Best Movies of 2019 so far

[tabuno]

oscar jubis has class. Talk about credible. He he writes he has substance behind it.

[oscar jubis]

Thanks Tab; I enjoyed reading your post about your best personal films, as you well put it. My aim is to hope that anyone reading this thread decides to watch a movie from my list of 10. Nonetheless, there is that "personal" aspect that you recognize that almost demands that I acknowledge that some will find La Flor way too long and inconclusive, The Image Book too ugly and intellectual, and The Beach Bum too silly and grotesque. I'm debating how to characterize the other films on my list. I guess someone might called them "middlebrow" or "middle-class"; certainly the other 7 films would and have, done better at "art cinemas" like the one where I work, or used to work.

So getting back to basics: I am writing because I keep running into films that are deserving of the kind of attention great films used to get back in my boyhood in the 60s and 70s. However, nowadays there is so much "content" available, on so many different platforms, in several media, that it's easier for great achievements to go practically ignored. So I take the opportunity to promote my 3 best personal films of 2018: The Other Side of the Wind, Zama, and A Bread Factory which has very wide appeal in my opinion, perhaps because it's American, and it has famous actors like Tyne Daly.

[Chris Knipp]

As you know, I spend most (but not all!) of my time watching newer films.

I'm glad that Joanna Hogg's THE SOUVENIR got wide US distribution and I learned about it and her and saw it on the big screen, then watched her three earlier films online.It looks like a forgot to see THE BEACH BUM. Maybe you will inspire me to watch it. I did see SPRING BREAKERS and put it in a list of favorites of hat year. I would not want to watch THE IMAGE BOOK. I have had my fill of late Godard at Lincoln Center in several NYFFs.

I didn't like SUNSET, though it's very interesting, an interesting failure. Strange. I saw it at the London FF with a friend. He agreed. SUN OF SAUL was a hard act to follow. TRANSIT I liked, also LITTLE WOMEN. MARRIAGE STORY is officially my favorite film of the year, simply because it gave me the most pleasure to watch.

I saw AN ELEPHANT SITTING STILL in ND/NF. I remember the experience. I also remember that Ed Lachman came, who had seen it in a European festival and couldn't wait to see it again, which impressed me. Working on movies all the time, he's still so enthusiastic about them. It's inspiring. I don't remember it as pleasurable but I remember it.

I had free online access to LA FLOR but I didn't get round to it. Maybe you should warn people that it is 13 and a half hours long. You talk about yourself, but you don't talk about these films. I didn't either, about my list, which is a shame. I didn't put as much into my list-making this year.

As for formats. Surely the life-changing format is to see a movie in a theater, with an attentive audience, and I did so decades before you. I would give VHS the edge over DVD's because with my best VCR, I could examine films frame-by-frame and backwards and forwards. Now the format that's dominant is online screening, Vimeo, and being sent so many screeners with links and passwords, which is so easy, or being to watch films instantly as one can watch great TV series (there was classy TV in the Fifties, by the way; it went downhill after that) like Mad Men or Babylon Berlin or The Crown or Succession or you name it, instantly online. But what we miss now, I do anyway, is the quality projection you speak of. My greatest experiences, but there have been many, have been watching all the movies I've seen at Lincoln Center at the Walter Reade Theater. The last one I saw was UNE FILLE FACILE/AN EASY GIRL in the Rendez-Vous in the Walter Reade Theater Thursday, March 12, when they told us afterward in the lobby that the rest of the series had been cancelled due to the pandemic.

I've seen MARRIAGE STORY, LITTLE WOMEN, THE SOUVENIR, AND TRANSIT twice.

[Chris Knipp]

I enjoyed reading tabuno's list of personal favorites too and his descriptions of them.

[oscar jubis]

One thing that interests me is how the movie experience has changed. It's easy for me to watch movies in a theater because I run one; and for me, Blu-rays are tax-exempted work tools. However, I'm interested in the film experience of someone not in my unique circumstances, and that means, as you say, online streaming. Now that I will be doing all my teaching online, at least in Summer and Fall semesters, I am thinking more seriously about how cinema changed ...is changing....as a result of changes in exhibition and reception, as a response to viewing in smaller screens by people who may regard watching as one task out of multiple, simultaneous tasks such as making a cup of coffee and monitoring text messages. Does the cinema seem smaller and more disposable in this era of plenty when cinema is, for a significant number of people, a solitary activity?

I did "talk about these films" a little. I said that I tend to divide the films I love that were released in 2019 into two groups. Films that "my audience" at the cinema watched or that I would program for them (an audience very similar to the average audience at art cinemas) and films I estimate this audience would not enjoy. I think it's interesting that the 3 of my Top 10 that I place in the latter category are the 3 you have not seen. However, The Image Book, La Flor, and The Beach Bum are to be found in the lists from Film Comment, etc., so that tells me others also find great value in them.
(What about "3 Faces"? IMdb gives a 2019 release date so I included it in the 2019 list. I'll have to check the 2018 version of this thread and see if it was listed for that year.) So I used two adjectives each to warn readers about their likely responses to these 3 movies. I think the other 7 movies I listed are the 7 movies I have watched that I would generally recommend and that is probably the biggest reason to write a post about movies: to encourage others to appreciate a few movies one regards as special achievements.

So, that's where my head is right now. I'm glad you have so much time to dedicate to cinema and to share what you learn with me and everyone else here and in other places. It's great you have been able to watch some of the best movies twice. This British film The Souvenir has a second part(let us know if you hear of a released date Chris) I had forgotten or did not know, when I watched it, the habit hidden by the love interest of the film student protagonist. This ignorance is important because the audience knows exactly and only what the protagonist knows, in this film, from beginning to end. What the viewer knows, when, and how this compares with what different characters know or don't know is often a most important narrative aspect (and not only in cinema, of course). Some of my favorite films provided restricted or partial knowledge of plot events and character traits. I think a great deal of the enjoyment of narrative, and most films we love are narratives, is in what the viewer feels and thinks about not knowing something we know is there to know. The grave and great emotional impact of The Souvenir on me derives from finding out two major revelations at the same moment as the protagonist and feeling this intimacy with her.

