- Children of Paradise part 1, 2: This movie was the first pop movie I had seen in a while. I really enjoyed the character introductions- the people you’d least expect to drive the plot are later revealed to be protagonists.
- (Original Cast Album) Company: What got me into musicals
- Hoop Dreams: I watched this movie over two days. So revelatory. Following the cast today, makes me realize how poignant this story is.
- Old Joy: A really calm movie- not one I expected to really like.
- Ata me: A really interesting ending- I did not expect such a powerful movie to end in a way that I thought catered to a populist audience
- Clemency: Not into really high budget films, but one I really liked. I enjoyed the acting of all the cast, and wished a few were given more screen time (specifically the prisoner)
- M: Not my favorite villain till the very end, and a very interesting climax. However, the plot as a whole was a blend of amusement and serious, which I found to be lost to time.
- La Cienaga: A slow movie, but one with great promise
- Metropolitan: One of my favorites. This genre really appeals to my character- quick witted, great dialogue, characters used well.
- Roshomon: Classic- I dont think I get the appeal entirely.
- Seven Samurai: Classic
- Ikiru: Classic
- Andrei Rublev: Solid movie. Took me 3 days to watch it.
- Battleship Potemkin: Tough movie to watch. The ending was really captivating
- Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles: Really poignant
- La Grande Bellezza: One of my faves
- Vivek (Reason): Woke me to the Indian left
- Paris, Texas: Slow, but interesting character development
- 8 1/2: Really good. Slow, deep, thoughtful, meta.
- The Piano Teacher: Critics noted it as dark. I agree, but praise the acting and story.
- Oldboy- the korean version. Easily one of my favorite movies.
- Tokyo Story- havent watched the last 20 mins, but till then, again a favorite
- Tampopo- Also one of my favorite movies
- The work- I cried non stop during the movie- easily one of my favorites
- Pablo Neruda- Great film
- Dr. Strangelove- watched it on a plane, dunno if it was edited from its original. Thought it ran a bit short.
- Anthropocene
- Washington (2006 I think)- Not one I enjoyed very much
- The handmaiden (Korean): Nice film, nice plot twist. Nice cinematography, memorable acting. Thought some of the supporting cast could have been worked in.
- Anthropocene: Legit one of the best. The carrara scene is my spirit animal
- Tiny: The story of Erin Blackwell: Made me realize (like Washington) that the American poor are really in a terrible place. Income inequality really makes me feel worse about my capitalist leanings
- Portrait of a Lady on Fire: Didn’t like it too too much, thought the set direction and camera work were amazing. The story seemed to be well paced in the first hour and a bit, and the relationship rushed.
- Darjeeling limited: Thought there were some moments of stillness that were unintentionally uncomfortable. The prequel had its moments of subtle tension, but a dragged ending if I remember correctly. The choice of music was highly regarded.
- La Strada: The movie is not about the protagonist’s perspective, but the world around her. I found the role of the protagonist to be a fly on the wall.
- Mouchette: Very similar to La Strada, but a bit more involved.
- The red shoes: Another one similar in presentation to children of paradise. I really liked the performances, not a dull moment in the film. No villain, which I found nice. I thought the ending was weak but I personally dont like tragedies. Again, if there’s no rabbit in the hat, you can’t pull a rabbit out of the hat.
- Makala
- The Love Godesses - wanted to watch it for the risquee element but stayed for the knowledge
- Becoming a spy- not sure why the desis always end up in technical roles
- Tenet: What a confusing movie. Really didn’t understand wtf was going on.
- Bullet Train: More than the movie, the experienceo fo watching it at the Alamo drafthouse really made the experience worthwhile for me.
- The headless woman: Another art house movie I failed to understand. My stupidity amazes me, even when it shouldn’t. Slow, complex and subtle, it forces me to ask questions at the speed of F1 that my Indycar 500 brain can’t drive at.
- Kantara- surprisingly good. It feels like the entire world is running on a tik tok attention span and this movie captures the intensity of every moment in that way.
- Big lebowski. His scene in bed smoking a joint with a tweezer is still fresh in my mind
- Killing of a Chinese Bookie- Grim, so far. “It takes work to be comfortable. But the only people that are happy, are the people that are comfortable”. “I’m only happy when I can be what people want me to be rather than be myself.”
- Salt in my soul- it was emotional seeing her facebook and that i share so many mutual friends with her. Ultimatley, inspiring.
- Knives out (its on netflix)- a bit too quick, could have taken its time
- Playtime- A real masterpiece, the large scale shots are really something.
- Feels good man - a real reminder that the internet is made of real people.
- Subramanipuram - probably one of my favorite gangster movies of all time.
- Breathless - Took me 2 days to watch it - loved the moving camera in real life Paris. Thought the man’s acting dragged on but the female protagonist’s actign was spot on. Hard for me to imagine that it would be as influential as it was, but a few days later, it had me remeniscing about it.
