btw, I had no clue criterion released taste of cherry. That's, uh, awesome, actually, gonna have to rebuy a copy. .. Anyway, been thinking about it a bit more and here are some more films I've watched pretty recently. This doesn't even scratch the surface, I was in the hospital a few weeks ago, I have been bed-ridden for a whole, too, so I've pretty much just sat around/layed around and watched movie after movie after movie. Kinda nice, but I'm also pretty damn burnt out. I own 5,236 films last time I counted and am getting to the point where I think I've seen JUST ABOUT everything I've ever wanted to see. Good thing is now I'm getting into tv shows again (LOOK AROUND YOU, MONKEY DUST, GARTH MAGHERI'S DARKPLACES, NATHAN BARLEY, and some other cool stuff). To be honest, the coolest thing I've seen recently is MONTY PYTHON: TERRY GILLIAM'S PERSONAL BEST, which is about 70 minutes of all of Gilliam's animations from MONTY PYTHON'S FLYING CIRCUS, edited together as one big "movie". This thing is absolutely fucking amazing... Anyway, here is my top 10 films ever, I feel it is important to list them every now and then, since I try to list them every 300-400 films I've watched, to see if I have any new favorites...
1. taxi driver
2. eureka (2000)
3. el topo
4. hana bi
5. possession
6. pastoral: to die in the country
7. pierrot le fou
8. branded to kill
9. maniac
10. bad liuetenant (original. Honourable mention/# 11: love is colder than death, honourable mention # 2/# 12: BLOW OUT).. whee!... Also, I'd like to mention that many films I've watched recently are films I've seen before, like FREDDY GOT FINGERED (watch # 300), PASTORAL (again. SHUIJI TERAYAMA is my favorite director ever, possibly, certainly up there with Godard and Kitano and Jost, and is my biggest
influence as a "director"), BLOW UP (and other Antonioni films), BRINGINGO UT THE DEAD, and so on. Me and different people are constantly rewatching films, I've especially been rewatching films with my girlfriend (we watched THE KILLER and HARD BOILED) recemtly. It feels a bit redundant to re-mention films over and over and over again, it's annoying to read, for example, someone mentioning, oh, how bad DOGMA is for the 50th time. I like to focus on the new.
But one thing we
have been doing -- and this is probably a great service to lots of people here -- is watching all hte Giuseppe Andrews movies. Since he has retired from filmmaking, with probably the greatest legacy of films known to man (33 AMAZING -- and very, very DIFFERENT -- films in a decade. Only Godard and Fassbinder come close), and since she isn't that familiar with his stuff, we've been watching everything he's ever done. Some of these films I've seen 10 times or so. A few, that I didn't like as much (see JACUZZI ROOMS and the Lloyd Kuafman-produced LONG ROW TO HOE, both which are kinda bad), I only watched once before. So, I fihnally rewatched ALL of them recently and want to finally do a rating for all of his films, now...
GIUSEPPE ANDREWS FILMOGRAPHY/RATINGS:
1999:
1. Touch Me in the Morning - 10/10
2002:
2. In Our Garden - 9/10
2003:
3. Trailer Town - 6/10
4. Jacuzzi Rooms - 2/10
5. Dad's Chicken - 8/10
6. Air Conditioning - 4/10
7. Wiggly - 9/10
8. Laundry Room - 5/10
9. Ants - 8/10
10. Monkey - 4/10
2004:
11. Tater Tots - 5/10
12. Dribble - 8/10
13. Date Movie - 8/10
14. Who Flung Poo? - 8/10
15. Actor - 10/10
16. Babysitter - 4/10
17. Grandpa - 7/10
2005:
18. Garbanzo Gas - 10/10
19. Okie Dokie - 6/10
20. 5th Wheel - 6/10
21. Gwank - 6/10
2006:
22. Period Piece - 8/10
23. Doiley's Summer of Freak Occurences - 7/10
24. Long Row to How - 3/10
25. Cross Breeze - 5/10
2007:
26. Golden Embers - 6/10
27. Holiday Weekend - 4/10
28. Everlasting Pine - 9/10
29. Cat Piss - 6/10
2008:
30. Oroz - 7/10
31. Schoof - 7/10
32. Airplane Pillows - 7/10
2009:
33. Check Out - 10/10
34. Esoterica - 10/10
2010:
35. The Check Out - 7/10
WHOO! So many great films. My favorite thing he did is probably DOLLY BALLS, his 95 page book which is the most surreal, vulgar, and downright hilarious thing I've ever read...
