RadicalThrasher
Active Member
It's basically about Clint Eastwood trying to track down a murderer. Pretty good, worth checking out for any Eastwood fans.
Walter Hill also has a movie from this year called Undisputed but I haven't seen it. Looks like a prison/boxing movie starring Snipes and Rhames.
Einherjar86
Active Member
TageRyche
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- May 13, 2007
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no country for old wainds
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- Nov 23, 2002
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Vegard Pompey
ALLY TO GOOD, NIGHTMARE TO YOU
I think The Two Towers was the first movie I ever saw in the cinema so I'm narrowly in the same boat D:
Bloopy
Active Member
Most of what I saw in the cinema as a teen was childish or crap so I don't rewatch much of it for these polls. 
2002 was my 1st year of university and my commute made it convenient to stop at video rental stores, catch up on what I missed by growing up without cable TV etc. The only 2002 films I'm sure I saw in the cinema are The Two Towers (twice) and Ali G Indahouse. Possibly Goldmember, but not sure.
2002 was my 1st year of university and my commute made it convenient to stop at video rental stores, catch up on what I missed by growing up without cable TV etc. The only 2002 films I'm sure I saw in the cinema are The Two Towers (twice) and Ali G Indahouse. Possibly Goldmember, but not sure.
I definitely saw Spider-Man, The Two Towers, 8 Mile, Attack of the Clones and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets at the cinema.
I saw Spider-Man with my little brother and it was his first time without a parent. We arrived like a fucking hour early and sat waiting inside for what felt like forever, but the movie ruled and it was overall a pretty cool experience. Chamber of Secrets I think I saw on a high school trip and it was the last Harry Potter I saw on the big screen. I don't remember shit about seeing The Two Towers except that I had a raging headache and by the end of the movie I felt like death. Pretty sure my dad took us to see Attack of the Clones but I don't remember anything about it.
8 Mile was probably the weirdest experience, I wasn't a fan of Eminem in those days but my best mate in high school was obsessed so I went with him to see it, we snuck in somehow and the room was absolutely packed, no seats free whatsoever, so we sat in the aisles and watched it. The place was so full that the ushers didn't even bother checking on the room or kicking people off the steps. People were drunk, chicks were sitting on the laps of guys they were with, it was a crazy experience for my 14 year old self lol.
I saw Spider-Man with my little brother and it was his first time without a parent. We arrived like a fucking hour early and sat waiting inside for what felt like forever, but the movie ruled and it was overall a pretty cool experience. Chamber of Secrets I think I saw on a high school trip and it was the last Harry Potter I saw on the big screen. I don't remember shit about seeing The Two Towers except that I had a raging headache and by the end of the movie I felt like death. Pretty sure my dad took us to see Attack of the Clones but I don't remember anything about it.
8 Mile was probably the weirdest experience, I wasn't a fan of Eminem in those days but my best mate in high school was obsessed so I went with him to see it, we snuck in somehow and the room was absolutely packed, no seats free whatsoever, so we sat in the aisles and watched it. The place was so full that the ushers didn't even bother checking on the room or kicking people off the steps. People were drunk, chicks were sitting on the laps of guys they were with, it was a crazy experience for my 14 year old self lol.
no country for old wainds
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i saw harry potter, the two towers and spider man myself, as well as minority report, signs, men in black 2.
only story i can remember is that there was a power cut during LOTR and when it came back on there was no sound for like 20 minutes until someone went and told reception, and i remember a lot of angry people demanding refunds at the end lol
only story i can remember is that there was a power cut during LOTR and when it came back on there was no sound for like 20 minutes until someone went and told reception, and i remember a lot of angry people demanding refunds at the end lol
challenge_everything
Active Member
no country for old wainds
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- Nov 23, 2002
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challenge_everything
Active Member
1. City of God (Fernando Meirelles)
2. The Twilight Samurai (Yoji Yamada)
3. Irreversible (Gaspar Noe)
4. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Chris Columbus)
5. Dog Soldiers (Neil Marshall)
6. Cypher (Vincenzo Natali)
7. The Pianist (Roman Polanski)
8. Hero (Zhang Yimou)
9. Minority Report (Steven Spielberg)
10. Solaris (Steven Soderbergh)
HM: Secretary, Sympathy for Mr Vengeance, Spider, Igby Goes Down, 28 Days Later, Punch Drunk Love, Adaptation, Gangs of New York.
