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Please add Everett Lewis's The Natural History of Parking Lots.

Done, thanks!

My new watches are proving very enjoyable so far. Case in point not yet on the Masterlist Chytilova’s captivity documentary TGM The Liberator. It might honestly even beat Daisies for me which seconds before watching I would have taken as an insane suggestion. The pure use of montage here is so effective as to be elevating. It kind of mourns a lost national union in a way that Kusturica made feel icky. Its thanks to the film running on empathy rather than her own politics like the ultimate achievement of Chytilova’s concept of the abrogation of the artist.

Nothing, obviously, could match that experience, but Cyrano De Bergerac is kind of a best case for the type of film it is aiming to be. What you expect is basically what you are going to get here. The film just tries to faithfully attend to the play without fuss resulting in exactly the film you’d expect to come from it in France in 1990. It’s fun by that standard, but isn’t going to be my default adaptation outside maybe a classroom setting.

knives wrote: Wed Feb 05, 2025 8:43 pm TGM The Liberator

Added, thanks

Hen, His Wife (or whatever it’s called) makes incredibly obvious that Kovalyov was a part of Rugrats as this plays out like that style disconnected from the strictures of decency that kids television enforces. Which is to say it’s ugly in a deeply uncomfortable way.

It took my a minute to acclimate to Jarman’s The Garden, but once I began treating this as a series of short films sometimes connected by theme or motif vying for the mind of its exhausted author I began to fall in love. The main theme of persecution via noise seems especially tangible now when the powers that be through noisy incompetence are killing people and tiring out all the rest creating zombified bystanders. The beating by Santas scene especially seems pointed this way, but Swinton chased down by paparazzi is just as effective. Even serenity comes across haunted and creepy.

Not to get into my own thing too much, Jarman just gave me a lot of catharsis as I’ve been struggling with my own ennui following a decade of crushing caring that seems to amount to naught. I’ve kind of just down this social political hermitage which I kind of need for personal care, but this served as a good reminder that that hermitage is a form of being a bystander.

Weather Diary 6
The beautiful and amazing thing about the Weather Diaries is how radically different each episode is. This one is basically a city symphony cum spy thriller.

Far less fun and thrilling is The Hunt for Red October, John McTiernan’s first entry into dull airport thrillers. It’s not as jingoistic as I remembered, but just as full of dull scenes of not much happening. Weirdly the Baldwin scenes worked best even if 30 Rock has totally ruined my ability to take him seriously in this sort of role. I really didn’t need any of Connery’s scenes which are just thuddingly redundant even taking away some of the tension from the exterior scenes. It’s a very pretty film though.

Going back to fun shorts, Michael Snow’s See You Later has a great sense of the emotions modulating time creates, though the fun set might be my favorite thing here. Grey Wolf and Little Red Riding Hood is a kooky Demy-esque satirical musical full of benign terror.

Finally a good feature with The Grifters. The absolute black hole of Westlake and Thompson becomes so unnerving in Frears and Stapleton’s candy coated color carnival. It gives a good sense of what was in the air that made Tarantino kind of an inevitability a few years later.

I have to say there wasn't a whole lot I wanted to check out that I hadn't seen. I will say To Sleep With Anger unfortunately didn't work all that well for me - as a Southerner who lived for a brief time in Lynwood, near South Central Los Angeles, I thought the movie would really stand a chance at registering with me but didn't. on paper I loved the idea of interruption and tradition being broken down a bit, but I think maybe I was looking for more about the clash of southern black culture versus west coast. that said, Danny Glover was absolutely incredible and put on a bravura performance. he was magnetic and absolutely the reason the film should be seen - even if I didn't love it, he's fantastic here, and it's genuinely really funny seeing him play a Royal Tenenbaum character after years of knowing that movie - I can't remember if Wes Anderson said anything about it, but I'd have to imagine his casting as Henry Sherman had to be at least influenced by this movie a bit. anyway, wanted to like it but I'm in the minority and recognize that.

revisiting Close-Up and Life is Sweet, two of my favorites for the year, in close succession ended up revealing some fun links between the two. Kiarostami admits that his narrative trickery was accidental, coming at the hands of some reels being switched around totally by chance, but Mike Leigh was very intentional in his. in funny ways, this ends up showing how both films decieve the audience. I will always love Leigh quietly revealing details about Andy, Aubrey, and Nicola that will surprise the audience as they come up as the film goes on. and in both films,

