Raxivace's 2019 List of Movies or: (Goodbye to Neo-General Chat 3D)

Lord_Lyndon
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Re: Raxivace's 2019 List of Movies or: (Goodbye to Neo-General Chat 3D)

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Raxivace wrote:Lyndon probably has me beat in total movies watched this year though.
I saw 235 films and anime series this year. Pretty much the same as last year.
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Hmm, if we count anime series and other TV shows, I would be up to... around 233, so just barely under you.

I have to catch up and obtain victory!!!
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Lord_Lyndon wrote: Avengers: Endgame (2019; Anthony Russo, Joe Russo) 8/10
The Place Beyond the Pines (2012; Derek Cianfrance) 7/10
The Equalizer (2014; Antoine Fuqua) 7/10
Mother! (2017; Darren Aronofsky) 8/10
Alien: Covenant (2017; Ridley Scott) 7/10
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011; Rob Marshall) 6/10
Serenity (2019; Steven Knight) 7/10
Of this bunch I've seen these. Mother! was my favorite among them.

What did you make of Serenity? I found it to be really odd.
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Raxivace wrote:What did you make of Serenity? I found it to be really odd.
Me too. The whole twist/reveal was so bizarre, it's probably one of the most bizarre things in the history of film. It caught me totally off-guard. Never would have expected it. I kind of liked the film overall, if only because it was so different than what usually comes out these days.
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Re: Raxivace's 2019 List of Movies or: (Goodbye to Neo-General Chat 3D)

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I saw some new films:

Jackie (2016; Pablo Larraín) 7/10
Begin Again (2013; John Carney) 8/10
Dear Zindagi (2016; Gauri Shinde) 8/10
Bajirao Mastani (2015; Sanjay Leela Bhansali) 7/10
Chennai Express (2013; Rohit Shetty) 8/10
Alexander (2004; Oliver Stone) 8/10
The Paperboy (2012; Lee Daniels) 6/10
Pushing Tin (1999; Mike Newell) 6/10
Original Sin (2001; Michael Cristofer) 6/10
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004; Kerry Conran) 6/10

Just a couple of points:
1) Four of those were Angelina Jolie films. I've now seen 25 of her films. Not bad at all.
2) Begin Again was magical. I love films like these. It's basically a film about two brokenhearted and lonely people (played by wonderful Keira Knightley and legendary Mark Ruffalo) who come together and heal through artistic/creative process (in this film it is about music; Mark is a music executive/producer and Keira is a singer-songwriter). The film is very reminiscent of Wong Kar-wai films at times (who is my favourite director of all time) with its moody visuals and low-key romance (it never really blossoms between these two; though they share some magical moments together). It was certainly the highlight of this year for me. Better late than never.
Couple of beautiful songs from the film sung by Keira:

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Sky Captain is the only one of that bunch I've seen. I remember thinking it was a little corny when I was young, though I'm not sure how I'd feel about it 15 years later.
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I'm a fan of Pushing Tin; been years since I've seen it though.
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Re: Raxivace's 2019 List of Movies or: (Goodbye to Neo-General Chat 3D)

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I decided to check out some really acclaimed films:

The Irishman (2019; Martin Scorsese)
Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (2019; Quentin Tarantino)
Joker (2019; Todd Phillips)
The Social Network (2010; David Fincher)

They were okay. Just okay. I think I liked Joker the most.
Anyway... I'll probably start my own thread next year. I watched 250 films/anime series this year. This is how I end this year.
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Haven't seen Joker yet but I really liked the other three. With Social Network in particular I'm not sure a better film has ever been made about the internet, or the kind of people that have made the modern internet what it is anyways.

Looking forward to your thread next year.
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Re: Raxivace's 2019 List of Movies or: (Goodbye to Neo-General Chat 3D)

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Sneaking in one last post before the decade is done.

201. Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker (2019, Dir. J.J. Abrams) - After how bold Rian Johnson's entry was, I was disappointed to hear Abrams was returning to Star Wars after how kind of blah I found The Force Awakens. Well with Rise of Skywalker he found a new level of blahness I didn't even find possible. Most everything here just doesn't work well- the core idea behind the story is blah (Seriously, why on Earth when you bring back Palpatine instead of just doing the natural thing of Rey vs. Kylo?), the pacing is really really rushed, too many locations, visually bland etc. Might honestly be Abrams' worst film- even The Force Awakens had a baseline competence that I'm not sure is even present here.