2. The Twilight Samurai (Yoji Yamada)
3. Irreversible (Gaspar Noe)
4. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Chris Columbus)
5. Dog Soldiers (Neil Marshall)
6. Cypher (Vincenzo Natali)
7. The Pianist (Roman Polanski)
8. Hero (Zhang Yimou)
9. Minority Report (Steven Spielberg)
10. Solaris (Steven Soderbergh)
HM: Secretary, Sympathy for Mr Vengeance, Spider, Igby Goes Down, 28 Days Later, Punch Drunk Love, Adaptation, Gangs of New York.
no country for old wainds
Active Member
- Nov 23, 2002
- 26,560
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- 113
25) About Schmidt (Dir. Alexander Payne)
What difference has my life made to anyone? None that I can think of. None at all.
not the mawkish road trip of self-discovery i dimly remembered it being, about schmidt is actually a pretty savage satire of such movies and much better for that. nicholson plays the titular black hole of a man with great against-type subtlety and blandness, framed in a way that captures both his lack of personhood and his obliviousness to it. retired and widowed, he travels the mid-west becoming dimly aware of the void where his identity should be, but where other films would offer life lessons, epiphanies, character growth, schmidt keeps getting in his own way. when a moment of catharsis finally comes the delicate touch of director and actor are apparent in the way the poignancy and critical distance co-exists; it's ok to sympathise with the automatons created by american capitalism as they flounder helplessly toward some sliver of humanity, but such slivers are really their best case scenario, and not nearly enough.
24) Ripley's Game (Dir. Liliana Cavani)
I think these Balkan types tend to take strangling quite personally.
in a way, every john malkovich film is being john malkovich. something of a ripley analog himself, with a voice and persona that seem the product of a reptilian, almost predatory calculation, the lines between director, actor and character seem to blur around him, and that's particularly true when he's playing a sociopath who acts solely on his whims, appetites and perceived affronts to good taste. it's a performance that reinvigorates the painfully tired archetype of the smarmy, elitist, machiavellian villain by never tipping the scales between slime and charm, and the direction matches ripley's discipline, snaking between baroque eroticism and mucky brutality with surprising ease. the stand-out is a messy set piece on a train, but the smaller character moments are equally crucial: ripley's surprisingly tender scenes with his wife, his banter with a boorish ray winstone or the desperate unravelling of dougray scott.
23) Minority Report (Dir. Steven Spielberg)
Careful, Chief. Dig up the past, all you get is dirty.
another film that has aged surprisingly well, with a vision of the future that seems years ahead of most other sci-fi i watched from 2002. in fact, i could do with a little less plot and a little more of that weird, lived-in tech-noir worldbuilding--stuff like peter stormare going full stormare as a vengeful optician, robo-spiders storming buildings to scan the tenants' eyes, and of course tom cruise playing high stakes geoguessr. the final act is convoluted to say the least and doesn't exactly do the strong premise justice, but cruise is game as always and carries it through the weakest moments.
22) Teknolust (Dir. Lynn Hershman Leeson)
Make me look like Björk.
imagine under the skin if it was a greenscreen geocities cyberpunk clusterfuck starring a scientist named rosetta stone and four tilda swintons in four different shitty wigs lounging and dancing and fucking their way through a colour scheme as vibrant as any musical drinking cum tea while karen black pops up as a PI called "dirty dick" for some reason. maybe the most batshit of all those y2k sci-fi attempts to wrestle with our transition into digital culture.
21) Lilya 4-Ever (Dir. Lukas Moodysson)
A golden future awaits you. Just kidding.
to call this european gummo would be selling it as more unconventional and hallucinatory than it is, but it's a helpful basic comparison that explains why it makes my list. depressing poverty dramas with on-the-nose catholic imagery would typically get a hard no from me, but there's enough of an insular glue-sniffing quality and dreaming-from-the-gutter vibe to invest me in its world--it's really one of the best shot films i've ever seen in this genre.
20) The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Dir. Peter Jackson)
"Leave now, and never come back!"
i haven't rewatched this lately and have no idea where to place it really, but it surely belongs somewhere. i can't say i ever gave much of a shit about aragorn (in the films, anyway), the legolas/gimli bantz, the peregrin/merry shenanigans etc, and i prefer the smaller scale of the first film with its intimacy and atmosphere, but i will forever love all of the frodo/sam/gollum stuff, the saruman stuff, and who's gonna deny the sheer majesty of the helm's deep battle even if it loses something away from the big screen. the serkis gollum is an incredible creation and miraculously the most human character in the trilogy, exactly as pathetic and haunted and grotesque and expressive as i dreamed when reading these books as a kid.
