Random Thoughts

As a contrast, after watching a year’s worth of Netflix movies, I thought it would be fun to watch all the films on the Sight & Sound directors’ poll, so I did, and probably bored all you all to death while doing it.

Or was that the COVID?

It was probably the COVID. *crosses fingers*

It’s will probably surprise nobody when I say that the movies on that list are, on the whole, pretty spiffy. I had fun! I discovered a whole bunch of great movies that I hadn’t seen before, so: Mission accomplished.

But… it’s a list that has some… uhm… issues. Here’s the list of movies:

Pos		Year	Title		BT
#1		1953	Tokyo Story	⚄	Y
#2		1941	Citizen Kane	⚂	N
#2		1968	2001: A Space Odyssey	⚅	N
#4		1963	8½	⚅	X
#5		1976	Taxi Driver	⚅	N
#6		1979	Apocalypse Now	⚃	N
#7		1972	The Godfather	⚄	N
#7		1958	Vertigo	⚅	N
#9		1975	Mirror	⚅	Y
#10		1948	The Bicycle Thieves	⚅	N
#11		1960	Breathless	⚄	N
#12		1980	Raging Bull	⚁	N
#13		1966	Andrei Rublev	⚂	N
#13		1959	The 400 Blows	⚅	N
#13		1966	Persona	⚅	Y
#16		1982	Fanny and Alexander	⚅	Y
#17		1954	Seven Samurai	⚂	N
#18		1950	Rashomon	⚃	N
#19		1955	Ordet	⚄	X
#19		1975	Barry Lyndon	⚁	N
#21		1966	Au Hasard Balthazar	⚃	X
#22		1939	La Règle du jeu	⚃	X
#22		1934	L’Atalante	⚄	N
#22		1936	Modern Times	⚄	N
#22		1927	Sunrise	⚅	N
#26		1954	La strada	⚄	X
#26		1966	The Battle of Algiers	⚃	X
#26		1958	Touch of Evil	⚄	N
#26		1955	The Night of the Hunter	⚅	Y
#30		1985	Come And See	⚂	N
#30		1931	City Lights	⚃	Y
#30		1964	Il Vangelo secondo Matteo	⚅	X
#30		1974	The Godfather: Part II	⚄	N
#30		1960	L’Avventura	⚅	X
#30		1973	Amarcord	⚂	X
#37		1967	Playtime	⚅	Y
#37		1928	Passion of Joan of Arc	⚅	N
#37		1961	Viridiana	⚄	N
#37		1990	Close-Up	⚄	N
#37		1960	La dolce vita	⚅	N
#37		1959	Some Like It Hot	⚄	Y
#37		1956	Un condamné à mort s’est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut	⚄	X
#44		1968	Hour of the Wolf	⚃	N
#44		1960	The Apartment	⚂	Y
#44		1968	Once Upon a Time in the West	⚃	N
#44		1963	Le mépris	⚂	X
#48		1960	Psycho	⚅	N
#48		1985	Shoah	⚂	X
#48		1990	Goodfellas	⚂	Y
#48		1954	Rear Window	⚅	Y
#48		1929	Man with a Movie Camera	⚅	N
#48		1955	Pather Panchali	⚄	Y
#48		1959	Pickpocket	⚅	X
#48		1956	The Searchers	⚃	Y
#48		1962	Lawrence of Arabia	⚁	N
#48		1962	L’eclisse	⚅	X
#48		1975	One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest	⚄	N
#59		1937	La grande illusion	⚄	X
#59		1966	The Good, the Bad and the Ugly	⚄	N
#59		1986	Blue Velvet	⚅	N
#59		1970	Il conformista	☐	X
#59		1974	A Woman Under the Influence	⚅	Y
#59		1972	Aguirre, Wrath of God	⚅	N
#59		1964	Gertrud	⚅	X
#59		1966	Blow Up	⚄	X
#67		1952	Singin’ in the Rain	⚅	Y
#67		2000	In The Mood For Love	⚄	Y
#67		1954	Journey to Italy	⚅	Y
#67		1950	Sunset Blvd.	⚄	N
#67		1982	Blade Runner	⚃	N
#67		1962	Vivre sa vie	⚅	Y
#67		1973	Badlands	⚄	N
#67		1953	Ugetsu Monogatari	⚂	N
#75		1975	Jaws	⚂	Y
#75		1950	Los Olvidados	⚄	X
#75		1969	The Wild Bunch	⚂	X
#75		1970	Husbands	⚀	X
#75		2001	Mulholland Dr	⚅	Y
#75		1969	Kes	⚃	N
#75		1975	Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma	⚁	Y
#75		1957	The Seventh Seal	⚅	N
#75		1980	The Shining	⚄	N
#75		2005	Hidden	⚃	X
#75		1973	Angst essen Seele auf	⚄	X
#75		1971	A Clockwork Orange	⚂	N
#75		2007	There Will Be Blood	⚂	N
#75		1926	The General	⚃	N
#75		1925	Battleship Potemkin	⚅	N
#75		1931	M	⚃	Y
#91		1967	Le Samouraï	⚃	N
#91		1961	L’Année dernière à Marienbad	⚅	X
#91		1964	Soy Cuba	⚅	X
#91		1973	Don’t Look Now	⚄	Y
#91		1983	Sans Soleil	⚃	X
#91		1976	The Killing of a Chinese Bookie	⚂	X
#91		1983	L’argent	⚅	X
#91		1933	Zéro de Conduite	⚃	X
#91		1978	The Deer Hunter	⚂	N
#91		1925	The Gold Rush	⚄	N
#91		1977	Opening Night	⚅	X
#91		1999	Beau Travail	⚅	N
#91		1973	La Maman et la putain	⚄	X
#91		1974	Chinatown	⚄	N
#91		1929	Un chien andalou	⚄	N
#91		1965	Pierrot le Fou	⚅	X

