SCFZ

Final list

1. Affliction (Paul Schrader)

Boogie Nights (Paul Thomas Anderson)
The Sweet Hereafter (Atom Egoyan)
Jackie Brown (Quentin Tarantino)
The Spanish Prisoner (David Mamet)
The Ice Storm (Ang Lee)
The Big One (Michael Moore)
The House of Yes (Mark Waters)
The Rainmaker (Francis Ford Coppola)
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (Clint Eastwood)
L.A. Confidential (Curtis Hanson)
Gattaca (Andrew Niccol)
The Game (David Fincher)
The Fifth Element (Luc Besson)
Deconstructing Harry (Woody Allen)
Event Horizon (Paul W.S. Anderson)
Face/Off (John Woo)
Full Tilt Boogie (Sarah Kelly)
Romy and Michele's High School Reunion (David Mirkin)
The Small Town (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)

henry fool is a strangely prescient film




i still plan to watch ossos too

Final list:

1. Perfect Blue (Satoshi Kon)

Boogie Nights (Paul Thomas Anderson)
Cure (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
Eve's Bayou (Kasi Lemmons)
Face/Off (John Woo)
Funny Games (Michael Haneke)
Happy Together (Wong Kar-wai)
Henry Fool (Hal Hartley)
Lost Highway (David Lynch)
Mother and Son (Alexander Sokurov)
Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion (Hideaki Anno and Kazuya Tsurumaki)
Nowhere (Gregg Araki)
She's So Lovely (Nick Cassavetes)
Starship Troopers (Paul Verhoeven)
The Blackout (Abel Ferrara)
The Eel (Shohei Imamura)
The Fifth Element (Luc Besson)
The River (Tsai Ming-liang)
The Sweet Hereafter (Atom Egoyan)

Also watched:

Assassin(s) (Mathieu Kassovitz)
Labyrinth of Dreams (Gakuryu Ishii)
Timeless Bottomless Bad Movie (Jang Sun-woo)

Low key year, from what I saw, a fair amount of good or generally thoughtful films, including some from directors I like, but few really jumped out as exceptional, seemed more of a year of recalibration than bolder assertion. Still, could be worse and I didn't of course see everything, so I'm sure I missed some better films too.

Princess Mononoke
The Eel
Twilight of the Ice Nymphs
Faraw!/Mother of the Dunes
Taste of Cherry
Happy Together
Sans Titre (Leos Carax)
Cube
Destiny
Once Upon a Time in China and America

The Sweet Hereafter
Hana Bi/Fireworks
The Mirror
The River
12 Storeys
Insomnia
The Ice Storm
Cure
Face/Off
Addicted to Love

Cure

Lost Highway
Train of Shadows
Princess Mononoke
Suzaku
The Sweet Hereafter
Happy Together
Mother And Son
The Mirror
The River
The Ice Storm
Voyage to the Beginning of the World
Taste of Cherry
Ossos
Boogie Nights
L.A. Confidential
Jackie Brown
Perfect Blue
The Pelvis of J.W.
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

Watched Deconstructing Harry last night, didn't expect to ever watch a Woody Allen movie where he calls someone a cunt. If Whatever Works is Larry David doing a Woody Allen impression, then we have the opposite here, and it's very inventive and frequently hysterical. Gonna have to make space for it on my list.

L.A. Confidential (Hanson)

Absolute Power (Eastwood)
Affliction (Schrader)
Barbara (Malmros)
Boogie Nights (Anderson)
Character (Van Diem)
Destiny (Chahine)
The Eel (Imamura)
Face/Off (Woo)
The Full Monty (Cattaneo)
Funny Games (Haneke)
Jackie Brown (Tarantino)
Life Is Beautiful (Benigni)
Lucky Star (Franco)
Marius and Jeannette (Guediguian)
Moonlight Serenade (Shinoda)
Same Old Song (Resnais)
Starship Troopers (Verhoeven)
The Sweet Hereafter (Egoyan)
Titanic (Cameron)

happy together
cure
starship troopers
masumiyet (innocence)
gallivant
henry fool
iruvar
the blackout
public housing
the river
taste of cherry
labyrinth of dreams
the pelvis of JW
rosas danst rosas
the mirror
four corners
buud yam
perfect blue
jackie brown
lost highway

i might watch something else too!

