Having sent this in (thanks, Heebster!) I'll kick things off by saying that a lot of people seem angry or confused about why Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, a film that most of the mopes complaining had never heard of before last week, would finish so high.
After the crowdpleaser of Vertigo people seem really hung up on the idea that a challenging film (those long, long cooking takes) with no stars or, really, plot could be in some sense "genuinely" a favorite (of a bunch of film critics and academics!) and therefore people must have picked it to get a woman to the top of the list. Just awful reasoning. (A lot of the same objections could be made about 2001, also on the list, but Stanley Kubrick is a recognized genius and we all love ape-on-ape violence.)
The other notable thing to me was that some recent movies showed up! The 2012 version of the list featured no then-recent movies (the youngest movies on that list were 2001's Mulholland Drive and 2000's almost distressingly beautiful In the Mood for Love, probably my favorite movie featuring no cartoonish violence; they both hung around for this year's list and finished in the top 10), but we've got Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Get Out, Moonlight, and Parasite from the last seven years.
Much love for Jeanne Dielman and no complaints from these quarters, also now that Citizen Kane has finally dropped maybe there won't be such an elitist tinge about it? It's brilliant accessible film making.
I loved Parasite, Get Out, etc, but I think 5 years is way to soon for a movie to land on a 100 best of all time list. Give it time.
I just realized that Get Out and Knives Out must be different movies.
Big +1 to You Must Remember This. I highly recommend the Charles Manson and Polly Platt seasons.
I haven't seen Jeanne Dielman. The biggest WTF for me that I have an informed opinion on is Mulholland Drive. It just doesn't make sense to me that it's so much higher than Blue Velvet and definitely doesn't strike me as a top-tenner.
Really glad to see Totoro and Spirited Away on the list (and in the right order!). Kind of odd that they're right next to each other? Does that mean that almost everybody who voted for one voted for both?
I've seen like five of those movies.
Blade Runner is, I think, the only one to use a cast member from Newhart. Which means it should be higher. And also that The Birds should be on the list.
Has anybody other than Barry seen Jeanne Dielman? I confess that not only have I never seen it, this was the first time I ever heard of it.
I think it's somewhat embarrassing that Mulholland Drive is that high. Parasite and Get Out I think are clearly deserving and will stand the test of time, I'm less convinced that Portrait of Lady on Fire and Moonlight will be remembered in decades but they're both beautiful films and I'm happy to see them there. I think Mad Max: Fury Road is the conspicuous recent snub, along with Eternal Sunshine (which did make the director's list). I'd put Casablanca higher myself. Like saiselgy I was surprised to see The Rules of the Game drop out of the top 10, it's very strange to see *two* French films ahead of it (haven't seen either of them).
In principal I support the more global and inclusive approach, but in practice I'm just really grumpy that I haven't seen fully 4 of their top 10. How am I supposed to argue about films I haven't seen?
I am not at all a serious film person -- I get bored at anything arty. Any actually good movie I enjoy was sort of intended to be commercial and sort of happens to be artistically meritorious as well.
That said, I read a lot of random stuff aimed broadly at the kind of person who is also a serious film person, so I'm kind of familiar with important movie titles and like peep I'd never heard of Jeanne Dielman before. Is it newly thought of as more important than it used to be or something?
2000's almost distressingly beautiful In the Mood for Love
God, yes. It's been years since I watched it, but it still stays with me.
I was surprised by how many films on the list I've actually seen (a little under 1/3 of them). I like movies, but I don't have especially "art house" tastes.
I've seen Rules of the Game! I've seen Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood, *and* Ran! But you're telling me that I still haven't seen either of the two French films in the top 10 or the Japanese film in the top 10? What the hell! (At least the Hong Kong one is a pretty widely seen film.)
Get Out and Knives Out are both fantastic and not at all spinach-y.
It is my understanding that Jeanne Dielman got remastered/made more widely available (possibly via Criterion?) In the last 10-15 years and that explains it's surge.
Another vote here for Get Out, which is terrific.