---------------------

Also I watched some Netflix series.

Merry Happy Whatever (2019) - A sitcom miniseries about the whacky family during the holidays, and the various hijinks the younger family members into while trying to tiptoe around their conservative dad. It's kind of funny and was enjoyable enough as a light thing to watch with your parents, but that's about it.

Fate/Apocrypha (2017) - Netflix produced a Fate anime, and it's…alright. It has the problem that most of these Fate spinoffs do in that its very far off from what made the original game interesting- here the focus is almost entirely on action (To the point I would say that it feels like maybe 20 episodes worth of screentime in this 25 episode show feels like its spent on action of some kind).

I suppose that makes sense for a show who's premise is on two teams of 14 engaging each other in war (Even if like five members on one of the sides are disposed of almost immediately), and its enjoyable enough (With the battles in Episode 22 probably being the highlight of the show), though I feel stuff like the original FSN VN had a much more reasonable balance between battles and things like character development and interaction and needlessly elongated cooking scenes.

In Apocrypha, with so many characters it really does make the whole cast feel a bit bloated. Like by the end of the show I wasn't sure why Shakespeare was even here since he doesn't do anything until he trolls Jeanne d'Arc for a while in the very very end of the show and then just spends the last episode chilling in his bedroom until he dies. Also, the show missed an opportunity to have Shakespeare's teammate Achilles dunk on the Bard for his portrayal in Troilus & Cressida.

Beyond that though, I think the show's plot might presume a little too much familiarity with other Fate material despite seeming like a standalone project. Like I'm not sure how they expected people to understand what the main villain is talking about when in the final episodes he starts going on about “Heaven's Feel" and “Third Magic" otherwise.

The Witcher (2019) - Yeah this ended up being way better than I was expecting. This adapts the Witcher books rather than the video games, and while there are clearly problems (The CGI in particular leaves a lot to be desired) this mostly actually works.

We basically have three timelines here that eventually converge- Yennefer as a child growing up into sorcery, Geralt having Witcher adventures (Easily the strongest stuff here, Henry Cavill is a great Geralt and the chemistry he has with the guy who plays Jaskier/Dandelion is quite good. This material also seems to largely be adapted from the one book in the series I've read, The Last Wish.), and Ciri as a child escaping from Nilfgaard soldiers that are chasing her while she looks for Geralt.

There's at least a good faith effort too in the way these stories are cut together, to make thematic parallels and connections. The way all three segments in episode 2 focus on elves in some fashion come to mind, or the way both plots in episode 3 feature Foltest in some way and focus on girls transforming.

Unfortunately, this also leads to the other biggest problem, in that while the thematic juxtaposition is good, it seems a lot of people don't even get at first that all three segments of the story take place decades apart from each other. It really does seem like the show expects you to have some familiarity with the Witcher franchise. Hell at no point during any of the eight hours of this program do they even explain what a Witcher actually is, beyond vagueness about mutations and Geralt seeming to have some form of Jedi powers.

Still, despite some issues its fun and pretty watchable, and I'm definitely onboard for more. Hopefully they eventually adapt the video games too, by which of course I mean I hope they eventually adapt Soul Calibur 6. The world needs to see Geralt go to actual Europe to fight samurai, dammit!
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Re: Raxivace's 2019 List of Movies or: (Goodbye to Neo-General Chat 3D)

Post by Eva Yojimbo »

Raxivace wrote:
Eva Yojimbo wrote:I'm typically hit-and-miss with Kiarostami but this sounds interesting; perhaps similar to Hou's Cafe Lumiere, which he also made in Japan as a tribute to Ozu. I'll definitely make Hell or High Water a priority.
I haven't seen Cafe Lumiere but I remember reading some review on IMDb that derisively compared Anno of all people to the film which has kind of stuck in my memory.

