2010s List Discussion and Suggestions (Lists Project Vol. 3)

An ongoing project to survey the best films of individual decades, genres, and filmmakers.
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zedz
Joined: Sun Nov 07, 2004 7:24 pm

Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#76 Post by zedz » Mon Feb 22, 2016 3:17 pm

swo17 wrote:Daines, given your esteem for Farhadi, I'm curious if you've seen anything by Rasoulof. His best film, The White Meadows, is from the last decade, but his two more recent films are worth a look for this project. I wrote a little about Goodbye here. And Manuscripts Don't Burn is another very fine film, even gutsier than Panahi's "non-film" protests, made in secret while being banned from filmmaking and very critical of the current regime.
I enjoy Farhadi's films (I think Fireworks Wednesday is the best), but I saw the wildly praised A Separation at the same time as the criminally unknown Goodbye, and for me there was no comparison. A Separation is a handsome, very well-made film in the European arthouse tradition: Goodbye is pulverizing. Manuscripts Don't Burn is in my to-watch pile.

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TMDaines
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Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#77 Post by TMDaines » Mon Feb 22, 2016 4:08 pm

swo17 wrote:Daines, given your esteem for Farhadi, I'm curious if you've seen anything by Rasoulof. His best film, The White Meadows, is from the last decade, but his two more recent films are worth a look for this project. I wrote a little about Goodbye here. And Manuscripts Don't Burn is another very fine film, even gutsier than Panahi's "non-film" protests, made in secret while being banned from filmmaking and very critical of the current regime.
Interesting. Somehow I have never heard of any of these films nor the director. I will definitely seek to give them a whirl.

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bottled spider
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Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#78 Post by bottled spider » Mon Feb 22, 2016 5:03 pm

Me neither. I'm very interested in Iranian cinema in general. My local video rental has Iron Island and the aforementioned Manuscripts Don't Burn. Is Iron Island good?

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swo17
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Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#79 Post by swo17 » Mon Feb 22, 2016 6:11 pm

I'd say yes but less so than the ones I mentioned, and it's also from the wrong decade for this project.

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zedz
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Re: 2000s List Discussion and Suggestions (Lists Project Vol

#80 Post by zedz » Fri Feb 26, 2016 4:33 pm

Another Earth - I found the next couple of films by this collective (or whatever they are) reasonably enjoyable, but given the high praise its received I was hoping for a lot more here, and it was much of a muchness really. Some interesting ideas and nice moments, and you have to admire a high-concept sci-fi film that spends most of its running time watching somebody cleaning house, but one of the best films of this or any other decade? That's some wild weed you guys are smoking.

Marling's performance is good, and she has an earnest intensity in this and her later roles that's easy to watch, but she also has a whole lot of standardized tics (e.g. holding her hands up to her face in a prayer motion to signify shock / terror - a gesture I've seen countless times in American dramas but not once in real life) that she leans on in all of the roles I've seen her in to date.

Stylistically, it seems to me set to Generic Indie: a whole lot of techniques gleaned from music videos (brief bursts of slow motion, exaggerated grain, skipped frames, superimpositions, lots and lots of 'dreamy' unmotivated handheld camerawork, lens flare) thrown into a blender and then plastered on indiscriminately, with no semblance of an individual style, no coherent sense of mise-en-scene. It's fine, it's functional (but a lot less functional than it could be), but for me it has zero stylistic personality. It works to deliver the story and frame the performances, but that's it.

