What is the Last Film that got you Excited about the Medium of Film?

[dreamdead]

So we're in the typically blase months of film releases, where, save for an occasional Wes Anderson or David Gordon Green popping up at some of the more independent-minded theatres, will feature less fascinating film choices. So I pose this question--what's the last film that you saw that got you truly excited about the medium and possibilities for film?

This is meant to be more than a "best film you've seen," in that not all great films that we see actively get us excited about the formal and cultural dimensions of filmmaking. So what is your pick for a film that just impressed itself on your thoughts or intellect, getting you to continue thinking on it and deliberating about its content?

[Qrazy]

Act of Killing

[Winston*]

Act of Killing

That and Leviathan were the two films I saw last year, where I felt I hadn't seen anything like it.

[Boner M]

Leviathan, The Strange Little Cat, Trouble With the Curve.

[EyesWideOpen]

The Spirit

[Watashi]

Honestly, probably The Avengers. Not so much on the intellect side, but it's gotten me excited that in this day and age, film can feature a continuous plotline through multiple films with (almost) the same actors building and expanding its mythology without ever feeling dry.

[baby doll]

So we're in the typically blase months of film releases, where, save for an occasional Wes Anderson or David Gordon Green popping up at some of the more independent-minded theatres, will feature less fascinating film choices.You make it sound like awards season is this really exciting time for movies. Maybe I'm just a grinch, but personally the whole thing makes me want to put a bullet in my head. It's not that the films are terrible (I rather liked Nebraska), but reading reviewers' ten best lists is a bit like getting travel advice from someone who's never left the States. Sure, New York's great, but how about Lisbon or Istanbul? So when I read an article by someone defending writing about the Oscars by saying that it's the only way to get Joe Public excited about works of quality, it's like they're saying people like me, who are curious, might as well not exist.

[Winston*]

What great films from Lisbon and Istanbul from the last year should we all be checking out, baby doll?

[Boner M]

You'll have to wait til Oscar season to find out, when Portugal and Turkey submit their horses in the race.

[Qrazy]

This is what I imagine Baby Doll's life must be like.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rh3QY9HpZV8

[Qrazy]

Also, I have to imagine there's some drunk astronaut sitting at a bar somewhere condescending to all those who think they're well travelled. Ohhh so you've been to a few places ON the earth? How nice for you.

[baby doll]

What great films from Lisbon and Istanbul from the last year should we all be checking out, baby doll?I didn't go to any festivals last year, but I did catch up with some pretty solid Turkish movies from 2012 on DVD: Beyond the Hill, Voice of My Father, Yeralti. (Araf was a disappointment, especially considering that it was selected for the New York Film Festival.)

[Russ]

Will everyone point fingers and laugh at me for saying Domino?

It seems to be a massively dividing film.

[dreamdead]

You make it sound like awards season is this really exciting time for movies. Maybe I'm just a grinch, but personally the whole thing makes me want to put a bullet in my head.

Not my intention. Here in Oklahoma we got Stories We Tell and Upstream Color last year in April, and those films ended up being magisterial experiences. The independent theater in Tulsa gets documentaries and American independent releases but shortchanges the international releases, sadly. As a result, if I want to see something better than 3 Days to Kill or a 300 sequel, it's a 45-minute drive. Still, there's no guarantee that I'll see new Jia Zhangke or Bong Joon-ho in the theater here.

To respond to my own question, I did a rewatch of Jia's The World for a class I'm teaching it in. It is so rich in content, so varied in form (dance sequences, animated sequences, stasiscore), and so integrated in engagement with Chinese society that I'm continuously impressed with how disparate responses to the film can be.

[MadMan]

Honestly I don't know.

[Skitch]

This


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0Ib9SwC7EI

[Ivan Drago]

The Tree of Life and Akira.

And it hasn't came out yet, but Under The Skin has me excited in this way, too.

[MadMan]

Under the Skin looks great and creepy.