It seems like there's always someone trying to take Anno down, though I think that's the first time I saw someone trying to do so from an arthouse POV and not some enraged Tomino fanboy that's mad Eva is more well-known than Space Runaway Ideon or something.
Wow, I can't imagine how/why someone would make a comparison between Anno and Cafe Lumiere; that's like, apples and rhinos! Of course, I can imagine why someone who loved a film like Cafe Lumiere could hate Anno. Cafe Lumiere is the epitome of those films where absolutely nothing superficially happens; it's just Hou observing very quiet, normal, slice-of-life stuff from a distance. It's subtly visually playful in that way that all Hou is, but it's often in the service of people just sitting and eating, or talking about their day, or whatever. Of course there's this very subtle commentary about the generation gap, as there always was in Ozu, but Hou makes Ozu looks like Sirk by comparison.
Raxivace wrote:It's hard to think of a real solid example that works in quite the way Scream does. Maybe Haxan?

I guess there's something like Targets too where Boris Karloff is basically playing himself, but that's not really quite "meta" in the way Scream is.
Haven't seen either of these, but Haxan has been on my list forever, long before Criterion finally got a hold of it.
Raxivace wrote:
To me, I've always thought of TV as being closer to novels and feature films being closer to lyric poetry; the idea being that the compressed time in features put more pressure on directors to do more with form and style to supplement whatever lack of time they have to do longer developmental arcs for characters and plot. In a sense, I won't be terribly sad if we see story-centric ("mainstream," I guess) filmmaking decline and allowing those things to move to TV, as long as the artier forms of filmmaking survive I'll be satisfied as I think that's really where films is at its best (and that's true even in what many would consider story-centric films like noirs and westerns).
I think the best noirs and westerns had strong styles/form too, though I think part of what was good in style in those films was how they would use visuals to suggest story information (Beyond general visual pleasures of venetian blind shadows or landscape shots of Monument Valley and so on that had helped create a great tone in a lot of the best of those movies).

Here's my worst nightmare scenario for films today: Take a movie like The Searchers. That movie never outright tells you what Ethan was doing in the Civil War, or that he had an affair of some sort with Debbie's mother, but there's enough there to suggest there's a lot we don't see (And well the latter of which is explicitly mentioned in Ford's script). Nowadays I wonder if instead of suggesting things about Ethan through cinematic style, gestures in actor's performances etc., we would get The Searchers 1 about Ethan's war misadventures and political assassinations or whatever the fuck misgivings he was up to, The Searchers 2 where Ethan has steamy love affair, and then The Searchers 3 Part 1 about Ethan coming home, The Searchers 3 Part 2 about the actual search for Debbie, and then The Searchers 4: The Scar Backstory Movie that gives backstory about Scar and fails at the boxoffice for being a prequel.

Or they could be seasons of a TV series, but at a certain point I have to wonder what expanding and lengthening a story really adds, especially since I think its likely to come at the expense of "putting pressure on directors to supplement with form and style", and that we just end up with a lot of pointless filler as a result that's much less interesting as an explicitly told story.

None of this is to say I wouldn't even enjoy these hypothetical versions of The Searchers, but I fear they would just end up as less dense, worse versions of Ford's classic.

"Prestige" TV at its worst gives you Lost type disasters where there are many pointless detours over 100+ episodes, and I wake up with a cold sweat in the night at the thought of my favorite films being subjected to that hellish format.

Of course the miniseries format a la Evangelion or Berlin Alexanderplatz are a different beast, and I think preferable usually to multiseason shows.
I was including films/westerns in that list of the "potentially arty films" I hope survives, though I realize that wasn't clear from how I worded that. Basically I was saying most would consider them "story-centric" type films, but I think their style is why the best examples have survived so if story-centric films are to survive I hope they're like noirs/westerns and stylized as well. I also agree about the visuals being used to relate story information, which I would include in that whole visual language-as-poetry metaphor.

Yeah, I get what you're saying about that fear, but I think as long as features are being made, directors/writers will be confronted with the question of how to include more content and say things beyond what the time constraints would normally allow. If you're hoping to create any kind of depth with film there has to be that level of suggestion, even if it's how Hitch used to do with his doubling of events/characters to suggest a lot of stuff (or even how much of Jeff's past is related in that opening shot of Rear Window). I'd forgotten how much even directors like The Coens do this; I don't know why it took me so long to realize that in No Country the scene where Chigurh asks the kids for their shirt is paralleled by Llewelyn doing the same thing much earlier. But there's also tons of films that do none of this, that are just trying to tell "what you see is what you get" stories, and THAT, I think, is better suited to a longer format like TV where where you have more runtime and don't have to rely on suggestion, where "text" can say as much as "text+subtext" merely because of time.