The biggest problem for me was just how lazy the writing was. There's a solid core to the screenplay - an intriguing science fiction concept; meaty personal drama; reasonably interesting characters - but all of the other stuff, the basic mechanics of plot, was perfunctory shortest-distance-between-two-points filler. Things just magically happen because they need to happen to get to the next plot point, with not even the sloppiest attempt at verisimilitude. One or two shortcuts I can forgive, but just about everything here is a shortcut, a wild coincidence, a fudging, or a motivational / behavioural stretch. A few of the niggles:
SpoilerShow
- Rhoda causes a tragic accident because she stares at the sky for a prolonged period of time while driving at full speed. Full disclosure: I roll my eyes when people driving cars in movies conduct their conversations with their passengers by turning their heads to face them. Do Hollywood scriptwriters and directors all have chauffeurs or something? I don't know why they didn't just make her drunk. It's not as thematically tidy, but it's much, much less stupid.
- She returns to the scene of the crime (standing photogenically but idiotically in the middle of the road) and just happens to see the father of the dead family. Okay, maybe it was a significant anniversary, but there are still 24 hours in any significant anniversary. Are we expected to believe that she was standing in the middle of the road for nine or ten hours waiting for something to happen before the scene began?
- Rhoda can track down the father because the local paper didn't just give his name and cover his story: they printed his home address. Just in case his future stalker was especially retarded (see above), they also print a picture of his house (as you do). Fortunately, even if Rhoda is too dim to find him from these generous clues, his professional website also provides his home address.
- The Golden Ticket is a cheap gimmick you just have to accept, but you don't have to accept the completely arbitrary way it's used as a multivalent plot device in this film. So, Rhoda wins a trip to Earth 2 out of millions of entries specifically because of her special personal qualities, and yet some random middle-aged guy turns up with her ticket and that's perfectly fine?
And that much vaunted final shot seems to me the epitome of the pseudo-profound gotcha moment that actually says nothing meaningful.
SpoilerShow
Okay, so Earth 2 Rhoda makes the journey that Earth 1 Rhoda didn't. So what? This doesn't answer any of the existential questions the film purports to raise, nor does it validate or refute any of the fuzzy theories that have floated around.
Considering Sound of My Voice also ends with a pseudo-profound gotcha moment (of the ". . . or is she?" variety), I'm skeptical that there's much serious thought behind that final shot - but by all means disabuse me if you can get more specific than "perfect ending."

It's an entertaining, above average industry calling-card, but I can't see anything even faintly resembling greatness here. But if you did love this film, by all means seek out Upstream Color, which is a much more interesting and challenging no-budget science fiction work.

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Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#81 Post by Brood_Star » Sat Feb 27, 2016 3:34 am

I've never actually participated in any of these polls. I started my "serious" film viewing and attending fests around 2011, so I think I'm equipped enough to contribute in this one. I have a rough idea of what my ballot looks like, but of course I look forward to unearthing new discoveries by the time the poll closes. The only thing I know within reasonable doubt is what's taking the #1 slot.

I'm not sure how the spotlight works, but the aforementioned The Strange Little Cat is a great one. It's a delightful gem that evokes the likes of Akerman and Tati – and it's a student project with a 10k budget, no less.

Other films that I think deserve more attention: I would choose Right Now, Wrong Then, which I think is Hong's best in an oeuvre of remarkable consistency, but being limited to 2014 and earlier, I'll suggest in its place any of his other features (Hill of Freedom/Nobody's Daughter Haewon/Our Sunhi). 'Til Madness Do Us Part from Chinese documentarian Wang Bing is his typical gruelling, extremely raw fare. I also remember being floored by Episode of the Sea, an ethnographic documentary that seemed at the time like a continuation of Leviathan but on steroids. However, it seems like none of their work is available anywhere, which is a shame since I've read many good things about View from the Acropolis as well.

Many things I need to revisit: Reygadas' Post Tenebras Lux (of which I was a big detractor) and Ruiz's Night Across the Street, which felt like Ruiz at his most surreal.

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mizo
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Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#82 Post by mizo » Sat Feb 27, 2016 4:39 am

Brood_Star wrote:I'm not sure how the spotlight works, but the aforementioned The Strange Little Cat is a great one.
A spotlight is just your opportunity to draw particular attention to a film that you think might otherwise be overlooked, something you love that doesn't seem to be on everybody (or anybody) else's radar. So, while it's obviously up to you in the end, I'd say The Strange Little Cat might not be the best choice, just because it's already been mentioned a few times in the thread.

