Sight & Sound

[therewillbeblus]

lol Return of the Jedi is on there.

Hey, Return of the Jedi is pretty good (well, it has a perfect first act that rivals anything else in the series, and we don't talk about the rest)

Spoiler

It's always been my favorite of the originals.

Spoiler

It's the only one we had taped on VHS growing up, so I saw it well before the others and watched it the most often as a kid. I honestly love a lot of things about it, and think the ending works really well too (not the final shot, but the darkness of Luke/Vader/Sidious), but I understand why people get tired during the Ewok respite. That said, I'm planning to revisit these very soon (my partner hates sci-fi but is on a mission to become an Adam Driver completist, so these originals -unseen by her- must precede those) so we'll see how a re-evaluation goes. Empire is my favorite of the originals, but Jedi might be better than A New Hope. But I also think eps 7 and 8 are as good if not better than the originals, so what do I know

[colinr0380]

Empire's gonna Empire, it seems.

Going back to the Sight & Sound list, I just found this BBC interview with Lillian Crawford from just after the announcement occurred, where she briefly notes that in her role as question setter on University Challenge she kept trying to get a question about the film onto the show but kept being overruled because Jeanne Dielman was considered to be just too obscure! (This on a show that regularly throws out quadratic equations to be solved!)

I also like that clip both for the the Jacques Demy shout-out at the end (the BBC guy was desperately wanting you to say The Empire Strikes Back, Ms Crawford!) and what I would like to interpret as the bluntly despairing factoid that pops up on the information bar at the bottom of the screen that "The film runs for three and a half hours", that contains no more or less informational weight than all the other worrying news on the ticker about North Korea conducting nuclear tests or Twitter banning Kanye!

[mas114]

Does anybody know if Sight and Sound ever posted online the Critics ballots for their 2022 Greatest Films Of All Time poll? They stated they would be doing that in January. I can't find it anywhere. Thanks for any info.

[MichaelB]

It's imminent - they just underestimated the workload.

[Red Screamer]

Get ready for round two: the top 250 of the #SightAndSoundPoll will be revealed on Tuesday

Due to the huge scale of the poll, preparing the ballots for publication has taken us longer than expected. We’re pleased to announce that all ballots and comments will be released online on Thursday 2 March

[mas114]

Thanks for the info!

[Red Screamer]

It looks like the rest of the top 250 is up on the site. Some more recent films I’m sure there’ll be grumbling about, plus lots of Bresson, and not only Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, which I somewhat expected given my generation’s (well-deserved) love of it, but also Twin Peaks: The Return! Another triumph for shorts: The House is Black at 101.

[yoloswegmaster]

I'm going to be honest, the list of films outside the top 100 is much better than the list of films within the top 100. Do they also show the top 250 films from the directors list?

[therewillbeblus]

Wow, terrific list. Thrilled that As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty made it, on the slow road to its rightful place at no. 1

[rrenault]

The most egregious absence for me from the entire top 250 is probably Viridiana. Since some of the WCP titles clearly got a push from being released on blu-ray by Criterion, such as Soleil O and Limite, I was hoping Pixote or one of the Brocka films would make it.

[Toland's Mitchell]

My theory on why Buñuel doesn't get much love on the critic's poll is because he lacks consensus choices. Critics are only allowed 10 films, which is a unfairly small number in my opinion. But anyway, when you ask critics to narrow down their top films to 10 choices, would they even have room for a Buñuel? If so, which one? You might get several different answers. Viridiana? Exterminating Angel? Belle de Jour? Los olvidados? I think this led to critics divided on which films to select, yielding a result in which Buñuel has 0 films in the top 100...but 3 in the 101-250 range. From what I see, he's not alone. Paul Thomas Anderson, Terrence Malick, Howard Hawks, Steven Spielberg, Jacques Demy, Nicholas Ray, David Lean...all these directors also have 0 representation in the top 100 but 2 or more in the 101-250 range. Heck, Hawks has 4 films ranked between 101 and 129.

[MichaelB]

This point has been made repeatedly, and it's traditionally why directors who don't have a single obvious heavy hitter along the lines of Vertigo, Citizen Kane, Battleship Potemkin, Tokyo Story and La Règle du jeu don't appear to do as well.

I may be misremembering, but I seem to recall that back in 2012 Robert Bresson scored the greatest number of individual films in the top 250, with something like seven.

