The Film Thread

[DaMuleRules]

How Sam Mendes, Roger Deakins Shot '1917' to Appear as One Continuous Take
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You thought God was an architect, now you know
He’s something like a pipe bomb ready to blow
And everything you built that’s all for show
goes up in flames
In 24 frames

Jason Isbell

Man, do those lyrics resonate right now

[Omar Little]

[Baron Von Humongous]

[loslakersss]

[Baron Von Humongous]

If you're serious about movies, you're serious about La Flor. All 14 hours are available to stream via rent ($15) or purchase ($30) at the Grasshopper website before 12/31.

That's right! Just $1 per hour of movie genius. Link here: Grasshopper Film
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Under New Management

[panamaniac]

Not sure that I would categorize Tarantino’s films as ‘pop art’.

[Baron Von Humongous]

Walked out of the new Black Christmas after 30 minutes. I appreciate the message, but can the direction be not terrible outside of the occasional showy set piece?

Maybe it gets better after the first 30 minutes. I should've seen Waves or Honey Boy instead.
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Under New Management

[Baron Von Humongous]

[Baron Von Humongous]

What movies have you walked out on?

I've quit on 300, the Korean film I Saw the Devil (악마를 보았다) (which is good, but a terrible date movie), and now Black Christmas (2019).

What are your walkouts?
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Under New Management

[panamaniac]

[Omar Little]

[Nobody]

[Dladi Vidac]

Saw Irishman last week at the old Frida theater in Santa Ana. It was super long and super slow but I wish it was even longer and slower. Loved that (bleep). Wish it lasted days.
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"The best there is. The best there was. The best there ever will be.", said Bret Hart regarding the Los Angeles Lakers.

[Baron Von Humongous]

[Baron Von Humongous]

[panamaniac]

I could definitely see myself walking out on any of the Fast & Furious or Resident Evil movies. Although I haven't watched any of them. I'm pretty picky with what I spend my cash on.

[Baron Von Humongous]

[Baron Von Humongous]

Double Lover: Ozon is a naughty scamp. What a fun send up of 90s erotic thrillers that's also unnerving, grotesque, and beautifully shot.
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Under New Management

[jodeke]

A great watch Belichick & Saban: The Art of Coaching. DTV. Reveals a lot about both men and why they are successful.
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Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.

America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.

[Baron Von Humongous]

[Baron Von Humongous]

In putting together my Best of 2010s list I keep mulling over movies that probably won't make the final list but they've stuck in my mind because of their interesting flaws, their oddness, or their small beauty. There are some overlooked indies and foreign films, some trashy flicks with redeeming qualities, and some bigger name movies that have been panned or forgotten. It's kind of a tame list, tbh - a lot of the risks I took over the decade ended up not paying off with anything too interesting.

Leap Year (2010) - a bit like Jeanne Dielman set in one room where an alienated Mexican woman brings home lovers with an escalating degree of kink and shame. It's exploitative, raw, and I can't shake it.

Ghost Writer - a twisty noir-ish thriller about writing that's kind of one of the best movies of the decade but was directed by P*lanski, so won't show up on too many "best of" lists.

Peace - Kazuhiro Soda's documentaries are all slowly unfolding treasures and I have a particular soft spot for this small film about elder care providers in Japan that touches on gaps in the healthcare system, the country's aging population, and the long shadow of military fascism on the national psyche.

Four Lions - a vicious satire from Chris Morris about a group of bumbling would-be radical Islamic terrorists, Morris takes aim at the war on terror and religious extremism.

Littlerock - a small, lived-in movie about two Japanese siblings visiting California, getting sidetracked on their travels in a small desert town, and hanging out with some fun local burnouts. There's just something comfortable and well-earned about this sweet, but not syrupy, movie navigating cultural exchanges and the hidden past all around us.

Margin Call - much better than The Big Short, imo, it's a smaller movie set in one firm as the awareness of the impending financial crash works its way up to the very top over the course of one night. It's not a rousing polemic, but is more chilling for its controlled tone as wealthy, anonymous financeers make decisions in boardrooms to cover their own tails at the expense of our livelihoods and lives.

Contagion - it looks like I won't have a Soderbergh film on my final list, which is a shame because he has remained prolific and vital even with his brief retirement. But how could everyone collectively forget how awesome this movie is? This movie stars everyone! It has one of the most tense, well-edited openings and closings of any movie this decade, and Soderbergh brilliantly juggles five different main subplots while globe-hopping to track the spread of a deadly virus that undermines the competence and trustworthiness of all of our institutions, our communities, and our own bodies. It's maybe too slick, too good, too 70s which makes it easier to overlook - more thrillers like these, please!

The Innkeepers - funny, nervy horror that builds real haunted house (or hotel) suspense. I haven't seen many better horror movies this decade.