I could buy an argument that movies like Citizen Kane are important, but I wouldn't actually call it a great movie.
I'm a little surprised that there was no love for Tarantino. Surely Pulp Fiction belongs on the list, and Jackie Brown is a legit contender.
Wizard of Oz shouldn't have been overlooked either.
If you liked Knives Out you'll like the sequel too (Glass Onion, Netflix). I think they really recaptured the magic.
Citation: https://www.vox.com/culture/23488576/jeanne-dielman-sight-sound-best-2022
The idea that Tarantino is really overrated is one of my favorite film ideas.
Tarantino may have squandered his early cineaste good will by being so consistently himself and so inexplicably commercial.
No PT Anderson? There Will Be Blood? The Master?
I like Tarantino, especially Kill Bill, far more than I should. I have a running gag (in my own head), based on the old Colbert bit where he says "I don't see color, people tell me that I'm white, and I believe them because I [very white thing]" where the previous entries are "I don't see gender, people tell me that I'm male, and I believe them because I..." "like to interrupt people," or "argue about sports on the internet," but "think Klll Bill is a great movie" is a good one.
Also I'm incredibly tickled that Glass Onion has a Pretty Little Liars easter egg. Like I already felt very sympatico with Rian Johnson because he's an exvangelical and a huge fan of The Mountain Goats, but this really made me think we'd be friends.
re: 17.2
There's a general lack of films with bad-ass fight scenes, tbh, except for the work of Kurosawa, and even then, the Kurosawa movies on the list aren't necessarily the ones in which Toshiro Mifune stylishly cuts a lot of dudes up.
4, 9: I like Lynch but Mulholland Drive seems weirdly overrated to me, too, possibly for the same movies-about-filmic-representation reasons that Vertigo was top-of-list last time. (Not my favorite Hitchcock; too chilly and I'm not enamored of either of the leads' performances. That said, there's a lot of that; I'm not sure Parasite is Bong's best movie, e.g.; Mother is riveting.)
10: Joon-ho Bong put it on his list! Fury Road is a real "we didn't deserve this" gem. I've actually been enjoying seeing people's lists as they show up on Twitter; this one, from the Canadian director Sophy Romvari, is kinda awesome in that it includes There's Something About Mary and an added surprise. (It's a really good, heartfelt list!)
12: As I said on Twitter, one of the things happening is that there was a major critical reassessment of Jeanne Dielman over the last IDK fifteen years (it went from being in the 70s on the 2002 list to in the 30s on the 2012 list), so it's simply much more widely seen than it used to be; there was a showing in Cleveland at the art school I believe last year.
15: Claire Denis, the Frenchie who cracked the top 10 list, has a staggeringly good and surprisingly varied body of work and is maybe France's greatest living director. Beau Travail is a French Foreign Legion adaptation of "Billy Budd", but she has also done e.g. 2001- and Solaris-influenced science fiction in 2018's English language High Life, with Robert Pattinson and Juliette Binoche, the harrowing colonialism-in-disarray near-thriller White Material, and the balls-to-the-wall horror flick Trouble Every Day.
A film that I have a lot of affection for and which I think ought to be on more best of lists is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minbo
The other thing about Jeanne Dielman (which is streaming right now on Criterion) is that it's so intentionally slow and repetitive that it does not really lend itself to home viewing. You're going to check your phone as she boils the potatoes.
Are there any Spanish language films? Almodovar? Any of the recent Mexican directors? (I'd go with Pan's Labyrinth myself, but maybe Y Tu Mama is more canonical.)
Vertigo happens to hit me right in the feels, so I get that one. My complaint with Mullholland Drive is partly that I don't think it's a top 10 level film (even if he is a very interesting director), it's also that it's kind of embarrassing to have a big push for more women directors *and* put a male-directed surprise sexy lesbian fun times film in the top 10. Like I wouldn't put Portrait of a Lady on Fire in the top 10, but it's at least a little embarrassing to have it below Mullholland Drive.
I haven't watched most of the Marvel movies, but glacial is how I would describe the pace of the Infinity War and Endgame ones.
