Which--or at Least How Many--of Sight and Sound's Top 50 Films Have You Not Seen?

It's up to you whether you want to list them or not--if there's a bunch, a number's probably easier. The ghosts of Pauline Kael, Andrew Sarris, and Andre Bazin are looking over your shoulder, so you've got to be honest.

link?

Here' a link for the list:

http://www.bfi.org.uk/news/50-greatest-films-all-time

I count eight, giving myself credit for Sunrise and Potemkin, both of which I saw ages ago in film class and almost certainly semi-slept through: Mirror, Shoah, Metropolis, Satantango, Journey to Italy, Gertrud, Play Time, Close-Up.

Journey to Italy and Playtime have never really interested me, but I feel duty-bound to see them all now. I have no good explanation as to why I've never seen Metropolis. Just some bad ones.

Singin' In The Rain
Le Mepris
In The Mood For Love
Shoah
Jeanne Dielman
Pierrot Le Fou
Close-Up
Histoire(s) du Cinema
City Lights
Ugetsu Monogatari

All or most of which I'd like to see, but haven't got round to as yet.

Actually I don't really care about In The Mood For Love, and will I honestly ever sit through Shoah? Probably not!

If the answer is less than half, hie yourself to ILF, IMO.

24

36

46

oops: four

25

Journey to italy is the only one i'd never even heard of though.

There are 13 I haven't seen. The most glaring one is 8 1/2 -- I've rented it a few times, but ...

32. The highest-ranked one I haven't seen is Tokyo Story, but I have that out from Netflix now, so I'll see it ... eventually.

Journey to italy is the only one i'd never even heard of though.

Fwiw:

Rossellini's Viaggio in Italia has been distributed in English under many different names, including Journey to Italy, Voyage to Italy, Strangers, The Lonely Woman, Love is the Strongest, and The Greatest Lore.

15 I haven't seen, of which the most egregious is possibly Taxi Driver. I keep meaning to go take it out.

Of the 8 or 10 I haven't watched in their entirety (and, in a few cases, at all), the ones I'm probably least interested in watching are La Dolce Vita and Shoah. The highest ranking of those is Persona.

Mirror, Shoah, Metropolis, Satantango, Journey to Italy, Gertrud, Play Time, Close-Up

LOL, Shoah aside, this is like a list of some of the coolest movies on the list.

is there a version of Shoah available with a Zucker-Abraham-Zucker commentary track?

Or Wet Hot American Summer-style extra farts?

Of the 52, there are only three I don't believe I have in my video library: Seven Samurai, Journey to Italy and Pather Panchali.

(A few are on DVD-R's that may have disc rot by now, tho.)

The movies here that I'd list among my own top favourites are The General, La Règle du jeu, Citizen Kane, and Seven Samurai.

One factor that's affected my own gaps is a thing I've always had about seeing a film for the first time in a theatre. I'm pretty sure that's true of all 42 that I've seen (counting the handful I once saw in class, which was more of an auditorium). I'm not as stringent about this since I bought the big-screen last year, although I'm much more open to seeing documentaries at home for the first time--that doesn't bother me at all--and I'll make an exception if it's something like Welcome to L.A., where I know I'll simply never get the chance to see it anywhere else. As I'm always quick to acknowledge, I'm lucky enough to live in a city where, with a little patience, virtually everything screens sooner or later.

I'm guessing it's a safe assumption that Shoah and Histoire(s) du Cinema are the two least seen from the Top 50.

I thought Shoah was relatively buzzy in the '80s. My guess is that Close-Up and, still, Dielman and Balthazar might be less seen, tho all 3 are on Criterion now, so who knows.

x-post
dunno if that's a safe assumption at all - i mean, weren't they both made for tv (they've def had screenings on uk television)?

my guess is that Gertrud and Satantango are are just as, if not moreso, little-seen

I've seem 20 of these, it'd be 21 but both times I've had to watch The Searchers for class I've walked out of the screening because it bored me so much that it was making me angry

I should add that I can't use theatre-preference as an excuse for the eight I haven't seen--they've all played rep theatres here, some like Metropolis frequently. Either the timing hasn't been right for me, or, as indicated earlier, the interest wasn't there.

