Oct 7, 2015

Well said, and I would agree with much of it. Also felt a Kiarostami connection with the close up of the flower later placed on the dashboard. I unfortunately missed the first 15 minutes, though, and will not be reviewing the film as a result. Regardless, It's my personal favourite Panahi, as his earlier films (of which I've seen) all seem overly conceptual to me.

Weerasethakul the GOD. Cemetary of Splendour is magnificent. Letting it wash over me but it's good competition with Assassin and Innocence as fave of the year, and it seriously contends with Syndromes... for top Weerasethakul.




ecent reviews
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• 
  Youth 2015
  ★★★ Watched 30 Sep, 2015
  
  [REVIEW] 66/100 - Youth (Paolo Sorrentino, Italy)
  
  As levity overcomes meaning and the film comes to an unearned closure, viewers might feel tricked by Youth’s self-flattering nature, an undeserved egotism that fails to match the film’s worth.
  
  Read full review:
  nextprojection.com/2015/10/06/viff-youth-beautifully-shot-depiction-old-age-regret-good-old-days/
  
  No likes
  
  
• 
  The Assassin 2015
  ★★★★★ Watched 30 Sep, 2015
  
  [Review] 97/100 - The Assassin (Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Taiwan)
  
  The Assassin presents Hou at his most confident and professional manner, with such perfectly measured pacing and framing it brings tears of beauty to one’s eyes. Typical of Hou, the images linger and wash over one’s conscience, leaving marked poetic resonance and transcendental value. The Assassin is no short of a work of art.
  
  Read full review:
  nextprojection.com/2015/10/06/viff-assassin-mesmerizing-opus/
  

 

Oct 8, 2015

Gummo and Julien Donkey-Boy have impacted my soul.

 

Oct 8, 2015

Heh I'm starting to like you

 

Oct 8, 2015

can't wait for kamran to quote me with his 5 star francofonia review.

 

Oct 8, 2015

Where should I start with Sokurov?

 

Oct 8, 2015

http://letterboxd.com/maximeproulx/list/aleksandr-sokurov/

 

Oct 8, 2015

I guess Russian Ark would be a good start.

 

Oct 8, 2015

I thought Elegy of a Voyage was new. Definitely checking that out first after reading FilmandWhisky's write-up.

 

Oct 9, 2015

sorry, bro

 

Oct 9, 2015

It's undoubtedly within sokurov's ouvre, and works in the same fashion as Elegy of a Voyage with voiceover narration in Sokurov's voice, crossing between reality and fiction, and interaction with the past, but too much of the film feels like a history lesson and Sokurov sounds like a pedantic college professor more than the psychologically curious agnostic (at least in that he's always posing questions and humbly admitting when he doesn't know) that he presents himself to be in other films. It's pretty d--- well crafted though, unique, and lesser sokurov still better than most filmmakers' best. Gonna be a 4 star one though..

 

Oct 9, 2015

[REVIEW] Three Stories of Love (Ryosuke Hashiguchi, Japan) - 77/100

Three Stories of Love shares three dense, heartfelt stories not on love acquired but on love absent, stripped, or pined for. It is simultaneously full of hope while being radically nihilistic.

Read full review:
http://nextprojection.com/2015/10/07/viff-three-stories-love-full-hope-radically-nihilistic/

• 
  Body 2015
  ★★ Watched 03 Oct, 2015
  
  [REVIEW] 55/100 - Body (Malgorzata Szumowska, Poland)
  
  Exceptionally well shot and directed, Szumowska’s Body unfortunately conveys a weak script and plodding themes which fail to support meaning or any inherent worth.
  
  Read full review:
  nextprojection.com/2015/10/08/viff-body-conveys-weak-script-plodding-themes/
  
  No likes
  
  
• 
  Les Anarchistes 2015
  ★★½ Watched 03 Oct, 2015
  
  [REVIEW] 62/100 - The Anarchists (Elie Wajeman, France)
  
  Opening and closing with monologues from Judith, The Anarchists frankly has little to say besides “Long Live Anarchy”.
  