Of course, keep in mind this advice is coming from the guy who spearheaded what may well turn out to be the worst spotlighting campaign this forum has ever seen (on page 1 of this thread).
Brood_Star wrote:Many things I need to revisit: Reygadas' Post Tenebras Lux (of which I was a big detractor)
While I wouldn't want to dissuade you from giving this a second shot, FWIW, you're not the only one who wasn't impressed. I found it to be both vacuous and utterly repellent. I mean, great filmmakers have worked wonders with unlikable and/or psychologically opaque characters, but Reygadas doesn't show himself to have any aptitude at that, and coupled with the refusal to make any kind of narrative sense, the whole experience was pretty miserable for me. Are there any fans who might want to come to its defense?

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Satori
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Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#83 Post by Satori » Wed Mar 02, 2016 11:05 am

I’m not sure if these films are generally well known, but I want to give a strong recommendation to Joana Hogg’s pair of 2010s films. Both are currently streaming on Netflix.

Archipelago (2010) takes place during a brief family vacation before Edward (Tom Hiddleston’s character) goes to Africa for a volunteer stint. Hogg’s still camera and long takes refuse any respite from the tension produced between Edward, his mother and sister, their hired housekeeper Rose, and Edward’s father, who is absent from the vacation. The film is indeed largely about absences: we hear brutal arguments that take place entirely off-screen, with the camera fixed on other characters listening. The film’s use of space also helps generate tension. There is a brilliant scene in which the camera is fixed in place with the dining room table in the foreground and the kitchen in the background. Edward’s mother and sister are whispering at the table while Edward awkwardly helps the hired cook clean up after dinner, an act which is making everyone else uncomfortable. The atmosphere is completely suffocating in these sorts of indoor scenes. Meanwhile, the outdoor scenes are beautiful, but it is a melancholic sort of beauty that compliments rather than contrasts the indoor scenes.

Exhibition (2013), about an artist couple selling their house, also uses absence: the house itself is divided up in complex ways—I could never get a complete mental image of its interior, despite the fact that the couple take a pair of realtors through a walking tour of it—and they spend a great deal of time in their own rooms, talking on an intercom system. The strange house is the focus, but the film also has a great deal to say about voyeurism, with “exhibition” taking on multiple meanings throughout the film: the exhibition of the house, an artist’s exhibition, and sexual exhibitionism. I don’t want to say too much about the narrative; it’s best to just let it unfold and get the cumulative effect of all the film’s little moments.

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Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#84 Post by Lemmy Caution » Wed Mar 02, 2016 1:02 pm

Swo, nice job on linking the page 1 spotlights to the posts touting them.
If this was done before I didn't realize or understand.
It's very useful.

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swo17
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Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#85 Post by swo17 » Wed Mar 02, 2016 1:06 pm

I've done that for as long as I can remember but I guess I never really advertised it. The idea is that the post it links to contains some kind of sterling defense of the film, information about availability, etc.

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zedz
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Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#86 Post by zedz » Wed Mar 02, 2016 7:07 pm

Satori wrote:I’m not sure if these films are generally well known, but I want to give a strong recommendation to Joana Hogg’s pair of 2010s films. Both are currently streaming on Netflix.

Archipelago (2010) takes place during a brief family vacation before Edward (Tom Hiddleston’s character) goes to Africa for a volunteer stint. Hogg’s still camera and long takes refuse any respite from the tension produced between Edward, his mother and sister, their hired housekeeper Rose, and Edward’s father, who is absent from the vacation. The film is indeed largely about absences: we hear brutal arguments that take place entirely off-screen, with the camera fixed on other characters listening. The film’s use of space also helps generate tension. There is a brilliant scene in which the camera is fixed in place with the dining room table in the foreground and the kitchen in the background. Edward’s mother and sister are whispering at the table while Edward awkwardly helps the hired cook clean up after dinner, an act which is making everyone else uncomfortable. The atmosphere is completely suffocating in these sorts of indoor scenes. Meanwhile, the outdoor scenes are beautiful, but it is a melancholic sort of beauty that compliments rather than contrasts the indoor scenes.