25.2 "Signs" is a hell of a take!
I'm trying to think what really out-of-left field film I'd put in the top 10 if I were trying to make an interesting list. Face/Off? (I do kinda think there should be one John Woo film on the list, but realistically none of them deserve to be there on their own. The Killer is too overwrought, A Better Tomorrow I doesn't have enough action, Hard Boiled is only action, A Better Tomorrow II is too silly. Face/Off gives you both Woo and Cage near their formidable peak powers.)
33: Toy Story 2!! What a perfect film.
I was also surprised that Keaton was so low, but it's a bit unfortunate that his masterpiece is also a work of confederate apologia (perhaps accidentally, I don't think he was aiming for politics in his movies, but still it's problematic as hell).
On the list, I've seen between 40 and 50. There are a few where I can't remember if I've seen them, which might be a sidewise comment about how I'd rank them. I haven't seen Jeanne Dielman but I used to spend a lot of time scrolling through the Criterion Channel offerings without watching anything and I added it to my "to watch" list some years ago.
I spend less time scrolling through movie titles on streaming services now and about the same amount of time not watching things. But the problem is more my attention span for things I want to watch more closely, not usually the movies themselves.
36: His Mr. Mom was very pro-feminist.
Star Trek IV should get in because of the line where the woman asks Kirk if he's from space and he says he's from Iowa but works in space.
29: that left me in suspense! Does she peel the other 2 potatoes?
33: As a minor correction, Varda's The Gleaners and I is on the list.
40: You'll have to watch all 201 minutes of the movie to find out! (One of the things Akerman is doing, although certainly not the only thing going on!, is foregrounding how much of her life Dielman spends taking care of her apartment and her kid. No cutting to the action: this is how long it takes to, you know, make a bed or whatever.)
Do people still make beds? Back in the 70s, we had to every morning. Now, not so much.
22: My best friend is a trans woman who loves Kill Bill; I don't get it at all but clearly Tarantino fans, of which I'm not one, are not a monolith. (I've also never gotten Godard, for what might be similar reasons.)
I am very fond of Mulholland Drive but that might be related to an old memory of having seen it in the theater with lesbian friends. Delighted that Wong Kar-Wai and Claire Denis are represented. My knowledge of film is really spotty but if I were going to carp about exclusions, I guess Parajanov and Preston Sturges.
42: I'm pretty sure it's all setting up a scene where she uses that knife to kill a person. I can always tell what's going to happen in a movie!
42: It's funny to think how even in a cooking show they wouldn't actually show in real time a person peeling a bunch of potatoes. The only show I can think of that would dare to be that boring is Mr. Rogers Neighborhood. And even that would have him talking about how soothing and pleasant it is to peel potatoes.
Fred Rogers gave Keaton his start.
The guy who sold shoes to Mr. Rogers is always making fun of how shitty my old shoes are when I go buy new ones.
The Turin Horse by Béla Tarr (director of Satantango on the list) spends like half its running time on hypnotically slow potato cooking and eating sequences. It's a vibe.
He's a local. I saw him eating in a restaurant years ago.
From the description Jeanne Dielman, reminds me of a Goddard film I saw back when I was a pretentious undergrad -- Two or Three Things I Know about Her. This scene changed my life! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMVBRjkG_ec
And by changed my life, I mean that when it was over I was 30-40 seconds older than when it started.
I love slow movies, love visible structuralism in film, love idiosybcratic visionary film, so my tastes line up.
I just recently watched Akerman's News from Home, almost all fixed-camera shots of ambient activity on streets and subways of NYC, intermittent voiceovers (by Akerman, quick Belgian French) of the anxious and kind of clinging letters that Akerman's mom wrote her. The drama, such as it is, comes from pacing and gradual change from empty streets to crowded ones, from the contrast between Mother's prose voice + deep roots elsewhere and Akerman's lonely NYC, also from an eventual departure. A bit similar to how Blair Witch's pace was set by each day's events being recorded with fewer shorter takes. Linklater does a lot of this also, for people who like this style, he's worth including.