I was going to do a bunch of data-driven charts based on the movies, but the idea didn’t occur to me until I was a few months into watching, and trying to recall data points now is just too much work. I hate work.

But I did do the Bechdel test, since that’s a service I can just query.

Here’s the results: There were 32 movies with no rating (or I was too lazy to figure out under what name the movies were filed under); 23 films that passes the test and 50 films that do not pass the test. Yes, I know the weaknesses of the test — there are experimental movies on the list where nobody speaks at all, and those fail the test, of course. And failing the test doesn’t mean that it’s a bad movie, but it’s… It’s something.

I wonder how many films on the list would fail the reverse Bechdel test (i.e., flip the genders). Persona would, for instance.

It’s not a very diverse list of films, either: I don’t think a single one of these have a black actor in one of the central roles? (Please correct me if I misremember.) The vast majority of the films are from the US or from Europe, and the few that aren’t are from Japan or Hong Kong. (And one from Iran and one from Bangladesh.) There’s a single movie directed by a woman (Claire Denis) and that is also the single movie that is (possibly) about an LGBTQ+ person. (Well, if you ignore Salò, which I think you should.)

This is a list that is overwhelmingly by, and is about, heterosexual white guys.

I’m sure you’re all shocked. SHOCKED I TELLS YA! I brings ya so much exciting news.

I know, I know.

But it is kinda embarrassing, and Sight & Sound already knows:

Female filmmakers also continue to be underserved by the consensus: while a quarter of our voters were women, there were barely nine female-directed titles in our top 250. And while we attempted to extend our invitations to more particular connoisseurs of documentary, animation, experimental and short films, there’ve been few surprises to disrupt the dominance of the ‘art’ feature film – the most notable exceptions being at numbers 8 and 29…

(8 is Man With A Movie Camera and 29 is Shoah on the Critics’ List.)

I was wondering about the distribution of upper class/working class concerns in the films… but that sounds like way, way too much work for me. My guess is… that it’s kinda even? For every Citizen Kane, there’s a Bicycle Thief. But I may well be mistaken.