Exhibition (2013), about an artist couple selling their house, also uses absence: the house itself is divided up in complex ways—I could never get a complete mental image of its interior, despite the fact that the couple take a pair of realtors through a walking tour of it—and they spend a great deal of time in their own rooms, talking on an intercom system. The strange house is the focus, but the film also has a great deal to say about voyeurism, with “exhibition” taking on multiple meanings throughout the film: the exhibition of the house, an artist’s exhibition, and sexual exhibitionism. I don’t want to say too much about the narrative; it’s best to just let it unfold and get the cumulative effect of all the film’s little moments.
Two very great films. The only reason Archipelago won't make my 2010-2014 list is that I need that space for Exhibition, and with only 25 spaces to fill, I'm going to parsimoniously limit myself to one film per director.

Exhibition is one of the best films I've ever seen about how long-term relationships work. It's also one of the best films I've ever seen about how architecture works, and possibly the only film I've ever seen about how those two things impinge on one another. Hogg's compositional eye is faultless, and the house is at least as important a character as its couple. As Satori notes, even though we get a very thorough understanding of its different spaces, and, at least theoretically, plenty of information about how those different spaces are related to one another, it remains, as a whole, something of an Escherian conundrum, and it's no wonder that the couple's relationship has been so defined by such a strong and unusual domestic space.

Also re-seen:

Clouds of Sils Maria - A supremely confident and impressive old-fashioned Euro-arthouse film. Although it doesn't make my top tier of Assayas works, it's a marvellous film. I have slight misgivings that Valentine is less a coherent character than a collection of traits necessary for exploring the film's theses (I suppose the same goes for Jo-Ann, but that's really the point of the character and how she's presented), But Kristen Stewart sells the hell out of the script and bridges most of that gap. If anything, it just reinforces that this is a film about ideas.

Assayas' three films this decade are all extremely good, but I don't think any of them will make my list this time around. Carlos is brilliant in just about every way, but I find it a lot more ordinary than most of Assayas' work, perhaps because of the mini-series format and its obligations. Still, the feature-length OPEC siege sequence is on its own better than most other films from these five years.

Apres Mai I find a little distanced, oddly enough, since it's one of his most autobiographical films, but the sequence set to Captain Beerheart's 'Abba Zaba' is one of the best things he's ever done, and in general this film has a fantastically counterintuitive, yet still absolutely appropriate, soundtrack.

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zedz
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Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#87 Post by zedz » Sun Mar 06, 2016 11:05 pm

I was about to add to the list of great but unavailable films for your consideration Ben Rivers' demi-feature Slow Action, which is a Markeresque found science fiction film, but a quick search revealed the entire thing is up on YouTube, so enjoy.

The Bens (not the Radiohead album) have done some great work this decade, together and apart, but Slow Action would definitely be my pick for Rivers, and, just to be confusing, River Rites would be my pick for Russell.

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Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#88 Post by knives » Wed Mar 09, 2016 4:15 pm

