ILX Film Club, The (1924-2019)

Why Blue? I've always meant to "watch" that as I love a few of his other films.

xp Yeah this same project 20 years ago would have at least four or five Woody Allen films on the list, instead of zero.

I find Jarman's films to be pretty exasperating, and I feel I will hate it even when the subject matter is sad.

xp

i will try to participate, when i can! i find it really difficult to take part in film discussions, for various reasons, but i do enjoy watching them. i'm no kind of old-school buff but, due to the ilx influence (and using morbs' letterboxd list) i've seen a lot of the earlier films here, and within the last several months, to boot. it'll be nice to give them a rewatch so soon after my first encounter with them.

Sherlock Jr. is perfectly 45 minutes long

Or Annie Hall.
― xyzzzz

I'm probably one of the few (only?) people on here who was heartened to see Annie Hall show up. Not defending Woody Allen, just glad there are some people left who can make that distinction between the person and the film (easier with Rosemary's Baby/Chinatown, I think, just because they're so much better as films; also, Polanski's largely invisible, though he does have the cameo in Chinatown).

For some other thread, I know.

I think that this film club needs to do the On The Buses film trilogy to truly capture how it was in Ted Heath's Pre & Post EEC Britain.

I think we can all agree that the ending to Annie Hall is, in effect, a happy one

"just glad there are some people left who can make that distinction between the person and the film (easier with Rosemary's Baby/Chinatown, I think, just because they're so much better as films; also, Polanski's largely invisible"

I wouldn't watch a Polanski film nowadays either, Clemenza. I have no interest in supporting their work while these people are alive.

I think that this film club needs to do the On The Buses film trilogy to truly capture how it was in Ted Heath's Pre & Post EEC Britain.

― Toshirō Nofune (The Seventh ILXorai), Friday, 10 February 2023 bookmarkflaglink

We just have to step outside for that, these days..

I’m in

I think we can all agree that the ending to _Annie Hall_ is, in effect, a happy one

Ugh, for some reason, I ventured outside this safe haven and ended up interacting with Jeffrey Wells. Not pleasant.

Yeah I'm in, tho can't promise to keep up every week - one objective I have this year is to watch more films from the rest of the world than US films overall and while these lists are varied and wonderful I fear they'd still land me on the wrong side of that in the end.

Why does ILX hate L'Atalante so much?

Is this true?

Yes, fuck all canal barges.

Alba can you tell which ilxors are hating I'll bully them for you.

Ha ha I was just making a glib comment after seeing the spreadsheet and noticing tha it placed relatively well in the S&S top 100s but nowhere with ILX.

I think that applies even more to Beau Travail but I was looking at the early films.

Gonna watch Beau Travail in a proper theater next week -- my first non-DVD/streaming experience w/it!

While everyone's gearing up, a reasonably engaging quiz:

Try this quiz - https://t.co/yyLpPtjiKP pic.twitter.com/fdHFKTXEpL

— DVDBeaver (@DVDBeaver) February 11, 2023

66/100. I raced through it, probably wouldn't have done much better if I'd taken my time (I either knew it or guessed--though I would have gone back and changed a few guesses based on subsequent answers).

more mainstream:
https://www.cinenerdle2.app/

68/100. Projectionist but no professor. But what's wrong with being a projectionist?

Wtf, I'm boycotting this quiz

Reasoning?

Putting professors above projectionists!

Ah!

96/100 and only because I accidentally put Jacques Rivette when I meant François Truffaut

Check out the big brain on Brad!

77/100 -- a couple of dumb mistakes on movies I've seen, a couple of lucky guesses on movies I haven't seen

71, though at least half were guesses.

(Some of them informed guesses, though.)

76. About five films I did see and couldn't place grr

88. Nailed every one I knew, every guess I guessed wrong

Oh and messed up Spike Lee . Just couldn't place that image in that film somehow

84/100!

I guessed on most of the contemporary Asian stuff, which rarely payed off. And I got the Black female directors all switched around. The only film I've seen that I miscredited was Death of Mr. Lazarescu.

I just exchanged texts with my friend who actually is a projectionist but did not mention this quiz.

I got 89. several of them were guesses based on what I know about the filmmakers’ visual aesthetics or the time periods from the images. I got several directors mixed up - Mizoguchi and Kobayashi, Kazan and Wyler, Etrice and Saura and others. I guessed Larisa Shepitko’s The Ascent correctly only because I have recently seen stills from it on twitter, but I haven’t watched it. Also still have yet to watch Djibril Diop Mambéty’s films, a few of which are on Kanopy, or Cheryl Dunye’s The Watermelon Woman

My projectionist friend told me about this yesterday:
https://framed.wtf

oh, it's a one-per-day thing, like wordle

Yes. I only started doing it yesterday.

But I like, I like.

I love Framed but I get annoyed every time a Marvel movie zilches my overall record

Will we be using this thread for discussion of films that are not on your list but are still, say, Morbius favorites?

Just the ones on the list, think there are several which wouldn't be there without his influence.

just downloaded sherlock jr, which i think just sneaks in as public domain. only i seem to have an entirely silent one and i can her neighbours clanking around

Looking through the list, some of my favourite directors, Louis Malle, Miloš Forman, Roy Andersson, Sidney Lumet, are either missing entirely or have a single entry, think this is probably A Good Thing on a personal level, more to explore, less so to those whose favourites are more well-represented I suppose, though otoh everyone likes talking about their favourites.

xp There are many different options for watching Sherlock Jr on YouTube with different soundtracks.

brilliant film

I liked it but I suspect Fellini thought it was about how sex is evil and makes you subhuman

So Gelsomina is supposed to be autistic, right?