Sunday (Jonathan Nossiter)

Taste of Cherry
The Eel
Gadjo Dilo
Voyage to the Beginning of Time
Children of Heaven
Paper Airplanes (Farhad Mehranfar)
Xiao Wu
Henry Fool
A Friend of the Deceased
Character
Green Fish
Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control
Gypsy Magic (Stole Popov)
Chinese Box
Washington Square
The Butcher Boy
Mother and Son (Sokurov)\
Live Flesh
Cure

1. Public Housing (Wiseman)

Princess Mononoke (Miyazaki)
Happy Together (Kar-wai)
Cure (Kurosawa)
Funny Games (Haneke)
The River (Tsai)
Lost Highway (Lynch)
Four Corners (Benning)
The Sweet Hereafter (Egoyan)
Taste of Cherry (Kiarostami)
Jackie Brown (Tarantino)
The Game (Fincher)
The Ice Storm (Lee)
The Eel (Imamura)
The Fifth Element (Besson)
Henry Fool (Hartley)
4 Little Girls (Lee)
The Mirror (Panahi)
Deconstructing Harry (Allen)
Boogie Nights (Anderson)

Final list:

1. The Roe's Room (Majewski)

The House (Bartas)
Yggdrasill: Whose Roots Are Stars in the Human Mind (Brakhage)
The Life of Jesus (Dumont)
The Sweet Hereafter (Egoyan)
A Man Whose Life Was Full of Woe Has Been Surprised by Joy (Elder)
The Blackout (Ferrara)
Train of Shadows (Guerin)
Taste of Cherry (Kiarostami)
Perfect Blue (Kon)
Cure (Kurosawa)
Eve's Bayou (Lemmons)
Mermaid (Petrov)
Iruvar (Ratnam)
The Film to Come (Ruiz)
Mother and Son (Sokurov)
Jackie Brown (Tarantino)
The River (Tsai)
Public Housing (Wiseman)

Meinen:

No Sympathy For The Devil - Dimitris Arhanhis

blackout (abel ferrara)
buud yam - Gaston Kadone
De Noche Vienes, Esmeralda - Jaime Humberto Hermosillo
Les Deux Orphelines Vampires - Rollin
Geneologies D'un Crime - Ruiz
Gummo - Korine
Invierno, Mala Vida/Winter Land - Gregorio Cramer
labyrinth of dreams (sogo ishii)
Neon genesis Evangelion: the end
Office Killer - Cindy
THE 120 DAYS OF BOTTROP (Christoph Schlingensief)
Pasaz
Princess Mononoke -Miyazaki
Quien Diablos Es Julieta/Who The Hell Is J - Carlo Marcovich
Rien Ne Va Plus/ The Swindle- Chabrol
Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion (David Mirkin)
Santo Luzbel/Saint Lucifer - Miguel Sabido
Das Schloss/ The Castle - Haneke
Starship Troopers

Taste of cherry

Same Old Song (Alain Resnais, 1997)
The Silver Screen: Color Me Lavender (Mark Rappaport, 1997)
Innocence (Zeki Demirkubuz, 1997)
The Expression of Hands (Harun Farocki, 1997)
Ossos (Pedro Costa, 1997)
HHH: A Portrait of Hou Hsiao-Hsien (Olivier Assayas, 1997)
The Crazy Stranger (Tony Gatlif, 1997)
Bhoothakkannadi (A K Lohithadas, 1997)
The Blackout (Abel Ferrara, 1997)
The Life of Jesus (Bruno Dumont, 1997)
Public Housing (Frederick Wiseman, 1997)
Still Life (Harun Farocki, 1997)
The Sweet Hereafter (Atom Egoyan, 1997)
Breakdown (Jonathan Mostow, 1997)
The Mirror (Jafar Panahi, 1997)
The Second Civil War (Joe Dante, 1997)
The River (Tsai Ming-liang, 1997)
Robinson in Space (Patrick Keiller, 1997)
Blue Moon (Ko I-Chen, 1997)