19) Morvern Callar (Dir. Lynne Ramsay)
It's the same crapness everywhere, so stop dreaming.
arguably the best 21st century progenitor of antonioni alongside its asian cousin millennium mambo, this is one of the great ontological films, externalising the headspace of its inscrutable heroine in the aftermath of her boyfriend's suicide. it transitions between states of being that ramsay stubbornly refuses to concretely define or explain, which can make it frustratingly enigmatic for some, but that spontaneous, restless, untethered quality is also what makes it so unique and specific. while it's a film of instincts and impressions over any real plot, i also realised how funny it is on this (third) viewing, mocking conventional portrayals of grief and various tropes of noir, coming-of-age and road movie genres. i was also reminded that it's one of the great earphones movies: the soundtrack includes stereolab, broadcast, boards of canada, aphex twin, the velvet underground and, last but not least, can, who the source novel was apparently dedicated to.
18) Adaptation. (Dir. Spike Jonze)
Mom called it "psychologically taut".
before synecdoche new york this was kaufman's signature work, the one in which the main character is himself and his own tortuous writing process, furiously twisting and contorting and meta-layering his texts as though fleeing his own perceived inadequacy and inauthenticity. i'm not sure even woody allen is so paralysingly self-aware (perhaps the better comparison is david foster wallace), but i suppose those who are generally don't end up placing their work in the public sphere to be torn apart. i'm always grateful that he keeps powering through, because the films never seem to collapse into gimmickry the way they should, instead scraping at all kinds of intellectual and emotional truths about the human condition. although i will add that the third act, which is extremely bold and clever, never really sticks with me the way i want it to, and frankly it isn't cage i remember from this one but cooper and streep, both of whom put in my all-time favourite of their performances.
17) Reflections of Evil (Dir. Damon Packard)
You're going to eat yourself to death! Fruity Pebbles? My god Bobby, this was made for children!
i'll let others describe this one...
matt lynch: "THEY LIVE made up of pop culture table scraps and crossed with a chemtrail conspiracy video, glued together with dried puke".
patrick pryor: "A Hollyweird gutter slob epic that feels like a great American novel filmed through a garbage bag".
connor: "Battery acid pukespit from a Sounds of The Seventies cassette, video conspiracies of national paranoia and streetfighter blind bravado, a pack of dogs oozing slime out of their jowls, E.T. the blood prophet and Spielberg the vengeful god, diabetic fistfucking in the arteries of studio city".
way more long, obnoxious, insane and repulsive than fatal pulse (seriously). it currently being bolded on RYM is absolutely jawdropping. has big prime MDE energy (before sam hyde shot up all those schools). highly recommended to @Vegard Pompey.
16) Ten (Dir. Abbas Kiarostami)
You can't live without losing. We come into the world for that.
this may be a relatively minor work by perhaps the most important filmmaker of the past 40 years, but kiarostami makes people talking in a car seem thrilling and vital, a rebellious guerrilla brand of cinema that panahi would go on to make even more overt. through casual conversation a whole society emerges, its stifling traditions and the various ways that women in particular navigate them. characters try to put across their perspectives but the long takes on a fixed camera always isolate one from the disembodied voice of the other, reflecting the rigid, binary principles which divide iranian life. at the same time the car offers a safe bubble from the world outside, allowing people to be candid in ways they're unable in the public sphere (which can also be true of cinema itself), their humanity peeking out from beneath their oppressive clothing. as always, kiarostami keeps us aware of the artifice, from the unsubtle edits to the people glancing at the cameras--he's always understood how it can disarm us into participating rather than merely spectating. in that same spirit, scenes are divided by countdown title cards that would typically be used to introduce a film, the implication being that the real movie starts in the audience's imagination once the credits roll.
15) On the Occasion of Remembering the Turning Gate (Dir. Hong Sang-Soo)
Even though it's difficult to be a human being, let's not turn into monsters.
often regarded as the film in which hong came into his own, turning gate contains many of the itches he obsessively scratches to this day (although not yet his signature zooms...): the doubling of characters and story beats, toxic males, the incorporation and mirroring of an external text, formal impositions onto the narrative, alcohol-fuelled confrontations, actors playing actors, awkward stilted dialogues, poetry (sometimes of deliberately dubious quality), rohmerian moralising over the actions of flawed, fickle characters. it's one of his more serious and harsh films, about a snake eventually, arguably, learning to become human.
