This is a posting celebrating Shii’s move to our sweet domain, yay yay! Hopefully the move and the new design will inspire him to blog more about the films he watched. :3
Besides that, I have recently gotten a list of his backlog – it’s even longer than mine! Not surprisingly, I haven’t watched many of those films, thus there aren’t many that I can recommend. The file also includes a list of films that he liked a lot, and again, I have not watched many of them either! So, here we are. I’ll try to be as short as possible, but I’ll most likely fail.
Films that I wholeheartedly recommend
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days: Should be watched in a dark, quiet cinema. Incredibly dense atmosphere, brrr.
2001: Odyssee: A classic, and featuring brilliant music. In retrospect, it made me think of Ed Wood though, somehow.
Mystery Train: If “Night on Earth” didn’t exist, this one would be Jarmusch’s most brilliant film, on par with “Coffee & Cigarettes”. Funnier, dirtier and more original than C&C though.
Stranger than Paradise: It took me quite awhile until I finally watched this, and it’s cinematography is stunning. Also, funny plottwists ahoi.
I’m a Cyborg, but that’s OK: I’m a Park Chan-wook fangirl – although this one is totally different from his other films, it’s still very original and cute.
Sympathy for Lady Vengeance: A simple story and the most stunning execution. A must when you have liked Old Boy.
Citizen Kane: What a classic. I suppose you just have to see it when you want to call yourself cineast.
Linda Linda Linda: I wrote an incredibly long post on this, and we all are slice of life fans. So what should I say? ;)
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit: Maybe my opinion is biased because I am a huge Wallace & Gromit fan and loved Chicken Run. Also, we had the opportunity to watch this in a movie theater. But hilarity ensues.
Brick: My very first “noir”, and at least part of my top 10 on Facebook. So atmospheric, sexy and intense. Arr.
Manhattan: Possibly the best Woody Allen ever – after all, Match Point only wins by nostalgy factor.
Go: It’s been ages since I watched this, and anti-korean sentiments make me facepalm all the time, but that is what made this film brilliant.
Films I would recommend with reservation
Two Days in Paris: This is so Julie Delpy! How can one not like this film even though it’s so incredibly, incredibly flawed. I even want to watch this film again for some reason (after all, I didn’t even blog about it. O.o)
Zodiac: I enjoyed it although I somewhat felt bored all the time. Let’s say that this film was very weird without being weird at all.
Metropolis: It’s a Fritz Lang, and the concept of the city are plain brilliant, but the story was disappointing after the gripping psychological depth of “M”.
Films I don’t recommend
Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance: When I watched this back then, I found the story pointless and needlessly gory. What the heck?
Sophie’s World: I watched this film because I loved the book as a little child (like everyone), but this adaptation is plain stupid. The only good scene was when Sophie kissed that guy, that looked cute.
Nackt: Brrr, stupid germans talking about relationships, brrr.
Films that I suppose I should watch
I love how this film mainly consists of meaning- and thoughtful films. I approve.
400 Blows (“Sie küssten und sie schlugen ihn” is a beautiful german title, by the way)
Funny Games
Nightmare Before Christmas
Sunset Boulevard
Das Dorf meiner Träume
Die Siebtelbauern
The Constant Gardener
Lovers of the Arctic Circle
Three Colours: Blue
My Life Without Me
The Fearless Vampire Killers
Paris, Texas
Cookie’s Fortune
Au hasard Balthasar
Little Miss Sunshine
Les Amitiés particulières
Last Life in the Universe
Frühling, Sommer, Herbst, Winter und… Frühling
Stalker
Die Rückkehr
Caché
Abril Despedaçado
Rabbit-Proof Fence
Babettes gæstebud
Badlands
In the Mood for Love
La Vida Secreta De Las Palabras
The Wizard of Oz
You dedicated a blog post to me? I feel so honoured! *___*
And I guess now I simply have to write a blog post about some film. XD
The problem about my backlog list is for example that even though it’s so long, the list is still absolutely incomplete. For example I haven’t listed M among the films I want to watch, even though it has more priority than Metropolis, argh.
With “Nackt” I meant the one by Mike Leigh, by the way. (http://german.imdb.com/title/tt0107653/)
BTW: The “already watched” section in my list only consists of the films that I want to have on DVD someday. And I haven’t actualized it since autumn – so I could even give you a list of films I really, really liked that I have watched since autumn.
Right, that’s it. You’ve pushed me over the edge. This weekend I will, after cleaning the house and updating my CV, make a running MyAnimeList-style run-down of everything I’ve watched so far. I’ve been promising myself to do this for ages, and can’t do a reply to a post like this justice in one comment alone. a MyMovieList page is the only way for me to go!
In the meantime Lost in Translation and Chrysalis need to be on your list too. The former is the best romance-but-not-quite-a-romance-but-still-is movie ever and the latter is how a P K Dick novel would turn out if it were done in the style on Luc Besson. Great stuff.
@Shii: You do want quite a lot of DVDs, much more than me even! Well, I am still waiting for the day when get HD or BluRay becomes mainstream and DVDs dirt cheap, haha. Then again, I have the impression that quite a lot of DVDs stay expensive because they become difficult to find. How difficult this all is! @.@
Well, I’m looking forward to your blog postings, but don’t force yourself, hahaha. Your list probably is similarily incomplete as mine (which is merely a random list of names I have picked up as well). Ultimately, the decision of which film to watch comes rather spontaneously, and I also think it’s good like that.
It seems Prog is the only person in the world who has no backlog issues XD
@Martin: MyMovieList! LOL That’s quite a necessary step indeed. As an Imdb user you have rather similar features to MAL (you can list films and rate them), it just looks less Web 2.0-ish and does not have all that “social crap”.
I actually have watched Lost in Translation. That was before I started watching a lot of films (and thus moving towards the direction of becoming a true cineast), and I wasn’t really able to appreciate it, honestly. Although I have been reading manga for years, I wasn’t really able to grasp the Japan that Lost in Translation depicted, I think. Nevertheless, I really liked the film, so… I suppose I should rewatch it.
Chrysalis sounds interesting indeed – I love how it doesn’t even have a german Wikipedia article. Thanks for the recommendation ^^
So, good luck with your CV! (By the way, what is it that you were doing/studying anyways?) I’m looking forward to you list ;)
@Sasa: despite my CV taking priority (I’m in full-time work but it’s a bit of a dead-end job so I’m looking for a complete career change!) I’ve knocked together a first draft for ‘my movie list’. It’s incomplete of course, but I can see it growing rapidly (especially the ‘Plan to watch’ section!).
@Shii: Ah, the backlog. I feel your pain!
@Martin:Woah, a complete career change. Good luck with it! Maybe it helps you to keep your morale to know that both my parents look back to an impressive list of complete career changes, so I suppose it should be quite feasible!
But… oh my gosh, your MyMovieList looks absolutely great. Did you code it or is it just a list that you manually filled out? Anyways, I want it too! *___* Hahaha. Do you actually use some IM program or something so we can talk about it? If you coded it, do you also want more features for it? For example, I use the “sort by ranking” feature very often on MAL.
@Shii:
Oh oh, yes please!