The Second Civil War (Joe Dante, 1997)

what this already happened?? glad someone else voted innocence. and i also remember romy & michelle fondly. post-its was it?

HI KARL

rischka wrote: ↑Tue Dec 01, 2020 1:52 am and i also remember romy & michelle fondly. post-its was it?

Yeah, they definitely invented post-its.

Watched Romy & Michele for this poll after I neglected it for so long. A tremendous amount of fun. And a killer soundtrack!

In grade four my teacher taught us about Shakespeare, and she was like "his most famous play, Romeo and Juliet, was recently made into a movie set in the current day" among other things and blah blah

Then we got put in groups and had to do some crap about Shakespeare, I really don't remember what probably make some fucking poster or some crap, anyway one of the members of my group wanted to do some stuff about Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion, and everyone's like what, and she's like Ms Green said it's based on Shakespeare's most famous play, and I'm like wtf are you kidding here and (admittedly obnoxiously, I was very obnoxious in my preteen precocity) explained that the two works were entirely unrelated and that the Romeo and Juliet adaptation was.... that movie that came out last year called Romeo + Juliet. She did not believe me, and was quite angry that I had spoiled her chance to incorporate her favourite movie into the assignment, and resented me for several years after that

I fucking hate group work

Another story about grade four and that girl, once we had to write an "essay" (it's fucking grade four that probably meant like a page) about our hero, and I wrote about Pavel Bure, and you know probably used some nice language like how he cuts across the ice, glides down the wing, the Russian Rocket, on Canadian soil! Some corny shit like that. Anyway as often happened in that class the "best" essayist (according to the teacher) got to read theirs in front of the class. In these shits it was often me, and I was pretty competitive about demonstrating my intellectual prowess to my peers (seriously I was a fucking asshole of a child, I wish I could go back in time and punch my own self in the face), so imagine my surprise when not just was it not me selected, but none of the rival smart kids either...it was that girl? Romy and Michelle girl. It's not nice to call kids dumb, but I mean kids honestly have a pretty good conception of who's academically smart and who's socially clever and who's just kinda dense, and she was regarded by the whole class as the third option there

So she's going up to read her essay and I'm just basically fuming, like wtf is going on, I used so many fucking metaphors and alliterations and onomatopoeias and all those "devices" they teach you make up "good" writing when you're a kid, like how the hell could her essay be better than mine

So she starts talking and her hero is her mom because she takes care of her by herself and works two jobs to make ends meet and fights her dad for custody in court cos neither of them wanna be around the dad. And I'm like damn that essay is so much better than mine. I felt very stupid, mostly for assuming my essay was better just because I was smarter, but also because I felt like a fucking child. Like a spoiled fucking child. Bure? Are you fucking kidding me? I'm writing about some fucking hockey player I've never met (who's had pretty shitty stats for the last two years too fwiw) and she's writing about her FUCKING MOM...... PROTECTING her from her FUCKING DAD

It was a good lesson in humility, and also an early reminder that writing is an art not a science (it would take about fifteen more years for me to fully grasp that)

Anyway how I felt at that moment is one of my most vivid memories of childhood shame. Shouts to that girl for teaching me a lesson, and also for writing a really fucking good essay. I hope your life turned out okay, Kayla

I too had neglected it, but I'm glad I took the plunge. I almost never think lines of dialogue are "quotable," but "You're an old hag on your death bed, I'm the Mary!" is one of several from this that are likely to stick with me.