I mostly singled out Shoah and Histoire just because of their length; they do require a significant time commitment. I got two or three hours into Shoah once and had to leave. Nothing to do with the film--work-related anxiety/exhaustion at the time.

xpost Too bad it wasn't a silent or you could've done what I used to do to non-canonical silent movies that bored me in class: listen to '90s house through my headphones.

I would put money on Histoire(s) being the least-seen, tho, you're right.

Satantango, yeah--forgot that's another really long one.

But a lot of people wanna tackle that one. Far fewer are, I think, interested in sitting through hours and hours of latter-day Godard.

Speaking of boring films...

That's a funny Searchers story. When I'm bored, i just drift off.

Histoire is a real test because of the non-stop drony narration. I liked it, found myself very moved at times, but I must have caught it when I was in exactly the right frame of mind; I can imagine being a lot less open-minded under different circumstances.

I sad in an almost unheated theater in January in an uncomfortable seat with a blanket I brought wrapped around me to watch Satantango. I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

The only one I haven't seen is Histoire(s) du cinéma, on reserve at the library. I'm pretty sure I've seen the other 49 in a theater at least once, or at least 45 of them.

Feel boredom at Glitter instead.

Two theatrical viewings of Satantango, I'm done. Wouldn't make my top 500. It's good, though.

I liked Werckmeister Harmonies enough that I'm anxious to see Satantango. I'll force myself to wait for a Lightbox showing.

32

Morbs I fucking hate westerns/John Wayne cliche machismo bullshit. Like its not that I find it offensive per se but it's just so corny to me

Have yet to see any Leone though so maybe that'll change shit up

so westerns/cowboy hats = unalloyed machismo? not true at all

Wayne gave a number of rather sensitive performances. Maybe you should see his last one where he (and his character) have terminal cancer.

I think the majority of The Searchers votes are indulgences in tokenism; people who are passionate about Ford have a much wider scatter of favorites.

My default response to westerns is boredom too, but there are definitely exceptions. Among them is The Searchers.

It might be tokenism, but I can safely say the only western that would've even come close to making my ballot is Assault on Precinct 13.

In the shamefully omitted Red River, John Ireland and Monty compare their guns.

http://www.kevinpratt.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/13195770.png

Overrated both as a western and as a gay classic.

Well, the latter at least. Don't have much investment in following hierarchies for the former.

I like Red River less now but as a guy who resisted westerns in the early nineties it was a good gateway

the Stewart-Mann westerns are good entry points too.

Who gives a flying fuck what's overrated and underrated?

"I saw Ride the High Country. I'd love it, but damn, not enough other people do."

Red River as a "gateway Western" makes a good deal of sense if the intention here is to force Stevie to like westerns, tho.

I've not seen half, but since I plan to live to age 84 I'm right on track:

8 1/2, L’Atalante, Late Spring, Au hasard Balthazar, Mirror, L’avventura, Le Mépris, Battleship Potemkin, Ordet, Wong Kar-Wai, Andrei Rublev, Stalker, Shoah, Jeanne Dielman 23 quai du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles, Sátántangó, Journey to Italy, Pather Panchali, Some Like It Hot, Gertrud, Pierrot le fou, Play Time, Close-Up, Histoire(s) du cinéma, La Jetée.

I'd love to be able to see Singin' In The Rain for the first time! The 20 minutes of Persona that make sense are awesome and La Dolce Vita is fun if only because it provided so much pop imagery of Italy. In general this list skews boring/beautiful.

If you want to hasten the aging process, Stalker's the one to see.

Maybe I'm revealing myself as Captain "All I Know About Cinema I Learned From The Canon," but I truly believe the overwhelming majority of the films on this list are way closer to beautiful than boring.

xpost OK, Stalker is a little bit of both.

Great ending, I'll give it that.

I'd love to be able to see Singin' In The Rain for the first time!

So true. For me, this is one of the very worst things about getting older.

