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Post by Tosh on May 26, 2007 13:39:52 GMT -5
56=
Eraserhead (1976) - A nightmarish vision of life on the weird fringes of the urban industrial wasteland. The movie took several years, but it was brought to the screen uncensored from David Lynch's subconscious. Packed with grotesque physical deformities and a quest for spiritual purity, Eraserhead is Lynch's most surreal work to date. Its brilliance depends on non-narrative elements, particularly imagery: With slight adjustment in lighting, a steam radiator looks like the facade of the Metropolitan Opera. Alan Splet's weird, eerie sound, and Fred Elmes and Herbert Caldwell's dense black-and-white photography, reinforce the claustrophobic ambience of the gloomy post-industrial landscape. Eraserhead was greeted with revulsion when it appeared, but, as the critic Jim Hoberman noted, the film was so perversely and coherently articulated that it defied comparison to any other film. Its surreal style and narrative ambiguity recalled the early work of Luis Bunuel (Un Chien Andalou) and Salvador Dali. Social satire, and special effects inform the film, which creates a nightmare, in which successive layers of reality seem to dissolve, with depressing metaphysical overtones. Eraserhead pushes the viewers to a terrifying apocalyptic vortex. Apparently the inspiration was Philadelphia, which Lynch described as "the sleaziest, most corrupt, decadent, sick, fear-ridden, twisted city on the face of the earth." One of the most successful American avant-garde films ever, establishing a precedent for other eccentric indies. This is almost certain to haunt you for years after watching it.....................
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Post by Tosh on May 26, 2007 14:40:33 GMT -5
55=
The Virgin Suicides (2000) - Dark comedies are a strange breed of film, they can be either extremely silly or extremely philosophical, but not anything in between. The latter, if done right, have a mystical air about them which can be absolutely mesmerizing. Sofia Coppola has managed to pull it off. The best thing about her adaptation of Jeffrey Eugenides’ book is the atmosphere. It has a dreamy quality about it that both excites and mystifies. Coppola has given her tightly-knit tapestry the momentum of a thriller, and her creative approach to many scenes (for instance a conversation shot through a small window) is matched by her use of music in all the right places. For once music, like everything else in the film, is not a lazy afterthought. In her debut as a film director, Sofia Coppola has made one of the most unusual films ever fashioned out of the fears and the fantasies of adolescent boys. It depicts what Terry Tempest Williams has called eroticism: "No longer numb, we feel the magnetic pull of our bodies toward something stronger, more vital than simply ourselves. Arousal becomes a dance with longing. We form a secret partnership with possibility." Yes, that is a perfect description of The Virgin Suicides: A haunting impression of the illusive and ultimately self-destructive mythical feminine allure.
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Post by Tosh on May 26, 2007 14:57:50 GMT -5
54=
Requiem For A Dream (2001) - The cornucopia of images flow over our systems like a drug rush. We aren't merely witnessing the cataclysmic effects of drug addiction; we are experiencing them up close and personal. Darren Aronofsky makes just the right choice in minimizing the surrealistic scenes in favour of speeding up the realistic ones. A relentless sensory assault threatens to overwhelm the viewer, but the visceral images and frantic editing capture the euphoric 'highs' and repetitive rituals of drug blighted lives, while drawing clear parallels between the characters' different forms of addiction. Refused a US censor's rating, this adaptation of Hubert Selby's 1978 novel is visually experimental and thematically uncompromising. Burnished camerawork and ex-Pop Will Eat Itself frontman Clint Mansell's part-punchy, part-elegiac score reinforce and counterpoint the increasingly nightmarish visuals. Aronofsky is so compelling, so visionary a filmmaker, he keeps us riveted to his film which is a work of art and whose beauty has the eternal power of redemption.
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Post by Tosh on May 26, 2007 15:05:07 GMT -5
53=
Un Monde Sans Pitié (1990) - The Debut from Director Eric Rochant adopts a pacy, elliptical narrative style to create an enormously witty and likeable study of emotional alienation and commitment. Though dealing with 'serious' themes (the gulf between classes and generations, responsibility through influence, the need to be honest with oneself as well as with others), it never bogs down in solemn moralising, but paints a vivacious, uncommonly plausible portrait of the preoccupations of contemporary Parisian youth. Stylishly shot, it also benefits from very affecting performances by Perrier and Girardot.
