Dynamic Top Tens of 2010

Discussions of specific films and franchises.
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j99
Joined: Wed May 27, 2009 10:18 am

Re: Dynamic Top Tens of 2010

#26 Post by j99 » Sat Mar 13, 2010 2:08 pm

1. A Prophet
2. The White Ribbon
3. Fish Tank

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Lemmy Caution
Joined: Wed Mar 29, 2006 3:26 am
Location: East of Shanghai

Re: Dynamic Top Tens of 2010

#27 Post by Lemmy Caution » Sat Mar 13, 2010 2:54 pm


1. Rabbit Hole

2. The Wind Journeys -- wandering through Northern Colombia with an accordion has become my backup plan in life.
3. Katalin Varga -- potent revenge drama
4. Last Train Home -- a doc following one Chinese migrant worker family through a few years of stress and strain that is their daily grind,punctuated by reunions during Chinese New Year. Damn, this is fairly depressing.

5. Toy Story 3
6. A Room and a Half -- Andrey Khrzhanovskiy's imaginative re-creation of Joseph Brodsky's life growing up in the Soviet Union. Many of the same trappings and shifts as Howl, but much more effectively handled.
7. Illusioniste


New Additions:
8. Marwencol
9. Children of Invention -- Chinese immigrant family trying to get a piece of the American dream. Low-key and moving with good performances and a tight focus on one family.
10. Restrepo

______________________________________________________

The Shanghai World Expo --
most pavilions utilized short films or images projected on walls and even ceilings to convey their culture.
Some of the best were:
Australia -- inventive circular revolving stage with rising and falling screen towers.
Mexico -- odd, interesting presentation of films, through mask periscopes and on statues.
Czech -- animation medley, with 16 screens each with different animation, with the action from one "continuing" into another different animation film. It was also charming that this was just a little side attraction in a jam-packed pavilion, so tucked into the corner that I missed it completely on my 2nd visit. The cement steps made a simple, useful place to sit and rest and watch.
Iceland -- movie cube with 4 wall and ceiling projection
USA -- garden growing film on 5 adjoining screen shards
France -- old Alain Delon films playing on the walls in the hallways, along with other b&w films showing French scenery, such as the Riviera, the Seine, etc.
There were others that were good


Bad:
The Secret In Their Eyes
-- how did this overlong, unconvincing, soap opera of an investigation win over many much better films. The title conceit is one of the worst plot contrivances I've seen in quite some time.
Last edited by Lemmy Caution on Mon Jan 09, 2012 4:58 pm, edited 42 times in total.

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Dylan
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Re: Dynamic Top Tens of 2010

#28 Post by Dylan » Tue Mar 16, 2010 6:59 pm

1. Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno
2. The Ghost Writer
3. You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger
4. Shutter Island
Last edited by Dylan on Thu Dec 26, 2019 2:24 pm, edited 13 times in total.

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HistoryProf
Joined: Mon Mar 13, 2006 3:48 am
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Re: Dynamic Top Tens of 2010

#29 Post by HistoryProf » Sun Mar 21, 2010 12:58 am

1. Carlos
2. A Prophet
3. White Material
4. Winter's Bone
5. True Grit
6. The White Ribbon
7. Män Som Hatar Kvinnor (AKA: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo)
8. The American
9. Let Me In
10. Certified Copy

Didn't make the cut...
The King's Speech
Ghost Writer
The Town
Red
Black Swan
The Kids Are All Right
Restrepo
Inception
Easy A
Nowhere Boy
Catfish
Scott Pilgrim vs....
The Girl Who Played With Fire
Black Swan
The Other Guys
Solitary Man
Farewell (Christian Carion)
Up in the Air
Shutter Island
Green Zone
Splice
Kick-Ass
Tron Legacy
Megamind


99. Twilight: Eclipse (Don't judge me...just wait till you have kids!)
100. Salt
Last edited by HistoryProf on Sat Oct 06, 2012 1:15 am, edited 25 times in total.

