Some of my favourite films from last year should qualify:
THE EDGE OF HEAVEN (Auf der anderen Seite) (2007) – Fatih Akin
CHANSONS D’AMOUR ( Love Songs) (2007) – Christophe Honoré
The already mentioned LES TEMOINS (The Witnesses) (2007)- André Téchiné
I also agree with those who have praised his L’HOMME BLESSE (1983) – It has one of the most erotically charged scenes I’ve probably ever seen on film.
YOSSI & JAGGER (2002) – Eytan Fox – “Romance blooms between two soldiers (Knoller, Levi) stationed in an Israeli outpost on the Lebanese border.”
THE STICKY FINGERS OF TIME (1997) – Hilary Brougher – Best lesbian time-travel movie ever! A hidden gem.
Good analysis of the film, Antoine, I had come to a very similar conclusion after seeing the film: the director as a god, manipulating the characters he created. The shadow being the biggest clue but another one, for me, were the very photogenic drawings that George receives, which were obviously done by a graphic artist. I think that considering the context they would have been less “designed” had they been sent by a fictional character within the film.
I loved the film as well. I found it very relevant and exciting,certainly not boring, that scene in the car blew me away. I just wish the ending had been even more ambiguous then it was.
My very first Ozon was the grim yet sexy ‘fairy tale’ LES AMANTS CRIMINELS (Criminal Lovers) and I think it’s still my favourite, even though the story makes a bizarre tonal shift at the end that just didn’t work for me. I also enjoyed LE TEMPS QUI RESTE (Time to Leave) with Melvil Poupaud and Veleria Bruni-Tedeschi (the good Bruni ;-) and the Haneke-esque REGARDE LA MER (See the Sea).
I thought it was a very good episode, actually. I missed the pilot but I’ve watched all the other episodes and last night’s was definitely the best. And not just because Tamoh was shirtless a lot of the time ;-). It really furthered the main storyline and gave us quite a bit to of new info and things to ponder. I liked the man-on-the-street TV interviews interspersed throughout, I thought that worked well.
EUROPA (1991) – von Trier
I just love this movie and a lot of it is set on a train.
STAZIONE TERMINI/ Indiscretion of an American Wife (1953) – de Sica
No actual train ride, but the whole movie is set inside the Rome train station and there are several scenes shot inside a train car.
OSSESSIONE (1942) – Visconti
I don’t remember if it’s over 10 minutes but there is an important scene in a train where Gino meets Lo spagnolo.
SIX SHOOTER (2004) – Martin McDonagh’s wonderful 28 min. short is set primarily on a train. Great performances by Brendan Gleason and especially Rúaidhrí Conroy who is inexplicably still not well-known over here.
JULIA (1977) – Fred Zinnemann
Lillian! Just wear the stupid hat already!
Yes, he’s definitely all that, yet only two of his films have ever been released on DVD in North America. (His only mistep, THE NEON BIBLE – 5/10 and the HOUSE OF MIRTH – 8/10).
Does anyone know why that is?
I just wish Cronenberg had been able to keep the original title, TWINS, which came from the book it was (loosely) based on by Bari Wood. Unfortunately the Arnold Doublecheeseburger/Danny DeVito vehicle came out the same year. In the book, which itself is very loosely based on the actual events, the dominant (evil) twin is gay. (I have no idea if that was the case in real life.) It’s interesting but not surprising, that this element was abandoned in the screenplay.
How about including Cronenberg’s A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE . Its status as a Western could be easily argued, I think. For one thing, the score reminded me of a western, then there’s that get-off-my-land scene, a protective Sheriff, and strangers who ride into town and do no good….Of course, it’s yet another film from 2005, along with BbM and The Proposition.
Here’s another vote for Bruce McDonald’s ROADKILL.
Synopsis (from IMDb): This is an early film by Bruce McDonald filmed on a tiny budget over a few weeks traveling the wilds in Canada. It tells the story of Ramona, sent to recover an errant band who are in danger of missing the final date in their tour. After obtaining the job through falsely claiming to be able to drive, she hires a taxi cab to drive her the hundreds / thousands of miles required to get the job done. On the way she meets a variety of characters from a trainee serial killer (who moans that the only jobs available in Canada are ice hockey players or serial killers, and he’s no good at ice hockey) who’s finding it hard to get off the ground, to a film crew desperate for some live action gore, to a silent young man who refuses to speak as ‘he has nothing left to say any more’. The conclusion to the film is just great, as the spaghetti of apparently isolated plot lines are tied together in a thumping final scene. In true road movie style, Ramona gradually develops and breaks out as she proceeds on her journey, and the whole attitude of the film is very open and free, complemented by the 8mm filming in black and white. It seems very unprofessional but that’s a lot of its charm, only some of which is retained in the bigger budget sequel, ‘Highway 61’
1956:
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Don Siegel)
Le ballon rouge (Albert Lamorisse)
The Spanish Gardener (Philip Leacock)
The Searchers (John Ford)
Bob le flambeur (Jean-Pierre Melville)
Le mystère Picasso (Henri-Georges Clouzot)
Tea and Sympathy (Vincente Minnelli)
Moby Dick (John Huston)
Written on the Wind (Douglas Sirk)
The Wrong Man (Alfred Hitchcock)
LES BONS DEBARRAS
1980 d. Francis Mankiewicz
Made during a period when Quebecois filmmakers were fascinated by dysfunctional losers—rather than today’s snappily dressed, gloomy yuppies—the late Francis Mankiewicz’s best picture is saturated with a deep and satisfying melancholy. Set during a cold, grey autumn in the Laurentian mountains, the movie presents its fallen world through the eyes of an obsessive young girl who won’t let her mother (Marie Tifo) have a life. Imagined by the reclusive writer Rejean Ducharme, played by Charlotte Laurier, the kid is a dangerously compelling seductress who wreaks havoc out of a need to control those she loves. Mankiewicz was one of the most emotionally powerful, and yet subtle, of Canadian filmmakers. It’s hard to understand why he’s also one of the most overlooked.
