challenge_everything
Active Member
Vanilla is the right word for Doctor Sleep. Vanilla in its lead performance, its redemptive arc, its nostalgic invocation of Kubrick's classic scenes...
GMD Poll: Top Ten Films of 2019
- Thread starter no country for old wainds
- Start date
- Nov 23, 2002
- 26,696
- 9,669
- 113
i think any fetishisation is extremely restrained compared to the majority of remakes and sequels, you could pretty much forget you were even watching something related to the shining until the third act. even when it goes on to directly confront kubrick it seems more like it's defanging him than merely idealising him--if there's redemption there it's a redemption of 'the shining' from what kubrick did to it, even restoring the original ending that kubrick subverted. redemptive doesn't seem the right word for the main character arc, it's more a matter of breaking a cycle of abuse/trauma. i admittedly have more of a penchant for all that goofy YA shit than most people and i'm not gonna pretend it isn't a big silly mess, but i think it's a sincere and thoughtful way of reconciling the book with the film. i mean it's a pretty tough task to take on, making a movie version of a book that was blatantly inspired by dislike toward one of the most beloved movies ever.
the art of self-defense cracks me up, man. doubling down on that lanthimos comparison i'd say that the sensei may be my favourite villain since that creepy little fucker from sacred deer.
parasite would be in my top ten in the previous two years, i don't mean to slander it by placing it there (also i did see 80something movies from 2019 lol). i'm not huge on the finale/epilogue and it's ultimately just not as much my thing as some of the stuff ahead of it i suppose, but it's great. probably only my third favourite bong having said that.
you'd like relaxer and knife+heart too i'd imagine, but i think i've mentioned those to you already.
the art of self-defense cracks me up, man. doubling down on that lanthimos comparison i'd say that the sensei may be my favourite villain since that creepy little fucker from sacred deer.
parasite would be in my top ten in the previous two years, i don't mean to slander it by placing it there (also i did see 80something movies from 2019 lol). i'm not huge on the finale/epilogue and it's ultimately just not as much my thing as some of the stuff ahead of it i suppose, but it's great. probably only my third favourite bong having said that.
you'd like relaxer and knife+heart too i'd imagine, but i think i've mentioned those to you already.
CiG
Approximately Infinite Universe
Didn't mean it as criticism of your Parasite placement, more like a statement of anticipation to see your top 10. Still keeping a constant eye open for Relaxer by the way. 
- Nov 23, 2002
- 26,696
- 9,669
- 113
10) Depraved (Dir. Larry Fessenden)
a fessenden frankenstein which bleakly posits that the only way of escaping these cycles of exploitation, trauma and violence is to withdraw outright, such is our essential depravity and hopelessness. the final gesture is crushing in its compassionate, dignified resignation; if one can only "bring the war home", it’s best not to go home at all.
9) Under the Silver Lake (Dir. David Robert MItchell)
he's the one who likes all our pretty songs, and he likes to sing along, and he likes to shoot his gun, but he knows not what it means.
/
he's a negative creep, and he's stoned.
8) Ash is Purest White (Dir. Jia Zhangke)
jia deep dives into his own backlog the way joe did in Cemetery of Splendour, but as a backdrop for a frenzied character study centred around the most compelling, charismatic female performance since Elle, courtesy of wife and regular collaborator zhao tao. her defiant clinging to the past and its values is mirrored by jia's own self-recycling, all tracked against the rapid modernisation of china, the dehumanisation of its 'progress' reflected in a series of transitions toward less empathetic modes of filming. the final shot is inevitably an oppressive one, but there's also a sublime miniature in here involving a train and a magic-realist callback to Still Life which epitomises how no imposed narrative can fully contain her. while jia's gotten rather more cosy with the establishment of late, look closely and his resistance remains fierce as ever.
