DECEMBER CHATS - 2022

Tell Santa About IT!!

If you're interested, Sight and Sound issued its list of 100 "best of all time" films (the list comes out once every 10 years, I believe). Top 20:

1. Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975, dir. Chantal Akerman)
2. Vertigo, (1958, Alfred Hitchcock)
3. Citizen Kane (1941, Orson Welles)
4. Tokyo Story (1953, Yasujiro Ozu)
5. In the Mood for Love (2000 Wong Kar Wai)
6. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, Stanley Kubrick)
7. Beau travail. (1998, Claire Denis)
8. Mulholland Drive (2001, David Lynch)
9. Man with a Movie Camera (1929, Dziga Vertov)
10. Singin' in the Rain (1951, Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly)
11. Sunrise: a song of Two Humans (1927, F.W. Murnau)
12. The Godfather (1972, Francis Ford Coppola)
13. La regle du jeu aka Rules of the Game (1939, Jean Renoir)
14. Cleo from 5 to 7 (1962, Agnes Varda)
15. The Searchers (1956, John Ford)
16. Meshes of the Afternoon (1943, Maya Deren)
17. Close-Up (1989, Abbas Kiarostami)
18. Persona (1966, Ingmar Bergman)
19. Apocalypse Now (1979. Francis Ford Coppola)
20. Seven Samurai (1954, Akira Kurosawa)

The complete Sight and Sound list.

There's also a directors' top 100.

>2 featherbear: Interesting. Thank you for providing this. At some time in my life, I have seen more than half of these.

David Sims. The Atlantic, 12/07/2022: The 10 Best Films of 2022.

In reverse order:

10. Murina (directed by Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović)

9. Nope (Jordan Peele)

8. After Yang (Kogonada)

7. We’re All Going to the World’s Fair (Jane Schoenbrun)

6. Armageddon Time (James Gray)

5. The Northman (Robert Eggers)

4. Three Thousand Years of Longing (George Miller)

3. The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg)

2. The Eternal Daughter (Joanna Hogg)

1. Tár (Todd Field)

Sims's outside looking in/honorable mentions: Top Gun: Maverick, Barbarian, The Banshees of Inisherin, Decision to Leave, RRR, Babylon, Return to Seoul, Aftersun, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, Crimes of the Future

Wesley Morris & A.O. Scott. NYT, 12/06/2022: The 10 Best Actors of the Year. In movies.

Michelle Yeoh for Everything Everywhere All at Once

Daniel Kaluuya for Nope

Thuso Mbedo for The Woman King

Michelle Williams for The Fabelmans

Frankie Corio for Aftersun ("She is a happy child, in one of the saddest movies you’ll ever see." A.O. Scott)

Freddie Gibbs for Down with the King

Brendan Gleeson for The Banshees of Inisherin

Vicky Krieps for Corsage

Keke Palmer for Nope

Jon Bernthal for We Own This City

Richard Brody. New Yorker, 12/05/2022: The Best Movies of 2022. Not just a top 10!

1. Benediction (dir. Terence Davies; "bio-pic of the First World War poet and memoirist Siegfried Sassoon:)

2. Nope (dir. Jordan Peele)

3. Armageddon Time (dir. James Gray) ("quasi-autobiographical coming-of-age story, set in 1980, in which a middle-class Jewish family faces the chill winds of history—and in which the Trump family figures prominently")

4. No Bears (dir. Jafar Panahi; Iranian director under directive to not make films sort of makes a film)

5. Both Sides of the Blade (dir. Claire Denis, whose film Beau travail is a recent entry in the Sight and Sound top 100 at #7)

6. Hit the Road (dir. Panah Panahi -- son of #4)

7. Amsterdam (dir. David O. Russell)

8. Saint Omer (dir. Alice Diop, "real-life story of a Senegalese woman in France who was charged with the killing of her young child")

9. The Eternal Daughter (dir. Joanna Hogg)

10. The Cathedral (dir. Ricky D'Ambroise)

11. Till (dir. Chinonye Chukwu, historical film about the Emmett Till lynching of 1955 focusing on his mother)

12. Don't Worry Darling (dir. Olivia Wilde; had a lot of gossip surrounding the production; might be available on HBOMax)

13. Saturday Fiction ("Shown at festivals in 2019 but unreleased in the U.S. until this year, Lou Ye’s vision of spies versus spies, in the milieu of theatre, in internationalized Shanghai, under Japanese occupation, at the outset of the Second World War ...")

14. In Front of Your Face (dir. Hong Sangsoo, "a long-retired actress’s reckoning with mortality and art stars the acclaimed actress Lee Hye-young, who herself had been absent from movies for many years")

15. Apollo 10 1/2: a space age childhood ("Richard Linklater’s quasi-autobiographical animated fantasy, about a fourth grader who’s recruited by nasa, re-creates family life in 1969, in the suburbs of Houston")

16. Framing Agnes (Chase Joynt, "rediscovery of an academic archive of interviews with gender-nonconforming subjects, conducted from 1957 to 1960")

17. Ahed's Knee ("Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid furiously dramatizes a dissident Israeli filmmaker’s mind-bending confrontation with his past, and with the country’s current politics, during a trip to a remote village to present a film")

18. The Novelist's Film (dir. Hong Sangsoo, who apparently released 3 films this year, about a writer turned movie maker)

19. The Inspection (dir. Elegance Bratton, "about a twenty-five-year-old Black and gay man who, to escape homelessness, joins the Marines and endures persecution in basic training")

20. Couples (dir. Frederick Wiseman, documentary about Sophia Tolstoy)

21. Master (dir. Mariama Diallo, " hidden racist background of a small New England liberal-arts college")

22. The Tsugua Diaries (dir. Maureen Fazendeiro and Miguel Gomes, "about a movie cast and crew working under the stress of their pandemic bubble in rural Portugal")

23. Beba (dir. Rebeca Huntt, documentary about herself and her family)

24. Clytaemnestra (dir. Ougie Pak, "a South Korean theatre company rehearsing a production of “Agamemnon” in a rented house in Greece, is centered on a young actress who endures emotional abuse from a charismatic male director")

25. RRR (dir. S. S. Rajamouli; I've posted on this one as well as Nope)

26. Introduction (dir. Hong Songsoo, his 3rd 2022 feature, "about a young South Korean man who follows his girlfriend to Germany")

27. A New Old Play (dir. Qiu Jiongjiong, "members of a Chinese theatre troupe, from the nineteen-twenties and the Second World War to the Cultural Revolution—and even into the afterlife")

28. Eo (dir Jerzy Skolimowski, remake of Robert Bresson's Au hasard Balthazar, in this case the donkey travels through Poland & Italy)

29. Descendant (dir. Margaret Brown, documentary about "the discovery, in Mobile, Alabama, of the submerged wreckage of the last-known ship that brought captive Africans to the United States, in 1860")

30. Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (feature length expansion of an animated web series created by & starring Jenny Slate & Dean Fleischer Camp)

Manoha Dargis & A.O. Scott. NYT, 12/06/2022: Best Movies of 2022.

Manhola Dargis:

1. ‘EO’ (Jerzy Skolimowski)
2. ‘Petite Maman’ (Céline Sciamma) (currently streaming on Hulu)
3. ‘Nope’ (Jordan Peele)
4. ‘No Bears’ (Jafar Panahi)
5. ‘Kimi’ (Steven Soderbergh) (streaming on HBOMax)
6. ‘The Eternal Daughter’ (Joanna Hogg)
7. ‘Happening’ (Audrey Diwan) (based on a memoir by recent Nobel Prize winner Annie Ernaux)
8. ‘Decision to Leave’ (Park Chan-wook) (apparently a cinematic argument with Hitchcock's Vertigo)
9. ‘Expedition Content’ (Ernst Karel and Veronika Kusumaryati) ("This documentary made for the weirdest moviegoing experience I had this year, partly because for most of its 78 minutes all it shows is a black screen. ... the relative absence of imagery forces your attention on the soundtrack, which consists of audio recorded during the making of “Dead Birds” (1964), an ethnographic classic about the Dani people of New Guinea")
10. ‘All the Beauty and the Bloodshed’ (Laura Poitras) (documentary about photographer Nan Goldin)

Dargis also liked: “Armageddon Time”; “The Cathedral”; “Corsage; “Descendant”; “Dos Estaciones”; “Funny Pages”; “Futura”; “Great Freedom”; “Hold Your Fire”; “I Didn’t See You There”; “Intregalde”; “Lingui, The Sacred Bonds”; “Louis Armstrong’s Black & Blues”; “Nanny”; “Playground”; “Pleasure”; “Return to Seoul”; “Riotsville, U.S.A.”; “Three Minutes: A Lengthening”; “The Tsugua Diaries”; “Till”; “The Woman King”; and “The Worst Person in the World.”

A.O. Scott

1. ‘Nope’ (Jordan Peele)
2. ‘Neptune Frost’ (Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman) (not sure what Scott is describing, but he seems to like it: "A hundred years from now, if the planet survives, this will be counted among the classics of our sorry time, taught in schools and quoted in speeches." Might still be on the Criterion Channel; will take a look)
3. ‘Mr. Bachmann and His Class’ (Maria Speth) (documentary; "portrait of a German educator approaching retirement," streaming on Mubi)
4. ‘Aftersun’ (Charlotte Wells) ("A father (Paul Mescal) and his 11-year-old daughter, Sophie (Frankie Corio), take a vacation on the Turkish coast, a trip filtered through Sophie’s adult memory")
5. ‘No Bears’ (Jafar Panahi)
6. ‘Tár’ (Todd Field) (Cate Blanchett as a female Karajan)
7. ‘Lost Illusions’ (Xavier Giannoli) (sounds like a film version of the Balzac novel)
8. ‘Flux Gourmet’ (Peter Strickland) ("a fantastical tale about food, passion, flatulence and funny hats")
9. ‘All the Beauty and the Bloodshed’ (Laura Poitras)
10. ‘Down With the King’ (Diego Ongaro) (I thought this was a hiphop video, but it seems it's a a film about a rapper emulating Henry David Thoreau)

A.O. Scott also liked: “A Chiara” (Jonas Carpignano); “All That Breathes” (Shaunak Sen); “Armageddon Time” (James Gray); “Corsage” (Marie Kreutzer); “Descendant” (Margaret Brown); “Donbas” (Sergei Loznitsa); “Dos Estaciones” (Juan Pablo González); “Everything Everywhere All at Once” (Daniels); “The Fabelmans” (Steven Spielberg); “Fire on the Mountains” (Ajitpal Singh); “Futura” (Pietro Marcello, Francesco Munzi and Alice Rohrwacher); “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” (Rian Johnson); “Happening” (Audrey Diwan); “The Inspection” (Elegance Bratton); “Lingui, the Sacred Bonds” (Mahamat-Saleh Haroun); “Marx Can Wait” (Marco Bellocchio); “Pleasure” (Ninja Thyberg); “The Woman King” (Gina Prince-Bythewood); “Women Talking” (Sarah Polley); “X” (Ti West).

With regard to >2 featherbear:, Manohla Dargis & A.O. Scott want a word: NYT, 12/07/2022: Is Sight and Sound’s List of 100 Greatest Films Too Tasteful?.

Sight & Sound compiles the top tens of film critics & historians, so here are the NYT critics on their besties:

Manhola Dargis (who contributed to the S&S poll). "my current 10 beloveds in order: “Au Hasard Balthazar” (Robert Bresson), “The Godfather” (Francis Ford Coppola), “Jeanne Dielman,” “Flowers of Shanghai” (Hou Hsiao-Hsien), “The Gleaners and I” (Varda), “Tokyo Story,” “Killer of Sheep,” “Little Stabs at Happiness” (Ken Jacobs), “There Will Be Blood” (Paul Thomas Anderson) and “Shoes” (Lois Weber)"

A.O. Scott (they didn't ask me but ...) "Here’s a list I might have submitted, in chronological order: “The Gold Rush” (Charlie Chaplin); “La Terra Trema” (Luchino Visconti); “What’s Opera, Doc?” (Chuck Jones); “Big Deal on Madonna Street” (Mario Monicelli); “La Dolce Vita” (Federico Fellini); “Cléo From 5 to 7” (Varda); “Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One” (William Greaves); “Do the Right Thing” (Spike Lee); “Paris Is Burning” (Jennie Livingston); “Happy as Lazzaro” (Alice Rohrwacher)."

A more upbeat take: Richard Brody. New Yorker, 12/06/2022: The Sight and Sound “Greatest Films” Poll Presents a Bolder Vision of World Cinema.

How Brody voted:
“King Lear” (1988, Jean-Luc Godard)

“Shoah” (1985, Claude Lanzmann)

“The Last Laugh” (1924, F. W. Murnau)

“The Gold Rush” (1925, Charlie Chaplin)

“The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum” (1939, Kenji Mizoguchi)

“Citizen Kane” (1941, Orson Welles)

“Playtime” (1967, Jacques Tati)

“Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles” (1975, Chantal Akerman)

“Faces” (1968, John Cassavetes)

“Daughters of the Dust” (1991, Julie Dash)

I should add that per AP, the National Board of Review named Top Gun Maverick: Maverick the best film of the year; I'll check it out when Criterion Channel streams it.

Downloaded a couple of these as potential wallpaper for my computer -- the Jack Nicholson shot poring over a scrapbook is a favorite.* The Shining would certainly be in my top 100!

Guardian, 12/09/2022: ‘The police came because of the sea of red gore’: unseen photos from the set of The Shining.

*"Me scrolling through Twitter"

An alternate to >5 featherbear: NYT best performances, a list from the New Yorker that combines movies & TV; unless otherwise indicated, I'm assuming the performance was for a movie).

Michael Schulman. New Yorker, 12/09/2022: The Best Performances of 2022.

Amanda Seyfried for The Dropout (Hulu series, where she plays Elizabeth Holmes, as in Theranos & 11 years sentence in prison)

Michelle Yeoh for Everything Everywhere All at Once

Jerrod Carmichael for Rothaniel (HBO standup directed by Bo Burnham)

The Cast of Severance on Apple TV+

Cate Blanchett for Tár

Dolly de Leon for Triangle of Sadness as "Abigail, the euphemistically titled “toilet manager” on a luxury yacht"

Paul Mescal for Aftersun

Megan Stalter for Hacks (HBO series)

Jenny Slate for Marcel the Shell with Shoes On a film from the A24 distribution company; based on YouTube shorts

Nathan Fielder for The Rehearsal (the HBO series I found fascinating)

Apparently 2022 was a bad year for movies. Both articles paywalled unfortunately (I subscribe to both so I'll take a look when I want to feel depressed):

Angelica Jade Bastién, Bilge Ebiri, and Alison Willmore. Vulture, 12/09/2022: Did We Want Too Much From Movies in 2022?

Brooks Barnes. NYT, 12/09/2022: Highbrow Films Aimed at Winning Oscars Are Losing Audiences.

James Wham. The Baffler, 12/12/2022: Shortsighted: Sight and Sound’s exercise in consumer criticism.

Top bad Santas list seems to be missing Fatman though the Billy Bob Thornton one is there. Gotta look into the new one with David Harbour, best known as the good sheriff in Stranger Things.

Alison Stine. Salon, 12/13/2022: A ranking of bad Santas, from naughty to vice.

Nicholas Barber & Caryn James. BBC Culture, 12/16/2022: The 20 best films of 2022.

Vulture has a list of best 3+ hr long movies. Based on the comments, the list has been up for 4 years, but gets updated, as it was this month. I get Vulture via my New York digital subscription, but I'm assuming it's paywalled. Have a favorite(s)?

The comments section had quite a few interesting adds. The Vulture list left off Yi Yi and A Brighter Summer's Day both by the late Edward Yang, and the popular Dr. Zhivago but (instead) had Avengers: End Game (I've seen it, but w/out an emotional investment in any of the characters, or the Marvel Universe as such, hard to see high value).

On the list is Barry Lyndon, to my recollection the best Stanley Kubrick after The Shining; not sure I've ever been able to sit all the way through 2001: a space odyssey (2 1/2) or Spartacus (3 hr 17 min) (the latter is on the Vulture list). I learned that Fanny and Alexander uncut is over 5 hours; the version I liked was abridged at ca. 3 hr. Nor did I know that the Criterion Collection's DVD of It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World is as long as Spartacus. The list reminded me that I haven't seen Shoah (9 hr) -- nor did I know it was that long -- though I did see The Sorrow and the Pity years ago (I'm sure it was much shorter than Shoah). Schindler's List is also on the Vulture list.

Comments on missing titles from Vulture readers reminded me that I haven't seen The Irishman or the Russian War and Peace (ca. 9 hr) which may be on YouTube (but I want to finish reading the recent translation of the book first). The list went from shortest to longest; #1 was Jacques Rivette's Out 1 clocking in at 12 hr 53 min. A recent addition was the James Cameron Avatar sequel, which I hope to catch at the downtown movie house for a holiday treat. Since my cataract surgery, won't need to wear the 3D specs over my own glasses!

Nate Jones et al. Vulture, 12/16/2022: The 36 Best Movies Over 3 Hours Long.

Megan Garber, Sophie Gilbert, Shirley Li. The Atlantic, 12/21/2022: The 15 Best TV Shows of 2022.

The Guardian, 12/23/2022: The 50 best movies of 2022 in the US – 50 to 1.

>19 featherbear: The only TV shows I have seen are Abbott Elementary which I really enjoyed and I once watched a season of Yellowstone since I got it on DVD.

>19 featherbear: I haven't seen any of those movies but several are on my to be seen list.

>20 JulieLill: Of the items listed, I've seen The Rehearsal, The White Lotus (Season 2, which is the one the article references), & Somebody, Somewhere. I didn't see what all the fuss was about regarding White Lotus, which generated much discussion on social media, but I did like & would re-watch The Rehearsal & Somebody Somewhere.

I've been meaning to resume watching Irma Vep. I've rewatched 2 episodes but holding off until I finish the Feuillade Les Vampires (I'm on episode 9 of 10) on the Criterion Channel, since CC is dropping it at the end of the month, unfortunately. The HBOMax series is about a remake of Vampires that has scenes from the fictitious remake & from the original 1916 production, and seeing the original silent film has enhanced my appreciation of the HBO series.

I believe earlier episodes of Yellowstone are still available on the Peacock streaming service, which is part of my cable package; I've been meaning to take a look but there's a lot of it. I'll try to catch up on Abbott Elementary via HBOMax time permitting.