DEAD RINGERS
1988 d David Cronenberg
The basic premise of Dead Ringers is derived from a novel based on a true incident. The twin gynecologists, Elliot and Beverly Mantle, played exquisitely and to perfection by Jeremy Irons, encounter a famous actress and carry on an affair with her. Elliot seduces her, pretending to be Beverly, and she ends up falling for Beverly. This leads to a rapid downhill spiral for the brothers into pills, eventual drug addiction and death.
Although fairly restrained for Cronenberg, the film contains several brilliant set pieces. In a particular lurid touch, inside the Mantle clinic’s operating theatre, the doctors and nurses wear blood-red surgical masks and gowns. Beverly designs and commissions a range of special gynecological instruments for treating “mutant” women. Laid out on a trolley, they are truly the stuff of nightmares.
LE DECLIN DE L’EMPIRE AMERICAIN
1986 d. Denys Arcand
A black comedy of manners built around a series of satiric and witty conversations about sex, love and life between several Montreal academics who are friends, lovers or both. The group includes a serial adulterer, an AIDS sufferer and a divorcee in a sadomasochistic relationship. It’s as if these aging professors are the militants of Quebec’s faded Quiet Revolution who are now locked into a sexual roundelay as their only outlet for action and iconoclasm. As Le Chat dans le sac in 1964 was the rallying cry for a militant generation, Le Declin de l’empire americain is its epitaph.
THE SWEET HEREAFTER
1997 d. Atom Egoyan
Based on the novel by Russell Banks, The Sweet Hereafter recounts the events leading up to and following a school bus accident that kills 14 children and injures many others. The story follows the families, told from multiple viewpoints, whose lives irrevocably change and the big city lawyer (Ian Holm) who shows up in the community hoping to sign people up for a class-action lawsuit. In the ensuing atmosphere of suspicion, guilt and doubt, a surviving teenager (Sarah Polley) manages to regain her strength and dignity, and by telling a lie, reunites the community and drives the lawyer from the town.
The film takes place in layers, on sometimes subtly different temporal planes, both before and after the accident. Told in Rashomon-like fashion, Egoyan has made an almost perfect adaption of Banks’s complex novel of guilt and redemption. The cast is seamlessly perfect, featuring a central performance by Holm as the deeply flawed lawyer with a smouldering intelligence which holds the screen with a magnetic core. Egoyan’s most accessible film to date.
Synopses for the above from:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0JSF/is_19_6/ai_30066436/?tag=content;col1
ATANARJUAT: THE FAST RUNNER (2001), d. Zacharias Kunuk
Lovers of gorgeous, slow-moving cinema—think Malick or Tarkovsky—should appreciate Atanarjuat, Canada’s first feature film produced in an aboriginal language (Inuktitut). If this strikes you as a dry description and your eye’s already edging down to the next entry, hold up—the film enraptured festival-goers around the globe, picked up countless awards, and proved that Arctic landscapes merit a cinematographer’s precision eye. Based on an Inuit legend, Atanarjuat tells the story of a skilled runner and hunter who overcomes a cruel rival for the hand of his bride—a union that leads to strife, murder and, ultimately, the need for speed on Atanarjuat’s part as he runs for his life over an ice-field in the film’s signature scene. It’s absolutely breathtaking and just one of many big pay-offs for viewers with the attention span the story demands once it settles into its arc and begins to explain its enigmatic opening scene. This film puts me into a trance state—I’m not sure if it’s the Arctic vistas or the astonishing soundtrack (a mix of Inuit and Tuvan music), but I think it’s one of the best films born in Canada. While its subject matter, pacing and semiotic reliance on gestures and absences may not suit everyone, Atanarjuat feels as enormous as the epics of Beowulf and Gilgamesh, or the saga of Egil.