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bearcuborg
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Location: Philadelphia via Chicago

Re: Dynamic Top Tens of 2010

#30 Post by bearcuborg » Mon Mar 22, 2010 3:12 am

Fresh from SXSW, here is a top ten of sorts:

NY Export: Opus Jazz (a short dance film based on Jerome Robbin's ballet)
In what appears to be faithful to Robbin’s 1958 ballet in it’s choreography, music (Robert Prince) and abstraction, this film also has clearly defined individual performances which give it a lyrical narrative form; it would not be out of place screened next to something by Tsai Ming Liang. Jody Lee Lipes, who shot this film, is a major new talent as cinematographer – and this is one of two films he shot in my best of SXSW list. (This appears to be available On Demand for PBS)

Passenger Pigeons
Easily the most impressive narrative I saw, and my introduction to a major talent in writer/director/actor Martha Stephens. A multiple character study with only a few threads connecting the multifarious story lines. Of the dozen or so significant characters, only two pairs briefly meet, yet what keeps them together is not a narrative device, but shared experiences of loss. Each character in Passenger Pigeons has either lost someone or something, come to end of a moment in life, or is in fear of losing something. Shot in Kentucky, which is as much a mental state as a place, no other movie took me to place as clearly lived in as this one did.

Annie Goes Boating (a short film shot in 3D)
Director Noel Paul told me his previous work has been more experimental in nature, and it makes me wonder how much that background helped make this sublime short succeed. In experimental films, things like feelings, impressions, sense of setting and rhythm often take the place of a traditional narrative form. What struck me first was it’s sense of setting. The way Paul and his crew framed scenes they recalled images of Monet in a simple and refined way. It’s a simple tale of young adults in the park one afternoon playing, relaxing, talking and being playfully romantic. It may sound slight, but the conception of the 3D allows for a unique immersion. The eye is allowed to wonder, and the film doesn’t distract by it’s showiness.

Putty Hill
A largely improvised film about the death of a young drug abuser which allows for various characters to recall memories of their relationship to the deceased. Often shot as series of interviews, the characters are asked questions from a off screen voice. The environment in which the subjects are shot in, seem to help to define them as they offer a brief glimpse into places they live, work, or hang. Director Matthew Porterfield and his crew give the movie a poetic feel, and each vignette would stand on it’s own but the narrative drive is the funeral. Yet, it doesn’t end there, and there is a sense of mystery under the surface. Beauty defined.

I Miss (a experimental short video)
Unfortunately, I Miss has little to no chance of appearing on DVD, but might find it's way online. Director Annie Dorsen gives (off/on screen?) direction to a little girl as she recites a intense & romantic poem. Charged with melancholy and sensuality – the video is almost in one take but the cut hardly takes away from it’s awesome power.

Audrey the Trainwreck
Audrey the Trainwreck features a strong cast, and a terrific written script – written being the key word as there is a distinction worth making. This is the first work of Frank V. Ross’s that I have seen, but clearly he has a talent for words and direction – little of the movie is improvised, yet it feels alive and of the moment. Kudos for getting original John Medeski (of the great Medeski, Martin & Wood) music on the big screen.

Dogtooth
I’m not quite sure what I saw here, but the feeling one gets is unsettling, atmospheric, and a kind of comedy that might make you laugh as even as you wince. With moments of shocking violence that recall Haneke, and a style of comedy that felt Godardian. A brother and two sisters are trapped physically on their parents estate, and mentally by their demands. The children (who are young adults) are even prisoners to language, as their father gives convenient definitions to words he finds objectionable. Despite it’s disturbing nature, it’s also quite playful.

Tiny Furniture.
At first I begrudgingly added this film because of the impressive work of Lena Dunham who wrote/directed and bravely stared. The artificial language of the Diablo Cody style leaves me cold and annoyed, yet it is still just as clever and sharp in this film as it is in Juno. Then something happened, I realized that my struggle was a problem of my own, rather than that of it’s filmmaker. What continues to amaze me is the assured direction, writing, and performance of it’s star that are first rate – it doesn’t get much more professional than this, yet I wonder how it is going to stand up in the face of its reviewers. The feeling may be that Dunham is playing herself, and from what I can gather this is a personal story, so while that may be true it’s more a mark of strength than liability.

