What If I'm... IN The Movie? - the 2019 ILX Film Poll Results Thread

A lot of movies came out in what might be the last year that movie theatres ever existed, and some people on this board saw a bunch of them. The ballots received for the 2019-or-thereabouts film poll saw 635 votes cast for 220 different motion pictures.

Mainstream publications, specialist film journals and Big Award all piss away their best-of lists on hastily-made decisions and compromises. The ILX film polls are the only ones that use HARD SCIENCE to determine the absolute incontrovertible best flicks of the year. This thread will run down the bestest fifty of those, after a few short subjects.

For those who came in late: previously, in the voting thread

who will get to be May Queen of the poll

Seven voters were moved enough to expel poison as well as bestowing praise this year, though there was little consensus. Only four films received multiple votes for Worst, and three of those were also balanced out with placings on other voters' Best lists. We'll note the latter as we go, but free and clear with only hate remarked is:

ILX WORST FILM OF 2019

Bombshell (d: visionary auteur Jay Roach)

https://i.imgur.com/irPU2iH.jpg

Bombshell received generally favorable reviews, with critics praising the makeup and hairstyling but some criticizing its screenplay and inaccuracies.

"some"

woop woop woop

IN MEMORIAM REEL

Let us take a moment to salute fallen comrade Frederik B, who valiantly suicided in a grim 51-way shootout yesterday, that the poll rollout might be spared any disagreement whatsoever.

✊

honestly not gonna be the same without him.

Amongst 28 voters, three recipients of first-place ballot positions have not made the top fifty, and one received no other votes.

Three movies received one point each. A single-digit quantity of films received over 300 points. The lowest score for a film voted on by more than one person is 9; that film was a remake.

Eight per cent of the winners are documentaries. Six per cent are based on novels.

Last year's Marvel Studios Avengers Assembled movie was commended by one fewer voter than the 2018 instalment.

Only one film that received votes both this year and last failed to place - and it also fell outside the cut last year.

popcorns hot join the movies

vote for a stay on proceedings until fred back

or at least one of us roleplays as his sock

didn't know about the Danish Troll! likely the best news in this thread.

^ magnificent work, managing to swipe at one specific person and also the opinions of every other voter, before any of their ideas even get unveiled

Morby Say Relax

In 2017, it took 40 points to make the top fifty. Last year, that moved up to 70.

lotta stats, let's see some flicks

https://i.imgur.com/nv35b7R.jpg

50. The Art Of Self-Defense
w/d: Riley Stearns
US 2019 digital
72 points, 3 votes

i thought the filmmaking and the script for Art of Self Defense were so immediately, egregiously bad that I turned it off shortly after he went to the dojo.

― ulysses, Friday, 6 December 2019 20:26

thought I would hate the art of self-defense but it was good

― flappy bird, Wednesday, 18 March 2020 05:55

I’m on the board!

I enjoy Jesse Eisenberg more than is dignified but I don't care

so hey, i turned the film off but let's see how predictable it was: are the guys in the mask who beat him up at the start of the film the sensei and the other guys from the dojo?

because that's absolutely what i recall the film was telegraphing at high volume.
flappy, no shade but if you dug this, you might also dig Buffaloed? They felt like similar films to me
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/13/movies/buffaloed-review.html

I mean yeah ulysses of course but there's other stuff that happens, I don't think the movie plays off of that being a surprise

Really good stats and hard science in this poll so far!

https://i.imgur.com/hXoQgqj.jpg

A joke post this early?

― cryptosicko, Tuesday, June 25, 2019 7:02 AM

lol

xp to silby, i dunno: "this singular black comedy balances off-kilter humor with an unexpectedly thriller-esque undercurrent, to the extent that audiences will find it tough to anticipate either the jokes or the dark, “Fight Club”-like turn things eventually take — all to strikingly original effect."
https://variety.com/2019/film/reviews/the-art-of-self-defense-review-1203159671/
in any case it wasn't for me.

I have yet to try Joker, perhaps another month of COVID quarantine will do it.

who reads reviews?

I prefer to become aware of movies by vague rumor.

Hoping all the images are for films other than the ones making the poll.

jk

https://i.imgur.com/OpMVsuY.jpg

49. Miles Davis: Birth Of The Cool
d: Stanley Nelson (doco)
US 2019 archival & digital
74 points, 3 votes, 1 #1

i did not see the joker film but the 'joker is too dangerous for the masses to see' was a real nadir of an already dreadful discourse

Thought Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool was excellent. I saw it at Hot Docs today; it's an American Masters production, so it might have played PBS already. It's a very conventional photos/footage + talking heads affair, and I don't think I'd want it to be anything else. (The Coltrane documentary from a couple of years ago was offbeat and intermittently annoying.) I liked every one of the interviewees, especially describing Davis's music--they really tried to find the right words to convey what effect it had on them (with lots of excerpts to help them along). Frances Taylor's self-regard is charmingly hilarious the first few times she's in the film--you enjoy it--then her story turns very sad, and you understand why she needs that. "Flamenco Sketches" at the end is an especially moving rebuke to anyone who decides they're not going to listen to someone's music anymore because they've done horrible things. (I'm differentiating between a sincere reflexive revulsion from such music--I don't have a problem with that--and, something else I've encountered here and there, a more self-conscious "I refuse to listen to such-and-such" because you think you're making the world a better place by not doing so.)

― clemenza, Sunday, May 5, 2019 4:23 PM

One thing that's crucial, I think, is how good Carl Lumbly's voiceover narration as Miles Davis is. They don't clarify anything at the beginning, so it's almost like they intentionally leave some ambiguity in place--is that actually Miles Davis's voice, something he left behind for future use? I knew that was highly unlikely, but Lumbly's that good. Looking at his filmography, he's been around a long time but I've seen next to nothing he's been in. He was in To Sleep with Anger, which I've never seen; I think I remember his small part in Pacific Heights.

― clemenza, Sunday, May 5, 2019 11:48 PM

I can't say Joker is a "good" movie but my wife and I discuss and reference it all the time so I guess we've been jokerfied.

jk

― donald failson (sic),Wednesday, April 15, 2020 4:41 AM

only about the placing though, it really did get three votes

https://i.imgur.com/H5xT1cm.jpg

i don't want to see this but i have some thoughts.

i think it's very possible the movie is sympathetic to joker, in some twisted way, just like todd phillips' first movie was sympathetic to its subject, GG Allin. america is soft on self-pitying narcissists who are willing to hurt others to get attention, especially if they're white men. or in any case, it encourages the behavior (cf. the current president, whose name escapes me).. in the trailer the joaquin phoenix voiceover mentions that he "didn't even know he existed" and felt like he needed validation in the mass media to feel "real" and this seemed -- not like an original idea at all -- but like an extremely american pathology. it's very possible the movie does end up saying something illuminating about why we're so broken.

i think the question of whether it will "inspire" violence seems a little alarmist. it's not like you can predict what will set people off.

― treeship., Thursday, 3 October 2019 11:04

Just saw this tonight.

Easily the most important movie ever made about how crazy the Joker is. You will not leave this movie thinking he’s just a normal guy. It’s a much-needed message in this day and age.

― latebloomer, Friday, 4 October 2019 04:39

it's almost as if sic is the true joker

The Joker strikes again!

i thought roach did a nice job w trumbo so had some non-zero level of expectations but bombshell was truly brutal

Oscar sure had his work cut out this year!

The most intensely challenging, daunting role that any actor can play is that of the clown who fights Batman.

— 𝖇𝖎𝖌 𝖇𝖆𝖑𝖑𝖔𝖔𝖓 𝖆𝖉𝖛𝖊𝖓𝖙𝖚𝖗𝖊 (@NickPinkerton) January 22, 2016

okay, there weren't really any #1 votes for Joker

https://i.imgur.com/wiPQT8l.jpg

48. Bacarau
w/d: Kleber Mendonça Filho, Juliano Dornelles
BZ 2019 digital
75 points, 3 votes

I went into Joker with very low expectations and I dunno, it was ok.

Saw Birth Of The Cool at the arts picturehouse as part of a film festival, everyone else was a drunk old jazz freak, they were heckling interviewees, good experience.

Well this is awkward. Would have been my #9 or #10 or something if I didn't decide to put it off until 2020. I enjoy how it waits an hour before introducing some of the most convincingly terrifying (if still quite comical) baddies I've seen in recent film

xp did any of them look like this?

https://www.tvinsider.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/game-night-1014x570.jpg

Shit. I had no idea the Miles Davis doc was that good.

I will also be voting for Bacurau next year - as far as tonally all-over-the-place revenge thrillers set in alternate presents go, it's pretty great.

Guessing that at least one of Bacarau's voters saw it after the polls opened.

both bacarau and birth of the cool sitting in my "to be watched" pile, perhaps this poll will incentivize my viewing habits for a week or three

okay, there weren't really any #1 votes for Joker

― donald failson (sic),Wednesday, April 15, 2020 5:06 AM

the three votes was legit though

https://i.imgur.com/L5P11bA.jpg

robocop and starship troopers basically laid out the blueprint for America in 2019

― bizarro gazzara, Friday, 6 September 2019 13:06

otm x2

― flappy bird, Friday, 6 September 2019 18:05

all i want from this movie is that the first thing joaquin does after suffering his catastrophic breakdown is put on the makeup and go straight into a full-scale busby berkeley number where he and hundreds of dancers stage an elaborate performanec for the entire running time of the steve miller band's 'the joker'

― bizarro gazzara, Wednesday, 3 April 2019 14:10

It should not in any way be controversial to say that Black Panther is a bolder political work than Joker. As is Aquaman, for what it's worth. Not much, really, in the case of Aquaman...

― Frederik B, Friday, 4 October 2019 23:03

why do you post so much about aquaman

― j., Friday, 4 October 2019 23:05

Wants2smash

― Neanderthal, Friday, 4 October 2019 23:10

i'd forgotten phillips made hated, this can all be redeemed if phoenix shits on the stage of a comedy club while in full joker makeup

― bizarro gazzara, Tuesday, 9 July 2019 15:39

To come full circle, this movie looks dumber than a bag full of breast implants

― DJP, Thursday, 5 September 2019 17:12

v pleased to have never posted to the joker thread

I hated this movie for inspiring my students to watch and watch and watch it.

the trailers made me think this might be a diverting pile of garbage but I never went to see it, bogged down by discourse

I often hate criticizing actors and directors for Making the Same Movie, but it uh didn't help my appreciation that Phoenix gave a subtler variant a year earlier in You Were Never Really Here.

....and in The Master.

the three votes was legit though

― donald failson (sic),Wednesday, April 15, 2020 5:24 AM

but they didn't really add up to 76 points

https://i.imgur.com/LpQG9Sv.jpg

47. Nuestro tiempo [Our Time]
w/d: Carlos Reygadas
MX 2018 presumably digital
77 points, 3 votes 1 #1

are we done with the "joke" posts yet? because these should be sent... straight to the DEAD LETTER PILE! HAHAHHAHAHAHEEEEE HEEEEEE it's THE JOKER!

latebloomer's joker post made me laugh out loud, thanks latebloomer wherever you are

https://i.imgur.com/DDzSLoM.jpg

Well this is awkward. Would have been my #9 or #10 or something if I didn't decide to put it off until 2020. I enjoy how it waits an hour before introducing some of the most convincingly terrifying (if still quite comical) baddies I've seen in recent film

― ban laggy jazzer (imago),Tuesday, 14 April 2020 bookmarkflaglink

I will also be voting for Bacurau next year - as far as tonally all-over-the-place revenge thrillers set in alternate presents go, it's pretty great.

― tangenttangent,Tuesday, 14 April 2020 bookmarkflaglink

Some ppl might think this is cute. It fucking isn't.

Voted for 48 and 47. Both ok. In Our Time was aiming higher than it got to.

comalph and Fred are encouraged to share film opinions and campaign for votes itt, discouraged from sharing poster opinions and campaigning for bans itt

As with the nominations thread, bemusing vituperation against other posters is unwelcome in this discussion.