A lot of these are beautiful but I mean anyone who actually earnestly thinks La Dole Vita isn't a bloated snoozefest is totally fronting

I did like Stagecoach fwiw

I have never seen Singin' In The Rain! Maybe I should

xp wait until older really kicks in and everything will be new for the second time.

really, I rewatched Solondz's Happiness recently and had forgotten 80% of it.

Did the #51-100 listing appear somewhere? Maybe Lubitsch & Sturges showed up there.

le mépris
jeanne dielman, 23 something something
pierott le fou
histoire(s) du cinéma

I haven't seen Singin' in the Rain yet! TCM has it on the 23rd, will watch.
xposts

Probably won't ever forget Camryn Manheim tearing into that tulip sundae while talking about castrating the rapist doorman.

Or, rather, dismembering him without touching "that."

I'd love to be able to see Singin' In The Rain for the first time!

Yeah, that's def one of the ones I haven't seen that I'm most looking forward to.

Seeing these films in theaters is clearly the way to go -- I should probably be more alert to screenings.

Man this list makes me feel terrible about how much I haven't seen! I've only seen 14 of these.

yeah I blocked out Camryn Manheim as much as possible.

Aren't you two guys in Chicago? What are the rep theatres like there?

I may be wrong, but it seems like a lot of those theaters around here have been more focused on "cult" stuff from the last 20-30 years than the older canon type stuff.

haven't seen 23, don't feel too terrible about it

That's what Toronto's reps used to be like, then they all went out of business in the first half of the 2000s as rental stores ascended, before they started reopening in the past few years as primarily second-run houses. So mostly it's canon-type stuff at the Lightbox now, and documentaries at the Bloor. (xpost)

I love early godard but breathless is not a film I'd recommend to anybody unless they had an interest in film history

some entries on this list just seem like bowing to icons

I may be wrong, but it seems like a lot of those theaters around here have been more focused on "cult" stuff from the last 20-30 years than the older canon type stuff.

Yeah, I think that's fair. The 11:30 AM weekend screenings at the Music Box are often a good bet, though.

Tbh though, I haven't paid attention since my son was born last year, my chances to go see movies in a theater are much less now.

Have not seen 16 of these.

I was also ready to bitch about the fairly poor state of rep screenings here as opposed to some of the other places cited itt, but looking over the list now I see that many of the films on it I have seen (and some I haven't) I either saw for the first time or had the chance to see or rescreen in a theater over the past several years.

i've seen 31. most of the 19 i haven't are "foreign" films, including a number i'm embarassed to admit i've avoided over the years:

8½
Battleship Potemkin
L’Atalante
Late Spring
Au hasard Balthazar
Mirror
L’avventura
Le Mépris
Ordet
Shoah
Tokyo Story
Bicycle Thieves
Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles
The 400 Blows
La Règle du jeu
Journey to Italy
Gertrud
Histoire(s) du cinéma
The Battle of Algiers
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
Ugetsu monogatari

oh man – what I'd give to watch The Rules of the Game or Sunrise for the first time.

I try not to fetishize first screenings of anything, because a lot of my favorite movies were "meh" on first watch.

True but not those two I mentioned.

certainly the case with Tokyo Story though

love a lot of the films people are taking shots at itt. the searchers is fantastic, one of the most visually striking and flat-out entertaining westerns i've ever seen. i prefer bande a part to breathless, but the latter's still pretty damn great. la dolce vita is kind of exhausting, but that's clearly the point, and it's so spectacular, strange and colorful that my attention never wandered.

satantango is a chore though.

I saw Rules of the Game a couple years ago. Good movie, but it didn't wow me or anything.

Just looked at the upcoming screenings at the Siskel Film Center and the Music Box, and now I'm excited to catch Celine and Julie Go Boating in a couple of weeks.

I try not to fetishize first screenings of anything, because a lot of my favorite movies were "meh" on first watch.

This is a good point -- I'm too hardwired to follow surface-level plot/text, and don't get into subtext, context and interesting technique until repeat viewings, though I'm trying to train myself to be a better film-watcher.

I only became comparatively "meh" on Tokyo Story when I saw some of Ozu's other variations and liked them more.

I saw Rules of the Game a couple years ago. Good movie, but it didn't wow me or anything.

Exactly my reaction, I can't see what I'm missing.