14) Bright Future (Dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
I forgive you. I forgive all of you for everything.
after his best friend and coworker inexplicably murders their employer, the similarly troubled yuji inherits his jellyfish, a creature which signifies a lost generation left to float around a maze of smog and concrete. one of the most mundanely horrifying ennui movies i know, the characters swallowed up in kurosawa's usual apocalyptic frames, but there's some kind of hope there in a friendship, an adoptive father-son relationship and most of all that jellyfish, even if it may ultimately be as ethereal as the wings in lilya 4-ever. in any case it's a singular kurosawa movie once again; no other filmmaker in the world is making this stuff.
13) May (Dir. Lucky McKee)
So, are we like best friends now that you've seen what's in my freezer?
a fucked up and sad little character-driven horror-drama, the appeal of which rests almost entirely on a beautifully pitched performance from angela bettis as a mentally ill tween whose lazy eye has left her infantalised, cripplingly lonely and desperately lusting for perfection. frankenstein and maniac in the screenplay, argento on the walls, the breeders on the soundtrack, anna faris as a hooker-fucking lesbian, what's not to like?
12) All or Nothing (Dir. Mike Leigh)
You're born, you die. That's it.
all it takes to bring a family together is james corden suffering a heart attack--so worth it. i expect it from an insufferable shitbird like jonathan ross but i'm perplexed sarris/hoberman labelled this condescending miserablism unless they left before the raw, desperately compassionate 3rd act or took a cheeky latter-era ebert toilet break every time it got quotably funny. maybe it'd be that without leigh's troupe of insanely talented regulars (lesley manville and timothy spall are the stars by the end, but there's also a young sally hawkins and the always fantastic ruth sheen among others) and framing/lighting i can only describe as humane... bullet dodged i guess? you could probably double bill this with lilya 4-ever.
fun tidbit from leigh: When we were shooting the heart attack, Steve Buscemi was in town and he brought his family along on set. I don't normally allow anyone on set, but he's a friend.
11) Blissfully Yours (Dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
Teaching me is easy because I know nothing.
it features uncensored dicks and a blowjob, nasty skin rashes, ant bites, a drowned child and an illegal immigrant, and for all of that it's truly a balm for the spirit and probably joe's simplest, sweetest, purest film (albeit the voiceover/drawings are the only instance in his whole filmography of him slipping into preciousness). if i was ever trying to help someone with anxiety or really any kind of illness i'd force them to watch it. the mother is transformed from an annoying "bitch" into a heartbreaking character by one single conversation, and the scene when she reluctantly enters the water is among my favourites of the year.
What difference has my life made to anyone? None that I can think of. None at all.
not the mawkish road trip of self-discovery i dimly remembered it being, about schmidt is actually a pretty savage satire of such movies and much better for that. nicholson plays the titular black hole of a man with great against-type subtlety and blandness, framed in a way that captures both his lack of personhood and his obliviousness to it. retired and widowed, he travels the mid-west becoming dimly aware of the void where his identity should be, but where other films would offer life lessons, epiphanies, character growth, schmidt keeps getting in his own way. when a moment of catharsis finally comes the delicate touch of director and actor are apparent in the way the poignancy and critical distance co-exists; it's ok to sympathise with the automatons created by american capitalism as they flounder helplessly toward some sliver of humanity, but such slivers are really their best case scenario, and not nearly enough.
24) Ripley's Game (Dir. Liliana Cavani)
I think these Balkan types tend to take strangling quite personally.
in a way, every john malkovich film is being john malkovich. something of a ripley analog himself, with a voice and persona that seem the product of a reptilian, almost predatory calculation, the lines between director, actor and character seem to blur around him, and that's particularly true when he's playing a sociopath who acts solely on his whims, appetites and perceived affronts to good taste. it's a performance that reinvigorates the painfully tired archetype of the smarmy, elitist, machiavellian villain by never tipping the scales between slime and charm, and the direction matches ripley's discipline, snaking between baroque eroticism and mucky brutality with surprising ease. the stand-out is a messy set piece on a train, but the smaller character moments are equally crucial: ripley's surprisingly tender scenes with his wife, his banter with a boorish ray winstone or the desperate unravelling of dougray scott.