The film is centered around a young woman who is just out of college. She’s aimless, conventionally unattractive and a loser at love – so she moves in with her mother and sister in Tribeca where she attempts to seduce a dubious internet celebrity (a interesting Alex Karpovsky), get a job as a hostess and bang the hot sous chef. She succeeds at a few in debatable ways perhaps, but she also abandons her life long best friend for her superficial and spoiled ex high school chum (played with artificialness showiness and star making turn by Jemima Kirke) which was never developed to my like.

Tiny Furniture recalled Ghost World, with it’s focus on a imperfect, unattractive lead character who we know is smart as hell, unconventionally attractive and yet somehow gets into situations that don’t play to her strengths and where her beauty isn’t appreciated. Some of the highlights for me where the great images she composed with master cinematographer Jody Lee Lipes, and a great, awkward sex scene that stands up there with the recent unnerving work of Andrea Arnold.

Clearly no other movie challenged me on so many levels.

Trash Humpers
There’s a slight drop off from here out… While no means a great film, Trash Humpers might be the best thing Korine has ever made. It’s free from any kind of narrative (so often his weakness), and is really just a series of vignettes about a group of elderly (or meant to be thought of as disguised?) who sexually abuse trash cans, trees, or other things - all of this is shot on video by themselves along the way. Among their encounters are strange conjoined twins, a fat misfit kid, and other weirdos. Shot on VHS, and shown complete with codec and STOP/FF/REW signals, it is supposed to play like a piece of found art and it may play better in a gallery setting, as it is often exasperating.

Cold Weather
Aaron Katz’s best movie, despite it’s slow start. Director of Photography Andrew Reed is perhaps the most interesting thing about Katz’s movies, and this time he gets his hands on the beautiful Red camera. A sly brother/sister story about a former forensic studies major (not quite believable) who moves in with his sister and discovers a mystery about his ex girlfriend. Along the way he is aided by his coworker, but it is his relationship with his sister, and their final moments that stuck with me the most.

Strange Powers: Stephen Merritt and the Magnetic Fields
Perhaps not much more is revealed here that couldn’t be found through some research, but this is really one of the great bands of the past couple of decades, and Stephen is a interesting subject. There is never a dull moment in this movie, and it’s adherence to traditional documentary methods (no 3D model still photo effects) make it completely satisfying. With the influx of documentaries, this one knows its limits unlike some of the others I saw at SXSW where they over stay their welcome.
Last edited by bearcuborg on Sat Mar 27, 2010 11:40 pm, edited 24 times in total.

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rohmerin
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Re: Dynamic Top Tens of 2010

#31 Post by rohmerin » Mon Mar 22, 2010 11:29 pm

Buenas:
1. Un profeta
2. The whirte ribbon


10. Shutter Island

-Don't tell anybody (NOT released in Spain, watched this year at home)




Rubbish:
-Precious
Last edited by rohmerin on Tue May 04, 2010 8:44 am, edited 1 time in total.

MaxS
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Re: Dynamic Top Tens of 2010

#32 Post by MaxS » Sun Apr 04, 2010 11:49 am

1. Heartbeats (Les amours imaginaires)
2. The Illusionist (L'Illusionniste)
3. Film socialisme
4. Toy Story 3
5. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Loong Boonmee raleuk chat)
6. Exit Through the Gift Shop
7. Greenberg
8. Winter's Bone
9. The Kids Are All Right
10. Inception
Last edited by MaxS on Sat Oct 02, 2010 12:14 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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zedz
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Re: Dynamic Top Tens of 2010

#33 Post by zedz » Mon Apr 05, 2010 6:28 pm

bearcuborg wrote:(no 3D model still photo effects)
Hallelujah! Any filmmaker who can't see how naff and dated this gimmick has become (and it was a pretty dumb idea even when it was fresh) must be completely clueless, and it makes me immediately distrust their other filmmaking instincts as well. It's like the Auto-Tune of documentary.