  Read full review:
  nextprojection.com/2015/10/08/viff-anarchists-moderately-looks-feels-era/
  
  No likes
  
  
• 
  Murmur of the Hearts 2015
  ★★★★½ Watched 02 Oct, 2015
  
  [REVIEW] 88/100 -Murmurs of the Heart (Sylvia Chang, Hong Kong)
  
  Nuanced and profound, Murmur of the Hearts leaves a deep impression on the souls of its viewers.
  
  Read full review:
  nextprojection.com/2015/10/07/viff-murmur-hearts-nuanced-profound/
  
  No likes
  
  
• 
  Rams 2015
  ★★★★½ Watched 01 Oct, 2015
  
  Rams (Grímur Hákonarson, Iceland) - 85/100
  
  A sincere evocation of love, between estranged brothers and between man and beloved animal, Rams tells a sullen story of loss and desperation. When the film reaches its climax and the main characters are threatened, its otherwise awkward denouement is instead accepted as meaningful and cathartic.
  
  Read full review:
  nextprojection.com/2015/10/08/viff-rams-meaningful-cathartic/
  

 

Oct 9, 2015

How do you arrive at such specific numeric ratings? Some sort of rubric I presume? @FilmAndWhisky

Also, defend Lucy as anything other than garbage pls.

 

Oct 9, 2015

I think ratings are highly idiosyncratic and measured best when the rater compares films relative to others. I might consider the number 80 differently, in a way someone else thinks of 70, but what matters is consistency in how one rates films against others. I know some people who hardly ever give 5 star ratings etc. so their 4's are like my 5s and their 3s are like my 4s, etc.

For me, it's usually pretty easy to narrow a film within a bracket. 90+ is a film I love, 96 I think is a masterpiece, these are the 5 star films.
85, excellent, 80 great/4 star. 75/3.5 65/3 etc...

Then within those brackets I compare to other films I've seen. If I give something 87, and screen a film I think is slightly better but not at the love level, It gets 88/89. So it's all relative. If I'm kinda unsure but know it fits in it gets flat ratings of 70/75/80/85/90 etc. which is why those kind of numbers get the most use from me. Sometimes this is all silly because I'm rating differently than I did before, or I'm more critical at some times than others.

One day I'll probably give up trying to rate, cause honestly giving a film a numerical value is absurd af.




I'm a big fan of Lucy...

Though divisive and critically overlooked, Luc Besson’s Lucy (2014) will surely satisfy the armchair philosopher, especially those psychedelically inclined. Indebted to the LSD consciousness expansion movement of the 60s counterculture, Lucy is frankly the best visual interpretation of Mind at Large, a theory posited by Aldous Huxley which states that the mind is furnished with a filtration valve in order to render the material world into comprehensible form. Taking off from the writings and research of philosophers, psychologists, and writers of the day, such as Aldous Huxley, Timothy Leary, Richard “Ram Dass” Alpert, William S. Burroughs, and Ralph Metzner, Lucy weaves theories of phenomenology into an instance, a practice, a ‘what-if’ situation.

While the film over zealously aspires to chart mental exercise with stylistic nuance, the special effects serve to provide an uncanny, almost hallucinatory experience—one which ostensibly renders, through affect, the phenomenon it presents. In this respect, Besson may be dismissed for realizing a caricature of reality rather than reality itself, but one must remember that the film attempts to make visible what is immaterial: the mind. This takes artificial means.

Lending sense and context to the visual stimulus is continual philosophical discourse. Scarlett Johannson aptly depicts a woman whose doors of perception are opening, while Morgan Freeman provides academic insight based on actual, yet hardly proven, research. The inter-titles simultaneously convey each jump in cerebral activity while indexing stylistic punches in the action back story. Though Besson’s violent vixen and her drug-ring surface plot under serve the sophisticated conceptual impetus, the high-octane sequences are rather entertaining and should reap merit from the vulgar auteur crowd.

