SCFZ

The only positive thing I remember from DIE HARD is the rather witty development that the terrorists just want the money. Otherwise meh.

1988 poll viewing No8:
MANSFIELD K. (Martine Rousset)
https://letterboxd.com/film/mansfield-k/

A sound and visual evocation of Katherine Mansfield’s (1888-1923) writing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherine_Mansfield

https://youtu.be/WFwDCLNfRxs

Mother's Mask (Christoph Schlingensief) - A madcap send-up of Veit Harlan's Opfergang. It had one or two neat moments but...it mostly just felt like a bunch of normies trying their hands at transgressive camp stylings, with an end result that was mostly cartoonish and devoid of any real sensibility. I was delighted when Udo Kier showed up halfway through but then it turned out to be only a cameo.

Final list:

Days of Eclipse (Aleksandr Sokurov)
Once More (Paul Vecchiali)
Dangerous Liaisons (Stephen Frears)
Defense Attorney Sedov (Evgeniy Tsymbal)
Landscape in the Mist (Theodoros Angelopoulos)
Distant Voices, Still Lives (Terence Davies)
A Short Film About Killing (Krzysztof Kieslowski)
Damnation (Béla Tarr)
On the Silver Globe (Andrzej Zulawski)
Alice (Jan Svankmajer)
The South (Fernando E. Solanas)
Camp de Thiaroye (Ousmane Sembene, Thierno Faty Sow)
Macho Dancer (Lino Brocka)
Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (Todd Haynes)
The Thin Blue Line (Errol Morris)
Gorod Zero (Karen Shakhnazarov)
Ariel (Aki Kaurismäki)
Chocolat (Denis)
Working Girl (Mike Nichols)
Jane B. for Agnes V. (Agnès Varda)

heartbreaking Thatcher's Britain melodrama...

- No time to stories now!
- I know, no time to stories.

GIRL FROM THE SOUTH (Richard Woolley)
https://letterboxd.com/film/girl-from-the-south/

A young idealistic girl (daughter of well-to-do parents) with a fondness for romantic fiction falls in love with a young working class black man; then decides to have the ultimate romantic story of her own where she and Ralph would be the key characters, overcome obstacles and live happily ever after. But the real world isn't exactly the same as the world of Mills & Boon...

https://youtu.be/fCwoYxwESrE

1988 poll viewing No10:
WALLS (Piotr Dumala)
https://letterboxd.com/film/walls-1988/

An animated short that deals with the incarceration of a man in a dark cell from where there is no escape.

... one year before the iron curtain fall.

The story of a man in a room without doors and windows.

https://youtu.be/6p5H3oTpbb0

The best I've watched for the poll so far:

Radio Bikini (Robert Stone) and The Cat Came Back (Cordell Barker).

1988 poll viewing No. 12:
SSS (Henry Hills)
https://letterboxd.com/film/sss/

Movement improvised on the streets of pre-gentrified East Village.

https://youtu.be/HkxH9dDEK_0

1988 poll viewing No13:
THE OCCURENCE (Hieronim Neumann)
https://letterboxd.com/film/the-event-1988/

Once again (→ "Block", 1982) the concrete jungle returns in the movie "Event". It starts with an idyllic picture from the life of the backward Polish countryside, which suddenly is struck, as if by a tornado, by a cataclysm of changes. However, it turns out that the dramatic, almost epochal modifications in the external landscape and architecture aren’t followed by changes in the customs or lifestyles of the inhabitants. The alleged social advancement proves to be nothing more than a superficial remodeling of decorations, which doesn’t bring any positive change. In the suggestive final scene of the film, a peasant waves his hand in resignation, puts on an ear cap, and in his shoes and coat goes to bed and pulls the blanket over his head. In the concrete jungle, only a flickering television screen and a thoughtlessly gorging child remain.

https://youtu.be/CnyIHIvl0q4

Doc's Kingdom (Robert Kramer) - Didn't do much for me but it had Vincent Gallo and J.C Monteiro starring in the same film, which was something...I guess. Gallo was kinda unsettlingly puppyish and Monterio was playing a kind bartender so there wasn't really any sparks going off in their scene.

watched bloodsport which is both fun and bad but not fun enough to justify being this bad. preferred jcvd in the volvo ad