And I agree with you on Dogtooth: a fascinating film, but I'm reserving final judgement until I see it again, since much of its initial impact I put down to the sheer oddness of its conception.

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bearcuborg
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Re: Dynamic Top Tens of 2010

#34 Post by bearcuborg » Mon Apr 05, 2010 10:48 pm

zedz wrote:
bearcuborg wrote:(no 3D model still photo effects)
It's like the Auto-Tune of documentary.
I love that line! I was just in a car where someone had the radio on to what must now be, all auto-tune, all-the-time.

royalton
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Re: Dynamic Top Tens of 2010

#35 Post by royalton » Tue May 11, 2010 4:28 pm

1. Confessions (Kokuhaku) (Tetsuya Nakashima)
2. The Social Network (David Fincher)
3. Symbol (Hitoshi Matsumoto)

tbd:

Inception (Christopher Nolan)
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (Niels Arden Oplev)
Golden Slumber (Yoshihiro Nakamura)
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (Edgar Wright)
Toy Story 3 (Lee Unkrich)
I Am Love (Luca Guadagnino)
Boys On The Run (Daisuke Miura)
Castaway On The Moon (Lee Hey-Jun)
Annyong Yumika (Tetsuaki Matsue)
Actresses (E J-Yong)

overrated:

Enter The Void (Gaspar Noe)

coming up:

A Prophet
Exit Through The Gift Shop
Police, Adjective
Winter's Bone
Dogtooth
Greenberg
Fish Tank
The Kids Are All Right
Catfish
Carlos
Tamara Drewe
Wild Grass
White Material
Film Socialisme
Around A Small Mountain
The Red Riding Trilogy
Last edited by royalton on Tue Oct 12, 2010 5:33 am, edited 5 times in total.

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rohmerin
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Location: Spain

Re: Dynamic Top Tens of 2010

#36 Post by rohmerin » Wed May 19, 2010 9:52 pm

So, everybody is appreciating my friend Claudia's teta asustada. Excellent ! I'll e-mail to her.
May be you can try her 1st film Madeiunsa, that it's avalaible in USA on DVD by film movement and for me it's more attractive.

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Galen Young
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Re: Dynamic Top Tens of 2010

#37 Post by Galen Young » Sat Jun 12, 2010 3:38 am

to date so far...

1. The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke)
2. Splice (Vincenzo Natali)
3. The Ghost Writer (Roman Polanski)
4. Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno (Serge Bromberg)
5. Life During Wartime (Todd Solondz)
6. Greenberg (Noah Baumbach)
7. Green Zone (Paul Greengrass)
8. Cargo (Ivan Engler)
9. Edge of Darkness (Martin Campbell)
10. Survival of the Dead (George Romero)

(Still waiting for the new Noé and Suleiman... Looking forward to the latest from Godard, Assayas and Araki...)

THX1378
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Re: Dynamic Top Tens of 2010

#38 Post by THX1378 » Fri Jun 18, 2010 8:22 am

The ten best of 2010-
1. Inception
2. True Grit
3. The Fighter
4. Carlos *the full 5 1/2 hour cut*
5. The Social Network
6. Toy Story 3
7. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
8. Black Swan
9. 127 Hours
10. Never Let Me Go

Runners up: Winter's Bone, The Ghost Writer, Green Zone, Fish Tank, Let Me In, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo/The Girl Who Played with Fire, Cyrus, The Kids are Alright, Shutter Island, The Town

The it's good, but I don't get the hype because it seems like Masterpiece Theater for the big screen- The King's Speech

The Worst:
A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010), The Wolfman, Alice in Wonderland, Survival of the Dead, Shrek Forever After
Last edited by THX1378 on Mon Dec 27, 2010 6:03 am, edited 5 times in total.

