Author Topic: ET v. Sight and Sound's 100 Greatest Films of All Time  (Read 50747 times)

colonel_mexico

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Re: ET v. Sight and Sound's 100 Greatest Films of All Time
« Reply #260 on: June 04, 2020, 04:19:50 PM »
* colonel_mexico likes the PLAYTIME review

I felt the exact same way when I saw PLAYTIME, like wtf is happening right now lol.  I for sure felt it was a criticism on modernism and the layout of the buildings and the apartment all felt like an expression of conformity, like this is what normal is or should be.  But the realities of being human or humans in the machine seem to throw monkey wrenches in the entire scheme.  This and perhaps KOYAANISQATSI are the films that lack plots, but speak volumes.  Subvert the program!
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Eric/E.T.

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Re: ET v. Sight and Sound's 100 Greatest Films of All Time
« Reply #261 on: June 04, 2020, 05:58:19 PM »
Kiarostami is life.

This film changed the directory of my academic career where I ended up writing a thesis on Kiarostami. I was trying to work it into a book but pandemic life kinda threw off everything as ILL books from the library became something I wasn't comfortable doing anymore.

Our libraries shut down 'til recently anyway. I hear you though, I can't understand how this can be a perspective-changer, a sort of paradigm-crusher. I'm still pretty mixed on Kiarostami, but certainly not on this film.

* colonel_mexico likes the PLAYTIME review

I felt the exact same way when I saw PLAYTIME, like wtf is happening right now lol.  I for sure felt it was a criticism on modernism and the layout of the buildings and the apartment all felt like an expression of conformity, like this is what normal is or should be.  But the realities of being human or humans in the machine seem to throw monkey wrenches in the entire scheme.  This and perhaps KOYAANISQATSI are the films that lack plots, but speak volumes.  Subvert the program!

Can someone get the good colonel a LIKE button up in here? And NOT make it take 28 seconds to register?

I think you're right about throwing wrenches in the scheme, it's really noticeable when you're looking into the apartments, boxy, generic and strangely transparent, and you see families just doing what families do, being together. Same with the restaurant, lemons into lemonade. But I'm always down with subversion. Bring that shit.

And now I have another film on the watchlist. I don't think I'd ever get Koyaanisqatsi right on a spelling test, though. Another film from my year of birth, so that's a bonus.
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Sam the Cinema Snob

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Re: ET v. Sight and Sound's 100 Greatest Films of All Time
« Reply #262 on: June 04, 2020, 06:02:14 PM »
Wohoo, glad you love PlayTime which is another all-time favorite of mine. You do have to give yourself over to Tati but once his films get going I swear they're some of the funniest gags in all of film. If you haven't seen his other films, you're in for a treat.

Eric/E.T.

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Re: ET v. Sight and Sound's 100 Greatest Films of All Time
« Reply #263 on: June 04, 2020, 08:02:39 PM »
Wohoo, glad you love PlayTime which is another all-time favorite of mine. You do have to give yourself over to Tati but once his films get going I swear they're some of the funniest gags in all of film. If you haven't seen his other films, you're in for a treat.

I almost impulse-purchased the Criterion box set last night, you are not helping! lol It's on the wish list. Definitely plan to explore further after the marathon.
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Sam the Cinema Snob

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Re: ET v. Sight and Sound's 100 Greatest Films of All Time
« Reply #264 on: June 04, 2020, 08:52:42 PM »
I'd wait for a Criterion sale. Still one of the best sets Criterion has put out in terms of quality. Parade is probably the only weak one of the lot and it's still quite good.

Junior

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Re: ET v. Sight and Sound's 100 Greatest Films of All Time
« Reply #265 on: June 06, 2020, 08:15:21 AM »
It's a good box set, even if Playtime is the best of the bunch. Tati is, as you've already discovered, one if the all time great worldbuilders. His use of sound is stunning.
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Eric/E.T.

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Re: ET v. Sight and Sound's 100 Greatest Films of All Time
« Reply #266 on: June 06, 2020, 05:44:00 PM »
Pierrot le Fou
JEAN LUD GODARD, 1965
4.5 STARS OUT OF 5

Now, this is my kind of Godard fun. Pierrot le Fou is a film that plays with color, sound, and cutting, includes musical numbers and visual and verbal gags, and somehow manages to hit on certain truths about human relations and art within all of the madness.

