BOT Top 250 Films of All-Time: or How We Learned to Start Shitposting and Love the Countdown!

[4815162342]

9 minutes ago, The Panda said:

 

181.    RoboCop (dir. Paul Verhoeven, 1987)
182.    Brokeback Mountain (dir. Ang Lee, 2005)
183.    City Lights (dir. Charlie Chaplin, 1931)
184.    Halloween (dir. John Carpenter, 1978)
185.    Arsenic and the Old Lace (dir. Frank Capra, 1944)
 

 

 

 

[baumer]

16 minutes ago, Ethan Hunt said:

I mean I love Stand By Me too but it's never made the list B

 

And that's a shame, isn't it?

[The Panda]

Number 60

 

 

"I'm not much on rear window ethics."

 

Synopsis

 

"A wheelchair-bound photographer spies on his neighbors from his apartment window and becomes convinced one of them has committed murder."

 

 

From the Scholar

 

"Window has long been recognized for its thematics of watching, connecting the voyeurism of L. B. "Jeff" Jefferies (James Stewart) with the spectator's curiosity about the lives of those one watches on the screen.2 Examinations of the film's reflexive structure have contributed multiple strands to the interpretation of scopophilia in Hitchcock's film and in the experience of cinema. Feminist psychoanalytic readings of the gendered implications of the gaze have called attention to the ways in which Hitchcock's film screens and reinforces the power of the masculine spectator over the feminine spectacle.3 More recently, analyses that place this film in its historical period have also detected interesting resonances with respect to the surveillance of McCarthyism.4 All of this critical interest in  the thematics of watching has added a great deal to the appreciation and understanding of Hitchcock's film, and has influenced how we think about the gaze as both an exercise of power and an imposition on those whom it cap tures. But, too frequently, critics have tended to read the power of the gaze as a unidirectional phenomenon and thus have emphasized how the film posi tions us with respect to Jeff as a voyeur?one of a "race of Peeping Toms" as his nurse, Stella (Thelma Ritter), calls him. As much as the film invites us to do so, interpreting it exclusively through the viewer's identification with Jeff fails to recognize that the film's narrative logic also stresses the risk of being seen."

- Lawrence Howe. College Literature, Vol. 35, No. 1 (Winter, 2008), pp. 16-37 (22 pages)

 

From the Filmmaker

 

 

 

From the Critic

 

"THE boorish but fascinating pastime of peeking into other people's homes—a thing that New York apartment dwellers have a slight disposition to do—is used by Director Alfred Hitchcock to impel a tense and exciting exercise in his new melodrama, "Rear Window," which opened last night at the Rivoli.Setting his camera and James Stewart in an open casement that looks out upon the backyards and opposite buildings of a jumbled residential block off lower Fifth Avenue, the old thrill-billy has let the two discover a tingling lot about the neighbors' goings-on, including what appears to be a grisly murder by a sullen salesman across the way.Mr. Hitchcock is nobody's greenhorn. When he takes on a stunt of this sort—and stunt it is, beyond question, not dissimilar from his more restricted "Rope"—he may be counted on to pull it with a maximum of build-up to the punch, a maximum of carefully tricked deception and incidents to divert and amuse." - Bosley Crowther, The New York Times

 

From the Public

 

"The universal dilemma: what if the most beautiful person in the world wants to sleep with you but you really just want to spy on your neighbors" - Patrick Willems, Letterboxd

 

 

Factoids

 

Previous Year's Rankings

2012 - #72, 2013 - #20, 2014 - #45, 2016 - #41, 2018 - #64, 2020 - #48, 2022 – #39

 

Director Count

J. Cameron (2), A. Kurosawa (2), J. Lasseter (2), S. Leone (2), D. Lynch (2), C. Nolan (2), R. Allers (1), R. Altman (1), P.T. Anderson (1), F. Capra (1), J. Coen (1), J. Demme (1), J. Demy (1), C.T. Dreyer (1), M. Forman (1), W. Friedkin (1), T. Gilliam (1), A. Hitchcock (1), T. Jones (1), W. Kar-Wai (1), M. Kobayashi (1), S. Lee (1), R. Linklater (1), K. Lund (1), L. McCarey (1), F. Meirelles (1), R. Minkoff (1), J. Peele (1), S. Raimi (1), A. Russo (1), J. Russo (1), M. Scorsese (1), R. Scott (1), M.N. Shyamalan (1), V.D. Sica (1), S. Spielberg (1), Q. Tarantino (1), G. Trousdale (1), B. Wilder (1), K. Wise (1)