Spoiler

the lack of resolution remains extremely satisfying to me. obviously tragic in Kiarostami's case, as Sabzian had quite a fateful future ahead, but why I love Leigh so much is the fact that he very definitively shys away from any dramatic climax. while the scene with Wendy and Nicola is incredible, and one of the most "real" arguments I've ever seen on film, we never see Nicola lash out in a desctructive manner, and the final scene with Nicola and Natalie remains a dear favorite to me

I know I should probably take a chance on some stuff I haven't seen before. I will try to be a better participant than I was last year. this is me reminding myself in the first month of the year

Please add:
Confesión a Laura - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101610/
Gumapang ka sa lusak - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099717/
Havana - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099747/
Pod severnym siyaniyem - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100380/
Uranus - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100851/
Buried Alive (TVM) - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099188/
Mirindas asesinas (short) - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0151585/

Swo, would you please add Andrew Bregman's The Freshman? Thanks.

All added, thanks!

Nearing the end of watches for this month. I loved Texasville's distinct Americana, but my favourite new-to-me 1990 effort is La Campagne de Cicéron by Jacques Davila.


Davila was part of Paul Vecchiali's Diagonale collective but only made a couple of other features and died a year after La Campagne's release. I came across it almost by accident, and went in pretty blind.

It has the hallmarks of Rohmer (who was a big fan), or just the wider French tradition of that ilk: love triangles, literary quotation, a precise mise en scène, and as the title suggests the countryside. But there are also elements of Rivette as well as broader stuff: the comedy is pretty full-throated; I'd love to see this with a crowd.

There's also some intrigue in the way the main character, Christian, gradually effaces himself. Davila begins - after an opening gag that's of a piece with this theme - with him breaking up with another character, and in the second half in particular he's very much on the sidelines, reduced to being accidentally struck by a friend whose attention is on someone else, or failing miserably at keeping another couple's secret.

This is all spelled out in a monologue which, looking back, takes place at the exact midpoint of the film. That reminds me a little of Racine's Phaedra (where the return of Theseus is announced on line 827 of 1654). In the film this isn't exactly the point on which the 'plot' pivots, though Christian's words do resonate right til the end. To continue this digression there's also Hippolyte in La Campagne, who as with Phaedra's Hippolytus has a chaste element to him...albeit likely for different reasons.

All of which makes me want to watch Davila's other feature, the earlier Qui Trop Embrasse, which seemingly again features Michel Gautier as Christian as well as a couple of other recurring characters (one played by a different actor from La Campagne, and the other by Anne Wiazemsky)

Recommended!

One more to be added: La fracture du myocarde - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099607/

At least the two Our Mother's House voters in 1967 should check this out.

Added, thanks

was left adrift by three new to me watches to wrap up the month...and all had a very similar thread through them

Miami Blues: love the colors, the fantastic settings, and Alec Baldwin, who was rather thrilling to watch in a performance like that. but the whole thing felt kinda flippant and empty to me, but I admit this is probably also a me problem, as I very much feel 90s "fatigue" and if Radiance hadn't put this out, I doubt I would've watched it. I'm just over these kinds of crime movies from the decade/Hollywood, and I doubt I'll be revisiting them throughout this project. I'm glad I watched this truly - it was great seeing Jennifer Jason Leigh pull off a great performance as a naive, southern belle girl too, but again, limited returns. when it ended I was just like "that's it?" but others see a lot in it..

The Comfort of Strangers: have enjoyed getting to know Schrader's directing a long time after being acquainted with Mishima. this one is solidly somewhere in the middle for me. the atmosphere is absolutely incredible, easily my favorite Angelo Badalamenti score to date and Venice arguably looked better here than any other movie. my friend pointed out how this is an inversion of a typical Schrader, where Christopher Walken would usually lead the movie and we see everything from his lens (as "god's lonely man" or whatever), which indeed was neat. but something didn't click here - I usually like Harold Pinter's scripts too so was kinda surprised. I guess in some ways I wanted it to go further in one direction or another and it kinda just never did. but Walken is incredible here, probably my favorite performance from him so far, and I found the movie fascinating enough to probably give it another go in the future. enjoyed Helen Mirren a good bit too