Let's see how it goes. I'd like to be discouraged from this, for sure.

I can arrange that.

the best thing about that weird post is that I don't know if it means xyzzzz loved or hated bacurau

Well, back on track.

https://i.imgur.com/iLkyiXd.jpg

46. Joker
d: Todd Phillips w: Jerry Robinson, Bill Finger, Paul Schrader, Paul Zimmerman, Scott Silver, Todd Phillips
US 2019 digital 4K
79 points, 3 votes

"like the more recent james bond movies we get into the joker's origins, except instead of a spy he's a criminal mastermind. he'd be a formidable foe for my character in decker, kington, who's a mastermind of codes" it writes itself

― BradNelson, Tuesday, 10 September 2019 19:39

Was wondering how the lose character I was hearing about could get anything together to do anything crime wise so interesting to see it's a.more widespread thought.
I think the traditional Joker had a history in crime before the disfiguring accident so he at least had some grounding. But on closer inspection not sure there would be much more depth to that than a set of gangster clichés being played with and developed on.

― Stevolende, Sunday, 6 October 2019 06:30

I can forgive Phillips a lot if he makes another one and casts Alex Baldwin as Mr. Freeze.

― K. Rrosé, Thursday, 3 October 2019 14:51

Steve Buscemi as Clayface

― K. Rrosé, Thursday, 3 October 2019 14:53

cate blanchett as whoever she wants

― darraghmac, Thursday, 3 October 2019 15:41

blanchett as the ventriloquist's homicidal dummy scarface imo

― bizarro gazzara, Thursday, 3 October 2019 15:43

Steve Buscemi as a variation on Killer Croc where he's just a regular human who kills people while wearing nothing but Crocs.

― Old Lunch, Thursday, 3 October 2019 15:48

Or kills people with Crocs? In either case, it's Steve Buscemi and he's naked.

― Old Lunch, Thursday, 3 October 2019 15:49

I got a text from my sister asking if I’d seen this yet. She loved it and said Phoenix is amazing - “Yeah I really thought he was excellent. Like I can’t remember the last time I watched a film and actually felt tense about what might happen next”.

For context, my sister is not an incel

― wins, Sunday, 6 October 2019 16:39

v pleased to have never posted to the joker thread

― ban laggy jazzer (imago),Wednesday, April 15, 2020 5:30 AM

I dare you to anticipate Joaquin Phoenix in Todd Phillips's JOKER (now with something that may or may not be a SPOILER)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCfZMsOK9wE

I can arrange that.

― WmC,Tuesday, 14 April 2020 bookmarkflaglink

the best thing about that weird post is that I don't know if it means xyzzzz loved or hated bacurau

― when I come out, can you introduce me as Jagger (imago),Tuesday, 14 April 2020 bookmarkflaglink

“I believe that whatever doesn't kill you simply makes you stranger.” -- The Joker

https://i.imgur.com/YRRGMFg.jpg

45. Diego Maradona
d: Asif Kapadia (doco)
UK 2019 archival & digital
81 points, 4 votes

i just watched the diego maradona doc on friday and it's very good and you should watch it if you are interested in diego maradona. focuses almost exclusively on his years at napoli - which is effective as it encompasses the highs (first scudetto with napoli, 1986 world cup triumph) and lows (injury, drug bans, world cup 1990 defeat, becoming the most hated man in italy) of his career and his descent into addiction

― jim in vancouver, Wednesday, November 6, 2019 5:48 AM

What is going on with Maradona's beard? Why is it so white when his mustache is so black?

― Moka, Friday, February 25, 2011 5:14 AM

Mmm did a google search and found this:

"I recently queried the new found hirsuteness of El Diego's chinnage and I'm indebted to Hasta El Gol Siempre's Sam Kelly for an explanation, here's his take:

Apparently... and you're going to love this... the beard has been grown 'on the advice of Diego's doctors' following the stitches he had put in his lip after his dog, erm, bit him on the mouth. So you see, it's a life-giving beard. I'm not kidding. That's a direct quote from Monday's Olé.

The fact that he went into hospital looking like Ron Wood and came out with a face smoother than baby's arse... well it's been noticed, but not by the press. I mean there's no way the dog attack was just an excuse for plastic surgery, right?"

― Moka, Friday, February 25, 2011 5:17 AM

Zubizarreta was natuurlijk een lul. Arconada was groots (ondanks de blunder). Andoni Goikoetxea is wel een beetje het prototype van de Baskische voetballer (het was trouwens laatst 25 jaar geleden dat hij Maradona's been brak). Alkorta was ook wel een erg goede verdediger. En niet-houthakkende Baskische voetballers waren oa. Julen Guerrero en López Ufarte (en nu nog Xabi Alonso)...of Jésus Zamora, met die naam, wel echt straat, ik bedoel kalle, is, betwijfel ik. :) Wel een goede voetballer, die Real nog eens op de laatste speeldag een kampioenschap door de neus boorde. Na ja, we hebben er toch zat.

</voetbal>

― OMC, Tuesday, October 14, 2008 8:54 PM

The first of the imago/tt double-boosters, and it's about Argentina's greatest footballer. Poetry

The Miles Davis doc is good but it's not special or anything

I was hoping for a good way to understand all his various eras and it did provide that

That came lower in my ballot. Unlike Senna it was as much about the south of Italy, and that very emotional relationship between the place, it's people and a person.

It lacked Argentina/South America. And then Italy turning on him post Italia '90 also felt off to me.

The Miles Davis doc is good but it's not special or anything

OTM. I voted for it, but in the last spot on my ballot and I thought about leaving it off entirely.

Miles Davis doc was just very competent and enjoyable. Maradona doc is another level, a coke-blur of mania and blokes kicking each other

my god the carpet in that still

speaking of a drug-blur of mania and kicking

https://i.imgur.com/XfKOr9q.jpg

43. Climax
w/d: Gaspar Noé
FR/BE 2018 digital
85 points, 3 votes, 1 #1

okay, lol at my personalized card

Fell outside last year at #75, with 43 points and 2 votes. Would be #32 this year with combined votes.

The film is worth it for the perfection and intensity of the two choreographed dance routines. I liked (a lot) and disliked (a lot) of the rest of it but the experience was good on the big screen. I'd watch those routines over and over.

― jed_, Friday, 8 March 2019 00:04

Gaspar Noe's Next Film

oh whoops

https://i.imgur.com/wMYMXNW.jpg

44. Greener Grass
w/d: Jocelyn DeBoer, Dawn Luebbe
US 2019 digital, I'll bet
84 points, 3 votes

loved it and was very amused the entire time. watch if you like unrestrained surrealism of a particularly gaudy hue. or (as tt said) todd solondz. or bunuel at his wackiest. or chris morris' 'jam'. or idk that tim robinson show (but this is imo much better)

― imago, Sunday, April 5, 2020 9:38 AM

I loved Greener Grass! So strange, but it hit me just right. Very funny and sad.

― Cherish, Sunday, April 5, 2020 10:33 AM

Also received two votes for worst.

or the Adult Swim infomercials

https://i.imgur.com/VnB7C7H.jpg

42. Peterloo
w/d: Mike Leigh
UK 2018 digital
87 points, 3 votes

it's terrible. ludicrous.

― jed_, Friday, July 12, 2019 1:52 AM

Should've made the effort but "a lesser Topsy-Turvy" was all I heard

― flappy bird, Friday, July 12, 2019 3:02 AM

I loved it, y'all should watch it. I cried at the end.

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Friday, July 12, 2019 10:35 PM

Rory Kinnear's performance/character is a wonderfully drawn and played classic melt poseur arsehole! The aftermath scenes are so hard hitting, it's quite a powerful finish. It really stayed with me did this.

― calzino, Monday, March 30, 2020 11:34 AM

it's terrible. full of people explaining what they are going to do, v. embarrassing exposition. Leigh at his worst when he's allowing the upper classes to be utterly ridiculous (as long as he's imagined/written the text) - I'm sure they were, fwiw. There was one scene that made me laugh out loud where one of the magistrate reads a letter to a maid and she says "oh dear" (or something) then walks offscreen, never to be seen again. She's only in the film to listen to the speech. also, the cgi is utter shit.

― jed_, Monday, March 30, 2020 1:23 PM

Didn't notice any bad CG, don't be such a fucking gearhead tosser.

― Dr Morbius, Monday, March 30, 2020 2:05 PM

The Mike Leigh Poll

Yeah as Jed says that dance sequence in the Noe film was really great.

*I think* I voted for Climax last year. Made no note of seeing it in 2019..

peterloo's fantastic. a fascinating, equally thoughtful and passionate film about ideas, discussion and action. complaining about on the nose historical exposition when there is so much more depth to this is midbrow sniping

xp: You didn't vote for Climax last year.

(I would have voted for it again this year if I'd realised it was getting votes, but I did my ballot without looking at the polls inbox. Checking now, though, the #1 voter this year moved it up from their #11 in 2018!)

Worth dancing to the opening half hour in your living room.

― Dollarmite Is My Name (sic),Wednesday, April 1, 2020 8:37 AM (two weeks ago)

a fascinating, equally thoughtful and passionate film about ideas, discussion and action. complaining about on the nose historical exposition when there is so much more depth to this is midbrow sniping

well put

wrote a bit more here

https://i.imgur.com/Sf9PNG0.png

41. Waves
w/d: Trey Edward Shults
US 2019 digital
88 points, 3 votes

It has its moments, Waves

Don't know anything at all about it, but that screenshot is pretty.

Our Time was the one today I voted for, it was high on my ballot, I’m still thinking about it

don’t think I voted for Waves but I really liked it, I liked that roughly the first half of the story was about the brother and the second half about the sister

still not sure if Joker at 46 is real

want to see Climax and Peterloo

still not sure if Joker at 46 is real

― Dan S,Tuesday, April 14, 2020 6:24 PM (eleven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i'm not sure anything that happened in that kooky movie was real! 🤪🤪🤡

https://i.imgur.com/V1FIWCd.jpg

40. A Hidden Life
w/d: Terrence Malick
US/DE 2019 digital 4K
89 points, 4 votes

"A HIDDEN LIFE"

This is a shit title.

― jed_, Thursday, 2 May 2019 15:08

The device of the two halves in waves didn't quite land...that one would find a way to live outside after carrying out some good to ease the trauma of what wasn't done before and the other would simply be left inside -- feels realistic enough, but why not spend anytime with them...it just didn't want to go there, and somehow that doesn't sit right.

beginning to think my number one didn't make it. haven't seen it mentioned much on ilx, so wasn't expecting it. certainly not expecting it to place over films by mike leigh and malick.

― ole uncle tiktok (darraghmac),Wednesday, April 15, 2020 3:35 AM (five hours ago)

u up?

I didn't quite see what distinguished A Hidden Life from the last raft of Malick films in which tracking shots capture blowing fields of grass that an AARP commercial can use.

lol, still haven’t seen A Hidden Life, I will be able to next month

xxp

“...that one would find a way to live outside after carrying out some good to ease the trauma of what wasn't done before and the other would simply be left inside -- feels realistic enough, but why not spend anytime with them...it just didn't want to go there, and somehow that doesn't sit right.”

agree it’s not ultimately satisfying

what have we learned about sic so far?

that he can't spell Bacurau, and doesn't believe in the number 43

The device of the two halves in waves didn't quite land...that one would find a way to live outside after carrying out some good to ease the trauma of what wasn't done before and the other would simply be left inside -- feels realistic enough, but why not spend anytime with them...it just didn't want to go there, and somehow that doesn't sit right.

― xyzzzz__,Tuesday, April 14, 2020 6:46 PM (forty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I really liked this, because the whole second half played like a normal coming-of-age/love/family story or whatever, but had this uncomfortable shadow over it the whole time.

Have only voted for Peterloo (#13) and A Hidden Life (#20) thus far, and haven't seen anything else but Bacurau (2020-eligible and unranked in any case).

