I enjoy making lists.
Often is the case that my lethargy culminates in lists such as this, a list I make for me, to humor myself with the films that I'm hog-wild about. And such lists I preserve for those who devour cinema like I do, and who find the need to share their knowledge about films.
Of the fifteen films I have named, I don't think there is any movie that doesn't deserve to be on this list, so please don't bother putting in suggestions that you think I might have left out. To be a bit more blunt and vile, they are useless, distracting, maddening, and make me punch a wall till it falls. Even if you intentionally name a magnum opus, I'm not going to make any changes to this list. So, please. Any movie that is not on this list has been left out consciously.
Here is the list, in no particular order :
1. A Separation (Iran; 2011)
Oh, what a film, what a film!
I thought filmmaker Bong Joon-ho will be hard pressed to make a better whodunit than his masterful Memories Of Murder. But he shut me up for good when he delivered the bludgeoning Mother. Weaving a startling, comical and sporadically horrific story around the murder of a young girl and its aftermath, Joon-ho brings forth the masked monster inside each one of us and what it makes us do.
Thoughtful, always stirring and ultimately moving, Mother is a cineast's wet dream.
7. Oslo, August 31st (Norway; 2011)
This film was purely on instinct.
I took a brief glance at the list of films that were to be played at Cannes that year, and I came up against this fascinating Norwegian drama. My knowledge on the cinema of Norway was cockeyed back then, and to break the niggling jinx, I thought I'll take a whack at it at the expense of my boredom. Suffice to say, this film blew my mind.
Filmmaker Joachim Trier crucially chooses to tell the story of a recovering drug-addict without taking sides and without sermonizing. There isn't much plot to binge on; it's just a junkie meeting up a few old friends and talking to them while on a break from his rehabilitation center, but so empathetic is Trier's approach to it that I felt the film slowly digging its claws into me. It kept me rooted, constantly disarming me with its honesty.
This isn't a falsified portrayal of drug-addiction. It's the screaming truth that we seldom have the guts to face.
8. No (Chile; 2012)
9. The Social Network (US; 2010)
So, Eisenberg rocks. Fincher rocks. Sorkin rocks.
I mean, I can picture this scene as clear as a cloud on a sunny day, you know. Aaron Sorkin wakes up and decides one day that he wants to marginalize the impact Facebook had on our lives, starting with that nettlesome talk about how addictive the website really is. He coos David Fincher into joining him, and they breathe life into a story about Harvard nerds getting filthy rich. Save your yawns.
This film is not about how the website came into existence as much as it is about why. An elegant blend of facts and fiction - yeah, his cranky girlfriend wasn't real - and this Facebook film isn't really about Facebook, which might be a first of its kind. It's about consumerism and all the yada yada yada about economics and friendship.
Except it's all a facade.
Beneath the marvelous quips is a rousing thriller about moral conflict and how man makes money and money makes man. It's a film that questions its characters and not the actions that prompted them to become what they have become.
I rhapsodize about it every single time I talk about it. Can't help it, bud.
10. Amour (France; 2012)
There's much more to Michael Haneke than that impressive beard of his.
Really, how does a guy manage to make three landmark films in a row in under a decade? His artistic detailing was evident in his previous films, and he touches the sky at the pinnacle of his career with this one. Amour is a gloomy tale about, well, love. And sacrifice. But this isn't the kind of love we're subjected to in the movies, the optimistic love with chirpy endings. This is a more thoughtful, introspective and earnest examination of the feeling, and how it makes us human.
It's a singularly harrowing experience to watch Amour, to live with its characters and to breathe with them. But you'll walk away from it, knowing that you've seen something important and possibly not for the last time. Possibly.
11. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Thailand; 2010)
Quite a mouthful, the title.
Apichatpong Weerasethakul's bizarro human-monkey-ghost art flick is a transcendent and arresting experiment about, well, ghosts that don't scare people.
Wait, wait, don't you get all philosophical on me just yet.
In faraway Thailand, tucked in the jungles, Weerasethakul spins a fable about a dying old man and his family haunted by their dead dear ones returning as ghosts. And sometimes, human-monkeys. It's a spiritual place where the paranormal exists without anyone hindering its mysterious existence, and people accept it as a part of their lives. Where catfish talk and man envisions his future and remembers his past lives as that catfish. Yeah, you read that right. Now stop judging.