I was happy to see a looser, more fun Jean-Paul Belmondo this time around, as compared to his performance in Breathless five years prior. He’s still a bit of an intellectual/pseudointellectual prick, especially when he’s fussing over his books and his writing, and since he’s both Ferdinand Griffon and Godard’s own personal avatar “Pierrot”, you can even see it as Godard poking himself in the eye. Here, he’s a bit of a better mate, though also with the brash, witty femme fatale in Marianne Renoir that can match his wit and dour attitude with her own willfulness, passion, and underhandedness. It makes them a magnetic duo to watch. As much as you want to see what Godard, the director, will do to play with time and form, you want to see what Ferdinand/Pierrot and Marianne will do, or what kind of film they will cast themselves into next.

Godard, the director, takes aim in many directions, as usual. Before Ferdinand reunites with Marianne, he’s a man married to a woman of wealth and luxury, and the party he attends with her is pretty hysterical. Godard employs a monochromatic and changing color scheme, from red to blue to green, and so on, along with conversations among the rich that play almost as advertisements as they do discourse. It seems to be a critique on classic cinema, especially that which focuses on the upper class, their intrigues and conflicts, and paints them as dull, predictable, and consumerist. When Ferdinand and Marianne get back together and jump in the car to be with each other, you have a classic two-shot in a convertible as they talk as the same color schemes from the party alternate and reflect off of the car’s windshield and body. Same type of critique: How typical is this? Then: Well, what can we do with this anyway?

The musical numbers get at something I heard from a Damien Chazelle NPR interview around the time La La Land came out, which is basically, musicals are a pretty radical form of art considering that people in real life do not often burst out into song that reflects their inner feelings and conflicts for everyone around them (and an audience) to see. I kept this in mind as Marianne danced around her apartment and sang a song explaining as to why she and Ferdinand should not promise themselves an everlasting love. This performance carries even more weight at the film’s conclusion. Then, the Fate Line vs. Thigh Line Song, as I will call it, again calls back to the woman with many passions vs. man with one singular thing in mind that was a large part of Breathless, and may make us more comfortable with the ensuing betrayal. Both numbers point to a playful Godard who will throw in everything and the kitchen sink to tell his story and keep it fresh, fun, and honest.

The finale is bananas with images I won’t shake anytime soon. It brings back around one of the more difficult points for me to wap my head around that was made at the beginning of the film, the idea of constructing art around negative spaces or the conjunction of two or more meaningless or nonliving spaces. In the end, the love you thought you had didn’t have you. What were all those moments from the getaway to the island where everything stopped? That led to a suicide rethought but unable to be aborted? It does make you think that maybe it’s stupid to center your art around human trials and travails when they are just going to CINECAST! up like this anyway.

This is a Godard intrigue that gets closer to what I think he wants from cinema, and how he wants to criticize it, than did Breathless. He goes far to criticize the action genre while also making a fascinating artsy action film himself. There may even be a criticism of the more idyllic film when Ferdinand and Marianne are on the beach living on who-knows-what, where the lack of the eventfulness that brought them together now threatens to destroy them, as if people weren’t meant for harmony together or with nature. It for sure has plenty of criticism for war and doesn’t even feel the need to be charitable to the poor souls dragged into it. All this, the musical numbers, the strategic and playful cutting and lighting, make Pierrot le Fou a Godard tour de force that simply feels essential.
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Eric/E.T.

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Re: ET v. Sight and Sound's 100 Greatest Films of All Time
« Reply #267 on: June 07, 2020, 10:15:14 PM »
Gertrud
CARL THEODOR DREYER, 1964
2 STARS OUT OF 5

Save a few neat shots, like the one above, Gertrud plays like a direct translation the world of theater to the world of cinema. There are long scenes, characters who look off in the distance more than at each other, and intelligent blocking that allows the camera to reposition itself so as to reduce cutting given that there is no cutting in the theater. For all that, it’s a rather simple story, one that seems to be told frequently, about the nature of love and personal identity. The script is influenced by romanticism, told with great emotional appeal, but it’s fairly hard to relate to in our contemporary age where women have far expanded roles than back then. Gertrud seems passe.

Essentially, Gertrud plays the game of love with her husband Gustav, young lover Erland, and ex Gabriel, and eventually decides to go it alone. She seems to both lament and stick with the choice in the end, reasserting that love is supreme in this life. There is a problem with this one-track view of life, in that anything less than love might lead one into miserabilism, as it seems to have done with Gertrud. It’s an antiquated view of the world, especially considering the rate of divorce, the number of marriages executed outside the name of love, and the large number of people who simply don’t get married because it’s not for them. It’s why I loathe the, “But-I’m so lonely,” Jo March quote from the most recent Little Women, as I think it’s a situation one ought to get used to and feel empowered by. We aren’t promised love, much less romantic love. We aren’t promised companionship, let alone a significant other or spouse. Putting everything on this particular issue is simply outmoded thinking. There’s nothing wrong with yearning and desire, but one must be comfortable with in their own company, as well. That maybe a simple difference of opinion between the Dreyer and his film and I, but considering it is everything in this film, it made it a hard pill to swallow.
« Last Edit: June 07, 2020, 10:20:00 PM by etdoesgood »
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Eric/E.T.

