Author Topic: Top 100 Club: PeacefulAnarchy  (Read 14028 times)


Bondo

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Re: Top 100 Club: PeacefulAnarchy
« Reply #1 on: May 31, 2018, 09:18:22 PM »
I think it is finally time to tackle The Human Condition.

1SO

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Re: Top 100 Club: PeacefulAnarchy
« Reply #2 on: May 31, 2018, 10:25:54 PM »
Your list is permanently marked in my ICM Lists to complete. I am down to 11 titles.

I for India: I wouldn't call myself a fan of Indian cinema so I don't know what connection I might make with this.
Manila in the Claws of Light: Realize I know nothing about this and it's one of the top ICM shames, appearing on 6 lists
The Brand New Testament: Some reviews on your last at bat got me very interested
The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum: I always think this is Fassbinder because the title reminds me of The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant. I'm a secret fan of Volker Schlöndorff.
Seventeen: I generally shy away from docs. Can't find a reason to watch this one... yet.
Police, Adjective: Always one I look for and have yet to find.
Timbuktu: Once I remind myself this isn't Mustang (2015) I realize I know nothing about the film.
Night and Day: Hong Sang-soo will be a full Marathon in my future
S21: The Khmer Rouge Death Machine: Same as Seventeen
Angano... Angano... Tales from Madagascar: Know nothing, but after reading IMDB description I'm even less inclined to watch this.
The Salt of the Earth: Same as Seventeen

PeacefulAnarchy

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Re: Top 100 Club: PeacefulAnarchy
« Reply #3 on: May 31, 2018, 10:46:45 PM »
I for India has absolutely nothing to do with Indian cinema and is only partly related to India as a country. It's a personal immigration story documentary. Whether that makes it more or less interesting to you is up in the air.
As for the other docs, which make up half the films you haven't seen, I will say that while I've grown much fonder of the documentary genre I shy away from a lot of docs for a lot of reasons, so I totally get it, but these all have something unique to them beyond just the subject matter. They are all very fundamentally human, films about people and about our place among each other. Which is a connection I hadn't realized until this moment, but makes perfect sense as to why they're on my list despite otherwise being incredibly different in subject and style.

I don't know if Angano Angano is for you but here's my review that hopefully is a little more informative than the imdb description:
Quote
Angano... Angano... (1989) 10/10
Third documentary in three days, and they could not be any more different. I dare say this one is the best, though. While there is certainly a colonial influence in this film as well, it is far from the focus. Instead this is a film about traditional tales and myths in Madagascar and their influence on the Malagasy way of life. The film takes, from the audience's perspective anyway, a very hands off approach, letting a handful Malagasys tell their own tales interspersed with a some scenes of modern way of life and rituals in Madagascar. What results is a wonderful film that beautifully blends two central themes.

First is the very interesting glimpse of Malagasy culture. Storytelling provides a very relaxed way to get little glimpses of life, beliefs and rituals without ever feeling dry or tedious. The method also belies the surprising amount of information given in this barely hour long film. It would be a lie to say it paints a complete picture of life on the island, but it certainly gives a pretty good overview and a solid amount of context for any further reading one may want to do on the subject. The interview subjects are very relaxed and charismatic, and that helps things as well. Knowing French I also found it interesting how little bits of French slip into the vocabulary, despite being almost entirely in Malagasy.

The second aspect, and the one that raises this from great to excellent in my mind, is the way the ancestral myths are told and approached. The Malagasy culture is an oral culture and many of the stories told in the film are variations of religious myths, from creation to the role and importance of certain rituals and ways of life. They are treated with respect and reverence, but not with blind devotion. There's an understanding from those telling these stories that they are myths, and that they are affected by both the vagaries of time, the imperfect memories of the many generations of tellers before them, and also the vivid imagination of one or several people along the chain of hundreds of years. There's levity in how they are told and an understanding that some of the conclusions are arbitrary or silly, but that doesn't seem to diminish their value both spiritual and in daily life. I found that to be very fascinating and while this is far from a unique approach to traditional beliefs it certainly contrasts with the dogmatic approach taken in much of western world.

I'll be curious to read about whichever one(s) you end up seeing.

I think it is finally time to tackle The Human Condition.
Can the content overcome the length for you? I hope so.

MartinTeller

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Re: Top 100 Club: PeacefulAnarchy
« Reply #4 on: May 31, 2018, 11:33:21 PM »
Mr. Nobody
Flesh and the Devil
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
C'était Un Rendez-Vous
The Crow
Good bye, Lenin!
Manila in the Claws of Light
Head-On
Missing
The Brand New Testament
The Decisive Moment
Hail the Conquering Hero
The Handmaiden
Seventeen
The Reunion
Kingdom of Heaven
Salvador
Cross of Iron
Dance, Girl, Dance
Angano... Angano... Tales from Madagascar
The Salt of the Earth
Cosmos
The Singing Detective

Will this be the month I finally watch Head-On? Probably not. The docs are standing out to me... Seventeen, Salt of the Earth, or if I'm at a loss for time, The Decisive Moment.