 

Decade Count

2000s (10), 1990s (8), 1950s (4), 1960s (4), 1980s (4), 2010s (4), 1970s (3), 1940s (2), 1920s (1), 1930s (1),

 

International Film Count

France (3), Italy (3), Japan (3), Brazil (1), Hong Kong (1), United Kingdom (1)

 

Franchise Count

WDAS (2), Nolanite Cinematic Universe (2), Pixar (2), Toy Story (2)Alien (1), Avatar (1), Before (1), Exorcist (1), Fargo (1), Gladiator (1), Hannibal Lecter (1), Hawkguy Cinematic Universe (1), Man With No Name (1), Monty Python (1), Spider-Man (1)

 

Genre Count

Drama (10), Historical Fiction (10), Comedy (8), Epic (7), Horror (6), Animation (4), Black Comedy (4), Fantasy (4), Musical (4), Sci-Fi (4), Adventure (3), Crime (3), Mystery (3), Noir (3), Religious (3), Romance (3), Thriller (3), Western (3), Action (2), Comic Book (2), Jidaigeki (2), Satire (2), Spaghetti Western (2), Superhero (2), Tragedy (2), Alternative History (1), Christmas/Holiday (1), Coming of Age (1), Neorealism (1), War (1)

 

 

A Recipe

Buttery Baked Lobster Tails

 

Ingredients

4 fresh lobster tails,, each should weigh about 6 to 8 ounces
▢4 tablespoons unsalted butter,, melted
▢3 cloves garlic,, minced or pressed
▢1 teaspoon sweet or smoked paprika, , or to taste
▢½ teaspoon salt,, or to taste
▢½ teaspoon ground black pepper,, or to taste
▢1 tablespoon lemon juice
▢1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley
▢Lemon wedges,, for serving

 

Instructions

Thaw lobster tails if frozen.
Preheat broiler.
Set the oven rack 4 to 6 inches from heat.
Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or foil.
Place lobster tails on the baking sheet.
Using kitchen shears cut straight along the middle of the top of the lobster shell towards the fins of the tail; do not cut through the fin.
With your fingers, gently open up the shell and pull up the meat from inside the shell; do not detach it.
You can also use a spoon to separate the meat from the two sides of the shell.
Close the empty shells together and rest the meat on top of the seam. Set aside.
In a mixing bowl, combine melted butter, garlic, paprika, salt, pepper, lemon juice, and parsley; whisk to combine.
(Optional: Make more sauce for dipping)
Brush the tops of the tails with the butter mixture.
Broil for about 6 to 8 minutes, or 1 minute per 1 ounce of lobster, and until lobster meat is opaque and sturdy.
Remove from oven.
Serve with lemon wedges and more butter sauce, if you like.

 

From: https://diethood.com/baked-lobster-tails/

 

 

 

Edited July 27 by The Panda

[The Panda]

Have to say, a bit crazy this film always makes it, despite really only being defined by a single scene.

Number 59

 

 

"She might have fooled me, but she didn't fool my mother."

 

Synopsis

 

"When larcenous real estate clerk Marion Crane goes on the lam with a wad of cash and hopes of starting a new life, she ends up at the notorious Bates Motel, where manager Norman Bates cares for his housebound mother." - The Movie Database

 

 

From the Scholar

 

"Alfred Hitchcock’s film Psycho (1960) is a significant work on many levels—to Hitchcock’s career, to film history, to the horror genre. I propose that a crucial aspect of Psycho’s design, one that relates to Hitchcock films as a whole, is its thematization of a concept that I call the “death-mother.” A distinction between Mrs. Bates/“Mother,” on the one hand, and the death-mother, on the other hand, impels this discussion. The death-mother—which relates to the varieties of femininity on display but exceeds their specific aspects and implications—is an effect produced by the film text and can only be understood through an analysis of the work as a whole. Exceeding the specifications of the Mrs. Bates character, the death-mother maps onto tropes and preoccupations in Hitchcock’s oeuvre but, more importantly, indicates the aesthetic implications, for the male artist most commonly, of the dread of femininity. I develop the concept of the death-mother from the writings of Freud, Nietzsche, and André Green and from feminist psychoanalytic theory: Barbara Creed, in her reworking of Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection, and Diane Jonte-Pace, in her analysis of Freud’s work. My analysis focuses on the relevance of the death-mother to issues of femininity and queer sexuality crucial to and enduringly controversial within Psycho."