LE CONFESSIONAL (1995), directed by Robert Lepage
Several things recommend this Quebecois film, the main one being lead actor Lothaire Bluteau, who helped put Canadian film on the map as the Christ figure in Arcand’s Jesus of Montreal. (For serious—I’m not discussing Canadian film ad nauseam without mentioning Bluteau. Say it with me now: Blue-Toe.) Other reasons to watch are 1) the exquisite framing of interior scenes, and 2) the way-fun references to Hitchcock’s 1953 thriller I Confess. The Confessional shifts back and forth between two time periods—1952, when Hitchcock excited the hell out of Quebec City by setting and shooting his latest work there, and 1989, when Bluteau’s character Pierre returns home to bury his father. He also, very quickly, gets involved in a family mystery that has a great deal in common with the mystery in Hitchcock’s film—in both cases, priests go down for someone else’s crime thanks to the stranglehold of the confessional’s seal. There’s a heavy emphasis on the inescapability of the past (Pierre literally tries to paint over his family history, and fails), a critique of the Quebec Catholic Church, and a serious examination of origins. But it’s also fun just to watch Kristin Scott Thomas totter around in kitten heels as Hitchcock’s production assistant, and Lothaire Bluteau … well, just be. I could gush out another 500 words about the brilliance of Bluteau, who’s recently been settling for guest spots on “Oz” and “24.” But he’s only one of the great players in The Confessional; the others are Quebec City itself and the Château Frontenac, the world’s most photographed hotel, whose interiors are very well used here indeed.
MAELSTROM (2000), d. Denis Villeneuve
Hollywood may be wearing out its welcome for movies that focus on invisible threads or fateful moments that connect strangers, but these elements are faint enough in Maelström to overlook, should you need to. The film actually came out the same year as Amores Perros (which seems to have ignited the current fad), and I think Maelström is its only legitimate competitor so far. Besides, you’re more apt to be distracted by the film’s cycle-of-life doubling and mirroring, which is pronounced and expertly staged. Set in Montreal, Maelström presents the downward spiral of a daughter of privilege struggling through a very bad week that involves abortion, a fatal hit-and-run accident, and possible embezzlement. In brief, girl is a mess. As bleak as it all seems, Maelström is warmed by the periodic intrusion of its narrator, a (series of) talking fish on a chopping-block; there’s a heavy Czech influence on the frame-story scenes, which recall the surreal, puppet-dense films of Jan Svankmajer or Jiri Trnka. The heroine isn’t terribly likeable on paper, but Marie-Josée Croze infuses her with enough charisma and confusion to persuade us to attach ourselves to her. And the film warms several more degrees at the halfway point, when the son of the Norwegian fishmonger she killed shows up, complicating her predicament; though viewers may quibble about probability, I’m not sure it harms the film in any way. Norway, in fact, and water and seafood (and maelstroms) are the motifs on which everything else rests, making for a beautiful movie that floats on affect while it rivets itself to its structure. It doesn’t hurt that Charles Aznavour’s Les deux guitars and Tom Waits’ The Ocean Doesn’t Want Me curl through the soundtrack periodically.
LEOLO (1992), d. Jean-Claude Lauzon
Jean-Claude Lauzon was shaping up to be Canada’s contribution to the Jeunet-Del Toro school of directing when he died in a plane crash in 1997. His only other feature, Night Zoo, was the first “real” cinematic experience handed to me by a Canadian director—it was Lauzon who informed me that my country has an industry beyond CBC TV and National Film Board shorts. While it doesn’t reach for Eraserhead levels, Léolo is the most disturbing movie on the list; it’s notorious for not one but three infamous scenes (including one that is ten times the pie scene in American Pie). In other words, the film falls squarely into not-for-the-squeamish territory, but if you thirst for the beautiful absurd, it’s required viewing. The story is set in a bizarro Montreal where twelve-year-old Léo is convinced he’s the secret offspring of a Sicilian farmer, conceived by an imported sperm-covered pomodoro that gets lodged accidentally in his mother. You can’t blame him for dreaming, given the way mental illness runs through his family tree and overwhelms his sisters and grandfather; Léo would rather be Léolo and escape his genetic destiny altogether. His parents are obsessed, in fact, with mental and physical health, ensuring there are daily bowel movements all around. Lauzon writes lines like Baudelaire and generates an unforgettable visual canvas: insects gathered in bottles, a cowardly body-builder, a boy snorkel-hunting old fishing lures in a filthy-hazy pond, and the redoubtable Ginette Reno who, as the maternal Mrs. Lozeau, fills the screen with helpless, hectoring devotion. A beauty worth chronicling somehow emerges from the debris-strewn landscape in which Léo is forced to come of age.