Of course, the proliferation of filler is the downside to having more time. More space doesn't mean that more meaningful content is added. This has generally been the reason I haven't watched as much TV, because in the end you often spend 10x more time than you would with films but don't get anywhere close to 10x the substance. Of course, TV works because most people just care about the moment-to-moment drama and as along as TV's delivering that and people are entertained/distracted, the rest doesn't matter. Perhaps one reason stuff like NGE and Dekalog is so remarkable is because of how dense they are given their long runtime. To have that combination of length and density of content/substance is extremely rare.
Raxivace wrote:
Yeah, I wouldn't doubt that Nadia is stronger on the character side (it's Anno, afterall, and I don't think character has ever been Miyazaki's strength), but that's not really why I loved Laputa.
I'd say biggest strength of Laputa is in the animation and art style, which is consistently the high point in Miyazaki's work.
Yes, but I also think it's the world-building he does with that animation/art style. It's not the expansive world-building that we get in, say, most RPGs, but I love how he seems to create these bizarre little pocket universes out of very little, even the mundane at times.
Raxivace wrote:
Conversely, this scared the living bejeesus out of me as a child. Took me a long time to get around to watching it again. I still think it's amazingly effective even after horror films got far more explicit and gruesome. You also really need to get around to seeing Killer Joe from Friedkin!
Have you seen Sorceror? That's another one from Friedkin I hear is good.
I have not. Looking it up it seems quite similar to The Wages of Fear, which I thought was a near-masterpiece.
Raxivace wrote:
Gran Torino is the best example of how laughably bad his actors can be.
I might have to rewatch this because Gran Torino is one where I don't actually remember the acting being bad. I haven't seen that since I was in high school though and that was over a hundred years ago at this point.
Man, I cringe every time I hear that film on TV. My mom loves it so it's on quite a bit and I often hear it when I come over. *shudders*
Raxivace wrote:BTW Jimbo, do you have any thoughts on "block-booking" of all things coming back to life recently here in the States?
I had not heard about this coming back, and TBH the only thing I know about it what I vaguely remember reading in some history of film textbook (Bordwell's?). What do you think?
Raxivace wrote:189. Underworld (1927, Dir. Josef von Sternberg & Arthur Rosson)
Not my favorite of his silents, but I still thought it good and, like you, better than most of his Dietrich collabs.
Raxivace wrote:190. Scarlet Street (1945, Dir. Fritz Lang) -
Solid noir-period Lang. Wish I remembered more but many of those films have ran together a bit in my head.
Raxivace wrote:192. King Lear (1987, Dir. Jean-Luc Godard)
I liked this when I saw it, but I don't remember as much now compared to almost all the other 80s Godard's I saw. Here's what I wrote on IMDb:
King Lear - Jean-Luc Godard - 7/10
Jean-Luc Godard, Burgess Meredith, Molly Ringwald, Woody Allen, Norman Mailer, and William Shakespeare
are names that should never appear in the same sentence, much less the same film. Yet here they are, and by
a not insignificant stroke of genius, it works.

More so than in any of his other 80s films, Godard's King Lear eschews narrative, returning to his 70s
obsessions with images and language. However, it works here primarily because Godard's ability to
deconstruct, to burrow into details, is given the framework via its literary namesake. So when Godard sets
about deconstructing all of the shades of nuanced meaning of “nothing" or “no thing," it makes sense both
intellectually and emotionally. Much like Wallace Stevens wrote NOTES Towards a Supreme Fiction (rather than
a Supreme Fiction), Godard structures the film as a “Study" and “Approach" to King Lear, rather than a filmic
adaptation.

Rather than stop-start music, King Lear finds Godard experimenting with overlapping dialogue and sounds, like
a fragmented fugue, or perhaps more like shattered variations on the theme of King Lear. Along with the
motivic cry of seagulls—sometimes piercingly aggressive, sometimes distantly haunting—and lapping waves
(at the end accompanied by an excerpt from Virginia Woolf's novel, The Waves—one of the film's most
beautiful scenes), Godard creates a truly layered and 3-dimensional soundscape that's arguably as important
as his imagery.