[Milky Joe]

Newer:
Upstream Color

Older:
The Visitor

[Izzy Black]

The past two years in cinema alone has had me very excited about the medium of film. I think 2012 and 2013 in particular are two of the strongest years of the 21st Century for cinema. 2012 gave me Holy Motors and Post Tenebras Lux, two of the most visually striking and formally interesting films of the past decade. I'd also say Chantal Akerman's Almayer's Folly, Ursula Meier's Sister, Sarah Polley's Stories We Tell, and Joshua Oppenheimer and Christine Cynn's The Act of Killing have all made me very excited about the medium of film. That's just 2012 alone.

In 2013, Gravity, Upstream Color, Spring Breakers, The Grandmaster, and Computer Chess have made me rather excited about the medium, and that's mostly just talking America cinema! (Interestingly, no American films made my top ten of 2012). Perhaps most standout of last year, however, are Claire Denis' Bastards and James Gray's The Immigrant. I just saw The Immigrant this month. I also just saw the film Viola this month by Argentinian filmmaker MatÃ*as Piñeiro, which was formally innovative and quite striking in ways I don't think I've seen, even with all the impressive films released this year. So, honestly, I think this month of recent film festival releases has been as good as any. 2014 is still kicking off, but Nymphomaniac Vol. 1 has already been a promising start to the year in terms of film's with compelling technique.

In short, it's been a great time to be a cinephilie these past couple of years, and even these past few months in particular. I'm very excited about cinema these days. I still haven't seen Norte, the End of History or A Touch of Sin, either. I hope to see the latter in a few days, however.

[Qrazy]

He said film. Singular Izzy, come on. ^_^

[Izzy Black]

:cry:

[Qrazy]

:cry:

:pritch:

[Izzy Black]

:)

[Boner M]

What was it about Sister made you excited about the medium, Izzy? It's a lovely, humane film, but doesn't stand out amidst other films of its ilk to me.

[max314]

Early last year, Asghar Farhadi's A Separation hit the reset button on my then-stagnating relationship with film. Rocked my world. Reignited my love. Opened my eyes.

[Izzy Black]

What was it about Sister made you excited about the medium, Izzy? It's a lovely, humane film, but doesn't stand out amidst other films of its ilk to me.

Here's what I wrote elsewhere:


Ursula Meier's touching film Sister beautifully explores the relationship between a boy and his sister within the larger context of the socially stratified environment of a ski resort in the Swiss mountains. This is captured with stunning images from Claire Denis' cinematographer Agnes Goddard as the constant comings and goings of cable carts, people, and seasons against a static terrain creates a situation of pervasive anonymity, a restless, shifting sense of detachment, tentativeness and constant uncertainty. This only exacerbates the emotional tension between Simon and Louise. The film is as honest and complex in its depiction of the family dynamics of sibling affection and conflict as it is its sense of their relationship to the world around them. The environment informs the narrative so heavily in this film that the sense of isolation and separation between two worlds isn't merely symbolic, but a literal effect on the emotional condition and state of its characters. This takes a page from Antonioni and Tarr and positions the film away from a merely expressionistic cinema that uses the environment to tell stories. In Meier's film, the environment is, in part, the story itself, reflecting the desire to combine a robust realism with the cinematic poetry of Goddard's striking images and Meier's immaculate control of temporal rhythm, space, and symmetry. The angular postpunk rhythms of the excellent score also helps to evoke their icy, anxious isolation and the wiry terrain of the resort. It's quite fascinating to get a glimpse of a ski resort as a transitional place that isn't merely a vacation for the rich, but a place of employment that separates the rich from the poor. The last 10 minutes of this film is simply masterful. We see rather haunting images of what the resort looks like after its closed for the season, stripped of its white paradise dream for the upper class and revealed to be the muddy, lonely, desolate landscape left to those that live there year around, physically and emotionally separated from human contact by time and space. Perhaps most powerful is the film's presentation of Simon's complex feelings in reaction to this apparently bleak reality - contrasting the alienating feeling of intense, debilitating isolation with the totally liberating feeling of an overwhelming sense of autonomy and freedom, bringing out the perseverance and resolve of Simon's pragmatism, but also his ambition and wonder, expressed in his capacity, or desire, to reinterpret his situation and overcome his circumstances by any means necessary.