[tenia]

Having a wider range of acclaimed movies is indeed generating more dispersion amongst voters, especially with a wider panel of voters. That's how people with a much more limited range of acclaimed movies are pushed forward while, at some point, the others will at best stagnate, at worst will get more movies suggested but less placed within the top (if at all).
In 2002, Godard was cited for 14 movies but only 4 ended up in the top 100. In 2012, it was 31... and still only 4 in the top 4. Chaplin was cited for 8 movies in 2002 with 3 placed : it was 15 in 2012 for only 2 placed.
And so on...
In the meantime, people like Charles Burnett or Vera Chytilova are concentrating votes on 1 or 2 movies only, making them much more likely to get the required amount of votes to be in the top.

[aox]

Unless I missed it, the biggest hole here is lack of Kobayashi. Harakiri is easily a top 250 film and I would view it as a consensus pick in his oeuvre for critics.

[Noiretirc]

Yes! The Thing is not far out of the top 100. That film needs much more love.

[Noiretirc]

I'm rather depressed that Lawrence Of Arabia keeps slipping. Doesn't war/bloodshed/political interference/identity confusion/god complex/failure resonate in 2023?

[bdsweeney]

Suprised that Soy Cuba/I Am Cuba doesn't appear even on the longer list. I can only guess that its relative unavailability over the last decade or so has played a role.

Very happy to see a number of Hawks films now included.

[ryannichols7]

Suprised that Soy Cuba/I Am Cuba doesn't appear even on the longer list. I can only guess that its relative unavailability over the last decade or so has played a role.

Milestone holding that title hostage in the US is beyond frustrating admittedly. that should honestly be unlawful

for those who don't know:

Although not currently available for home use, the DVD and Blu-ray of I Am Cuba are available for Institutional Purchase, which includes public performance rights and a 3-year streaming license.

literally let us own this alongside The Cranes Are Flying and Letter Never Sent, what's so hard to grasp about this

[yoloswegmaster]

Suprised that Soy Cuba/I Am Cuba doesn't appear even on the longer list. I can only guess that its relative unavailability over the last decade or so has played a role.

You would think so but Histoires Du Cinema is on the list and that has been even more unavailable than Soy Cuba, as a blu for the latter has been available in France for a couple years now (not to mention that way more people have logged Soy Cuba on IMDb and Letterboxd). Luckily you don't have to worry about the unavailability anymore since Milestone told someone via email a few days ago that there are planning to release it (as well as Killer of Sheep) on blu later this year.

[ntnon]

Having a wider range of acclaimed movies is indeed generating more dispersion amongst voters, especially with a wider panel of voters. That's how people with a much more limited range of acclaimed movies are pushed forward while, at some point, the others will at best stagnate, at worst will get more movies suggested but less placed within the top (if at all).
In 2002, Godard was cited for 14 movies but only 4 ended up in the top 100. In 2012, it was 31... and still only 4 in the top 4. Chaplin was cited for 8 movies in 2002 with 3 placed : it was 15 in 2012 for only 2 placed.
And so on...
In the meantime, people like Charles Burnett or Vera Chytilova are concentrating votes on 1 or 2 movies only, making them much more likely to get the required amount of votes to be in the top.

Does that suggest that either weighting, algorithms or multiple rounds of voting would produce a more "accurate" list..?

[pistolwink]

You would think so but Histoires Du Cinema is on the list and that has been even more unavailable than Soy Cuba...

This is maybe a terrible thing to say but I honestly wonder how many of the folks who listed Histoire(s) du cinéma have seen the whole thing -- esp. more than once. It's a film that, in my opinion, is cited as much as an "idea"—Godard's putative magnum opus, something like a summation--as an actual work to engage with. I find Godard's videographic "essay" films less interesting than his narrative features, where his essayistic and aphoristic and cinephilic tendencies coexist with storytelling -- setting up, for me, a more stimulating collision of expectations and sensations. The Histoire(s) feel more arid and didactic.

On a somewhat separate note, the major shift in this decade's poll is obviously the increasing number of "third world" (to use a dated phrase; "global south" might work, although it's not evenly distributed across that terrain), explicitly political, and feminist films reaching the top ranks. But rather than being an explosion of new discoveries, almost all of the films in those categories that made the top 250 were subject to a major European/North American home-video re-release in the last 10–15 years. A striking number of them were on those Scorsese-associated Criterion box sets of world cinema. It's always been true that the films that pop up are usually ones that have been re-circulated in the years prior to the poll, but what surprises me is how small the number of gatekeeping institutions still seem to be, despite the internet etc. etc. (Of couse, a Criterion release is often the culmination of decades of work by archivists, scholars, programmers, etc. talking up and sometimes teaching these films, but it's still true that for many folks, if a film isn't released by one of a small handful of companies, it might as well be invisible.)