HIGHWAY 61 (1991), d. Bruce McDonald
Before Bruce McDonald found a niche directing episodes of “Queer as Folk” (US) and “ReGenesis,” he made three films that have reached cult status in Canada: Roadkill (1989), Hard Core Logo (1996) and Highway 61, a dark comedy about a small-town barber who agrees to drive a strange woman and a corpse from Pickerel Falls, Ontario to New Orleans—pursued by Satan, no less. As with many low-budget indies, the acting’s a little rough and the oddness pervasive, but the scenes grow progressively stronger and funnier, by and large, as the film gets going; I’m thinking especially of the border crossing, the first encounter with the singing Watson family, and a highly quotable bingo parlour episode. Don McKellar inhabits Pokey the naïve barber with his signature twitchiness, and Earl Pastko is fulsome and unforgettable as the sinister Mr. Skin who acquires souls (?) along the route for twenty bucks, a mickey of bourbon or a bus ticket apiece. This is a road movie tinted with the Coen brothers’ fancy, and one that illuminates some of the more carnivalesque aspects of the American landscape from a Canadian point of view. It’s also a nod to the history of American music, from Delta blues to Dylan to the Ramones. Watch for a brief appearance by Jello Biafra as a sententious US customs officer.
ELDORADO 1995 – Charles Binamé
This free-form Canadian drama chronicles the dysfunctional lives of six young people living in Montreal during the summer of 1994. All of the characters are in their twenties, and all are dissatisfied with modern life. Rita is hell on rollerblades and makes her free-wheeling living snatching purses and breaking into cars. She camps out in the apartment of her wealthy friend, Roxan who devotes her spare time to caring for the homeless. Lloyd is a skinhead Deejay for an alternative radio station. His self-important, outrageous ranting provides the background for the rest of the stories. Lloyd is in love with Loulou, a barmaid at a punk club. Loulou is involved in a boring relationship with liquor store clerk, Marc; she looks to Lloyd for excitement. Finally there is screwed-up Henriette, who is so busy venting her neurosis in her shrink’s office that she has no time to listen to the doctor’s advice.
http://www.fandango.com/charlesbiname/filmography/p188583
Honorable mentions:
CAREFUL 1992 – Guy Maddin
THE HANGING GARDEN 1997 – Thom Fitzgerald
ECLIPSE 1994 – Jeremy Podeswa
FULL BLAST 1999 – Rodrigue Jean
LES VAUTOURS 1975 – Jean-Claude Labrecque
Some people are still upset that I recommended they see THE TENANT, a movie I absolutely loved when it came out.
I had to cross a picket line of people I knew to see Friedkin’s CRUISING.
Also, I dragged a friend to a cinematheque screening of Tsai Ming-Liang’s VIVE L’AMOUR. Alas, he didn’t share my enthusiasm for this film.
From someone who hasn’t read the book, I don’t think I could have taken more bleakness! ;-) I loved the film though, I thought it was horrifying and very affecting, I was riveted throughout. The performances were excellent, even the kid was pretty good.
The opening credits of Noe’s ENTER THE VOID are awesome. The audience actually broke into applause. I haven’t seen too many opening sequences get that kind of reception.
WHAT FILMS NEED THE TREATMENT? over 3 years ago
These Terence Davies titles are just itching for the Criterion treatment. (In fact, after all these years, I’d settle for any kind of DVD issue.):
THE TERENCE DAVIES TRILOGY (1984)
DISTANT VOICES, STILL LIVES (1988)
THE LONG DAY CLOSES (1992)
Go to Comment
Gay and Lesbian Cinema over 3 years ago
Some of my favourite films from last year should qualify:
THE EDGE OF HEAVEN (Auf der anderen Seite) (2007) – Fatih Akin
CHANSONS D’AMOUR ( Love Songs) (2007) – Christophe Honoré
The already mentioned LES TEMOINS (The Witnesses) (2007)- André Téchiné
I also agree with those who have praised his L’HOMME BLESSE (1983) – It has one of the most erotically charged scenes I’ve probably ever seen on film.
YOSSI & JAGGER (2002) – Eytan Fox – “Romance blooms between two soldiers (Knoller, Levi) stationed in an Israeli outpost on the Lebanese border.”
THE STICKY FINGERS OF TIME (1997) – Hilary Brougher – Best lesbian time-travel movie ever! A hidden gem.
Go to Comment
(UN)HIDDEN CAMERA: THE "REAL" SENDER OF THE TAPES over 3 years ago
Good analysis of the film, Antoine, I had come to a very similar conclusion after seeing the film: the director as a god, manipulating the characters he created. The shadow being the biggest clue but another one, for me, were the very photogenic drawings that George receives, which were obviously done by a graphic artist. I think that considering the context they would have been less “designed” had they been sent by a fictional character within the film.
Go to Comment
My Top 25 Performances of All Time over 3 years ago
Here are some of my favourites:
Massimo Girotti – OSSESSIONE (1943)
James Dean – REBEL WIHTOUT A CAUSE (1955)
Alain Delon – PLEIN SOLEIL (1960)
Johnny Depp – ED WOOD (1994)
Julianne Moore – SAFE (1995)
Gillian Anderson – THE HOUSE OF MIRTH (2000)
Nanni Moretti – THE SON’S ROOM (2001)
Naomi Watts – MULHOLLAND DRIVE (2001)
Heath Ledger – MONSTER’S BALL (2001)
Heath Ledger – BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN (2005) – Yes I’m a Heathen…
Annamaria Marinca – 4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS, 2 DAYS (2007)
Viggo Mortensen – EASTERN PROMISES (2007)
Go to Comment
The Auteurs "Sight & Sound" Poll over 3 years ago
I’d like to register, I’m on this like a fat kid on a Smartie!