No Altman either.
to 34, Face/Off would be good; I was genuinely surprised to see nothing by De Palma, either Blow Out or Body Double are examples of the kind of self-conscious filmmaking that this committee seems to like, also both witty and quite good. Babe: Pig in the City is IMO also a legitimate masterpiece. Wuxia maybe? Hero is amazing, I haven't seen Shadow yet.
Only children's movies from Miyazaki are on the list. I liked Scorsese's Hugo a lot, up there with Munchausen. Disney's Pinocchio amd Snow White ? Nemo for athat matter, also light on Bildungsroman - 400 blows and Moonlight are both for adults. The whole idea of a best list is a sus[ect project, I guess useful for archiving and reference. The lists help popularize less-than-obvious choices, this list definitely made me decide for News from Home this week.
A childhood friend's mom passed away 2 years ago, he just recently sent me a box of mostly film books from the family's library. So nice to dip into these.
Do other people use letterboxd? Keeping track of stuff I'd like to watch in kind of a systematic way, with easy links to cast/crew and other people's thoughts, I like the service a lot.
I don't really keep track of stuff. I mostly watch what other people are watching and formulaic murder mysteries.
52 reminds me of the Umberto Eco essay about how to tell if you're watching porn or not. Basically, he says, non-porn films are trying to tell a story. Everything has to be about the characters and the story. Porn is different - it's all about building anticipation before the actual sex. No one's there for the plot.
So if your film has the hero take a 20 minute bus ride to his girlfriend's flat and they have sex, that might not be porn. If the bus ride takes 10 seconds of screen time, it isn't porn. If you have to watch all 20 minutes, it's porn.
It was a nice restaurant. No porn.
There was even a baby in the restaurant. I remember because the same friend I stopped from going up to Keaton spent half of dinner making the baby at another table laugh.
No one can make a baby laugh like the Batman.
Speaking of Keatons, it looks like they never had Annie Hall in the top 100 to remove? They do seem to have banished Polanski from the main list, but he is still on the Director's list.
The thing about Annie Hall is that it isn't that good.
I think Jaws should be on the list.
Do people still make beds? Back in the 70s, we had to every morning. Now, not so much.
Jammies cares very much about our bed being made. He usually makes it, and on days he doesn't, I figure he's extra stressed and I try to do it. Sometimes I fail.
It's not actually hard if you try.
I am pretty sure I've never enjoyed a fight scene or an action sequence. Maybe a single punch or slap if the person has it coming.
I agree with everything Upetgi(9) says in 10. With respect to recent films, along with Fury Road and Eternal Sunshine, I might add The Act of Killing.
The persistence of The Searchers on these lists is so baffling to me. The fifteenth greatest film of all time, wtf.
Voices of Bob Newhart and Eva Gabor. What's not to like?
I am pretty sure I've never enjoyed a fight scene or an action sequence.
If you have time, watch the "Every Frame A Painting" video on Jackie Chan and let me know if you find any of that action enjoyable. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1PCtIaM_GQ
The opening of whatever movie had Thor killing everything set to The Immigrant Song was great. I didn't watch the rest of the movie.
Doesn't seem like there are any comedies on that list, but OTOH there are 93 or so that I've never seen.
70: I enjoyed the commentary and analysis! But not the action per se, beyond illustrating the point. It did not make me want to see any of the movies.
73: I thought it was supposed to be a Moebius strip.
I am pretty sure I've never enjoyed a fight scene or an action sequence.
I am pretty sure you are wrong, because:
"I admit it, you are better than I am."
"Then why are you smiling?"
"Because I know something you don't know. I am not left-handed."
Fair point. That scene is very cute.
72: Sherlock Jr., Some Like it Hot, Modern Times, City Lights, The General, Playtime, The Apartment, Singing in the Rain... is that all?
Celine and Julie Go Boating looks like a comedy.
I'm pretty close to what Heebie said. Not never, because there are fight scenes that are charming or funny or something about the specifics is comprehensible and important to the plot, but mostly I'm just waiting, bored, until the dialogue restarts after the action scene is over.
