15k - Line's NEW Top 100 Films of All Time

[Line]

^^ I have a feeling I've seen this one, something familiar about this descripion. Sandow in it?

Sydow? He does the narration I posted, but I don't believe he plays an actual character.

 

[tim290280]

^^ Ok probably not the one I'm thinking of then. I have seen his other ones with the "real" sex in them. It was a cult film thing and amazingly you barely notice the nudity/sex as being anything other than part of the story.

 

[Line]

^^ Ok probably not the one I'm thinking of then. I have seen his other ones with the "real" sex in them. It was a cult film thing and amazingly you barely notice the nudity/sex as being anything other than part of the story.

The Idiots by Lars von Trier or different film with Max von Sydow? In the case of the former, I don't recall Max being in that particular pciture either, but, yeah, the Dogme 95 style of the film made the transition from conversation to gangbang pretty seamless.

 

[Line]

90. The Player (Altman, 1992)

There's not too much I can say about this one that can't be inferred from this: it's 8-minute long opening shot. Self-aware and highly humorous, The Player isn't Altman's best film, but its critical barbs and comic cynicism - particularly those pointed at film industry - are, if nothing else, as candid as they are thought worthy.

 

[tim290280]

^^ I loved that film. Especially liked the small but typifying role by Richard E Grant.

There have also been numerous films that have attempted to use the same blackmail plot. Most have failed to create the same sense of desperation due to their shallow understanding of the effective use here.

Also probably the film I enjoyed the most of Tim Robbins' (next to Bob Roberts).

 

[Line]

^^ I loved that film. Especially liked the small but typifying role by Richard E Grant.

There have also been numerous films that have attempted to use the same blackmail plot. Most have failed to create the same sense of desperation due to their shallow understanding of the effective use here.

Also probably the film I enjoyed the most of Tim Robbins' (next to Bob Roberts).

Altman, aside from being a modernist, has a proclivity for genre deconstruction with McCabe & Mrs. Miller - an anti-western - being the next obvious example (The Long Goodbye is a great contempo take on Raymond Chandler novels as well). And, in order to breakdown a genre, one must know its tendencies and inner-workings, which is why he has the success he does. I agree about Robbins as well -- I'm usually not much of a fan, though I haven't seen Bob Roberts.

I'll post #89 after I get from Military Pressing.

 

[Line]

89. Army of Shadows (Melville, 1969)

Mixing his pseudo-subtle color palette - which evokes a certain eerie romanticism meant to chastise how far detached man can come from reality - and ascendant ideologies concerning those who cheat the status quo (specifically when infringing on the rights of others) and the cause-and-effects that amount from such societal shortcuts, Jean-Pierre Melville's 1969 picture of fortitude and depravity wasn't seen by American audiences until nearly thirty years after its creation, yet remains as powerfully honest and formally expressive as any work I've seen. The French Resistance has never been portrayed as wholly realized as it is here both in terms of emotive and oppressive spectrums.

 

[fdelval]

i admire how well spoken you are


my taste in movies is pretty different than yours and i dont know half of the movies you write about. But i will watch some of them for sure.
I also miss some movies but there are 2 i would like to get your opinion:

saving private ryan
gladiator

 

[Line]

i admire how well spoken you are


my taste in movies is pretty different than yours and i dont know half of the movies you write about. But i will watch some of them for sure.
I also miss some movies but there are 2 i would like to get your opinion:

saving private ryan
gladiator

Thanks, fdelval. I actually write for two sites: Box Office Magazine and Next Projection. In this, I watch a good amount of movies and my taste has grown increasingly eclectic, so I don't expect everyone here to have seen too many of my favorites. That said, I'd encourage anyone to watch any (or all!) of these films. As for the two films you've listed, it's been awhile since I've watched either of them, though I prefer Saving Private Ryan out of the two. Gladiator I find pretty mediocre.

Another update in a few.

 

[Line]

88. Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (Murnau, 1927)

Perhaps the pinnacle of the silent era aesthetic, F.W. Murnau's Sunrise is a wondrous collage of both super and social imposition. Always the experimentalist, Murnau eclipses his previous efforts like Faust and Nosferatu in the way he hones his craft to evoke not only the duality of man but also our introspectionism inherent. The story, while ostensibly simple, even dated perhaps, needs to be considered within the context of a time; as such, Sunrise is in some ways the death rattle of the silent era. Subversive in its ideologies - which range from infidelity, to uxoricide, to our complex emotional schemas - the film sought to show the beauty of imagery and the power of storytelling without the gimmickry of dialogue -- how human action, and emotion, are exponentially more powerful when seen rather than heard and how cinema, more so than other mediums, is capable of evoking more immersive emoting than its other artisan counterparts.