Bernie - an underrated, underseen Linklater black comedy with maybe Jack Black's best performance as a charming, gregarious, effiminate local paragon whose care for a wealthy older woman takes a dark turn. Based on a true story, Linklater populates this with colorful Texas locals who lived through the events.

Snowtown - a serial killer movie from down under, there's something so inexorable and oppressive in a movie about a young man who falls under the sway of a local group of sociopaths who gradually escalate their bullying sadism into murder.

The Lords of Salem - Rob Zombie makes flawed movies, but they are undeniably his, and they stick with you when other slicker horror movies are forgotten. I'm not going to recap the plot because that seems beside the point - it's an eerie, strange movie about addiction and trauma explored through a witches coven flick.

100 Bloody Acres - a funny slasher that actually works, this gory dark comedy from down under was one of the more fun movies I've seen this decade.

Farewell My Queen - a lesbian love triangle with Marie Antoinette at its center at the dawn of the French Revolution, we see the inner workings of the court through the eyes of the Queen's reader played by the lovely Lea Seydoux. It's a twisty erotic drama that plays on performance, perspective, and slippery time jumps.

Project X - an ugly, nauseating, misanthropic entry into the "high school nerds looking to get laid" genre produced by Todd Phillips (of course), it's the unabashed sociopathy that strips away any pretense behind these types of movies from Porky's to Superbad.

In the Fade - ah, Fatih Akin. What if a white woman married to a vocal Islamic activist is involved in a terror atrack that kills her husband and young son? And what if she then hunted down the white supremacist terrorists behind the bombing and turned the tables on them? A trashy, polemical revenge thriller from a talented provocateur.

Starred Up - there are so many Mike Leigh and Ken Loach knock-offs about class struggles in Britain that are solid and important, but struggle to rise to the level of those two masters. Starred Up comes closest from what I've seen, as a violent young man is moved to the same prison as his father after he turns 18. A tough, well-shot, well-performed take on trying to break generational cycles of anger and violence.

Bastards - I'm so close to including this on my final list. Denis' neo-noir has a merchant marine brother as surrogate investigator moving back to be with his sister after the death of her wealthy older husband and her daughter's attempted suicide. Suffice it to say that the rot within the family unit becomes exposed in one of the most soul-draining endings of any movie this decade.
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Under New Management

[Baron Von Humongous]

Pt. II:

Predestination and The One I Love - I love time travel movies with doppelgangers and these two movies scratch that particular itch in very different, but equally entertaining, twisty ways.

The Tribe - a Ukrainian movie set in a school for the deaf using aurally impaired young actors, it's a fascinating, borderline exploitative plunge into an underrepresented community and a different world. No words are spoken, the signing is subtitled, and long stretches of a beautiful, dark movie go without "dialogue," it's one of the more unique films I saw in recent years even as it gradually turns the dial on violent European artiness up and up.

The Mend - more of the New York I knew than what I see in Noah Baumbach movies, John Magary's debut film takes a Sundance-y premise of an estranged, down-and-out slacker coming back into the orbit of his fed-up younger brother and keeps subtly surprising you just when you feel like you've pinned it down. It's lived in, funny, affecting, and cuts across so much twee indie cinema.

The Rover - every movie I liked from Australia this decade has been pretty rough and The Rover isn't much different as a dystopian chase movie where a terrifying Guy Pearce coldly seeks out revenge against some bad men while dragging Robert Pattinson along in one of RPatz's odder, interesting roles in a decade full of them. Nasty, brutish, and short with brilliant opening and closing set pieces, it's worth tracking down.

Buzzard - Joel Potrykus makes movies that make me want to take a shower, and here he burrows into the life of one unremarkable antisocial burnout turned petty criminal, Marty, portrayed by what may be the best unknown actor in America, Joshua Burge. The movie understands exactly how the American dirtbag ticks and spending 90 minutes in Marty's company as his dumb criminal escapades escalate amid the backdrop of a decayed Detroit is chilling in ways that few other directors get.

Office - Jonnie To goes out and makes one of the best musicals of the decade about office politics and romance of all things. Using brilliant stage-y sets that heighten the artificiality of modern office spaces, To weaves multiple melodratic narratives of young lovers, doomed lovers, corporate fraud, ladder-climbing, and backstabbing with a handful of catchy ballads while satirizing corporate culture. A bit slow in spots, but often quite fun and lovely to look at. Chow Yun-fat and Sylvia Chang kill it.

15:17 to Paris - easily the strangest big budget studio release this decade, this ridiculous Eastwood movie reaches a kind of dumb, absurd poignancy in following three unremarkable American joes doing tourist-y nonsense around Europe and then having them undergo big budget Hollywood action movie performance therapy in reenacting their thwarting of a terrorist attack on a train. It's insane and beautiful in the end even if the rest of the movie is a mess.

The Fits - a young tomboy boxer in Cincinnati is gradually drawn to dance even as a strange, inexplicable wave of spasmodic fits begins to spread among the other teenage girls in the after school dance troupe. A lyrical metaphor for female sexuality and coming of age, Royalty Hightower's physical and emotional transformation is breathtaking at times in this small, beautiful film.