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Post by Tosh on May 26, 2007 15:12:26 GMT -5
52=
Clerks (1993) - Kevin Smith has been called "the King of Gen-X Cinema," a label he embraces with joy and ambiguity. A satirist who writes deftly but lacks any sense of visual style, Smith makes a strong case for attending film school, if only to acquire technical skills. Clerks turns out to be more than just the sum of its parts though. In the final fifteen minutes, Smith begins pulling the threads of his narrative together with a surprising message about the twenty- somethings. Dante becomes a character representative of everything that is wrong with his generational peers, wallowing in self-pity and willing to blame everyone but himself for the circumstances of his life, and Randal's brutally honest rebuke is perhaps the film's highlight. Kevin Smith places himself in the awkward position of chastising those who are most likely to be his audience, and it is that daring that makes CLERKS most worthy of admiration; it is not often that personal responsibility is the moral to a story. While he may not have had all the tools at his disposal that a studio filmmaker would have had to tell this story, Kevin Smith did have a story to tell. CLERKS is unquestionably uneven, but it is also a very funny wake-up call to the over-the-counter culture. It's also the film that gave the world Jay and Silent Bob!!
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Post by Tosh on May 26, 2007 15:24:18 GMT -5
51=
Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolfe? (1966) - "You have Ugly Talents" says Richard Burton to Elizabeth Taylor; a line worthy of ending up a title of a classic Ruth Ruth tune many years later!! Critics have most commonly interpreted this film as a psychodrama—of a childless couple for whom alcoholism and verbal sadomasochism are symptoms of their failure as a procreative family unit; of an alcoholic relationship in which the barrenness is the cause and verbal abuse a symptom. The lead characters seem Platonic soul-mates, perfectly suited to one another. Emblematic of the death cult of modern society, they have descended into a folie a deux, locked in a sadomasochistic love-hate relationship, which neither of them can live without. The original play is divided into three acts—“Fun and Games,” “Walpurgisnacht,” and “The Exorcism.” Strongly suggesting Goethe’s Faust I, The films richly subtextured Walpurgisnacht resembles the monkish and naive scholar Faust’s foray into the Real World--of flesh, desire, emotions, and human interactions and their consequences: the Devil’s playground. When George the historian casts Nick the biologist as the mortal enemy, The author Albee presents a philosophical treatise about the battle between traditional humanistic values and the modern technological world, between knowledge and experience, between good and evil. Burton and Taylor both got Oscars for this, a film with Ugly Talents indeed!
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Post by Tosh on May 26, 2007 15:38:46 GMT -5
50= Taxi Driver (1976) - Perhaps the most formally ravishing as well as the most morally and ideologically problematic film ever directed by Martin Scorsese, Taxi Driver remains a disturbing landmark for the kind of voluptuous doublethink it helped ratify and extend in American movies. Most of the glamorous depictions of hell on earth and odes to stoical despair about a post-apocalyptic civilization found in monuments to capitalist-urban squalor, including Blade Runner and Seven, can be traced back to Taxi Driver, and it continues to exert an enormous claim on our imagination, this is surely because we continue to live in its vengeful, puritanical fantasies, as well as with the dire consequences of those fantasies. The blend of Schrader's script, Scorsese's direction, Hermann's music and De Niro's performance is riveting and unnerving. A film that will stay with you forever.
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Post by Tosh on May 26, 2007 15:58:25 GMT -5
49= Singles (1992) - Cameron Crowe convincingly captures the frantic and funny sides to romance in Singles which takes the grunge scene as it's backdrop . Through the expert use of flashbacks and talking to the camera monologues, he shows us how tiny, isolated moments hold the key to whether a relationship blooms or withers on the vine. Crowe also makes it clear that for this twenty-something generation, there is little resentment if a love affair goes to blight. The twosome can still be friends. Other generations could only dream about such amiability. The movie will challenge some audiences simply because it is not a 1-2-3 progression of character and plot. There is no problem at the beginning and no solution at the end; the film is about a life process that is, by its very nature, inconclusive. There's brilliant dialogue, killer musical cues and hilarious comic beats. It made me happy, it made me sad... It was the right movie at the right time. The awesome soundtrack includes Paul Westerberg, Pearl Jam, Screaming Trees, Alice In Chains, Mudhoney, Mother Love Bone etc
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Post by Tosh on May 27, 2007 8:57:08 GMT -5
48= The Exorcist (1973) - A sensational, shocking horror story about devil possession and the subsequent exorcism of the demonic spirits from a young, innocent girl. The controversial nature of the film's content - exorcism (accompanied by blasphemies, obscenities and graphic physical shocks), was supposedly based upon an authentic, nearly two-month long exorcism performed in 1949. A sour odour of spiritual guilt wafts through every fascinating minute of this film which was presented with ten Academy Award nominations, two of which won. Friction developed between director Friedkin and various cast and crew members during production, and there were additional post-production conflicts between Friedkin and Blatty. Other disturbing events that affected some of the film's stars (injury and death) also plagued the production. On it's release, some portions of the viewing audience fled from theatres due to nausea or sheer fright. At once an honest, disturbing exploration of the darker aspects of religion and the spiritual world, it is absolutely timeless horror in its purest form.