23) Minority Report (Dir. Steven Spielberg)
Careful, Chief. Dig up the past, all you get is dirty.
another film that has aged surprisingly well, with a vision of the future that seems years ahead of most other sci-fi i watched from 2002. in fact, i could do with a little less plot and a little more of that weird, lived-in tech-noir worldbuilding--stuff like peter stormare going full stormare as a vengeful optician, robo-spiders storming buildings to scan the tenants' eyes, and of course tom cruise playing high stakes geoguessr. the final act is convoluted to say the least and doesn't exactly do the strong premise justice, but cruise is game as always and carries it through the weakest moments.
22) Teknolust (Dir. Lynn Hershman Leeson)
Make me look like Björk.
imagine under the skin if it was a greenscreen geocities cyberpunk clusterfuck starring a scientist named rosetta stone and four tilda swintons in four different shitty wigs lounging and dancing and fucking their way through a colour scheme as vibrant as any musical drinking cum tea while karen black pops up as a PI called "dirty dick" for some reason. maybe the most batshit of all those y2k sci-fi attempts to wrestle with our transition into digital culture.
21) Lilya 4-Ever (Dir. Lukas Moodysson)
A golden future awaits you. Just kidding.
to call this european gummo would be selling it as more unconventional and hallucinatory than it is, but it's a helpful basic comparison that explains why it makes my list. depressing poverty dramas with on-the-nose catholic imagery would typically get a hard no from me, but there's enough of an insular glue-sniffing quality and dreaming-from-the-gutter vibe to invest me in its world--it's really one of the best shot films i've ever seen in this genre.
20) The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Dir. Peter Jackson)
"Leave now, and never come back!"
i haven't rewatched this lately and have no idea where to place it really, but it surely belongs somewhere. i can't say i ever gave much of a shit about aragorn (in the films, anyway), the legolas/gimli bantz, the peregrin/merry shenanigans etc, and i prefer the smaller scale of the first film with its intimacy and atmosphere, but i will forever love all of the frodo/sam/gollum stuff, the saruman stuff, and who's gonna deny the sheer majesty of the helm's deep battle even if it loses something away from the big screen. the serkis gollum is an incredible creation and miraculously the most human character in the trilogy, exactly as pathetic and haunted and grotesque and expressive as i dreamed when reading these books as a kid.
19) Morvern Callar (Dir. Lynne Ramsay)
It's the same crapness everywhere, so stop dreaming.
arguably the best 21st century progenitor of antonioni alongside its asian cousin millennium mambo, this is one of the great ontological films, externalising the headspace of its inscrutable heroine in the aftermath of her boyfriend's suicide. it transitions between states of being that ramsay stubbornly refuses to concretely define or explain, which can make it frustratingly enigmatic for some, but that spontaneous, restless, untethered quality is also what makes it so unique and specific. while it's a film of instincts and impressions over any real plot, i also realised how funny it is on this (third) viewing, mocking conventional portrayals of grief and various tropes of noir, coming-of-age and road movie genres. i was also reminded that it's one of the great earphones movies: the soundtrack includes stereolab, broadcast, boards of canada, aphex twin, the velvet underground and, last but not least, can, who the source novel was apparently dedicated to.
18) Adaptation. (Dir. Spike Jonze)
Mom called it "psychologically taut".
before synecdoche new york this was kaufman's signature work, the one in which the main character is himself and his own tortuous writing process, furiously twisting and contorting and meta-layering his texts as though fleeing his own perceived inadequacy and inauthenticity. i'm not sure even woody allen is so paralysingly self-aware (perhaps the better comparison is david foster wallace), but i suppose those who are generally don't end up placing their work in the public sphere to be torn apart. i'm always grateful that he keeps powering through, because the films never seem to collapse into gimmickry the way they should, instead scraping at all kinds of intellectual and emotional truths about the human condition. although i will add that the third act, which is extremely bold and clever, never really sticks with me the way i want it to, and frankly it isn't cage i remember from this one but cooper and streep, both of whom put in my all-time favourite of their performances.
17) Reflections of Evil (Dir. Damon Packard)
You're going to eat yourself to death! Fruity Pebbles? My god Bobby, this was made for children!
i'll let others describe this one...
matt lynch: "THEY LIVE made up of pop culture table scraps and crossed with a chemtrail conspiracy video, glued together with dried puke".
patrick pryor: "A Hollyweird gutter slob epic that feels like a great American novel filmed through a garbage bag".
connor: "Battery acid pukespit from a Sounds of The Seventies cassette, video conspiracies of national paranoia and streetfighter blind bravado, a pack of dogs oozing slime out of their jowls, E.T. the blood prophet and Spielberg the vengeful god, diabetic fistfucking in the arteries of studio city".
way more long, obnoxious, insane and repulsive than fatal pulse (seriously). it currently being bolded on RYM is absolutely jawdropping. has big prime MDE energy (before sam hyde shot up all those schools). highly recommended to @Vegard Pompey.