Go to Comment
Children of Men disdain forum over 3 years ago
I loved the film as well. I found it very relevant and exciting,certainly not boring, that scene in the car blew me away. I just wish the ending had been even more ambiguous then it was.
Go to Comment
TOP 10 OZON over 3 years ago
My very first Ozon was the grim yet sexy ‘fairy tale’ LES AMANTS CRIMINELS (Criminal Lovers) and I think it’s still my favourite, even though the story makes a bizarre tonal shift at the end that just didn’t work for me. I also enjoyed LE TEMPS QUI RESTE (Time to Leave) with Melvil Poupaud and Veleria Bruni-Tedeschi (the good Bruni ;-) and the Haneke-esque REGARDE LA MER (See the Sea).
Go to Comment
Dollhouse? about 3 years ago
I thought it was a very good episode, actually. I missed the pilot but I’ve watched all the other episodes and last night’s was definitely the best. And not just because Tamoh was shirtless a lot of the time ;-). It really furthered the main storyline and gave us quite a bit to of new info and things to ponder. I liked the man-on-the-street TV interviews interspersed throughout, I thought that worked well.
Go to Comment
Rare and Obscure films you wish were on Dvd. about 3 years ago
Wow, double posts are easy to make, eh?
Go to Comment
Rare and Obscure films you wish were on Dvd. about 3 years ago
I’d like to see a release of Todd Haynes’ SUPERSTAR: The Karen Carpenter Story. I’ve only seen a poor quality bootleg.
Go to Comment
Movies That Should Be In the Criterion Collection about 3 years ago
I wrote these in another thread with the same topic but it’s worth repeating. These Terence Davies titles aren’t available at all, in North America:
THE TERENCE DAVIES TRILOGY (1984)
DISTANT VOICES, STILL LIVES (1988)
THE LONG DAY CLOSES (1992)
Also:
ENCORE (1988) – Paul Vecchialli
Go to Comment
Favorite films involving Train Rides! (of at least 10 min of film) about 3 years ago
EUROPA (1991) – von Trier
I just love this movie and a lot of it is set on a train.
STAZIONE TERMINI/ Indiscretion of an American Wife (1953) – de Sica
No actual train ride, but the whole movie is set inside the Rome train station and there are several scenes shot inside a train car.
OSSESSIONE (1942) – Visconti
I don’t remember if it’s over 10 minutes but there is an important scene in a train where Gino meets Lo spagnolo.
SIX SHOOTER (2004) – Martin McDonagh’s wonderful 28 min. short is set primarily on a train. Great performances by Brendan Gleason and especially Rúaidhrí Conroy who is inexplicably still not well-known over here.
JULIA (1977) – Fred Zinnemann
Lillian! Just wear the stupid hat already!
Go to Comment
Of Time and terence davies about 3 years ago
Yes, he’s definitely all that, yet only two of his films have ever been released on DVD in North America. (His only mistep, THE NEON BIBLE – 5/10 and the HOUSE OF MIRTH – 8/10).
Does anyone know why that is?
Go to Comment
David Cronenberg's Dead Ringers about 3 years ago
I just wish Cronenberg had been able to keep the original title, TWINS, which came from the book it was (loosely) based on by Bari Wood. Unfortunately the Arnold Doublecheeseburger/Danny DeVito vehicle came out the same year. In the book, which itself is very loosely based on the actual events, the dominant (evil) twin is gay. (I have no idea if that was the case in real life.) It’s interesting but not surprising, that this element was abandoned in the screenplay.
Go to Comment
Modern Westerns about 3 years ago
How about including Cronenberg’s A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE . Its status as a Western could be easily argued, I think. For one thing, the score reminded me of a western, then there’s that get-off-my-land scene, a protective Sheriff, and strangers who ride into town and do no good….Of course, it’s yet another film from 2005, along with BbM and The Proposition.
Go to Comment
Three Monkeys and Climates playing on The Auteurs (free!) about 3 years ago
Figures, they are only available to watch in the U.S. (and Portugal) :(
Go to Comment
YOUR FAVOURITE "ROAD MOVIE" ? about 3 years ago
Here’s another vote for Bruce McDonald’s ROADKILL.