- Greven, D. (2014). The Death-Mother in Psycho: Hitchcock, Femininity, and Queer Desire. Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 15(3), 167–181.

 

From the Filmmaker

 

 

From the Critic

 

"Was it the insolently blunt title? Hitchcock's hilarious first-person trailer ("and here we have the b-a-a-ah-th room")? The unprecedented print ads featuring a Hollywood star (voluptuous Janet Leigh) in a slip and brassiere? The well-publicized absence of press previews? The radio spots promising, "no one... but no one... will be admitted to the theater after the start of each performance"? According to film historian Steven Rebello, "ticket holders standing in line grilled the patrons who poured out of the theater, laughing, outraged, shaken." Asking about the ending they were told, "You gotta see it for yourself!"
To have been among the fortunate few who did see Psycho cold in late June 1960 -- a tense month that followed the Soviet downing of an American U-2 spy plane, the ensuing collapse of the Eisenhower-Khrushchev disarmament summit, continued Red Chinese shelling the off-shore islands Quemoy and Matsui, anti-US riots in Japan, and the expulsion of Cuban diplomats -- was a once in a lifetime experience. The critic William Pechter described the unique atmosphere of excited dread, spectators united before the screen in fearful anticipation."

- J. Hoberman, The Village Voice

 

From the Public

 

"If someone offers you milk with dinner like that's an acceptable beverage you can automatically assume they are mentally ill." - Wood, Letterboxd

 

 

Factoids

 

Previous Year's Rankings

2012 - #52, 2013 -#54 , 2014 - Unranked, 2016 - #78, 2018 -#73, 2020 - #49, 2022 – #38

 

Director Count

J. Cameron (2), A. Hitchcock (2), A. Kurosawa (2), J. Lasseter (2), S. Leone (2), D. Lynch (2), C. Nolan (2), R. Allers (1), R. Altman (1), P.T. Anderson (1), F. Capra (1), J. Coen (1), J. Demme (1), J. Demy (1), C.T. Dreyer (1), M. Forman (1), W. Friedkin (1), T. Gilliam (1), T. Jones (1), W. Kar-Wai (1), M. Kobayashi (1), S. Lee (1), R. Linklater (1), K. Lund (1), L. McCarey (1), F. Meirelles (1), R. Minkoff (1), J. Peele (1), S. Raimi (1), A. Russo (1), J. Russo (1), M. Scorsese (1), R. Scott (1), M.N. Shyamalan (1), V.D. Sica (1), S. Spielberg (1), Q. Tarantino (1), G. Trousdale (1), B. Wilder (1), K. Wise (1)

 

Decade Count

2000s (10), 1990s (8), 1960s (5), 1950s (4), 1980s (4), 2010s (4), 1970s (3), 1940s (2), 1920s (1), 1930s (1),

 

International Film Count

France (3), Italy (3), Japan (3), Brazil (1), Hong Kong (1), United Kingdom (1)

 

Franchise Count

WDAS (2), Nolanite Cinematic Universe (2), Pixar (2), Toy Story (2)Alien (1), Avatar (1), Before (1), Exorcist (1), Fargo (1), Gladiator (1), Hannibal Lecter (1), Hawkguy Cinematic Universe (1), Man With No Name (1), Monty Python (1), Spider-Man (1)

 

Genre Count

Drama (10), Historical Fiction (10), Comedy (8), Epic (7), Horror (7), Animation (4), Black Comedy (4), Fantasy (4), Musical (4), Sci-Fi (4), Adventure (3), Crime (3), Mystery (3), Noir (3), Religious (3), Romance (3), Thriller (3), Western (3), Action (2), Comic Book (2), Jidaigeki (2), Satire (2), Spaghetti Western (2), Superhero (2), Tragedy (2), Alternative History (1), Christmas/Holiday (1), Coming of Age (1), Neorealism (1), War (1)

 

 

A Recipe

Bloody Marion Mess

 

