2024 Film Challenge

Thanks Takoma11! About to pick my next film.

So I've hit a wall a bit with watching 10 films that won at Cannes. Everything I'm able to find is just so . . . depressing. I'm like, "Do I want to watch the movie about the woman who has been devastated by terrible things in her life, the movie about a town slowly turning on each other in the aftermath of a war, or the movie about children who are sold by their indifferent parents?"

Any suggestions for Cannes winners that are joyful/uplifting? I've watched 3 so far, so I do need quite a few more to finish the category.

I know I'd have more luck with not-sad stuff if I just punt and switch to the Oscars, but I'm hoping there are half dozen Cannes winners out there that don't evoke the words "devastating", "harrowing", or "tragic".

Because I watch every category in the order they are listed, I've been stuck for about two weeks at this point. Halp!

Something like Madness of King George, perhaps?

I know you watch a ton of films so chances are you've seen those already, but here are some from the Palm d'Or winner list (just cause I can find it easily here) that I do not recall being depressing:
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, The Piano, Underground, Barton Fink, The Mission, WHen Father Was Away on Business, All That Jazz, The Working Class Goes to Heaven, Gate of Hell, Viridiana, The Third Man and Union Pacific.

For some of these it's been years so take it with a grain of salt.

Yes, fab.

These are the ones I haven't seen. I'll see if I can track a few of them down, thanks!

Also, I just realized that using IMDb to find Cannes winners is SO MUCH EASIER than using Wikipedia or the Cannes website itself. Like, stunningly easier!

What we've got here is a failure to communicate
watch 10 films in the same foreign language (French)
La Captive
Mon Oncle Antoine
Demonlover
Nocturama
The Strangler
Our Body
Calvaire
After Blue
Jessica Forever
The Advent Calendar

Honestly, I'd recommend all of them. Jessica Forever and The Strangler are the weakest of the bunch.

Thanks for letting me know
The movie definitely had a "play" vibe to it. You're right, it doesn't happen often!

How did you like Clue? I really enjoyed it and I am definitely planning on rewatching it.
I think it should be considered a "cult classic" though it is not as popular as it should be!

I am a ridiculously huge fan of Clue. It's required viewing for me at least once a year. I've been a fan since I was young.


My best friend and his sons are also huge fans, and we've had way too many conversations about its fine details.


It's an enigma of a movie, with one of the best casts in comedy history, while being a legitimately good murder mystery, and has three different endings to boot.


Love it.

Round up the usual suspects
watch 10 films from the same genre (thriller)
Somewhere Quiet
You’ll Never Find Me
Lured
Last Seen Alive
The Silent Partner
Blow Out
Targets
Night Games
Our Father, the Devil
The Dark Valley

Some really good stuff in here. Somewhere Quiet is very so-so, and fair warning that Night Games contains nudity and sexual sequences with a child that, for me, crossed a line. Everything else, though, easy recommendation.

November 28 Update

Seen It
(Watching It)
Plan on Seeing It

Slowly but surely, I will get there! Second category just completed! Here is what I watched.

I. The Golden Age Part 1: The Dirty 30s
[watch a 1930s Hollywood film for each of the challenges relating to the decade]
1. a film that won an Academy Award: Wuthering Heights (1939) - William Wyler
(Best Cinematography, Black-and-White - Gregg Toland)
2. a Universal Horror (or other monster) film: King Kong (1933) - Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack
3. a traditional Western: Stagecoach (1939) - John Ford
4. a film directed by Frank Capra, Ernst Lubitsch, Charlie Chaplin or Victor Fleming: It Happened One Night (1934) - Frank Capra
5. a film starring James Cagney, Bela Lugosi, Jean Arthur or Ginger Rogers: Top Hat (1935) - Mark Sandrich

I'm currently at 84/110 in Nightmare Mode, but right now I'll just post the sections I've completely finished.


Pick 10 movies from the same genre:


Film Noir: Big Heat, Pickup on Southstreet, Murder My Sweet, Kiss Me Deadly, Sweet Smell of Success, Strangers on a Train, Big Combo, Gilda, Postman Always Rings Twice, Moonrise


10 From National Film Registry:


Home Alone, Nightmare Before Christmas, Duck Soup, The Thin Man, Easy Rider, Notorious, Deliverance, Airplane!, Ghostbusters, He Who Gets Slapped


10 Recommended on this forum:


Escape From NY, Ponyo, The Descent, Us, The Mummy, The Princess Bride, Rollerball, Wither, Wolf of Snow Hollow, Zombie Exorcism

Just finished this category last night:

J. There’s no place like home
[watch a film corresponding to each of the settings below]
1. a road film: Latcho drom (1993) - Tony Gatlif
2. a stranger-in-a-foreign-place film: Gadjo dilo (1997) - Tony Gatlif
3. a film taking place in a confined space: The Zone of Interest (2023) – Jonathan Glazer
4. a film that is an homage to a city: Pane e tulipani (2000) - Silvio Soldini

Nice going!