[Izzy Black]

What was it about Sister made you excited about the medium, Izzy? It's a lovely, humane film, but doesn't stand out amidst other films of its ilk to me.

Here's what I wrote elsewhere:


Ursula Meier's touching film Sister beautifully explores the relationship between a boy and his sister within the larger context of the socially stratified environment of a ski resort in the Swiss mountains. This is captured with stunning images from Claire Denis' cinematographer Agnes Goddard as the constant comings and goings of cable carts, people, and seasons against a static terrain creates a situation of pervasive anonymity, a restless, shifting sense of detachment, tentativeness and constant uncertainty. This only exacerbates the emotional tension between Simon and Louise. The film is as honest and complex in its depiction of the family dynamics of sibling affection and conflict as it is its sense of their relationship to the world around them. The environment informs the narrative so heavily in this film that the sense of isolation and separation between two worlds isn't merely symbolic, but a literal effect on the emotional condition and state of its characters. This takes a page from Antonioni and Tarr and positions the film away from a merely expressionistic cinema that uses the environment to tell stories. In Meier's film, the environment is, in part, the story itself, reflecting the desire to combine a robust realism with the cinematic poetry of Goddard's striking images and Meier's immaculate control of temporal rhythm, space, and symmetry. The angular postpunk rhythms of the excellent score also helps to evoke their icy, anxious isolation and the wiry terrain of the resort. It's quite fascinating to get a glimpse of a ski resort as a transitional place that isn't merely a vacation for the rich, but a place of employment that separates the rich from the poor. The last 10 minutes of this film is simply masterful. We see rather haunting images of what the resort looks like after its closed for the season, stripped of its white paradise dream for the upper class and revealed to be the muddy, lonely, desolate landscape left to those that live there year around, physically and emotionally separated from human contact by time and space. Perhaps most powerful is the film's presentation of Simon's complex feelings in reaction to this apparently bleak reality - contrasting the alienating feeling of intense, debilitating isolation with the totally liberating feeling of an overwhelming sense of autonomy and freedom, bringing out the perseverance and resolve of Simon's pragmatism, but also his ambition and wonder, expressed in his capacity, or desire, to reinterpret his situation and overcome his circumstances by any means necessary.

[D_Davis]

Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame

[Skitch]

Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame

Good pick!

[D_Davis]

It has that energy and bizarre atmosphere that I love about HK flicks from '90s, and that is lacking from a lot of more contemporary HK flicks. It's fun, creative, and just a weird movie. I mean...that talking deer, WTF?

[quido8_5]

I'm so glad this thread was created. Over the last year I had somewhat of an existential crisis about film because I hadn't watched anything that really affected me or seemed substantial for a long time. Over the last few months, though, I've seen or revisited a gaggle of films that expanded my definition of the medium and had my heart pounding (either because of the film's pathos, craft or both).

In order that I've watched them:

There Will Be Blood . Re-watched this last night and was just awe-struck. Third time seeing it and each time it's blown me away.
Wolf of Wall Street
Enter the Void
Let the Fire Burn
Upstream Color
The Act of Killing . This and Leviathan seem to be a common thread that I've noticed. I so wish that I could see the later, about as much as I wish I could watch the former for the first time again. It's been a while since I saw a film as intellectually challenging and emotionally wrenching.


And, maybe, Inside Llewyn Davis. I'll also throw out Computer Chess as a film that did something unique in a surprisingly successful way. I don't think that film should work, but it somehow does. It's just so damn earnest in it's thesis- stylistically, substantively, philosophically. I need to rewatch both that and Under the Skin before I come down with a solid opinion.