7) Deadwood (Dir. Daniel Minahan)
if Deadwood was a more hopeful show than The Wire, that's because it took place in a clearing, an empty space upon which to build. where The Wire finds its characters entrenched in a city that's been systematically strangled, deadwood is a place of possibility, a future yet to be mapped. it's akin to shakespeare not just in its towering wit and ambition but in this way we're witnessing our world being created before our very eyes. of course, by the end of the final season such hope is in short supply, because men like george hearst exist and when the earth speaks to them of its fertility and its possibility it's only a matter of time before blood is spilled. Deadwood was among the great american works of the 21st century across any medium, and it couldn't end the way its creator wished because the money men decided it. welcome to the future.
most will know that powers boothe passed away between the end of the show and the making of this film, but did you know ralph richeson and ricky jay have too? what about milch himself, struggling with dementia for the last half decade, his genius slowly slipping away? there'll always be george hearst, though he'll go by different names and faces, and each new generation will either strike a deal with the devil and his kingdom or die fighting him. of course, they'll end anyway, just a little later and with a lot more regrets. this movie knows all that, and it's terrified. still, the overriding emotion is hope. not the commodified fortune cookie hope bandied about today's blockbuster landscape, but simply a belief that there is something in humanity that is irreducible. that we are not simply apes, or helpless cogs in a machine run by the strongest cruellest apes. that we can achieve something meaningful, and there is a capacity in us for growth and grace.
6) Toy Story 4 (Dir. Josh Cooley)
getting lost at a carnival was a critical moment of my childhood, so... yeah, close to the bone as ever. a hefty thesis could be written on the theological and existential weight of this film/series (chaw’s review is a perfect primer), and there are political implications too (woody and gabby are boomers pining for order, home, purpose... God; one climbs out of hell and ecstatically into heaven, the other learns that maybe his ideas of those places were built from fear and narcissism). regardless, the way i feel about certain pixar movies is not dissimilar to how i feel about some of the best silents, and i'll defend them to the grave.
5) Uncut Gems (Dir. Ben Safdie, Joshua Safdie)
passed about like ophuls’ earrings, the gems circulate a path bisecting the worlds of sport and cinema, where ground-level aspiration and romantic dreams of transcendence meet the system shaping and profiting from them. if Good Time approached scoldy sadism (even the title is a bit much), here the safdies' understanding of the nature of the game doesn't stop the players shining, and set against the charm and euphoric, demented energy of this golden ensemble the scathing critique only hits harder.
4) Grass (Dir. Hong Sang-Soo)
the greatest and darkest of the hong-kim films, suspended in a liminal space between fiction and the real which brings to mind the other two french directors beginning with R for a change. many of his pet themes are here, but there's a heightened emphasis on suicide and voyeurism, and the vibe is haunting, an almost purgatorial wander from one small, violent rupture to the next. no film's final shots had a greater impact on me than these over the past year, and i'll attempt to unpack my reaction when i rewatch it as part of a planned hong retrospective which literally nobody here would give a fuck about lol.
3) The Beach Bum (Dir. Harmony Korine)
four deaths in nearly eighteen straight years of GMD posting. it's a terrific record. now, i've been stripped of my account privileges on five separate occasions, but each time i get it reinstated due to a technicality i never quite understood.
korine is a poet of the margins, a malick for the gutters. he finds so much beautiful, hilarious absurdity in the class divide defining this milieu, but he never looks down nor betrays any discomfort. moondog is the same, a stand-in of sorts, but even the autobiographical trappings are free of ego: i mean, the dude plagiarises all his fucking poems. i adore Spring Breakers but it strained for significance, at least a little. The Beach Bum is pure. would that other filmmakers had the courage to be so true to themselves and their subjects.