I am getting close myself, with 16 films to go. Struggling a bit with just 3 nightmare mode categories left. American Film Registry, Participant recommendations and Actor which for this year was Gunnar Bjornstrand.

Main challenge completed. Highlights included Victim, Targets, Oppenheimer, Poor Things, Autumn Sonata, It Should Happen To You, The Ox-Bow Incident, Seconds, and The Plot Against Harry.

Unlikely I'll get through Nightmare, but if interesting gets watched I may post it here.

And I'm done with the Main Challenge. Will do a bit more of the Nightmare challenge in December, but not promising to finish it.

Let's look at the categories I'm needing to cover to wrap this up:

The Human Condition:

The Best: One of the things I'm noticing about Stanley Kubrick is that I'm vibing with his ones with a single plotline. Despite narration that's not far removed from a Dragnet episode, I thought The Killing was well done. A lean, mean crime thriller noir about a heist feature one of the best climaxes I've seen.

The Rest: Somehow, I've seen Glass Onion before I saw Knives Out. It was a solid mystery with a good cast, particularly Ana de Armas as the help-nurse of the guy who died. It could have used more scene-chewing from Daniel Craig's Benoit Blanc, but that last shot was pretty good. The Naked Truth had some funny moments with Peter Sellers and Terry-Thomas among a quartet of British people being blackmailed by a tabloid reporter. It's uneven, but when the comedy hits, it hits hard. Despite having Robert De Niro and Meryl Streep as the stars, Falling in Love was a meh film. Maybe because it felt like it was inspired by a far better film in Brief Encounter or maybe it was that weak sauce climax which felt manufactured and forced rather than a natural extension of the plot.

I See Dead People:

The Best: A potent mix of comedy and drama, The Great Dictator stands as the finest hour of Charlie Chaplin. Whether bouncing the globe of the world like a rubber ball or dropping some serious truths in that final speech, I don't think I'll find anything that beats it in the last month.

The Rest: Thanks to Louis Malle's tight leash and Jeanne Moreau's performance, Elevator to the Gallows is a strong film noir as a guy who's fallen for her charms offs her husband and in his quest to cover things up, ends up trapped in an elevator. Throw in a Miles Davis jazz score and you can forgive the final act for solving things a bit too quickly. My first exposure of Agnes Varda was Faces Places and Grandma Agnes was everything I thought she'd be. A nice interplay between her and co-director/artist JR makes up the crux of the film which overcomes predictability with how charming and interesting they and their subjects are. A real treat. Ugetsu is a tough story of two couples who chase glory and money in the middle of a war and find their lives shaken by what happens. Although the cinematography is superb, its treatment of the women left me with a bitter taste in my mouth. From the guy behind Freddy vs Jason and Bride of Chucky (Ronny Yu), The Phantom Lover is a melodramatic look at an ancient love story between two starcrossed lovers and the broke theater troupe who lends them a hand as they try to make enough money to clear their debts and make some entertainment while they're at it. Although Leslie Cheung is a good singer and offers a good argument for portraying The Phantom on stage, the film suffers from an excess of melodrama and less interesting characters in the present day.

Michael Jackson in Disneyland:

The Best: Another year, another Sidney Poitier film. This time, it was the searing A Raisin in the Sun, a drama about a funeral inheritance and what to do with it. Although it never fully breaks out of its play origins, a solid cast led by Poitier, Ruby Dee and Claudia McNeil gives life to the multidimensional characters written by Lorraine Hansbury. And you get chills from the "Welcoming" committee as they meet the Younger family for the first time.

The Rest: I normally feel like I'm a smart person. But The History of Time Travel proved I still have a lot left to learn. The acting could have been better, but the clever touches and the creative way the filmmakers handled the low budget proves that history can be fun. Plus, it's only 70 minutes! Although Fist of Fury proves that Bruce Lee has the it factor, its storyline proves to be nowhere near as compelling as Enter the Dragon. But at least Bruce fights racism in Shanghai by kicking in a sign! Lupin III: The First does a good job of getting the look of the film right. But between not getting to see the full team in action much and the various shifts in tone between the plot and the goofy antics of the crew, the first CG animated film from the Lupin series leaves you wanting more than you got. Interestingly enough, the director of this went on to do Godzilla Minus One a few years later! The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure probably isn't made for anyone over 10 or someone who isn't high, but the actors mostly commit to the concept (poor Chazz Palmenteri) and a few of the songs are borderline catchy. I've seen worse films this year!

