The Film Reel @blood-and-biscuits - Tumblr Blog

Rashomon (1950) & The Graduate (1967)

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Cinematography - Hoyte Van Hoytema

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In 2016, I watched 215 films for the first time. Here are my most memorable, in order.

1. Enemy - One of the best movies I’ve ever seen. It’s really hard to describe movies like this, because at this level they’re operating on such a strong cinematic level that language cannot do it justice. Enemy affected me to my core. I can remember exactly how I felt while watching it and thinking about it. It was astounding and staggering and breathtaking.

2. Stalker - The greatest movie I have ever seen about faith. Stalker is so incredibly involving and subtle and smart and beautiful. The last shot is a question posed to the audience, asking how and if the movie has changed the viewers at all. This film says so much about you and asks so much of you.

3. The VVitch - One of the greatest horror films I have ever seen. Black Philip is, no joke, one of my favorite characters ever. It’s scary in all the right ways, beyond the familiar horror tropes and onto things that strike you on a gut level.

4. La La Land - The shot of the couple dancing across the stars is one of the best shots in cinema history. During that scene, the woman next to me was laughing and crying at the same time. The lighting was absolutely astounding. Admittedly, I cried a lot at the end. Speaking of which, the ending was really great but I think It’s Such a Beautiful Day did it much better.

5. Close Encounters of the Third Kind - A great movie about fatherhood. Spielberg really knows just how to show wonder and awe, and also produce it in his audience. The tone scene at the end is mind-blowingly brilliant.

6. Dancer in the Dark - The musical numbers are really fantastic and inventive. Yes, the movie may be a little simple for some people’s tastes but Selma’s determination really struck a chord in me.

7. West Side Story - I’m now realizing I like a lot of musicals, although I would have just a year ago said I hate musicals. I just really like dancing I guess. The shots are fantastic and the strong parts are so strong that they easily carry the weaker parts.

8. A Serious Man - One of the Coen Brother’s masterpieces. It’s weird and funny in all the right ways.

9. We Need to Talk About Kevin - This film is birth control. Swinton does an amazing job and the opening is so effective. It’s a meditative film and nuanced, plus the structure really adds to it.

10. In the Mood for Love - The music! So beautiful. The film was an absolute feast for the eyes. The editing and cinematography was astounding.

11. Man with a Movie Camera - Just absolutely incredible. The story of an industrializing Russia as told through shots and editing alone. I highly recommend watching it with the soundtrack by the Cinematic Orchestra.

12. Arrival - This one really hit home for me since I’ve become really interested with language as a tool and its potentials. I’ve heard some people say it was really intellectually interesting but not so emotionally. I disagree.

13. Rams - One of my favorite endings. It puts everything into perspective and asks what’s most important to the characters.

14. The Neon Demon - I’m just a Refn fanboy so maybe ignore me here, but I felt like this was a really wonderful film. I am also colorblind and always love Refn’s use of color and lighting.

15. The Thin Red Line - I definitely need to watch this one again. But its boundless beauty and grace was absolutely astonishing. So many shots and moments have really stuck with me.

16. The Lobster - Winner of the Best Poster Award! Seriously though, I loved this movie. I think about the ending a lot.

17. All the President’s Men - Absolutely fantastic shots and acting and dialogue and eat your heart out Spotlight.

18. My Dinner with Andre - I went back and forth on this one. Is this what films should be? No, probably not, but it’s certainly what this film should be. It felt so effortless and easy and real.

19. James White - Almost daily I think about the desperation in White’s voice as he asks his best friend if he’d help him bury a body without question. That single line has been the most memorable thing I watched all year.

20. Stranger than Paradise

21. Some Like It Hot - It’s really crazy what movies used to get away with. I think, for its time, this movie is an interesting look at gender. The classic Wilder dialogue is so snappy and is clearly a master at the height of his game. The party scene on the train had my sides bursting.

22. Come and See - This is a really brutal look at World War II through a Hungarian boy’s perspective. It’s cold and unforgiving, especially the ending which is one of the most hopeless and frustrating scenes I’ve ever seen.

23. Son of Saul - I really don’t have much to add to what’s already been said about this film, besides that the ambiguity of the situation is entirely what makes this film interesting for me.

24. Green Room - Just a good action flick that picks away at its characters to find out who we prop ourselves up to be.

25. Grey Gardens - Perhaps the greatest accidental comedy of all time?

26. It Follows - I just really, really like the music. And the weird clam cellphone.

27. Eraserhead - Another movie I consider to be effective birth control.

28. Trouble in Paradise - They don’t make movies like this anymore, seriously. The direction is absolutely phenomenal and Lubitsch really understands how to get a joke out of a shot.

29. F for Fake - I need to watch this one again, but I remember it being very interesting. The editing, pace, and narration are tops.

30. The Nice Guys - Once again, Ryan Gosling’s acting is amazing. His physicality was absolutely amazing.

31. Heat

32. Dazed and Confused

Rating Films and Meek’s Cutoff

I hate rating films. I detest it, i despise it, and I do it often. A friend will ask me what I thought of a particular movie and I reply with a “7 out of 10″. I hate it.

I’ve done it all my life. Always on a 10 point scale. People who have followed me for awhile (who knows why) probably know that, at the end of December, I rank the new films I watched that year. It’s a tough process for me, but it’s usually made easier by checking my IMDb scores quickly. There is a certain utility and speed that a ranking system provides. But it doesn’t really get at the truth of a film.

People often talk about how good a film is, what’s overrated, what’s a hidden gem, and blah blah blah. People think that there’s some objective rating for any form of art and so they need to rank films according to the artistic merit that they perceive. This is stupid because films are subjective, yet I’ve done this.

How does one rate a film that dared to try but failed? Or a film that was “fun” but shallow and completely unoriginal? Even a cliche’ can hit its mark, that’s why it’s a cliche’.

Meek’s Cutoff didn’t work for me. I’d heard about it for months before I watched it and people said it was a masterpiece. I sat down and watched it. 6/10. I moved on. But this film has stuck with me. At least once a week, I think about its ending. I think about its structure. I think about how it made wives actually people instead of the “wife of main character” stereotype that I’ve become so sick of. It’s organic, which is something I’ve been thinking a lot about recently and it’s mostly because of this movie. So is this a 6/10?

I don’t know. But I do know that my view on a film cannot be described by a number. Some of you may be upset to find this out, but this blog thingy has always been for me first. And so I’m going to start talking more about the films that won’t leave me alone. Because I need to talk to myself about them. With all this said, I really just want to watch Meek’s Cutoff again.