The Sting of Death: maddening movie. while not as bad as some of the really rough Letterboxd reviews of this, it should be way better than it is. visually it's gorgeous - some absolutely stunning shots and wonderous scenes of inaka and Japanese island life abound. and I like the comment made in the Radiance thread for this (where I'll crosspost this) that it feels like a "dark Ozu" movie. in some ways yes - the rigid formalism, the familial struggle for sure. but this is way too miserable and melodramatic, and goes on for far too long while doing so. I'm not against this kind of movie at all - A Separation is great, but the endless yelling (this literally features more yelling than Goodfellas) and physical violence really make it impossible to ever get a real rhythm here. absolutely brilliant in parts (I do particularly like the idea of it exploring the effect of this on their children) but really brutal in others, and not in a good way. I'd love to see more of Oguri's films and would pick them up, but I'm not convinced this was for me at all. every time Miho started questioning him about the mistress and calling him a liar again, I was just waiting for it to be over. the "it's her" meltdown at Shinagawa may be one of the most disappointing scenes I've ever seen in any movie. those silences are beautiful, and we never get to enjoy them

on a visual sense all three of these films were fantastic, with tremendous sense of location!!

The Golden Boat (Raúl Ruiz)

I know I'm predisposed toward everything Ruiz does but this film, which was new to me, still managed to surprise. Ostensibly this is the creaky English-language debut of a beloved foreign auteur, which can have mixed results. There can be an oddness to the work that likely results at least in part from the director's loose grasp of the language and lack of cultural familiarity. But here that all plays wonderfully into Ruiz's signature surreality. The film is courageously dialogue-heavy and the dialogue is surprisingly sharp but also off in the way that people might speak to you in a dream. And John Zorn's score is this spine-tingling wave of destruction that somehow stimulates my taste buds for both fear and humor at the same time. Who knows what it all means but I look forward to revisiting to try and find out

swo17 wrote: Thu Jan 09, 2025 11:41 pm ELIGIBLE TITLES FOR 1990

VOTE THROUGH FEBRUARY 28

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

Reminder that today's the last day to vote

The 1990 List



##. Film (Director) points/votes(top 5 placements, aka likely votes in decade list)/highest ranking

01. Miller's Crossing (Joel & Ethan Coen) 305/15(9)/1(x4)
02. کلوزآپ ، نمای نزدیک [Kluzap nema-ye nazdik] [Close-Up] (Abbas Kiarostami) 281/14(8)/1(x4)
03. To Sleep with Anger (Charles Burnett) 272/14(8)/1(x3)
04. GoodFellas (Martin Scorsese) 267/14(7)/1(x2)
05. Metropolitan (Whit Stillman) 211/12(4)/2(x2)
06. Tulitikkutehtaan tyttö [The Match Factory Girl] (Aki Kaurismäki) 189/10(3)/1(x3)
07. An Angel at My Table (Jane Campion) 187/11(3)/1
08. Paris Is Burning (Jennie Livingston) 169/10(4)/2
09. Life Is Sweet (Mike Leigh) 149/9(3)/3
10. Northwest Passage (David Lynch) 132/7(4)/2
11. 阿飛正傳 [Ah fei zing zyun] [Days of Being Wild] (Wong Kar-wai) 128/7(3)/3
(tie) 菊豆 [Ju dou] (Zhang Yimou) 128/8(1)/5
(tie) Gremlins 2: The New Batch (Joe Dante) 128/10(1)/2
14. Miami Blues (George Armitage) 122/8(2)/4
15. Wild at Heart (David Lynch) 121/8(2)/1
16. Sink or Swim (Su Friedrich) 104/6(2)/3
(tie) Europa Europa (Agnieszka Holland) 104/8(1)/4
18. Conte de printemps [A Tale of Springtime] (Éric Rohmer) 90/5(1)/2
19. Nouvelle Vague [New Wave] (Jean-Luc Godard) 89/6(2)/2
20. Texasville (Peter Bogdanovich) 82/7/6
21. Szürkület [Twilight] (György Fehér) 75/4(3)/2
(tie) Edward Scissorhands (Tim Burton) 75/7(1)/2
23. Non, ou a Vã Gloria de Mandar [No, or the Vain Glory of Command] (Manoel de Oliveira) 74/4(1)/3
(tie) The Grifters (Stephen Frears) 74/6(1)/5
25. 夢 [Yume] [Dreams] (Akira Kurosawa) 71/7(2)/2(x2)
26. Pretty Woman (Garry Marshall) 59/3(2)/2
27. Mo' Better Blues (Spike Lee) 58/4(1)/5
28. Mountains of the Moon (Bob Rafelson) 57/3(2)/3
(tie) The Godfather Part III (Francis Ford Coppola) 57/4/9(x2)
30. King of New York (Abel Ferrara) 52/5/12
31. Das schreckliche Mädchen [The Nasty Girl] (Michael Verhoeven) 50/3/6(x2)
32. S'en fout la mort [No Fear, No Die] (Claire Denis) 49/3/6
33. Alice (Woody Allen) 48/5(1)/4
34. The Comb (From the Museums of Sleep) (Stephen & Timothy Quay) 47/3(1)/3
35. 3-4x10月 [San tai yon ekkusu jugatsu] [Boiling Point] (Takeshi Kitano) 46/3(1)/3
36. White Hunter, Black Heart (Clint Eastwood) 45/2(2)/3
(tie) Love at Large (Alan Rudolph) 45/3/9
38. American Dream (Barbara Kopple) 44/3/8
39. The Golden Boat (Raúl Ruiz) 43/3(1)/4
(tie) Total Recall (Paul Verhoeven) 43/3/8
(tie) The Comfort of Strangers (Paul Schrader) 43/5/14
42. La voce della luna [The Voice of the Moon] (Federico Fellini) 41/2(1)/1
43. Porte aperte [Open Doors] (Gianni Amelio) 40/2(1)/3
(tie) 死の棘 [Shi no toge] [The Sting of Death] (Kōhei Oguri) 40/2(1)/4
(tie) Dances with Wolves (Kevin Costner) 40/2(1)/5
(tie) The Garden (Derek Jarman) 40/3(1)/3
47. Avalon (Barry Levinson) 39/2(1)/1
48. Mindwalk (Bernt Capra) 38/2(1)/1
(tie) Tremors (Ron Underwood) 38/3/8
(tie) The Witches (Nicolas Roeg) 38/3/8
(tie) Hidden Agenda (Ken Loach) 38/4/9

