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ELIGIBLE TITLES FOR 1997

VOTE THROUGH SEPTEMBER 30

Please post in this thread if you think anything needs to change about the list of eligible titles.

Link still active, resolution still atrocious, video still all <3.

brundlefly wrote: Thu Sep 26, 2019 12:33 am My all-time favorite one-take video is The Geraldine Fibbers' "California Tuffy," which I think was directed by Carla Bozulich. The quality of that version on YouTube is terrible, which is a shame -- though not inappropriate for something that captures the whirligig energy of a bunch of talented kids killing time and making art in a basement with a handful of puppets, a box of matches, and some furniture dollies. It's defiant, insistent fun, and there's something in watching Nels Cline guitar-sync a solo on an instrument with a broken neck that perfectly duct-tapes destruction and creation together.

Missing "Spice World" (Bob Spiers)

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Need to hear a spirited defense for that one

Haneke'll surely be number 1 and 2 this year, if we can get Das Schloss (my number 1!) on the list. I'll also likely vote for Bellocchio's Il principe di Homburg, Carax's short "sans titre", Kurosawa's Fukushu - Unmei no Homonsha [Revenge - A Visit from Fate], Morita's Shitsurakuen [Paradise Lost], and Szasz's Witman fiúk [The Witman Boys], if those can be added and they hold up upon re-viewing. Thanks, as always.

All added. Is it a coincidence that Assayas also released a "Sans titre" this year?

domino harvey wrote: Sat Aug 02, 2025 4:21 pm Need to hear a spirited defense for that one

Well, let's wait and see if it cracks the top ten first


Swo, you're also missing "Maslin Beach", Australian film by Wayne Groom. Although it would be harder to defend this than the Spice Girls movie....

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Swo, also missing are Clockwatchers by Jill Sprecher.

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domino harvey wrote: Sat Aug 02, 2025 4:21 pm Need to hear a spirited defense for that one

I would need some mind altering substance to watch it.

Can you please add Le bossu?

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Looks like Mr Jealousy is missing as well

I have that as 1998 because it only had an unceremonious festival screening in 1997

Could you add Lucky Three: An Elliott Smith Portrait? There’s a quietude present here which feels like just the right way to end the day and reflect.

Rostov-Luanda
I really adored the use of a life of peculiar people mixed with a culture in an uneasy state of flux. There’s this joy filtered through a palpable exhaustion that is easy to appreciate.

The Blackout
The first half is a fairly direct continuation of Dangerous Game’s themes and aesthetic choices, but with this terrifying emptiness replacing that film’s cruelty. You want Modine to get better and the second half switches gears to show the pain of accomplishing that. Weirdly one of Ferrara’s least toxic feeling films despite the text highlighting so much rot.

Please add Masahiro Shinoda's Moonlight Serenade, Nils Malmros' Barbara, Roland Suso Richter's 14 Days to Life and John Singleton's Rosewood.

Hate to pillor you swo, but here’s a few more titles I’d appreciate you adding.

Just the way Petrov establishes movement in his Mermaid is one of the most exciting things ever. His figures are actually rather Stalinesque, but that fits with the sandy motion suggesting reality almost pushing through to establish scenario. Speaking of, the scenario here is rather touching as it bridges the feelings of two men separated by age.

Miguel Sabido directed an obscure little satire called Saint Lucifer which I think about regularly. It tackles all the cultural realities of Mexico: rural and urban, European and indigenous; Catholic and pagan so on and so forth teasing reality as fundamentally absurd with anyone trying to make sense of it being the insane one.

Ken Burns’ documentary of Thomas Jefferson is one of his first great films. It in depth tries to untie the knot of a thorny man. It still maintains some of the air of American Hagiography that Burns had in his early years due to avoiding tougher topics, but cracks show suggesting Jefferson as something of a beloved failure rather than a clear example of a great president.

Rossi’s The Truce based on the wartime experiences of Primo Levi is a film I find hard to talk about or analyze. I limit myself to saying it feels like it is revealing an otherwise I revealed side to the holocaust in film.

Bent shows this as a great year for holocaust in film. The story is, in short, kind of a gay Becket play. Below are some words I wrote during my first impression.