Ingredients

2 strips Bacon
3-4 oz Cherry Tomatoes (a handful)
3 Dashes Worcestershire sauce
2 Dashes Hot Sauce
1 Squeeze Lemon Juice (about 1/4 tsp)
1/8 tsp Celery Salt
1/8 tsp Cracked Black Pepper
1/8 tsp Horseradish
1/8 tsp Paprika
2 slices Dark Pumpernickel Bread
3-4 oz Extra Sharp Cheddar Cheese
1/2 cup Swamp Greens/Spinach Leaves
Butter for brushing bread

 

Instructions on website: https://twocrumbsup.co/psycho/

 

 

 

Edited July 27 by The Panda

[The Panda]

 

176.    Aladdin (dir. John Musker & Ron Clements, 1992)
177.    All About Eve (dir. Jospeh Mankiewicz, 1950)
178.    Edward Scissorhands (dir. Tim Burton, 1990)
179.    The Prestige (dir. Christopher Nolan, 2006)
180.    The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (dir. Tobe Hooper, 1974)
 

[Jake Gittes]

7 minutes ago, The Panda said:

Have to say, a bit crazy this film always makes it, despite really only being defined by a single scene.

 

It may not be on my own list but that's a reductive statement

[The Panda]

Number 58

 

 

"Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine."

 

Synopsis

 

"More has been written about it than any other film, with the possible exception of The Birth of a Nation, Citizen Kane, and Gone with the Wind. Its central image, that of Bogart in a trench coat and hat, holding a gun, with a cigarette dangling from his lips, has become a popular icon of sorts. 

 

The film has spawned any number of books, master’s theses, and been the inspiration for Woody Allen’s hit play and film, Play It Again, Sam, a popular misquotation of one of the film’s memorable lines. What exactly transpired over the years to transform Casablanca’s status has been endlessly debated, discussed and otherwise analyzed. Casablanca is unique because it crystallized and encapsulated an entire generation’s idealistic view of itself. There is scarcely anyone in this country over the age of forty-five who can remain unmoved by the film. It provides tangible evidence of not necessarily the way we were, but more importantly, the way we wanted to be. It is this sense of the more positive beliefs and virtues of another time that gives the film its timelessness. Casablanca bridges the generations, giving us a sense of the hopes of an earlier decade and reminding us that a heritage need not be lost to the passage of time."

- The Criterion Collection

 

 

From the Scholar

 

""Was it the cannon fire or is my heart pounding?" Whenever Casablanca is shown, at this point the audience reacts with an enthusiasm usually reserved for football. Sometimes a single word is enough: fans cry every time Bogey says "kid." Frequently the spectators quote the best lines before they are uttered. According to the traditional standards in aesthetics, Casablanca is not a work of art-if such an expression still means anything. In any case, if the films of Dreyer, Eisenstein, or Antonioni are works of art, Casablanca represents a very modest aesthetic achievement. It is a hodgepodge of sensational scenes strung together implausibly; its characters are psychologically incredible, its actors act in a manneristic way.

 

Nevertheless, it is a great example of cine matic discourse, a palimpsest for the future students of twentieth-century religiosity, a paramount laboratory for semiotic research in textual strategies. Moreover, it has become a cult movie. What are the requirements for transforming a book or a movie into a cult object? The work must be loved, obviously, but this is not enough. It must provide a completely furnished world, so that its fans can quote characters and episodes as if they were part of the beliefs of a sect, a private world of their own, a world about which one can play puzzle games and trivia contests, and whose adepts recognize each other through a common competence.

 

Of course all these elements (characters and episodes) must have some archetypal appeal, as we shall see. One can ask and answer questions about the various stations of the subway in New York or Paris only if these spots have become or have been taken as mythical areas, and such names as "Canarsy Line" or "Vincennes Neuilly" do not only stand for physical places, but become the catalyzers of collective memories."

- Eco, Umberto. “‘Casablanca’: Cult Movies and Intertextual Collage.” SubStance 14, no. 2 (1985): 3–12.

 

From the Filmmaker

 

 

From the Critic

 

"If we identify strongly with the characters in some movies, then it is no mystery that “Casablanca” is one of the most popular films ever made. It is about a man and a woman who are in love, and who sacrifice love for a higher purpose. This is immensely appealing; the viewer is not only able to imagine winning the love of Humphrey Bogart or Ingrid Bergman, but unselfishly renouncing it, as a contribution to the great cause of defeating the Nazis.