I'll take Early Summer over both TS and Late Spring, although I confess to using Wiki to remember which is which.

love a lot of the films people are taking shots at itt

Down low.

satantango is a chore though.

Too slow.

I've had films sneak up me over time, of course, but I do carry around in my head the overwhelming experience of certain first-screenings in my life: Taxi Driver, the two Godfathers back-to-back, the three Apus in a row, Raging Bull, On the Waterfront, Crumb, a few others.

Late Spring is my pick, along with its reboot An Autumn Afternoon. Equinox Flower was another I remember liking a whole lot.

Of the 49 I've seen, by far the one that leaves me cold is Le Mépris. Bad marriage on the Rivieria, zzzzzzzzzzz.

And after 2 viewings of Celine and Julie Go Boating, done with it as well.

and The End of Summer.

As for The Rules of the Game it wears its mastery lightly, so I can see how on first glance it's amiable enough.

This is a good point -- I'm too hardwired to follow surface-level plot/text, and don't get into subtext, context and interesting technique until repeat viewings, though I'm trying to train myself to be a better film-watcher.

My problem is that I so rarely watch things more than once -- I'm sure films I shrugged at would gain something upon repeat viewings, but there are too many movies that I haven't seen at all to catch up with. To preemptively answer clemenza, I'm not a Paulista, just a pragmatist.

I think Paulistas are the Libertarian wing of the Paulettes.

And Armond is a member of the Tea Pauly.

pauly vous paulette?

Paulista!: the legendary unreleased 4-disc concept album about film criticism by The Clash.

what would P.K. have voted for besides The Godfather and The Manchurian Candidate? Is there any record of her participating in '62-92?

Pretty sure she eschewed participation, but surely Nashville and Last Tango would be joined by Shoeshine and Intolerance.

Maybe Rules of the Game too. Can't quite remember if that got the treatment.

she loved L'avventura and Joan of Arc.

A bunch of us made some guesses on the Kael thread a year or two ago. Other than that one cage-match of a film-critics circle she belonged to, I don't think she ever dealt in awards or lists of any kind ever.

The thing that makes the "too many movies" problem manageable is that the contemporary American films that are lauded by the MSM are worse than ever, so you can skip most of those.

Sarris always participated (this time I don't know); Kauffmann did in '72 and I think maybe '82, then dropped out; Simon, never.

Well, Simon couldn't actually come up with 10 movies he even liked, so much loved.

he liked a lot of Bergman.

if Simon doesn't concentrate hard enough he can't help but imagine Barbra Streisand's nose in every movie.

Actually, he did compile a favourites list at the beginning of one of his first two collections...I'm willing to make the trip downstairs to retrieve it, if anybody cares enough.

Babs has a new film at Christmas. Maybe he'll blog about it. xp

wow, I've only seen one of those movies

guessing which one could be a poll

xposts and Liza Minelli's eyes and (lack of) jawline

I think Paulistas are the Libertarian wing of the Paulettes.

Haha, OK: proving my point that I'm not one.

In the introduction to his first collection Simon got pissy because Kael included The Lady Eve in her list of great American movies; it was merely "sound, solid entertainment...nothing to sneeze at," he wrote.

Confusing Paulettes with Paulistas is probably a sign of good mental health.

from a John Simon blog post on tennis in June. He is... the same.

Being a fan, for me, is definitely tinged with sexuality where women players are concerned. Steffi Graf was the great tennis star of my younger days, but all I could summon up for her was respect. Perhaps her nose was too big. She definitely lacked charm, though she clearly had intelligence. But Hingis had both. Lacking a powerful serve, the Achilles heel of many a female player, was certainly also Hingis’s, although she also lacked the brute force of certain current players, e.g. Serena Williams—and a good thing too....

But women’s tennis today is full of conspicuous athletes, and very poor lookers. Just try to feel sexual about Kvitova or Azarenka, let alone Kuznetsova. I would as soon dine on goat excrement. There is today only one woman player about whom I have strong feelings, Julia Goerges. She is beautiful and gifted, and has a terrific serve (125 miles), but not quite great. One rarely sees her on television, being German rather than American. If only she could be black or at least butch, but no such luck.

http://photoshopcontest.com/images/fullsize/84382039498619fe3bb45697d4bfc8fbe8ef12f166654.jpg

I hope I can keep my mind off eating goat shit when I'm 87.