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Post by Tosh on May 27, 2007 9:09:57 GMT -5
47= Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead (1990) - Lifted from Tom Stoppards play, this is a delicious and profound film which compels us to consider the fear and fate and folly in our own lives. It is absolutely full of great quotes: Eternity is a terrible thought. I mean, where's it going to end? -RosencrantzDeath is not anything.....It's the absence of presence, nothing more...the endless time of never coming back...a gap you can't see, and when the wind blows through it, it makes no sound. -Guildensternoccasionally, from out of this matter, there escapes a thin beam of light that, seen at the right angle, can crack the shell of mortality. -GuildensternOut we come, bloodied and squalling, with the knowledge that for all the points on the compass, there is only one direction, and time is its only measure. -RosencrantzWe cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that our eyes once watered. -GuildensternWe might have been left to sift the whole field of human nomenclature, like two blind men looting a bazaar for their own portraits. -GuildensternAll your life you live so close to truth, it becomes a permanent blur in the corner of your eye, and when something nudges it into outline, it is like being ambushed by a grotesque. -GuildensternWe do on stage the things that are supposed to happen off. Which is a kind of integrity, if you look on every exit being an entrance somewhere else. -the PlayerYou must remember that we are tied to a language which makes up for in obscurity what it lacks in style. -the PlayerThe film is very self-aware and postmodern in style, a modus operandi that became all the rage in the late '90s, though Stoppard was doing it quite effectively way back in the '60s, making one question just how post-postmodern the idea really is these days. However, unlike more modern attempts at blurring the line between objective reality and narrative reality Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead isn't forever waving its metaphorical arms in the air and shouting at you to please notice its extreme cleverness, with which it has reinvented cinema and for which it should receive copious accolades from the kids. It simply pops on, displays its wit and skill, and politely excuses itself without a lot of self-aggrandizing braggadocio. Great stuff!!
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Post by Tosh on May 27, 2007 13:35:16 GMT -5
46= Dead Poet's Society (1989) - A very special movie directed by Peter Weir and written by Tom Schulman, two men who accept the Blakean view that no bird soars too high if he soars with his own two wings. In a rousing performance, Robin Williams stars as John Keating who in the fall of 1959 arrives at Welton Academy. Exemplifying his philosophy of strident individualism, this charismatic and unconventional teacher tells his students to seize the day and make their lives extraordinary. Displaying the notion that words and ideas can change the world Dead Poets Society celebrates nonconformity and freethinking as an adventure worthy of emulation — not your usual movie theme these days. The tale's dramatic finale will stir both your heart and your mind!
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Post by Tosh on May 27, 2007 13:44:48 GMT -5
45= Wings Of Desire (1987) - An exploration of opposites, a debate right down to its structure and narrative, and like a feather dropped from a cloud, it floats this way and that till it catches the ground. And for the longest while, we fly with the angels, seeing Berlin through their colour-blind eyes. Wim Wenders masterpiece is is a film about love and despair and the choices mortals have in dealing with each. The universal appeal of Wings of Desire has to do with the way that it addresses not merely angels above a divided city, but all of us struggling with the divided natures of our lives and our souls. Maybe all of us, at some point, are seeing the world in colour for the very first time, like the lead character; looking for a place to trade in the trinkets of our past for the building blocks of our future. And so it is in that, for all of us, Wings of Desire deposits a happy ending. Stunningly shot with sympathy and sensitivity.