Results - Computer Chess and Support the Girls are better films, but I also want to shout out Bujalski's quirky low key romantic comedy about two personal trainers played by the awesome Cobie Smulders and Guy Pearce who gradually realize their feelings for another go deeper than their work friendship.

Antiporno - Sion Sono has a streak of demented genius in him, and in this strange, seductive, fourth wall breaking kaleidoscope of a pinku eiga homage I think he reached his peak this decade. Both a send-up of obscurantrist arthouse erotica and a love letter to obscurantrist arthouse erotica, the plot is almost an afterthought as artist Kyoko (an amazing Ami Tomite) is besieged by visitors in her very yellow loft who keep demanding more and more of her as the movie becomes more surreal and more thorny in its depictions of women as erotic subjects/objects. It has to be seen to be believed.

Catfight - Onur Tukel's dry social satire is as subtle as a punch to the gunt. Sandra Oh and Anne Heche play two former college frenemies who run into each other in very different economic circumstances before the movie turns into Trading Places with each fight. The movie goes for it again and again and again, knowing that it's dumb, knowing that there's some point where the rake joke goes from funny to unfunny back to funny and then unfunny again and trying to pound its fists against that wall with a mumblecore hipster shrug. It's a weirdo movie.

Hounds of Love

A Dark Song

After the Storm - this may end up my favorite movie directed by Kore-eda this decade, it's one of his lightest, least strident films about a deadbeat dad trying to use an impending typhoon to have an excuse to reconnect with his ex-wife trapped overnight by the storm. Hiroshi Abe gives a wonderful, hangdog performance as the father who turned from once successful young novelist to P.I. while his mother portrayed by the late great Kirin Kiki nearly steals rhe show.

Kicks

Dog Eat Dog - Willem Dafoe out-Cages Nicolas Cage in this nasty Paul Schrader mess of a bad boys crime caper. So ugly and excessive it's fascinating and sometimes funny, I don't know that anything else this decade tops the bravura insanity of this movie's pink-hued murder spree opening. And Paul Schrader cast himself! It's a crazy movie.

Among Wolves

Microhabitat - a (single) woman in her 30s struggling to make ends meet who tries to recapture the promise of her 20s by getting her old band back together, the movie teanscends it's Sundance-y premise in subtle ways that are hard to describe. Ebert always stressed that it's not what a movie's about, but how it's about it that matters, and this is a lovely, funny character study anchored by a wonderful lead performance from Esom that makes it work.

Mom and Dad - a ridiculously fun movie from the director of the Crank cinematic universe, Selma Blair goes toe-to-toe with Nicolas Cage in bug-(bleep) acting as homicidal parents tearing apart their home to try to murder their brood. The setup is almost nonexistent - a strange transmission causes all parents ro want to murder their kids - the movie goes all out for its gory gags escalating to intergenerational conflict in this introspective look at how families suck.

Western

Oh, Lucy - I unabashedly love this seemingly little nothing of a movie about a middle aged Japanese woman tired of her office drone life who starts taking English classes and develops a crush on the ESL instructor played by Josh Hartnett (!). It's a road movie, a sly satire of the American dream (and handsome white dudes), a great sister fight movie, and becomes quite moving as "Lucy" (Shinobu Terajima) comes to realize that subtle changes in life can be as profound and fulfilling as chasing our big, romantic dreams.

Wonderstruck - Haynes directs the (bleep) out of this intertwined tale of two deaf children separated by decades as they explore the wonders of New York. A great nerdy kid and adult movie, it celebrates the love of culture, of museums, of miniatures, and of cinema, and it goes to show what great direction - along with Ed Lachman's cinematography, sound design, production design, etc. - can do to punch up a script into something almost special.

Spoor

Love & Goodbye & Hawaii - lovely, lovely Japanese film about a young couple growing apart after college but unable to end their relationship out of fear, familiarity, and lingering love for one another and what they once had. There's deft directing and understated performance here in what would be an interesting pairing with Marriage Story.

Keep An Eye Out - Dupiex keeps churning out these odd, fun, clever single premise movies like Rubber, Reality, Wrong Cops, etc., but my favorite is this farcical almost two-hander between a frustratingly pedantic cop (Benoît Poelvoorde of Man Bites Dog) and a man who happened across a murdered woman late at night and just wants to go home. Hijinks ensue, the fourth wall gets broken, time keep slippin', and Dupiex leads us on a strange, economical, slightly Charlie Kaufmann-esque journey into the fallibility of memory.

Apocalypse After ("Ultra Pulpe")
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Under New Management

[jodeke]

[Baron Von Humongous]

[Baron Von Humongous]

More annoying (an informal poll):

A) The kid from Marriage Story

B) The kid from Jerry Maguire

C) The kid from Time of the Wolf
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Under New Management