ScarletLion's Top 25 films

Not much more can be written about this film that hasn't already, but I'll try. Hitchcock didn't invent any new genres but he sure came close. ‘North by Northwest’ gave a ready made template to the James Bond style action flick, and ‘Vertigo’ pushed the psychological drama genre yet further on. Jimmy Stewart intoxicated by the beautiful Kim Novak is something I can watch at any time. And it’s a film that has this mysterious eerie quality to it. The inspiration/homage that Vertigo oozes can still be seen today in films like ‘Long Day’s Journey into Night’ (Bi Gan) and ‘Suzhou River’ (Lou Ye) - both interms of style / colour scheme and in terms of the duality of a character (leading lady).

This is a great article on how Vertigo shaped the career of David Lynch:


https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/davi...tigo-influence


With stunning colours, outfits, and San Francisco almost playing a character itself, it’s a film that goes up and down my best of all time list. Sometimes it’s in my top 20, sometimes not. But it’s always close.



.................................................................................................... ......................................................................................


‘Woman in the Dunes’ is a masterpiece of cinema. The cinematography is amongst the most alluring and inventive of the 60s and it’s subject isn’t a million miles away from Hitchcock’s Vertigo. The tagline reads:

“An entomologist on vacation is trapped by local villagers into living with a woman whose life task is shovelling sand for them.”

This is what I had to say about it when I watched it for the first time a few years back:

I’m not entirely sure that is accurate but it’s a film that stays long in the memory

Vertigo is my favorite so far. I don't think it was in my last top 100 but it was close and has been in previous versions.

No. 19: ‘Raging Bull' (1980)

Directed by Martin Scorsese

For years I had considered Scorsese’s best films as Goodfellas, Casino etc. Then I was compelled to rewatch Raging Bull again. Whilst watching it, I was struck by how sincere and jaw dropping the performances are. This is de Niro’s best performance, nothing he has done comes close. Likewise Joe Pesci. I don’t normally go for biopic type films as they leave little room for true film-making creativity, but this is an exception because it’s an exceptional film. Scorsese’s best.

No. 18: ‘Nosferatu’ (1922)

Directed by F.W. Murnau

I didn’t have much to say about this film on first watch:

But it hasn’t left me since I watched it, and really has some striking visuals for a 101 year old film. It's creepy, bizarre and captivating. I can only imagine how audiences reacted all those years ago. In 1924, the German studio behind the film agreed to destroy all copies of Nosferatu, as part of a copyright infringement case pursued by Florence Balcombe, the widow of the Dracula author Bram Stoker. Murnau had changed the character's names to try and avoid a lawsuit, but it failed and he was sued. Fortunately, some copies in other countries still survived.

I haven’t seen Herzog’s remake yet but will be interesting to compare. The original is a true landmark in horror film.

Seeing Woman in the Dunes for the first time really had me excited - and it stormed into the upper ranks of my "best ever" rankings. I've been curious about Hiroshi Teshigahara's career ever since.

__________________

Without a doubt one of the greatest European films ever made. I was stunned when I forst watched it a few years back and had this to say:

A masterpiece.


Every scene in this film is perfect. Every cast member is perfect. The ending is perfect. It's probably a 10 out of 10 film and could be way higher. It was the film that got me interesed in film. Before I watched this as a youngster I'd wondered why people watched old movies when there were new more colourful films to watch. Such naivety.

It remains on of the finest classic films ever made.

The greatest film ever made IMO, though I appreciate your high praise for it nevertheless.
Basically what makes a film a masterpiece.
Yeah, this scene is so powerful it actually turned me into a cinephile overnight. I started watching other art movies because I wanted to find something that will make me feel just like that scene. I never found anything exactly like it. But on my journey, I found thousands of other amazing movies. You know what they say, it's not about the destination, it's about the journey.
I do agree with the latter part but would you mind elaborating on what you mean by Tarkovsky-like values? Do you mean the general idea of sculpting in time? It's quite ambiguous and general these days, as people are happy to jump at any slow-moving film and call it Tarkovskian. But it's not as simple as that, I think. I think that there's a sort of philosophical and spiritual unity in Tarkovsky's movies that was rarely ever recreated. And, in all honesty, you can't really do that if you don't want to be called a Tarkovsky rip-off. Zvyagintsev's The Banishment is the closest to a Tarkovsky film anybody's ever got, and I call that film a Tarkovsky rip-off myself, even though I love it! Tarr, on the other hand, appears much more nihilistic than Tarkovsky. I think his idea of the world is that it's full of pain and suffering AND that there's nothing like God to redeem it. He still isn't 100% without hope, though because, as he said himself, if he was, he wouldn't be making films. Sure, he no longer is, but I think that's because he's pissed about the filmmaking principles of these days, about money, and all that jazz.
Yeah, there are many interpretations of Harmonies, but I think that, just like with Tarkovsky, Tarr never uses symbols. The basic idea is that a symbol means a particular thing. Once decrypted, it loses its power, as in "x" means poverty, "y" means "the main character", so "x*y" means the character's poverty. Done. I think that in that way filling your film with symbols is a pretty bad way of filmmaking.
I love how pragmatic Tarr is about the meaning of particular scenes. The interviewer asked him why the crowd stops after seeing the naked old man. Tarr's answer was that it was because there was a wall behind the old man, so they had nowhere else to go and had to return.
Well, the question here is: "Is it really out of tune?" or are other temperaments out of tune? The idea of the eponymous Werckmeister Harmonies is to have an equal temperament by making sure the intervals between all notes are just. I think Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier uses that idea, too. I'm not sure if it uses Werckmeister's mathematical temperament or some other equal temperament, though. And yes, it's quite ambiguous and unclear what the meaning of the Harmonies is in the context of the film. But it's hard to think about all that when you have these incredible images coupled with beautiful music. This is the kind of movie that hypnotizes me from the first minute and doesn't let go until the ending credits roll. As for its exact meaning? Maybe some things are better left as a mystery.

