Random Thoughts

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.

I watched this movie some years ago.

I’m a bit surprised at how many “recent” films there are on the list. That is, in 2012, there was a whole bunch of movies from the 70s, which I assumed reflected the age of the directors. So I was expecting this list to have a whole bunch of 80s directors — like, Jim Jarmusch, Aki Kaurismäki, Peter Greenaway and that whole generation — but instead we’re basically jumping ahead 20 years and going for late 90s/early noughties directors instead.

It’s like the 80s is the lost decade in film history.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Michel Gondry. 2004. ⚄

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

I haven’t seen any movies by Andrew Yang before… The Sight & Sound poll has been criticised before for only including American, European, Japanese and Hong Kong movies before, so here they take a wild step into the unknown: Taiwan!

It looks like we’re solidly in the mainstream of the “best of” genre, though: It’s a slow moving family drama.

Hey, that’s an original interior decoration idea: Table as lamp.

I like a lot of the shots in this movie — coldly registering at a distance. It’s nice.

All the shots are very calculated, but slightly off-kilter so that it doesn’t look like it’s that calculated.

See? I love that shot, and it’s one that I’ve tried to do myself more than few times, but it’s difficult to get right.

However! I’m not really getting into this film. Yang is obviously inspired by a bunch of really great directors, but the dialogue just feels so artificial. Like… that’s something a kid would say?

Exactly!

This is my kind of movie, and many of the performances are great (especially the kids (when they don’t have any lines to deliver)), but some of the adult male actors are just… there. That, combined with the unconvincing dialogue, constantly pulls me out of the movie.

And there’s so many cliches, like this sad sack without any characteristics we’re supposed to sympathise with — because he’s in love with a girl who already has a boyfriend.

At the bottom of the top 100, you only need nine votes to get in.

On the other hand, it has a 97% tomatometer.

I had planned on the first film for this blog series to be Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood (also on a shared #93), but when I double-checked the S&S web site:

It’s not there! Did I hallucinate it? So I went undercover and did some real sleauthi’ (i.e., I checked on the Wayback Machine):

THERE IT IS!!!

There was originally 12 movies on a shared #93, but now there’s only 11, and Throne of Blood is gone. Did they do a re-tallying or something? I can’t see anything else changed on the list except that…

MYSTERIES!!!

This movie is kitch in an art framework.

Yi Yi. Edward Yang. 2000. ⚃

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