43 is misplaced Noe but I can understand the desire to push him lower

xxp if anything doesn’t believe in 44, since he revealed 43 first

I hated The Dark Knight so much and was expecting to like nothing about Joker but was surprised that I enjoyed the gothic cinematography

If I'd realised I could have delayed Climax further, I might have moved to Pazz rules this year

that he can't spell Bacurau, and doesn't believe in the number 43

What If I'm... IN The Movie? - the 2019 ILX Film Poll Results Thread

I really liked this, because the whole second half played like a normal coming-of-age/love/family story or whatever, but had this uncomfortable shadow over it the whole time.
― The Mandymoorian (Whiney G. Weingarten),Tuesday, April 14, 2020 4:30 PM

liked the Waves soundtrack

Your reaction to the Miles Davis documentary is probably tied in to a degree to how close you are to the subject--the closer you are, the less impressive it'll seem. I'm at my pickiest when it's Neil Young or Martin Scorsese, etc. With Miles Davis, I'm the typical listener who had nothing but Kind of Blue coming out of university, added albums sporadically over the years, added a few more later in life. I'm far from an expert, so pretty much everything biographical in the film was new to me. And, to go back to something I wrote in my earlier posts, I think it deftly addresses--or at least doesn't sidestep, and leaves you to think about it--a subject that has come up frequently the past few years: that great art is sometimes made by people who do horrible things. That the same guy who was so brutal to Frances Taylor (can't recall if the film was clear on his relationship with Cicely Tyson) also recorded "Flamenco Sketches"--not to mention the brutality he endured himself--that's a subject that is endlessly complicated to me.

I mean, I wanted a basic overview of Miles' career and I got it, but I dunno if there's anything in there that isn't really just documentary-by-numbers

just watched Bacarau, what a blast! It's the kind of film where it's best to just go into it without knowing what you're buying so I will lay off of referencing the obvious story/film precedents but I don't think it's a spoiler to say that the movie is just wonderfully film literate and far more clever than it seems.
Really felt like a fully realized Beto Hernandez story; I'd love to see his adaptation.
Strongly recommended.

I have everything else that I haven't seen locked and loaded for followup; I think Peterloo, Our Time and Waves get precedence in that order.

ilplexers on 77 can follow along on my playlist if you swing that way

https://media.giphy.com/media/wIJ8p8384rXqR16MdA/giphy.gif

tick tock

https://i.imgur.com/N3njwBJ.jpg

39. John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum
d: Chad Stahelski w: Derek Kolstad, Shay Hatten, Chris Collins, Marc Abrams
US 2019 digital
91 points, 4 votes

John Wick: Chapter 2 placed at #47 in 2018, with 43 points from 3 voters

John Wick 3 as the 2016 election/Pro-Bernie propaganda

--The high table is the democratic party, obsessed with rules and norms to their own detriment
--The adjudicator is Hillary, a seasoned professional fighting a broken system just trying to keep everything normal.
--John Wick is Bernie Sanders, the rogue veteran, a little old but still a scrapper. He's already got the young fighters obsessed with him (Zero), but has to win over older voters who are set in their ways/routines (Anjelica Huston) and the women who still claim fealty to the high table (Halle Berry)
--Visiting Berrada was the DNC kneecapping him in the primaries
--Winston is Trump, whose only concern is himself and maintaining status/money/power and his HOTEL
--Lawrence Fishburne and his crew are the mobilized lower class electorate who is going to help Wick and Bernie rise to victory in Part 4 (2020)

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Friday, 17 May 2019 15:38

wheres biden

― darraghmac, Friday, 17 May 2019 15:39

sorry, meant to post that to the twin peaks thread with a fuller theory that it itself is a 2020 allegory

― darraghmac, Friday, 17 May 2019 15:40

good morning!

biden is the poll voters

wick tock

still haven't seen this (or number 2 lol)

"This was so violent it was almost hallucinogenic at times."

One half of the couple behind me hit her partner with her purse and walked out after Wick stabbed that guy slowly in the eye

(spoiler John Wick stabs a guy in the eye, slowly)

― gbx, Saturday, 18 May 2019 03:05

"motorbike swordfight was dope af"

chopped-off arm blocking up one of the motorbikes' wheels was one of those moments I thought my brain made up as I was watching it

― Simon H., Sunday, 19 May 2019 23:58

these sequels don't completely avoid dumbness or being too in love with characters that flash by us in the blink of a stabbed eye, but jesus they are so much fun and you cant argue with the panache and the quality of the job made of it

trash made by people who know what makes great trash

-- "'disappointed nobody shushed them when they were fighting in the stacks.'"

- "big guy shushed john"

This made me laugh very hard, partly bc when that fight started I recalled this thread and thought “nobody gets shushed in this scene, a true shame”. Then Boban Marjanovich shushed John and I was like “ok John Wick 3 let’s party”

― One Eye Open, Saturday, 25 May 2019 13:28

I like how they didn’t bother reminding you that he’s wearing a bulletproof suit from John Wick 2. One of my friends didn’t remember about the suit as was a little confused by how he kept getting shot and not getting hurt at all, but also not THAT confused because hey, John Wick.

― One Eye Open, Saturday, 25 May 2019 13:32

i saw the first one, thought it was solid and mostly interesting for the lack of excess plot. i missed the second one. then i caught john wick 3 on a a plane and suddenly there are medallions and pacts and alliances and SO MUCH PLOT. i ended up watching it without the headphones and only paying attention during the action scenes, which were great.

loved the fight in the stable where john wick keeps making the horses kick bad guys

did not vote for this tbc

the first one makes such an incredible virtue out of the slow buildup

i do think the others suffer a little by comparison in being constant-running action movies

but the closest comparison that suggests itself is matrix + sequels and this series handles it all so much better than that

everything about wick seems like i should love it and yet i couldn't handle more than 15 minutes. it's a thin line between grindcore and sadism i suppose and making the death and violence look prettier than john woo does is a step too far for me.

https://i.imgur.com/J6ahrmJ.jpg

38. Dragged Across Concrete
w/d: S. Craig Zahler
US 2018 digital 4K
93 points, 5 votes

if it's just three hours of Gibson's face being dragged across concrete while Vince Vaughn pisses on the concrete slighty ahead of his face, I'm in

― Price Waterhouse Coopers (sic), Wednesday, 6 February 2019 22:11

what the christ...it's 159 minutes long

― omar little, Wednesday, 6 February 2019 23:10

just watched Dragged, which has some arresting moments and details but holy fuck it does not earn that running time. Feels like it stretches out His Thing to the breaking point and well beyond. Its politics are thankfully inscrutable. (Yes, all the cops are reactionary assholes, but most cops are.) The only straightforwardly objectionable aspect is that the female roles are ornamental (or worse)

― Simon H., Friday, 22 March 2019 22:45

does anyone want to describe this one

A much bloodier Hell or High Water.

It's a lot more po-mo and exploitation-y than that

https://i.imgur.com/O4p3G8M.jpg

37. Diamantino
w/d: Gabriel Abrantes, Daniel Schmidt
PT/FR/BR 2018 digital
95 points, 5 votes

ahaha

portuguese cinema has come out with some amazing things in recent years, but if you fancy the lighter and sillier side of that, here's a genetic-modification conspiracy satire that reimagines CR7 as a lovely grown-up kid who learns his own heart, ft. giant pomeranians

dragged across concrete looks partic bad but maybe you guys know something i don't here

I didn’t get my shit together in time to vote for this, I apologise if jojo rabbit somehow makes this list and I could have kept it out

voted for this. went in a little wary but so much to like about this. suprised how moved i was by the central romance

Didn’t catch dragged for a few reasons (vod and runtime probably foremost) but it is funny to consider in light of the moral panic about joker that raged for like 7 years and burned out like a day after joker actually came our

voting a film 'worst of' doesn't detract points...yet

https://i.imgur.com/NTggnPe.jpg

36. 大象席地而坐 [An Elephant Sitting Still]
w/d: Hu Bo
CN 2018 digital
97 points, 4 votes

Placed at #43 in 2018, with 89 points from 3 votes. Would be #23 with combined votes.

elephant shit

― Dr Morbius, Monday, 24 June 2019

Elephant Sitting Still was no 4 on my ballot, although tbh it is overlong and repetitive but whatever does happen comes from a place (even if you don't know what happened to its director), and I think its one of the first Chinese films where the politics of the place just isn't there, as a thing that weighs in. I would probably go lower with it now but I'm glad it got in.

I'll vote for Jia next year. Which I regret because it might have put it above a doc on fucking Bros - oh yes! brb, going to brainlessly describe this as "compelling". wtf is it with you all aargh, just can't fucking unsee that.

― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 25 June 2019 09:48

elephant is more interested in talking about society through its effect on the individual's lived in experience and psychology than portraying society in of itself, and so lets the grey swathes of the city and the out of focus supporting characters just become a canvas.

does have an incredible chekov's gun moment

― devvvine, Tuesday, 25 June 2019 10:56

I thought this was like the last Ceylan film too long but, like the last Ceylan, I didn't mind spending time in its world.

i thought TWPT raced by tbh! but more of this as/when it places, want to see AESS obv

trash made by people who know what makes great trash

something for all kinds of trashmongers today

diamantino is hyperkitschy eurotrash of the very finest sort, no comment on the others as i've not seen them

diamantino rocks and those are pekingeses not poms

dragged across concrete is great and I really think Simon H. calling Zahler's films "degenerate nu-pulp" is accurate. That's either your thing or it isn't

4 hours, dang bro.

i never saw bone tomahawk... is DAC the best place to start with this guy if i was gonna?

forky, both the mostly imagined pearl-clutching and the film nerd can-i-unseperate-the-bloo-from-the-blee neckbeard "response" are both "protest too much" imo. Real Long Duk Dong poll vibes.

You either like problematic 80s action crap or your don't, shrug emoji.

All three Zahler pics are fine places to start if that's your thing

forky, both the mostly imagined pearl-clutching and the film nerd can-i-unseperate-the-bloo-from-the-blee neckbeard "response" are both "protest too much" imo. Real Long Duk Dong poll vibes.

i like some problematic derivative 80's action crap but i am honestly mostly burnt out on that shit by having watched it into the ground during the VHS era when i was a stripling. bacurau has a ton of that going on though and i thought it was awesome!

diamantino rocks and those are pekingeses not poms

― The Mandymoorian (Whiney G. Weingarten),Wednesday, 15 April 2020 17:56 (eleven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

goddammit trust me to misremember the most important aspect of the film

forks, there's some "outrage" that seems mostly manufactured about Zahler films being "conservative" and, naturally, a bunch of film nerds going out of their way to counter it

oh, okay. i haven't read anything about Dragged until more or less just now. man though: vince vaughan and mel gibson onscreen together for over two hours, huh? that's a challenge.

https://i.imgur.com/eP3TDTg.jpg

35. Hustlers
d: Lorene Scafaria s: Lorene Scafaria a: Jessica Pressler
US 2019 digital 4K
98 points, 7 votes

Went to see Hustlers the other night, good stuff

― Noodle Vague, Tuesday, 8 October 2019 12:13

DAC doesn't remain squarely focused on vaughn and gibson, thankfully.

hustlers was incredibly tedious. needed more cardi b

Hustlers was v low on my ballot, and whilst there’s not much new to learn and Julia Stiles’ character seems included as an afterthought, it was a fun buddy movie and J-Lo was more impressive than I remembered.

Dragged Across Concrete stars a man caught on camera being an obnoxious cunt and starts with that man caught on camera being an obnoxious cunt and goes from there. Not sure why anyone would want to waste any time actually thinking about it.

