The 1987 Mini-List

[swo17]

ELIGIBLE TITLES FOR 1987

VOTE THROUGH SEPTEMBER 30

Please post in this thread if you think anything needs to change about the list of eligible titles.

[therewillbeblus]

Can you please add Godard's Closed Jeans (series 1 + 2) commercial? They're a hoot

[brundlefly]

I'd assumed he'd left off Diane Chambers' "Manchild in Beantown Redux" because it has been described as too derivative of Godard, but he left off actual Godard!

[swo17]

I've now ruined brundlefly's joke by adding the Godards. Actually, it seemed to make the most sense to add them as:

Closed Jeans (1987)
Closed (1988)
Metamorphojean (1990)

This is how they're listed on both IMDb and Letterboxd

[therewillbeblus]

This is a fabulous year, maybe my favorite of the 80s. Some recs that might not be quite as popular, with writeups linked:

Beyond Therapy (Altman)
Closed Jeans (Godard)
King Lear (Godard)
Morning Patrol (Nikos Nikolaidis)
Nadine (Robert Benton)
Under the Sun of Satan (Pialat)

[therewillbeblus]

I've now ruined brundlefly's joke by adding the Godards. Actually, it seemed to make the most sense to add them as:

Closed Jeans (1987)
Closed (1988)
Metamorphojean (1990)

This is how they're listed on both IMDb and Letterboxd

I’ve revisited these and 1988’s Closed is easily the best of the lot - for those who didn’t get much out of this year’s Closed Jeans, keep going, the next commercial is a hoot

[yoshimori]

Encouraging everyone with interests in New Chinese Cinema to search out Chen Kaige's King of the Children. Will certainly be my number 1 pick. And may be, for my money, the best Chinese film ever. Tony Rayns wrote quite a nice short book about it too.

And while I'm at it: those of you who like any Itami Juzo film should certainly check out A Taxing Woman, if you haven't seen it. I think it's his best.

[Toland's Mitchell]

And while I'm at it: those of you who like any Itami Juzo film should certainly check out A Taxing Woman, if you haven't seen it. I think it's his best.

I started his filmography with this decade project. I was indifferent towards The Funeral, but enjoyed Tampopo. A Taxing Woman is on my to-do list this month.

[knives]

My first real watch for the list is such a delightful doozy. The Taviani’s have rarely been better in my experience than with Good Morning Babylon.

Unlike anything I was expecting and all the better for it. Kind of a mystery untying this brotherly relationship through a grueling (but also light and humorous) experience. It had me twisting at the ties which bind together the Taviani films I’ve seen so far. The unifying theme seems to be in how people change specifically with changes in place and time in mind. Padre Padrone has humanity rising outside the rural realm, quite the good change, while I think of St Michael’s Rooster and how being in prison made him forever a man out of time never understanding humanity again, quite an awful change. Good Morning Babylon is somewhere in between as is appropriate for a story about brothers who act as a single entity for as long as fate permits. America could be a land of opportunity, but also this time made of eternal damnation where opportunities leave you lost and crushed. It’s a terror run through with the tale of Isaac’s sons too allegorically possessed to ever seem autobiographical and so just appears wondrous instead.

[knives]

No film featuring Debra Winger in Buster Pointdexter drag should make me cry this much. It’s almost embarrassing how affected I was by what Rudolph was delivering because ultimately Made in Heaven is a really corny movie that plays things soft.

The script zigs and zags around knowing the payoff in each segment we want, but treating it as instead kind of beside the point. Instead I was pushed to caring about the interior nature of these various scabs. Even the smallest character gets moments about us developing insight. I suspect that’s the thing which worked so well for me.

For the leads the film really twists that so that we get how moments make thought and thoughts make moments with the characters changing certain aspects to meet the moment and retaining some core qualities.

[knives]

No new viewings, but a little cheat sheet so no films shall be forgotten (except those not on the list).

[knives]

Dang, this year is turning out way too good. Watched a handful of shorts to change things up. The first two aren’t on the list yet.

In the Night Kitchen is easily the best of these animated children’s books I’ve seen from Gene Deitch. The animation is really fluid and accompanied by a crazy jazz infused score. It takes Sendak’s wildest book and emphasizes the experience in ways I wasn’t expecting. (Also my kid thought it was the bees knees)

Far less baby friendly was Devilman: The birth which is my first experience with the character. It’s a somewhat incomplete tale told as a mystery. The structure reminded me a lot of the weird tales of the 1920s such as Lovecraft. In an impressionistic fashion we’re introduced to a foreign world before returning to earth with a classic heroic character. A friend from his past comes in really narrating the horrors so that the shock is in what was. It’s a fascinating enough story that I’m going to look into more of the character.

How Wang Fo Was Saved also replicates the feeling of classic literature with this religious understanding of art. It’s almost like Laloux saying this is why I go through the trials of making movies though the threat to Wang Fo is more literal than a silenced mind.

Finally is Peter Hutton’s Landscape (for Manon) which is just this calming breeze.

[swo17]

I've added those first two, thanks!