[ntnon]

This is maybe a terrible thing to say but I honestly wonder how many of the folks who listed Histoire(s) du cinéma have seen the whole thing -- esp. more than once. It's a film that, in my opinion, is cited as much as an "idea"—Godard's putative magnum opus, something like a summation--as an actual work to engage with. I find Godard's videographic "essay" films less interesting than his narrative features, where his essayistic and aphoristic and cinephilic tendencies coexist with storytelling -- setting up, for me, a more stimulating collision of expectations and sensations. The Histoire(s) feel more arid and didactic.

On a somewhat separate note, the major shift in this decade's poll is obviously the increasing number of "third world" (to use a dated phrase; "global south" might work, although it's not evenly distributed across that terrain), explicitly political, and feminist films reaching the top ranks. But rather than being an explosion of new discoveries, almost all of the films in those categories that made the top 250 were subject to a major European/North American home-video re-release in the last 10–15 years. A striking number of them were on those Scorsese-associated Criterion box sets of world cinema. It's always been true that the films that pop up are usually ones that have been re-circulated in the years prior to the poll, but what surprises me is how small the number of gatekeeping institutions still seem to be, despite the internet etc. etc. (Of couse, a Criterion release is often the culmination of decades of work by archivists, scholars, programmers, etc. talking up and sometimes teaching these films, but it's still true that for many folks, if a film isn't released by one of a small handful of companies, it might as well be invisible.)

The cause-and-effect there may be inextricably linked - Criterion releases the "best" films, so much exposure to the "best" films is via CC... and there's a potential for skewed expectation in that the CC approval (or lack of it) denotes disproportionate greatness - so it's hard to determine whether it's a slightly troubling sign of deferring to another's authoritative pronouncements, or a vindication of the scope of the collection.

Or neither. Or both..

[tenia]

It could also just be that such releases are giving these movies a new and wide visibility, and that it turns out many pollsters who used it liked those newly-visible movies that much (because outside of who released these, that's great movies anyway).

So I'd say the question should actually be a reverse one : how many tremendously great movies aren't being suggested simply because they're too little seen or too difficult to find and watch ?
(The corollary being : is the S&S canon so static in places because it's feeding itself, both in what is available and what remains little seen ?)

[ntnon]

It could also just be that such releases are giving these movies a new and wide visibility, and that it turns out many pollsters who used it liked those newly-visible movies that much (because outside of who released these, that's great movies anyway).

So I'd say the question should actually be a reverse one : how many tremendously great movies aren't being suggested simply because they're too little seen or too difficult to find and watch ?
(The corollary being : is the S&S canon so static in places because it's feeding itself, both in what is available and what remains little seen ?)

Agreed.

It's also possible that the "new" can eclipse ones memories of the old - if you see something for the first time, do you rewatch an old favourite to better rank them, or do you promote the new over the old..? (Where "new" is new-to-the-viewer, not necessarily new-new.)

I assume also that many people who have a favourite film or three still get a mild twinge for naming the same thing every year (or ten), so there may be a mental quirk that also makes one want to be more open to the new - which is not a bad thing, but could suggest different scales and comparitive choices being used sometimes.

Trying to boil down 70,000+ films to 250 (10) is already frought with difficulty - comedies seem to often get the short end of the stick, for instance - so ceding some degree of filtering to worthy third parties may be inevitable.

[ford]

It's about time Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade moved ahead of Citizen Kane, so much more important film

lol Return of the Jedi is on there.

Hey, Return of the Jedi is pretty good (well, it has a perfect first act that rivals anything else in the series, and we don't talk about the rest)

I’m a Star Wars super fan — I can’t help it, believe me I’ve tried — but ROTJ is such a weak film. And it doesn’t have much to do with Ewoks. More with its mad dash to wrap up plot lines, regurgitation of the Death Star and failure to give Harrison Ford much to do at all.

Also: after the mesmerizing photography of EMPIRE, it’s astonishing just how rough and mediocre JEDI looks (note the strange hand-held shots in the throne room). Apparently, part of this is due to how Lucas wanted it shot: a master shot for every scene with a bunch of other cameras running so he could “direct” it in post. Whereas Kersh on EMPIRE intentionally refused any such arrangement, not wanting to cede these choices to Lucas in the editing room.