Celine et Julie vont en bateau (one of my favorite movies) has some terrifically funny bits but is not a comedy per se. I described it once as "a breathtaking movie that is both about the friendship between two young Parisiennes *and* a movie in which magic candy gets them high and they can experience a melodrama in a haunted house". Alice in Wonderlandian dreamscape? Daisies is a comedy--there's a food fight.
81: The line "Nobody's perfect" cracked me up the first time I heard it, but it's gotten stale over the years.
Generally the only silent comedies I enjoy are the shorts (up to about twenty minutes) but it's been a while since I've watched any full-length ones aside from The General, which I don't enjoy.
On the other hand, "Why, I make more money than Calvin Coolidge... put together!" is still comedy gold.
70: I enjoyed the commentary and analysis! But not the action per se, beyond illustrating the point. It did not make me want to see any of the movies.
Interesting; thanks. If you are not charmed by Jackie Chan then I believe you are unlikely to be charmed by much cinematic action.
65, 80: Atypical action favorites of mine, ymmv. Babe, Pig in the City is a talking animal kids movie directed by George Miller, who also made Mad Max. There's some animal conflict and a free-for all with swinging from a chandelier. 100% great chase scene. Mickey Rooney's last role.
Action movie I liked, the hard-bitten hero is a single mom: Furie one big fight takes place in an open-air vegetable market.
Miyazaki on epic action:
"Americans shoot things and they blow up and the like, so as you'd expect, they make movies like that," Miyazaki expressed at the time. "If someone is the enemy, it's okay to kill endless numbers of them. Lord of the Rings is like that."
Continuing on, Miyazaki stated, "The Lord of the Rings is a movie that has no problem doing that [not separating civilians from enemies, apparently]. If you read the original work, you'll understand, but in reality, the ones who were being killed are Asians and Africans. Those who don't know that, yet say they love fantasy are idiots."
Another very good "fun" action sequence: http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2020/06/15/little-stabs-at-happiness-3-you-know-for-kids/
I worry about recency bias, and no doubt, I think Parasite and Get Out and Moonlight and Mad Max Fury Road are all great and will stand the test of time but still. And this may be heresy but Mad Max 2 > MMFR and I don't think it's close. Whatever one thinks of Polanski as a human being (a piece of shit) Chinatown should be there. As should The Conversation. The two by Edward Yang are great but I'd have at least one by Hou Hsiao-Hsien (likely Flowers of Shanghai or City of Sadness) and Tsai Ming-liang (Goodbye Dragon Inn). One musical is weird. No Buñuel and not a single Latin American film. Just some disordered thoughts as I'm still out of it from surgery and recovery.
These lists are kind of silly anyway but helpful in a way for discovering blind spots.
And yes, lk above, Parajanov's The Color of Pomegranates should be there too.
I'm just upset that hardly anyone can make a decent parody movie. I think Not Another Teen Movie was the last passable one.
89: Goodbye, Dragon Inn is amazing. (I was actually planning on watching Yang's The Terrorizers sometime in the near future.) And I'm not sure but I think I like Rosemary's Baby (and maybe even Knife in the Water, which I haven't seen since I was in my early 20s) better than Chinatown (which is nonetheless a great movie).
Getting down to a list of 10 is hard! I took a whack at it, revised it twice, and realized one of my favorites (Nicholas Ray's In a Lonely Place) still isn't on the list. Mad props to the Signs and There's Something About Mary director for wedging those two weirdo choices in.
No love for "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story"?
If you love parody movies you could do a lot worse than "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story" from just this year.
89, continued: There are some noticeable gaps (Hawks; Almodovar; Herzog; any Latin American movies or movies by a Latin American director*; anything by Demy or Melville or Chabrol or Clouzot or Rohmer), some of which can be explained by directors competing against themselves (Almodovar and Hawks, I think), but Polanski obviously fell off because he's a disgusting creep.
* Which I phrase like that because how do you treat e.g. Children of Men, which I might have put on my top 10 if I'd thought of it.
