Author Topic: Top Discoveries of 2012  (Read 28488 times)

maņana

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Top Discoveries of 2012
« on: December 25, 2012, 09:22:39 PM »
Back by popular demand!

What are the 20 best non-Filmspot eligible films you saw for the first time in 2012? Pictures are always a plus.

Link to 2008 discoveries.
Link to 2009 discoveries.
Link to 2010 discoveries.
Link to 2011 discoveries.
There's no deceit in the cauliflower.

roujin

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Re: Top Discoveries of 2012
« Reply #1 on: December 25, 2012, 09:58:33 PM »
I have waited all year.

maņana

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Re: Top Discoveries of 2012
« Reply #2 on: December 25, 2012, 10:10:04 PM »
I have waited all year.
Less jibber-jabber, more lists.
There's no deceit in the cauliflower.

Sam the Cinema Snob

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Re: Top Discoveries of 2012
« Reply #3 on: December 25, 2012, 10:32:04 PM »
Ahh, the wonders of discoveries. I spend all year just watching films that I hope might make this list.

toro913

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Re: Top Discoveries of 2012
« Reply #4 on: December 25, 2012, 10:42:41 PM »
Top 50 discoveries split (somewhat haphazardly) across 4 categories.

Favorite Films watched because of various Filmspotting Events/Games:
1. Un Homme Qui Dort
2. The Cranes are Flying
3. Moonrise
4.  Letter to Three Wives
5. Le Notti Blanche
6. Dust in the Wind
7. La Rayon Vert
8. Ali: Fear Eats the Soul
9. The Friends of Eddie Coyle
10. We All Loved Each Other So Much
11. Forbidden Games
12. Friday Night

High Prestige/High Reward:
1. Harakiri
2. Sanjuro
3. The Ox-Bow Incident
4. Hiroshima Mon Amour
5. A Short Film About Love
6. La Haine
7. Mr. Hulot's Holiday
8. Johnny Guitar
9. Aparajito
10. Bad Day at Black Rock
11. Stalag 17
12. The Man with a Movie Camera
13. Sansho the Bailiff

Films by Directors that Already Had My Attention:
1. My Sex Life...or How I Got into an Arguement
2. Stranger Than Paradise
3. La Promesse
4. Elevator to the Gallows
5. Happy Together
6. The Crime of Monsieur Lange
7. Cria Cuervos
8. Fury (Fritz Lang)
9. Bullets Over Broadway
10. Shotgun Stories
11. Boy Meets Girl
12. The Last Days of Disco

Honest to Goodness Surprises:
1. Un Homme et Une Femme
2. I'm Gonna Explode
3. The Ascent
4. Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist
5. The Dreamlife of Angels
6. Mrs. Miniver
7. Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion
8. Leolo
9. Advise & Consent
10. US Go Home
11. Night Moves
12. Land and Freedom
13. Holiday (George Cukor)

1SO

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Re: Top Discoveries of 2012
« Reply #5 on: December 26, 2012, 12:09:32 AM »
You had an excellent year. That list would make for a marathon of great cinema.

Bondo

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Re: Top Discoveries of 2012
« Reply #6 on: December 26, 2012, 04:08:03 AM »
Undertaking an effort to watch more female-directed cinema paid dividends as those films make up half of my discoveries in 2012 (i.e. films added to the Bondo Collection) including at least two new entries into my top directors list.

Alice Guy: The Magician's Alms, The Consequences of Feminism and, as subject, The Lost Garden.
Lois Weber: Where Are My Children?, Hypocrites and Suspense
Muriel Box: The Passionate Stranger, The Truth About Women and To Dorothy A Son

Open Hearts
Awakenings
2 Days In Paris
Caramel
The Night Porter
Me Without You

I actually like Stan Brakhage (Window Water Baby Moving and The Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes)

Intolerance
A Face In The Crowd
Stage Door
Metropolitan
Superstar: A Karen Carpenter Story
Sundays and Cybele
Rejected
The Cherry Orchard
Validation

verbALs

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Re: Top Discoveries of 2012
« Reply #7 on: December 26, 2012, 05:04:00 AM »
17 March- A Woman Under The Influence
...the choice of the slightly young kids for this slightly older couple was an interesting choice. Falk has to work frustratedly through extended scenes with the children, where you know there is no way to relate to them, why their mother has gone away. It kills you.

30 March- Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? {For 1957 Retrospot}
It's like a pop song, all jaunty melody and twangy guitar chords, which talks about poverty or war; a cyanide message wrapped up in a dollop of syrup.
How does Mansfield make those noises?

13 April- Two-Lane Blacktop
...my definition of the word "cool" has been redefined by the last hour-odd watching this film. I would call that a valueful use of my time.

5 May- Ugetsu Monogatari
Here is a director with a Shakespearean ambition of his own. He is fearless in taking the consequences of the actions of these greedy/ ambitious men to their fullest extreme. Death and degradation of the spirit are your ultimate reward. Wow. Be careful of that which you wish for, would convey a fraction of the power of this message.

23 May- The Devils
Scenes go from sublimely strange to crazy, against a background of pure white brickwork, spinning sacrificial crosses on which to place the nearest protestant, and infernal devices to encourage the confessions of witches.

15 Jun- The Conformist
I have seen Marcello described as a weak man, but that doesn't go far enough. He represents something venal, a very symbolic cowardice and by transposition, the epitome of the Fascist.

23 June- Faces
Gena Rowlands; appears as a catalytic character to the side of the action. She is a dirty angel, a beautiful train wreck. Cassavettes worships her with his camera, but burrows for the cracks and fissures. Gena stares back into the camera, and melts it with her laser vision.

28 October- Body & Soul
This is "just" a sports movie as much as The Hustler is. The standard rags to riches boxing spiel is the framework, but the movie stops to allow the characters to talk to each other.

4 November- Ossessione {For Noirvember}
There's an amazing scene where the man gets physical with the widow in a street. The camera pulls back and a crowd forms around the pair like a whirlpool coalescing. As the man leaves, the crowd disperses more like smoke. I can't convey how well Visconti does these things. Cinema Ultimo.

14 Nov- Mildred Pierce {For Noirvember}
... a good deal of the film could bubble in its own melodramatic juices, if Curtiz allowed it to. The whole is so much a greater thing than the parts it includes. It, ultimately, becomes one of the best mother/ daughter sagas I can ever remember seeing. EVER!
I used to encourage everyone I knew to make art; I don't do that so much anymore. - Banksy

Corndog

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Re: Top Discoveries of 2012
« Reply #8 on: December 26, 2012, 12:38:29 PM »
Light year for me.
Listed in the order in which I saw them:


June 17, 1994 (Brett Morgen, 2010)


Cinema Paradiso (Giuseppe Tornatore, 1988)


Gods and Generals (Ronald F. Maxwell, 2003)


Nosferatu (F.W. Murnau, 1922)


The Naked City (Jules Dassin, 1948)


The Endless Summer (Bruce Brown, 1966)


Touching the Void (Kevin Macdonald, 2003)
"Time is the speed at which the past decays."

Sam the Cinema Snob

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Re: Top Discoveries of 2012
« Reply #9 on: December 26, 2012, 12:55:17 PM »
Its been years since I've seen Gods and Generals, but I liked it a lot in my teen years. Always glad to see more people watching Murnau.