2) The Irishman (Dir. Martin Scorsese)
small wonder this has been so polarising, this deflating death knell for a genre, a country and perhaps a medium as well. devoid of the thrills of its predecessors, it's the chilling product of the void at its centre: this nothing of a man with his lifeless, artificial eyes and mechanical movements, a near gump-esque tumbleweed hollowed out by the war long before the film started and now buffeted obliviously from historical beat to historical beat, blinkered and militant and guided entirely by his subservience and loyalty to two men who embody twin poles of american identity, playing a key role in his country's transition from one to the other.* i don't think a story like this has been told in such a way before: structured around absence, notable for all the scenes and emotions it omits, a rambling, desperate confession to an audience of zero by a shuffling, trembling husk who dimly recognises his mortality, futility and waste but doesn't possess the interiority to confront the reality of his life even at the last. i'm not sure i can think of a more depressing american film, at least not in recent memory, and that final shot will be reverberating around my skull the next time i watch The Godfather.
*i highly recommend this piece as a far more in-depth reading of what is a deceptively dense text.
1) Long Day's Journey Into Night (Dir. Bi Gan)
the quite rational ideas about memory/art versus lived experience espoused in Portrait of a Lady on Fire are here rejected by a film which speaks of a belief in miracles and then, for the doubters among us, performs one. it begins as a wong kar-wai film--a studied, brooding noir made of broken clocks and cigarette smoke and repressed longing--then collapses halfway through into a cinema-breaking stunt as revelatory ontologically and emotionally as it is technically. untethering itself from time and space, it falls asleep in a movie theater and slips into a present-tense netherworld of all those images which haunt and imprison its hero, enabling him to wander the rubble of the self and perhaps even free himself from its weight.
---------------
a fessenden frankenstein which bleakly posits that the only way of escaping these cycles of exploitation, trauma and violence is to withdraw outright, such is our essential depravity and hopelessness. the final gesture is crushing in its compassionate, dignified resignation; if one can only "bring the war home", it’s best not to go home at all.
9) Under the Silver Lake (Dir. David Robert MItchell)
he's the one who likes all our pretty songs, and he likes to sing along, and he likes to shoot his gun, but he knows not what it means.
/
he's a negative creep, and he's stoned.
8) Ash is Purest White (Dir. Jia Zhangke)
jia deep dives into his own backlog the way joe did in Cemetery of Splendour, but as a backdrop for a frenzied character study centred around the most compelling, charismatic female performance since Elle, courtesy of wife and regular collaborator zhao tao. her defiant clinging to the past and its values is mirrored by jia's own self-recycling, all tracked against the rapid modernisation of china, the dehumanisation of its 'progress' reflected in a series of transitions toward less empathetic modes of filming. the final shot is inevitably an oppressive one, but there's also a sublime miniature in here involving a train and a magic-realist callback to Still Life which epitomises how no imposed narrative can fully contain her. while jia's gotten rather more cosy with the establishment of late, look closely and his resistance remains fierce as ever.
7) Deadwood (Dir. Daniel Minahan)
if Deadwood was a more hopeful show than The Wire, that's because it took place in a clearing, an empty space upon which to build. where The Wire finds its characters entrenched in a city that's been systematically strangled, deadwood is a place of possibility, a future yet to be mapped. it's akin to shakespeare not just in its towering wit and ambition but in this way we're witnessing our world being created before our very eyes. of course, by the end of the final season such hope is in short supply, because men like george hearst exist and when the earth speaks to them of its fertility and its possibility it's only a matter of time before blood is spilled. Deadwood was among the great american works of the 21st century across any medium, and it couldn't end the way its creator wished because the money men decided it. welcome to the future.
most will know that powers boothe passed away between the end of the show and the making of this film, but did you know ralph richeson and ricky jay have too? what about milch himself, struggling with dementia for the last half decade, his genius slowly slipping away? there'll always be george hearst, though he'll go by different names and faces, and each new generation will either strike a deal with the devil and his kingdom or die fighting him. of course, they'll end anyway, just a little later and with a lot more regrets. this movie knows all that, and it's terrified. still, the overriding emotion is hope. not the commodified fortune cookie hope bandied about today's blockbuster landscape, but simply a belief that there is something in humanity that is irreducible. that we are not simply apes, or helpless cogs in a machine run by the strongest cruellest apes. that we can achieve something meaningful, and there is a capacity in us for growth and grace.