Unlike Neil Burger’s Limitless (2011), which boasted a similar concept, Lucy seriously contemplates the philosophic ramifications of such a phenomenon. This is no more evident in Lucy’s inquiry: “what should I do?”. In Limitless, we saw Eddie Morra (Bradley Cooper) utilize his new found intelligence to achieve superficial success. The major fault of Limitless is its lack of sincerity, something which is certainly not missing from Lucy. While opinionated and highly arguable, Besson’s concept and execution of such is concise, thoughtful, and consistent. Any argument of this comes from a lack of agreement not from a challenge of competence.

In the film, Lucy’s cerebral activity increases as the drug breaks into the nucleus of each of her cells. Beginning with increased concentration and focus, Lucy quickly evolves as her potential as a life-force becomes realized. We become aware of her psychological state from both her dialogue and her reactions. As time passes, she becomes more attuned to her environment, including her self.

With expansion of consciousness comes greater self recognition, which can be greatly overwhelming. This is not lost on Besson, whose character, Lucy, shows signs of doubt, fatigue, and fear. Until she finally overcomes her cultured instincts to feel and to self-recognize, her increased awareness only does her harm. From crying on the phone with her loving mother to re-experiencing the aches and pains of growing bones to self-denying her own existence on an airplane, Lucy’s awareness only breeds chaos and disintegration.

Once beyond the realms of human experience, Lucy displays a great comfort and confidence, in the vein of Melville’s Samurai and Refn’s Driver. A sense of eternity abounds her as she realizes that death does not really exist and that literacy and mathematics are simply the mechanical and flawed means by which the material world can be made comprehensible to human minds. As she explains that time is the only unit of measure, and that time does not exist in reducible—scientific—form, visual images of fractals and unbounded extension fill the screen.

To increase suspense and provide a narrative, Besson continues the yakuza action story which unfortunately undermines Lucy‘s philosophical value. It reduces the film’s poignancy by adding irrelevant action. While Besson makes efforts to seam the two together, such as the final gunshot signalling the Big b---, his efforts are in vain; they sensationalize what ought to be taken as a serious conceptual piece.

Foreshadowing its denoument, Lucy shows a car disappear from existence when motion is sped to infinity. So too Lucy’s existence as a human figure ceases to be once she reaches 100% of cerebral activity. At this point, it is assumed that her cerebral activity has reached a level beyond the scope of time; her cells fire at an infinite rate. She is no longer perceptible to material life-forms; she is no longer part of the material world. Though cheesy when her “I am everywhere” text hits the screen, the notion that she has transcended material existence remains high concept, and every bit as sincere as the rest of the film. While the idea could have been presented less overtly, Besson’s intentions to dispel of ambiguity is quite admirable. The only other feature of Mind at Large I would add is that death itself supposedly releases one from the material world. The difference is that Lucy got to know and experience it.

82/100 – Great.





Also, forgot to include Taxi, which I missed the first 10 minutes of and so didn't write a proper review.



Taxi 2015
★★★★½ Watched 03 Oct, 2015

Panahi's most aesthetically pure and visually provocative film, chalk full of self-reference, cultural exposition, and homage to cinema. The Kiarostami-esque close up of a rose, eastern string instrumentation in the soundtrack, and long tracking takes from the taxi's interior render a profound and verisimilar experience. May have worked even better as a single long take.

85/100

 

Oct 9, 2015

Transporter was better tbh.

