Community > Evillordexdeath

A Day in the Life
Yesterday
All You Need is Love
While My Guitar Gently Weeps

rwlh posted...

Neat list. I probably won't participate, but in case I do, do you know if any of the movies have a lot of gore?

Well I haven't seen them all. I think the list is light on that kind of thing but:
- Harakiri has a scene in which someone commits seppuku
- The Battle of Algiers and Aguirre have some violent scenes, idk how extreme they get
- Eraserhead has some body horror elements and Pan's Labyrinth has disturbing creature designs
- The Holy Mountain is really weird
- Joan of Arc gets set on fire in Passion of Joan of Arc

O yeah I should probably have included a deadline shouldn't I. Given that some of these films are a little longer let's say July 9th with the possibility of extensions

A word of caution:

This is a list not for the faint of heart, with the majority of the movies being longer than the 90 minute mark and several that are not quite what you'd call excessible. However even among this elite company one film stands out as by far the longest and the slowest. That film is Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080, Bruxelles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ih3nBxjkBH8

And while I feel it would been inexcusable to omit the Sight & Sound Greatest Film of All Time from a list of art films, I do think that having a plan to tackle Jeanne Dielman will increase your chances of completing the list. Get it out of the way early or save it until you're almost done and don't have to worry about losing your nerve anymore. Jeanne Dielman is a unique, challenging, and purposeful film, but I promise the whole list isn't like this!

Welcome to the next iteration of Board 8 Watches and Ranks films! Throughout the last few lists, there's been a lot of discourse around one particular question: what is an art film? And while this label might mean a lot of different things depending on who you ask, I've thrown together a list of 30 films I personally consider artistic to try and shed some light on that question.

So what makes an art film? Is it a movie that challenges our conceptions of narrative and cinematic structure? Is it one that eschews an easily comprehensible plot to try and create an experience you feel your way through instead of thinking? Is it one that deeply examines society and its cultural assumptions? Or is it one that asks philosophical questions about the meaning of life and humanity's place in the universe? On this list you will find assembled many answers to that question, and hopefully many portals to a moviegoing experience unlike anything you're used to.

Although I feel this aspect could've been taken further, I made an effort to make this our most diverse list yet both in nationality and time period. I believe this is the first list since the anime rankings where the United States of America is not the most-represented country and a minority of films are in English. We have many French films, two with African directors, a Mexican film and a Spanish one, a few Italian films, some Swedish, Danish, and German representation, an Indian film, a Taiwanese film and a few Japanese ones, and of course a few from the USSR and its exiles. We have a silent film, a World War 2 film made during the war itself, a film that took decades to release in its own country, and even a few Best Picture nominees to round things out.

Your 30 films, along with their year of release and directors:

The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) - Carl Theodor Dreyer
The Rules of the Game (1939) - Jean Renoir
Citizen Kane (1941) - Orson Welles
Ikiru (1952) - Akira Kurosawa
Tokyo Story (1953) - Yasujir Ozu
Ordet (1955) - Carl Theodor Dreyer
Pather Panchali (1955) - Satyajit Ray
Harakiri (1962) - Masaki Kobayashi
8 1/2 (1963) - Federico Fellini
Black Girl (1966) - Ousmane Sembne
The Battle of Algiers (1966) - Gill Pontecorvo
Persona (1966) - Ingmar Bergman
Playtime (1967) - Jacques Tati
The Conformist (1970) - Bernardo Bertolucci
Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972) - Werner Herzog
The Spirit of the Beehive (1973) - Victor Erice
The Holy Mountain (1973) - Alejandro Jodorowsky
Mirror (1975) - Andrei Tarkovsky
Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) - Chantal Akerman
Eraserhead (1977) - David Lynch
The Ascent (1977) - Larisa Shepitko
Three Colors: Red (1994) - Krzysztof Kielowski
Vive L'Amour (1994) - Tsai Ming-liang
Beau Travail (1999) - Claire Denis
Amlie (2001) - Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Pan's Labyrinth (2006) - Guillermo del Toro
Synecdoche, New York (2008) - Charlie Kaufman
The Tree of Life (2011) - Terrence Malick
The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) - Wes Anderson
Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) - Cline Sciamma

Send completed lists to me either by email at [email protected] or Discord @peopleranimals2

Great top 2 and a deserving winner even if I would've preferred The Shining.

I'll get the sign-up topic for our next list up shortly.

It seems like whatever you think of Stephen King as a novelist it's hard to deny that he isn't the best screenwriter.

If you had asked me at the start I would've predicted The Thing to win... but now that we've seen Possession in #5 I'm not as sure. I think my call will be The Thing next at #2 and The Shining for #1.

Seginustemple posted...

I don't think I can catch up at this point so I might as well go with a dark horse pick

Pokmon Movie 05: Mizu no Miyako no Mamorigami Latias to Latios from outta nowhere

LOL

It makes me happy that someone else picked up on my goofy-ass Pokmon joke

I'll take The Fly next

5th is an insanely good placement for Possession on B8, thrilled it managed to get so high.