16) Ten (Dir. Abbas Kiarostami)
You can't live without losing. We come into the world for that.
this may be a relatively minor work by perhaps the most important filmmaker of the past 40 years, but kiarostami makes people talking in a car seem thrilling and vital, a rebellious guerrilla brand of cinema that panahi would go on to make even more overt. through casual conversation a whole society emerges, its stifling traditions and the various ways that women in particular navigate them. characters try to put across their perspectives but the long takes on a fixed camera always isolate one from the disembodied voice of the other, reflecting the rigid, binary principles which divide iranian life. at the same time the car offers a safe bubble from the world outside, allowing people to be candid in ways they're unable in the public sphere (which can also be true of cinema itself), their humanity peeking out from beneath their oppressive clothing. as always, kiarostami keeps us aware of the artifice, from the unsubtle edits to the people glancing at the cameras--he's always understood how it can disarm us into participating rather than merely spectating. in that same spirit, scenes are divided by countdown title cards that would typically be used to introduce a film, the implication being that the real movie starts in the audience's imagination once the credits roll.
15) On the Occasion of Remembering the Turning Gate (Dir. Hong Sang-Soo)
Even though it's difficult to be a human being, let's not turn into monsters.
often regarded as the film in which hong came into his own, turning gate contains many of the itches he obsessively scratches to this day (although not yet his signature zooms...): the doubling of characters and story beats, toxic males, the incorporation and mirroring of an external text, formal impositions onto the narrative, alcohol-fuelled confrontations, actors playing actors, awkward stilted dialogues, poetry (sometimes of deliberately dubious quality), rohmerian moralising over the actions of flawed, fickle characters. it's one of his more serious and harsh films, about a snake eventually, arguably, learning to become human.
14) Bright Future (Dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
I forgive you. I forgive all of you for everything.
after his best friend and coworker inexplicably murders their employer, the similarly troubled yuji inherits his jellyfish, a creature which signifies a lost generation left to float around a maze of smog and concrete. one of the most mundanely horrifying ennui movies i know, the characters swallowed up in kurosawa's usual apocalyptic frames, but there's some kind of hope there in a friendship, an adoptive father-son relationship and most of all that jellyfish, even if it may ultimately be as ethereal as the wings in lilya 4-ever. in any case it's a singular kurosawa movie once again; no other filmmaker in the world is making this stuff.
13) May (Dir. Lucky McKee)
So, are we like best friends now that you've seen what's in my freezer?
a fucked up and sad little character-driven horror-drama, the appeal of which rests almost entirely on a beautifully pitched performance from angela bettis as a mentally ill tween whose lazy eye has left her infantalised, cripplingly lonely and desperately lusting for perfection. frankenstein and maniac in the screenplay, argento on the walls, the breeders on the soundtrack, anna faris as a hooker-fucking lesbian, what's not to like?
12) All or Nothing (Dir. Mike Leigh)
You're born, you die. That's it.
all it takes to bring a family together is james corden suffering a heart attack--so worth it. i expect it from an insufferable shitbird like jonathan ross but i'm perplexed sarris/hoberman labelled this condescending miserablism unless they left before the raw, desperately compassionate 3rd act or took a cheeky latter-era ebert toilet break every time it got quotably funny. maybe it'd be that without leigh's troupe of insanely talented regulars (lesley manville and timothy spall are the stars by the end, but there's also a young sally hawkins and the always fantastic ruth sheen among others) and framing/lighting i can only describe as humane... bullet dodged i guess? you could probably double bill this with lilya 4-ever.
fun tidbit from leigh: When we were shooting the heart attack, Steve Buscemi was in town and he brought his family along on set. I don't normally allow anyone on set, but he's a friend.
11) Blissfully Yours (Dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
Teaching me is easy because I know nothing.
it features uncensored dicks and a blowjob, nasty skin rashes, ant bites, a drowned child and an illegal immigrant, and for all of that it's truly a balm for the spirit and probably joe's simplest, sweetest, purest film (albeit the voiceover/drawings are the only instance in his whole filmography of him slipping into preciousness). if i was ever trying to help someone with anxiety or really any kind of illness i'd force them to watch it. the mother is transformed from an annoying "bitch" into a heartbreaking character by one single conversation, and the scene when she reluctantly enters the water is among my favourites of the year.