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Re: ET v. Sight and Sound's 100 Greatest Films of All Time
« Reply #268 on: June 07, 2020, 10:23:30 PM »
Some Like It Hot
BILLY WILDER, 1959
1.5 STARS OUT OF 5

I bet that in 1959, it was hilarious just to see Jack Lemon and Tony Curtis crossdressing to get away from a pack of mobsters after witnessing a hit in Chicago. Pull off the conceit, and you have an unlimited supply of dramatic irony at your disposal. Throw the seductive, alcoholic, airheaded Sugar (Marilyn Monroe) into the mix, and you really have something to rouse and please the crowd. It just didn’t do anything for me.

I’d gotten the impression that Curtis and Lemon in drag would bring the problems of women into the world of men. All I saw was a missed opportunity to do so. Besides having a man here or there hitting on them, there weren’t too many obstacles they couldn’t conquer, and even the come-ons were so silly that you couldn’t even take it seriously as a women’s issue. Actually, Jerry (Lemon) as Daphne decides to get hitched to a wealthy old gentlemen after a long night of dancing, thinking it’s his best shot at marrying rich! Man, women have all the opportunities in this world.

Happenstance is another element of this film - and others that I wind up feeling mixed-to-bad about - that drags down the experience. The guys end up heading south to Florida after witnessing the hit, and not all that long after getting to the hotel where they’re to play with this all-women's band for three weeks, the mobsters end up at a major meeting of mob bosses at the exact same hotel. What’re the odds?! (No, really, what are the odds?) Speaking of things that don’t seem real, no one’s believing that Josephine/Daphne act outside the set. Maybe I’m just not having the requisite amount of fun with it, but there are a million ways to make me laugh, and this stunt taps into none of them.

Marilyn Monroe on screen had me thinking of Pierrot le Fou. There’s a point in the party scene toward the beginning, where Ferdinand/Pierrot goes from conversation to conversation, and eventually we see women go from their pretty dresses to, suddenly, nothing cover their tops. I connected it with Histoire(s) du Cinema where Godard mentions that men are typically framed from the belt up to show the guns and get close to the genitals, while women are framed from the breasts up, for even more obvious reasons. It boils down to: Tits sell. And the outfit choices for Monroe in Some Like It Hot could not make that anymore clear. Her acting is abominable. Is there anything more she could have done with the role of Sugar? Though, even if she was putting in a sparkling performance, all our attention would still be directed elsewhere. As is, she just plays into all the bad blonde bombshell stereotypes, and is hardly believable as a human being. Even the big mob boss who has Spats taken out at the end, with the ridiculous affectations to his speech, seems more believable as being a person that might be in the same world as you or I.

As with other Wilder films, and maybe a lot of classic Hollywood films, there’s a lot of snappy dialogue and one-liners in Some Like It Hot. A few piqued my interest or made me laugh with their wit, but more often than not they missed me, likely because I didn’t enjoy what I was watching. I don’t mind a good smart ass, but when every other line is smart assery, and there is so little human for me to grasp, I become exasperated. This even comes down to the Joe and Jerry relationship. Who are they? Why are they friends? I can’t remember if they ever interact in a human way toward each other. It’s all about them having to stay in character to avoid the mobsters vs. finding a way into Sugar’s pants. Inspiring.

I find myself wondering what the whole point was, why Some Like It Hot had to be made, and why it was so popular. A humorous conceit taken the distance, I guess. It was probably quite racy back then. Now? I can’t imagine all these people who in 2012 thought that Some Like It Hot is a top ten film of all-time, but it’s on the Sight & Sound List tied for 42nd, so there you have it. I think if something like this came out in the theater now, I probably wouldn’t even go see it. Some Like It Hot? Is that on Redbox yet? Go check when you go to get gas. Huh? I’ll take a KitKat. Mmm hmm. See ya.
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Bondo

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Re: ET v. Sight and Sound's 100 Greatest Films of All Time
« Reply #269 on: June 07, 2020, 10:41:40 PM »
Hmm, it's one I liked a lot when I first watched it probably in the 18-24 range. I think I rewatched it more recently. I'd have it on my 1950s list but certainly not my top 100 all time.

 

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