Big Eyes
I haven't been as against Burton's most recent work as others. While he has gone into decline usually there's still something to be enjoyed. Big Eyes though really highlights his potential though and even makes me question why he's been wasting his time when he could have been making this all these years. Give or take a Depp and wife this really has all of his earmarks whether they be overly pretty period kitsch design glossily captured by Delbonnel or the strange outsider protagonist who's accepted all the same. On the surface this is really no different from Edward Scissorhands. Yet he shifts things just enough to make them feel fresh all over again. Amy Adams as Keane really is the fundamental to all of this. In what's easily her most difficult role, and probably best performance, she takes all of this Burton artifice and delivers on a very real world piece of introspection. The character is entirely interior to the point where I don't think she's ever given a moment to actively react. Even her big successes in the climax come from being acted on through questions. Despite this she doesn't come across as a wallflower or weak. She's definitely lame and already a relic in certain respects (becoming religious seems like such an obvious thing that it could have been played for a laugh), but at worst is awkwardly trying to be the new woman that the '70s would usher in (it's interesting how her leaving at the beginning is structured like Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore). Given that it's the same team comparisons to Ed Wood seem inevitable so I'll play along by saying that this film just shows how much they've grown as artists. Wood was always loud and underlined in his motivations and needs while Keane forces the audience to look into her and discover the mechanics going on. The motivation always makes sense, but it depends on reading Adams and taking her in as a person. The film plays things with an eye for comedy for the most part mostly because Walter is such an incompetent and loony villain which helps make the breaks into the horror he sets up for her more affecting. Most of his actions are casual and psychological which is the sort of mundane thing that usually doesn't take effect on film, but it's clear even before Burton turns the film into a horror movie how torturous the experience is. Waltz gives just as great a multi-tonal performance her as with Tarantino even as the character is far more thinly sketched (like I said he's a cartoon villain). Also Krysten Ritter needs to be cast in every period piece. With no effort she fits into the era perfectly.

Diplomacy
This is a good movie to have seen on a rainy day. The cinematography is gorgeous hiding everyone in a perpetual shadow as two old men contemplate the death of one of Europe's oldest cities. The play is opened up just enough to excite the theatrical elements into a grand tension even when the stakes aren't at the center of the conversation. Dussollier and Arestrup under play everything coolly even when they have explosions of emotion emphasizing in just the right manner a history of firewalled personality for the sake of work that holds themselves and what they may hold dear in the balance. This is a very mature view of the world which highlights how much Schlondorff has grown as an artist. So why does it all feel so pointless an afterthought

Fruitvale Station
It's extremely obvious why Coogler was hooked for Creed given how much Rocky is in Fruitvale's DNA. They share the same working class hopefulness and self destructive by way of necessity leads. Coogler also passionately paints Oakland giving a full sense of the city as a character which helps a lot to expand this beyond that one time a black kid was shot. That said the Rocky comparison also highlights the film's problems. It simplistically moves along afraid to characterize the internal aspects of the characters so all we get is the overly pretty surface. Jordan and Diaz, who is equally a revelation to him, give good performances but they are very much so traditionally pretty movie stars unlike the, and I'm sorry to be mean, kind of ugly Stallone and Shire. Even the cinematography makes Oakland look like this romantic and clean town unlike the steel choked Philadelphia. The film is good, just not Rocky good.

Wild
This is a pretty good improvement on Dallas Buyers Club and definitely one of the better entries in the white people connect with nature on vacation genre (the only betters I can think of are the unusual entries Gerry and 127 Hours). It primarily suffers from the same major problem as Vallee's last film of being significantly overdirected and overedited. The flashbacks are essential, but are differentiated from the lovely documentary present by being a poorly conceived Brakhage blob. Outside of that it's a fun, light weight film with a surprisingly effective pair of performances by Witherspoon, who manages to be casually terrible in a way that sells the later evolution, and Laura Dern, who despite having a nothing character really sells her few moments.

Into the Woods
I don't understand why this has had such a strongly negative reaction. Admittedly this isn't as good as Chicago and the second act is messy, but it still manages to do enough which works to be good. Marshall is pretty brilliant at utilizing film to give the effect of watching in the theater. I'm unfamiliar with the stage musical so I'm sure much of my excitement comes from that ignorance. The characterization of Streep's witch is fascinating and the highlight of the film. Streep herself is not a good singer made all the worse by how good everyone else is. This does hurt the film some since the emotional highlights of the film are sung by her. This does level the film some into merely a very entertaining lark rather the next great film musical it seems to aim for.