[oscar jubis]

One claim I brought up in the previous post involves the relationship between technological developments in terms of access, exhibition, and reception of movies and the movies themselves, their production or creation, the filmmaking. I wonder what readers think about the received wisdom (fact?) that the reduction in average shot length in feature films since the 1980s was mostly a response to the editing rhythms of music videos me and my MTV-addicted college friends devoured in that decade. Is there any doubt that the increase in fantasy films (or films involving fantasy sequences) has something to do with how special effects became easier and cheaper to produce in the digital era? Do you doubt that the smaller size of the screen in which people watch films has something to do with the popularity of shots in which only one person is prominent? The camera got closer because the screen got smaller, to get to the point. Is this of interest to our readership?

[Chris Knipp]

For 3 FACES under Rotten Tomatoes on Goggle it says In Theaters‎: ‎Mar 8, 2019 limited.

A New York Times piece by Randall Stross from eight years ago argues that in the solitary, small screen viewing predominating now, we've simply come full circle; it was like that at the beginning. I personally don't get involved much in cinema history. My interest is in individual movies, taken one at a time. For that reason I'm glad there's now a decent new documentary about our most important film reviewer, Pauline Kael. You can watch it online, alone, on your little screen. The trouble is that at this point the people who remember reading Kael's reviews in the magazine are literally dying out. If you weren't there you don't know what it was like. It wasn't about the opinions. It was that it was stimulating and very rare to encounter such passion and quickness of intelligence focused on movies.

Re: THE SOUVENIR as I've often said, I do not think that one's pleasure in seeing a new film depends on knowing nothing about it. I know this is widely believed. It does not apply to the arts in general. The most knowledge you bring has a lot to do with your appreciation, along with the taste and common sense you already have. I'm a longtime student of literature, comparative literature and English literature, where you approach a read by learning as much about it as you can, not by maintaining a blank mind. Well prepared as I was for THE SOUVENIR, it was still surprising and fresh every step of the way. I still saw everything from Julie's semi-blind point of view. The film is dominated by her point of view. It's still a shock at the end to realize how blind she was.

The big screen is still always the defining experience and I have great big screen experiences (as I mentioned, especially the Walter Reade Theater in Lincoln center) in my head all the time as the ideal. As for the audience, first of all, we're not necessarily more alone watching on a small screen at home, we could be less so. We're usually alone - together - in the movie theater. The audience varies. My best memories are new movies watched in a full house with a crowd that is totally excited about it. That actually happens only rarely. When the audience is sparse, that opens up the possibility for people to be assholes, to talk, to make noise. If they're shoulder-to-shoulder twith strangers intent on the screen, people shut up.

For the best audiences, go to Paris. Not always but generally there in a theater you can hear a pin drop, it's the civilized standard and love of cinema that prevails. I've enjoyed this for decades. It greatly enhances the experience of movie watching that here in my suburban California cineplex can be diluted by inattentive popcorn munchers. I've been told this by a friend who lives in Paris too who growing up lived in many countries and is half Swedish. She said nobody can touch the French for attentive, respectful, silent movie watching.

I'd agree he said/she said closeups work better than panoramic outdoor action shots in a small-screen format but I guess my background as an artist helps me watch a small screen and imagine a big one. A beautifully composed image can be appreciated even postcard size. Statistics on shot length or closeup frequency don't interest me that much, frankly, or seem relevant to the individual films I see.

I have examples from classical music that show how you first encounter great art can vary hugely and still be an equally tremendous experience. Two of the most momentous musical introductions of my youth were 1. first hearing Beethoven's Ninth Symphony played over the radio on the family radio-phonograph in the dining room; 2. Hearing the Berlin Philharmonic live in a concert hall conducted by Herbert von Karajan play Beethoven's Seventh. Sonically and technically those two experiences were worlds apart. Yet for me, they were equally life-changing.

[oscar jubis]

We have retreated (devolved?) to what the cinema was for those 3 or 4 years years before the Lumiere brothers decided to project the images onto a screen: a Kinetoscope viewing box. At its best, cinema is an immersive, sensual and social experience. The lockdown serves to remind us what a precious experience it is. I enjoyed reading about yours; and about the Paris cinemas you visit.

I wonder how popular this forum is... Do I need to say "spoilers ahead" to those who will listen to Chris and I and watch "The Souvenir" soon? I can only go by my viewing of the film; I must say that as the film unfolds, I was fascinated and thoroughly engaged by my evolving assessment of "the love interest" in relation to the affections of the extremely simpatico protagonist. Part of the artistry in this film resides in the gradual, subtle realization in the first half that there's something "majorly wrong" with this man; and that it's going to have a profound effect on the extremely likable character whose partial perspective we share. Part of the pleasure of "not knowing" resides in the weighing of evidence, the consideration of hypotheses, the development of expectations about the nature of characters and predictions about their behavior. Knowing the guy is a heroin addict before watching the film would not have spoiled (as in "ruined") the experience but it would have diminished it. I can always watch the film again, as I have, to enjoy it now that I know how it is resolved. It was great to watch it once without knowing much more than "it's a British film a lot of critics love".

So I was right to list Jafar Panahi's 3 FACES on my 2019 list. It seems to be the great film of last year everyone has managed to ignore. It's the film I should say something about. It won Best Screenplay at Cannes 2018.
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