Top 10 Movies & Albums of the Week (2011)

I'm currently cycling through my Greatest Films list, watching movies at a pretty high rate. Viewing these has been amazing and revelatory, despite having viewed most of these films numerous times before.
With each viewing, I am continually amazed that film as an art form stands up as comparably to music as it does, something I thought I wouldn't be able to say a year or two ago, but has grown increasingly evident for me since then.

Man, I love when we agree on a film, cause you tend to echo my thoughts exactly! Great review of Taxi Driver. The combination of hyper-reality and surreality in that film is damn near unmatched. I love movies that have palpable moods.

Just when I think I have your taste figured out, you go ahead and do something like giving Aliens a 9/10. Seriously dude? :-)

I am glad you're a fan of The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover. That film is so outrageous and I love it. I still haven't figured out a way to see The Travelling Players, but I do like Landscape in the Mist and enjoyed reading your comments on it. Plus, I second callanyvegetable's praise of your Taxi Driver review.

Good to see this going again, although I think Aliens is far too stupid to be considered a great film. A fun one for sure, though. Maybe rewatches will knock it down a few, like you rightfully did with Jigoku.

Onwards--

I think the Angelopolous film to check is The Weeping Meadow, some of the most affecting images I've ever encountered. Not got a chance to check out too many paintings lately? Here are a few painters you should like for the sole reason that I do: Lucien Freud, Jacques Villon, Joan Miro, Wassily Kandinsky, Anders Zorn and James Ensor.

Was just watching The Seventh Seal fascinated by it not just because it's an amazing film but from a historical context it seems to be part of the creation of Tarkovsky as a filmmaker.

Tarkovsky, aside from being his own unique directorial self, is basically:

Dreyer (his pacing, spirituality) + Bergman (such as The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries perhaps Persona) + Resnais (Hiroshima, Mon Amour, Last Year at Marienbad). A pretty formidable combination. There's others in there, perhaps Mizoguchi and Bresson, but I'm keeping this "analysis" concise...

Btw just a side thought: it's interesting to think how staggeringly important Alain Resnais is as an impetus to the creation of some films I love...Hiroshima, Mon Amour and Last Year at Marienbad were HUGELY influential...

Interestingly enough, Tarkovsky, to my knowledge, never counts Resnais as a favorite director of his or an influence, but their cinematic relationship seems unavoidable to me.

All my friends are rather "EW, JOCK-ROCK" at Bruce Springsteen but I am just about in tears every time I listen to "The River" or "Independence Day" or "Drive All Night". Even if Springsteen is some kind of jockrocker or whatever dumb labeling or inspired a whole genre of middle-of-the-road music, he's an amazingly sincere, heartfelt, and sensitive man.

Two things:

-FUCK YES MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS REMASTER HELL YEAH DID ANYBODY FIND SOME GODDAMN ANYTHING OF THE ORIGINAL OR HAS THE IMPATIENCE JUST GOT TO THEM? Because even if they just did what they did with Metropolis with little intertitles saying "here's what's supposed to have happened" that'd at least be something.

-I think you missed an html thing to close the bold. The whole page is now in bold.

"...I will say this for now: Citizen Kane is a sleight of hand so extraordinary and inexplicable that millions of viewers have been unknowingly fooled out of really watching it for 70 years and counting. "No Trespassing" indeed."

...what??? Plz expand.

I agree with Marquee, expand. ASAP SVP.

I'd trust you a helluva lot more than I'd ever trust Roger Ebert with anything at all.

You keep rewatching flicks! You need to get your Fassbinder/Cassavetes/Tsai/Ozu/Bresson/Kiarostami/etc on!

Exactly what Marquee said.

Just picked up 10 films from the library, 5 of which I've never seen before but have wanted to for what seems like forever! And the other 5, I've been wanting to rewatch for months (in some cases, a year or more)! Coming soon to this list...

I will now be exceeding the "limit" of 10 if my amount of "favorites" in a given week is more than that.

I will now be exceeding the "limit" of 10 if my amount of "favorites" in a given week is more than that.

I check this list every day for movie suggestions. Keep up the great work!

Did Playtime seem that pessimistic to you or does your write up just kind of lean that way? I thought the film was a little warmer than "mundane, meaningless existence modern man has created for himself"-- I mean I felt like it never made a point of looking down on anyone or anything in the film, but its main point of view is that life should be fun and even in the most desolately stiff and boring places, a little wriggle of humanity can show through.

ALSO do you have any particular favourite gag from that film? (I love the neon-light-sounds and the weird floating-motorized-dress woman.)

Glad you liked Ballad of Narayama. Imamura is a seriously brilliant filmmaker, but I think that's probably his best film. Check out Vengeance is Mine and Black Rain for more evidence Imamura's badassery.

If you haven't already, I'd strongly suggest you check out the films of Masaki Kobayashi, particularly Harakiri. He's a supremely talented and controlled filmmaker, probably the only real Japanese equivalent of Kubrick. Each and every shot is so perfectly framed and composed - it's quite awe-inspiring for real cinema lovers.

Oh, and HI! Yes, I am still alive. Shoot me an e-mail sometime - you should have still it.

Facebook? Haven't read it. No, really, I haven't used it in years. I made an account one day, logged out and never went back. Don't even remember the password. You can send a message to my Last.fm account (same user name).

Response sent. I blame Fuddruckers myself.

Not been listening to much classical music these days, it seems. Any reason? Or has it just not been recorded on your list.

Give Jimmy Bell's Still In Town by 15-60-75 (The Numbers Band) a listen. It's a combination of rock, jazz, and blues with a definite Beefheart and Soft Machine influence. It's David Thomas' (of Pere Ubu) favorite album of all time.

Re: Pet Sounds -- totally agree on "Don't Talk", that's an intoxicating experience. The chords are gorgeous.

Have you heard Furtwangler's 1942 performance of Beethoven's 9th? It -is- the greatest piece of music ever. Unfathomable. It's not the kind of recording you can listen to often, but I'd be shocked if you don't even mildly agree with my judgement.

Do you think Synechdoche, NY is depressing or (cleverly) optimistic? I thought it was depressing the first time I watched it. A friend of mine said the opposite. I watched it again and thought it was even more depressing and liked it more, but not because it was depressing. I (obviously) prefer Eternal Sunshine. Frank or Francis cannot be released soon enough....

I'll be posting my Top 50 Music/Films of the Year here soon (can include anything I watched/listened to over the year, regardless of release date). Anyone wanna try and guess what my top 10 will be?

Much of the evidence is on this page, though I don't always remember to post everything every week...

I came here to ask if you've heard the incredible A Tribute to Jack Johnson (who's greatness is concisely summarized here) and instead was reminded of the overrated La Dolce Vita. It's baffling that a rightfully heralded film--8 1/2--can have this bland effort placed beside it on the pedestal. I liked the ending with the stream, as well as the beautiful Anita Ekberg and Anouk Aimee, but that's about it.

What's he saying that's new about life? He's piling on the old themes: alienation, distance, religion, excess, modernity, etc but he's not exactly giving these cliches new life. I recall Roger Ebert wrote about how the movie changed for him over the years, first how he saw the film as showing the glamor of life, and in later years realizing Fellini was always portraying emptiness. I like the idea of a film being mutable, but La Dolce Vita has always struck me as empty. The cinematography is doubtlessly beautiful, but I don't find the images expressing anything subtle or nuanced, just the glaring themes of the work. The central figure has no personality; he's generalized and universal, a blank slate for the viewer to project his/herself onto.

I don't know, I watched this during my Fellini kick a few years back when he was in my top 5, but this was one film I didn't take to.