SAD_SCROOGE wrote: ↑Tue Dec 01, 2020 2:27 amI fucking hate group work

same! one of the last group projects i had in high school, i straight up told everyone in the group from the very get-go that i'd do all the work, and they didn't have to worry about it. of course, they all laughed, shrugged their shoulders, and said 'ok,' which is exactly what i expected, since it was entirely indicative of the amount of effort i anticipated from them in the first place

also, ramhsr is a classic! my grandma used to record movies off the tv for me cuz she was a sweet ol' gal, and ramhsr was one of them. think i watched it every day for like two weeks after that. have no idea why. it just clicked. the huge crush on mira sorvino probs helped, but also the idea of kicking ass despite being the awkward kid(s) in school, and doing it in such an odd, offbeat way. most of these cinderella story-type high school flicks don't subvert anything. the awkward girl never changes the world around her. instead, she just lets her hair down, takes off her glasses, and turns into the popular girl by becoming exactly like the rest of the shitty popular people. but in ramhsr, the girls start off goofy, stay goofy, and ultimately win by staying true to their goofy goofball selves, complete with choreographed dancing to cyndi lauper's time after time. god love 'em. also, for a mainstream movie, the structure is crazy. all flashback, flashforward, and flashsideways. but it's never clunky, or merely trying too hard. just a charming, interesting foray into perfectly crafted fluff. and fwiw i think one of those british kitchen sink directors like mike leigh or ken loach or somebody really enjoys it too. testament to the fact we can't all live off the hard shit all day every day

Poll ends in about nine hours.

Man, now I feel bad for going with the disturbed "romantic comedy" of Addicted to Love instead of Romy and Michele, which was one of my alternate choices. But changing now would be a sign of mental weakness in giving in to peer values, so I'd better stick to my choice lest I lose face.

greg x wrote: ↑Tue Dec 01, 2020 3:44 pmthe disturbed "romantic comedy"

'tis ok, greg! i have a soft spot for addicted to love as well. a solid '90s romcomdram that pokes fun of the genre with a blacker bent than most others of its ilk

also a cool time capsule as an early entry in meg ryan's attempted transition away from her girl next door persona; plus a crushable kelly preston in her prime (rip)

INNOCENCE (Zeki Demirkubuz)

the blackout (abel ferrara)
brother (aleksei balabanov)
the castle (michael haneke)
cure (kiyoshi kurosawa)
fireworks (takeshi kitano)
gridlock'd (vondie curtis-hall)
jackie brown (quentin tarantino)
lifeline (johnnie to)
mother and son (aleksandr sokurov)
nowhere (gregg araki)
ossos (pedro costa)
princess mononoke (hayao miyazaki)
rainy dog (takashi miike)
the river (tsai ming-liang)
romy and michele's high school reunion (david mirkin)
starship troopers (paul verhoeven)
taste of cherry (abbas kiarostami)
timeless bottomless bad movie (jang sun-woo)
ulee's gold (victor nunez)

*final list here. was torn over the #1. the blackout and timeless bottomless bad movie are both amazing (ferrara's film, in particular). in the end, had to go with innocence for strategic reasons, but also cuz it was an important film for me at the precipice of getting into off the radar stuff far beyond the canon. also, good news for rischka: haneke's the castle bumped off the fifth element (though i still enjoy besson's movie for what it is, a piece of pure over-the-top scififantasy grotesquerie; even read the novelization of the movie back in the day cuz, you know, nerdism and whatnot)

Taste of Cherry (Kiarostami)