I'll also take Nightmare on Elm Street for 4th

I'll guess Possession too.

I'm sticking with Nightmare as well

Ah okay, in that case I think I'll leave Come and See off my list and I would encourage you to include it if we end up doing War Films because I feel it is an extremely great and important example of one of those!

Hey Snake, I was reading the planning topic from January and it was suggestion that you were planning to host a War Movies topic sometime in the future, were you thinking of/planning to include either The Battle of Algiers (1966) or Come and See (1985)? I am trying to decide if I should add them to my list for the Art Films ranking or not.

O and on a similar note, are there any plans to do a sci-fi ranking or can I have 2001?

I'll stay on Nightmare on Elm Street

Wow, that was NOT the drop I was expecting next. I can't believe someone would have Le Prdateur in 30th place... I thought that was definitely gonna be a Henry or Possession ranking.

At this point I think I'm gonna guess Nightmare on Elm Street next for Vegas, Possession and Henry are just unstoppable it would seem.

I can see any of Possession/Henry/Videodrome/The Fly being a potential #1, I'm sure The Shining and The Thing have #1s but I also think they're a lock for 2nd and 1st respectively, I wouldn't be too surprised if Le Prdateur or Beetlejuice made it, but Nightmare I kinda doubt was anyone's first place pick.

Hmm I think I'll get in on Possession too

haha, tbf I was probably a little more impassioned when I wrote that writeup and have cooled my hatred for the film a little bit over the last few weeks. I did cover some of the ways it's much better than Movie 43, but I still think comparing them in that they both just repeat one brainless shtick the whole runtime is valid... at least from what I saw of 43 which I admittedly dipped out on in like 10 minutes. Maybe I was just so tapped out from the opening that I didn't notice but personally I really don't feel like adding the other characters changed much for Evil Dead II, it was still pretty much just nonstop horror setpieces I found entirely meaningless and tiresome. Maybe you can say the female lead is a little less empty and reactionary than Ash but I still thought her character was completely shallow. I get why people appreciate the ending and how it was set up earlier, but for me it just kinda meant the film was ending with the promise that the same repetitive shenanigans would continue even after the credits rolled so it just pissed me off even more.

Fuck yeah, I would've been so disappointed to see that one land ahead of my beloved art films

LinkMarioSamus posted...

Never been interested in Hellraiser and the first thing that comes to mind about the movie is Roger Ebert giving it 0.5/4 stars.

I always found Ebert's take on Hellraiser very strange. Hellraiser 2 is probably one of his worst reviews because of the extremely condescending tone he takes toward people who liked the movie. I find it rather odd that he bemoans how the movie is "made for people with no attention span" when he gave a 3/4 to a certain other movie on the list that feels like it deserves that criticism quite a lot more

https://tenor.com/view/latios-licks-pikachu-gif-6431863923421164287

I wonder if everyone's #1 is either The Shining or The Thing

I'll stay on Evil Dead II

1. ???
2. ???
3. ???
4. ???
5. Fright Night
6. Tetsuo: the Iron Man
7. ???
8. ???
9. An American Werewolf in London
10. Prince of Darkness
11. ???
12. The Changeling
13. Phenomena
14. The Dead Zone
15. The Lost Boys
16. Pokmon Movie 05: Mizu no Miyako no Mamorigami Latias to Latios
17. Hellraiser
18. ???
19. Christine
20. Pet Sematary
21. Child's Play
22. ???
23. Basket Case
24. Poltergeist
25. Creepshow
26. Gremlins
27. Re-Animator
28. Sleepaway Camp
29. Friday the 13th
30. Killer Klowns From Outer Space
31. ???

Here are some of my thoughts on art:

- These topics are weird about "Art Films". I've previously participated in two animated film rankings where there was a group (Inviso, Ermine, Red, and sometimes Karo though he would deviate a lot from the other 3 on certain films) who seemed to me to have a very broad definition of what constitutes an "Art Film" and were very hostile to those films. When I think of "art films" I think of things like Jeanne Dielman (4 hours of watching a woman do chores to make a point about Feminism), or anything directed by Tarkovsky (Russians looking sadly into the middle distance for 10+ minutes at a time in between random conversations about philosophy), while in contrast I recall Inviso describing Cartoon Saloon movies like The Secret of Kells and Song of the Sea as "Art Films" that get extra credit for being foreign. And while I can understand where that perspective comes from I think it's hard to deny that those movies are several tiers lower than the aforementioned in terms of being inaccessible for the sake of some kind of "artistic" purpose, so for me it was something of a culture shock seeing movies like Anomalisa or Boy & the World get lambasted on these lists. I often felt like films that were in any way challenging where getting unfairly criticized for using things like dialog-free storytelling or characters you aren't strictly supposed to relate to and it was very frustrating for me to see these films land below what I perceived as mediocre shlock like Abominable or Over the Moon. So I am surprised that the "Art Films" of this list (which I presume to mean Possession, Videodrome, and Henry) have yet to be eliminated. This does mean that compared to previous lists, "Art Films" are doing well this time, but that might even be because Red and Ermine didn't participate this time and the sample size among the voters is larger, so the "anti-art bias" of previous lists isn't being felt as much. I only think Possession is Art on this list. Videodrome is structurally a fairly standard Hollywood horror film that just refuses to explain certain aspects of its plot and Henry feels more like an attempt at gritty realism. Dumb fun movies are doing fine too, Le Prdateur, Nightmare on Elm Street, and Evil Dead II are all still in and Gremlins and Re-Animator at 13 and 12 is respectable on a carefully curated list.

