I See Dead People (no. 2)
Aug. 1st, 2012 04:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
koganbotLook, this is really sad. No list of all-time great movies whose top ten includes only movies I've already seen can be credible.* Or if it is credible, this is a sad world. Not to denigrate my own tastes, judgments, and habits, but round '78 I decided that I didn't have the time or money to watch a lot of movies. And in 1999 I made the decision, I can either be a writer or someone who owns a TV set, but I don't have time for both. So not a lot of movies made in the last 35 years have unfolded (or unspooled or whatever) in front of my eyes.
Not that I've seen nothing in that time. Likely any movie with Steven Seagal that appeared on cable in the late '80s got viewed by me. But in general I no longer have my explorer's hat on.
I'm sure the Sight And Sound poll included gobs of people excited by right now, but obviously there was no consensus in it, no "Here's a movie that's changed the game" or "Here's the flick that called out to everyone."
Strange: visit a local lending library and you'll see just the opposite, the past a bare flickering shadow, westerns all but nonexistent, everybody relaxing into the here and now.
In any event, what's the next movie you're gonna see? Here's mine, if I can find it streaming somewhere for free (was taken down from mysoju):
*Unless the list is entitled Frank's All-Time Top Ten Movies (Restricted To Movies That He's Actually Seen).
Not that I've seen nothing in that time. Likely any movie with Steven Seagal that appeared on cable in the late '80s got viewed by me. But in general I no longer have my explorer's hat on.
I'm sure the Sight And Sound poll included gobs of people excited by right now, but obviously there was no consensus in it, no "Here's a movie that's changed the game" or "Here's the flick that called out to everyone."
Strange: visit a local lending library and you'll see just the opposite, the past a bare flickering shadow, westerns all but nonexistent, everybody relaxing into the here and now.
In any event, what's the next movie you're gonna see? Here's mine, if I can find it streaming somewhere for free (was taken down from mysoju):
*Unless the list is entitled Frank's All-Time Top Ten Movies (Restricted To Movies That He's Actually Seen).
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
my vote
Date: 2012-08-02 10:57 am (UTC)The Long Goodbye (Robert Altman, 1973)
Eraserhead (David Lynch, 1977)
Sir Henry at Rawlinson End (Steve Robert, 1980)
The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982)
Police Story (Jackie Chan, 1985)
Communion (Philippe Mora, 1989)
Maborosi (Hirokazu Koreeda, 1995)
The Messenger: the Story of Joan of Arc (Luc Besson, 1999)
Pirates of the Caribbean III: At World's End (Gore Verbinski, 2007)
There are films that matter historically. There are films which mark what all the world agrees is greatness. And there are films which do something you hadn't seen before, that catch at you and divert you and teach you something you didn't know. A performance, a move, a feel, a sound, a view, a device: it might be small (it may not); perhaps it eats through expectation at an odd angle, in a film you anticipated nothing from. Glenn Anders, giggly, perverse and sweaty in Shanghai. The vast grindingly gorgeous whole-cloth mythology in Pirates III, with the franchise figurines chirruping like ghosts in front of it. Milla Jovovich's breakneck teenage martyrdom in Messenger, and why the hard-bitten French army is captivated by it. In Rawlinson the treacle-black surreal concentrate of the history of British comic writing and performance. Walken cracking up in Communion, jerkily hallucinating a silly-weird story of alien abduction that his family prefers to the notion of his being badly mad (as in fact do we). The anti-noir daylight ambience of modern evil in Goodbye, and the innocent, incorruptible drift of Elliott Gould's honesty, his near-passive soft-shoe refusal. Sometimes other people get it (Police Story; Maborosi); sometimes everyone does (Eraserhead; The Thing).
Re: my vote
Date: 2012-08-02 06:22 pm (UTC)What do you mean by "get it" when you say, "Sometimes other people get it (Police Story; Maborosi); sometimes everyone does (Eraserhead; The Thing)"?
I do recommend this one, if you've not seen it (but is more about human dynamics than about alien strangeness):
[Error: unknown template video]
What's the next flick on your queue?
Re: my vote
Date: 2012-08-02 06:30 pm (UTC)My LoveFilm queue is clogged with old Doctor Whos I haven't written up for FT. I have about 25 films recorded on my TiVo ready to watch, but to be honest recording something is generally more a recognition of anxious duty -- I ought to watch this -- than desire. It's deferred homework.
Re: my vote
Date: 2022-08-09 07:24 pm (UTC)