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Stunning, immersive, (redemptive?) new year films?

Started by amputeeporn, December 30, 2019, 12:46:15 PM

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amputeeporn

I love to get crunk with my girl and watch something overwhelmingly great on New Years and am after some suggestions. You can probably hold off on action, horror or anything too traumatic on account of 'er indoors. Some former new year faves:

Days of Heaven, Fishtank, Tree of Life, Sideways, Tangerine, All These Sleepless Nights, Boyhood, Roma.

So quite visually sweeping - and I guess most of these have a coming of age element, too, although that's less essential. I seem to recall us watching and loving Happiness and Under The Skin one year, so don't throw out darker stuff due to this brief...

Some currently on my shortlist:

Wings of Desire, In the Mood For Love, Certified Copy, Love exposure, YiYi, Solaris, Black Mirror: San Junipero (find Black Mirror a bit one note but his appeals somehow), A Ghost Story, Tokyo Story, The Revenant.

Any of these fit the bill? Anything else that I'm really missing?

Puce Moment

Great picks - I watched In the Mood for Love a couple of days ago and I just adore it deeply. I watched Call Me By Your Name afterwards and it seemed horribly unrestrained in comparison (for obvious reasons) but that might be one for your list. People seem to really like it.

You might also like Parasite, Ash is Purest White, Beanpole, Uncut Gems, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Shoplifters (if you like that then watch Nobody Knows, his earlier film), Atlantics, Pain & Glory, Happy as Lazzaro, The Farewell , If Beale Street Could Talk and probably a few other films released this year that I have been watching over the xmas break. 

Wings of Desire is one of my favourite films, but Tokyo Story is just perfect. Dive in!


non capisco

A Ghost Story, definitely. I adore that film. And if alleged wrong 'un Casey Affleck being in it is a problem then he's at least concealed under a sheet for most of it.

Stick this year's Burning on your list if you haven't seen it, I think it would fit. Ambiguous South Korean psychological mystery that gets through about three different genres in its first act. A disquieting gem.


Pink Gregory


SteK

Quote from: Pearly-Dewdrops Drops on December 30, 2019, 03:19:39 PM
Can't beat Wings of Desire given those criteria.

Is that 'Der Himmel über Berlin'? If it is love it too, and the sequel, which again I only know in German as the missus was honing her German and we went though just about every classic German movie, 'In weiter Ferne, so nah', I think that one had Natascha Kinski looking very nice in it......

Both such peaceful films....

We did quite a few German films;

Wir Kinder Vom Bahnhof Zoo - pretty grim
Various Til Schweiger films, Wo Ist Fred, Kokowääh
Heimat - traditional German watch for all Germans
Alexanderplatz - epic
Gegen Sie Wand - Turks in Hamburg

Indeed, my missus said I look like Gregor from German TV soap 'Sturm Der Liebe'.....

Ahh, happy days, reading German noun inflections as she tried to memorise them......


Sebastian Cobb

Not mentioned yet but I've got Aniara on the list. Might go for it tonight though.

https://film.avclub.com/a-sci-fi-film-that-has-it-all-outer-space-european-en-1839946172

QuoteAniara doesn't have too much of a plot, but what it possesses in spades is ennui: long, agonizing moments of ennui. People in this film are overwhelmingly unhappy, and they enjoy conveying that existential angst via looks that say, "Please don't talk to me unless you've got powerful narcotics to relieve me of this mental burden that is life itself." Admittedly, they've got a good reason for that attitude, what with being on a one-way trip to death in the farthest reaches of space, but still.

The film begins on a dying Earth, where we see the latest group of émigrés abandoning the climate change-devastated planet, traveling via space elevator (it's a real, albeit wildly unlikely, possibility!) up to the space cruiser Aniara, which will convey them to a new home on Mars via a three-week journey. Unfortunately, within the first hour of their trip, they're hit by some space debris that knocks them off course and destroys their entire fuel supply, leaving them unable to steer—meaning that, barring some miraculous rescue, they'll be slowly drifting in a random direction. Head pilot Chefone (Arvin Kananian) addresses the entire assembled crew and passengers (several thousand people, including lots of families), reassuring them they're safe and possessed of a sufficient food and water supply (algae stock, a perpetually renewable resource) to last them until they can use the gravity of an upcoming celestial body to slingshot them back on course. The time until they reach that body? Two years.