It's not a film about something, it doesn't ever assert itself as a film, let alone a ghost flick, but so beautiful, pure and symbolic is Weerasethakul's elusive experiment that I found myself getting more and more beguiled. Give this a whirl and bite into it before it bites into you.
12. Beasts Of The Southern Wild (US; 2012)
Quvenzhane Wallis. Remember that name, you.
Young Wallis, the sensational little firestorm that she is, breathes life, hope and overwhelming emotion into Behn Zeitlin's magnificent debut that knocked me silly.
Brains and bravura plug away together to create this small but important film, but it's a film of wonder, of curiosity, a beautiful and boisterous odyssey of optimism and survival in a land that's nature at its most human and its most chimerical. And Wallis is at the heart of it. Try taking your eyes off her for a second. If she smiles, you smile. She's that good.
This is some fantasyland to get lost into. It involves you in its world of magical realism not just as an audience but as a human being too. Drink it up while it lasts, would you?
13. Short Term 12 (US; 2013)
Why do we love dramas?
Why do we begin to believe in the world they create for us? Why do we go back to them every now and then, trying to soak up more of the atmosphere of their fictitious realms? These questions came back to me in a major swoop as I watched my favorite English-language film of 2013 unfurl its ideas, its ambitions and its fidelity right in front of me. The knockout punch came in the form of Brie Larson, the young star, the new promise, the future luminary.
A compassionate, honest perusal of teenage angst, it lays new ground rules for independent cinema and, in the process, delivers one of the most poignant films of last year.
Same old, you say, kindred? Not really. Think again, deeper. So ironic is that fact that in a film about discoveries, you might end up discovering yourself.
14. Holy Motors (France; 2012)
This is cinematic seduction.
French provocateur Leos Carax weaves a startlingly creative, utterly baffling and equally absorbing piece of cinema that always astonishes and sporadically frustrates. You're not allowed to ask a rational question here, mon ami. You won't make head or tail of this cheeky concoction - and its wise not to attempt it unless you want to go partially bald - but I doubt if you won't be astounded by it. Spanning multiple genres, Carax gives you a peek into the life of a human chameleon, Monsieur Oscar, and hang out with him while he's doing his job. That's it, no big deal.
This is glorious filmmaking, a brilliant ripsnorter that compels you to invest emotionally, physically and intellectually but still manages to be deliberately incoherent at the end of it. I haven't seen anything so weird yet so gorgeous.
Enjoy it to its last dregs and smack your lips.
15. The Tree Of Life (US; 2011)
Voila! Malick is back to being Malick.
Ah, so typical. The new film by Terrence Malick - who, by the way, was famed at one point of time for making a new film once every eight years - is like being flung into a world where time comes to a screeching halt, the sound of words is unusual and everyone hallucinates secretly. So, yeah. It's an art film, and by art film, I mean art film. The imagery consists of nature at its quietest, gentlest.
But so curious is Malick's perusal that you can't help but watch on. It's a hypnotic film that questions the very existence of cosmos, of humans, of emotions, of death. Spinning the yarn around a tragedy-affected family, Malick brings forth the questions nobody asks in the form of images and sound, as if exploring everything around him. Ambitious? Yes. Crazy? Yes. Failure? Nah-ah.
You'll either love it or hate it. Me? Well, I put it on this list.
Often is the case that my lethargy culminates in lists such as this, a list I make for me, to humor myself with the films that I'm hog-wild about. And such lists I preserve for those who devour cinema like I do, and who find the need to share their knowledge about films.
Of the fifteen films I have named, I don't think there is any movie that doesn't deserve to be on this list, so please don't bother putting in suggestions that you think I might have left out. To be a bit more blunt and vile, they are useless, distracting, maddening, and make me punch a wall till it falls. Even if you intentionally name a magnum opus, I'm not going to make any changes to this list. So, please. Any movie that is not on this list has been left out consciously.
Here is the list, in no particular order :
1. A Separation (Iran; 2011)
At gunpoint, if you ask me to name a scary movie that didn't involve ghosts or cannibalistic serial-killers, I'd probably mumble A Separation.
