Sight and Sound (2002) Greatest Films Club - Page 95

Adam_S · 10-28-2005, 12:44 PM

Updated the list to include all the 344 films I know of that recieved two votes or more in the S&S 2002 poll

Seth Paxton · 10-30-2005, 10:06 AM

Pyaasa and Kaagaz Ke Phool
I was impressed with both of these Dutt films, but I preferred Kaagaz Ke Phool. Not just the songs (which are great in that film - the counting song was my fave) but the directorial style and story. The only mild fault is the melodramatic oppression/martyrdom in both films which I assume is partially a cultural thing. At some points you just want characters to take advantage of the opportunities in front of them to solve their own problems.

This puts me at 233 seen, 111 to go.

I just haven't been able to get excited about putting Puppetmaster in, and in the meantime I went through both Lost and Arrested Dvlp. Sea. 2, plus some Halloween pix and more recent releases.

george kaplan · 10-30-2005, 11:04 AM

The Gospel According to St. Matthew

This is an interesting, but ultimately flawed film. It has some interesting visuals, but there are just too many things that don't work.

First of all, in Genesis, there's a lot of A begetting B. But I'm pretty sure in Matthew, there's not a lot of A staring at B. But to watch this film, you'd think that every other line of the Gospel was "Zebedee stared at Andrew and James, Andrew stared at Zebedee and James, and James stared at Zebedee and Andrew."

But my biggest problem with this film is the portrayal of Jesus. I realize this is supposed to be a "liberal" take on Jesus, but it strikes me as a very "conservative" take. Sure, Jesus says to turn the other cheek, but he says it with such anger that you'd almost think he was being sarcastic. This is Jesus as old testament vengeful God, not the loving, forgiving Jesus that I read into those words when I read the bible.

Ordet's portrayal of "Jesus" is much more in line with my views, and I just can't watch Gospel According to St. Matthew without constantly thinking "but that's not how Jesus was", which pretty much ruins the movie for me.

224 down
129 left

Dome Vongvises · 11-18-2005, 12:31 AM

Pather Panchail

Score: A

I liked this. Nice score by Ravi Shanker.....I mean Shankar. It's amazing that in spite of cultural differences, we can find similarities in the tones and melodies of music when conveying the emotional weight of a scene. I'm looking foward to the second film.

Brook K · 11-18-2005, 01:18 PM

The score was definitely my favorite part. I found the film a bit disappointing overall, though I should really watch it again one of these days.

I'm spinning my wheels on the Challenge. Pickpocket is at the top of my list but has been out of stock. I could go ahead and rent Ashes and Diamonds but I've been putting it off for some reason. Still have Godfather III sitting forlornly on my shelf, unwatched. La Bete Humaine in a few months from Criterion. That's about it. I'm wondering if I'll even be able to break 300 next year?

Thi Them · 11-18-2005, 07:19 PM

I was also disappointed by Pather Panchail, enough that I haven't seen the second or third films after more than a year of having seen it. I have all three in my Netflix queue, but they are near the bottom.

Ashes and Diamonds is one of my favorites that I discovered from the S&S list.

~T

Brook K · 11-28-2005, 04:09 PM

#286 Masculin féminin (1966)

Jean-Pierre Léaud stars as Paul, an idealistic teenage intellectual hoping for a relationship with pop star Madeleine (Chantal Goya, a singer who had a hit on the French charts at the time of filming). Jean-Luc Godard's incisive portrait of 1966 France beat today's critics of consumerism and sex culture to the punch 30 years ago. Its teens are poised on the brink of a sexual revolution that will irrevocably change the male-female dynamic and culturally on the brink of a consumer revolution that will overwhelm political idealism.

Godard may portray a bit too much of his own cynicism and wounded viewpoint, what with the boys talking strikes and spraypainting political slogans while the girls are into shopping and pop music, but as with many of his 60's films, it displays a comic touch and sensitive emotional quality that is too rarely recognized today. Jean-Pierre Leaud's rush to the projection booth to explain that the film they are watching is being shown in the wrong aspect ratio would warm the cockle's of any HTF'ers heart. While the pop music sung by Madeline lends an airy optimism not present in the underlying narrative. An optimism that will be shattered in May '68 when Coca-Cola dealt a knockout blow to Marx. A-

george kaplan · 01-05-2006, 10:56 PM

I've been thinking about this, and I've decided to dramatically modify my participation in this. I always thought, as did others I think, that this was the official Sight & Sound list, and I guess it is in a way, but not in the sense that I had thought. They list their top 10 lists (one for directors and one for critics), and of course, I've seen all those, and then they extend both those lists, but only down to ones that got at least 4 votes.

Now, you can find on their website the list (or one very close to it), of all the movies that garnered even 1 vote. But given how utterly ridiculous some of those one-offs are, I can't really justify spending more time trying to see those. The ones on the major list, those are obviously of some agreement important films, but too many of the others are just pet films by one critic or another. And while some of those may also be truly important films, if so, I believe they'll also show up on one of the other top 100 or top 1000 lists I'm looking at.

So, for me at least, I'm redefining my list to the following that I haven't seen:

The Story of the Late Chrysanthemums (Mizoguchi)
Letter from an Unknown Woman (Ophuls)
Pierrot le fou (Godard)
Sansho Dayu (Mizoguchi)
Shoah (Lanzmann)
The Travelling Players (Angelopoulos)
Two or Three Things I Know about Her (Godard)
Persona (Bergman)
Pickpocket (Bresson)

so for me, I now view it as 9 to go, and once that's done, I'm not going to worry about not getting to some obscure films like When it Rains.