Synopsis (from IMDb): This is an early film by Bruce McDonald filmed on a tiny budget over a few weeks traveling the wilds in Canada. It tells the story of Ramona, sent to recover an errant band who are in danger of missing the final date in their tour. After obtaining the job through falsely claiming to be able to drive, she hires a taxi cab to drive her the hundreds / thousands of miles required to get the job done. On the way she meets a variety of characters from a trainee serial killer (who moans that the only jobs available in Canada are ice hockey players or serial killers, and he’s no good at ice hockey) who’s finding it hard to get off the ground, to a film crew desperate for some live action gore, to a silent young man who refuses to speak as ‘he has nothing left to say any more’. The conclusion to the film is just great, as the spaghetti of apparently isolated plot lines are tied together in a thumping final scene. In true road movie style, Ramona gradually develops and breaks out as she proceeds on her journey, and the whole attitude of the film is very open and free, complemented by the 8mm filming in black and white. It seems very unprofessional but that’s a lot of its charm, only some of which is retained in the bigger budget sequel, ‘Highway 61’
Go to Comment
TOP 10 FILMS FROM YOUR "BIRTH YEAR" about 3 years ago
1956:
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Don Siegel)
Le ballon rouge (Albert Lamorisse)
The Spanish Gardener (Philip Leacock)
The Searchers (John Ford)
Bob le flambeur (Jean-Pierre Melville)
Le mystère Picasso (Henri-Georges Clouzot)
Tea and Sympathy (Vincente Minnelli)
Moby Dick (John Huston)
Written on the Wind (Douglas Sirk)
The Wrong Man (Alfred Hitchcock)
Go to Comment
Which film title attract you to watch without reason? about 3 years ago
Rebels of the Neon God (1992) – One of my all time favourite titles
The Secret Lives of Dentists (2002) – Picked this up basically because of the title but I also like the actors in it. and I quite enjoyed it.
Sissy Boy Slap Party (1995) – “Remember boys, NO slapping!”
Go to Comment
Gay and Lesbian Cinema almost 3 years ago
Stinkmeaner said: “God hates Faggots”
Luckily, I’m an Atheist, lol! Now go back to your bowl, Stinkmeaner. How old are you anyway, 12?
Which reminds me, TRUE BLOOD-Season 2 starts tomorrow!! GOD HATES FANGS!
Go to Comment
top 10 favourite films from your home country almost 3 years ago
LES BONS DEBARRAS
1980 d. Francis Mankiewicz
Made during a period when Quebecois filmmakers were fascinated by dysfunctional losers—rather than today’s snappily dressed, gloomy yuppies—the late Francis Mankiewicz’s best picture is saturated with a deep and satisfying melancholy. Set during a cold, grey autumn in the Laurentian mountains, the movie presents its fallen world through the eyes of an obsessive young girl who won’t let her mother (Marie Tifo) have a life. Imagined by the reclusive writer Rejean Ducharme, played by Charlotte Laurier, the kid is a dangerously compelling seductress who wreaks havoc out of a need to control those she loves. Mankiewicz was one of the most emotionally powerful, and yet subtle, of Canadian filmmakers. It’s hard to understand why he’s also one of the most overlooked.
DEAD RINGERS
1988 d David Cronenberg
The basic premise of Dead Ringers is derived from a novel based on a true incident. The twin gynecologists, Elliot and Beverly Mantle, played exquisitely and to perfection by Jeremy Irons, encounter a famous actress and carry on an affair with her. Elliot seduces her, pretending to be Beverly, and she ends up falling for Beverly. This leads to a rapid downhill spiral for the brothers into pills, eventual drug addiction and death.
Although fairly restrained for Cronenberg, the film contains several brilliant set pieces. In a particular lurid touch, inside the Mantle clinic’s operating theatre, the doctors and nurses wear blood-red surgical masks and gowns. Beverly designs and commissions a range of special gynecological instruments for treating “mutant” women. Laid out on a trolley, they are truly the stuff of nightmares.
LE DECLIN DE L’EMPIRE AMERICAIN
1986 d. Denys Arcand
A black comedy of manners built around a series of satiric and witty conversations about sex, love and life between several Montreal academics who are friends, lovers or both. The group includes a serial adulterer, an AIDS sufferer and a divorcee in a sadomasochistic relationship. It’s as if these aging professors are the militants of Quebec’s faded Quiet Revolution who are now locked into a sexual roundelay as their only outlet for action and iconoclasm. As Le Chat dans le sac in 1964 was the rallying cry for a militant generation, Le Declin de l’empire americain is its epitaph.
THE SWEET HEREAFTER
1997 d. Atom Egoyan
Based on the novel by Russell Banks, The Sweet Hereafter recounts the events leading up to and following a school bus accident that kills 14 children and injures many others. The story follows the families, told from multiple viewpoints, whose lives irrevocably change and the big city lawyer (Ian Holm) who shows up in the community hoping to sign people up for a class-action lawsuit. In the ensuing atmosphere of suspicion, guilt and doubt, a surviving teenager (Sarah Polley) manages to regain her strength and dignity, and by telling a lie, reunites the community and drives the lawyer from the town.
The film takes place in layers, on sometimes subtly different temporal planes, both before and after the accident. Told in Rashomon-like fashion, Egoyan has made an almost perfect adaption of Banks’s complex novel of guilt and redemption. The cast is seamlessly perfect, featuring a central performance by Holm as the deeply flawed lawyer with a smouldering intelligence which holds the screen with a magnetic core. Egoyan’s most accessible film to date.
