.

[Curtis, baby]

1. Mountains May Depart (Jia Zhangke, 2015)

Victoria (Schipper)
Carol (Haynes)
Anomolisa (Kaufman)
The Vanity Tables of Douglas Sirk (Rappaport)
Brooklyn (John Crowley)
The Diary of a Teenage Girl (Marriane Heller)
The End of the Tour (James Ponsoldt)
The Assassin (Hou Hsiao-hsien)
Our Little Sister (Kore-eda)
Cemetery of Splendor (Weerasethakul)
Field Niggas (Khalik Allah)
Stutterer (Benjamin Cleary)
Everything Will Be Okay (Patrick Vollrath)

[niminy-piminy]

2015 poll viewing No9:
INTIMACY IS HAIR IN THE DRAIN (Hanna Chetwin)

A film examining cohabitation and the everyday bodily functions and grooming rituals of a shared home. Using my rayogrammed hair as a mask, I assembled glimpses of private moments of my partner and I in our apartment, resulting in an abstract yet slightly voyeuristic portrait of a couple's shared life.

https://vimeo.com/138716594

[Pretentious Hipster]

Only #1 is ranked, but the rest are tiered by ratings

Über die Jahre [Over the Years] - Nikolaus Geyrhalter

Bulantı [Nausea] - Zeki Demirkubuz
悲兮魔兽 [Behemoth] - Zhao Liang

지금은맞고그때는틀리다 [Right Now, Wrong Then] - Hong Sang-soo
Aferim! - Radu Jude
Blackhat - Michael Mann
Bone Tomahawk - S. Craig Zahler
Dead Slow Ahead - Mauro Herce
The Exquisite Corpus - Peter Tscherkassky
In Jackson Heights - Frederick Wiseman
The Lobster - Yorgos Lanthimos
The Other Side - Roberto Minervini
刺客聶隱娘 [The Assassin] - Hou Hsiao-Hsien
路边野餐 [Kaili Blues] - Bi Gan

Mad Max: Fury Road - George Miller
The Witch: A New-England Folktale - Robert Eggers
Krisha - Trey Edward Shults
Noite sem distância [Night Without Distance] - Lois Patiño
Saul fia [Son of Saul] - László Nemes Jeles
Carol - Todd Haynes

[sally]

2015 poll viewing No1:
STRATA OF THE IMAGE (Lois Patiño)

Colors are matter's effort to become light. —D’Annuzio

https://vimeo.com/117412872

this is a cross between the fairy of spring (1904) and the waterfall in sleep has her house (2017) which i can't get beyond because it sends me to sleep-death immediately

[Monsieur Arkadin]

stuff from this year that I detest with a bright flaming hatred.

For me it's Demolition (Jean-Marc Vallée). A strong contender for the worst film of the decade.

I watched that film silently over someone's shoulder on an airplane and had a real good time looking at the editing. Maybe that's the optimal way to view it?

[Monsieur Arkadin]

Ï'm kinda intrigued by Angelina Jolie's By the Sea. Seems like an auteur work that was completely ignored, only a few people I follow on letterboxd has seen it.

Me too. I drove 40 minutes to a theater to go see it, and when I got there they said no one bough tickets so they cancelled the screening and replaced it with a 3rd screening of an Avengers movie (or something along those lines) instead. I feel the residual bitterness might taint my feelings while watching the movie.

[Monsieur Arkadin]

Right Now, Wrong Then (Hong Sang-Soo)
Cosmos (Andrzej Zulawski)
Tired Moonlight (Britni West)
The Revenant (Alejandro Gonzales Innaritu)
Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller)
Field Niggas (Khalik Allah)
Carol (Todd Haynes)
45 Years (Andrew Haigh)

[niminy-piminy]

this is a cross between the fairy of spring (1904) and the waterfall in sleep has her house (2017) which i can't get beyond because it sends me to sleep-death immediately

Or alternately a cross between "Fairy" and "States".
https://youtu.be/eNYeB5hUqDM?t=275

If Hollis would watch "Fairy" and wouldn't be lazy to add some colors to his "States" (1967) filmgoers wouldn't need to wait nearly 50 years (half a century!) to see it finally (in 2015).

Btw., sometimes, when i am unable to fall asleep, i imagine (successive) "baths" in (different) colors. I don't count sheep but i imagine i am entirely surrounded by a specific color. if sleep doesn't come immediately, then (instead of counting the next sheep) i imagine "bathing" in another color, etc., etc.

[greennui]

Blood of My Blood (Marco Bellocchio) - Yeeeah, not sure what to think of this one tbh. It is though another example from this year of an aging auteur simply not giving a fuck. Bellocchio, Bressane (Kid), Zulawski (Cosmos), Mann (Blackhat), Schroeder (Amnesia, bad film tho).

Also noticed the same shot from Piavoli's Frammenti:

[sally]

exactly the same shot! scary face in the sky

does that mean i need to have seen the piavoli to get the film?

(i mean also it sounded like sexist old man movie, but now i'm curious)

[greennui]

I wouldn't really recommend it, no, def got it's eye rolling moments. The Piavoli one's a short he directed with the help of some students, organized by Bellocchio it seems, so he probably saw it in the editing room and yoinked it.