Zombie-Luv
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Re: Dynamic Top Tens of 2010

#39 Post by Zombie-Luv » Fri Jun 18, 2010 9:20 am

I'd love to see A Prophet but this is what I've seen so far what I think is the best:

The Ghost Writer
REC 2
Shutter Island

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Kellen
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Re: Dynamic Top Tens of 2010

#40 Post by Kellen » Sun Jul 18, 2010 3:04 am

personal favorites so far:

shutter island
un prophete
inception

still waiting to see these:

dogtooth
exit through the gift shop
Last edited by Kellen on Mon Jul 19, 2010 2:39 am, edited 1 time in total.

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FerdinandGriffon
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Re: Dynamic Top Tens of 2010

#41 Post by FerdinandGriffon » Sun Jul 18, 2010 11:28 am

The Ten:
1. Oki's Movie
2. Inception
3. Les herbes folles
4. Shutter Island
5. Like You Know It All
6. Our Beloved Month of August
7. Police, Adjective
8. The Red Chapel
9. Ne change rien
10. 36 vues du Pic Saint Loup

Near Everything Else:
The Fighter
Hadewijch
Somewhere
The Portuguese Nun
127 Hours
True Grit
The Social Network
Winter's Bone
Double Take
Four Lions
The Strange Case of Angelica
Lebanon
Never Let Me Go
Somewhere
Cyrus
L'illusioniste
The Chaser
Last Train Home
Lebanon
Un prophete
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
Air Doll
Vincere
Greenberg
The Ghost Writer
Dogtooth
Toy Story 3
Mesrine: Killer Instinct
Middle Men
I'm Still Here
Carlos
The White Ribbon
(Fatally flawed, to be honest, but good cinematography and acting does manage to salvage something, which was not the case with...)

The Bottom of the Barrel:
I Am Love (What a deeply insipid film. Cinematographer Le Saux does some very impressive work here, but in the service of one of the most arrogantly brain-dead films I've seen in along time.)
A Single Man
Serge Gainsbourg, vie heroique
Valhalla Rising
Secret Sunshine
You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger
Another Year
Farewell
Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould
The American
Black Swan
Enter the Void
Last edited by FerdinandGriffon on Wed Oct 16, 2013 10:42 am, edited 25 times in total.

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zedz
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Re: Dynamic Top Tens of 2010

#42 Post by zedz » Mon Aug 09, 2010 6:04 pm

Melody for a Street Organ (Muratova) – Twenty-something years after The Asthenic Syndrome, Kira Muratova makes another state of the union address, and it’s a doozy. Dressed in the fairy-tale finery of a Christmas tale – two orphans travel to Kiev in search of their absentee fathers, seeking assistance from all manner of adults along the way – and ending on a moment of truly Bunuelian sacrilege, the film balances itself precariously between several conflicting moods: comedy, satire, tragedy, absurdity. While you could relate a lot of the stylized sequences to the heightened, leering cinema of Fellini or Kubrick (Eyes Wide Shut is the only other Christmas film I can think of within earshot of this one’s slippery, sinister tone), at its heart it’s an allegory about Charity that’s unusually astute about the reasons people do bad things, with indifference and solipsism rather than malice the grand villains of the piece. A modern mystery play, from one angle it can be read as a Christian film; from another it’s profoundly pessimistic, even nihilistic. The force of Muratova’s style merges these two perspectives and gives them a scabrous political edge. Like all her other films, no doubt Melody for a Street Organ will be buried in the snowdrift of history, but it’s one of the great films of the 21st century, a late masterpiece from an old master, so keep your eyes peeled for it as it burns across the sky of the international festival circuit.

Police, Adjective (Porumboiu) – Well, what do you know? Everything they said about this film was true. A phenomenal piece of cinematic sleight-of-hand, looking for all the world like a police procedural, or the hollowed-out ‘slow cinema’ deconstruction of one, but actually being a rich philosophical treatment of a completely different matrix of ideas. But that’s just semantics.