Fewer Godard films have provoked more polarized reactions. Most critics upon its release considered it trash,
truly Godard imploding and scraping the bottom of the barrel, and perhaps his ridiculous appearance as
“Professor Pluggy," his hair a dreadlocked mess of cables, supported that; yet Richard Brody named it the
greatest film of all time, and Jonathan Rosenbaum has also called it one of Godard's masterpieces. Allow me
to tread a middle-ground: King Lear is middling Godard, neither among his worst or best. Godard's best all
have something in common: a kaleidoscopic effect created by their unique combinations of visual beauty,
intellectual density, and tonal complexity. Lear gets the intellectual density, but lags in the visual and tonal
departments, though they do possess both sporadically (the ending is tonally rich; the scene in the editing
room is visually beautiful). It is, however, one of Godard's most distinct films of the 80s that finds him, yet
again, refusing to tread water and fall into easy patterns and modes.
Raxivace wrote:Big thanks to Jimbo for hooking me up a with a copy of this. I flatout could not find a copy of this online myself- even standard piracy does not assure the myth of availability in the digital age.
No problem. :)
Raxivace wrote:198. Die Nibelungen: Kriemheld's Revenge (1924, Dir. Fritz Lang)
I could agree it wasn't quite as strong as the first but I still the both together constituted a masterpiece and probably Lang's best silents outside Metropolis. I remember finding the "olympics" section kinda boring, but the fact that I even remember it probably says how memorable these films were! I do remember liking the whole conflagration bit at the end. I remember wondering at the time if it could've been an influence on Gone With the Wind or Kurosawa.
Raxivace wrote:200. My Neighbor Totoro (1988, Dir. Hayao Miyazaki) - Why is Totoro even in this movie? Like he's barely in it as it is, and his design is really unsettling. With that creepy, big toothed smile of his and those large claws half the time I wondered if he was going to kill one of those kids. Same with the cat bus thing. It's a bus made out of hair, that's disgusting and a probably a health code violation.

Anyways despite usual technical brilliance from Ghibli, this fell pretty flat for me. It just seems a little too saccharine for my tastes.
Strange you'd call this saccharine of all things. I came away thinking it probably one of the least-saccharine children films I'd ever seen. Again, I'd say the wonder/magic of that film is just the subtle world-building. That whole scene of Totoro and the girl at the bus station... just them standing there, nothing else happening, was so good to me. What Miyazaki does in those moments of quiet and stillness is something I've only seen a handful of filmmakers be able to do, including Ghibli-cohort Takahata (but notably directors like Ozu and Hou). Ebert pretty much nailed it in his Great Movies review of it: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/grea ... otoro-1993
Raxivace wrote:The Kingdom II (1997) -
I wonder how much I'd agree with you if I rewatched The Kingdom today. Back when I saw it I just remember thinking how original it was and enjoying every weird, scary, goofy, funny, minute of it. Whether or not it ever managed to add up to something more (or even less) than the sum of its parts I couldn't say. It probably lacked the depth of Lynch's visionary approach to similar subjects, but that's a pretty lofty standard as it is.
Raxivace wrote:The Witcher (2019) -
This was encouraging to read! Whenever I (eventually!) get back to film/TV this is certainly high on the list!
"As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being." -- Carl Jung
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Re: Raxivace's 2019 List of Movies or: (Goodbye to Neo-General Chat 3D)

Post by Eva Yojimbo »

Lord_Lyndon wrote:Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust (2000)
I liked this better than the original but I think I'm in the minority. I think what that review mentioned is precisely why I preferred it; these types of films are inherently ridiculous anyway, and one that leans into that ridiculousness imaginatively is far better, IMO, than one that tries to create some coherent, consistent world out of it. I also thought that, just tonally, this film was much more interesting and nailed the "vibe" of what I think this genre should be going for.
Lord_Lyndon wrote:Some Like It Hot (1959)
Very good comedy from Wilder. I liked it for its outrageous plot. Jack Lemmon was fantastic.