[niminy-piminy]

HEAD TRILOGY (Andrew Kötting):
1/ BUOYED BY THE IRRELEVANCE OF THEIR OWN INSIGNIFICANCE (2014)
2/ COMBAT (2015)
3/ BLACK APPLES (2015)

BUOYED BY THE IRRELEVANCE OF THEIR OWN INSIGNIFICANCE (Andrew Kötting, 2014)
Not a 2015 film but, as it is the initial part of the trilogy, i share it alongside those two other films from 2015.

http://www.andrewkotting.com/ak%20web/buoyedby.html
Gladys v/o
Sea air does you good if you can get some good sea air.
Andrew, do you know that air is sexually exciting for you?
I don’t know, it all depends who you are with.
And did you know that sea water is good for the bowels?

https://vimeo.com/119849265

2015 poll viewing No12
COMBAT (Andrew Kötting)

http://www.andrewkotting.com/ak%20web/COMBAT.html
That’s what I’m not sure about
What are we going to do now?
That’s what I’m not sure about
I just need time to think
You’ve got to fight for the revolution
No more rich
More Poor
No that’s not right
Wait
No more rich
More Poor
No that’s not right
Less Poor
More rich
No that’s not right
You’ve got to fight come the revolution

https://vimeo.com/142380477

2015 poll viewing No13
BLACK APPLES (Andrew Kötting)

http://www.andrewkotting.com/ak%20web/BLACKAPPLES.html
Provoked by the strange, enigmatic series of paintings, Afal du Brogwyr (Black Apple of Gower), made by the artist Ceri Richards in the 1950s, Sinclair leaves behind the familiar, ‘murky elsewheres’ of his life in Hackney, carrying an envelope of black-and-white photographs and old postcards, along with fragments of memory that neither confirm nor deny whether he belongs here...

Black Apples was inspired by Iain Sinclair’s book BLACK APPLES OF GOWER

https://vimeo.com/142397007

Ceri Richards (1903-1971)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceri_Richards

https://www.caughtbytheriver.net/2015/0 ... jon-gower/
The Black Apple of Gower, 1952 by Ceri Richards, Private Collection

[sally]

i can't watch the kötting(s) until i've read the sinclair, and that isn't going to happen any time soon.

however.......RUIN PORN ♥♥♥

it doesn't even have to try and do anything in as much as in a bachelardian sense, old abandoned buildings are the first cinema, their palimpsest interiors being records of past domestic moments...

anyone got any more?
there was: the silence of ani (which has now itself disappeared) & anapeson

[niminy-piminy]

Ha, there were plenty of films on Francis Alÿs' Vimeo account but now there is only one left.
It seems he made all of them (with one exception) private.
The more I am glad I urged you to watch ANI (last minute).
I watched ANAPESON some time ago and liked it too!
When I wrote in KM's search engine — 2015, SEEN, ruins — besides the two mentioned, the result was also WHERE IS THE JUNGLE?
https://letterboxd.com/film/where-is-the-jungle/
But I must admit I don't remember that film anymore (don't remember how many ruins it offers) and I am afraid it is not as good as ANAPESON & ANI.
Tho (since I don't remember it anymore) anything is possible.

Otherwise, noteworthy ruin porn from 2014 is Benjamin Balcom's CEOL (RUINSONG)

See the ruins of a castle at the far edges of land. The birdsong you hear mimics the sound of the river, and the human voice mimics the song of the bird. This is a failed historical gesture sung in a playful, wild mimetic gesture.

https://vimeo.com/104889936

And from 2016 ALL THE CITIES OF THE NORTH (Dane Komljen).
https://letterboxd.com/film/all-the-cit ... the-north/
It somewhat evaporated from my memory but as far as I remember it was okay.

https://vimeo.com/187164774

And from a different era (the decay from a different decade) FRAGMENTS OF DECAY (Henri Plaat, 1983)
https://letterboxd.com/film/fragments-of-decay/

https://vimeo.com/25253980

APOSTLE OF RUINS (Audrius Stonys, 1993) i see you already saw!

Plus one more: REDUIT (John Skoog, 2014) — I didn't see it, only on my ruin watchlist.
https://letterboxd.com/film/reduit/

The mapping of a desolate house in southern Sweden encased in iron and cement, standing as a monument of one man’s loneliness and paranoia.

[rischka]

as a lover of zhao liang's petition i intentionally put this one off, fearing disappointment. and it already feels ponderous



in case it wasn't obvious, the behemoth of the title is us. eh i live in a mining district so maybe i'm immune to the effect here. but i somehow loved chinese documentary of the handmade variety like petition and oxhide. this is a major production designed for film festivals. still early tho. change my mind zhao liang!

[rischka]

wait... did i miss the silence of ani??!

[niminy-piminy]

it seems you did miss it (for now).
maybe all those videos will re-appear???
maybe he is just late with his Vimeo bill???
https://vimeo.com/francisalysvideos
or maybe he will move everything to YT???
some of the videos that disappeared from Vimeo are still on YT (unfortunately, ANI is not on YT).
https://www.youtube.com/user/FrancisAlys/videos
he seemed rather permissive in showing freely his short films, so maybe it is just a temporary issue???
i am placing here all these links, so we can occasionally check if anything has changed...
https://francisalys.com/
https://francisalys.com/the-silence-of-ani/
on KG few entries (not ANI).

btw. i watched in the past his "Children's Games" series and reached only till episode 12.
i hope, he will make everything available again, so i can proceed to "Knucklebones" (Ep. 18)..
http://francisalys.com/category/childrens-games/