I'm not sure exactly what the film is aiming for in parts of its second act which feels overly edited into not making full narrative sense. The Cinderella story in particular seems to be trying something daring, but it feels too disconnected. Credit where it is due Chris Pine, who I mistook as a Hemsworth, is genius giving a better Shatner imitation here then in either of the Star Trek films. As a result the film does mask a lot of that choppiness.

Unbroken
Hey, it's Jai Courtney again. I guess Jolie didn't get my Water Diviner memo yet. That short term failure aside I'm really surprised at how not terrible this is despite a truly horrendous reputation its already gathered (which seems to be the whole theme of this post). There is some very good work by Deakins even considering his set standard with amazingly rich colours and a crisp emptiness to the background that's just damned effective. The Coen's script too is pretty good even if it seems to go out of its way to not say anything of value. Most surprising of all is Jolie's direction which fortunately stands on the principal of getting out of the way of the action and just let everyone do their job right. The lack of flash even helps with the tension like the background antics of the sharks about an hour into the movie (easily the film's highlight). The stuff in the prison camp isn't as good as the lost at sea stuff and I suspect the Coen's had their least input here, but even then the film doesn't become a complete disaster. The film does lack next to comparable movies like Rescue Dawn or Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, but it could be worse.

Lucy
This is a really fun take on DOA, but the first act is an overlong mess which nearly derails the whole thing. The dramatic bits just don't work and the mitigation of them after the bag explodes mostly serves to highlight how bad an idea playing things straight instead going full trash was. Though post-bag there are some good dramatic like the phone call to mum which suggest the problem of the first act is more tonal presentation then being dramatic necessarily. Of course the film is an aesthetically beautiful blood bath after that. Still I can't fully endorse a 90 minute movie that is twenty minutes too long.

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Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#89 Post by Mr.Scratch » Sun Mar 13, 2016 5:12 pm

I had previously posted on the forum under the name "bamwc2" and a whole slew over other ones over the last 15 years in different incarnations of the forum. Unfortunately, I've been preoccupied with work, so I haven't participated in the forum much over the last six months or so. I also had a catastrophic hard drive failure. I lost all of my writings on film and my log on information. Since I always hated my old name, I thought that I'd pick a new one instead of pestering Chris to retrieve it.

My son was born in 2009 and literally every film that I've seen in the theaters since then has been a kids flick with him, these last six years have been a near total blind spot for my cinematic knowledge. Though I've seen a few great films with him, I'm not going to do a spotlight this time around. I will, however, periodically check in with a viewing log.

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dustybooks
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Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#90 Post by dustybooks » Thu Mar 17, 2016 1:17 pm

Catching up on some titles from the dynamic threads...

Wild Tales - Most portmanteau films are hit-and-miss for me (even sainted ones like Dead of Night) and this was no exception, though I thought it was interesting that had it been played straight it might have been very reminiscent of A Touch of Sin. There's lots of violence that I'm a little squeamish about here and the road rage episode in particular seems to go on forever, though for me the weakest is the segment about the rich family whose son ran over a child (which pointed up how much stronger Child's Pose was at treating the same basic premise). All that said I loved the Agatha Christie-like opening on the plane and thought the lengthy closing wedding was delightful in a jet-black, schlocky sort of way.

Still Alice - I found this rather empty. Perhaps I'm not being empathetic enough, but Julianne Moore's sufferings here weren't very illuminating to me, and I found myself wishing the family being explored had been less... ordinary, for lack of a better word. It struck me as a little unnecessarily bleak, but then again I was also lukewarm on Amour, so maybe I just have a thing about a loss of memory and consciousness. The diversion that has Alice giving a speech to speak seemingly for all afflicted the world over brought to mind nothing so much as the long cancer story in "Funky Winkerbean".