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Post by Tosh on May 27, 2007 13:58:10 GMT -5
44= Being John Malkovich (1999) - An outlandishly original film, Being John Malkovich is a hilarious and beguiling comedy, adventure, mystery, romance hybrid. And it's not just the jaw-dropping oddity of the thing that makes it work; the film has a wonderfully involving and moving storyline. Concentrate hard, as paying attention to its small details turns out to be very rewarding. Listen carefully for names of companies, a mention of a plank of wood, and Orson Bean's explanation of why a certain journey cannot be taken after a certain deadline. Intriguing? Definitely! The most pleasant surprise is how this outlandish idea for a film works on such a personal level. The humour ranges from broad comedy, to the absurd, to acerbic wickedness. And the actors are terrific, with great performances that bring real heart and soul to the piece. This contrasts the sheer daring of it all with a warm-hearted, yet complicated romantic centre that examines themes of trust, identity, fame and even mortality. Even when a big-conspiracy subplot threatens to take over, the film is still much, much more than a wacky comedy. Elizabethtown (2005) - What's the difference between a failure and a fiasco? That's the first question Orlando Bloom's character, Drew Baylor, asks himself in Cameron Crowe's "Elizabethtown," and the question he keeps asking throughout. It also echoes some of the critical response that followed the movie's premiere at the Venice and Toronto film festivals, making it seem uncannily prescient and self-aware. Like his characters, Crowe is given to flights of fancy, sudden enthusiasms, and risks — which sets him apart from other contemporary commercial American filmmakers. "Elizabethtown" doesn't just open on the subject of failure, it gives in to the same impulses that send Crowe's protagonists on lonely, weird and often misunderstood missions. (Like proposing a Rockwellian code of ethics to a bunch of shark-like sports agents, say, or designing a blubbery sneaker in the shape of a stingray.) The movie gets lost sometimes, wandering down several stray paths to nowhere, only to suddenly change course and wind up in an unexpectedly exhilarating place. In this sense, it's the opposite of the quick commute of the average commercial movie. It's a meandering road trip instead. Crowe is still a master navigator of swampy territory, and any movie that can warm the heart and tickle the funny bone without selling its soul is to be cherished, warts and all. The critics hate this movie - I for one love it.
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Post by Tosh on May 27, 2007 15:13:00 GMT -5
43= Blue Velvet (1986) - Anyone who has ever lived in a small community where normality is assumed probably also suspects that beneath the surface of everyday life lurk malevolent happenings. Blue Velvet is surreal neo-noir about the moral rot underlying the American Dream. Coming of age is usually connected with an individual's sexual awakening. Blue Velvet explores the dark side of human relationships built upon power and perversion. This film, written and directed by David Lynch is one of the most hallucinatory movies ever released. It elicited a wildly divergent critical response ranging from laudatory praise to complete damnation. It is not a movie for everyone. Those who savour exotic experiences are sure to find it both frenzied and exhilarating. Blue Velvet is laced with arresting cinematic images that are at once realistic and surreal. The music on the soundtrack demonstrates the eerie effects of songs, which can transport us into realms of nostalgia and fantasy. it is a strange world, where criminal predators wait in the shadows, where users and abusers, victims and villains are as real as apple pie, pleasant suburban lawns, and nice friendly families. The fact that we must somehow find our way through this strange world is what makes Blue Velvet such an unsettling and unforgettable experience. I first saw this on it's release in a cinema in London's Picadilly Circus and it's impact really hooked me to what could be achieved by surrealism in cinematography. That, and the fact that Denis Hopper scared the living shit out of me.....
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Post by Tosh on May 27, 2007 15:23:48 GMT -5
42= Pan's Labyrinth (2006) - This is a somber, lovely picture, set in Franco's Spain a few years after the country's civil war. It's rich both in metaphorical terms and in literal ones. Del Toro's imagery is so vivid and concrete that it's likely to change the colour of your sleep: A writhing, cooing root that's "almost" a human baby; a faceless creature with pale wrinkly skin draped over its willowy bones, its eyes located in the palms of its hands instead of in its head. Those far-side-of-sleep images (and the movie contains many others) can be read as symbols and stand-ins for other things -- a nascent country that might have been; so-called leadership that's howlingly blind -- but del Toro isn't playing a game of allegorical one-to-one matching here. The movie's meanings emerge from its visuals instead of being driven by them. Del Toro has mastered the delicate, difficult feat of using pure sensation to make us think. Watching Pan’s Labyrinth gives you the excitement of experiencing a filmmaker blossoming into true greatness.
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