Without question the best english language film of the holocaust; the impressive nature of this film really stands on its own without words. I'll venture to say some small thing though as the film shows the importance of speech and this is my written monument. To digress for a moment to clarify what I mean in Semitic languages the word to read and to recite, a rough translation I admit, are identical. You'll probably be most familiar with this through the Quran which can be translated out as the calling or the reading. This is something rather important to Bent as its primary way of fighting, showing free will as Horst calls it, is through reciting actions and causing them to be reality. They speak the word and so the word occurs.

The film is not shy about its antecedents, but given the Beckett format of the script I imagine that's true of the play as well. Under any circumstance this seems a tough tale to tackle, but by utilizing '70s British experimentalism, particularly from Greenaway and Jarman though arguably Fosse is just as big a component, to make literal the psychology of the characters it leaves us so purely in the emotional realm that everything rings true. There is more or less five parts to the film. First is The Night of Long Knives, followed by the escape, the cart, and ending for over half the film the camps plus epilogue.

The night has to quickly showcase the decadence, beauty, and absurdity of that moment. Everything is beautiful and black with a porno going on in the background. This stage is largely set is a destroyed castle with the accompanying metaphor being clear as the danger around the corned. The next two stages are much more literal and traditionally built as Max has to mix an animal instinct for survival with with the coming out of his fantasy to confront the real world. The reason I'm separating the escape from the cart is for its emotional status more than its form. The escape offers a type of hope though one that the film will discuss as rancid. McKellen in his cameo is genius in summarizing this idea as he foppishly defends the virtue of the upper class closet and ignorantly revels in his own safety. This is a man you don't want to become. Equally good, so much so that I though it was Hugo Weaving at first, is Mick Jagger doing well in summarizing the insanity that society wants. His speech on dumb queers seems to talking to modern England more than any other moment of the film. Wryly and with a tired humour the film asks if this is what you really want?

The cart kills that hope and is probably the darkest part of the film. It's realistically set and yet comes across as the most minimalist part of the film. The boogeymen want you, Max, to become an animal. Yet instead this loss of the old identity allows to flourish a new and better one. It is gross to use this horror as a self improvement story, but that's not what it's really about so that it does present a more secure identity seems to evade the problem though this is the one area I could see a legitimate criticism of even if I think it works.

The Beckett finale is where Max is made into a person and the humour returns. The set, a giant quarry where Nazis scan in the background, leaves us with nothing but words. Words are comforts, words are action, words are communication. The sex scenes here are the deepest and most emotionally fruitful I can recall and they're all words, but also not because those words are the point which allows for a true nakedness. A lesser or at least less confident film would think showing is better then telling, but presenting action as action would undermine the theme that Wiemar was a lie as the visual of sex wouldn't allow the explicit thought processing we get here. Horst's hesitancy in the second sex scene is frightening and real and is the moment that I, tear stained, wanted him to love all the while knowing that there were no happy endings for gays in the '40s. The hope now is no longer about the future, but of the present. What intimacy in the void can be achieved this moment allows for real hope.

All added, thanks!

Color me surprised by Mean Guns. I’ve avoided Pyun up to this point because I was under the impression he was some stiff incompetent like an action Joe D’Amato. Mean Guns is the total opposite of that utilizing every technique possible within its limited budget. It actually reminded me of Cube with its Nu Metal aesthetic and quick cuts. It’s a real satisfying case of providing a lot of entertainment with limited resources.

My excitement lead me to Pyun’s other Ice-T cameoed feature which I hope to add to the master list Crazy Six. Somehow this sibling film is even better than Mean Guns. It’s a more expansive story with the experimental tension coming across more in the vein of HK bromances ala Ringo Lam or especially John Woo though in its bizarre fashion Pyun’s film worked better for me. It’s honesty incredible now to me that Pyun isn’t treated as a more major player, but I suspect that has to do with the absolute sincerity on display. This is intensely melodramatic with the human largely being corny character stuff while the narrative drama is handled like a sacred object. In English this must be too much for some. Me though, I love every moment of pain from Rob Lowe and feel for the exhausted rummage of the female lead. Crazy Six is a film that’s outmatched ambitious more than compensates for its limited budget.

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Can you add Mojo (Jez Butterworth) and my second favorite film by Ann Hui, Eighteen Springs?

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Lowry_Sam wrote:Can you add Mojo (Jez Butterworth) and my second favorite film by Ann Hui, Eighteen Springs?

What’s your first?