Recommendation Game [fka Pair-Up Game]

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mesnalty recommends three films to nrh <recs> watch1 watch2
nrh recommends three films to flip <recs> watch1 watch2+ watch3
flip recommends three films to Umbugbene <recs> watch1 watch2+
Umbugbene recommends three films to bure <recs> watch1
bure recommends three films to MrCarmady <recs> watch1
MrCarmady recommends three films to wba <recs>
wba recommends three films to mesnalty <recs> watch1+

Everyone please post your film recommendations, and your write-ups on films recommended to you, in this thread

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Recommendations for MrCarmady:

BLOOD OF THE CONDOR - Jorge Sanjinés - 1969
THE ONLY SON - Yasujirō Ozu - 1936
LAUGH, CLOWN, LAUGH - Herbert Brenon - 1928

[Umbugbene]

Recommendations for bure:

INDIA SONG - Marguerite Duras - 1975
MALARIA - Niki List - 1982
IN THE CITY OF SYLVIA - José Luis Guerín - 2007

Here are a couple alternates in case you can't find Malaria:

A DAY OFF - Lee Man-hui - 1968
TU DORS NICOLE - Stéphane Lafleur - 2014

At first I thought this would be hard, but after looking through your favorites it felt rather easy. Hope these aren't too far off. Each of them checks a few of the boxes you listed in the discussion thread.

[wba]

Recommendations for mesnalty:

ONE - Ulrich Schamoni - 1971
BEFORE THE FACE OF THE SEA - Teuvo Puro - 1926
ROSE TINTED DREAMS - Dušan Hanák - 1977

Here are a couple alternates, in case some of the above are hard to find or don't have subs:

GINEVRA - Ingemo Engström - 1992
PROCESSION OF MEMORIES - Nasir Hussain - 1973

[MrCarmady]

Thanks bure, these look great!

My silents knowledge is woeful and wba's rules are so restrictive, but looks like he hasn't seen what could be my top 3 silents ever, so that's a lucky break.

How about Stachka (Eisenstein, 1925), Coeur fidèle (Epstein, 1923), and Ménilmontant (Kirsanoff, 1926). I would strongly suggest breaking your rule and watching Stachka with the Alloy Orchestra soundtrack which is magnificent, if you can find it. Let me know if you need any of them in the spot.

[wba]

Sounds great MrCarmady!

Though I have seen some 500 silents, I haven't seen them all - by far! And I adore silent cinema. So all three sound wonderful.

Yes, I do need all of them!!

When someone can get them for me (or give me links to streams) in good (preferably HD) quality, I'll be off watching these (with many, many, many breaks...) at work.

Sorry about the score for STACHKA - can't do you that favor.

[MrCarmady]

Fair enough! bure, would you mind grabbing Stachka and sharing it with wba? I'll dig the other two out by this weekend.

[flip]

umbugbene - the first film that came to mind, reading your profile, was juliette, or key of dreams. unfortunately you've seen it, but the fact you gave it a five-star rating on letterboxd made me more confident i could make some decent choices. it seemed you hadn't seen any films by beizai or abuladze - if i'm mistaken about that, i might sub out one of those recs.

3 recommendations for umbugbene:

ballad of tara (bahram beizai, 1979)
the wishing tree (tenghiz abuladze, 1977)
joseph kilian (pavel juracek/jan schmidt, 1963)

3 alternates:

manoel's destinies (raul ruiz, 1984)
larks on a string (jiri menzel, 1969)
tranquility in the presence of others (naser taghvai, 1972)

i was hoping to come up with films that might be further off your radar than most of these, but had trouble thinking of anything obscure that i'd seen i thought would fit your tastes

[Umbugbene]

Well, Flip, your confidence was warranted. You've already hit a home run with Joseph Kilián. The opening shots took my breath away (I assume there's a significance to the caryatids and those three parades). The movie soon settles into a recognizable form of Czech surrealism, but its photographic brilliance and its sense of mystery never flag. I especially love the man with the tank climbing the stairs like one of Escher's figures. I've added it to my favorite short films at #12, but I could see it climbing higher.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5y76zLljVo

I'll have to see where I can access the others. Manoel is on YouTube... it's already high on my watchlist, and I was holding off for a better print for my virgin viewing, but for this game I think I'll relent and watch what's available. Larks on a String is famous, but the other 4 weren't really on my radar at all. Joseph Kilián is the only one that didn't make an SCFZ country poll, and I don't think I had ever heard of it.