the film references key moments from the show via flashbacks which seem uncharacteristically clumsy, but there's a heartbreaking cut between one whore's face and another which illustrate their purpose: to evoke the cyclic nature of history, of life, and how that weighs upon each character in different ways. almost everything that happens in the movie already happened in the show, in one guise or another. the hope lies in the small ways they might differ this time around.
the first time joanie and jane meet in the show they're broken and lost, but they ultimately find comfort in one another. at the start of the movie they're back to broken and lost, and their reunion is distressing for how easily and believably one of the show's most moving arcs has been eradicated as though it never happened, a fleeting fantasy before the pain took hold again. milch loves these flawed characters though, and while he will never magically ignore or sugarcoat their weaknesses for our viewing pleasure, he will envision a beautiful, violent, messy way in which jane can perhaps break the wheel, or at least modulate it enough that she can sleep better at night.
bullock drags hearst to prison by his ear for a second time. on each occasion this act is primarily fuelled by frustration and grief; for his son in the first case, for a dear friend in the second. hearst has a few more bruises this time around but the result will be the same, he will go free. but consider what follows in each case. in the show, bullock's next scene was to awkwardly tell his wife what he'd done as they sat at opposite ends of the table in their dark, empty house. this time around, he's given closure for his grief, and goes home to kiss his wife passionately at the door, his three children flocking around. milch doesn't deny the ways in which progress can poison this camp, but at key moments he chooses to emphasise the strengthening of bonds, the potential for positive change.
the most important new character is a fresh-faced whore who quickly charms her way into al's establishment. she reminds some of trixie, others of the whore murdered in trixie's place. trixie lets this girl hold her newborn; she represents her own past and her son's future, standing at the same fork everyone does when they enter deadwood, one leading to the fruits of civilisation, the other to the bottle or the coffin. al embraces her in a pose identical to how he once embraced trixie, the woman he's been covertly in love with since the start of the show, and tells her "it's a sad night. something's afire. christ, i do have feelings.' in another life he could've been where sol star is right now instead of laying on his death bed haunted by his own thoughts and deeds, but he'd have had to sacrifice an essential part of himself. what makes milch great is that you can always tell what he wants for his characters, wants deeply, but in this world nothing good comes without a price, and sometimes no penance is enough. consider that the nicest guy in deadwood pays for his happy ending with a bullet to the head.
harold bloom had a theory that shakespeare wasn't simply the first to capture the burgeoning self-consciousness of the time, but created it. that he triggered an evolution in our psychology, a new level of self-understanding, like some kubrickian monolith from the future. art had the power not only to illuminate but reroute us, to write our future in its image. Deadwood is set in the distant past, but it's about what's to come and how we ought to face it, individually and collectively. the final moments here, with hands entwined and a last guttural quip, suggest the answer is with love, humour and defiance. consider me fuckin' inspired, you cocksuckers.
the first time joanie and jane meet in the show they're broken and lost, but they ultimately find comfort in one another. at the start of the movie they're back to broken and lost, and their reunion is distressing for how easily and believably one of the show's most moving arcs has been eradicated as though it never happened, a fleeting fantasy before the pain took hold again. milch loves these flawed characters though, and while he will never magically ignore or sugarcoat their weaknesses for our viewing pleasure, he will envision a beautiful, violent, messy way in which jane can perhaps break the wheel, or at least modulate it enough that she can sleep better at night.
bullock drags hearst to prison by his ear for a second time. on each occasion this act is primarily fuelled by frustration and grief; for his son in the first case, for a dear friend in the second. hearst has a few more bruises this time around but the result will be the same, he will go free. but consider what follows in each case. in the show, bullock's next scene was to awkwardly tell his wife what he'd done as they sat at opposite ends of the table in their dark, empty house. this time around, he's given closure for his grief, and goes home to kiss his wife passionately at the door, his three children flocking around. milch doesn't deny the ways in which progress can poison this camp, but at key moments he chooses to emphasise the strengthening of bonds, the potential for positive change.