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Weerasethakul) – Discussed in its own thread.

Marwencol (Malmberg) – An unprepossessing documentary that achieves greatness simply by having the brains and the guts to get out of the way of its fascinating subject. After a brutal beating that leaves him with brain damage, Mark Hogancamp retreats to the only place he feels safe, a fantasy of World War II in which opposing sides can momentarily set aside their differences and enjoy a good drink and some staged cat fights (in which nobody ever gets hurt). Mark plays out these scenarios with dolls in a miniature village he has constructed, and obsessively documents the weird, looping narratives with photographs. The filmmakers never overplay the therapeutic analogies of the invented narratives, and only slowly reveal the full details of the incident that damaged Mark, so the full resonance of the material deepens and evolves the longer we get to observe it. When Mark’s photographs are discovered by the art world, and other twists come tumbling out of the closet, it looks like we’re heading for a pat, upbeat conclusion, but Malmberg is smart enough to realise that sometimes the obvious questions (“When does therapy become art?”) aren’t even particularly relevant. In the end, he’s making the film for Mark, not for himself, and that humility makes all the difference.

The Time That Remains (Suleiman) – All the virtues of his previous couple of films are present and correct, meaning that this contains some of the most precise and witty deployment of cinematic space since Tati, and some of the driest and most pointed accumulations of discrete sketches since late Bunuel, but this time it’s harnessed to a more carefully constructed and involving narrative than before.

Extraordinary Stories (Llinas) – Amazingly impressive first feature which plays fast and loose with narrative norms in a very productive manner. Three parallel stories all work variations on the ‘wrong man’ idea, with three protagonists each getting wrapped up in somebody else’s conspiracy theory and vamping desperately for their lives. Each of these individual threads – which are broken up into bite-sized chapters and intercut with the other two, and which include shaggy-dog digressions and inset narratives of their own – would make a fine, suspenseful feature in its own right, but the strength of the film lies in the way it bounces its structural preoccupations (with the act of narration as much as with generic narrative mechanics) between all three without ever becoming abstract or theoretical. There are strong echoes of early Greenaway or Ruiz, but I was also put in mind of Marguerite Duras trying her hand at a commercial thriller.

Between Two Worlds (Jayasundara) – I was impressed by this Sri Lankan filmmaker’s first feature, The Forsaken Land, a few years ago, but this effort seems much more resolved and persuasive. It’s a self-consciously visionary film, with political unrest elevated to the level of an understated apocalypse (the armed forces spreading mayhem throughout the countryside are almost entirely off-screen), and with a distinct Biblical and mythical edge – although the myth that our protagonist seems to be embodying is one made up on the spot by a couple of fishermen early in the film. What keeps the film going is its visual grandeur, and watching this film made me realise how rare it is to see action staged effectively in extreme depth: figures in the foreground interacting with events or figures in the extreme background. It’s a sure-fire way to give your images scale and power, but it’s hard work, and most contemporary filmmakers can’t be bothered.

Certified Copy (Kiarostami) – Already discussed in its dedicated thread.

The Strange Case of Angelica (De Oliveira) – It’s getting harder and harder to tell major De Oliveira from minor, and when a director’s over 100, every new film seems like some kind of miracle, but to me this seems like his strongest film for several years. At base, it’s a simple ghost story, of the romantic obsession variety, and it unfolds in a stately manner like a 19th century tale transposed to some indeterminate later date, and there’s a depth and weight to everything that’s rare to see in modern film, and quite different from the lightness of Belle Toujours, Christopher Columbus or Eccentricities of a Blond Hair Girl. The sombre, painterly compositions are exquisite, and the incorporation of simple old-school special effects is far more authentically evocative and convincingly uncanny than most CGI.