Anyway, recent film watches..
blood work - 5/10
Clint Eastwood looks like he was covered out of a tree. His mole distracted me. Still, I loved the pacing of this one -- Eastwood mgiht be the only director who doesn't seem particularly swayed by any recent MTV edits or colors or framing, and seems to still enjoy making films in a style that represents the golden age of cinema (70's/80's). Still it's a fairly straightforward film, with very few surprises. What's here is good -- but it's just that, good. Not great. And while the guy from DUMB AND DUMBER and SQUID AND THE WHALE is a good actor, his role in here is hilariously bad. The last 30 minutes is horrible.
CYRUS - 3/10
Downright annoying and bad. Starts out.. okay... but it just leads to nowhere, and does nothing. Is downright stupid and might be one of the most annoying films ever, all the characters are morons. This isn't dramatic, isn't comedic, and is only barely over an hour long but is boring. Also, the directing is downright terrible; zooms into absolutely nothing (why zoom if you're not actually zooming into anything? Fulci got a LOT of shit for zooming all the time, but his zooms rocked... so did Altman's and Lumet's... zooming can be artful and brilliant, the zooms here have no real point except to give you a migraine). The camera is so fucking shakey. This should be a film every young director watches -- how NOT to direct a film.
tape - 6/10
Funny evolghost mentioned LINKLETTER (well, he mentioned DAZED AND CONFUSED, but yeah), I think he is one of the moist consistently brilliant directors of our time. SLACKER (which I love), WAKING LIFE (which I love), and then some other films like BEFORE SUNSET, BEFORE SUNRISE, SCANNER DARKLY, DAZED, and this film... films I'm not as fond of, but are certainly very interested films. This film takes place in one room, with 3 people. HARD CANDY is mainly 2 people in a house. ZERO is one guy in a basement. I haven't seen it yet, but isn't BURIAL or whatever, just one guy in a coffin? I am going to check that out today. But, uh, yeah, for a pretty mainstream fikm, it's pretty remarkable.. Uma and Ethan and soem other guy, all releasing their inner actor, standing around in a room for 90 minutes. And it works for the msot part. It's still not something I'd ever want to watch again. Linklater gets great performances out of his actors -- and obviously, this is a film that lives and dies by its actors strengths -- but it all ends up being one big ball of nothing by the end. But, hey, it kept me compelled for 90 fucking minutes, of mainly 2 guys sitting at a table in a room. There was no violence, no voiceovers, no cutaways, nothing besides a couple guys sitting. So, for it being a pretty damn good film, that's quite remarkable.
8:17 PM DARLING STREET - 8/10
Cool film. Read this synopsis:
A former journalist, three times divorced, Gerard is now a member of Alcoholics Anonymous who lives in a small apartment on Darling Street. By a combination of circumstances, he isn't home when his building explodes one evening, causing the death of six people. Moved by the fact that he has escaped death, Gerard finds his old journalistic instincts returning and decides to research his dead neighbors' past to understand what occured, but also to give meaning to this terrible event.
Does that sound interesting to you? Well, it is. It's a bit of a slow burn, and pretty depressing. It's also known as 20h17 Rue Darling.
Finally, I can't post more than 4 pcitures, so this is pcitureless, but I watched LOVE LIZA... 8/10... PHILLIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN is one of the best actors ever, isn't he? He
made Happiness (9/10 btw), in my opinion, despite being only one character. Let's not forget his creepy and disconnected, but awesome, performance in BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU'RE DEAD (also with Ethan Hawke, who I've been really impressed with in the last few movies I've seen him in -- another 9/10 film imo, Lumet is one of the best directors ever). This is another very fucking depressing film, and it's about a guy whose wife kills herself so he starts huffing gasoline. There are so many amazing shots in the film. The film ends up actually being really fucking weird, too, by the end (there's a scene where's he's mostly naked and very zombie-like, walking down a highway as hundreds of cars pass him by... amazing/creepy.. another scene where he walks away from a burning-down house.. just awesome).
All in all, those two films are two of the most depressing films i've ever seen, as was PROZAC NATION. I'd say the top 3 most depressing films ever are: FROWNLAND, NIGHT FLOWERS, and probably NATURAL ENEMIES. If anyone has any other reccomendations for films so damn depressing it makes
you want to die, lemme know.
And.. that's it.