It’s also a list that is heavily weighted towards straightforwardly narrative films. That is, there’s very few experimental films here. I think there’s like… five?… that don’t have a narrative focus. It’s also very heavily weighted towards deep and serious movies. I love the deepness; I surely does; but just a handful of comedies seems… odd? If I were to do a list of swell flicks, there’d be more of them.

And: There’s a single musical on the list. It’s a fine movie; it’s a delight — but it’s not one I’d even put on my top ten of musicals. But it’s easy to see how it ended up here: It’s muscular and swaggering.

It’s also rather striking how many movies from the 70s are on this list, but probably just an artefact of the age distribution of the directors voting. I mean, I don’t mind watching four movies by John Cassavetes — but it’s… it’s a thing.

This person has done an analysis of the poll over the years. I think the main take-away is that the list isn’t very stable? I’m guessing some of the 70s movies will be gone in the 2022 poll to be replaced by… 80s movies? Dear god! Please don’t have The Goonies on the next edition!

PLEASE!

Tokyo Story. Yasujirô Ozu. 1953. ⚄

We’ve reached the end of this blog series, and we go out on a really good one. It’s a really moving film; even more so than that bicycle thief one. I can totally see why this ended up as #1 in 2012: The performances are swell, the cinematography is solid, it’s Japanese, and it’s the most touching movie you’ll ever see.

Central dialogue fraction:

“Isn’t life dissapointing?”

“Yes, nothing but disappointment.”

I watched and blogged about this in 2014.

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

2001: A Space Odyssey. Stanley Kubrick. 1968. ⚅

The end is nigh! For this blog series.

I think… I haven’t seen this movie since the 80s? I think I saw it in a movie theatre? Yeah, I’m pretty sure I did. And then on VHS later.

When thinking back on it, there’s so many scenes I vaguely remember, like the guy jogging in that circular space ship thing… and the obelisk monkey thing… and Daisy Daisy…

What I’m saying is that it has to be (at least) a visually striking film.

But it might still not be much cop. Let’s find out.

[twenty-five minutes pass]

Oooh! They just did the line that Colourbox sampled here:

It’s always so weird seeing scenes with dialogue you’ve heard a million times in various songs…

Anyway. This is really quite spiffy. The monkey thing was all kinds of deep (people injecting mary jane into their eyeballs and smoking LSD and such back in 1968 would have their minds blown), and the space station and docking thing is exquisite. It’s just the right pace, too: The grandeur of the movie is also in how deliberately it moves.

[forty-five more minutes pass]

I had totally blanked on the structure of the movie… it’s pretty brave having these clear sections with no overlapping characters to identify with. Sure, there’s some infodumps to carry us through (the briefing, the interview), but it feels oddly natural.

The work with all the rotating rooms (for filming) is amazeballs. No wonder everybody thought Kubrick faked the moon landing.

[the end]

I like it. It’s amazing how emotional Kubrick made that HAL lobotomy scene. *sniffle* And I really love how unemotional he made the astronauts — it’s like they’re professionals or something. Whenever I’ve seen a space movie from the past decade it’s like “”We’ve momentarily lost communication with Earth AAAARGH WE”RE ALL GONNA DIE!! NO COMMUNICATION!!!! WHERE”S MY SHOTGUN!!1!! We’re all cannibals now AND I”M GOING TO EAT YOU!!! NOOOOOO!!! YOU WEREN”T THERE FOR ME WHEN I GREW UP YOU”RE NOT MY FATHER oh communication has been re-established; let’s continue on to Mars”” in every single one of them.

The stoicness (stoicity? sure, that’s a word now) of the humans is an effective counterweight to the saga.

It’s so oddly structured, though, that I wonder whether the HAL conflict was added as a sweetener between all the cosmic stuff, or whether the cosmic stuff was added to give the HAL stuff more weight? Or perhaps it was always going to be this odd; Clarke isn’t a very good writer…

Anyway, it’s wonderful. Doesn’t feel like it’s seven hours long at all.

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