Friday, January 15, 2016

A year in flickering lights

For no reason other than film nerdery, I decided to make a list last year of the films I watched (when I remembered... I know there are a bunch I forgot) more or less in the order I saw them. If you like this sort of nerdery, here is my 2015 in cinema...

A MOST WANTED MAN - Antón Corbjin
MOTHER - Bong Joon-Ho
HARDCORE - Paul Schrader
TAI CHI MASTER - Yuen Woo Ping
POLICE STORY 3 - Stanley Tong
BUDDHA COLLAPSED OUT OF SHAME - Hana Mahkmalbaf
13 ASSASSINS - Takashi Miike
35 SHOTS OF RUM – Claire Denis (rewatch)
NIGHTCRAWLER – Dan Gilroy (quit watching)
IN A BETTER WORLD - Susanne Bier (repeat watch)
WOMAN ON THE BEACH - Hong Sang Soo
BIRDMAN - Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu
MEMORIES OF MURDER - Bong Joon-Ho
THE LEGO MOVIE - Phil Lord & Christopher Miller
GONE GIRL - Ben Affleck
LA DOLCE VITA - Federico Fellini
RETURN OF THE JEDI - Richard Marquand (repeat watch)
TMNT - Michael Bay (quit watching)
REVANCHE - Gotz Spielman
WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY - Mel Stuart
DUMB AND DUMBER TO - Bobby and Peter Farrelly
CAFE LUMIERE - Hou Hsiao-Hsien (repeat watch)
THREE TIMES - Hou Hsiao-Hsien (repeat watch)
BONNIE AND CLYDE - Arthur Penn (repeat watch)
THE MULE – Tony Mahony &Angus Sampson
MAPS OF THE STARS - David Cronenberg
RETRATOS SALVAJES - Damián Szifron
IDA - Pawel Pawlikowski
NN - Héctor Gálvez
LEONERA - Pablo Trapero
WHIPLASH – Damian Chazelle
FORCE MAJEURE – Ruben Ostlund
ZERO DE CONDUITE – Jean Vigo
MAGNOLIA – Paul Thomas Anderson (repeat watch)
TAKEN 3 – Olivier Megaton
FOXCATCHER – Bennett Miller
THE IMITATION GAME – Morten Tyldum
HUNGER GAMES - MOCKINGJAY – Francis Lawrence
THE KEEPER OF LOST CAUSES – Mikkel Norgaard
THE GREAT BEAUTY – Paolo Sorrentino
2046 – Wong Kar Wai
IM A CYBORG AND THATS OK – Chan-Wook Park
KINK – James Franco
LA ESTRATEGIA DEL CARACOL – Sergio Cabrera
A MOST VIOLENT YEAR – JC Chandor
SCARFACE – Brian dePalma
MESRINE 1 & 2 – Jean Francois Richet
CITIZENFOUR – Laura Poitras
THE SECRET OF THE GRAIN - Abdellatif Kechiche
TODOS ESTAN MUERTOS – Beatriz Sanchis
LEVIATHAN - Andrey Zvyagintsev
THE LEGEND IS BORN: IP MAN – Herman Yau
TYSON – James Toback
SALT OF THE EARTH – Wim Wenders
TWENTY FEET FROM STARDOM – Morgan Neville
DIOR AND I – Frederic Tcheng
SELMA – Ava DuVernay
IP MAN 2 – Wilson Yip
THE ASSASSIN - Hou Hsiao-Hsien
CEMETERY OF SPLENDOUR - Apichatpong Weerasethakul
EVERY SECRET THING – Amy Berg (quit watching)
12 OCLOCK BOYS - Lotfy Nathan
JURASSIC WORLD 3D – Colin Trevorrow
DJANGO UNCHAINED – Quentin Tarantino
NEBRASKA – Alexander Payne
GOODBYE SOUTH, GOODBYE – Hou Hsiao Hsien
DIRTY WARS – Rick Rowley
TABLOID – Errol Morris
OLDBOY – Chan-Wook Park (rewatch)
SALT OF THE EARTH – Wim Wenders (rewatch)
SEARCHING FOR SUGARMAN – Malik Bendjelloul (rewatch)
FOCUS – Glen Ficarra & John Requa
LA PRINCESA DE FRANCIA – Matias Piñeiro
LA ISLA MINIMA – Alberto Rodriguez
THE AVENGERS AGE OF ULTRON – Joss Whedon
THE GUNMAN – Pierre Morel
UNDEFEATED – Daniel Lindsay & TJ Martin
THE CENTRAL PARK FIVE – Ken Burns & Sarah Burns
THE INTERNSHIP – Shawn Levy
SE7EN – David Fincher (rewatch)
THE OTHER WOMAN – Nick Cassavetes
HOT PURSUIT – Anne Fletcher
SPARE PARTS – Sean McNamara
MAGIC MIKE XXL – Gregory Jacobs (quit watching)
PITCH PERFECT 2 – Elizabeth Banks
ENTOURAGE – Doug Ellin
SPY – Paul Feig
TRUE STORY – Rupert Goold
INSIDE OUT – Pete Doctor & Ronnie del Carmen
EX MACHINA – Alex Garland
WHILE WE'RE YOUNG – Noah Baumbach
THE ARTIST - Michel Hazanavicius
WE ARE YOUNG WE ARE STRONG – Burhan Qurbani
CARTEL LAND – Matthew Heinemann
STRAY DOGS – Tsai Ming Liang
EDEN LAKE – James Watkins
CASE 39 – Cristian Alvart
BOURNE IDENTITY – Doug Liman (rewatch)
BOURNE SUPREMACY – Paul Greengrass (rewatch)
BOURNE ULTIMATUM – Paul Greengrass (rewatch)
CALVARY – John Michael McDonagh (quit)
TRAINWRECK – Judd Apatow
ELECTION – Alexander Payne (rewatch)
ZODIAC – David Fincher
SILENCE OF THE LAMBS – Jonathon Demme
RED DRAGON – Brett Ratner
DOUBLE LIFE OF VERONIQUE - Krzysztof Kieslowski (rewatch)
MOUNTAINS MAY DEPART – Jia Zhangke
THE CHASER – Hong Jin Na
LOVE 3D – Gaspar Noe
IN THE SHADOW OF WOMEN – Philippe Garrel
THE CEMETERY OF SPLENDOUR - Apichatpong Weerasethakul (repeat watch)
MUSTANG - Deniz Gamze Ergüven
MARGARITA WITH A STRAW - Shonali Bose & Nilesh Maniyar
LAND AND SHADE - César Augusto Acevedo
THE PEARL BUTTON – Patricio Guzman
SICARIO – Denis Villeneuve
HORSE MONEY – Pedro Costa
COURT - Chaitanya Tamhane
MATEO – Maria Gamboa
FLAPPING IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE - Diep Hoang Nguyen
EXOTICA, EROTICA, ETC - Evangelia Kranioti *
INHERENT VICE – Paul Thomas Anderson
DALLAS BUYERS CLUB – Jean Marc Valleé
JAMÓN JAMÓN – Bigas Luna (rewatch)
REVANCHE – Gotz Spielman (rewatch)
THE PLEASURE OF BEING ROBBED – Joshua Safdie
HEAVEN KNOWS WHAT – Joshua & Bennie Safdie
GO GET SOME ROSEMARY - Joshua & Bennie Safdie
LENNY COOKE - Joshua & Bennie Safdie
TESIS – Alejandro Amenabar
KISS THE GIRLS - Gary Fleder (rewatch)
LA COLLECTIONEUSE – Eric Rohmer
SERPICO – Sidney Lumet
THE PERVERTS GUIDE TO IDEOLOGY – Sophie Fiennes
35 SHOTS OF RUM – Claire Denis (rewatch x 2)
RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES – Rupert Wyatt
CHARLIE'S COUNTRY – Rolf de Heer
EL AÑO BISIESTO -  Michael Rowe (rewatch)
DOUBLE LIFE OF VERONIQUE - Krzysztof Kieslowski (rewatch x2)
THE SILENCE – Baran Bo Odar
STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON – F Gary Gray
DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES – Matt Reeves
IT FOLLOWS – David Robert Mitchell
LIKE SOMEONE IN LOVE – Abbas Kiarostami
THE MARTIAN – Ridley Scott
THE GIFT – Joel Edgerton
PARANORMAL ACTIVITY - THE GHOST DIMENSION – Gregory Plotkin