TS: Christgau vs Simon, which critic is the most creepy?

By absolutely no popular demand whatsoever, John Simon's pantheon circa 1967 (from Private Screenings): Smiles of a Summer Night, Les Enfants du Paradis, Forbidden Games, Kanal, The Rules of the Game, The White Sheik, I Vitelloni, L'avventura, The Seven Samurai, The Naked Night, and, a sop to the rubes, Citizen Kane. Films I associate him with from subsequent books: Badlands, Swept Away, Melvin and Howard...I'd have to check back; he didn't go overboard very often.

Back to Rules of the Game... Kael put it well when she said that the thrill of this film is that it seems to unfold right in front of you. It's so spontaneous and alive that its formal perfection is dazzling to see. For me it's also about the perfect arrangement of the final scenes, from the furious energy of the party to the grace and melancholy of the ending.

the movie takes its cue from Dalio and the maid's performance: smiling, flustered, unable to be serious for a moment.

Effervescence isn't incredibly high up on my list of qualities I seek in movies, but Rules does it so impressively that, yes, it's clearly one of the all-time greats.

I have seen 37 of them. These I haven't seen:

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
L’Atalante
Au hasard Balthazar
Persona
Le Mépris
Ordet
Shoah
Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles
Sátántangó
Journey to Italy
Gertrud
Histoire(s) du cinéma
Ugetsu monogatari

pretty stoked to have seen exactly half!

I just biked to the library and picked up Singin in the Rain, Au Hasard, Stalker, Citizen Kane, and L'Avventura (and also Carrie, Andrei Rublev, Ma Vie En Rose, Streetcar Named Desire, and Feuillade's Fantômas). We'll see how many I can watch before they're due back in a week.

I think the only Ozu I've seen is Good Morning and I loved it so much; I don't know if anything else can top it.

Also, Who Are You, Polly Magoo? Is better than anything Godard ever wanked out.

My number went down by one this morning --
http://archive.org/details/ChelovekskinoapparatomManWithAMovieCamera

39

OK, I just realized my number is 30 because I am dummmmm -- one of the films I'd seen, but only knew it by its English title. Durrr.

Rented out Shoah today, so, with resolve, coffee, and another three weeks of vacation, I'll be down to seven. I'm going to knock them off my list one by one, like Jeanne Moreau in The Bride Wore Black.

I've seen about half of them, though I saw a lot of them a long time ago (i.e. in lolcollege) and don't remember much about them.

***Spoiler*** sled ***Spoiler***

***Spoiler***Russian People Doing Things***Spoiler***

That's another out the way.

I'll resist the temptation to go through the whole list, but you can have some fun with this.

***Spoiler*** ambiguous and enigmatic ***Spoiler***

That covers quite a few.

***Spoiler*** barn > cows > mud > barn ***Spoiler***

***Spoiler*** Jeanne drops a spoon on the kitchen floor. ***Spoiler***

***Spoiler*** Jeanne drops a spoon on the kitchen floor. ***Spoiler***

Damn it, I was going to watch that this weekend!

***Spoiler***Italian Chick Doesn't Get Back On Boat***Spoiler***

***Spoiler*** Singin' in the rain ***Spoiler***

hahaha

***spoiler***buster keaton looks sad***spoiler***

Surprised I've seen nearly all of them apart from:

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
Au hasard Balthazar
Le Mépris
Shoah
The General
Some Like It Hot
Play Time
Close-Up
Histoire(s) du cinéma
City Lights

'city lights' is probably gone from the top 10 forever, which is a total bummer for me.

I saw Rules of the Game a couple years ago. Good movie, but it didn't wow me or anything.

― Trewster Dare (jaymc), Thursday, August 2, 2012 12:27 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4AeXMEIeNI

Seven months later, I'm inching forward--I've now seen Shoah, Satantango, and Playtime, with Mirror, Metropolis, Journey to Italy, Gertrud, and Close-Up still to go. I've still got another nine-plus years before the list changes.