This sounds like a real bummer, until the real bummer is revealed: Within three weeks, everyone starts to learn the truth—they won't get close enough to any celestial bodies to get back on track. They're stuck in a permanent drift out into the cosmos. Before you can say, "Who decided to make a Bergman film in space?" the film jumps ahead three years. Then four. Then five. Then—in the last five minutes of the movie—years 10, 24, and 5,981,407. No, I'm not kidding. This seems like a good place to mention one of the main ways everyone on board the Aniara has kept their sanity: Our unnamed protagonist who only refers to herself as "MR" (short for "Mimaroben," her job title) works aboard the ship as the facilitator of "Mima," an AI system that lets humans enter immersive, nature-surrounded memories of Earth as it once was, for a near-spiritual experience of zen calm. Needless to say, this goes south: In year three, Mima decides the increasing number of messed-up humans demanding the AI system enter their memories and provide them balm are bringing it down. Mima self-destructs, and soon, the population is descending into star-worshipping cults, drug-fueled orgies, and more, while those in charge try to keep everything from spinning out of control, all while endlessly staring down the inky blackness of the void.

greenman

Uzak I think beats Stalker as the most CaB film ever made, more of a sense of humour despite being a Tarkovsky like atmospheric/contemplative piece, and even has someone watching Stalker with a friend, switch over to porn when the friend goes to bed and then have to quickly switch back when he wakes up.

Sebastian Cobb

Three Colours are on Mubi* at the moment, I wonder if they selected it for new year angst?

*film service that has a 30 day rolling stock of films.

Puce Moment

Yeah, Tree Colours Blue is also now at the top of my re-watch list.

If you like In the Mood for Love or films with similar themes, you might also want to watch Brief Encounter, Carol, Head-On, more Kieslowski with A Short Film About Love, Paris Texas (more Wenders), Happy Together and Chunking Express (more Wong Kar-Wai).

rjd2


greenman

The Dekalog generally is a good bet as well, maybe not the most dramatic but I do love episode 3 there in terms of atmosphere.

SteK

I'ma massive fan of Brendan Gleeson, a truly nice man in real life too, Gaelic speaker. Was in two films I loved, not sure they were last year tho, but what the hell...

Calvary, really good deep movie, he plays a priest in small town Co. Sligo who is visited in the confessional by a man who was abused as a boy by a priest, and will kill this one two week on Sunday. Then we spend the movie following him wondering who it is, and there ar plenty of suspects...

And 'The Guard' funny af, Galway Irish-cop buddies with FBI Don Cheadle, very enjoyable. For those not Ireland-literate a Guard, or Garda, for Gardaí, is just a copper.......

alan nagsworth

The Hudsucker Proxy is my go-to. Fast-paced, brilliantly quick-witted, a beautiful and magical film that also revels in absurdity. One of my favourites from the Coens without a doubt.

amputeeporn

Thank you so much for these responses! Of the suggested films, we've seen (and loved) Call Me By Your Name, Calvary, The Guard, Parasite, Uncut Gems, Burning, Brief Encounter, Carol, Paris Texas, Hudsucker Proxy.

Love the sound of Dekalog, Dawson City, Aniara, Uzak (very much), Three Colours (been on the list for so long), A short film about love (looked this up and sounds terrific) and Happy Together but think they'll go on our wider to watch list.

I'm committed to kicking off with San Junipero as it's short, contemporary and apparently up beat. Then, argh, in current order of preference either Wings of Desire, In The Mood For Love, Ghost Story or Chungking Express.

Anything that we don't get through (likely nothing after the first two) will just go on the watch list for the future.

Happy new year, this has been great.

Puce Moment

Great idea, and excellent picks.

If you're going for variety (of directors, genres, lannguages etc) you might want to go for Ghost Story over Chungking Express. They're both great, but I think Ghost Story is a fantastic film to watch with those other two films. I won't say anymore than that.

Twit 2

HEART OF GLASS

A film that only gets more relevant every year. A society collapses around people sleepwalking to disaster because they've put all their eggs in one basket and refused to heed the warnings of the clear sighted. Sound familiar? It's also visually stunning, barking mad and the ending is some of the most beautiful and soul-gnawing cinema ever created.


Osmium

Stunning, immersive and redemptive. Maybe the best film of the last 20 years. Shinjia Aoyama's Eureka.