the most important new character is a fresh-faced whore who quickly charms her way into al's establishment. she reminds some of trixie, others of the whore murdered in trixie's place. trixie lets this girl hold her newborn; she represents her own past and her son's future, standing at the same fork everyone does when they enter deadwood, one leading to the fruits of civilisation, the other to the bottle or the coffin. al embraces her in a pose identical to how he once embraced trixie, the woman he's been covertly in love with since the start of the show, and tells her "it's a sad night. something's afire. christ, i do have feelings.' in another life he could've been where sol star is right now instead of laying on his death bed haunted by his own thoughts and deeds, but he'd have had to sacrifice an essential part of himself. what makes milch great is that you can always tell what he wants for his characters, wants deeply, but in this world nothing good comes without a price, and sometimes no penance is enough. consider that the nicest guy in deadwood pays for his happy ending with a bullet to the head.
harold bloom had a theory that shakespeare wasn't simply the first to capture the burgeoning self-consciousness of the time, but created it. that he triggered an evolution in our psychology, a new level of self-understanding, like some kubrickian monolith from the future. art had the power not only to illuminate but reroute us, to write our future in its image. Deadwood is set in the distant past, but it's about what's to come and how we ought to face it, individually and collectively. the final moments here, with hands entwined and a last guttural quip, suggest the answer is with love, humour and defiance. consider me fuckin' inspired, you cocksuckers.
6) Toy Story 4 (Dir. Josh Cooley)
getting lost at a carnival was a critical moment of my childhood, so... yeah, close to the bone as ever. a hefty thesis could be written on the theological and existential weight of this film/series (chaw’s review is a perfect primer), and there are political implications too (woody and gabby are boomers pining for order, home, purpose... God; one climbs out of hell and ecstatically into heaven, the other learns that maybe his ideas of those places were built from fear and narcissism). regardless, the way i feel about certain pixar movies is not dissimilar to how i feel about some of the best silents, and i'll defend them to the grave.
5) Uncut Gems (Dir. Ben Safdie, Joshua Safdie)
passed about like ophuls’ earrings, the gems circulate a path bisecting the worlds of sport and cinema, where ground-level aspiration and romantic dreams of transcendence meet the system shaping and profiting from them. if Good Time approached scoldy sadism (even the title is a bit much), here the safdies' understanding of the nature of the game doesn't stop the players shining, and set against the charm and euphoric, demented energy of this golden ensemble the scathing critique only hits harder.
4) Grass (Dir. Hong Sang-Soo)
the greatest and darkest of the hong-kim films, suspended in a liminal space between fiction and the real which brings to mind the other two french directors beginning with R for a change. many of his pet themes are here, but there's a heightened emphasis on suicide and voyeurism, and the vibe is haunting, an almost purgatorial wander from one small, violent rupture to the next. no film's final shots had a greater impact on me than these over the past year, and i'll attempt to unpack my reaction when i rewatch it as part of a planned hong retrospective which literally nobody here would give a fuck about lol.
3) The Beach Bum (Dir. Harmony Korine)
four deaths in nearly eighteen straight years of GMD posting. it's a terrific record. now, i've been stripped of my account privileges on five separate occasions, but each time i get it reinstated due to a technicality i never quite understood.
korine is a poet of the margins, a malick for the gutters. he finds so much beautiful, hilarious absurdity in the class divide defining this milieu, but he never looks down nor betrays any discomfort. moondog is the same, a stand-in of sorts, but even the autobiographical trappings are free of ego: i mean, the dude plagiarises all his fucking poems. i adore Spring Breakers but it strained for significance, at least a little. The Beach Bum is pure. would that other filmmakers had the courage to be so true to themselves and their subjects.