[nrh]

since flip has seen as much as anybody i'll try 3 fairly well known films that (at least according to your letterboxd) you haven't gotten to yet, can suggest alternates if you've seen any of these already -

tsui hark's shanghai blues (1984) - both knockabout screwball farce and film about memory, longing and displacement.

dominik graf's die katz (1988) - mathematically precise genre filmmaking shot through with end of '80s graf cynicism.

dileesh pothan's thondimuthalum driksakshiyum (2017) - this one is kind of a wild card pick, not least because it is just a bit over 2 hours long. a recently eloped couple and a thief in a rural police station. if it be belongs to any genre it's one that recent malayalam film has made its own.

and an alternate pick in case the last one is too long or the others are unappealing -

alejo moguillansky's little match girl (2017) - moguillansky is probably best known for editing films by matias pineiro and mariano llinas, but i think he's overlooked as a director in his own right; this is his third feature and combines the interest in dance/physical theater and hybrid filmmaking with a more collage like approach to narrative, adding red army politics, bresson's donkey, and helmut lachenmann opera.

links are up in resources.

[mesnalty]

nrh, do you have any blindspots you're looking to fill/particular likes you want me to target? Otherwise I can just pick some favorites that I think you might like.

[nrh]

nrh, do you have any blindspots you're looking to fill/particular likes you want me to target? Otherwise I can just pick some favorites that I think you might like.

honestly i think favorites might be the most fun way to approach this. i have tons of blind spots once you get outside of canon stuff (like i don't think i've seen more than 30 russian films, or a dozen african films, or any egyptian films, and the list just oges on) but i'm not sure if there's anything particular i want to target.

and sorry that my letterboxd isn't all that useful, but as long as i haven't seen it in the last year or two i don't at all mind re-watching something.

[flip]

I'll have to see where I can access the others. Manoel is on YouTube... it's already high on my watchlist, and I was holding off for a better print for my virgin viewing, but for this game I think I'll relent and watch what's available. Larks on a String is famous, but the other 4 weren't really on my radar at all. Joseph Kilián is the only one that didn't make an SCFZ country poll, and I don't think I had ever heard of it.

glad you liked it! it would be cool if you could watch that beizai film, i think that's one you'd find interesting, the only watchable version on youtube has french subs though. it's available through other channels though, so if there might be another way you can get it, not sure which options work for you. the three major abuladze films all appear to be on youtube in what looks like good quality, and i could have rec'd any of the three (the plea, the wishing tree, repentance). they have softcoded subs it looks like, and sometimes those kinds of subs are good and sometimes worthless, so you might have to make a guess based on the quality of the english if they're worth watching. i haven't had a chance to check that.

[flip]

tsui hark's shanghai blues (1984) - both knockabout screwball farce and film about memory, longing and displacement.

dominik graf's die katz (1988) - mathematically precise genre filmmaking shot through with end of '80s graf cynicism.

dileesh pothan's thondimuthalum driksakshiyum (2017) - this one is kind of a wild card pick, not least because it is just a bit over 2 hours long. a recently eloped couple and a thief in a rural police station. if it be belongs to any genre it's one that recent malayalam film has made its own.

thanks nrh! those all sound great, definitely haven't seen them. i haven't even seen films by any of those directors besides hark, and in his case i've only seen green snake, and i have the impression that's a unique film in his (or anyone's, really!) filmography. and i've been meaning to watch a graf film for ages, so this is a great opportunity to do that.

[rischka]

hey i never look at this thread. will be checking regularly

[mesnalty]

My recs for nrh:

Celestial Wives of the Meadow Mari (Aleksey Fedorchenko)
Beduino (Julio Bressane)
Peppermint Soda (Diane Kurys)

Alternates in case you've seen these: Charisma (K. Kurosawa), Book of Days (Meredith Monk)

[nrh]

My recs for nrh:

Celestial Wives of the Meadow Mari (Aleksey Fedorchenko)
Beduino (Julio Bressane)
Peppermint Soda (Diane Kurys)

Alternates in case you've seen these: Charisma (K. Kurosawa), Book of Days (Meredith Monk)

have been wanting to see a bressane for years and while i liked entre nous quite a lot i somehow never got around to anything else by diane kurys. and, unsurprisingly, the russian film is the one that's more or less totally unkown quantity for me.

[flip]

links are up in resources.

thanks for sharing these, i've got the first three and grabbing the last one now, hope to start watching today or tomorrow

[flip]

watched die katz (dominik graf, 1988), sort of a backwards die hard where the police are unaware there's a heist mastermind in the building, rather than the reverse. it's really committed to using sound as an organizing principle, creating a rhythm of alternating comms cacophony and silence. it recalled some superior noirs like robert florey's the crooked way which invert the hollywood pattern of creating tension with volume - florey and graf both understand that silence can be used to even greater effect. this was a perfect choice for me, because i'd been watching heist films recently anyway (tower heist, the maiden heist, heist and seek - only tower heist was worth the time) and this graf film was much better than those.

[mesnalty]

I watched Rose Tinted Dreams and Before the Face of the Sea, and enjoyed both greatly, especially the enchanting Rose Tinted Dreams, which brings rural Slovakia to life in a beautiful way. Also includes some of cinema's best pigeons. Before the Face of the Sea is an atmospheric horror-adjacent piece set on an isolated island, whose plot resolution is less interesting than the depths of weirdness (both supernatural and perfectly natural) on the island which the film only hints at. Thanks for the recs, wba!