- Tetsuo is kind of an oddball. I can see thinking of it as an "Art Film" and I get why one would be confused to see it ranked above certain other movies. I actually think an even more useful comparison than Basket Case for Tetsuo is Evil Dead II. Both are basically one shtick repeated nonstop with very little attempt at plot, characterization, or relief. There's a big gap between these two movies on my list too and I would explain this by saying that I enjoyed the shtick of Tetsuo and not that of Evil Dead II. I would definitely not try to defend Tetsuo by saying it has deep metaphors or anything like that, I just thought Tetsuo's unique brand of stupidity was refreshing after so many movies that were stupid in samey ways.

- I don't necessarily mind unpleasant things in my movies. Especially when criticizing I try to evaluate whether what the film does matches with what it's trying to achieve. So something like the opening scene with the man inserting metal bits into himself in Tetsuo doesn't really warrant criticism imo. Yes it's disturbing and made me cringe, but it's meant to and that suits the intended tone of the movie. I also don't necessarily mind if the characters are unlikable as long as I feel they're psychologically interesting which is why I think Anomalisa is a great movie even though I agree the main character is a piece of shit. Come and See is basically nothing but suffering and it's one of the greatest films of all time because of how raw its depiction of war is. This goes doubly when we're talking about horror movies, for me. Possession is definitely not my idea of a fun movie but it was an intense experience and I value that a lot more than something like The Dead Zone that was inoffensive and mildly entertaining throughout. I don't really recall being disgusted by Basket Case, I just remember it being dull - which for me is worse.

- I think Deadzone vs. Videodrome might encapsulate a lot of the difference in how Inviso and I think about movies. Both films where I left wishing for more narrative depth, but I value the story in Videodrome a lot more precisely because it leaves things unexplained. I think trying to create a deep metaphorical analysis of what Videodrome and the New Flesh are in the context of the film would probably be very tortured, but because it doesn't spell everything out for you the viewer is still able to come to interesting conclusions on their own: for example, is the "New Flesh" really a preferable alternative to what Videodrome is trying to accomplish, or is James Woods just getting pulled between two equally nefarious and manipulative agendas? Videodrome's ending is one of my favorite scenes in any movie on this project, I found it extremely haunting, but if the movie had gone on for five more minutes either to show you that James Woods does somehow ascend to "The New Flesh" or that he just winds up lying in a pool of his own blood that would've ruined it - and that's basically what The Dead Zone's ending does by showing you the flash of Martin Sheen's political career being ruined. I felt very disappointed by The Dead Zone's tendency to explain everything and make sure you know that Christopher Walken's actions are morally correct. For me, this made for a much shallower narrative than that of Videodrome. It's perfectly valid to see it the other way around and think that Videodrome is just begging empty questions to try and compensate for a lack of substance in its narrative, but I don't really like the assumption that anyone who doesn't think that way must just be giving the movie "a pass" because it seems artsy.

- I like fun movies, Fright Night is my #5 and The Big Bad Fox and Other Tales is one of my favorite movies we've done across all of these lists. They just have to actually be good :p

I'll get in on Evil Dead II

O damn surprise great elimination, I think this gives us a small possibility of a top 10 with no bad movies

Gonna guess Re-Animator again

I'll guess Possession then

Sticking with Re-animator

Staying on Re-animator

Wow I would not have expected to be the top ranker for Werewolf.

Staying on Re-animator

Sticking with Re-Animator

LinkMarioSamus posted...

I thought Fright Night has a Rotten Tomatoes score in the 90s? I know Gene Siskel didn't recommend it but still.

Fright Night is the best non-artsy movie on this list by a lot so I'm really surprised people are already predicting it but then again my taste in movies isn't very representative of B8 as a whole

I'll take Re-Animator

I too will predict Creepshow

I will also stay on Creepshow

I'll keep guessing Creepshow

Artsy is a bit of a loaded term in this topic series lol

I think it's crazy that anyone is guessing Fright Night but I would've said the same for Prince of Darkness...

Curious to see how high Tetsuo can go. I wouldn't be surprised if it drops next but multiple people switched to it when the hint that the next film had a number 2 placement came out which is intriguing because one play with that information is to guess your own #2.

I'll go back to Creepshow

O wow that one got done unbelievably dirty

Hmm well with that hint I feel like I should change my guess, Creepshow being someone's #2 seems a little unlikely

I guess I'll change to Possession

I'll guess Creepshow

Cool poem, I think it speaks to something a lot of us struggle with :)

I'll take Tetsuo as well

Solitaire
Phelps

I'll take Friday 13th

I'll take Killer Klowns