Signs? I enjoyed that movie until the excessively ridiculous ending, but of the three M. NIght movies I've seen it's my least favorite.
I did like There's Something about Mary a lot.
Just for the fun of it, off the top of my head, with no thought put into ordering... Mad Max: Fury Road, Lady Bird, Pan's Labyrinth, Casablanca, Vertigo, Face/Off, Toy Story 2, Eternal Sunshine, The Inside Man, In the Mood for Love.
Once I started watching enough movies, I found it too hard to rank them and gave up. Things were much easier when I could cynically declare I hated everything.
RWM says: The Third Man, Sherlock Jr., MM:FR, Jurassic Park, Dirty Dancing, Spirited Away, Bright Star, Sunset Boulevard, Little Women (Gerwig), King of Kong: Fist Full of Quarters.
re: 99
Those are interesting choices. Pan's Labyrinth and In the Mood for Love would make it onto mine. The Inside Man is a film I've watched several times and enjoyed every time. Eternal Sunshine, on the other hand, I enjoyed but have this nagging feeling that it's not really that great, in the long run.
In some sense Eternal Sunshine doesn't hold up. In another sense, I'm going to put either Eternal Sunshine or High Fidelity on my list, and I think it's hard to argue high fidelity is the better film...
33: that whine was spectacular and I enjoyed it very much.
top 10 restricting to just vampire movies is hard enough-- Trouble Every Day, Nosferatu, Lost Boys, first 2 seasons of True Blood, Coppola's 92 film, parts of Herzog's, The Hunger, Girl Walks Home Alone at Night.
OK I see that's just 8.
oh wow, there's a Guillermo del Toro vampire film I haven't seen.
Has anyone seen his Pinnocchio? I liked it a lot, but the incredibly accomplished stop action left me appreciating simpler efforts more. Boxtrolls was very good, I thought.
105: What We Do in Shadows; Chan-Wook Park's Thirst; Alfredson's Let the Right One In; Near Dark.
I saw the Angry Birds movie but I don't recommend it.
I loved Nadja so, so much in high school that I'm afraid to go back and watch it again now.
I don't like taking movie recommendations from people who like movies, because in 1995 a film fan told me Kids was good, so I went to see it and sat through the whole thing. Never again.
True story. On the recommendation of someone else, and apparently with no knowledge of the movie, my dad took my mom to see Clerks in a theater. She would not sit through the whole thing, so she missed the part about the sex with the dead guy.
Which doesn't happen on screen anyway, if you haven't see the movie.
107. Being Human was also really good, had vampires.
There was a movie that had vampires, Winona Ryder, and Keanu Reeves, but it wasn't very good.
105 is a great exercise. I'd also include Shadow of the Vampire and Vampyr.
87: "American" is a funny way of describing a set of movies directed by a New Zealander adapting the written work of an Englishman. I guess they meet in the middle? Except the middle is more likely India than California, so whatever.
When you say Englishman, in some sense you mean South African, right?
When you say South Africa, in some sense you mean Orange Free State, right?
There's supposed to be a hyphen so you know if it's a state without oranges or a free state that is orange.
Looking back at my comment, it does not appear to me that I have said South Africa. (Dropping the nitpicking pedantry now.)
I think they should have had at least 30 minutes with Tom Bombadil.
They are generally considered to be Hollywood movies though, no? The money was American? U.S. cultural hegemony?
If they were really American, Frodo would have been carried to Mount Doom by eagles.
To John Ashcroft singing "Let the eagle soar!"
For a time, the main newspaper in Chattanooga was formed by the merger of the Chattanooga News with the Chattanooga Free Press.
Chantal Akerman's "Jeanne Dielman" is on the criterion channel which I just signed up for. I am watching the criterion channel way more than I thought I would. All the movies are supposed to be good so I just watch one rather than scrolling around like I do on Netflix.
