ILX Film Club, The (1924-2019)

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?

Is Holiday on the Buses the same as Mexican Bus Ride?

Man those MUBI Leaving Soons are torture. I rewatched THE GENERAL recently and maybe still have it saved on my cable box so I think I will pass on that and watch a few others.

i never her.

finished Sherlock Jr as it was only 44 minutes long. (this was an archive.org download rather than youtube. ogg video in fact, only 100MB, 400x300 but perfectly watchable)

is that a recognised meaning of the work sheik?

yes -

2 usually sheik : a man supposed to be irresistibly attractive to romantic young women

lots of things that are now cliches, probably a lot different back in 1924. the suitcase jump kinda spoilt it - everything else was at least possible

THE GENERAL also avaiable in several other places, Amazon Prime, Criterion and... wait for it... Tubi. https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/the-general

Actually I have to be careful here as I have been fooled before. Oftentimes something will show up there as being on Amazon Prime but in fact it is only there with a subscription, a subscription to MUBI.

Is Holiday on the Buses the same as Mexican Bus Ride?

― The Windows of the URL (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 12 February 2023 17:27 (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I like to think so.

As Mark S likes to tell me, the first On The Buses film was the highest grossing film at the box office that year.

Pfunkboy was Holiday on the Bus's #1 vote

^this

Yeah I will check them out for sure.

First though, let's start off 2025 with

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/ab/Night_and_Fog.jpg

Night and Fog (Nuit et brouillard), Alain Resnais, 1955 (or maybe 1956)

Morbsies #250

A half-hour documentary about the Holocaust isn't usually how I like to start the year, I have to say. This is here because it was someone's #1 choice in the Morbsies.

Having trouble finding this one online with English subtitles - but if you speak French or Spanish then this link is for you - https://archive.org/details/vimeo-123483626

Well fucking hell. I knew that a Holocaust documentary was going to be hard-going, but still. Fucking hell.

I saw Night and Fog at least a couple of times decades ago, and I found the distanced approach (and brevity) alleviated some of the tendency it could have had to be overwhelming - while never feeling like it was pulling back on the facts or softening the material.

I found the distancing made it all the more galling somehow. A brilliant piece of work but not watching that again.

Here's one I absolutely love but haven't watched for a quarter of a century

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c0/A-man-escaped.jpg

A Man Escaped, Robert Bresson, 1956

Morbsies #118
Sight & Sound Critics #95
Sight & Sound Directors #41

Perfection. No BS. Nothing there that doesn't need to be. Even my Dad thought it was brilliant when we watched it a year before he died and he wasn't one for subtitled films.

He loved Le Trou as well.

There aren't very many subtitles needed, to be fair.

My 13yo is watching Prison Break right now (?!) and I was reminded instantly of both those movies - will try and wedge at least one into the rotation (it helps that he speaks French)

Watched this a week ago and haven't updated sorry. It was as great as ever, there was a lot more talking than I remembered. The actual escape scene at the end was unsurpassable, would love a whole film of just that sort of thing.

Anyway, better press on

https://i.imgur.com/4720Izk.png

The Searchers, John Ford, 1956

Morbsies #211
Sight & Sound Critics #15
Sight & Sound Directors #72

ooh my favorite contested classic!

beautiful film. shame that it's racist, the ending only makes half sense, and the "ethan is secretly attracted to his brother's wife" idea is nonsense.

I don't think you can separate the racism, and the movie does indict Edwards.

Didn't like it. Felt like I was watching Triumph of The Will. Sure there's some nice cinematography, but to what end? If it wasn't 2025 I might have given it a chance, but it is 2025, and fuck all these people.

I dunno man, I think the extent to which it is a critique of racism is overblown a fair bit by its partisans, but Triumph Of The Will...that's p hyperbolic imo.

Hyperbolic maybe, that's just how it felt.

Have you watched Triumph of the Will? I have not cuz yikes

I have seen it, yes, it was on sale at a DVD stall in China for equivalent of 20p. Aside from the epic opening it was dull, lots of speeches and marching and nothing much else. Don't still have it of course, think I binned it.

I guess my take on it has been documented several times on ILX: I basically think it's on a level with Heart Of Darkness in being skeptical of white notions of superiority but that the "deep down we're all savages" attitude doesn't do much to humanise non white characters, also the comedy bits are terrible. Others see more in it tho.

I feel no duty to give it a fair hearing, there are other films to watch.

Fair enough!

For example

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/69/Seventhsealposter.jpg

The Seventh Seal, Ingmar Bergman, 1957

Morbsies #192
Sight & Sound critics #136
Sight & Sound directors #75

My second fave film ever!