The Apartment (1960)
Part of it is a satire of corporate life, part of it is a love story. It is absolutely magnificent. Its screenplay is one of the best ever. Definitely one of the best films I've ever seen.

The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)
This silent is considered to be one of the best films of all time. I couldn't agree more after seeing it for the first time. Dreyer's direction was exceptional, Falconetti's performance was unforgettable.

Ivan the Terrible, Part I (1944)
Ivan the Terrible, Part II (1958)
Probably Eisenstein's most famous films after Potemkin. I liked them. He didn't go for realistic approach with them; they are rather operatic. I really liked how he played with light and shadow in them.

Man with a Movie Camera (1929)
Excellent experimental film by Dziga Vertov. Not really much to say here.

The Bling Ring (2013)
Sort of a satire of culture obsessed with celebrity. Most people disliked it, but i thought it was rather amusing. Solid film by Coppola.

October Sky (1999)
Nice little movie with Jake Gyllenhaal in a leading role. One of those movies about following your dreams no matter what. There isn't much to it, but it is pretty good for what it is.
Some Like it Hot is an old favorite of mine. Seen it many times and enjoy it every time I come across it. Just so many eminently quotable lines and memorable scenes. The Apartment I only saw once many years ago. I don't remember it as well but remember liking it. Passion of Joan of Arc is one of my handful of films I could easily consider the best ever. I also think it's one of those that either just works for you on a primal, visceral level or it doesn't, because Dreyer's idiosyncratic use of set-design, shot composition/angels, and editing isn't really comparable to anything else before it, and barely after it. It didn't work for Rax, but it definitely did for me. Likely a permanent resident of my top 10. Ivan the Terrible was excellent, but, yes, very operatic. Funny how both Eisenstein and Visconti went from being "realists" early on to being "stylists" as they got older. Man With the Movie Camera is a masterpiece too. Only seen it once, but it's one of those where the sheer cinematic virtuosity leaves a huge impression (similar to I Am Cuba). I think I saw October Sky too, but I don't remember much.
Lord_Lyndon wrote:I saw many movies. I'm just going to put down how much I rated them on imdb instead of commenting on them:

The Red and the White (1967; Miklós Jancsó) 8/10
Aparajito (1956; Satyajit Ray) 7/10
The World of Apu (1959; Satyajit Ray) 8/10
Taboo (1999; Nagisa Ôshima) 8/10
Somewhere (2010; Sofia Coppola) 7/10
Avengers: Endgame (2019; Anthony Russo, Joe Russo) 8/10
Scarecrow (1973; Jerry Schatzberg) 7/10
Once (2007; John Carney) 8/10
King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017; Guy Ritchie) 6/10
The Beach Bum (2019; Harmony Korine) 6/10
The Place Beyond the Pines (2012; Derek Cianfrance) 7/10
The Equalizer (2014; Antoine Fuqua) 7/10
Mother! (2017; Darren Aronofsky) 8/10
Cop (1988; James B. Harris) 8/10
The Duellists (1977; Ridley Scott) 8/10
Alien: Covenant (2017; Ridley Scott) 7/10
Life (2017; Daniel Espinosa) 7/10
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011; Rob Marshall) 6/10
Tomb Raider (2018; Roar Uthaug) 9/10
Serenity (2019; Steven Knight) 7/10
Killing Them Softly (2012; Andrew Dominik) 9/10
I've seen the bolded ones. The Apu Trilogy is a favorite of mine, and though I think you're underrating Aparajito and World of Apu (I'd bump my ratings for both up a point), I'd agree they aren't as great as Pather Panchali (though I think Ray has other films that are as good). Red and the White I remember being very visually impressive even if the story was forgettable. Once was fun, but pretty forgettable in retrospect. Duellists is visually glorious, even on par with Blade Runner for Scott's best film cinematically (maybe best, period).
Lord_Lyndon wrote:I saw some new films:

Jackie (2016; Pablo Larraín) 7/10
Begin Again (2013; John Carney) 10/10
Dear Zindagi (2016; Gauri Shinde) 8/10
Bajirao Mastani (2015; Sanjay Leela Bhansali) 7/10
Chennai Express (2013; Rohit Shetty) 8/10
Alexander (2004; Oliver Stone) 8/10
The Paperboy (2012; Lee Daniels) 6/10
Pushing Tin (1999; Mike Newell) 6/10
Original Sin (2001; Michael Cristofer) 6/10
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004; Kerry Conran) 6/10
I thought Begin Again was mostly just "Once... Again." It was OK, but I don't see how it's a 10/10 by a long shot. Pushing Tin I don't remember much, though I don't think I liked it much when I saw it. Sky Captain is one of those films where the imaginative reach far exceeded the filmmaker's grasp, but I'll take films like that over most fare that's more conventional, safe, and competently (if dully) made.
Lord_Lyndon wrote:I decided to check out some really acclaimed films:

The Irishman (2019; Martin Scorsese)
Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (2019; Quentin Tarantino)
Joker (2019; Todd Phillips)
The Social Network (2010; David Fincher)

They were okay. Just okay. I think I liked Joker the most.
Anyway... I'll probably start my own thread next year. I watched 250 films/anime series this year. This is how I end this year.
I posted my The Social Network review in the other thread. Haven't seen the rest.
"As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being." -- Carl Jung
Lord_Lyndon
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Re: Raxivace's 2019 List of Movies or: (Goodbye to Neo-General Chat 3D)

Post by Lord_Lyndon »

I actually agree with everything you said in response to me, Eva. I even changed my rating of Begin Again (2013) to a more acceptable 8/10. I do have to correct you in one thing though.
Eva Yojimbo wrote:I liked this better than the original but I think I'm in the minority. I think what that review mentioned is precisely why I preferred it; these types of films are inherently ridiculous anyway, and one that leans into that ridiculousness imaginatively is far better, IMO, than one that tries to create some coherent, consistent world out of it. I also thought that, just tonally, this film was much more interesting and nailed the "vibe" of what I think this genre should be going for.
You are not in the minority on this one. Vampire Hunter D (1985) has an imdb rating of 7.2, and it was rated by 12000 users. Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust (2000), on the other hand, has an imdb rating of 7.7, and it was rated by 27000 users. So, as you can see, the second one is much more popular and highly rated.
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Re: Raxivace's 2019 List of Movies or: (Goodbye to Neo-General Chat 3D)

Post by Eva Yojimbo »

^ That's interesting to hear! All my years of watching anime and I've heard plenty about VHD and seen it on plenty of "best of" lists, while it seemed everybody just ignored VHD:BL. I guess the years have been much kinder to the latter than it was when it first came out...
"As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being." -- Carl Jung
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Re: Raxivace's 2019 List of Movies or: (Neo-General Chat III: Dream Warriors)

Post by Faustus5 »

Raxivace wrote: Wed Jan 23, 2019 11:18 am 13. Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (1984, Dir. Hayao Miyazaki) - Yeah I dunno what happened here. It took me an entire week to slog through this nonsense about how it's good for ugly insects to have overrun the world because, uh environmentalism or something. Even as a preachy allegory for the very real concerns about pollution in the modern world, this just seemed like very silly primitivism that makes James Cameron's Avatar merely silly primitivism look nuanced by comparison.
As you may recall, I have an issue with animation in general and anime in particular, and I rarely enjoy this art form enough to finish a movie. But I managed to not only finish this one, I actually liked it! Not "I must have it in my collective" level of like, I'll probably never watch it again, but it was a rare win for the anime genre with me.

Yes, the "primitivism" is irrational, I'll grant you that. I just liked the world building. I felt like I was visiting a self contained world with its own history and rules, and appreciated that even if I was rolling my eyes at the well intentioned but not fully thought out scientific/social ideas.

Cameron had to have been influenced by this flick when he made Avatar. The design choices and even some of the ecological mechanisms are too similar.
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Re: Raxivace's 2019 List of Movies or: (Goodbye to Neo-General Chat 3D)

Post by Raxivace »

Cameron likely was. He's at least into an anime/manga enough to the point he spent years and years getting that live action Battle Angel Alita adaptation made (Even if he didn't ultimately direct it himself), so it wouldn't shock me if he was familiar with work as mainstream as Miyazaki's.
"[Cinema] is a labyrinth with a treacherous resemblance to reality." - Andrew Sarris
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