 

No one making “Casablanca” thought they were making a great movie. It was simply another Warner Bros. release. It was an “A list” picture, to be sure (Bogart, Bergman and Paul Henreid were stars, and no better cast of supporting actors could have been assembled on the Warners lot than Peter Lorre, Sidney Greenstreet, Claude Rains and Dooley Wilson). But it was made on a tight budget and released with small expectations. Everyone involved in the film had been, and would be, in dozens of other films made under similar circumstances, and the greatness of “Casablanca” was largely the result of happy chance.

 

 

...

 

Stylistically, the film is not so much brilliant as absolutely sound, rock-solid in its use of Hollywood studio craftsmanship. The director, Michael Curtiz, and the writers (Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein and Howard Koch) all won Oscars. One of their key contributions was to show us that Rick, Ilsa and the others lived in a complex time and place. The richness of the supporting characters (Greenstreet as the corrupt club owner, Lorre as the sniveling cheat, Rains as the subtly homosexual police chief and minor characters like the young girl who will do anything to help her husband) set the moral stage for the decisions of the major characters. When this plot was remade in 1990 as “Havana,” Hollywood practices required all the big scenes to feature the big stars (Robert Redford and Lena Olin) and the film suffered as a result; out of context, they were more lovers than heroes.

 

Seeing the film over and over again, year after year, I find it never grows over-familiar. It plays like a favorite musical album; the more I know it, the more I like it. The black-and-white cinematography has not aged as color would. The dialogue is so spare and cynical it has not grown old-fashioned. Much of the emotional effect of “Casablanca” is achieved by indirection; as we leave the theater, we are absolutely convinced that the only thing keeping the world from going crazy is that the problems of three little people do after all amount to more than a hill of beans."

- Roger Ebert

 

From the Public

 

"Finally managed to watch a film I was scared to watch for so long (as it's possibly the only black and white film (from the pre colour era) that ever looked like it would stand up as a film to a modern viewer (aka me) and I'd have been damn depressed to be bored to tears by it.

 

Anyhow, yeah it is quite possibly the best film ever made. It's not my favourite, I may never watch it again, but for its time (hell even if you include the next 20 -30 years of cinema) it was lightyears ahead of what anybody was making. It feels like you are experiencing cinematic perfection as you watch it and Bogart, Bergman and co just never put a foot wrong."

- @chasmmi

 

 

Factoids

 

Previous Year's Rankings

2012 - #33, 2013 - #14, 2014 - #22, 2016 - #15, 2018 - #23, 2020 - #19, 2022 – #14

 

Director Count

J. Cameron (2), A. Hitchcock (2), A. Kurosawa (2), J. Lasseter (2), S. Leone (2), D. Lynch (2), C. Nolan (2), R. Allers (1), R. Altman (1), P.T. Anderson (1), F. Capra (1), J. Coen (1), M. Curtiz (1), J. Demme (1), J. Demy (1), C.T. Dreyer (1), M. Forman (1), W. Friedkin (1), T. Gilliam (1), T. Jones (1), W. Kar-Wai (1), M. Kobayashi (1), S. Lee (1), R. Linklater (1), K. Lund (1), L. McCarey (1), F. Meirelles (1), R. Minkoff (1), J. Peele (1), S. Raimi (1), A. Russo (1), J. Russo (1), M. Scorsese (1), R. Scott (1), M.N. Shyamalan (1), V.D. Sica (1), S. Spielberg (1), Q. Tarantino (1), G. Trousdale (1), B. Wilder (1), K. Wise (1)

 

Decade Count

2000s (10), 1990s (8), 1960s (5), 1950s (4), 1980s (4), 2010s (4), 1940s (3), 1970s (3), 1920s (1), 1930s (1),

 

International Film Count

France (3), Italy (3), Japan (3), Brazil (1), Hong Kong (1), United Kingdom (1)

 

Franchise Count

WDAS (2), Nolanite Cinematic Universe (2), Pixar (2), Toy Story (2)Alien (1), Avatar (1), Before (1), Exorcist (1), Fargo (1), Gladiator (1), Hannibal Lecter (1), Hawkguy Cinematic Universe (1), Man With No Name (1), Monty Python (1), Spider-Man (1)

 