[Umbugbene]

Presently watching Abuladze's whole trilogy (with the bonus of completing the first few rows of the Auteur Trilogies list). While I found The Plea more immediately appealing for its poetic dialogue and striking compositions, I suspect that The Wishing Tree may be an even better film.

It would be easier to read The Wishing Tree's intentions if I knew more about Soviet Georgia, but it looks like the characters represent basic forces in Georgian society: Tsitsikore is the patriarchy or the old feudal order; Marita and Gedya are something like the spirit of Georgia; the priest is religion; Ioram is Communist idealism (forecasting the revolution [a storm] and praising technological progress [the train]); Pupala represents art; ...and what about the man searching for the magical tree? The latter three and the "slap-lad" are all touched with madness, which raises fascinating questions about the film's attitude, but again I'd need to know more about the relevant history.

[wba]

I watched Rose Tinted Dreams and Before the Face of the Sea, and enjoyed both greatly, especially the enchanting Rose Tinted Dreams, which brings rural Slovakia to life in a beautiful way. Also includes some of cinema's best pigeons. Before the Face of the Sea is an atmospheric horror-adjacent piece set on an isolated island, whose plot resolution is less interesting than the depths of weirdness (both supernatural and perfectly natural) on the island which the film only hints at. Thanks for the recs, wba!

Glad you liked them so much!!

[flip]

i watched shanghai blues (tsui hark, 1984), which is phenomenally impressive on a lot of levels, from the extraordinary detail of the mise en scene to the colours that burn holes in the frame to the intricate choreography of some of the more farcical sequences (it might be interesting to compare with the similarly complex staging in noises off!, which bogdanovich is a lot less successful with). comedy is of course really subjective, and the comedy here only worked for me intermittently, though the film is sometimes hilarious. the film also includes some suspect material, and while i might not condemn a film for making a joke of sexual assault, especially if i can read the film as commentary, parody, or satire, it's also not something i enjoy watching very much. i imagine anyone making the film today would treat that material (and some of the other material) differently. but overall the film is so good in so many ways that i was happy to see it, but i bet there's a different hark film out there that i'll like more.

and i realized before watching this that i was mistaken above - i've seen three hark films now, not two (have also seen the butterfly murders, which is my least favourite of the three i've seen).

[nrh]

Peppermint Soda (Diane Kurys)

loved this one. it's the kind of film that's so moment for moment charming that it becomes easy to underestimate how sophisticated the whole thing is. surprised that dave kehr wrote that "treats the end of childhood in the traditional manner, as a fall from grace" since kurys avoidance of that kind of easy narrative arc in favor of mosaic like series of events with shifting emphasis (and a kind of circular structure, with those 2 bookending vacation freeze frames) is part of what is so impressive about the whole film. love the way she builds only to cut of scenes, and the play with foreground and background, where someone in your class can be main character in your life for months and then just a bit player in the back of a classroom later.

[nrh]

i imagine anyone making the film today would treat that material (and some of the other material) differently.

definitely not in context of hk/mainland chinese mainstream filmmaking

edit - should also say with die katz i don't know if you're watching as a first graf how representative it is of his wider body of work; frustratingly almost none of his other films from the '80s-90s have subtitles, but definitely post 2000 he seems to move almost completely away from this almost classical narrative/formal sense towards something more jagged and discursive, switching between rough 16mm and dv, integrating all sorts of political history and literary influences into tv police movies, etc. the tone and outlook on world though do seem fully formed to me.

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Recommendations for MrCarmady:

BLOOD OF THE CONDOR - Jorge Sanjinés - 1969
THE ONLY SON - Yasujirō Ozu - 1936
LAUGH, CLOWN, LAUGH - Herbert Brenon - 1928

since ppl are doing spares, you might consider that i was also considering HE WHO GETS SLAPPED by sjostrom instead of LAUGH, CLOWN, LAUGH... if that seems more up your alley

[MrCarmady]

Recommendations for MrCarmady:

BLOOD OF THE CONDOR - Jorge Sanjinés - 1969
THE ONLY SON - Yasujirō Ozu - 1936
LAUGH, CLOWN, LAUGH - Herbert Brenon - 1928

since ppl are doing spares, you might consider that i was also considering HE WHO GETS SLAPPED by sjostrom instead of LAUGH, CLOWN, LAUGH... if that seems more up your alley

I'll grab both, thanks, planning to watch them all after the 1959 poll ends. Do you mind grabbing Stachka and putting it in the place for wba?

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Will do. Do you need any of my recs? I have Blood of the Condor for sure and I think also the others if you don't want to spend ratio

[MrCarmady]

Already grabbed Blood of the Condor before your kind offer and found a good stream of The Only Son but either of the Chaney ones would be appreciated.

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the Niki List movie doesn't have English subs available... unless you've got a way, Umbugbene?