Its come the time once again to formally celebrate and ponder upon the past year's log of cinema. As established in the last iteration of dual lists, discoveries (films released two years prior to the current release year, so for this list, 2019) shall be illuminated first before the eventual list of new releases/premieres. With that laid down, onto trends, emergent patterns and other cumulative observations. Japanese cinema noticeably took remarkable precedence among my favorite first time viewings this year and similarly to last year's lists with Angela Schanelec, Paul Verhoeven is likely to be represented twice with a film on each designated list (some potential foreshadowing). As far as actual 'discoveries' go (films I had no clue existed going into the year), only one film of the nine fits the description, though as I only further purge the back catalog of works as a passionate researcher, most films to appear on these lists will be more destinies manifested than gems blindly stumbled upon. Lastly, unlike my more comprehensive descriptions from the previous lists, I've decided instead to enact a more minimal, but targeted and punctual approach in my blurbs. Different method, but the intention remains intact. To share what reverberated most with the hopes of contributing to your own movie viewing. Onto the films.
10) KEANE (2004)
(Dir. Lodge KERRIGAN) (USA)
A concurrence of footsteps on concrete. Muffled voices littering the thick air. Car horns blaring and bus engines rattling. The urban noise of screeching modernity. Kerrigan directs Damian Lewis' William Keane as a mentally ill man grasping for a foothold of consistent rhythm among the chasm of stimuli. A singular past trauma synthesizes as a central point of focus and concentration, but juggles the viewer's trust to that of a mime performing the act. The odyssey presents itself less convincing upon the fateful encounter of a seemingly single mother and her young daughter, but as the path opens up for further treading, against all curious assumption, the conclusion of its mounting conflict enacts as a frigid, two-pronged sobering. The truth hurts, then heals. Polluted air filters out into cold clarity.
9) CUT (2011)
(Dir. Amir NADERI) (Japan/France)
The severity of film love and making in an ever conflicting world that incentivizes works of 'content' over 'cinema' for instant gratification and easy monetary gain. Naderi's impassioned loyalty to defend tradition and artistic purity within the medium is transparently projected back onto the screen with a blistering lucidity that cuts straight through to the audience he preaches to like an unrelenting beam of light. Human flesh is pounded, bruised, and lacerated throughout as corrupt powers inflict brutal acts of violence upon the protagonist for an owed debt. But flowing within him, underneath the regenerative exterior, is the literal power of the history of world cinema he's committed his entire life's purpose to. The vessel endures erosion, but the precious interior light remains glowing. Not unlike the physical journey of a printed roll of film. Vitality is dependent on its hardware, which is not object to total degradation, but not without revolutions of resistance first.
8) TURKISH DELIGHT (1973)
(Dir. Paul VERHOEVEN) (Netherlands)
The diseased, maggot infested conclusion to the "young and free spirited European couple" picture from this period. Female counterparts exist only for libidinous stimulus, to be disposed of after exhaustive use. Once vibrant flesh rots back down to the essence of the earth and the cycle begins anew. Arguably Verhoeven's bleakest and most scathing work.
7) SAZEN TANGE AND THE POT WORTH A MILLION RYO (1935)
(Dir. Sadao YAMANAKA) (Japan)
The sole discovery on this list as alluded to earlier, my relatively swift stumbling upon it to viewing couldn't have resulted much better for this proto-Hawksian comedy of human error. Its central premise surrounding the nation wide search for a lucrative pot is immediately established and rolled out to make way for its delightful ensemble of flawed eccentrics to dance upon in laid back jest. Like Hawks, this is less concerned with its narrative fiction per say and more on its screen performers playing their individual bids, in whatever way pleases their damn heart's desire. But despite its loosey goosey nature, an impressive formal clarity coalesces in its substrate that becomes more and more noticeable as each of its variables parlay into a complex game of clever introduction, cause, and effect. A classically fun, light, and breezy watch made even greater by the role of the titular Sazen Tange, the famed one-armed swordsman, played by Denjiro Okochi, whose appearance and traits of a brutal and harsh warrior wildly conflict with the rest of the movie's docile space. Nobody hand him a Snickers.
6) A GENTLE WOMAN (1969)
(Dir. Robert BRESSON) (France)
Material objects perpetually drift in and out between Luc and Elle, establishing a proximity of physical removal mistaken as simple hurdles for emotional symbiosis. Bresson's routine emphasis on the opening and closing of doors (with the added repetition of the same causal and effectual sound cues) punctually illustrates the division of space. Public exhibitions (theaters, galleries, zoological displays), proponent spaces for social convention, act merely as attention variables for connections desperately plugging away for some correlation. The death of heteronormative romance.