[martin]

In transit (Cédric Klapisch)
I mainly know Klapisch for L’auberge espagnole (aka The Spanish Apartment) which I thought was a pretty good mainstream film when I saw it 20 years ago. In transit is a 15 minute short about a man’s adventures/tribulations during a layover in New York when he misses a connecting flight. It’s Klapisch’s first credited work and nothing more than a bagatelle. The most interesting thing is perhaps that it’s shot in New York and that The World Trade Center is seen a few times. I was also surprised to see Todd Solondz’s name in both the cast and the crew credits.

I saw this short on DVD (bonus feature on one of his films) but it’s also on Dailymotion with low PQ and low audio Q, but probably the same source as the DVD. English audio with French subs (hardsubbed).

[the preacher]

To add: Clandestinos and Street Smart, yeah the one starring Christopher Reeve un drame violent, exigeant, moral qui évite toute manipulation (Bertrand Tavernier).

[knives]

Ha, I had just put Street Smart on my personal docket just to see if it lived up to the hype.

[domino harvey]

It doesn’t. Freeman is okay in his star making role, and that’s about it

[swo17]

I've added both

[knives]

Sorry for making you work overtime swo, but I’d love you to include Les Blank’s amazing Živeli! Medicine for the Heart. It’s another one of his ethnographic films, but differentiated by setting. It focuses on ethnic Serbs in the suburbs of California. As stated by one person the film’s concern seems to be with idea of hyphenated identity. Usually Blank likes enclaves of uniquely American groups like Cajun’s, but here he is focusing on a group that has one hand in America and the other in Europe before any fusion can truly occur. It breathes a surprising life to the film that is very distinctive. Don’t worry though folks, we get plenty of scenes of music so Blank isn’t completely outside his element.

[swo17]

No worries, added

[knives]

It doesn’t. Freeman is okay in his star making role, and that’s about it

After sitting down with this I’m about in between the two camps. I was really impressed by how well the Canon sleaze and Schatzberg left wing realism gel. This is an incredibly empathetic way of wrestling with social Reaganism. I’ve been really inundating myself with some of the most fascist stuff as an aside to this list including all of the J Lee Thompson films and it makes incredibly stark how witty the film is. Not more than a couple of days ago I saw the other side of the coin to the court room scene here in Lustig’s Vigilante (which I did like). Both scenes are nothing like real life, but while Lustig puts the audience fully in the eyes of someone slipping into belief that the world is against them while prosecuting Schatzberg really highlights how that uncaring face of justice applies to everyone. It’s a great scene for Freeman and a real highlight to how uniquely he is blowing the place apart. With a lesser performance I don’t think I’d have wrestled so thoroughly with how the film was portraying Fast Black. There’s a real hurt and frustration in the scene that cuts deeper than the bravado or even impulse that we see elsewhere in the movie.

Freeman isn’t the only one though as I think Reeve does an underrated good job playing a totally different kind of creep. This is a guy who doesn’t see his subjects as humans. They don’t even need to be real (just the first red flag to how little ethics the character has). He’s this master manipulator who’s so good at playing dumb.

This shows the film as having a lot of great to it and I suspect many will find it just great. I have my reservations though in part because I think the film is too cheeky trying to a Network type satire and also the working within the Reagan mentality just cheapens the film to being of the moment. The film clearly is trying to be a liberal counterpoint, but also can’t imagine a vocabulary outside that.

[knives]

Gordon Parks’ autobiographical abstract documentary Moments Without Proper Names is another one off the masterlist that is a truly unique experience heightened by an artist who has perfected his vision. (It’s actually been a really great year for documentaries) Parks’ life story and how he fits it into different artistic modes made me think of King Vidor throughout and in hindsight there’s probably no other film artist he resembles. From a literary perspective I adore how Parks seems a mirror image to James Baldwin with many of the same life experiences, but taken at a very different perspective. For example, in talking about his sojourn through Europe Parks reflects on his relationship with America which has many negative feelings, but also much love.

Encouraging everyone with interests in New Chinese Cinema to search out Chen Kaige's King of the Children. Will certainly be my number 1 pick. And may be, for my money, the best Chinese film ever. Tony Rayns wrote quite a nice short book about it too.

Thanks for the recommendation as I would have never thought to look for this otherwise. I didn’t particularly love the film though. It’s doing a lot of things I do like, but it’s hampered by the ‘inspirational teacher’ genre which just can’t work when this formulaic. Still, Kaige’s lack of sentimental stylings is refreshing.

[knives]

Which cut of Friedkin’s Rampage do people prefer?

[knives]

Finally got to The Stepfather after being curious from years of good notices and one of the best posters ever. It mostly lived up to the hype even though the use of, “who am I here?” isn’t as powerful in the movie proper. The film really lives and dies by O’Quinn (my excuse for not rewatching the Ruben’s similar The Good Son) who is phenomenal embodying the Reagan era version of Bigger Than Life James Mason.

Also, got into a little Luc Moullet groove including La Valse des médias which is largely an ordinary short promoting the library Moullet lets the visuals get progressively weirder as the film goes on. It kind of reminded me of Wiseman in its quiet observance though for differing tonal needs. Also great to continue to find a hatred of turnstiles in Moullet’s work.

[domino harvey]

You’ll def enjoy the Stepfather II, which just lets O’Quinn run wild. Not as good a film overall, but as good or better a performance