Which is to say, it's quite interesting but (mostly) not for the action scenes which are deliberately undersold and disrupted.

https://i.imgur.com/jE0myc2.jpg

34. Bait
w/d: Mark Jenkin
UK 2019 16mm b&w
102 points, 4 votes, 1 #1

yes

still haven’t got round to seeing this. glad to see it did so well in the uk

my #1

Jenkin is the real deal

tenuous link between diamantino and hustlers in that the former’s directors had the tate modern cinema play the cardi b asmr audio while the room filled up

my description of Bait was 'british kitchen-sink godardian irrealism' and it's as tense, unusual and smartly-composed as anything I've seen recently. the sound design especially is something else

Hustlers was my favorite pulp movie last year

https://i.imgur.com/nugq2Pj.jpg

32= Rocketman
d: Dexter Fletcher w: Lee Hall
UK 2019 digital
104 points, 4 votes

its true there is no duran duran but i swear on the bible his thighs alone are worth the ticket price
yes i just turned this Elton John biopic into a thirst pic

that is my superpower

― VegemiteGrrl, Monday, 3 June 2019 00:52

agreed with akm's overall take... I liked it less but what i liked about it was its embrace of nonfactuality and "feel" over dull rock-biopic tropes. maybe i just wanted getting the "feel" to extend more into things like, yeah, the country-western-songwriter-poet-pontifications of the early albums. it rushes the transition to big, wild arena Elton. of course it did all happen so fast. and Captain Fantastic as an album is always there for the version of this story i really want.

still it's just like... it'd be cool, as a music nerd, to get some of the larger musical/cultural context that informed his stage persona. and a sense of why he connected so much with an audience at a particular time and place. the movie leans into the timeless magic of the songs (and, more smartly, the idea that there were things in Bernie's lyrics that Elton personally would have identified with).... but timeless can also turn into generically contemporized Glee renditions. maybe related: it drains all the rock and roll out of elton, even his loudest, guitariest, rockingest hits. a defensible choice but maybe i just would have dug it being BOTH a biopic of a lonely addict, and some kind of statement about The Seventies.

queer culture also oddly distant and vague --- surely Elton got some of his pizzazz from, like, drag? right? or Bowie and glam, at the least? i would have even accepted sth like how Velvet Goldmine invents fake eno/ferry/bolan/iggy syntheses that our fake Bowie sees early on and goes "aha" at...

― Doctor Casino, Monday, 17 June 2019 15:25

I watched this on the plane yesterday and I have never cried so much while watching a movie

I cried when he says he's an alcoholic in the first scene
When Bernie very clearly writes "Your Song" about Elton
When he makes his debut at the Troubadour
The sex scene which is like um finally a normal extremely hot gay sex scene in a Hollywood movie
When the dad hugs Elton's half-brothers
When his mom tells him he'll never be loved
When he played "Pinball Wizard"
When Robb Stark turns into an asshole
Literally every time Bernie gazes as Elton with the most intense fraternal adoration
"Bennie And The Jets"
The stark re-arrangement of "Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me"
Every single time the orchestral score nodded to the chorus-modulation from "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road"
When adult Elton hugs his childhood self

And when it was over I was sitting there like, "why do I feel one way about Bowie (overt worship), and feel another way about Elton (sheepish tolerance)". I understand that Bowie was far more successful and pulling a look and Elton was all awkwardness but... I was sitting there, shaken, like "have I forsaken Elton in this weird way by spending as much time lolling about "Honky Cat" as I do worshipping "Daniel"?"

"I'm Still Standing" was used so incredibly, too. idk, overall just a wonderful film.

― flamboyant goon tie included, Saturday, 14 September 2019 15:51

I appreciated the fact that the filmmakers were deliberately winking at the audience enough to make it clear that "this is fantastical revisionism", no efforts made to conceal the fact that this was a self-aggrandizing piece, and in fact acknowledging it slyly

― flamboyant goon tie included, Saturday, 14 September 2019 18:15

totally

― Squeaky Fromage (VegemiteGrrl), Saturday, 14 September 2019 20:06

On a separate note: one of my favorite 'because we can' moments in the film is him rocketing up from Dodger Stadium into the passing jet.

― Ned Raggett, Sunday, 15 September 2019 21:24

_Rocketman_ -- the Elton John biopic! Starring...Tom Hardy!

huh

i didn't see it but ... huh

rocket...man?

This is a movie I would never see that I would actually see

Way better than the Freddy Mercury excrescence, but not particularly gay or interesting.

*Freddie

Mercurie

*gaie

poll really running hard today with movies I haven't seen or even thought of seeing (except for Dragged)

i saw this a week ago and it was a blast

and all the stronger for skipping the bits doc casino missed, for me personally

https://i.imgur.com/hBIJVAL.jpg

32= Booksmart
d: Olivia Wilde w: Emily Halpern, Sarah Haskins, Susanna Fogel, Katie Silberman
US 2019 digital
104 points, 5 votes

Late response, but Oh Baby was in Booksmart, and in a pretty prominent position. Made me feel quite old, but I was also literally the second oldest man at the press screening.

― Frederik B, Friday, 19 July 2019 16:47

it was either joker or booksmart, two mostly ok movies with great moments.

― flappy bird, Sunday, 8 March 2020 02:30

ew

First thing to place that I’ve seen (I didn’t vote). I liked it.

Found this intensely annoying, idk.

these are the only jokes in like 90% of movies now pic.twitter.com/Qap6VJIK6O

— Nicole Silverberg (@nsilverberg) June 16, 2019

woke superbad

lots of charming performances saving jokes from a mediocre script.

I saw it at the cinema drunk and loved it and then I tried to show it to imago and he didn’t get it and it made me doubt what I initially thought. I think it’s probably still great if you can adjust easily to cartoonishly over-the-top characters and pop culture references. Such great fun comedic leads.

xp I would totally watch a movie of all those clichés.

kaitlyn dever is obviously great all the time, but it's worth pointing out that she is much funnier in justified (as is nearly every actor, tbh)

truthbomb

ftr I was not hating Booksmart but my failure to adore it in every conceivable manner resulted in our viewing's piqued decease only forty minutes in, maybe we'll finish it some merciful day

I like Beanie Feldstein a lot, though.

The notion that the high achieving kids and the popular kids actually intersect quite a bit is something that goes against high school movie orthodoxy, but I remember it being fairly accurate from my school days.

I liked it fine tbh

I bailed out after ten minutes on first viewing last year, finding it an over-mannered pastiche of (obv) Superbad and other, more earnest, end-of-school comedies. Tried again last month, relaxed into the zone and enjoyed it plenty, though it's v definitely aiming to be the 2019 version of films the producers saw growing up, rather than anything with a distinct sensibility. (Balancing a completely nonplussed attitude to sexuality with a kind fidelity to teenage angst about crushes is a welcome and significant approach to Hollywood teen movieing, though.)

https://i.imgur.com/LZrwhXF.jpg

31. Last Black Man In San Francisco
d: Joe Talbot w: Jimmie Fails, Joe Talbot, Rob Richert, Emma Nicholls, Fritzi Adelman
US 2019 digital
117 points, 6 votes

I thought it collapsed under the weight of its own ambition, and while it started off strong, it fell apart for me pretty quickly, just not following through on so much. and by the end it had completely lost me

― flappy bird, Thursday, 19 March 2020 04:27

its story wasn't conventional and it didn't have a resolved plot, but I thought it was beautiful, quiet and surreal

― Dan S, Thursday, 19 March 2020 04:38

it was maybe my favorite film of the year! i guess ymmv

― Fuck the NRA (ulysses), Thursday, 19 March 2020 15:15

tbh i voted for this even though i only watched the first 40 minutes or so of it. i wanted to go back to it but just ... never did. i did see jello biafra as a segway tour guide.

hahahaha, was just gonna post about the Jello cameo

i really enjoyed what i watched! very unique style, a different story. wish i had seen it in the theater.

https://i.imgur.com/qNITsnG.jpg

30. Ahlat Agaci [The Wild Pear Tree]
d: Nuri Bilge Ceylan w: Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Ebru Ceylan, Akin Aksu
TR 2018 digital
126 points, 4 votes

Placed at #41 in 2018, with 91 points from 3 votes. Would be #18 with combined votes.

I think I saw this this year and will vote for it next time

― wins, Tuesday, 25 June 2019 19:03

Voted for TWPT - it's a bit like the Jia (which I only saw this year), not exactly a bold departure from their previous, better movies, but still with enough of the good stuff - performances, visuals, story - to make it p satisfying. The image that sic has used is from the film's best scene, which has a kind of erotic undertow that's mostly missing from the rest of the movie. It's also probably slightly too long (there's an extended theological conversation towards the end which unbalances the whole). Once Upon a Time in Anatolia is the masterpiece, for me, but then I like murder mysteries.

― Ward Fowler, Tuesday, 25 June 2019 19:19

lol oops

I didn't vote for Last Black Man, but it was probably the most intriguingly head-scratching movie I saw last year.

https://i.imgur.com/2NFninA.jpg

29. سه رخ / Se rokh [3 Faces]
d: Jafar Panahi w: Jafar Panahi, Nader Saeivar
IR 2018 digital & phone
130 points, 5 votes

Rocketman was of course better than Bohemian, but I mean not like by that much.

Oh man I loved 3 faces

Really beautiful and clever

Reviews for Last Black Man were p mediocre, at least in NY (and I thought that its being made by a white man wd make it cinema non grata).

Voted for both Pear Tree(#11) and 3 Faces(#16).

I caught up with The Wild Pear Tree last week; it would've made the lower reaches of my ballot.

thought The Wild Pear Tree was as great as any of the other Ceylan’s films, and of his longer later films it’s the one I’ve most enjoyed watching. Doug Demirkol was really good in it

*Dogu

Three Faces is available on the CC, I should have watched it

Same, wish I'd have had time to view it before the deadline.

Fantastic film. Panahi's films are miracles, all of them.

TWPT and 3 Faces my numbers #2 and #3. Both incredible

oh fuck yeah, glad to see this thread. these ILX film polls are how i keep up with THE MOVIES.

TWPT was my #3, ALMOST as amazing as Winter Sleep, which makes it pretty damn amazing - Ceylan is pretty much my own 'all his films are miracles' best-active-director contender atm (although Panahi is 1 for 1 from what I've seen and idk how I keep missing his stuff when living with one of his street team).

in terms of probably-quasi-autobiographical portrayals of the self-absorbed young artist learning about themselves, their families and their culture, well let's say TWPT was by far my favourite of that sort of thing from 2019

the conversation with the pear-stealing priests is so great too, doesn't unbalance anything

oh fuck yeah, glad to see this thread. these ILX film polls are how i keep up with THE MOVIES.

― davey,Wednesday, April 15, 2020 10:58 PM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Same here, the reason I don't have a ballot is that I spent much of the year watching last year's top 20.

xp yes, agree imago

The conversations with the older writer went on for a bit longer than necessary, but the comedy of exasperation was well-done; Sinan just doesn't get it.

The convo with the older writer at least felt a bit more necessary to the overall film.

it was v important yes. and the older writer wasn't let off lightly either. a different sort of arrogance, albeit a wiser one

The touches of surrealism -- the baby covered in ants -- were apt.

yes! ceylan is a massively inventive (and well-studied) visual director - the camera is always doing something interesting

and that related moment near the end which I'm not going to spoil - a masterful dramatic flourish that did me completely

Wild Pear Tree was nice enough. Think I voted for it the previous year, probably lower end of ballot now.

The Wild Pear Tree was my #2 also tangenttangent

I liked the long slow circling tracking shots in An Elephant Sitting Still, and the way the camera seemed reluctant to focus directly on the action. it was one of the more memorable films I saw last year.

Good choice! I’ve so much loved that his last two films have managed to package very artfully slow, beautifully shot paeans (albeit complicated ones) to Turkish culture with these long, soapy, extremely dialogue-heavy scripts. His treatment of his younger self proxy is equally harsh and tender and it is the kind of intense philosophical coming-of-age film that I would hope get new film students into great cinema.

yes!

3 Faces is wild. Panahi routinely gets the best performances from actors I’ve ever seen, and comes up with the weirdest premises, but treating them with impassive restraint. I love the character he embodies as well, and the way he engages with the effect of his celebrity on Iran.

https://i.imgur.com/Zyg08Ql.jpg

28. カメラを止めるな! / Kamera o Tomeru na! [One Cut Of The Dead]
d: Shin'ichirô Ueda s: Shin'ichirô Ueda r: Ryoichi Wada
JP 2017 digital 2K & 4K
137 points, 6 votes

One Cut of the Dead won me back into everyone's good graces, which is good news, because if I picked another one [the family] didn't like I'm afraid they would have gone with "Cats." Which is inevitable, I suppose.

― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 19 March 2020 13:50

xxp will watch it soon

reviewing the types of cameras used (thank you sic), Bait stands out so far as having the only non-digital (16mm) cinematography on this list. It’s still not really available in the US, but I’m looking forward to seeing it eventually

oh some genre geeks voted

T*r*ntino #1 (spoiler)

never heard of One Cut of the Dead!

One Cut of the Dead is really fun even if you're not a genre geek! Just watch it, no spoilers itt!

If it comes down to Once Upon a Time or Parasite, I hope so.

(But it'll be Parasite.)

Like removed from "genre" film or "LES CINEMA," One Cut of the Dead is "fun" in the same way that like Knives Out or Back to the Future is "fun"

One Cut Of The Dead is more about movie-making than Once Upon A Time In Hollywood is.

Bait stands out so far as having the only non-digital (16mm) cinematography on this list

shot on a hand-cranked Bolex, with the negative physically processed by the director, too.

GO AWAY

BAITIN

https://i.imgur.com/hbP50fp.jpg

27. Monos
d: Alejandro Landes w: Alejandro Landes, Alexis Dos Santos
CO/US 2019 digital
138 points, 7 votes

disappointed in myself that I didn’t get to this one

liked that this film seemed so feral

my #4

there are so many great things about this but above all those performances from the young actors

also liked Mica Levi’s score

yes! also it is tense as hell and genuinely shocking. and the cinematography is stunning. and it's very au courant, the zoomer death circus is in town

lol zoomer death circus

I watched this a couple of days after I voted -- it would have made my ballot.

going back, I liked that The Last Black Man shows neighborhoods of SF I haven’t seen much in films before, I also really liked the meta performance of Jonathan Majors as Montgomery Allen

avoided Monos cuz Michael Sicinski's opinion seemed typical in my Letterboxd feed: "Essentially an exploitation film that doesn't have the courage of its convictions"

posting just to match this DN with Morbs

^ good stuff

so if you were hoping for the most radical outcome of the film as the culmination maybe. I liked that it followed one of the most gentle characters

https://i.imgur.com/K2y5yiF.jpg

26. Apollo 11
d: Todd Douglas Miller (doco)
US 2019 archival 65mm, 70mm, 16mm, CCTV, stills and audio
153 points, 6 votes

Eyes Wide Shut was released on July 16 th 1999.

Stanley Kubrick insisted in his contract that this be the date of the release.

July 16th 1999 is exactly 30 years to the day that Apollo 11 was launched.

― Adam Brune4u, Friday, 29 October 2010 18:04

was phenomenally beautiful

Just three months until Eyes Wide Shut can legally drink at a sex club in the US.

special effects were incredible for the time

with use of amazing archival footage

xp

society’s belief in science and its hope for the future in this film documenting events from 51 years ago makes me sad today

Monos had some great stuff in it but it didn't totally click with me. That transition from the mountains to the jungle felt like them going from heaven to hell. I'd have liked it a bit more if it delved into their motivations because when things start to break apart, you're not really bothered, each characters a bit formless.

It must've been a horrendous shoot though. Jfc

Booksmart, Hustlers, John Wick Parabellum, Dragged Across Concrete, Rocketman - don’t at all agree with those being among the best of 2019

and The Beach Bum, ugh

snob

had Apollo 11 in top 10

(I mention The Beach Bum because I’m guessing it will show up here)

ye'll see worse results from democracy this year, id practice getting over it

He’s right. THE BEACH BUM is totally gonna shellack Biden, fwiw.

Moondog / Bernie 2020 or bust

Monos was low 20s as making full use of sound, image and light made for a rare physical experience in the cinema. Unfortunately it was in the service of a dystopianish plot that almost never delivers anything else as default. Bacurau had a lot of that too but it seemed to be trying a bit more.

did not see monos but do remember laughing at some one calling it beau travail for idiots

Some truth in that..

:(

https://i.imgur.com/6HTgSqZ.jpg

25. Le Livre d'image [The Image Book]
w/d: Jean-Luc Godard
CH 2018 collage
155 points, 6 votes

Placed at #41 in 2018 with 91 points, 4 votes and 1 #1 (the #1 voter dropped it to #2 this year).
Would be #21 this year with combined votes, or #14 including repeat votes.

voted for the image book. don't think i made it past the surface, thematically, but still an incredibly captivating experience; even as just a light and sound show

― devvvine, Tuesday, 25 June 2019 19:27

I kind of wish that all the original Image books were still around and had all also had evolved into disgusting R Crumb style sex comix

― soref, Wednesday, 21 March 2018 11:17

the imagent household discovered this between the 2018 and 2019 poll

it is a magnificent feat of juxtaposition above all

i mean that's a pretty trite comment but i'm hesitant to unpack its celebration/critique of historical 'western' cinema (itself unpackable into us, french traditions) juxtaposed with the urgency of contemporary arabic-language film because these cloddish hands would quite crush the flowers of godard's poetry, or something

the emerging presumably fictional storyline about the sheikh of dofa and his philosopher brother is quite the development

Too low, obv

7th in my ballot, and it should've been higher.

had it #3, and hence will be revolted by most of the next 24

should have voted for it again

I should say it was 7th in my ballot the year before, didn't vote for it this time round.

https://i.imgur.com/uFrzcSE.jpg

24. Dolemite Is My Name
d: Craig Brewer w: Scott Alexander, Larry Karazewski
US 2019 digital 4K
157 points, 8 votes

‘Dolemite is my Name’ is as good as the hype suggests. Murphy hasn’t been so watchable since Bowfinger and must be in with a shout of the Oscars.

― Dan Worsley, Friday, 25 October 2019 21:54

i give it five bags of popcorn and mark my words oscar will recognize eddie murphy for his performance in this movie

― BradNelson, Friday, 25 October 2019 22:05

(i haven't seen it)

― BradNelson, Friday, 25 October 2019 22:05

Fuck. Yes.

Murphy brought it. It’s so great to see him do something with so much heart, that’s so funny & genuinely touching. The whole cast on point, Snipes had me howling, everyone just crushing it. Send up thankyous to Rudy Ray Moore for living the life that made this great biopic possible. Goddamn I loved this so much

― VegemiteGrrl, Monday, 11 November 2019 01:59

It took me a while to realize Wesley Snipes was his co-star, so unrecognizable was he.

#18

It's not that Snipes doesn't look like Snipes; it's that we're not accustomed to seeing him act, let alone be delightful.

Nah, he's been solid to excellent in many films: Jungle Fever, White Man Can't Jump, To Wong Foo, One Night Stand....

Yes, but the most recent of those was 22 years before this.

Been hoping Hollywood would give Snipes a clean slate for a long time. Extremely entertaining actor.

Nah, he's been solid to excellent in many films: Jungle Fever, White Man Can't Jump, To Wong Foo, One Night Stand....

― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn),Thursday, April 16, 2020 7:22 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

demolition man erasure! for shame!

apollo 11 was fantastic. beautiful movie.

i watched dolemite is my name on the plane and it was a very good plane movie. did not vote for it.

I think I tossed it a vote near the end of my ballot.

Snipes has been great in everything he's been in!

apollo 11 was stunning. Dan S otm re the melancholic tinge of an unrealized future suggested by the footage

https://i.imgur.com/BLq4u3b.jpg

23. Pájaros de verano [Birds Of Passage]
d: Ciro Guerra, Cristina Gallego w: Maria Camila Arias, Jacques Toulemonde
CO 2018 Super 35
161 points, 6 votes

ok now this one i did vote for last year, it's good

Fell outside last year at #58 with 61 points and 2 votes. Would be #16 with combined votes

birds of passage was cool tho I think I preferred guerra’s Embrace of the Serpent - this may have been the film I was most tired during so I think I was a little impatient with some of the more inevitable genre story turns. There are certainly enough things that make it atypical, and it’s well done.

― wins, Saturday, 3 November 2018 14:51

I liked Birds of Passage well enough, but it's no Embrace of the Serpent, and I was sympathetic to Mike D'Angelo's complaint: "Standard-issue drug-war melodrama, featuring not one but two Hotheaded Impulsive Johnny-Boy-Style Sidekicks Who Ruin Everything."

― Dr Morbius, Thursday, 28 March 2019 02:42

top ten film

I liked Embrace of the Serpent, thought that one was more standard issue.

I'm excited to get to the part of the rollout where everyone is shocked, shocked that films more people have seen get more votes than films fewer people have seen

Other people’s reactions to this make me think I def need to watch it again in a non-“midnight after a busy day of festival viewing” context

with morbs on this one

I can't remember if this came up at any point, but did you ever consider carrying over votes year-to-year Pazz & Jop style? They had one technicality I can't remember, but it eliminates some arbitrary calendar issues. It also creates extra work...

at sundance 2019, i saw my #1 movie instead of this. still need to see it.

Seen it, voted for it - Hustlers, Last Black Man in SF, Wild Pear Tree, One Cut of the Dead, Monos, Apollo 11, Birds of Passion
Seen it, didn't like it - Art of Self Defense, Greener Grass, Wick 3
Seen it, liked it - Bacurau, Booksmart
Didn't see it but on deck to watch in the next month or two - Birth of the Cool, Our Time, Climax, Peterloo, Waves, Diamantino, Bait, Image Book, Dolemite Is My Name
mmmmmmmmmaybe gonna try sooner or later - Dragged Across Concrete, Joker, A Hidden Life, An Elephant Sitting Still, 3 Faces
Not gonna do it - Diego Maradona, Rocketman

I can't remember if this came up at any point, but did you ever consider carrying over votes year-to-year Pazz & Jop style? They had one technicality I can't remember, but it eliminates some arbitrary calendar issues. It also creates extra work...

Well, that's why I'm doing the extra work this year :) and giving best-of-both-worlds results - I think it might be worth eradicating the territorial / festival rollout issues. Was considering switching to the combined vote as main result and year-specific as a footnote next time, but it's very unlikely to be a factor for 2020 releases (and who knows if exhibition will survive at all).

rep cinemas will survive, in cities I can't afford to live in

xxp unless its something specific like you're a bitter ac milan or juventus fan, maradona doc is great & engaging & worth your/everyones time

https://i.imgur.com/qVaAXvJ.jpg

22. Ad Astra
d: James Gray w: James Gray, Ethan Gross
US 2019 35mm & digital infrared
175 points, 8 votes

Saw it this afternoon and I was sadly unimpressed. Brad Pitt's ok and there's some decent space spectacle and a few dark laughs, but it's portentous in the extreme (thankfully dialogue is relatively scant, but I thought both it and Pitt's voiceover border on cringe- and/or laugh-worthy at times) and the whole thing is so utterly unsurprising/unadventurous, in terms of ideas, plot or the emotional side of things. I liked both Gravity and Sunshine, and thought this bears a lot of similarities to and/or took cues from both, without really doing anything different enough for me. Not terrible, but not great either.

― brain (krakow), Friday, 20 September 2019 16:52 (six months ago) link

I watched it, loved it. Loved the way it just dives headfirst into banality.

― Frederik B, Friday, 20 September 2019 16:56

I liked this a lot and look forward to seeing it again, but a lot like Z it felt relatively muted to me on first watch. Just like Z I found myself wanting it to go just a bit further *out there* (funny thing to think during a movie that ends literally at Neptune). The music was good but nothing quite as effective as the Ravel in Z.

Perhaps unfair to compare them since I feel so strongly about the prior film, but I think I actually enjoyed this more than Z after the first watch. I will see this again with my aging father (lol) who is a sci fi nut and hopefully untangle my feelings a bit more.