To Die Like a Man (Rodrigues) – A film of two halves. The set-up is one that’s oppressively familiar: aging drag queen struggles at home with a wastrel young lover who’s just using him and at work with a young upstart who’s upstaging / angling to replace him. And there’s an alienated son who turns up to angst on the doorstep. It’s frisky enough, and tarted up with a couple of stylistically intriguing sequences, but so far, so what? Then, about halfway through, things change. A stray border collie turns up and (not necessarily connected to this) the rote narratives that we were expecting to follow to their telegraphed conclusions are largely abandoned. Instead, we get some really extraordinary sequences (including a becalmed musical interlude in the middle of nowhere) and the emergence of the film’s real story. On paper, that story is just as clichéd as the earlier false leads, I suppose, but the dignity and invention with which it’s treated elevates it to something special.


Five More:

36 Vues du Pic Saint-Loup
Like You Know It All
The Illusionist
A Portugese Nun
Carlos

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Steven H
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Re: Dynamic Top Tens of 2010

#43 Post by Steven H » Mon Aug 09, 2010 6:29 pm

zedz, you've always had a knack for making me feel guilty for not watching enough newer films. I just thought I'd let you know that you haven't lost it. I think I'm all done with the 20s and Noir lists, so... I need to start driving around to see / hunting down these.

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swo17
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Re: Dynamic Top Tens of 2010

#44 Post by swo17 » Mon Aug 09, 2010 6:40 pm

zedz, thanks for putting all that effort into your write-ups. I'm looking forward to a lot of those. Also glad you liked Police, Adj. Now on to the mystery of why Criterion passed on it.

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knives
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Re: Dynamic Top Tens of 2010

#45 Post by knives » Mon Aug 09, 2010 6:46 pm

Criterion passed on it? I can't even find an MPI announcement so how do we know Crit swung that way.
Also Zedz fantastic write up. Ypu made me even more guilty of the De Oliveira hole in my education. Hope to see an update in December.

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swo17
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Re: Dynamic Top Tens of 2010

#46 Post by swo17 » Mon Aug 09, 2010 7:00 pm

At some point after IFC acquired it, Criterion said they had no plans for it (on Facebook, I think). Of course, it hasn't been announced for any kind of release yet, so maybe there's still hope. Remember Criterion also initially denied that Antichrist would be coming, and we all know how that turned out.

Image

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zedz
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Re: Dynamic Top Tens of 2010

#47 Post by zedz » Mon Aug 09, 2010 7:24 pm

swo17 wrote:Also glad you liked Police, Adj. Now on to the mystery of why Criterion passed on it.
I have no idea.

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gubbelsj
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Re: Dynamic Top Tens of 2010

#48 Post by gubbelsj » Thu Aug 12, 2010 9:11 pm

Zedz, I'll just add to the thanks for your list - you've single-handedly helped turn my films-to-watch list into something formidable. So very helpful. I'll be tracking these down for some time to come, I suspect.....

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Lemmy Caution
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Re: Dynamic Top Tens of 2010

#49 Post by Lemmy Caution » Fri Aug 13, 2010 1:03 am

Marwencol sounds very interesting.

One I've added to my 2010 list:

The Wind Journeys, an impressive 2009 Colombian film, still playing the festival circuit and just released on Dvd by Film Movement. It basically plays out much like a Western, with a strong silent lead on a mission somewhat shrouded in secrecy, passing through a ruggedly beautiful landscape. He packs an accordion -- accessorized with bull horns, appropriately enough -- while machetes seem to be the weapon of choice in northern Colombia.

Some of the North Colombian landscapes are quite remarkable. Verdant mountains, sheer cliffs, harsh salt flats. The film has an authentic feel and integrity, even if it does play up the exotic and primitive a bit. The music is terrific and used well. I was impressed with the young actor who plays the would-be protege trying to come of age.

Accordion music and machetes, and a lead character who knows what tune to play during a machete fight to the death. What more could you want?

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Re: Dynamic Top Tens of 2010

#50 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Thu Aug 26, 2010 12:45 am

1. Inception.

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