Because there is something so incessantly familiar about it that it worries me. Director Asghar Farhadi takes your usual domestic quibbles and turns them into some kind of a thriller where you actually watch yourself on the big screen. His characters are so tangible that you begin feeling what they feel and they slowly, deftly clasp their invisible hands around your windpipe and stifle you. This is no ordinary film; it's a film that is about us, a film where there are no villains and yet, and yet, Farhadi adroitly shows you that in any situation, moral or immoral, whether you are right or wrong, the real villain is actually you. Because good deeds often lead to turbulent repercussions. Amazing.
2. The Hunt (Denmark; 2012)
Hey, quick question : how would you react if you were wrongly indicted? And by indicted, I mean accused of being a obnoxious pedophile. Nauseating enough?
Oh, just you wait and watch as Thomas Vinterberg holds you hostage with that thought toying with your conscience as he makes you feel the horrors an innocent man goes through when he is wrongly accused of molesting a little girl. It's a brutal, brutal movie because you're sucked into the vast abyss of pessimism without the luxury of choice. You have to watch. There's no way out of it. Hold on, wait for that jab that keeps coming every ten fucking minutes. This movie left me with my head reeling, a little wiser and a lot more aware.
3. Drive (US; 2011)
There's a scene in the neon-bathed Drive when a thug blows off half the head of an unsuspecting woman with a shotgun slug, gets punched heavily and stabbed by a shower rod through his oesophagus and watches his friend take a pop of the same shotgun, all in under thirty seconds.
That's Drive for you. Live with it.
I'm two years too late. But Nicholas Winding Refn's kaleidoscopic film passes off manic mayhem as art, and I haven't seen anything quite like it. A beguiling punch of grisly violence and cinematic poetry that gives you a high, it explodes with style, skill and spite. Watch and learn, watch and learn.
4. A Prophet (France; 2009)
It's rare for an arthouse prison-crime-drama to spew out most of its barbarity with words. Jacques Audiard's searing masterwork has the distinction of being one of those bijoux. With a perpetual dreary aura, and with genuine love for craft and detail, Audiard expertly recounts the story of a nineteen year-old boy's ghastly story from a forgettable prisoner to a potent druglord.
Deceptively artsy and phantasmagorical, A Prophet announces the arrival of Tahar Rahim, a major star in the making. Props to Audiard for this, who squeezes promise out from the young man's many talents. This, you won't forget anytime soon, I guarantee.
5. Moonrise Kingdom (US; 2012)
Wes Anderson is at it again.
The undervalued auteur of seven one-off films uses delectable imagery, inspired symmetry and blue-chip cast to tell a waggishly-written love fable of two kids who take on the world. It's a put-off for some who deplore kiddie romances, but in Anderson's dreamy world, it's like any other romance.
The surprise package here is Bruce Willis, who plays a subdued good guy from his usual beefy, bang-lovin' copper in the best performance of the film. Moonrise Kingdom never fails to enchant me, even in its repeated viewings. It's the reason why we love films in the first place.
6. Mother (South Korea; 2009)2. The Hunt (Denmark; 2012)
Hey, quick question : how would you react if you were wrongly indicted? And by indicted, I mean accused of being a obnoxious pedophile. Nauseating enough?
Oh, just you wait and watch as Thomas Vinterberg holds you hostage with that thought toying with your conscience as he makes you feel the horrors an innocent man goes through when he is wrongly accused of molesting a little girl. It's a brutal, brutal movie because you're sucked into the vast abyss of pessimism without the luxury of choice. You have to watch. There's no way out of it. Hold on, wait for that jab that keeps coming every ten fucking minutes. This movie left me with my head reeling, a little wiser and a lot more aware.
3. Drive (US; 2011)
There's a scene in the neon-bathed Drive when a thug blows off half the head of an unsuspecting woman with a shotgun slug, gets punched heavily and stabbed by a shower rod through his oesophagus and watches his friend take a pop of the same shotgun, all in under thirty seconds.
That's Drive for you. Live with it.
I'm two years too late. But Nicholas Winding Refn's kaleidoscopic film passes off manic mayhem as art, and I haven't seen anything quite like it. A beguiling punch of grisly violence and cinematic poetry that gives you a high, it explodes with style, skill and spite. Watch and learn, watch and learn.