― ryan, Friday, 20 September 2019 22:25

Space travel: it’s just an elaborate form of therapy where you learn how to process your feelings about dad

― latebloomer, Sunday, 22 September 2019 02:43 (six months ago) link

“Just open up a little, dude. Enjoy some coffee, talk to your wife.” Ok, great. Why did we have to go to fucking space to learn this?

What a bunch of bourgeois horse manure. Urgh.

Very pretty movie though

― latebloomer, Sunday, 22 September 2019 03:08

My bad on the above Uranus calculation -- for some reason, even watching the film, I kept thinking TLJ's character was stuck there and not Neptune. There's probably something insidiously Freudian going on with my memory.

― mh, Wednesday, 25 September 2019 16:31

James Gray's "inward-looking" sci-fi film AD ASTRA starring Brad Pitt

some very strange takes there

why not make it in space?

tuomas-esque "id have preferred if they had done this" oh cool congrats

it was not a very good movie, effects/action aside

https://i.imgur.com/PRIwVom.jpg

21. High Flying Bird
d: Steven Soderbergh w: Tarell Alvin McCraney
US 2019 iPhone 8
177 points, 8 votes

Labor drama that skips the basketball? Not *that* pop.

― Dr Morbius, Wednesday, 17 April 2019 14:07

Looooooove High Flying Bird. iPhone populism 4ever!

― Frederik B, Wednesday, 17 April 2019 14:24

Is the work of Steven Soderbergh the most overrated thing ever?

A movie that is quietly loud, still with me.

i liked it, but i would very likely not have done so if it *hadnt* had such good effects and action

if it had been brad moping around idk williamsburg to a whimsical soundtrack worrying about spending Thanksgiving with his korean war vet dad, yeah sure thats a movie doesnt need making again

xps

but throwing him to the depths of the galaxy, for no reason, and taking that part seriously enough to nake it a decent genre effort?

sure I'll watch that

what abt brad moping around Colonial Williamsburg™

Never heard of this soderburgh film

is this the first of my votes to place? maybe.

really gripping film, i love the way it captured how much of the fun in following the modern nba comes from the off-court interpersonal drama. andre holland should get the roles that young denzel would've gotten

the labor issues were a compelling through-line in here, but the idea that nba players can bypass the owners/organization by going straight to netflix is pretty lol.

He was only a year out, all entertainment is straight to Zoom now

Loved the script.

xp yeah but did you try to watch that horse tourney? yeesh

Of the iPhone movies I've seen, I'd rank 'em Tangerine > High Flying Birds >> Unsane - it's especially satisfying to see how Peter Andrews went for completely different effects on his two b2b productions. The tension, intimacy, and subjectivity of Unsane replaced by stillness and a lack of affect that almost reads as mannered on High Flying. My strongest memory of it is the setup of a diner-counter conversation with the phone just propped against a plate or cup.

Loved the script.

― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn),Thursday, April 16, 2020 2:10 PM (fourteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah, the dialogue was great, even/especially the over-the-top stuff they gave bill duke

André Holland is such a lovely camera subject.

idc about space movies but la flor's most tedious hour was more engaging than this

― devvvine,Sunday, 6 October 2019 23:48 (six months ago) bookmarkflaglink

stand by my ad astra take

https://i.imgur.com/Bub5UjU.jpg

20. 地球最后的夜晚; [Long Day's Journey Into Night]
w/d: Bi Gan
CN/FR 2018 flat & stereoscopic digital
180 points, 7 votes

Long Day's Journey into Night is quite somethin'. The "dream" half is more lucid than the "real" one. Like Frederik, I too may prefer Bi Gan's debut.

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Wednesday, 24 April 2019 11:31

Long Day's Journey into Night is fuckin' ponderous... Lincoln Center audience gave a helpless laugh of mystification at the cut to end credits, then stood in the lobby reading the Times review placard for help.

― 2NUguys, Monday, 29 April 2019 00:32

voted for this last year, glad to see it place

liked this I think as much as Kaili Blues. wish I had been able to see it in 3D

I really liked the aesthetic of it, where nothing is pinned down, every conversation drifts, and every scene feels like it’s just half-remembered. The second dream half was beautiful even without 3D

The first half is the worst movie of 2019. The second half is pretty good/intriguing/promising. A failure but a good one

Very high on my list, gorgeous flick

He mostly just needs a real screenwriter

Couldn't quite get a handle on what it wnated to do, but what a film to drift to in that dark room!

I voted for it about mid-ballot almost entirely on the basis of technical ingenuity. Even before the miraculous second part, the sense of place is so sharp.

He mostly just needs a real screenwriter

― when I come out, can you introduce me as Jagger (imago),Thursday, 16 April 2020 bookmarkflaglink

To strangle any remaining life out of it?

https://i.imgur.com/SO9HHih.jpg

19. 江湖儿女 [Ash Is Purest White]
w/d: Jia Zhangke
CN 2018 DV-cam, digital, film
195 points, 8 votes, 1 #1

Placed at #48 in 2018 with 77 points from 3 votes. Would be #12 with combined votes.

I thought the first act in Ash Is Purest White was almost perfect, not so much the second and third ones - but still immensely enjoyed it overall.

― calzino, Friday, 31 May 2019 10:14

Strong start to our top 20.

now that this is settled, someone should try to figure out which is the warmest color

this was the film I had at #1

lol

Jia's on such a streak that eventually one film is lesser. I prefer MMD but AIPW benefited from a re-watch and it made my ballot.

i mean that's a pretty trite comment but i'm hesitant to unpack its celebration/critique of historical 'western' cinema (itself unpackable into us, french traditions) juxtaposed with the urgency of contemporary arabic-language film because these cloddish hands would quite crush the flowers of godard's poetry, or something

― when I come out, can you introduce me as Jagger (imago),Thursday, April 16, 2020 6:26 AM (nine hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

the emerging presumably fictional storyline about the sheikh of dofa and his philosopher brother is quite the development

― when I come out, can you introduce me as Jagger (imago),Thursday, April 16, 2020 6:28 AM (nine hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I don't think The Image Book celebrates Western cinema at all, I think it's a brutally bitter indictment and condemnation of an art form that has failed to make the world a better, more enlightened place--quite the opposite, as Godard juxtaposes the poses and looks and moves of old villains and modern terrorists. The Image Book says that all this has done is influence the aesthetics, not the actions, of imperialism and its subjects. the only hopeful note in the whole movie is the very end, when he speaks of hope as a "necessary utopia," and he's right. it is not about Faust but Sisyphus

I liked what Jia said about the filming of Ash Is Purest White: “I actually used six different types of cameras, starting from the mini-DV to the HD-DV to 16mm, 35mm, 4K, and all the way to 5 and 6K, also including film stock that I also used in certain parts of the film”

and Amy Taubin’s comment: “The other amazing aspect of the film is that Jia gives us a history of image capture in his films. Working for the first time with cinematographer Eric Gautier, he goes from DV to Digibeta to HD video to 35mm to the high-end Red camera, and yet the changes in the image are never notable for themselves but become the means to show the transformation of his filmmaking and of China itself”

The second film on the countdown that I've actually seen! My first Jia Zhangke; I will be seeking out more.

Tao Zhao’s performance was the one that moved me the most of any that I saw last year

Zhao Tao rather

another good film i voted for last year. fantastic use of ymca

many xp

didn’t think Birds of Passage was a “standard-issue drug war melodrama”, it was as much about the upending of a culture. and although it didn’t have the psychedelic black and white look of Embrace of the Serpent, the film-making was just as beautiful

I don't know what made it standard issue! It looked at a little known indigenous culture with curiosity; the drug film tropes accentuated the oddness.

(was quoting morbs’ quote of another critic)

agree with your point Alfred

I had

Ad Astra #6
High Flying Bird #12
Ash Is Purest White #15

both halves of Long Day's Journey bored me

if only it had had a dumb moon buggy chase

https://i.imgur.com/Ae6boek.jpg

18. Atlantique [Atlantics]
d: Mati Diop w: Mati Diop, Olivier Demangel
FR/SN 2019 digital
200 points, 9 votes

Saw and liked Mati Diop's Atlantics, which is an absorbing first feature -- plot and vibewise, pitched about halfway between the sensibilities of Val lewton and Jordan Peele. It looks great, shot by Alain Guiraudie veteran Claire Mathon.

I'm not sure the supernatural mechanics make inner "sense" but I guess they don't have to.

― Dr Morbius, Wednesday, 27 November 2019 16:46

another one on my list

Nick Davis otm:

Despite presenting itself so matter-of-factly, the opening long shot is, like almost everything else in Atlantics, at least three things at once: an aesthetic coup, a political claim, and a bold gesture of refusal.

in my top fifteen

lower end of my list, more than striking enough to earn it’s place

didn't vote for it; needed moon buggy chase

keep meaning to watch the short

shame that the netflix acquisition seemed to bury its release somewhat

loved this film

thought Mathon’s cinematography and visual effects and Fatima Al Qadiri’s score were perfect for the haunted mood of Atlantics

https://i.imgur.com/m0b4HMI.jpg

17. Us
w/d: Jordan Peele
US 2019 digital
213 points, 10 votes

It's not bad. Lupita Nyong'o becomes a star. The ending is illogical.

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Wednesday, 20 March 2019 10:18

ooh illogical

― BradNelson, Wednesday, 20 March 2019 12:42

US by jordan peele

not me, us

unpopularly think this movie is brilliant and better than get out

:)

really liked this film too. quality top 20 so far

heidecker underused

unpopularly think this movie is brilliant and better than get out

Jordan Peele's debut feature as writer/director came #2 in the 2018 poll.

I liked the setup better than the payoff, but I'm already starting to think I underestimated it. Lupita Nyong'o is fantastic.

voted for this. tried to bite off more than it could chew, and alluded to themes without full follow through (revenge of an exploited underclass, etc.), but there were plenty of fantastic moments and the first half was genuinely scary despite knowing the whole deal from the trailers.

im also all for any piece of art that recognizes 'i got 5 on it' as the all-time classic it is.

Still bringin' satin for them drawers.

going way back, I haven't seen Bacurau yet but I loved Aquarius so I’m looking forward to watching it

Diamantino was lovely

https://i.imgur.com/JL16jI2.jpg

16. Dolor y gloria [Pain And Glory]
w/d: Pedro Almodovar
ES 2019 digital 3.4K
215 points, 9 votes

Really liked it. Circuitous and laconic and reflective. Not the sort of career spanning, packed with references to prior films sort of movie I was expecting, but a very good Almodóvar movie, probably his best since Broken Embraces in 2009.

This is pedantic but the ending doesn't borrow from Taste of Cherry - that would be like if the final dolly back to reveal the movie set also revealed Almodóvar himself at work, coaching Banderas. Kiarostami's appearance at the end of Taste of Cherry, where we see them making the movie we've just watched, is different than this more common film-within-a-film thing going on here.

It's nice to have another Almodóvar movie where he just sort of takes his time and it's not plot beat after plot beat. Oddly, in this way it reminded me most of I'm So Excited!!, which isn't really good otherwise.

― flappy bird, Sunday, 20 October 2019 22:28

Puta Madre! The Pedro Almodovar Poll

my favorite Almodóvar film

My favourite for a long time. flappy bird summarised it well

Banderas was fantastic, the scene with his ex lover was really something

for some reason I resisted this, despite watching it twice. Banderas was fabulous, and I still don't think he gets credit for his ironic, self-aware performance despite the Oscar nod, in part because ironic, self-aware performances at this comedic level don't often get nominated.

My resistance stems from directors becoming softies about their own work.

It amazed me that this film, despite Miami as the city where Aldomovar gained his domestic reputation in the mid eighties, caused several old biddies in the audience to get up and leave after the kiss between Banderas and his former lover.

uhhhh have you SEEN other Almodovar films in Miami?

Banderas' Oscar nomination was my favorite of the batch btw

I resisted it too, in sympathy w/ Mike D'Angelo's take: More glory than pain, ie "Ain't I great?"