The Golden Age Part 1:

The Best: Make that two films from Chaplin this year. City Lights isn't as polished as The Great Dictator, but it has its charms as it blends the humor with the pathos. The boxing match is a choreographed highlight. Although it does dive sometimes headfirst into melodrama, there's enough there that it proves to be a shining achievement.

The Rest: Tabu: A Story of the South Seas excels at its authenticity and look. The native cast adds character to the film as the cinematography deservedly won an Oscar. FW Murnau takes the story into another look at love and its wrinkles, although the second half is less compelling and the Prime close captioning was less than desirable at times. Something to Sing About has a story that's too simple for its own good. But James Cagney is talented at singing and tap dancing and some of the side characters played by Phillip Ahn and Kathleen Lockhart proved compelling. Harlem Rides the Range introduced me to the talents of Herbert Jeffrey who is both comfortable behind a mic or throwing down with the bad guys. But despite the relative novelty of an all African American cast, a padded story and a hard to see video makes it little more than a curio. The Monster Walks might be one of the worst films I've seen this year. Although Rex Lease plays the fiance of the lead character as someone who actually believes her when she's freaking out about a hairy hand that was reaching for her, they did a piss poor job of taking care of the chimpanzee who was playing the gorilla. You can hear him in severe discomfort. Throw in deteriorating sound, subtitles that don't make sense and some shaky acting into a mix with a film that's barely a horror movie and it was one of the worst I've seen this year.

I Need a Hero:

The Best: The semi-true story of a research scientist hired to prove wolves are destroying the caribou population makes for a solid adventure film. Never Cry Wolf shows Charles Martin Smith as a man over his head who tries to survive the unforgiving tundra of Canada while researching the wolf population. Despite a sluggish pace at times, the film manages to compel with its subject matter and its arguments that humans might have something to do with disrupting nature (a bold concept in 1983!). Just be warned of a lot of male nudity for a PG movie and some mice eating.

The Rest: Divergent is a perfectly competent film focusing on a dystopian future featuring an uneasy alliance between five factions. But between meeting all the checklist requirements of one of these films and skimming the surface of some interesting plot points (do women have to face violence to be considered as equals; if the lead characters suspect a conspiracy, why not go towards the Factionless for backup) means that it thoroughly lacks ambition. Although there's a certain retro charm as Jeff Bridges and company go aboard a virtual reality in 1982, the story of Tron which manages to be both too simple and too convoluted at the same time keeps it from clicking.

Are We There Yet?:

The Best: Finally having seen the first Toy Story, I can tell you that it holds up well 30 years later because its story remains compelling. Toys feel jealousy, shame, resentment and doubt as cowboy Woody tries to retrieve new toy Buzz from a neighbor kid with a nightmarish tendency to rebuild toys in a dark image. It may be a bit too scary for the young'uns, but I had fun with it. Can't wait to see Toy Story 2 which I've seen in bits and pieces over the years.

The Rest: Barbie is a blast as the lead character becomes self-aware and decides to look for its owner to try to make things right. Very funny, but when it tries to tie in with broader concepts of how it's tough to be women in 2023, it's a bit more mixed (I found Rhea Perlman's character was more effective with that than America Ferrera's big Oscar-esque speech). Still, I think it's a giant leap up from Frances Ha for director Greta Gerwig. Bread and Roses is a compelling documentary about a group of women who protest the redaction of their educational and career rights by the militant Islamic Taliban who took over Afghanistan after the Americans left. Its focus on three women who decide to protest showing their everyday lives as well as that of their efforts is made interesting by Sahra Mani's cinema verite approach. Although the story feels like it's unfinished, I could see this advancing to the Oscar shortlist for Documentaries. And then there's Maestro, Although Bradley Cooper manages to coax solid chemistry between himself as composer Leonard Bernstein and Carey Mulligan as his long suffering wife, the info dumps with the rudimentary screenplay and its mis-focus on the personal life which is less interesting than his compositions and conducting which allowed him to have a luxurious family home complete with an outdoor pool ensure that it'll be the worst Best Picture nominee of 2023.

I'm still in Nightmare mode. I'm currently 89/110. I'll post the sections as I finish them. I finished 10 Movies based on stage plays (the musicals event helped).


A Midsommer Night's Dream, West Side Story, The Visit, Little Shop of Horrors, Cabaret, A Star is Born, Chicago, Porgy and Bess, Hair, SweeneyTodd

90/110 twenty movies to go.


For 10 movies from a list on this site, I went with Deadite's 50 Movies for cool people:



Akira, Mimic, Versus, Existenz, Evil Dead Trap, Bubba Ho Tep, Stepfather, Happiness of the Katakuris, The Nines, Evil Dead 2


The only one I just flatly didn't like was Bubba Ho Tep. All the rest were at least okay.