Synopses for the above from:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0JSF/is_19_6/ai_30066436/?tag=content;col1
ATANARJUAT: THE FAST RUNNER (2001), d. Zacharias Kunuk
Lovers of gorgeous, slow-moving cinema—think Malick or Tarkovsky—should appreciate Atanarjuat, Canada’s first feature film produced in an aboriginal language (Inuktitut). If this strikes you as a dry description and your eye’s already edging down to the next entry, hold up—the film enraptured festival-goers around the globe, picked up countless awards, and proved that Arctic landscapes merit a cinematographer’s precision eye. Based on an Inuit legend, Atanarjuat tells the story of a skilled runner and hunter who overcomes a cruel rival for the hand of his bride—a union that leads to strife, murder and, ultimately, the need for speed on Atanarjuat’s part as he runs for his life over an ice-field in the film’s signature scene. It’s absolutely breathtaking and just one of many big pay-offs for viewers with the attention span the story demands once it settles into its arc and begins to explain its enigmatic opening scene. This film puts me into a trance state—I’m not sure if it’s the Arctic vistas or the astonishing soundtrack (a mix of Inuit and Tuvan music), but I think it’s one of the best films born in Canada. While its subject matter, pacing and semiotic reliance on gestures and absences may not suit everyone, Atanarjuat feels as enormous as the epics of Beowulf and Gilgamesh, or the saga of Egil.
LE CONFESSIONAL (1995), directed by Robert Lepage
Several things recommend this Quebecois film, the main one being lead actor Lothaire Bluteau, who helped put Canadian film on the map as the Christ figure in Arcand’s Jesus of Montreal. (For serious—I’m not discussing Canadian film ad nauseam without mentioning Bluteau. Say it with me now: Blue-Toe.) Other reasons to watch are 1) the exquisite framing of interior scenes, and 2) the way-fun references to Hitchcock’s 1953 thriller I Confess. The Confessional shifts back and forth between two time periods—1952, when Hitchcock excited the hell out of Quebec City by setting and shooting his latest work there, and 1989, when Bluteau’s character Pierre returns home to bury his father. He also, very quickly, gets involved in a family mystery that has a great deal in common with the mystery in Hitchcock’s film—in both cases, priests go down for someone else’s crime thanks to the stranglehold of the confessional’s seal. There’s a heavy emphasis on the inescapability of the past (Pierre literally tries to paint over his family history, and fails), a critique of the Quebec Catholic Church, and a serious examination of origins. But it’s also fun just to watch Kristin Scott Thomas totter around in kitten heels as Hitchcock’s production assistant, and Lothaire Bluteau … well, just be. I could gush out another 500 words about the brilliance of Bluteau, who’s recently been settling for guest spots on “Oz” and “24.” But he’s only one of the great players in The Confessional; the others are Quebec City itself and the Château Frontenac, the world’s most photographed hotel, whose interiors are very well used here indeed.
MAELSTROM (2000), d. Denis Villeneuve
Hollywood may be wearing out its welcome for movies that focus on invisible threads or fateful moments that connect strangers, but these elements are faint enough in Maelström to overlook, should you need to. The film actually came out the same year as Amores Perros (which seems to have ignited the current fad), and I think Maelström is its only legitimate competitor so far. Besides, you’re more apt to be distracted by the film’s cycle-of-life doubling and mirroring, which is pronounced and expertly staged. Set in Montreal, Maelström presents the downward spiral of a daughter of privilege struggling through a very bad week that involves abortion, a fatal hit-and-run accident, and possible embezzlement. In brief, girl is a mess. As bleak as it all seems, Maelström is warmed by the periodic intrusion of its narrator, a (series of) talking fish on a chopping-block; there’s a heavy Czech influence on the frame-story scenes, which recall the surreal, puppet-dense films of Jan Svankmajer or Jiri Trnka. The heroine isn’t terribly likeable on paper, but Marie-Josée Croze infuses her with enough charisma and confusion to persuade us to attach ourselves to her. And the film warms several more degrees at the halfway point, when the son of the Norwegian fishmonger she killed shows up, complicating her predicament; though viewers may quibble about probability, I’m not sure it harms the film in any way. Norway, in fact, and water and seafood (and maelstroms) are the motifs on which everything else rests, making for a beautiful movie that floats on affect while it rivets itself to its structure. It doesn’t hurt that Charles Aznavour’s Les deux guitars and Tom Waits’ The Ocean Doesn’t Want Me curl through the soundtrack periodically.