I’ve always wondered what Almodóvar was saying with his films, feels like this film makes it clear

I was very amused by the actress playing his old mother, given that she aged from being Penelope Cruz (ok, the last shot got him off the hook there)

anyway, #11-20 shaping up much worse than #21-30

I liked 21-30 but no

is joker gonna win

the top three in order have never been easier to predict! good thing they're all good to great eh

joker, joker, and little women

good thing you've got 1/3 of the electorate who will vote for bathwater

At least bathwater is warm, unlike certain posters

between 21-30 and 11-20 (so far) a lot of my favorite films have been accounted for. I love The Wild Pear Tree, The Image Book, Monos, and Birds of Passage, but Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Ash Is Purest White, Atlantique, Us and Pain and Glory are easily as great

i'm as cool as the other side of the pillow

hotcha

films I still want to see place - The Irishman, The Lighthouse, Once Upon a Time..., Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Transit, High Life

I’m sure Parasite will show up and I’m guessing Midsommar will, I loved both

wish more people had seen Synonyms, Little Joe, Honeyland

don’t want to even invoke The Souvenir, but I guess it will be high on this list

I’m pretty sure at this point that my #1 is one of those that finished outside the top 50 because someone didn’t get a ballot in but if it’s still to come I’ll be delighted

https://i.imgur.com/NNeJQC1.jpg

15. The Beach Bum
w/d: Harmony Korine
US 2019 35mm
221 points, 9 votes, 1 #1

No idea if this purports to some larger comment on the actual world--the ending suggests a possible Trump film, though I do tend to find such connections where none exist--but mildly diverting, with a weird soundtrack (yacht-rock primer plus...the one Cure song I love).

― clemenza, Sunday, 21 April 2019 03:11

this seems to be genuinely offending our patrons, but otoh one of the ushers reported to me that an old lady emerged from it yesterday and announced to the lobby "i wish i was him!!" lol

i enjoyed it, didn't seem to want to waste my time

― difficult listening hour, Tuesday, 21 May 2019 03:40

this was great. Korine has such a fantastic eye, really I will just watch his films for the parade of funny/surprising imagery. Was also interesting that the film doesn't shy away from the trail of destruction anyone living like this would leave behind them, and is more about this fine line he toes between being lovably entertaining and a destructive narcissist

― Οὖτις, Monday, 1 July 2019 16:20

saw it tonight, thought we were gonna pass out laughing during the Captain Wack sequence

― Noodle Vague, Thursday, 7 November 2019 22:07

THE BEACH BUM by Harmony Korine starring Matthew McConaughey

one of the most amazing top 20s ever, ruined

I love everything about this movie except Matthew McConaughey

Really should have been a character actor 15-25 years his senior or something

its like a spring break party stretched out over a whole life

in other words, spring break forever

lol

Really should have been a character actor 15-25 years his senior or something

that's the thing about these character actors, they look 15-25 years his senior but he acts the saaame age

sorry thought this film was gross

lol

will give this another chance setting aside my expectations

Isla fisher dying like 30 min into the movie is so fucking funny

wish more people had seen Synonyms, Little Joe, Honeyland

― Dan S, Friday, April 17, 2020 10:46 AM

https://i.imgur.com/yTylKD0.jpg

14. Медена земја [Honeyland]
d: Tamara Kotevska, Ljubomir Stefanov (doco)
MK 2019 digital
228 points, 9 votes

saw Honeyland today, it is really good

― Dan S, Monday, 10 February 2020 00:08

The Almodovar has its moments (especially in the couple of convos with his elderly mother). Us was the last item on my ballot.

Honeyland was very good. iirc I gave it a watch while the fires across the Amazon were all over the news and that added to the melancholia.

Isla fisher dying like 30 min into the movie is so fucking funny

was this sarcasm?

Honeyland was fine, didn't vote for it

This was good. Made the lower end of my ballot.

Matthew McConaughey kicking that random tuba player off the dock >> all of The Image Book

And that's an FP

Felt a lot of people thought the movie was celebrating Moondog and hated it because of that. Its got an ironic distance to the character

guess who’s on the moon

to the haters

One day I will swallow up the world, and when I do, I hope you all perish violently

― johnny crunch,Sunday, July 14, 2019 12:28 PM (nine months ago) bookmarkflaglink

that was a good line

https://i.imgur.com/U5XfZ0z.jpg

when we saw the preview for this, someone yelled out "too soon!"

13 spot bodes well for joke placement

R: Jojo Rabbit L: Lord Sotosyn.

lol Hitler so random XD

I like waititi’s first few but... this is not a good film lads

https://i.imgur.com/aqXEmif.gif

XD

Non-voters like me have no right to complain, but still, this better be a joke post.

https://i.imgur.com/rHtf0hU.jpg

13. Transit
d: Christian Petzold s: Christian Petzold a: Anna Seghers
DE 2019 digital
237 points, 10 votes

I'm lukewarm on Petzold generally.

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Wednesday, 4 December 2019 20:49

Need to watch Transit again; I've never been mad about Petzold.

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Wednesday, 11 December 2019 17:59

I just saw Transit again, almost a year to the day of my first screening. My heart was in my throat. How quickly the times line up with our aesthetic preferences.

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Saturday, 11 January 2020 14:31

lol

I missed this at the film fest, heard good things

Isla fisher dying like 30 min into the movie is so fucking funny
was this sarcasm?

― clap for content-providers (Noodle Vague), Friday, April 17, 2020 5:35 AM (eight hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

No it was one of the biggest laughs in the movie for me. Just killing off a 'major' character in such an offhand, quick way relatively early in but not that early in-- this isn't done enough, and it's usually not for comedic effect (obvious example is Psycho but also the criminal hippie husband in Atlantic City).

Transit is amazing.

film i most regret not managing to see yet

Jojo Rabbit was like #25 on my ballot

tbh not ruling out an appearance later, ilx is not to be trusted and this sic fuck thinks crime is funny

https://i.imgur.com/aqXEmif.gif

My #1 of 2020 is going to be the 39th anniversary reissue of Arthur.

lol thanks sic

cryptosicko's unfiled ballot:

https://i.imgur.com/uWPyCnq.jpg

On Cinema is TV. This thread is about movies. Let's stick to movies.

lol I am watching that special now (instead of bacurau as I’d planned)

Transit my #4

you couldn't pay me to watch some of the shit u guys voted for

On Cinema is TV. This thread is about movies. Let's stick to movies.

sic you gotta put TRTs in the posts next year, it's all we ever want to talk about

― don't mock my smock or i'll clean your clock (silby), Friday, June 28, 2019 9:03 AM

https://i.imgur.com/Q42JUpL.jpg

12. High Life
d: Claire Denis w: Claire Denis, Jean-Pol Fargeau, Nick Laird, Andrew Litvack, Zadie Smith, Geoff Cox
FR/DE/PL/UK 2018 digital & Super 16
265 points, 13 votes

JIZZ

IN

SPAAAAAACE

― bizarro gazzara, Monday, 10 September 2018 13:10

Apparently about 1/4 of the audience walked out. Lots of "worst movie ever" tweets. Obviously, I'm stoked.

― Simon H., Monday, 10 September 2018 13:19

wondering if i can justify going to paris in nov just to see this

― devvvine, Monday, 10 September 2018 13:36

"The Fuckbox" is not a spoiler.

― Dr Morbius, Friday, 29 March 2019 16:18

Finally got around to this, thought it was ok but had a very hard time not switching it off during juliette binoche's scene in the dildo box, one of the silliest sex scenes this side of The Room

― One Eye Open, Thursday, 24 October 2019 16:22

Extremely long-term anticipation thread for Claire Denis, Zadie Smith and Olafur Eliasson's Sci-Fi film, High Life

sometimes i feel like i'm floating through space in a fuckbox of my own making

this ruled btw

DILDO CHAMBER

#iconic

one of Denis' worst for sure

would way sooner rewatch this than Let the Sunshine In (though they could almost swap titles)

the standing of this has lessened for me after having to bail on a rewatch the other week; the first hour taken on its own is pretty shaky. was still strong enough on first viewing to make my top ten

had to bail because of external circumstances, not the film

this was better than i expected but i didn't love it

The only thing I really liked about this were the clunky exterior shots of the ship.

i enjoyed denis just saying 'idc' when people asked about the science not making sense

yeah even Danny Boyle's done a better doomed-space-mission movie! if you could combine that movie's first hour with this movie's second you'd have quite a good movie. boyle's lot get to the other ship and find a load of dogs instead of space zombie etc etc

ooh, another FP

(haven't seen High Life yet)

it is literally the only Boyle movie i'll at all rep for tbf

i enjoyed denis just saying 'idc' when people asked about the science not making sense

yes!

xp one too many, sorry, those are the rules

thought this film was interesting and challenging, and was the better of the two ‘parent and child in space’ films on this list

https://i.imgur.com/57scJSz.jpg

11. The Souvenir
w/d: Joanna Hogg
UK 2019 Super 16
273 points, 11 votes, 2 #1s

There's just something about the fact that the mother is played by Tilda Swinton and the daughter is played by Tilda Swinton's daughter that gets my back up. I know we are so used to this horrendous nepotism in the UK, maybe elsewhere, that we become inured to it and I also know that there exist think-pieces about how it's all perfectly normal and makes sense within the world she's portraying etc. but that makes it worse. She's a decent filmmaker with a singular vision who's made one good film so far (Archipelago) and she's being given huge leeway because she is fucking posh!

― jed_, Thursday, 6 June 2019 22:14

exhibition was pretty good too

― imago, Thursday, 6 June 2019 22:15

best I've seen this year

and this is how the early '80s looked

― Dr Morbius, Wednesday, 12 June 2019 02:19

Was really enjoying the bougie dialogue and the odd couple relationship but fell asleep. I presume her character wasn't naive enough to take the old "had a bit of an accident" excuse when she sees the gammy arm with needle tracks! Definitely going watch it again from the start.

― calzino, Friday, 9 August 2019 12:51

this was very exciting for an hour but the second half is significantly less interesting. my showing was preceded by an interview with JH in which she complained that her films are always judged through the prism of class but that class was "something she just wasn't very interested in" (!) i felt like shouting out "easy for you to say!"

Tom Burke is amazing in this. he really knows how to smoke on camera.

― jed_, Sunday, 1 September 2019 21:54

Joanna Hogg, painterly, modernist Brit filmmaker utilizing static frames, uneasy vibes

liked didn't end up on my ballot

xxxpost yes, and it has Three Stacks

My #1.

this was a misstep for hogg imo and the fact there's an apparent sequel in the works is a sign of further missteps to come

was enjoying it at first but there was just no real growth, and a coming-of-age film with no growth is just an age film

enjoyed hogg's films previously but was mostly disappointed by this one, it's a familiar story and i didn't feel compelled to watch it play out

the souvenir II: day of soldado

the further i got from it the more it's use of an addict's death as a stepping stone in an artists creative development left a bad taste in my mouth

also my #1!

devvine that is a v strange reading

I enjoyed the running gag of Souvenir that the lead character’s films were very bad

The people who love this film, both here and elsewhere, seem to really love it, but I found it so flat and unengaging that I bailed after 30 mins.

the further i got from it the more it's use of an addict's death as a stepping stone in an artists creative development left a bad taste in my mouth

― devvvine, Friday, April 17, 2020

I'm not following you, or, rather, if you mean what I think you mean my response is...so?

I may be wrong, though.

https://i.imgur.com/1MQXXGF.jpg

10. Marriage Story
w/d: Noah Baumbach
US 2019 Super 35
295 points, 13 votes

i kinda hate Baumbach's mannered fatuous style but i suppose i'll give this a try based on the strength of the casting.

― ulysses, Friday, 29 November 2019 20:55

I don't like Baumbach's film as a whole very much, but at least he seems to hate the father figure. The Squid and the Whale seemed a full on attack on the husband, and The Meyerowitz Stories kinda followed it up years later. I don't really get the argument, except that it's true his male characters often are too narcissistic to grow and reflect on what they've done.