 

Oct 9, 2015

http://letterboxd.com/kamahmed/list/the-100s/

 

Oct 9, 2015

Top 10 of the 2000's:

01. As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty (Dir. Jonas Mekas)
02. Tropical Malady / Syndromes and a Century (Dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
03. La Libertad (Dir. Lisandro Alonso)
04. Elegy of a Voyage (Dir. Aleksandr Sokurov)
05. Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks (Dir. Wang Bing)
06. Inland Empire (Dir. David Lynch)
07. Yi Yi: A One and a Two (Dir. Edward Yang)
08. Goodbye, Dragon Inn (Dir. Tsai Ming-Liang)
09. Kader (Dir. Zeki Demirkubuz)
10. Miami Vice (Dir. Michael Mann)

Honorable mentions:

Histoire de Marie et Julien (Dir. Jacques Rivette)
Trick r Treat (Dir. Michael Dougherty)
Colossal Youth (Dir. Pedro Costa)
Les Amants Reguliers (Dir. Philippe Garrel)
At Sea (Dir. Petter B. Hutton)
Ten Skies (Dir. James Benning)
Oxhide (Dir. Liu Jiayin)
Letter from a Filmmaker to His Daughter (Dir. Eric Pauwels)
Mulholland Dr. (Dir. David Lynch)
A Serious Man (Dir. Coen bros)
Millennium Mambo (Dir. Hou Hsiao-Hsien)
War of the Worlds (Dir. Steven Spielberg)
Werckmeister Harmonies (Dir. Bela Tart)
Go Go Tales (Dir. Abel Ferrara)

Top 10 of the 90's:

01. Satantango (Dir. Bela Tarr)
02. Vive L'amour (Dir. Tsai Ming-Liang) / Scream (Dir. Wes Craven)
03. The Match Factory Girl (Dir. Aki Kaurismaki)
04. D'est (Dir. Chantal Akerman)
05. New Rose Hotel (Dir. Abel Ferrara)
06. Chungking Express (Dir. Wong Kar Wai)
07. Mother and Son (Dir. Aleksandr Sokurov)
08. Gummo (Dir. Harmony Korine)
09. Ossos (Dir. Pedro Costa)
10. The Last Days of Disco (Dir. Whit Stillman)

Honorable mentions:

Eyes Wide Shut (Dir. Stanley Kubrick)
I Hired a Contract Killer (Dir. Aki Kaurismaki)
Histoires du Cinema (Dir. Jean Luc Goddard)
Close-Up (Dir. Abbas Kiarostami)
The Corridor (Dir. Sarunas Bartas)
Julien Donkey Boy (Dir. Harmony Iodine)
Trying to Kiss the Moon (Dir. Stephen Dwoskin)
Few of Us (Dir. Sarunas Bartas)
Goodfellas (Dir. Martin Scorsese)
Show Girls (Dir. Paul Verhoeven)

Top 10 of the 80's:

01. La Ville des Pirates (Dir. Raul Ruiz) / Querelle (Dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
02. Elle a passe tant de temps sous les sunlights (Dir. Philippe Garrel) / Offret (Dir. Andrei Tarkovski)
03. Mauvais Sang (Dir. Leos Carax)
04. Sans Soleil (Dir. Chris Marker)
05. Shadows in Paradise (Dir. Aki Kaurismaki)
06. Nightmare on Elm Street (Dir. Wes Craven)
07. Hail Mary (Dir. Jean Luc Godard)
08. Landscape Suicide (Dir. James Benning)
09. A Story of the Forest: Mavka (Dir. Yuri Ilyenko)
10. L'Ange (Dir. Patrick Bukanowski)

Honorable mentions:

Le Rayon Vert (Dir. Eric Rohmer)
Trop Tot, Trop Tard (Dir. Jean-Marie Straub & Huillet)
Days of Eclipse (Dir. Aleksandr Sokurov)
Berlin Alexander Platz (Dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
La Chouette Aveugle (Dir. Raul Ruiz)
Les Trois Couronnes du Matelot (Dir. Raul Ruiz)

 

Oct 9, 2015

HARD AF

 

Oct 9, 2015

Trick r' Treat is the height of cinema as an art.

 

Oct 9, 2015

new coen looks incredible

 

Oct 9, 2015

d---.