Rabbit Hole - Nicole Kidman carries the day here and I think it's one of her finest performances, but the general restraint on display here worked across the board for me except maybe in Dianne Wiest's contribution. (I love her but she was pitched a little differently than the others.) It's something of a relief that the couples' conflict is not a simplistic "one half is over the tragedy, the other isn't" but that there are shades of gray and a clear give-and-take in their progress through the film. A particularly interesting choice was our being introduced to Miles Teller without being told of his role in the back story. Maybe it was immediately obvious to others but for me, the Vertigo-like slow chases of a school bus led down a path I never began to expect.

A Most Violent Year - One of the reasons I'm not a great contributor here is that I have a real problem appreciating many kinds of noteworthy films. One example is horror; it's not that I think all or most horror films are bad, just that in my experience to date they're, with few exceptions, absolutely 100% not for me. To make a music analogy, it's like the way I can't hear enough in metal to be able to distinguish the good from the bad. Another big blind spot is gangster movies and most variants of same; there's some mental block that prevents me from finding anything entertaining about ruthless macho anti-heroes for the most part. I love Oscar Isaac but his virtues as an actor were all but invisible to me in this; I didn't dislike it as much as Casino but there was nothing in it as inspired as the more undeniable bits and pieces of Goodfellas. And there was just a sense that I was watching something lurid on Showtime at 2am... which I know is unfair, or even a virtue for some. So I'm not really condemning this, I'm just saying, it's for someone else.

The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu - A perfect example of what I love about this forum: watching this because I saw it was about to expire on Netflix, I found myself utterly lost within moments, and it was thanks to several posts on the documentary lists project thread that I ultimately managed to navigate it despite its extravagant length and understand what it was doing. However, I ended up agreeing with something zedz said there -- it's a very impressive and sometimes astounding collection of footage, but it seems like not very much is being done to shape it. I admire the fact that others can see more layers and depth to its storytelling and rhythms, but I guess I need my hand held a little more. (I really love Emile de Antonio's Point of Order!, about the Army-McCarthy hearings, as an example of an ingenious assembly of existing footage that's utterly compelling.) This did lead me to learn more about Romania and the austerity measures and such.

Biutiful - I don't strongly dislike AGI; I've only seen three of his other films (Amores Perros, 21 Grams and Birdman) and I'd classify them all as interesting but a little silly. This, however, seems to justify all the criticisms I've read of him as a sleazy merchant of misery-porn melodrama. On top of all the feel-bad disease crises we endure -- with multiple loving shots of Javier Bardem's bloody urine stream -- there is the bizarre element of Uxbal being psychic. I reckon this is part and parcel with magical realism, but it just makes an already too-busy story overwhelming.

A Most Wanted Man - Philip Seymour Hoffman embodying a character beautifully for one last time is the main reason to see this, but it's also a fine thriller apart from that. In another bit of audience manipulation sleight-of-hand, it seemed for a time like a fairly ordinary War on Terror drama, then weaved into something more progressive and empathetic, only to
SpoilerShow
pull the rug out in one of the bleaker endings to a film of this scale I can remember. It ends up fitting snugly with my cynical opinion of the U.S.'s treatment of these matters in the last decade and a half, but the decisive event is so disappointing in a Chinatown sort of way that it got a more emotional response out of me than I honestly expected from this kind of a film.
I loved Anton Corbijn's music videos growing up but I must say I liked this mostly conventionally shot film quite a bit more than Control, which struck me as a slight treatment of subject matter that deserved better.

Side Effects - On the other hand, this movie jumps around with audience expectations in a way that grated on me. I get that Soderbergh is going for a lurid, B-movie feeling here -- the way he has Catherine Zeta-Jones play her part points to almost nothing else -- but in the end it's not only slight and hokey but also seems completely mismatched with the movie Rooney Mara is doing her best to perform in. I also found it all surprisingly listless from a cinematic standpoint despite being so thematically nuts; it was like a rote, unimaginative take on a Hitchcock or Clouzot film. (For comparison, I wasn't enormously fond of Magic Mike but after three years I still vividly remember several striking shots from it.) On the film's dedicated thread I saw a few people lament that the movie diverted from what seemed like its original pathway in favor of something weirder and schlockier, but I wasn't too keen on the initial evident plot about SSRIs either. Behind the Candelabra remains by far my favorite of Soderbergh's last several efforts.