__________________
San Franciscan lesbian dwarves and their tomato orgies.

I find the same location bleakness in Tarr's films as I do in Stalker and The Mirror. Maybe Nostalghia too. The Turin Horse is probably more Tarkovskian in this respect than W Harmonies, but the sense of Isolation the characters are experiencing is exactly the feeling I get from many Tarkovsky films. The early bar shots are identical almost to the early shots in Stalker. Maybe I should have said tone./images and not values.

I loved The Banishment. Complete Tarkovsky rip off but yup, amazing.


Not much to disagree with. I find the whole music allegory to life thing absolutely genius like. That scene where the old fella explains it (basically why the title of the film is the title of the film) is beautifully poignant.

Words can't really do justice to how beautiful and tragic this film is. I fund it a struggle to write about it other than just throw it some superlatives and adjectives. It could be way higher up the list on another day. My review when I firsts aw it:


Similarly to the above - like most Tarkovsky films, it's difficult to write a review for Stalker. It's not unlike The Mirror in that it's a visual poem that needs experiencing rather than a narrative film that requires understanding. It's cerebral, ethereal, puzzling and hypnotic. Tarkovsky divided opinion and this in some ways could be the ultimate art house film. Is it about Tarkovsksy's views on the Soviet Union? A chilling prophecy on Nuclear accidents? Or just a philosophical attempt to unravel the meaning of life channelled via the original novel Roadside Picnic? I have absolutely no idea, I just enjoyed letting it interfere with my eyes and mind.


Probably one of the best looking films ever made, and one of the most memorable. Chilling too. My original review:

The Night of the Hunter is good but overrated. I've seen it twice and the cinematography sure slays. Stalker and Sansho the Bailiff are among all-time greats (actually, I've seen them twice, too).

Same sentiments. Mitchum is creepy in it, but the movie itself is only good, not great.
Sansho and Stalker are masterpieces

I think The Night of the Hunter is great, personally. Both Sansho the Bailiff and Stalker are masterpieces though.

__________________
IMDb
Letterboxd

I've seen 9 so far; some that are way overdue for a rewatch (Raging Bull and Night of the Hunter) and a good bunch that I watched within the last years and loved quite a bit. Great list.

__________________

Yes, I'm going to be that guy. The guy that jumps on the hype and gets with it. A recent review:


This film is incredible.

In 1990, Abbas Kiarostami made 'Close-Up', which is a re-enactment of the real life trial of the man who steals the identity of filmmaker Mohsen Makmhalbaf, using the real life people as actors.

6 years later, Makmhalbaf himself goes a step further and makes a film about the making of a film. In the 70s, Makmhalbaf got into an altercation with a policeman and was arrested for it. 20 years later he gets the real people involved in the incident (including himself obviously) to direct young actors playing younger versions of themselves and he then films that film being made. But the dialogue is so clever that Makmhalbaf blurs the lines of the documented incident, and the remaking of it. So much so that in the last 30 minutes of the film the viewer has to try and work out if they are seeing the film, the making of the film, or the making of the making of a film. This all culminates in a twist ending of sorts which may be part of the intended fictional film or part of reality as Makmhalbaf filmed it. It is ingenious film-making.

Critic Mike D'Angelo said "this film ends with the greatest final freeze-frame since The 400 Blows". Can't disagree.

An absolute masterpiece.

I've seen everything listed so far. Plenty of great choices. A Moment of Innocence was one of my Hall of Fame nominations, in fact. As expected, reactions to it were mixed, but I think it's perfect.

I know a couple of people here like it. For me, it's cinema in it's purest form. That sounds pretentious. But it just is.

One of my fave movies. Seen it several times.

__________________
I’m here only on Mondays, Wednesdays & Fridays. That’s why I’m here now.

I went into JD not knowing what to expect, other than it being long and slow. I found it endlessly fascinating watching this woman’s meticulously crafted daily rhythm come completely unraveled over the course of a day until its shocking end.
Great stuff.

Like I always say, a good movie is too short & a bad movie is too long. JD could even have been longer & I would still love it.

Into the Top 10:


One of the films I could say that changed the way I look at world cinema. My initial review when I watched it some years ago was:

Since then I appreciate it more and more as a true masterpiece. Kieslowski's perfectionist way of filmmaking was interesting too. Purchasing lots of different brands of sugar cubes until he found the one that sucked up the coffee in just the right amount of time etc.

There's a shot in this film that links the trilogy - Julie is carrying a box of WHITE wine, and she walks to the right of the screen and intersects a man in a BLUE sweater and a woman dressed in a RED coat, thus foreshadowing the trilogy of Blue white and Red. Kieslowski was a genius at ethereal, spiritual film and this will always be one of my favourites.

.................................................................................................... .................................................................................................



This film introduced me to 2 things primarily - how good single location films could be, and how good dialogue can get. Lumet's masterpiece is a stellar example of both these things and also how to get a viewer engrossed in morality and ethical dilemmas.

It's a really fantastic watch and also features top notch example of framing / blocking. How Lumet got all those actors to be perfect all of the time in such a hot sweaty room was nothing short of remarkable.

Two of my favorites as well

__________________