― Frederik B, Friday, 29 November 2019 22:39

Awful

― flappy bird, Monday, 9 December 2019 19:10

I am ready for movies to find a different way of signaling that characters are smart & talented in a creative field than having them get a macarthur grant.

― One Eye Open, Monday, 30 December 2019 16:19

Noah Baumbach's Marriage Story

a coming-of-age film with no growth sounds awesome

i.e. Ingmar Bergman films

Loved Transit - reckon Petzold has made haf a dozen really great films and is kinda underrated in Anglo cinema discourse.

Hogg's Souvenir was fine on its own but its probably her worst film when I got to finally watch her earlier ones for the first time shortly after. The navel-gazing into her own milieu got a bit too cozy, so I placed it down the ballot.

started the beach bum but it was just too goofy. i enjoyed spring breakers so maybe i just wasn't in the mood.

saw the souvenir and mostly did not care for it, though i loved the visual look of it

The Souvenir to me vividly captured a kind of inglorious relationship that's perplexing to observe.

In other words I think it worked for me because the couple wasn't "relatable."

I've not known a couple, hetero or homo, whose relationship doesn't incarnate a strangeness I will never comprehend.

Did anyone else not figure out he was a smack addict until Richard Ayoade's character said it? I just thought he was ultra louche!

I loved this a lot more than Exhibition which seemed like a study of a disintegrating realationship between two self absorbed London art twats. I loved the heart and pathos of The Souvenir

I've not known a couple, hetero or homo, whose relationship doesn't incarnate a strangeness I will never comprehend.

― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, April 18, 2020 6:08 AM (seven minutes ago)

https://i.imgur.com/UxWGTzf.jpg

9. The Lighthouse
d: Robert Eggers w: Max Eggers, Robert Eggers
CA 2019 35mm b&w
339 points, 12 votes, 2 #1s

Anyway, saw it last night, still digesting it a bit. A striking film certainly on that technical front alone, pretty much every shot is damn near immaculate; the Movietone ratio worked really well. Pattinson and Dafoe go at it but more in a slow burn than explosive way; if anything Dafoe's most self-consciously 'actorly' moment is clearly scripted that way and is hilariously responded to in context. It's often a very funny film but in the way that Samuel Beckett can be funny, if you like. There are 'big' moments but they all feel earned and I even had an actual jump scare moment.

In terms of whether it's 'fantasy horror' or not -- giving away nothing, it's very clearly psychological horror but could be something else. Weird Tales and Lovecraft, sure I guess, but more in the 'New England can be a fucked up landscape' sense (which given The Witch makes sense). zchrys's "a straight psychodrama about two dudes going nuts on a tiny island" wish upthread is pretty much all you need to know going in.

Music often excellent, pacing works incredibly well, being an actual lighthouse keeper in the 19th century at that place would have driven me goddamn crazy.

― Ned Raggett, Friday, October 25, 2019 2:53 AM

so when a man gaslights another man I guess it's called lighthousing him

― the girl from spirea x (f. hazel), Thursday, October 31, 2019 4:53 PM

Masterpiece imo. what could've been gimmicky cinematography is completely necessary. for once, form enhances content. You could take a still of this and a still from the Cohen restoration of The Old Dark House, or Dreyer's Joan of Arc, and it would look like the same movie. The only thing separating it is the modern sound equipment. Stunning sound design also, that fuzzed out scream when he finally touches the light was incredible. And the foghorn itself. But also, there are phenomenally executed tracking shots and some crucial camera moves during their dinners. I wasn't that hot on The Witch so this really surprised me.

― flappy bird, Friday, November 1, 2019 7:21 AM

This movie about two men drinking and masturbating in a lighthouse does NOT pass the Bechdel Test

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Sunday, November 3, 2019 4:09 PM

arr it be The Lighthouse (Eggers, 2019) - Pattinson, Dafoe, sea shanties

To embrace The Souvenir, you gotta accept Honor Swinton Byrne's unpretentious, modest, alert, wary presence; she's like an Austen heroine wising up before our eyes.

lol

i had a lot of fun watching the lighthouse but in retrospect it wasn't as great as i hoped it would be. i believe i voted for it though.

Some people dismissed Lighthouse as being nothing more than an audio/visual design showcase but God I'd be happy to see something like that in a theater now.

bonus title card:

https://i.imgur.com/1OoEFiO.jpg

Yet to see The Lighthouse, but if Eggers ouvre remains period films with slowly growing dread, leading to his characters finally cracking, that's something new.

― Sanpaku, Tuesday, December 24, 2019 10:19 AM

... and also timely. We're all watching the same news of the collapsing world, and some days its all I can do to stop myself screaming naked down the street. We're surrounded by others pacified with political propaganda, like having credulous neighbors in Jonestown (now there's a film I'd love to see a docu-psychological horror). A horror cinema of this sense of glacially encroaching dread, that its all falling apart and we're doubtless doomed, but which focuses on the psychological tension of the struggle to stay presentable... that's something I can identify with.

I liked The Witch quite a lot. I think its stature will only grow.

― Sanpaku, Tuesday, December 24, 2019 10:30 AM

The Lighthouse is just a pretty, empty lark tbf

I loved that scene that the second image is from

catching up--i voted for high life. was truly disturbing and the fuckbox scene was instantly legendary, and wound up being a nice peek into the mind of the binoche character, who was at least as messed-up as 99% of the prisoners on that godforsaken ship.

irl lol at whiney's lighthouse quote

Yeah it's a classic

The Lighthouse wd go in the Andrew Sarris category Less Than Meets the Eye

Marriage Story was a good popcorn look-at-the silly-rich hets movie, had it #14 I think

https://i.imgur.com/wjhNKsK.jpg

8. Midsommar
w/d: Ari Aster
SE 2019 digital 4K
345 points, 12 votes, 2 #1s

d'oh

https://i.imgur.com/wjhNKsK.jpg

Hm. Okay, hopefully non-spoilery thoughts: Aster's metier, clearly, is trauma and survivorhood. That's what he explores, consistently. The question is how he constructs the vehicle. In this case I would add there's a definite sense being raised of *how* trauma/survivorhood is understood and interpreted not merely by the survivor but those around the survivor, especially, in this case, beyond family as understood, as opposed to Hereditary's clear internal focus on family. I think this film will be one to reflect on with time, I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it, and I look forward to others' thoughts. Beyond that: beautifully shot (the all-encompassing/oppressive sense of light and its rare muting or absence is handled extremely carefully), some actual funny moments, truly striking diagetic (mostly) Haxan Cloak score. Will say that how the scenes are stacked to show all sorts of activity going on that is never fully explained (and doesn't need to be explained) is one of the film's strong points. Would add that this is clearly a case where if you know your horror tropes you kinda know where it's all going, which may or may not frustrate you -- this isn't Wicker Man redux, say, but it's a film that knows its heritage. Final note: it's LONG. Give into a pee break if you think you need it.

― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, 3 July 2019 06:04

Also, now that I’ve had a night to sleep on it — sound design is pretty crucial in this film. Grief and its aftereffects are portrayed visually (natch) but the underscoring of how someone can *hear* differently in its throes is something that really stands out to me all the more. Like it is an aural representation of shock and what it means to work through it — things are murky, unclear, you feel disoriented, sudden memories overwhelm you and your senses don’t ‘work.’ Again, it’s there visually to a degree but the sound design really underscores it, and arguably has both vivid moments of sudden actualization in the narrative, making itself manifest and then part of a greater whole, leading to an ending where it is absolutely central on several levels. This might be one of the strongest such efforts in terms of how grief is portrayed since Twin Peaks season 3, though instead of Lynch’s operatic dream tragedy and confusion via sound, this is somewhere where we are constantly looped back into an internal headspace projected outward. It’s very striking the more I think about it.

"the length does not give me a lot of hope tbh"

An edit or two wouldn't've hurt anything.

― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, 3 July 2019 14:58

Took me a little more thought but I finally put my finger on something that helps me think about the film: two themes, maybe more implied than directly stated, are culpability and conscious guilt. This plays out to the end, but in a way where I’m not entirely sure whether the resultant ambiguity is intentional. This could just be an overread on my part, though.

― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, 3 July 2019 15:19

Also manipulation is more obviously central as well the more I think about this. I was initially treating the cult trappings as just that but the more I think about it the more obvious it is that you have to separate the actual 'trappings' part -- the rituals, the visuals, etc. -- from what a cult is like in any form. This all still feeds into grief as the core. And I'll finally stop for now.

― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, 3 July 2019 15:37

tbh I just want to know how long it takes them to kill the black guy

― DJP, Wednesday, 3 July 2019 13:08

Ari Aster's MIDSOMMAR (2019)

No. What

If this is real this is a serious TOO LOW. My #2. A monster, a joy

This was my number 1. The occult touchstones, the visual spectacle, Florence Pugh, flowers...all of that would have been enough for me, but the exploration of grief is what elevates this above other contemporary horror. I don't have much to add to Ned's comments, except that I thought it showed so well the non-linear caprices of grief - how one can move back and forth between depressive acceptance and manic refutal. Aster's such a nice film geek too - always praising his heroes and writing essays and stuff. I think that excitement really shows in his work.

I really loved this at the cinema but it is from six years ago

i was the other #1 vote for midsommar. so visceral and cathartic. i can't imagine watching it at home unless you can blast the volume.

https://i.imgur.com/rh3q8dW.jpg

Fucksake

lol love the image for midsommar

https://i.imgur.com/Z6g8GmB.jpg

7. Portrait de la jeune fille en feu (Portrait Of A Lady On Fire)
w/d: Céline Sciamma
FR 2019 digital 4K
351 points, 12 votes, 1 #1

Sciamma's Portrait of a Lady on Fire finds the queerness in the conventional 18 th century setting (relationship between tutor/governess/artist and pupil).

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Monday, 30 December 2019 19:59

portrait of a lady on fire: now that’s a fuckin movie

― BradNelson, Wednesday, February 19, 2020

*morbs voice* it's good but that's a 2020 movie

each of the last three films have visual qualities that are unique and memorable

two excellent movies that got deserved votes from me, and both movies that get better the more you think about them.

portrait of a man-bear on fire

xxxp though as morbs pointed out it did have a one-week run in 2019 in NY/LA

There are no 2020 movies

I saw this last year and loved it, would have voted for

Now that's too low

now I'm really sure my #1 isn't going to make it

https://i.imgur.com/WIBWF16.jpg

6. Little Women
d: Greta Gerwig s: Greta Gerwig a: Louisa May Alcott
US 2019 35mm
362 points, 14 votes, 1 #1

was there a thread for portrait of a lady on fire? i remember searching for one and coming up empty after watching a few weeks ago.

killer cast, tons of love coming off the screen, no experience with the story prior to now and the out-of-sequence hamburger of a script didn't much help me give a damn about any of these characters
a lot of gerwig trying to have her cake and eat it to with regard to anachronistic takes on the characters outcomes but she's a very good director.

― ulysses, Friday, December 27, 2019 6:08 AM

thanks for the dn Armond

― (bold caucasian eroticism) Simon H., Saturday, December 28, 2019 2:44 AM

Let's have a fangirl freakout over Greta Gerwig's LITTLE WOMEN (Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson, Florence Pugh, Laura Dern, Meryl Streep, Timothée Chalamet)

Little Women is too high

Saoirse Ronan and Florence Pugh should be in every movie

was there a thread for portrait of a lady on fire? i remember searching for one and coming up empty after watching a few weeks ago.

be the change you wish to see in the world

threads are free

a coming-of-age film with no growth sounds awesome

― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson), Friday, April 17, 2020 3:43 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

i.e. Ingmar Bergman films

― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, April 17, 2020 3:47 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

HOLY. SHIT.

do we just toss the last 5 movies up in the air and see what order they land in

didn’t end up voting for this. saw it in a theater with a friend who hated it, and hated the acting. I thought he was being harsh, and we actually had an argument about it. I finally read the book after seeing it and even with anachronistic sensibility, the jumping back and forth in time, and Jo’s desire for an alternate story ending, I was surprised how faithfully this recreated the story

Little Women is too high