Rain Man

Grave of the Fireflies
Law or Justice
As Tears Go By

1988 poll viewing No14:
CYCLING THE FRAME (Cynthia Beatt)
https://letterboxd.com/film/cycling-the-frame/

The film follows a young girl (Tilda Swinton) and her thoughts as she circumnavigates West Berlin alongside the 96 mile long symbol of the cold war. The film blends visual and audio art into a montage of simple scenes depicting the wall, its watch towers and life along the border strip just as it was a year before the wall fell and the cold war ended.

https://youtu.be/RU_1nA332ws

Worthy '88s on the 'Tyoob:

A WOMAN FOR TWO (Ling Zifeng). A woman and her lover find themselves in a pickle when the woman's husband, now a legless beggar, recognizes her on the street and follows her home. Tony Rayns: "Ever since history relieved him of the obligation to direct communist propaganda movies, Ling Zifeng has been shooting adaptations of books he loved as a young man[...] One of China's finest directors."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEyEzBl ... =CHINALIVE

I don't know why the Korean film channel doesn't have it, but for those who know how to "grab" this stuff and can find the subs, Park Kwang-su's "Korean New Cinema" classic CHILSU AND MANSU is here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-6LoLH ... el=SiJeong

Fortunately, Jang Sun-woo's "Korean New Cinema" classic is on the Korean film channel with subs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DLNGgf ... lassicFilm

Vladimir Bortko's great film of Bulgakov's classic novel HEART OF A DOG:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVtOjJ_ ... hannel=LFV

COLD SUMMER OF '53: Violent prisoners simply let out of their camps after Stalin's death terrorize a Siberian community. Again, subs must be located elsewhere (even though the title's in English on this Mosfilm channel!):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgCGGSK ... C%D0%BC%22

Joining this one a bit late, with Agnès Varda holding down both the top spots (tough I can only give my top points to Jane B. par Agnès V. - no contest!)

Jane B. par Agnès V. (1988, Agnès Varda)

Kung-fu master! (1988, Agnès Varda)
Dead Ringers (1988, David Cronenberg)
The Last Temptation of Christ (1988, Martin Scorsese)
Neco z Alenky / Alice (1988, Jan Svankmajer)

Une affaire de femmes / Story of a Woman (1988, Claude Chabrol)
Nuovo cinema Paradiso / Cinema Paradiso (1988, Giuseppe Tornatore)
Arashi ga oka / Wuthering Heights (1988, Yoshishige Yoshida)
Camp de Thiaroye (1988, Ousmane Sembene, Thierno Faty Sow)
The Thin Blue Line (1988, Errol Morris)

Karhozat / Damnation (1988, Bela Tarr)
Another Woman (1988, Woody Allen)
Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988, Robert Zemeckis)
They Live (1988, John Carpenter)
Salome's Last Dance (1988, Ken Russell)

Medea (1988, Lars von Trier)
Mág (1988, Frantisek Vlacil)
Tonari no Totoro / My Neighbor Totoro (1988, Hayao Miyazaki)
Dom za vesanje / Time of the Gypsies (1988, Emir Kusturica)
Sur (1988, Fernando E. Solanas)

Honourable mentions:

Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988, Terence Davies)
Hotaru no haka / Grave of the Fireflies (1988, Isao Takahata)
Once More (1988, Paul Vecchiali)
Mississippi Burning (1988, Alan Parker)
Bird (1988, Clint Eastwood)
Tsuitô no zawameki / Noisy Requiem (1988, Yoshihiko Matsui)
Chocolat (1988, Claire Denis)
Ashug-Karibi / The Hoary Legends of the Caucasus (1988, Sergei Parajanov & Dodo Abashidze)
Akira (1988, Katsuhiro Ôtomo)
Tempos Difíceis / Hard Times (1988, João Botelho)

akira (katsuhiro otomo)
the big heat (tsui hark / andrew kam / johnnie to)
cocktail (roger donaldson)
cop (james b. harris)
damnation (bela tarr)
funny farm (george roy hill)
iguana (monte hellman)
my neighbor totoro (hayao miyazaki)
on the silver globe (andrzej zulawski)
painted faces (alex law)
slugs (juan piquer simon)
they live (john carpenter)

*unranked as of rn; will edit prior to the deadline

Lencho of the Apes wrote: ↑Fri Jan 01, 2021 7:36 pmI'll trust you blindly

wondering now if i should blow my good will on a tom cruise golden raspberry worst picture winner...