 *Best line from a movie this year is from this doco: "Sailors are like terrorists. They arrive in ports with a bomb called love and throw it. And do you know what happens? The bomb explodes when they go away and they never come back, destroying the hearts of all the girls in the neighborhood. How strange - To love somebody who pays you..."

Splashing in the Shallows

“For me, cinema is the ocean. It’s an infinite, endless form of human expression. The ocean of expression. And it’s enormous. After 120 years of making films, we’re still on the beach – we’re splashing in the shallows, and I believe we have a lot deeper to go. 
“I’m not a philosopher, I’m a filmmaker, but I think we have a long way to go before we fully understand the subconscious. The problem with film is that now people view it as an accurate representation of reality. I’m much less interested in reality in cinema than I am exploring the way we truly experience life, which is far away from reality. Reality is really just memories, little slices of sensation that we interpret as accurate versions of an event or moment in time. There’s a lot of things left to explore, and I’m just scratching the surface of the subconscious, of the spirit world. But unfortunately right now I think we’re going in the exact opposite direction. 
“The Revenant was a way for me to express an extreme human experience through what I call ‘pure cinema’. It was a huge exercise for me to work out how I could tell this story with as few words as possible, in a very emotional and sensory way. When you strip out dialogue you do so in order to understand your subject – to understand what he’s thinking and feeling and trying to do – and by doing that you’re left with the image, literally to moving images and sounds. You have to go deep to really get to what this guy is about. For me, it was an exercise in molecular storytelling.”