"Jeanne Dielman" is very good. Definitely a good choice for #1. No other movie is like it. If you have the attention span for a 3h20min movie one day, this movie will 100% reward it.
this was interesting "https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/features/greatest-film-all-time-jeanne-dielman-23-quai-du-commerce-1080-bruxelles
"When I first included Jeanne Dielman in avant-garde film classes in the early 1980s, there were always some students - perhaps even a lot - who had to leave to smoke, to go to the lavatory, etc. I noticed recently that, 20 or so years later, a whole class would be gripped by the film, actually experiencing its suspenseful plot as well as its mesmerising cinematic language."
I did walk out Akerman's "Je Tu Il Elle" in the eighties. I always thought of it as "the movie where the main character eats sugar out of a bag" but I never remember who made it or the title until recently. I watched that one on Monday. It is good but not as good as "Jeanne Dielman" so I don't feel that bad for walking out.
If you have the attention span for a 3h20min movie one day, this movie will 100% reward it.
That's like an entire day of free time. Can you watch it at 1.5 speed?
118: Tolkien was not in any sense South African. He was born to English parents temporarily living in Bloemfontein, OFS, and he left SA at the age of three and lived the rest of his life in England. He described himself consistently as English. At no stage did he live in South Africa (the Union didn't exist when he left).
"When I first included Jeanne Dielman in avant-garde film classes in the early 1980s, there were always some students - perhaps even a lot - who had to leave to smoke, to go to the lavatory, etc. I noticed recently that, 20 or so years later, a whole class would be gripped by the film, actually experiencing its suspenseful plot as well as its mesmerising cinematic language."
Maybe it's just that Marvel and Hollywood in general has trained people to watch long films. It's rare for a big film not explicitly aimed at kids to be less than 2.5 hours these days.
Yeah. The Batman really dragged on.
132
It is interesting. My theory with "Jeanne Dielmann" is that people are so phone distracted now that they like to get away from being distracted. They appreciate the opportunity to be bored.
Or, possibly, fewer people smoke these days than did 20 years ago!
I've never noticed this preventing nonsmokers leaving a boring event "for a quick ciggie".
I'm polite so I like to say "I've got to go see a man about a horse."
Thank God for Greta Gerwig who still knows how to make a 90 minute film.
I just saw Bullet Train. It's pretty good and I learned a new word. "Ballpointing"
Further to 132, if she started teaching Dielman in the early 80s then "20 or so years later" is not "recently". It is two decades ago.
(It's also before Marvel, smartphones, streaming etc.)
There's just so many Marvel movies. It's not that I didn't like the couple I've seen, but there's no way I'm going to watch that many comic-book movies.
A few of the Marvel movies are decent. Ragnorak, Black Panther, Guardians I. But basically all of them are terrible *as action movies*. Is there a single action scene in the whole Marvel Universe as good as the worst action sequences in a Mission Impossible film? It's genuinely embarrassing.
I've never seen the Mission Impossible films. I wouldn't have seen any of the Marvel ones except that having a teenager in the house makes it hard to avoid.
Poking around the Internet suggests maybe there's one good fight scene in an elevator in Winter Soldier? And Guardians I has some on action. Also I would not call X2 and Logan MCU movies.
on --> OK
Bullet Train has good fight scenes.
144: people also recommend the Shang Chi bus fight (which also generated this great twitter thread: https://twitter.com/that_mc/status/1459613123590066180 )
That thread is delightful. Never saw that film, because the reviews weren't that strong, and that's the one whose star is a reddit incel right? Maybe I should watch that scene though.
It's not a coincidence that the highly regarded Marvel action scenes are the ones taking place in small enclosed spaces.
150.2: The Winter Soldier elevator scene, sure; I'm curious if there's more than one?
151: Daredevil on Netflix could be good that way.
149 to 151.
the one whose star is a reddit incel right
I have to defend Simu Liu!
Yes, when Shang Chi came out there was some controversy about his past Reddit comments, but that genuinely does not seem represenatative of who he is. His recent memoir When We Were Dreamers is really impressive, and I think provides a lot of context.
The book came out of his public letter in MacLeans.