Just finished this, quite a bleak ending and I'm not sure what to take away - but the world conjured up on the way was certainly worth it.

I do find it a little hard to get over what a complete dick Zampano is though, just not really interested in his internal life, he's so despicable.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/Rear_Window_film_poster.jpg

Rear Window, Alfred Hitchcock, 1954

Morbsies #22
Sight & Sound Critics #38

This was always by least-favourite of the a-tier Hitchcocks, however my exposure to it was on my Film Studies degree while being introduced to "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" so the heavy-handedness I remember may just be the lecturers.

Obviously this isn't freely available on Youtube - anyone know where it is streaming?

I know it's tempting to hold the movie's easy pedagogical meta elements against it. But I wouldn't, it's maybe the most sheerly entertaining movie he made between The 39 Steps and Psycho.

I feel fortunate to have seen all those classic Hitchcock movies like Psycho and Rear Window on tv when I was a kid and have my appreciation further deepen for them as I get older.

The 1998 remake starring Christopher Reeve is apparently free to stream on youtube. Probably not going to bother with it.

Obviously this isn't freely available on Youtube - anyone know where it is streaming?

It's on Bezos-Prime

If you don't mind hard-coded subs: https://archive.org/details/rear-window-1954_202007
gear icon -> HD

Eric otm. When Stewart, Kelly, and Ritter plot together, it'direction. point of Hitch's ensemble directing.

Yeah, Rear Window rocks. Has overtaken North By Northwest as my fave Hitch.

some of the early relationship scenes drag
otherwise it's great

i find that "heavily foregrounded meta but glommed onto pure story-telling thrills" is the core of Hitchcock's attraction tbh

Whoa -- I apologize for my phone-posted post. I meant: "best Hitchhock-directed ensemble."

Forget Vertigo -- Stewart never played a better Pure Acting moment than when he watches Thorwald assault Lisa.

Forget Vertigo

I will not

Just rewatched RW for the first time in ages because of this thread. Agree, hugely entertaining and well conceived and executed. It’s also so perverse of Hitchcock to cast Stewart in two different parables of impotence. (Tho he let him have TMWKTM in between I guess.)

Something there obviously about the WWII generation of men becoming redomesticated and incorporated into bland American life.

Yeah, they give a little more shading to the conventional wisdom about ‘50s America

The domestication of the American male was fodder for thinkpieces in the 50's - a lot of talk about "a crisis in masculinity". Pretty funny when now you hear mra types say we need to get back to that era.

Grace Kelly cooing about seeing him in a grey flannel suit a couple years before the infamous short story.

I love the shot at the end where she puts down her Himalayas travel book and picks back up Harper's Bazaar. She's not going anywhere, and neither is he.

My memory is so terrible. I spent this whole rewatch convinced thorwald didn't do it.

Poor miss lonely heart! What a damning indictment on Jeff and Stella, ignoring the potential suicide happening in front of them multiple times for the simple thrill of the chase.

Think I might be in love with Grace Kelly. Hope to get a date when I meet her up in the stars one day

Sorry, very slow right here. Yes, this was much better than I remembered, love the construction of a particular space and a time, just so vividly conjured. And the story is so self-contained, doesn't feel like it's just under two hours at all. Parallels with Vertigo are spot on, when he falls at the end, that's basically the start of Vertigo, isn't it? The exploration of viewer as voyeur is fine, but it was good not to think about it too much.

Still prefer Vertigo though

Seven Samurai, Akira Kurosawa, 1954

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/ba/Seven_Samurai_poster.jpg

Morbsies #97
Sight & Sound Critics #20
Sight & Sound Directors #14

Another biggie! For context here are the next five in the list

Johnny Guitar
Journey to Italy
Sansho the Bailiff
Ordet
The Night of the Hunter

LOL, perfect timing: Male weepies: Pick the "best," I guess

Every single one of the next five movies in line is a flaming goddamned masterpiece. I love all of the next five movies in line. They are great. Yep, love 'em.

Ordet happens to be your particular abnormality

(j/k I can understand loving it)

xps

Greatest film ever made IMO

Hm, guessing you mean Seven Samurai?

mibbes aye mibbes naw

Can be found here - https://archive.org/details/seven-samurai - it is quite long, isn't it?

The length of it feels fine

should explain that I somehow haven't seen it before

It flies by. Not a second overlong.

I wouldn't rank Seven Samurai in my Kurosawa top five.

I probably wouldn't either, but that's more about how many great films the dude has.

It is a bit sad that this is The One because there's a lot of more accessible intros - Yojimbo, Stray Dog, Ikiru.

The samurai film genre is interesting because if you compare it to the western, even though Ford and Hawks and etc certainly had moments where they questioned the myths there are a few decades' worth of films that mostly celebrate those myths, and so when the revisionist western rolls around we know what it's revising. But the samurai film, for a western audience, only comes into vogue in the postwar era, and so it's a generation of writers and directors who grew up with the samurai sprit being part of govt wartime propaganda and so it's pretty much all revisionism, very few movies come to mind where bushido is seen as anything other than a sick joke. At some point it just becomes part of the trope.