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mfunk9786
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Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#91 Post by mfunk9786 » Thu Mar 17, 2016 3:33 pm

dustybooks, I'd be curious to hear what you thought/think of Away from Her, considering your reaction to Still Alice and Amour. I thought it was the strongest fictional film on the subject I've seen.

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knives
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Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#92 Post by knives » Thu Mar 17, 2016 3:37 pm

Is it any better then the other Polley's? I've only seen Stories We Tell and that one where Sarah Silverman pees in a pool and I thought they were handsome, but otherwise not intriguing.

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domino harvey
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Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#93 Post by domino harvey » Thu Mar 17, 2016 3:54 pm

I didn't like it at all

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dustybooks
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Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#94 Post by dustybooks » Thu Mar 17, 2016 4:02 pm

Stories We Tell is the only film of hers I've seen to date, but we have Away from Her at my workplace. When I have some time I'll check it out and will diligently report back on... I guess the 2000s thread!

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Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#95 Post by mfunk9786 » Thu Mar 17, 2016 4:49 pm

It's the only Polley film I've seen, but I remember being extremely affected by it and it's easily been prominently placed in my top 10 of that year since

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domino harvey
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Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#96 Post by domino harvey » Thu Mar 17, 2016 5:22 pm

dustybooks wrote:Stories We Tell is the only film of hers I've seen to date, but we have Away from Her at my workplace. When I have some time I'll check it out and will diligently report back on... I guess the 2000s thread!
Or... ( I know, our search sucks)

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Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#97 Post by mfunk9786 » Thu Mar 17, 2016 5:37 pm

OMG that thread includes a theory that Christie is faking Alzheimer's, including admittance into a medical facility, just to fuck with her husband

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bottled spider
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Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#98 Post by bottled spider » Thu Mar 17, 2016 6:32 pm

The short story on which it is based is very good, one of Munro's best. Polley's adaptation is fairly faithful, and some of her additions/deviations were interesting improvements.

I remember there was at least one unfortunate educational moment: the husband has been reading up on Alzheimer's; we see him on a winter evening walk, contemplating his studies, and hear a voiceover reciting part of the text, which employs a simile of lights of a building being switch off one by one; the husband looks back at his house (or a neighbour's), and we see lights being switched off, room by room. Viewers don't need to understand anything about Alzheimer's to appreciate the story, and certainly don't need a simple simile illustrated for them, and worse it's not clear whether the lights are being extinguished in the husband's imagination, or literally and very coincidentally.

The music, too, I remember as being rather simple-mindedly illustrative -- the husband performs a noble act at the end, to the accompaniment of a noble/jubilant-sounding piece of Bach I think it was. A few missteps like these lent an otherwise excellent film a made-for-TV quality.

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Re: Away from Her (Sarah Polley, 2007)

#99 Post by mfunk9786 » Thu Mar 17, 2016 6:47 pm

Man, the "Made for TV" accusations have been flying around here lately

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Re: Away from Her (Sarah Polley, 2007)

#100 Post by bottled spider » Thu Mar 17, 2016 11:15 pm

mfunk9786 wrote:Man, the "Made for TV" accusations have been flying around here lately
I recently made a similar remark about No One Knows About Persian Cats in the youth list thread. Is that what you're referring to? NOKAPC ends with a device familiar from TV crime dramas, but rarely seen in cinema, while Away from Her lapses once or twice into mild didacticism, a characteristic of movies made for CBC television ten, twenty years ago. But two occurrences hardly make a trend. If unbeknownst to me there's been a plague of made-for-TV comparisons elsewhere on the forums, then I'll ration myself to no more than three or four a week. That seems fair.

I admired much of Away from Her if I didn't enjoy all of it. I like her other two films. All three are very different from each other.

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