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Roughly 100 films I loved from the last decade.

By: Ronald

Here is a rough list of about 100 films I loved from the last decade. I loved them for how they made my world feel larger, even if just for one single evening. I saw the Band’s Visit when I couldn’t feel anything but this lonely weight on me like heavy smoke. I sat watching that film somewhere in the middle rear of the theater, where I could see the backs of a couple of heads sitting next to eachother, and felt my forlorn feeling lift into bright warmth, free and full as air, & deep too, connected out of sympathy with lonely people. The lonely guarded people in the film opened to eachother, and to quiet night, and so did I. I loved Yi Yi for its gentle sympathy and astute insight into the quiet confusion and little estrangements of modern life. Curious and unhappy explorers of the world, what good company to be in, I thought.

A few movies made my world seem bigger and smaller at the same time, like Elephant, for how rough, lyrical, visionary and deeply sad it was to me. It was disturbing, I couldn’t shake this dream-like feeling of doom afterwards, and I was grateful for how beautiful it was, and “close to home” it felt. I shuddered but I was transported. The night I finished watching Synecdoche NY in a theater auditorium that resembled a brownstone warehouse like the ones in the movie, and the lights came up, I thought to myself, " My God, the movie is here right now in this very auditorium. I’m in it, one of its cast of millions!" So I walked from the cinema alone, through Chinatown to the BART, and saw the world as I saw it in the film. Two giant Giraffe statues outside a shop, necks crossed in intimacy, made this world of glittering shop windows recall a Noah’s Ark. Films live inside us for a little while. When I work on plays the happy accidents, & discoveries, seem to reflect a deeper level where the play lives and grows inside us, as it melds with our personal experiences and desires. I believe so. It’s such a pleasure to be able to imagine things.

The list does not include Seeing, Searching, Being: Three Films on William Seagal which may have been done in the 90’s; and The Quarry; which I saw in 2001 even though it was released in 1998. What about Television? The last four episodes of the 2nd Season of Mad Men. The first three seasons of LOST, and all of Breaking Bad, and the excellent In Treatment with Gabriel Byrne.

I’ve included films from other decades that I got to see in the cinemas like the Dekalog or Vivre Sa Vie. Here they are in rough preferential order which gives you a general way of seeing which films ellicit more respect or feel more personal to myself:

 

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filmcapsule

21Apr11

Hooray for Bright Leaves! I saw Ross McElwee give a Q&A after a screening of it last week. He's awesome.

  • Ronald

    22Apr11

    From his movies he seems pretty awesome. I believe he teaches film somewhere on the east coast. It'd be need taking a class from him. I think his movies are wonderful, light and loose, while getting into very honest and deeply personal territory.

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