ILX Film Club, The (1924-2019)

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.

To your last post: that is sort of the whole good and bad of lists in a nutshell.

I've watched the first hundred.

For those who have MUBI, try to catch The General over the next 3 days before it gets yanked

I really am going to be forced to watch Holiday on the Buses huh

Whose first place vote was that?

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.

Donald Richie's book on Kurosawa is essential reading, and not surprisingly the chapter on Seven Samurai is great. (It may have been his favorite Kurosawa film - he usually listed it as one of his favorite films, period.)

I think it's very compelling to look at how WWII impacted Japanese films and how Japanese films grappled with the aftermath, especially now in light of the current rise of nationalism in certain parts of the world (like ours). Generally speaking, I never found comparisons between Japanese period epics and American Westerns all that interesting, but comparing The Seven Samurai to the American films it inspired (not just The Magnificent Seven but also Saving Private Ryan) does seem edifying in highlighting the differences in history and culture. The Seven Samurai always seemed like a great war film to me - nine years isn't that far removed from the end of WWII, and I was left with the impression that a defeated country was far more likely to re-examine and interrogate the culture surrounding war in ways that a proud and jingoistic country would not like to do. The myriad class conflicts and moral hypocrisies are either watered down or stripped away in something like The Magnificent Seven (turning samurai/military officers into "gunfighters" will do that), but they're always there in The Seven Samurai.

Kikuchiyo gun stealing scene the heart of this movie. Stunning end shot with the Katanas in the graves

The horses in this movie reminded me of the horse(s) in Andrei Rublev. Put me off, for what were some great scenes. hmph. I did eat stake for dinner though so I'm a bit of a simpleton in this way

I like my stake either well done or in the ground.

Rear window is a movie that I had seen so many parodies of that end at first reveal (most famously the Simpsons, but so many others), so the second part suddenly felt really disorienting!

the moment the man looks out of the screen at the audience is so crazy the first time you see it,

and the film is incredible in how it seems to surface filmic epistemologies in an instantly graspable way that can't be untangled from the film's dramatic dynamism! Sorry for the turgid way of phrasing that but I think its clear what I mean???

That said there's something that really 'wears off' about the effect that is very different from e.g. Vertigo, where it burrows down into your subconscious (why does she take the backdoor to the florist???). I think this one relies too much on a central trick or conceit, very A minus grade Hitchcock. There's also something about how its been parodied that gives it a flat, repackagable quality although that's not really its fault. Its a shame because its got so much good stuff in it (thelma ritter, wendell corey, Dior by Head and barbara bel geddes designing gravity defying bras etc) but i could probably never see it again and I wouldn't lose sleep.

seven samurai is so good and to me so obviously one of the best kurosawas so i'm curious what people who think this mid level would put ahead of it

Vertigo wears me down at the hour mark. Acts I and III are strange and powerful

What I'd rank over Seven Samurai:

Red Beard
The Bad Sleep Well
Throne of Blood
Stray Dog
High and Low

lol high and low is fun but bad

the scenes where they're all shouting at each other about shoes are really funny so i'll allow it

so much melodrama for the sake of a shoe mogul!

lol xpost

The shoe business can be a great setting for tragedy: see Bastards by Claire Denis.

yeah i remember the shoe company stuff being kind of dull, but the police procedural half of the movie is excellent

High & Low is my 2nd fave Kurosawa

Ran and High & Low are my fave Kurosawa's

High and Low and Ran are among my very favorite Kurosawa films too (along with The Seven Samurai, Rashomon, Ikiru and maybe a couple of others. I have no desire to actually rank them, they're all great films doing very different things.

Ran's in my top ten.

It's in my top 10 ... of 1985

I need to see "The Bad Sleep Well"

FWIW, if there's ever a 35mm print of Ran playing at a repertory theater near you, it's definitely worth seeing. Obviously an epic is going to play better in a theater, but the current restoration that's being used in all DCP's, streaming and Blu-ray/UHD masters is marred by dubious color grading, something older film curators have pointed out given their familiarity with the oft-programmed film.