4. A Prophet (France; 2009)
It's rare for an arthouse prison-crime-drama to spew out most of its barbarity with words. Jacques Audiard's searing masterwork has the distinction of being one of those bijoux. With a perpetual dreary aura, and with genuine love for craft and detail, Audiard expertly recounts the story of a nineteen year-old boy's ghastly story from a forgettable prisoner to a potent druglord.
Deceptively artsy and phantasmagorical, A Prophet announces the arrival of Tahar Rahim, a major star in the making. Props to Audiard for this, who squeezes promise out from the young man's many talents. This, you won't forget anytime soon, I guarantee.
5. Moonrise Kingdom (US; 2012)
Wes Anderson is at it again.
The undervalued auteur of seven one-off films uses delectable imagery, inspired symmetry and blue-chip cast to tell a waggishly-written love fable of two kids who take on the world. It's a put-off for some who deplore kiddie romances, but in Anderson's dreamy world, it's like any other romance.
The surprise package here is Bruce Willis, who plays a subdued good guy from his usual beefy, bang-lovin' copper in the best performance of the film. Moonrise Kingdom never fails to enchant me, even in its repeated viewings. It's the reason why we love films in the first place.
Oh, what a film, what a film!
I thought filmmaker Bong Joon-ho will be hard pressed to make a better whodunit than his masterful Memories Of Murder. But he shut me up for good when he delivered the bludgeoning Mother. Weaving a startling, comical and sporadically horrific story around the murder of a young girl and its aftermath, Joon-ho brings forth the masked monster inside each one of us and what it makes us do.
Thoughtful, always stirring and ultimately moving, Mother is a cineast's wet dream.
7. Oslo, August 31st (Norway; 2011)
This film was purely on instinct.
I took a brief glance at the list of films that were to be played at Cannes that year, and I came up against this fascinating Norwegian drama. My knowledge on the cinema of Norway was cockeyed back then, and to break the niggling jinx, I thought I'll take a whack at it at the expense of my boredom. Suffice to say, this film blew my mind.
Filmmaker Joachim Trier crucially chooses to tell the story of a recovering drug-addict without taking sides and without sermonizing. There isn't much plot to binge on; it's just a junkie meeting up a few old friends and talking to them while on a break from his rehabilitation center, but so empathetic is Trier's approach to it that I felt the film slowly digging its claws into me. It kept me rooted, constantly disarming me with its honesty.
This isn't a falsified portrayal of drug-addiction. It's the screaming truth that we seldom have the guts to face.
8. No (Chile; 2012)
Boy, how I thought this movie will suck.
When I watch a political-drama rife with tension, I enjoy a bit of ultra-violence to spice things up a bit, you know. But how would you feel if you sit down to watch a political-drama without people threatening or cussing each other, those diabolical little beauties completely absent? Yeah, I know. But Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larrain, like some voodoo magician that he is, makes this claptrap tick. Based on a true story about the advertising war between two political campaigns in the 1988 Chilean referendum, where each side got fifteen minutes on national television to present their views, it plays out much like a sly game of poker.
Many will find this film excruciatingly boring. But the brainiacs will dig deep into it.
9. The Social Network (US; 2010)
So, Eisenberg rocks. Fincher rocks. Sorkin rocks.
I mean, I can picture this scene as clear as a cloud on a sunny day, you know. Aaron Sorkin wakes up and decides one day that he wants to marginalize the impact Facebook had on our lives, starting with that nettlesome talk about how addictive the website really is. He coos David Fincher into joining him, and they breathe life into a story about Harvard nerds getting filthy rich. Save your yawns.
This film is not about how the website came into existence as much as it is about why. An elegant blend of facts and fiction - yeah, his cranky girlfriend wasn't real - and this Facebook film isn't really about Facebook, which might be a first of its kind. It's about consumerism and all the yada yada yada about economics and friendship.
Except it's all a facade.
Beneath the marvelous quips is a rousing thriller about moral conflict and how man makes money and money makes man. It's a film that questions its characters and not the actions that prompted them to become what they have become.
I rhapsodize about it every single time I talk about it. Can't help it, bud.
10. Amour (France; 2012)
There's much more to Michael Haneke than that impressive beard of his.
Really, how does a guy manage to make three landmark films in a row in under a decade? His artistic detailing was evident in his previous films, and he touches the sky at the pinnacle of his career with this one. Amour is a gloomy tale about, well, love. And sacrifice. But this isn't the kind of love we're subjected to in the movies, the optimistic love with chirpy endings. This is a more thoughtful, introspective and earnest examination of the feeling, and how it makes us human.