 

[Line]

87. Annie Hall (Allen, 1977)

A unique alloy of amusingly-aware middle-brow musings and intellectual witticisms, Woody Allen's Annie Hall is a playfully boyish yet wholly realized take on relationships, specifically how they evolve (both internally and externally) from sporing to spurning. While most see a more-witty-than-worthy romcom, Allen's piece is actually an assay on not only how we orient ourselves to our most familiar of milieus - which in Woody's case, is the dating scene of NYC - but also to ourselves -- how we change and, with this, how our needs change accordingly. This semi-chaotic pictorial of humanity isn't a convenient reality, nor is it a comforting one. And while Allen could have gone the route of showing his Alvy Singer (played by Allen) as single and satisfied, he goes the bolder route of playing up man's inner-dynamicism, suggesting that we must first find peace, perhaps even love, within ourselves before extending that unto others.

 

[Line]

86. A Woman is a Woman (Godard, 1961)

Oh, Godard. During his formidable 60's oeuvre, Jean-Luc Godard satirically tackled every genre - from Hollywood classicism (Breathless) to war (Le petit soldat, Les carabiniers) to crime (Vivre sa vie, Band of Outsiders), and so on - and, in the case of his 1961 film Une femme est une femme he exceptionally extrapolates an ostensible musical using the same guerrilla film tactics that made the Nouvelle Vague as influential as it was. The result is nothing short of amazing. With the use of smash cuts, which are, contrary to the name, somewhat rhythmically incorporated in this particular picture, and other motifs aimed at subverting expectation, Godard's formal considerations snake around a narrative as to evoke the notion that men never know what to expect from a woman. But rather than do this via fierce genderization (as he's been unfairly accused of in Masculine Feminine) or sexist airs, Godard instead treats his titular subjects with respect, knowing full well its the limits of the masculine mindset that makes the fairer sex so allusively alluring.

 

[Line]

85. Second Breath (Melville, 1966)

Out of his numerous films dealing with the innerworkings of criminality - both in terms of his austere representation of apathetic acts and the mindsets of those perpetuating them - Jean-Pierre Melville's Second Breath is his most complete, socially coherent work. Though I'm often at odds with the director's somewhat credulous, free-application of karma-esque justice, I find this film to be a penetrating analysis of duty and conscience, stilted specifically to be indicative of the underworld realm.

 

[Line]

84. Playtime (Tati, 1967)

Director Jacques Tati went all but broke making this -- a film of postmodern deconstruction and consumerist encroachment all wrapped within a physical comedy chassis. Like Chaplin sans the emotional intrigue, Tati uses the tacky decor of Paris' increasingly ornamental architecture to expose the gaps between form and function and, moreover, the relative sterility of contemporary living and necessitated warmth of mankind. And yet Playtime remains as jocular as its title suggests, positing postmodern applications as something more appropriate for parks than municipalities and suggesting that, just maybe, a formal collapse of technological tenacity may clue us in on just how bound our lives truly are by the playgrounds we call society.

 

[tim290280]

attenuate Lang's otherwise atrabilious aesthetic

I just learnt a word for the day. I'm as interested in the film as I am in the fact that a lot of the old films are being transferred to DVD/BluRay. I've seen several old films that have just blown me away, it would be great to be able to see some of them again (possibly without some of the horrible colour updates they started doing for the old B&W films a decade ago).



PS: check your PM's Line.

 

[Line]

82. Festen (Vinterberg, 1998)

The better of the two original Dogme 95 films - the other being Lars von Trier's The Idiots - Festen is a formally relevant eschewal of cinema's all-too turbid rules and, moreover, a bravely austere pictorial of upper-class familial dynamics (and politics). Those unfamiliar with the movement will probably not realize the difficulties inherent to shooting this film, which include foregoing the use of non-diegetic sound, camera dollies/stands, props, artificial lighting, and so on. The result? A work unique in its gelid take on both filmmaking and relationships; an approach that's only magnified, exponentially at that, by the director's relentless provocations about a family on the brink of disaster.

 

[tim290280]

87. Annie Hall (Allen, 1977)

A unique alloy of amusingly-aware middle-brow musings and intellectual witticisms, Woody Allen's Annie Hall is a playfully boyish yet wholly realized take on relationships, specifically how they evolve (both internally and externally) from sporing to spurning. While most see a more-witty-than-worthy romcom, Allen's piece is actually an assay on not only how we orient ourselves to our most familiar of milieus - which in Woody's case, is the dating scene of NYC - but also to ourselves -- how we change and, with this, how our needs change accordingly. This semi-chaotic pictorial of humanity isn't a convenient reality, nor is it a comforting one. And while Allen could have gone the route of showing his Alvy Singer (played by Allen) as single and satisfied, he goes the bolder route of playing up man's inner-dynamicism, suggesting that we must first find peace, perhaps even love, within ourselves before extending that unto others.​

Possibly the best of the 3 films Woody has ever made.......​

 

[Line]

Possibly the best of the 3 films Woody has ever made.......

Hmm...there very well may be one or two other Woody films making this list. What are your other two favorites?

 

[tim290280]

The one set in New York......

I liked Match Point and Bananas. I'm betting you've got Love and Death on your list.

 

[Line]

The one set in New York......

I liked Match Point and Bananas. I'm betting you've got Love and Death on your list.

I actually haven't seen Bananas, though I do enjoy the other two you mentioned. That said, Love and Death didn't make it -- only New York-set Allen films did. :gaysign: