Directors What's the last movie that really grabbed you? (1 Viewer)

I watch quite a few movies - most of them good or great - but not many reach out and really grab me. You know, the kind of film you want to recommend to your friends as something special, something that makes it all worthwhile...

Sin City aside - I knew it was gonna be cool - here's mine:


Noi the Albino


Of Freaks and Men

Anthony Mann's Raw Deal (1948) would be the most recent.

One I mentioned in the film-tracking thread, The Makioka Sisters. Not on DVD yet, as far as I know. Enjoyable to see something that great where you hadn't even heard of it before you got the chance to see it, probably a relatively uncommon occurrence for us film-freaks.

Walter, it's teriffic, your friend is right! The print I saw had the Janus Films logo at the beginning, which I guess means that it might be a Criterion property for DVD. This is all pure speculation on my part, but perhaps it'll work out for a DVD release, as a quick Google search just turned up the fact that it played at the New York MOMA a few years ago in an Ichikawa retrospective, and it was advertised there as a new 35-mm print. The AFI Silver theater, where I saw it, always says if they're showing a new print--they didn't with this one, but it looked very nice, so I assume it was probably one of the prints struck at the time of that NY retrospective. So perhaps a Criterion might be in the pipeline at some point. But, in the meantime, as great as it is, don't pay $250 for it.

Vera Drake, a movie I thought that worked on every level--plenty of sentiment while not being sentimental.

Red Lights - outstanding recent French film that begins as a story about a marriage with deep problems, morphs into a suspenseful thriller, and then changes yet again into something altogether unexpected. Excellent performance by the lead actor and terrific editing, including a fade to black that had me picking my jaw up off the floor.

I'm still in a rut or down period. Other than some of the recent Criterions like the Suzuki's, Dassin's, and Beckers, I just haven't seen much in the last few months that has really excited me and I haven't really felt like talking/writing a whole lot.

That one sounds good, Brook, I didn't hear about it at all last year. I'll add it to my Netflix queue.

Red Lights was reviewed twice in the 2004 Alternative Thread. Check the index for specific links. Widely divergent views, too.

The movie I've seen mostly recently that grabbed me was Kontroll.

M.

Red Lights sounds good - I'll check it out.

I've heard of The Makioka Sisters. Ain't seen it yet.

Two others I forgot to mention: Takeshi Kitano's Dolls, and the Douglas Fairbanks adventure The Gaucho (the latter is a lot of fun). The Gaucho DVD features the comedy short The Mystery of the Leaping Fish in which Fairbanks, as the hero, gets hopped up on opium before trouncing the bad guys! Really bizarre...

I'll also recommend the DVD Mad Love: Three Films by Evgenii Bauer. These three shorts, all made before 1920, are notable for their technical excellence, including sophisticated lighting, camera movement and deep-focus photography (!). Evgenii died in 1917; had he lived he surely would have been regarded as one of the greats of Soviet cinema. These are must-see films for buffs.

All the more reason to read the Alternative thread, an oversight that I've corrected this year by reading along and contributing.

Hope you enjoy it Haggai.

I just added Mad Love to my Netflix list to a planned short series of Russian silents I hadn't seen at #28. Of course given my current slow progress it will probably be June or July before I get to 'em.

I bought the R3 DVD of Dolls last year and agree that it is excellent, but then, Kitano is one of my favorite current directors. I highly, highly recommend his A Scene At The Sea, one of my all-time favorite romantic films, though all the available DVD versions suck, so better to rent it 1st.

i had never seen "on the waterfront", so i got it from netflix recently, and i was very impressed with it.

CJ

"The Ring"... the girl came out of my TV and grabbed me...

In recent months:

Fox and His Friends
Even Dwarfs Started Small
A Swedish Love Story
Late Spring

And special mention goes to Cremaster 3 which not only grabbed me, but violently assaulted me and left me bruised!!

I recently saw "Brazil" for the first time, thanks to Starz Cinema airing the letterboxed director's cut. Excellent film!

Million Dollar Baby was the last film to grab me. I hope to catch it one more time before it leaves theaters.

Million Dollar Baby

I would say "Nobody Knows (Dare mo Shiranai)". I don’t generally enjoy films revolving around children, but it's impossible not to get drawn into the fate of these children. I still marvel at how Koreeda was able to blend in little touches of childhood joy while building a palpable sense of dread and never stooping to manipulative tear-jerking.

I just watched Fight Club on friday. I never heard of it before then, and really enjoyed it.