ALSO-RANS

Jacob's Ladder (Adrian Lyne) 37/4/10
Vincent & Theo (Robert Altman) 36/2(1)/3
To Be (John Weldon) 34/3/6
The Reflecting Skin (Philip Ridley) 33/3(1)/2
Ο άνθρωπος που αγάπησε ένα πτώμα [O anthropos pou agapise ena ptoma] [Singapore Sling] (Nikos Nikolaidis) 33/2(1)/4
Pont de Varsòvia [Warsaw Bridge] (Pere Portabella) 33/2(1)/5
Mister Johnson (Bruce Beresford) 33/2/7
Mr. & Mrs. Bridge (James Ivory) 33/2/9
Quick Change (Howard Franklin & Bill Murray) 32/3/9

Misery (Rob Reiner) 31/4/11
Milou en mai [May Fools] (Louis Malle) 30/2(1)/5
本命年 [Ben ming nian] [Black Snow] (Xie Fei) 30/2/9
All the Vermeers in New York (Jon Jost) 30/2/10
天若有情 [Tin joek yau ching] [A Moment of Romance] (Benny Chan) 28/3/14(x2)
After Dark, My Sweet (James Foley) 28/3/14
The Krays (Peter Medak) 26/2/7
Cry-Baby (John Waters) 25/3(1)/4
The Sheltering Sky (Bernardo Bertolucci) 25/2(1)/5
La Campagne de Cicéron (Jacques Davila) 25/2/6

Die Hard 2 (Renny Harlin) 23/2(1)/5
Streets (Katt Shea) 23/2/12
Tilaï [The Law] (Idrissa Ouédraogo) 23/2/14
客途秋恨 [Ke tu qiu hen] [Song of the Exile] (Ann Hui) 21/2/6
Napló apámnak, anyámnak [Diary for My Father and Mother] (Márta Mészáros) 21/2/7
The Two Jakes (Jack Nicholson) 20/2/13
Visions in Meditation #3 (Plato's Cave) (Stan Brakhage) 19/2/12
Reversal of Fortune (Barbet Schroeder) 19/2/16
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (Tom Stoppard) 19/2/16
Korczak (Andrzej Wajda) 17/2/13

Dick Tracy (Warren Beatty) 16/2/15
喋血街頭 [Dip huet gai tau] [Bullet in the Head] (John Woo) 16/2/17
皇家女將 [Huang jia nü jiang] [She Shoots Straight] (Corey Yuen) 12/2/16
See You Later (Michael Snow) 12/2/18
Truly Madly Deeply (Anthony Minghella) 10/2/18
Le Mari de la coiffeuse [The Hairdresser's Husband] (Patrice Leconte) 10/2/21(x2)
Affirmations (Marlon Riggs) 5/2/23