I need to get back to this. I'm up to 41.1. (Didn't make it very far into Histoires du Cinema).

Okay--I'm dropping myself to 42.7 to account for parts of Potemkim, Contempt, and a few others where I nodded off for a time.

Contempt, i can't blame you

Potemkin is, like 69 minutes long cranked at 24fps, isn't it?

Potemkin is so good.

I've drifted off during eight-minute experimental films, and stayed alert for Berlin Alexanderplatz. It's often more to do with circumstances than the film with me.

I'm an insomniac so falling asleep during a movie is not gonna happen.

Oh now I haven't seen 27 of these (it was 30 initially!)

i haven't seen 18 -- highest one i'm still missing is 'tokyo story,' shamefully enough. i have a feeling i'm never gonna be in the mood for 'satantango.'

last time i hadn't seen 36 now i have seen 34 (16 to go)

i have seen five of the films on the list, and enjoyed one (taxi driver)

15. Late Spring
19. Mirror
29= Shoah (watched around 2 hours then gave up)
35= Sátántangó
41. Journey to Italy
42= Pather Panchali
42= Gertrud
42= Close-Up
48= Histoire(s) du cinéma

I have 14 to go (though, to be honest, I'm never going to watch Histoires):

The Searchers
Man with a Movie Camera
Battleship Potemkin
Contempt
Shoah
Bicycle Thieves
Sátántangó
Journey to Italy
Pather Panchali
Gertrud
Pierrot le fou
The Battle of Algiers
Histoire(s) du cinéma
City Lights

i have a feeling i'm never gonna be in the mood for 'satantango.'

Feel the same way about Seven Samurai, which is I'm positive always going to be the highest ranking movie I've never seen in its entirety.

Haven't seen 25 of these. Three of them I've started watching but turned off before the halfway point for one reason or another.

Have a feeling the last one I'll ever see is Voyage to Italy.

Kinda surprised with myself. Only ones I haven't seen are:

Shoah
Satantango
Journey to Italy
Histoire(s) du cinéma*

*I actually own this, but still haven't seen the last two episodes or so. LOVE what I've seen, but it takes a certain mood.

Random thoughts (do not read if you hate me)

* Haven't seen 31 of these films--would have seen more if I hadn't blown off seasons of Italian neorealism or Japanese actresses at the National Gallery.
* I have knee-jerk reactions against Iranian films, and Westerns. Can anyone recommend "gateway" films for these genres?

A Moment of Innocence
Red River / My Darling Clementine

A Moment of Innocence seems hardly a "gateway" film.

Gateway western is Assault on Precinct 13.

One of Mann's westerns with Jimmy Stewart, maybe.

If those don't work, Paint Your Wagon.

Among Iranian films, what's more broadly appealing? The White Balloon?

Damn, you are really pushing the Hawks baiting, honeybunch. (But I am envisioning you and Madonna in a remake of Destry Rides Again.)

Close-Up is a very moving film. Other than that, Life and Nothing More or This is Not a Film, perhaps? The House is Black is only fifteen minutes long.

I need to see nine of these. Histoire(s) was kinda great, the section on neo-realism was oddly moving.

I've seen half of the 50. A large number of them require one to deliberately seek them out, so anyone not dedicated to classic-film viewing is going to miss out on many of them. Of course, that is why these lists are made - to prod you into seeing the ones you've missed.

I'd choose Red River too as the best intro into westerns. Whether you applaud it or not, the western starts to get more and more self-conscious from The Gunfighter/High Noon/Shane onward, into The Searchers and beyond, and I wouldn't start there. Red River's great in a very classical, unselfconscious way.

Clementine 2 years earlier tho.

No excuse, haven't seen it. Don't chastise me, Sidney.

'liberty valance' is my favorite ford western by a long way, but it's sort of a 'last hurrah' for ford westerns you might get more out of it if you try a few of the older ones first. i remember 'fort apache' being pretty great. i have fond memories of 'she wore a yellow ribbon,' which seemed to be on AMC every week when i was a teenager.