Faraw! (Abdoulaye Ascofare)
The House (Bartas)
Train of Shadows (Guerin)
L.A. Confidential (Curtis Hanson)
Mother and Son (Sokurov)
The Apostle (Robert Duvall)
Made in Hong Kong (Fruit Chan)
Postman Blues (SABU)
Little Dieter Needs to Fly (Herzog)
Killer (Juliusz Machulski)
The Eel (Imamura)
Good Will Hunting (Van Sant)
Suzaku/The God Suzaku (Kawase)
Color Me Lavender (Rappaport)
Shulie (Elisabeth Surbin)
Woman in Witness Protection (Juzo Itami)
Boogie Nights (Anderson)
A Man Whose Life Was Full of Woe Has Been Surprised by Joy (Elder)
Leila (Dariush Mehrjui)

Final

Grosse Pointe Blank (George Armitage)
Mat i syn (Aleksandr Sokurov)
The Game (David Fincher)
Happy Together (Wong Kar-wai)
Face/Off (John Woo)
Gattaca (Andrew Niccol)
Henry Fool (Hal Hartley)
Deconstructing Harry (Woody Allen)
Lily and Jim (Don Hertzfeldt) sh
Princess Mononoke (Hayao Miyazaki)
Perfect Blue (Satoshi Kon)
Con Air (Simon West)
The Man Who Knew Too Little (Jon Amiel)
L.A. Confidential (Curtis Hanson)
Gummo (Harmony Korine)
Cure (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
Sex & Violence (Bill Plympton) sh
Hana-Bi (Takeshi Kitano)
In the Company of Men (Neil LaBute)
Fever Pitch (David Evans)

if titanic wins, i'm f***in done......

A year unlike any other

1
Happy Together (Wong Kar-wai)

2
Cure (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
taste of cherry (abbas kiarostami)

4
the river (tsai ming-liang)
The Sweet Hereafter (Atom Egoyan, 1997)

6
Starship Troopers

7
Princess Mononoke -Miyazaki

8
Boogie Nights (Anderson)
blackout (abel ferrara)
Henry Fool (Hal Hartley)\
The Ice Storm (Lee)
jackie brown (quentin tarantino)
L.A. Confidential (Hanson)
The Mirror (Jafar Panahi, 1997)
Public Housing (Frederick Wiseman, 1997)

16
Lost Highway (Lynch)
Mat i syn (Aleksandr Sokurov)
Train of Shadows (Guerin)

19
Face/Off (Woo)
Funny Games
Hana-Bi (Takeshi Kitano)
The Life of Jesus (Bruno Dumont, 1997)
Perfect Blue (Satoshi Kon)

24
the pelvis of JW

25
attaca (Andrew Niccol)
Neon genesis EvangelionL: The End
Ossos (Pedro Costa, 1997

28
Affliction (Schrader)
Deconstructing Harry (Woody Allen)
The Eel (Imamura)
The House (Bartas)
INNOCENCE (Zeki Demirkubuz)
nowhere (gregg araki)

34
buud yam - Gaston Kadone
Children of Heaven
The Fifth Element (Besson)
The Full Monty (Cattaneo)
The Game (David Fincher)
Gummo - Korine
Iruvar (Ratnam)
Knittelfeld - Town without History (Gerhard Benedikt Friedl)
Life Is Beautiful (Benigni)
Robinson in Space (Patrick Keiller, 1997)
The Roe's Room (Majewski)
Same Old Song (Alain Resnais, 1997)
Titanic (Cameron)
Voyage to the Beginning of Time

48 - 63
Abre los ojos (Amenábar)
brother (aleksei balabanov)
Character (Van Diem)
"Comingled Containers" (Stan Brakhage, 1997)
The Crazy Stranger (Tony Gatlif, 1997)
Grosse Pointe Blank (George Armitage)
In the Company of Men (Neil LaBute)
Labyrinth of dreams (sogo ishii)
A Man Whose Life Was Full of Woe Has Been Surprised by Joy (Elder)
The Rainmaker (Francis Ford Coppola)
rainy dog (takashi miike)
Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion (David Mirkin)
Das Schloss/ The Castle - Haneke
Still Life (Harun Farocki, 1997)
Study of a River (Peter Hutton)
Suzaku

[embarrassingly redacted for posterity]