Any of my closest friends could tell you that I ride a rollercoaster of emotions when I talk about my complicated childhood--anger, sadness and resentment being the frontrunners. But I'm tired of being angry at my parents.
So I'm writing this letter to unpack my unsaid words, to thank you for all that you've done for me and to tell you that I love you. It's about time we started, don't you think?
I was born in Harbin, China, in 1989, a time when you were trying to leave the country--no easy feat, in Deng Xiaoping's regime--to start a better life abroad. A one-in-a-million opportunity arose for you to pursue graduate studies at Queen's University, and you took it. You had to. So Grandma and Grandpa raised me in Harbin until I was 5, when life had stabilized enough in Canada for you to bring me over. I was excited to finally meet my real parents and start my life in Canada, but I had no recollection of you--so when you returned in January of 1995, you felt like distant relatives.
...
We fought often. If I tripped on my laces, I was clumsy. If I scored below an A, I was stupid. If I wanted to hang out with my friends, I was wasting my time. I grew to resent the pressure you put on me, resolving to make your lives as difficult as you were making mine. I ran away from home in 2005 after a particularly bad fight, staying at a different friend's house every day for a week. I spoke dismissively about you, told you I hated you, and that I couldn't wait to leave the house. But privately, I yearned for your love and affection. I often fantasized about having the family I saw in the movies--the ones where everyone would talk like best friends and hug each other hello and goodbye.
Which makes it more convincing when he says
"It's very hard," he whispers, eventually. "I don't think I do. I was constantly aware of how I was being perceived. In my younger years, I was desperate for the admiration of others. Sometimes I would try to say or do things to capture people's attention, but people would just roll their eyes. It would never work. It's like being cool in high school. You either have it or you don't and I most definitely did not. None of the pieces were falling where they should and I hated it. I was a sad kid."
...
We Were Dreamers, on the other hand, is a strikingly honest book, its hero a mass of contradictions. Gleeful exhibitionist gripped with insecurity. Mouthy teen capable of great tenderness. Romantic outcast with abs and boy-band hair but never a date. What emerges is a portrait of a young man who spent his childhood despising his parents but now desperately wants to humanise them. In an early chapter, he writes that they provided him with boundless opportunity and professional guidance, but little emotional warmth. ...
And he seems to be genuinely trying to do the right thing at this point.
Simu Liu has addressed the subject of Asian toxic masculinity, condemning Asian diaspora men who attack Asian diaspora women.
The Shang-Chi star has been criticised and called out by some Asian Americans in the past for encouraging harmful rhetoric against Asian women in the way he regularly discussed emasculation in Asian men.
...
re: 142
I think most big blockbusters don't care. You get a few films, like some of the Bourne films that put a lot of effort into fight scenes, and action, like being pursued, in general but most don't. There are better pure fight scenes in the Jason Statham "Transporter" movies than in almost anything, and those are knowingly dumb movies.
I wonder if it's because those kinds of scene are often small, and lack spectacle, but also, they take a lot of work and skill for quite a small pay-off.
Then again, the John Wick movies are very successful, and those are almost entirely about that.
The guy from the Allstate commercials is not a metaphor, so I wasn't sad when he died.
I doubt that I would enjoy this movie, but I very much enjoyed watching the fight scene choreography, I think complete with ridiculous sound effects.
The Transporter movies are pretty terrible but I do enjoy the action scenes where they make use of stuff that's just lying around in the setting, not just conventional weapons and hand-to-hand.
Sure, he just tries other stuff first.
I don't think he ever killed anyone though.
I doubt that I would enjoy this movie, but I very much enjoyed watching the fight scene choreography, I think complete with ridiculous sound effects.
The Raid is absolutely amazing. The Raid 2, which I believe this fight is from, is not so good as a film, but the fights are still fantastic.
re: 165
Yeah. Even the rope-dart thing with the horseshoe in Shanghai Noon is so well done.
MacGyver makes the horseshoe from empty soup cans and hits a guy with it once. Which isn't that interesting but 80s tv didn't set a high bar.
Speaking of great films: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zIf0XvoL9Y