SO you might get more out of it, i meant to write.

seven samurai is top 5 for me, the searchers made me barf, but WHO GIVES A SHIT this list is almost as tedious as seeing the same film jerkwads do their pantomine for the 80 billionth time on ile. its like if ilm was marcello carlin (morbs) the lex (eric h) and mark g (clemenza) talking about mojo lists for all eternity then commencing to jo to christgau or whoever the choon equivalent of pauline kael is. if i never see another 'discussion' about her fifty year old 'opinions' on here i will die happy. take it to blogspot already!!

so glad you could stop by and play our game

That is one nutty hospital.

if you're saying "fuck a canon" i agree with you Matt P but if you're saying this isn't a list of amazing films then you crazy

4

I read the list, have seen some of these films, life is too long to have seen all these already, let's keep some good stuff for later hey?

hmm.....

eh?

you can see all 50 and keep other good stuff for later (and there are many)

Yeah, I suppose so.

I'm the same with music, I discover things every year that other people would expect me to have used up / worn out, like a couple years ago I decided "Physical Grafitti" and "Axis: Bold as love" were worth checking out for the first time.

me too

but my ability to continue listening to a new record for a long time, even if it's great, is shortened. lack of patience and time i guess.

life's too short not to see some of these as many times as possible

i have a feeling i'm never gonna be in the mood for 'satantango.'

Feel the same way about Seven Samurai, which is I'm positive always going to be the highest ranking movie I've never seen in its entirety.

This sounds odd to me, because despite it's length SS is not really "slow movie", and it's pretty entertaining from beginning to the end. What's the thing that has stopped you from watching it all the way through?

those picks for iranian gateway films are crazy imo the one you want is jafar panahi's Offside - quite fast, gently funny, extremely accessible. & it's a suberb film

itt Matt P coughs up his regularly scheduled hairball

the lex (eric h)

I have never once caused half a kitchen to go up in flames by opening up a can of soda.

What's the thing that has stopped you from watching it all the way through?

Sometimes fast movies are more boring than slow ones.

Oddly of the ilxors whose tastes I’ve been able to get a bead on, Lex is my polar opposite while Eric is probably most similar to me.

I've seen 12, haven't seen 38.

I thought 'gateway' -- if we're talking about the recent output of AN ENTIRE NATION -- required it actually be 'great' as well as relatively accessible. Offside is a good film but some '90s Kiarostami might do just as well; I really don't think most of em are impenetrable or difficult w/o context of other films (excepting maybe taste of Cheery).

itt Matt P coughs up his regularly scheduled hairball

― I Don't Wanna Be Dissed (By Anyone But You) (WilliamC), Wednesday, February 20, 2013 5:34 AM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

just for you sweetums

fwiw i was taking the piss. i have a deep and undying love for this list, dr morbius, clemenza, and especially pauline kael. eric h can eat it though.

^lol

Offside has a bunch of characteristics that appeal about (and was marketed to us thru festivals as) "iranian cinema"―unforgettable non-actors, mixing documentary & fiction in startling ways, political issues & that great advantage of all "world cinema": simply a window on an unfamiliar world.

so seeing it should stand one in good stead i think for, say, this is not a film, the apple (sib), thru close-up etc., back to a moment of innocence. and in truth i think it stands in this company, tho i can show it to non-cineastes when putting on the wind will carry us would be gauche.

(i agree films like moment of innocence, the apple & even close-up are not especially difficult watches, but as much as i may imagine through the olive trees or TWWCU has a trancending universality, slow 90s kiarostami is sort of what i think someone who can't get into iranian film knee-jerks against.)(i also think this cinema is particularly helped by an actual cinema.)

but on a different tack, here's nanni moretti's slow wry 7 minute short The Opening Day of Close-Up, maybe as good a gateway as any, in which close-up looks intriguingly beautiful

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNDI4MzI3OTEy.html

eric h can eat it though.

Right up there with the best of them.

the apple is as rewarding as any film i can think of but is def a difficult watch imo, just wrt the first 20 minutes. i can imagine people turning off. what's satisfying is how the air in the room changes as this progresses, though, as the humour surfaces, as it becomes almost playful. really feeling your exemplary post btw so only being picky here.