2) The Irishman (Dir. Martin Scorsese)
small wonder this has been so polarising, this deflating death knell for a genre, a country and perhaps a medium as well. devoid of the thrills of its predecessors, it's the chilling product of the void at its centre: this nothing of a man with his lifeless, artificial eyes and mechanical movements, a near gump-esque tumbleweed hollowed out by the war long before the film started and now buffeted obliviously from historical beat to historical beat, blinkered and militant and guided entirely by his subservience and loyalty to two men who embody twin poles of american identity, playing a key role in his country's transition from one to the other.* i don't think a story like this has been told in such a way before: structured around absence, notable for all the scenes and emotions it omits, a rambling, desperate confession to an audience of zero by a shuffling, trembling husk who dimly recognises his mortality, futility and waste but doesn't possess the interiority to confront the reality of his life even at the last. i'm not sure i can think of a more depressing american film, at least not in recent memory, and that final shot will be reverberating around my skull the next time i watch The Godfather.
*i highly recommend this piece as a far more in-depth reading of what is a deceptively dense text.
1) Long Day's Journey Into Night (Dir. Bi Gan)
the quite rational ideas about memory/art versus lived experience espoused in Portrait of a Lady on Fire are here rejected by a film which speaks of a belief in miracles and then, for the doubters among us, performs one. it begins as a wong kar-wai film--a studied, brooding noir made of broken clocks and cigarette smoke and repressed longing--then collapses halfway through into a cinema-breaking stunt as revelatory ontologically and emotionally as it is technically. untethering itself from time and space, it falls asleep in a movie theater and slips into a present-tense netherworld of all those images which haunt and imprison its hero, enabling him to wander the rubble of the self and perhaps even free himself from its weight.
---------------
1. long day's journey into night
2. the irishman
3. the beach bum
4. grass
5. uncut gems
6. toy story 4
7. deadwood
8. ash is purest white
9. under the silver lake
10. depraved
2. the irishman
3. the beach bum
4. grass
5. uncut gems
6. toy story 4
7. deadwood
8. ash is purest white
9. under the silver lake
10. depraved
CiG
Approximately Infinite Universe
For some reason I didn't expect to see The Irishman so high in your list or even The Beach Bum (though at the same time I'm also not shocked or anything). Did you end up seeing Dragged Across Concrete, Joker, Bliss, Her Smell, Midsommar and/or The Forest of Love? Interested to know what you think of them if you did.
Edit: NVM saw your RYM list just now.
Edit: NVM saw your RYM list just now.
Last edited:
challenge_everything
Active Member
- Nov 23, 2002
- 26,696
- 9,669
- 113
Einherjar86
Active Member
TechnicalBarbarity
Poser Disposer
yea i'm gonna try, can you give leave this open for another 2-3 days?
TechnicalBarbarity
Poser Disposer
so i just signed up for the Disney+ free trial. Which 2019 movies are on there that i can check out?
dwellerINTHEdark
Curator of the mausoleum
Oh man I just signed up for it and watched Frozen 2 the other day... it was not a rewarding experience.
CiG
Approximately Infinite Universe
I didn't renew mine so I can't check the catalog, but I know Avengers: Endgame and Spider-Man: Far From Home are on there. Not a great service if you're just trying to check out new movies tbh.
I heard good things about Togo, and I think Ad Astra and that Tolkien biopic are on there.
TechnicalBarbarity
Poser Disposer
well that sucks. I'm not planning on keeping it past the free trial since i have no desire whatsoever to support disney but i was hoping to just get a few more movies in to get my list to 5. I might have to just bow out of this one unless wainds is willing to count the two 2019 movies ive seen so far
CiG
Approximately Infinite Universe
Disney only hosting Disney and Marvel shit kinda means it's very limited in that way. Honestly I only initially signed up for The Mandalorian lmao.
Edit: Have you used up your Netflix free trial yet?
Edit: Have you used up your Netflix free trial yet?
TechnicalBarbarity
Poser Disposer
CiG
Approximately Infinite Universe
dwellerINTHEdark
Curator of the mausoleum
CiG
Approximately Infinite Universe
mutantllama
Active Member
Just watch all the old Simpsons episodes for a week.
TechnicalBarbarity
Poser Disposer
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