Random Thoughts

Heh heh. Funded by Gucci? Well, the Éric Rohmer box set I have was financed by Agnés B… actually, it’s not that surprising that fashion houses fund film restoration, is it? Art’s arty.

I have not seen anything by Barbara Loden before, and I don’t know anything about her, but the start of this movie is fabulous, at least.

This is fantastic.

It’s genius! I’m totally entranced.

The restoration is fantastic, too. The 16mm really comes through, with a swarm of film grain (in this 2K version), and colours that are vibrant almost beyond belief. Was this shot on the same film stock that John Waters used for a while? It was colour stock meant for news shots, so it was really light sensitive which meant that you didn’t need artificial lighting…

This is the most unpredictable movie I’ve ever seen. But it’s not… “zany”? It all makes sense.

Riveting.

Anyway… this film deals with many of the same themes as Badlands, which was made three years later. Badlands is as if Malick saw this movie and then went “but what if I made it with Martin Sheen! Then it’d be sexy!” (And amusingly enough, Badlands was at #67 on the 2012 Sight and Sound list, and isn’t on the 2022 list — so it’s as if Wanda swapped places with Badlands.)

“Canon” is to a large degree about what’s available — this movie wasn’t available for a few decades, but it was restored in 2010, and then made released by Criterion (and perhaps more importantly, available on the Criterion Channel). And that’s the case with many of the new entries on the S&S list in 2022: These movies are finally available to watch for a larger audience, and people go *gasp*.

Makes sense:

The film is a favorite of actress Isabelle Huppert, who championed its release on DVD in France in 2004. The film has also been cited as a favorite by filmmaker John Waters, who presented it as his annual selection within the 2012 Maryland Film Festival.

Wanda. Barbara Loden. 1970. ⚅

This blog post is part of the Officially The Best 2022 series.

I watched this movie a couple of years ago. It’s pretty good, but I think a major factor of it being on the list is because it’s from 2019.

Huh, the Mad Max: Furry Road director voted for this? Hm, I guess I can see that… Here’s his list:

That is a very, very quirky list. I like that, but…

Parasite. Bong Joon Ho. 2019. ⚃

This blog post is part of the Officially The Best 2022 series.

I’ve seen this movie before, but I apparently didn’t blog about it then, so now I have to watch it again. *sob* Let that be a lesson to you all!

Err err err

OK, I don’t actually remember anything about this movie, except I remember I thought that it sucked — I remember feeling that it was Oscar bait or something. So there. Let’s see if that was correct…

The kids do a good job at delivering these really unconvincing lines, so that’s something.

As usual in these “I was a nerd and cool kids picked on me” things (you see this even more in comics than in movies), it’s automatically assumed that the viewer will identify and sympathise with the nerd character (because he’s getting picked on, after all). And that’s true! We do! So there’s no need to give the nerd character, well, any character at all.

And this movie takes this tendency to the max: The nerd character is a total non-entity, and does basically nothing of interest. As a result, the bullies just seem a lot more interesting. I mean, look at the two shots above: First we have the sadistic bully, and then we have the persecuted nerd. Who seems more interesting?

People! When doing a “I was a nerd and cool kids picked on me” thing, remember to give your nerd character. It can be anything! Give him or her a hobby! Anything! Just being picked-upon isn’t character.

This is kinda well made in some ways — there’s individual scenes that really work. But as a whole, it just doesn’t hold up.

But it’s an attractive movie in many ways, and I can totally see why somebody looking for a recent movie to include on their lists would include this: It’s a serious (oh so serious) drama, told in a very non-annoying way.

It’s interesting that more than half of the people who voted for this film are from the UK. Come to think of it, the bluray I have is a BFI release — was this film pushed heavily in the UK?

But I just can’t get over the hokey dialogue and etc, so:

Moonlight. Barry Jenkins. 2016. ⚂

This blog post is part of the Officially The Best 2022 series.

I watched this and blogged about it a couple years ago.

The Colour of Pomegranates. Sergei Parajanov. 1969. ⚄

This blog post is part of the Officially The Best 2022 series.

This is an extremely pre-Grindr movie, I guess.

This is both deeply creepy and incredibly tense.

This is an utterly original movie, and beautifully made — with (I’m guessing) very limited resources. Perhaps that explains the extremely non-Hollywood slant of the directors that voted for this:

But I’m not sure that it’s an altogether successful movie. I really liked Kiarostami’s Close-Up, but interest slightly fizzles here after it grows clearer what the movie is really about.

That is, the first half hour is super mysterious and tense, and then it becomes very chatty, and slightly exasperating.

And it just keeps on a downward trajectory.

Kitten!

I liked the ending, and the first third was phenomenal. The rest was… I dunno.

طعم گيلاس…. Abbas Kiarostami. 1997. ⚃

This blog post is part of the Officially The Best 2022 series.