5) PARANOID PARK (2007)
(Dir. Gus Van SANT) (USA/France)
An unusual encapsulation of American life in the 2000s, where all the particles of societal trauma and existential displacement amidst a looming recession are inhaled and stored forever for eternal preservation. Long days baked underneath beaming sunlight, Levi jeans & Converse sneakers on ashy carpet and concrete and the fragmented recollection of seemingly mundane moments that felt nothing more than fleeting in their time. There is of course more to how the latter is of relation to the film's central disturbing event, but within its backwards tracing of chronology, disjointedly piecing and mapping together loose episodes of faces, places, and words exchanged, is where its form comes to function. As with any decade one finds their first steps, breaths and experience of living in, the first ten years may particularly remain shrouded in certain enigmatic detail as maturation and change increases proximity from such confusing years. Varied specifics collate into an unintelligible assortment of understanding while feelings stay trapped to their association, being thought and felt over and over until eventual disintegration from memory. What were the spaces we once populated, the people we met. What did it all mean then?
4) PERSONAL PROBLEMS (1980)
(Dir. Bill GUNN) (USA)
Gunn's almost musical-like elegy for the black working class of New York City circa 1980 is many things. An avant-garde rendition of the soap opera form. An observant deconstruction of screen actors' expressive freedom from the stage. And a purposeful time capsule of a microcosm of existence likely to be forgotten if not preserved at an instance. Dramatic relationships (with major off screen contextualization) of a time, place, and community that'll continue singing forever.
3) ZABRISKIE POINT (1970)
(Dir. Michelangelo ANTONIONI) (USA)
As someone whose slice of the U.S. experience has remained virtually exclusive to an opportunistic settlement of rotting structures, neon, and dirt in the middle of hostile nowhere, Antonioni's damnation of commoditized consumer culture into existential hell rings especially pertinent in imagery and feeling. All the fancy toys and manufactured goods that materialize our day to day lives are just nothing. No different to the miles and miles of surrounding dirt and dust of which they originated and will again eventually become. A kaleidoscopic decay of Manifest Destiny interpreted as a Jackson Pollock painting.
2) PULSE (2001)
(Dir. Kiyoshi KUROSAWA) (Japan)
First of all, before anything else, I must mention how insanely pleasurable it is for a work of cinema as this to please every aesthetic button (both visual and auditory) that can possibly exist for me. A densely textured overcast that heavily looms over the urban sprawl of Tokyo, permeating gloom and enforcing an emotional anchor of anxiousness. Cafes, libraries & building roof tops where an ensemble of young twenty-somethings lounge around in their supremely chic late 90s/early 00s wear. And the distorted and warped concatenation of early PC dial up and static to score this newly displaced reality of personal technological devices and digital personas. In fact, all of its individual components from its images, atmosphere, sound, and thematic explorations is why this happens to synergize so damn well in my book. A horror that ponders crippling uncertainty of an old world engulfed by newly emerging tech, at once creating new social linkages and ease of access, all while silently constructing invisible barriers and lasting imprints of appearance and contact. The death of the analog world and purity of organic human contact. One that ultimately concludes in global collapse, which at the time, might've appeared as nothing more than paranoid overreaction, but now resonates as a highly possible end thread. The future remains cloudy and inescapable. Will this path that we've embarked upon for progress, be the one of our downfall? Chilling to ponder, but even more chilling is the prospect of our Twitter feeds and high school profile pics outlasting us and living beyond our mortality.
1) SORCERER (1977)
(Dir. William FRIEDKIN) (USA/Mexico)
Recounting the doomed fate of its dual release alongside Star Wars in 1977, and being in the camp that acknowledges the intimidating tower of its ambition and achievement over its more financially successful counterpart, Friedkin's Sorcerer exists as the apotheosis of the New Hollywood experiment, an irrepressible behemoth of a film only made possible by sheer male hubris and lunacy. A work so aggressively conquering in its wake that only a cursed affliction could drive a stake through its heart and thus, effectively kill and destabilize the pillars of power that let it be conceived into existence in the first place. Today, many of us still collectively mourn what could've been of the American film industry had such a populist black hole not swallowed up the culture into an aimless and nebulous ass fucking. And in a year that's gravely shown how the works of filmmakers who follow in the footsteps of the flickering light depressingly undersell compared to those who followed in Star Wars' own path, echoes of THE split in movie-going culture hauntingly reverberate all over again. But to not end on sadness, I present an antibody to the current condition. It would not be out of line to suspect that at some eventual point in their havoc of the industry that the Demon conglomerate whose harshest exploitation of IP brainwash pull out of the theatrical game altogether to completely sever and retain all potential earnings exclusively. At that point, how do the remaining studios, whose drastically reduced audience draw, save the multiplex and mass theatrical altogether? Having gleaned a synthesized understanding from various conversations and speculative writings on this very topic, my proposal is to shoot back at the stars again and aim for a resurrection of what the curse killed in the first place to defibrillate widespread artistic integrity back in Hollywood. With the curse having taken its own ship and flown somewhere else entirely, up in the clouds one might say, perhaps the way to reestablish big budget American cinema is to invest again in the artists, technicians, and dreamers (of a more diverse body this time around) to reignite the old path lost.
End the infantilization of the American movie-going public.
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