ORPHANS

Film (Director) highest ranking

Brain Dead (Adam Simon) 25
ウルトラQ ザ・ムービー 星の伝説 [Urutora q za mūbi hoshi no densetsu] [Ultra Q the Movie: Legend of the Stars] (Akio Jissōji) 10
Pump Up the Volume (Allan Moyle) 10
The Freshman (Andrew Bergman) 20
Sanctus (Barbara Hammer) 11
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (Beeban Kidron) 2
Daddy nostalgie (Bertrand Tavernier) 5
The Bonfire of the Vanities (Brian De Palma) 23
Hard to Kill (Bruce Malmuth) 20
¡Ay, Carmela! (Carlos Saura) 23
Home Alone (Chris Columbus) 21
La Discrète [The Discreet] (Christian Vincent) 14
Uranus (Claude Berri) 12
Troll 2 (Claudio Fragasso) 25
George Michael: Freedom! '90 (David Fincher) 24
Industrial Symphony No. 1: The Dream of the Brokenhearted (David Lynch) 7
The Hot Spot (Dennis Hopper) 14
Свето место [Sveto mesto] [A Holy Place] (Đorđe Kadijević) 10
The Natural History of Parking Lots (Everett Lewis) 7
Hello Hemingway (Fernando Pérez) 14
Buried Alive (Frank Darabont) 25
The Russia House (Fred Schepisi) 15
Weather Diary 6 (George Kuchar) 6
Stanno tutti bene [Everybody's Fine] (Giuseppe Tornatore) 7
Archangel (Guy Maddin) 6
By Dawn's Early Light (Jack Sholder) 13
La Fracture du myocarde [Cross My Heart] (Jacques Fansten) 4
Confesión a Laura [Confessing to Laura] (Jaime Osorio Gómez) 23
Metamorphojean (Jean-Luc Godard) 25
Paul Cézanne im Gespräch mit Joachim Gasquet (Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Huillet) 13
Cyrano de Bergerac (Jean-Paul Rappeneau) 1
Foutaises [Things I Like, Things I Don't Like] (Jean-Pierre Jeunet) 17
Ghost (Jerry Zucker) 10
The Hunt for Red October (John McTiernan) 18
Joe Versus the Volcano (John Patrick Shanley) 24
The Civil War (Ken Burns) 2
The Ambulance (Larry Cohen) 16
Gumapang Ka sa Lusak [Dirty Affair] (Lino Brocka) 18
Nikita (Luc Besson) 11
नजर [Nazar] [The Gaze] (Mani Kaul) 17
Berkeley in the Sixties (Mark Kitchell) 18
Desperate Hours (Michael Cimino) 25
Nuit d'été en ville (Michel Deville) 9
La Ville Louvre [Louvre City] (Nicolas Philibert) 22
The Juniper Tree (Nietzchka Keene) 22
Longtime Companion (Norman René) 21
Men Don't Leave (Paul Brickman) 10
The Sundays: Here's Where the Story Ends (Peter Scammell) 15
Под северным сиянием [Pod severnym siyaniyem] [オーロラの下で] [Orora no shita de] [Under Northern Lights] (Petras Abukevičius, Toshio Gotō & Sergei Vronsky) 8
Henry & June (Philip Kaufman) 8
Mermaids (Richard Benjamin) 25
O Som da Terra a Tremer [The Sound of the Shaking Earth] (Rita Azevedo Gomes) 14
Back to the Future Part III (Robert Zemeckis) 18
Fear (Rockne S. O'Bannon) 11
You Be Mother (Sarah Pucill) 19
Q&A (Sidney Lumet) 25
Quigley Down Under (Simon Wincer) 16
Glaze of Cathexis (Stan Brakhage) 3
Passage Through: A Ritual (Stan Brakhage) 5
Visions in Meditation #4 (D.H. Lawrence) (Stan Brakhage) 13
Havana (Sydney Pollack) 5
ビーナス [Bīnasu] [Venus] (Takashi Itō) 6
Spontaneous Combustion (Tobe Hooper) 21
Days of Thunder (Tony Scott) 19
TGM osvoboditel [TGM the Liberator] (Věra Chytilová) 10
The Handmaid's Tale (Volker Schlöndorff) 25
Grim Prairie Tales (Wayne Coe) 21
The Exorcist III (William Peter Blatty) 24
Ucieczka z kina Wolność [Escape from the Liberty Cinema] (Wojciech Marczewski) 19
Reise der Hoffnung [Journey of Hope] (Xavier Koller) 19
Privilege (Yvonne Rainer) 12
The Orchestra (Zbigniew Rybczyński) 22

22 lists submitted

Thanks swo!

Oops, forgot the Deville. Thanks swo!

I completely forgot this month, but glad to see a good turnout. The high placement of Gremlins 2 is a nice touch!