- Past lives - a mediocre (not), slow paced, indie (not) movie about romantic passions un-kindled. The fact that it was autobiographical is probably the most interesting thing about this movie. Otherwise, I think the idea behind this movie was very brief, a short-lived spark. I thought some of the acting where the actors were looking for words to say actually came across as boredom, as opposed to longing. I found the dialogue when the actors were on Skype, to be somewhat unbelievable - that they would actually have things to talk about for that long. I also felt that the movie kept oscillating between fiction and documentary, when the romantic lover (male) would try to find his lost love with great difficulty on the internet, but wouldn’t plan a trip to meet her. I thought the ending was interesting, that she has to live with the burden of unfulfilled love. I thought the characters were fairly static, and the power dynamic and relationship between Arthur and Nora was too unbelievable. I would have hoped for some more details so the viewer could believe in their love. It’s also hard to believe that the only thing Hae Sung and Nora had in common, or rather that the only basis of their love, was Nora’s ambition? Or that Hae Sung had scored more than her in school? Or that he protected her from public humiliation? To me it also seemed like the movie was actually about an underlying narrative of asian pride - it was pride that kept Nora in her marriage, she seemed to smother Arthur’s doubts about her love for him by fawning over him, and her face showed a cold ingenuity, which reminded me of asian pride. There were multiple places in the movie where she seemed to reject her culture in lieu of an adopted Amerian culture, namely when she discusses In-Yun with Arthur in the camp, and dismisses his question about its veracity by claiming it was simply a seduction tactic. Another instance I found of this subplot was when she was in bed with Arthur, and he asks her in learned Korean what she wanted to eat, and she answered in English with ‘Chicken Wings’. There were a number of points in that scene to take note. One was their physical posture - Arthur was in his underpants, pinning a fully clothed Nora down with his leg, which evoked an idea of a mother-son relationship. This monther-son vibe carried into their dialogue, where he said that he was hungry and what she would like to eat. While the meaning might have been lost in translation, he seemed to imply with his tone that he was expecting her to solve his food problem, another thing a son might ask his mother. While I found that he asked her in Korean to be touching, her response in English instead of engaging with him in Korean, indicated to me that she wanted to break away from her birth culture. I also assumed that since he asked her in Korean, that he would have reminded her of home, and that she would want to eat something that reminded her of Korea. But her response of ‘Chicken Wings’ also indicated that she’d moved past her longing for her culture at birth. Arthur’s character also didn’t seem to progress much through the movie. Although I get that the movie wasn’t about him, he seemed to be portrayed as a perpetual loser. It was also not clear to me whether the scene where he was signing his book titled ‘Boner’ was supposed to continue his portrayal him as some sort of loser, because while the look on her face seemed to indicate so, it’s unclear why, then, she married him (unless it was for material gains, and that she stayed with him because of her hubris).
- The Graduate: One of my favorites, but lik esome reviewer mentioned, falls prey to the movies it seeks to mock, in its second half.
- Some like it hot: Marilyn Monroe could set the world on fire with one eye closed.
- Sunset Boulevard: A real starburst film, ages like wine.
- Punch Drunk Love - a moronic movie where a woman hits on a hodgepodge man with the brain of a 13 y o which is not worth watching until the final 20 mins.
- Sophie’s Choice - really difficult watch. - interestingly enough, it was very difficult for me to recall this movie. I googled the plot on gpt and google like 20 times ( a southern writer moves into an apartment and starts a love triangle with a couple who are in an abusive relationship) and got no hits. I remembered a key scene from the movie as well, where the three are drinkign coffee and heaping spoonfulls of cream into their cup from a tray of cream on a hot summer day. No luck finding the movie. Then, the thing that worked for me was to remember that it had a famous actress that won an award for the movie. The thing was, was that the movie was shot in the 80s, and there are many famous actredsses from the 20th century. Luckily, searching for famous actresses from the 80s, produced Meryl Streep and looking at her movies, I could identify the one because I knew the name had a word structure like “(Proper noun+posessive modifier) (common noun)” so something like Orpheia’s love. The movie was called Sophie’s choice.
- Anatomy of a fall: I really enjoyed the acting, until the climax where I felt the countroom drama was rushed by a child’s confession and I wasn’t sure if anything else before it mattered.
- Umbrellas of Cherbourg: I thought that Geneviève’s character was intended to portray one who wasn’t acting out of jealousy or malintent. However, Guy’s refusal to see his child with her, made me think maybe he resented her for her decision, which left me with a bitter taste in my mouth. I felt as if he wasn’t content with his decision to forget Geneviève, and that she had to suffer his decision.
- Kwaidan: The story with the biwa easily one of my favorite short films of all time. easily could watch over and over. mesmerizing and put me in a trance. While I would have ended the story differently, irrelevant.
- The great dictator - I thought it was really brave that somebody would make this movie. In the first scene itself when chaplin is giving the speech, I could tell that he was mocking real footage of Hitler by the way his eyes looked up as though he was trying to remember something.
- Company - I have many thoughts about the 2011 filming of the play shot with the New York Philharmonic. It was very clear to me that the person who wrote the book was likely gay - the views on marriage (all heterosexual) were very cynical - it seems the protagonist views his married friends as crazy, stupid, almost unenlightened. He seems to largely only care about their opinions of him. The reactions the protagonist had about things like one of his ‘friends’ wanting to have an affair with him, one of his frinds asking him to have a homosexual relation with him, and I certainly would not be friends with someone who proposed to my wife on the day of our marriage. I find it to be a ludicrous mockery of metropolitan friendships - in a fast paced world where we’re simply acommpaniments to other individuals as opposed to friends.
- Anora -
- Triangle of sadness -
To watch:
- Buena Vista Social Club
- Once upon a time in Hollywood
- Charles Manson’s 1987 interview (emmy winning)
- Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence
- The End of the Tour
- Opening Night (1977)
- Anatomy of a murder
- Haxan
- In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones
- Drowned out
- Amelie
- Blue Velvet
- Breaking away
- The ten commandments (1956)
- Satya
Forked from design by Ankit Sultana