Dave the Necrobumper

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Re: Top 100 Club: PeacefulAnarchy
« Reply #5 on: June 01, 2018, 07:24:05 AM »
I tried for Psycho with Martin's month, lets try it for this month.

oldkid

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Re: Top 100 Club: PeacefulAnarchy
« Reply #6 on: June 02, 2018, 02:57:34 AM »
I'll probably catch up with The Stranger and I've just watched Lily and Jim. 

1SO, I'd be really interested in your take on Timbuktu.
"It's not art unless it has the potential to be a disaster." Bansky

Teproc

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Re: Top 100 Club: PeacefulAnarchy
« Reply #7 on: June 03, 2018, 01:53:39 PM »
Before Sunset (Richard Linklater, 2004)

I was advised to wait two years between Sunrise and Sunset... well, six months isn't that bad, right ?

Obviously it's not too bad, because I liked this even more than Sunrise. I'm very impressed by the way Jesse and Celine pick up right where they left off, though the nature of their conversations is very different. In Sunrise, they're philosophizing about the world, the nature of time, God etc. What little there is of that here is much more down-to-earth,; and they mostly end up talking about their actual, practical life and the way they've been affected by their missed connection a decade earlier. There are a few things that make this better than Sunrise to me, but one of them is that I felt the process of Jesse falling in love with Celine all over again much more acutely than in Sunrise, and I don't know if it's me liking Céline more in her thirties or the connection simply being more profound this time around, or if it's Ethan Hawke's performance that got better... it's probably a combination of these things really, and everything generally being more meaningful because there's that weight of what happened before hanging over the film. It's no longer a discovery of each other, it's a realization of something that feels obvious.

Part of it is also the real time nature of it. Linklater constrains himself much more than in Sunrise, where he had a whole night for his story: as such, their conversation is slightly more intense than it probably would be realistically... but it works, and I think that's because of Linklater's directing. I was reminded of Victoria: there are many cuts here, but the film feels of one piece because of that real time element. It's breathless (hah) in a way, we're there with them for those 80 minutes, and there's something exhilarating to that. The more I think about it, the more it seems obvious to me that they're also simply better, deeper performances on both sides here, maybe because Delpy takes control of the film in some ways, with Hawke spending a lot of time reacting to her, which he's great at.

In any case, this is simply wonderful. It's funny that there are so many films now trying to take characters we know and love and give us more of them in the hopes of solliciting an emotional reaction, but none of them get the effect that Linklater gets here. Probably because seeing Han Solo and Leia thirty years after is nice and all, but those movies aren't about their relationship really, it's just an element of them. Because Linklater makes these intimate films, the the effect of seeing them reunited is much stronger, and there's also the fact that it's so relatable: even if most of us haven't had any experience as romantic as Before Sunrise, we've ran into people we hadn't seen in a long time, or thought about what might happen if we would at the very least. Linklater, Delpy and Hawke, who really do feel like co-authors here, get that completely right, and the way their priorities shift from Sunrise to Sunset, from the big ideas to the disillusionment and need to deal with reality, that all makes for a very powerful experience.

9/10
« Last Edit: June 03, 2018, 02:01:45 PM by Teproc »
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jdc

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Re: Top 100 Club: PeacefulAnarchy
« Reply #8 on: June 03, 2018, 06:10:08 PM »
Before Sunset (Richard Linklater, 2004)

I was advised to wait two years between Sunrise and Sunset... well, six months isn't that bad, right ?

I'll advise you not to wait 6 months before you decide to watch Before Midnight, do it sooner
"Beer. Now there's a temporary solution."  Homer S.
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1SO

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Re: Top 100 Club: PeacefulAnarchy
« Reply #9 on: June 03, 2018, 10:46:23 PM »
Manila in the Claws of Light
Watching the film knowing nothing was like watching your first film by a distinct filmmaker without knowing if they ever made another. It's rough and ragged and wasn't grabbing me like Pixote or City of God, which seemed reasonable comparison points. I figured this was someone who only made the one film or possibly a voice new to me with a rich filmography. That felt more like the case when I got to the climax of this 1975 film which looks a lot like the 1976 film Taxi Driver, directed by someone famous for lifting from more obscure corners of cinema. That's when it clicked that the real point of reference might be Mean Streets or more likely Abel Ferrara.

Sure enough, in my post-game I discover director Lino Brocka is one of if not THE most famous Filipino director, and there's a Marathon to be done in Weighed But Found Wanting, this, Insiang (the first Filipino film to play the Cannes Film Festival), Jaguar, Bona and Bayan ko. All highly-rated on IMDB and Letterboxd, two available on Criterion.

So, I'd love to know PA if you've seen anything else by Brocka and what is it about this one that's so special to you? I'm asking because it didn't grab me, but that might be because I wasn't prepared. For this type of film, Manila showed me the roots of a type of gritty street melodrama where I've enjoyed much of the fruit.

 

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