It's a singularly harrowing experience to watch Amour, to live with its characters and to breathe with them. But you'll walk away from it, knowing that you've seen something important and possibly not for the last time. Possibly.
11. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Thailand; 2010)
Quite a mouthful, the title.
Apichatpong Weerasethakul's bizarro human-monkey-ghost art flick is a transcendent and arresting experiment about, well, ghosts that don't scare people.
Wait, wait, don't you get all philosophical on me just yet.
In faraway Thailand, tucked in the jungles, Weerasethakul spins a fable about a dying old man and his family haunted by their dead dear ones returning as ghosts. And sometimes, human-monkeys. It's a spiritual place where the paranormal exists without anyone hindering its mysterious existence, and people accept it as a part of their lives. Where catfish talk and man envisions his future and remembers his past lives as that catfish. Yeah, you read that right. Now stop judging.
It's not a film about something, it doesn't ever assert itself as a film, let alone a ghost flick, but so beautiful, pure and symbolic is Weerasethakul's elusive experiment that I found myself getting more and more beguiled. Give this a whirl and bite into it before it bites into you.
12. Beasts Of The Southern Wild (US; 2012)
Quvenzhane Wallis. Remember that name, you.
Young Wallis, the sensational little firestorm that she is, breathes life, hope and overwhelming emotion into Behn Zeitlin's magnificent debut that knocked me silly.
Brains and bravura plug away together to create this small but important film, but it's a film of wonder, of curiosity, a beautiful and boisterous odyssey of optimism and survival in a land that's nature at its most human and its most chimerical. And Wallis is at the heart of it. Try taking your eyes off her for a second. If she smiles, you smile. She's that good.
This is some fantasyland to get lost into. It involves you in its world of magical realism not just as an audience but as a human being too. Drink it up while it lasts, would you?
13. Short Term 12 (US; 2013)
Why do we love dramas?
Why do we begin to believe in the world they create for us? Why do we go back to them every now and then, trying to soak up more of the atmosphere of their fictitious realms? These questions came back to me in a major swoop as I watched my favorite English-language film of 2013 unfurl its ideas, its ambitions and its fidelity right in front of me. The knockout punch came in the form of Brie Larson, the young star, the new promise, the future luminary.
A compassionate, honest perusal of teenage angst, it lays new ground rules for independent cinema and, in the process, delivers one of the most poignant films of last year.
Same old, you say, kindred? Not really. Think again, deeper. So ironic is that fact that in a film about discoveries, you might end up discovering yourself.
14. Holy Motors (France; 2012)
This is cinematic seduction.
French provocateur Leos Carax weaves a startlingly creative, utterly baffling and equally absorbing piece of cinema that always astonishes and sporadically frustrates. You're not allowed to ask a rational question here, mon ami. You won't make head or tail of this cheeky concoction - and its wise not to attempt it unless you want to go partially bald - but I doubt if you won't be astounded by it. Spanning multiple genres, Carax gives you a peek into the life of a human chameleon, Monsieur Oscar, and hang out with him while he's doing his job. That's it, no big deal.
This is glorious filmmaking, a brilliant ripsnorter that compels you to invest emotionally, physically and intellectually but still manages to be deliberately incoherent at the end of it. I haven't seen anything so weird yet so gorgeous.
Enjoy it to its last dregs and smack your lips.
15. The Tree Of Life (US; 2011)
Voila! Malick is back to being Malick.
Ah, so typical. The new film by Terrence Malick - who, by the way, was famed at one point of time for making a new film once every eight years - is like being flung into a world where time comes to a screeching halt, the sound of words is unusual and everyone hallucinates secretly. So, yeah. It's an art film, and by art film, I mean art film. The imagery consists of nature at its quietest, gentlest.
But so curious is Malick's perusal that you can't help but watch on. It's a hypnotic film that questions the very existence of cosmos, of humans, of emotions, of death. Spinning the yarn around a tragedy-affected family, Malick brings forth the questions nobody asks in the form of images and sound, as if exploring everything around him. Ambitious? Yes. Crazy? Yes. Failure? Nah-ah.
You'll either love it or hate it. Me? Well, I put it on this list.