Cocktail is rubbish but that tagline is fantastic

when he pours, he reigns

guilty pleasure fosho. interesting (almost exclusively) as a historical artifact of '80s america. it's like the urreagan flick. capitalism at its finest, people at their worst

elisabeth shue is a total smokeshow tho

Tall Stories (Joaquim Pinto) - It suddenly dawned on me while watching this one that Ines de Medeiros and Maria de Medeiros are sisters. Def feels like something I should have realized sooner. I do enjoy looking at Ines de Medeiros...it's a shame that she seemingly quit being an actress after appearing in basically every Portuguese film made in the late 80's/early 90's (Luis Miguel Cintra being the male equivalent of starring in every film during that period). Also, I always have to remind myself that it wasn't Maria de Medeiros but some other Portuguese actress that kidnapped Jon Jost's daughter. Now, the film? Quiet, observant but probably not memorable enough to land a place on my list.

ｉｔ＇ｓ　ａｌｌ　ｉｎ　ｙｏｕｒ　ｈｅａｄ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlVh0TCDDgU

1988 poll viewing No17:
TRAP (Amy Kravitz)
https://letterboxd.com/film/the-trap-1/
https://vimeo.com/10490757

Talking with Strangers (Rob Tregenza) - A fine, nimble piece of American independent cinema. At first, it kinda felt like an inverse version of Mike Leigh's Naked, with the trench coat wearing protagonist being a meek loser that kept getting ragged on and called out on his BS by everyone he encountered whilst roaming the streets in the magic hour. Then it veered closer to Jon Jost-ish territory. It's a shame that the quality of the print wasn't the greatest, the ropey audio + no subs made it difficult to make out some of the conversations.

Sokurov's short Mariya is '88 on imdb now so I changed the page to reflect that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPVbPFOqxlA

Sur (Solanas)

The Accidental Tourist (Kasdan)
Biloxi Blues (Nichols)
La boca del lobo (Lombardi)
Damnation (Tarr)
The Decline of Western Civilization II: The Metal Years (Spheeris)
Emma's Shadow (Kragh-Jacobsen)
A Fish Called Wanda (Crichton)
July (Omirbayev)
Landscape in the Mist (Angelopoulos)
The Last Temptation of Christ (Scorsese)
Midnight Run (Brest)
My Neighbor Totoro (Miyazaki)
The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad (Zucker)
Running on Empty (Lumet)
Switching Channels (Kotcheff)
Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser (Zwerin)
Veronico Cruz / The Debt (Pereira)
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Almodóvar)
A World Apart (Menges)

Three Seats for the 26th (Jacques Demy) - In the same year Varda did a portrait of Jane Birkin in her own way, Demy, also did a portrait of a French star in his own way, namely Yves Montand. The result? A brightly-coloured partly biographical/musical/behind-the-scenes musical in which Montand unknowingly has an incestous romance with his own daughter...Even though it felt like Demy was going through the motions at times and with Michel Legrand's music not gelling well at all with 80's synths, I still found it weirdly charming. It looked fine, everything meticulously color-coordinated as usual and the performances were quite charming, Mathilda May as a cuter, non-shrill Leslie Caron, Francoise Fabian as her mother and Montand managed to avoid veering into dreaded Maurice Chevalier territory. It'll probably end up snatching a place on my list.

Watched TALKING TO STRANGERS. good shit
. Gang shit, will make my list

Lots of dialogue one could sample in the outro of a rap song there

i'm watching yoshida's wuthering heights, a thing i did not know existed til this poll. it's quite beautiful. yoshida's abstract visuals work well within a period piece

that might be his best color film. for some reason his black and white films are usually the better ones even more in terms of plot than visuals, but that one works pretty well.

SAD_SCROOGE wrote: ↑Sun Jan 10, 2021 10:01 pm Watched TALKING TO STRANGERS. good shit
. Gang shit, will make my list

Lots of dialogue one could sample in the outro of a rap song there

Now that would be a deep cut