LEOLO (1992), d. Jean-Claude Lauzon
Jean-Claude Lauzon was shaping up to be Canada’s contribution to the Jeunet-Del Toro school of directing when he died in a plane crash in 1997. His only other feature, Night Zoo, was the first “real” cinematic experience handed to me by a Canadian director—it was Lauzon who informed me that my country has an industry beyond CBC TV and National Film Board shorts. While it doesn’t reach for Eraserhead levels, Léolo is the most disturbing movie on the list; it’s notorious for not one but three infamous scenes (including one that is ten times the pie scene in American Pie). In other words, the film falls squarely into not-for-the-squeamish territory, but if you thirst for the beautiful absurd, it’s required viewing. The story is set in a bizarro Montreal where twelve-year-old Léo is convinced he’s the secret offspring of a Sicilian farmer, conceived by an imported sperm-covered pomodoro that gets lodged accidentally in his mother. You can’t blame him for dreaming, given the way mental illness runs through his family tree and overwhelms his sisters and grandfather; Léo would rather be Léolo and escape his genetic destiny altogether. His parents are obsessed, in fact, with mental and physical health, ensuring there are daily bowel movements all around. Lauzon writes lines like Baudelaire and generates an unforgettable visual canvas: insects gathered in bottles, a cowardly body-builder, a boy snorkel-hunting old fishing lures in a filthy-hazy pond, and the redoubtable Ginette Reno who, as the maternal Mrs. Lozeau, fills the screen with helpless, hectoring devotion. A beauty worth chronicling somehow emerges from the debris-strewn landscape in which Léo is forced to come of age.
HIGHWAY 61 (1991), d. Bruce McDonald
Before Bruce McDonald found a niche directing episodes of “Queer as Folk” (US) and “ReGenesis,” he made three films that have reached cult status in Canada: Roadkill (1989), Hard Core Logo (1996) and Highway 61, a dark comedy about a small-town barber who agrees to drive a strange woman and a corpse from Pickerel Falls, Ontario to New Orleans—pursued by Satan, no less. As with many low-budget indies, the acting’s a little rough and the oddness pervasive, but the scenes grow progressively stronger and funnier, by and large, as the film gets going; I’m thinking especially of the border crossing, the first encounter with the singing Watson family, and a highly quotable bingo parlour episode. Don McKellar inhabits Pokey the naïve barber with his signature twitchiness, and Earl Pastko is fulsome and unforgettable as the sinister Mr. Skin who acquires souls (?) along the route for twenty bucks, a mickey of bourbon or a bus ticket apiece. This is a road movie tinted with the Coen brothers’ fancy, and one that illuminates some of the more carnivalesque aspects of the American landscape from a Canadian point of view. It’s also a nod to the history of American music, from Delta blues to Dylan to the Ramones. Watch for a brief appearance by Jello Biafra as a sententious US customs officer.
Above synopses from:
http://www.pajiba.com/guides/ten-secret-canadian-films.php
ELDORADO 1995 – Charles Binamé
This free-form Canadian drama chronicles the dysfunctional lives of six young people living in Montreal during the summer of 1994. All of the characters are in their twenties, and all are dissatisfied with modern life. Rita is hell on rollerblades and makes her free-wheeling living snatching purses and breaking into cars. She camps out in the apartment of her wealthy friend, Roxan who devotes her spare time to caring for the homeless. Lloyd is a skinhead Deejay for an alternative radio station. His self-important, outrageous ranting provides the background for the rest of the stories. Lloyd is in love with Loulou, a barmaid at a punk club. Loulou is involved in a boring relationship with liquor store clerk, Marc; she looks to Lloyd for excitement. Finally there is screwed-up Henriette, who is so busy venting her neurosis in her shrink’s office that she has no time to listen to the doctor’s advice.
http://www.fandango.com/charlesbiname/filmography/p188583
Honorable mentions:
CAREFUL 1992 – Guy Maddin
THE HANGING GARDEN 1997 – Thom Fitzgerald
ECLIPSE 1994 – Jeremy Podeswa
FULL BLAST 1999 – Rodrigue Jean
LES VAUTOURS 1975 – Jean-Claude Labrecque
Go to Comment
What film do you love but your friends either don't get or like? almost 3 years ago
Some people are still upset that I recommended they see THE TENANT, a movie I absolutely loved when it came out.
I had to cross a picket line of people I knew to see Friedkin’s CRUISING.
Also, I dragged a friend to a cinematheque screening of Tsai Ming-Liang’s VIVE L’AMOUR. Alas, he didn’t share my enthusiasm for this film.
Go to Comment
Favorite Time Traveling Movie over 2 years ago
I really enjoyed THE STICKY FINGERS OF TIME (1997) by Hilary Brugher
Go to Comment
THE ROAD > Faithful but lacking? over 2 years ago
From someone who hasn’t read the book, I don’t think I could have taken more bleakness! ;-) I loved the film though, I thought it was horrifying and very affecting, I was riveted throughout. The performances were excellent, even the kid was pretty good.
Go to Comment
Best or Favorite Opening Sequence over 1 year ago
The opening credits of Noe’s ENTER THE VOID are awesome. The audience actually broke into applause. I haven’t seen too many opening sequences get that kind of reception.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dL0lNGXoP8E
Go to Comment