Genre Count

Drama (11), Historical Fiction (10), Comedy (8), Epic (7), Horror (7), Animation (4), Black Comedy (4), Fantasy (4), Musical (4), Romance (4), Sci-Fi (4), Adventure (3), Crime (3), Mystery (3), Noir (3), Religious (3), Thriller (3), Western (3), Action (2), Comic Book (2), Jidaigeki (2), Satire (2), Spaghetti Western (2), Superhero (2), Tragedy (2), Alternative History (1), Christmas/Holiday (1), Coming of Age (1), Neorealism (1), War (1)

 

 

A Recipe

Moroccan Chicken

 

Ingredients

 

For Spice Rub

1 1/2 tbsp all-natural Ras El Hanout
1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp sweet paprika
1 tsp ground ginger
1/2 to 1 tsp black pepper

 

For Chicken

3 1/2 lb/1587.57 g whole chicken cut into bone-in pieces (or 7  to 8 pieces of chicken with bone in. Leave skin on or remove it, up to you.)
Kosher salt
Private Reserve Greek extra virgin olive oil
1 medium yellow on ion, chopped
4 garlic cloves, peeled and minced
1 oz/28.3 g chopped fresh cilantro
1 lemon, thinly sliced (or 1 preserved lemon, cut up into small pieces)
3/4 cup/ 58.5 g pitted green olives
1/4 cup/37 g raisins (any kind)
1/4 cup/ 47 g chopped dry apricots
3 tbsp/49.14 g tomato paste
1 1/2 cup 352.5 ml low-sodium chicken broth
Toasted slivered almonds, to your liking, optional

 

Instructions

In a small bowl, combine Ras El Hanout and the remaining spices to make the rub.
Pat chicken pieces dry and season lightly with kosher salt on both sides. Now, rub the chicken all over with the spice rub (if you kept the skins, make sure to apply the spice rub underneath the skins for best flavor.) Set aside in room temperature for 40 to 45 minutes or so (or, if you have the time, cover and refrigerate for 2 hours or overnight. If you do this, take chicken out of fridge and let it rest at room temperature for a few minutes before cooking.)
In a 12″ deep ceramic pan or braiser like this one, heat 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil over medium-high heat until shimmering but not smoking. Add chicken (skin side down, if you kept skin) and brown for 5 minutes. Turn over and brown on the other side for another 3 minutes or so.
Lower heat to medium-low and add onions, garlic, and cilantro. Cover and cook for 3 minutes, then add lemon slices, olives, raisins, and dried apricots.
In a small bowl, mix the tomato paste and chicken broth. Pour mixture on top of the chicken as it cooks.
Bring to a simmer for 5 minutes, then, keeping heat on medium-low, cover and cook for 30-45 minutes until chicken is tender and cooked through registering an internal temperature of 165 degrees F or higher.
Garnish with more fresh cilantro and toasted almonds, if you like. Serve over plain couscous.

 

From: https://www.themediterraneandish.com/moroccan-chicken-recipe/

 

 

 

Edited July 27 by The Panda

[cannastop]

4 minutes ago, The Panda said:

 

"Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine."

Which movie is more quotable. Star Wars or Casablanca? 🤔

[The Panda]

Thank you for voting for my favorite film!

Number 57

 

 

"I kind of see this all love as this, escape for two people who don't know how to be alone."

 

Synopsis

 

"An exquisitely understated ode to the thrill of romantic possibility, the inaugural installment of The Before Trilogy opens with a chance encounter between two solitary young strangers. After they hit it off on a train bound for Vienna, the Paris university student Celine and the scrappy American tourist Jesse impulsively decide to spend a day together before he returns to the U.S. the next morning. As the pair roam the streets of the stately city, Richard Linklater’s tenderly observant gaze captures the uncertainty and intoxication of young love, from the first awkward stirrings of attraction to the hopeful promise that Celine and Jesse make upon their inevitable parting."

- The Criterion Collection

 

 

From the Scholar

 

"There are few films seductive enough to engender real emotion; what is deemed “emotional” by the current pack of media critics-slash-pundits seems contrived, resigned, and without risk. Not so Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise (1995). It produces an array of responses within the immediacy of its viewing, without resorting to the resolute clichés of less seductive work. The task of this essay is to try to understand these powerful, illusive, and contradictory responses, not simply delve into and illustrate some “inherent” meaning. To dissect it, tease out latent “purpose” and “theme,” and then derive some Generation-X template from this, would do a tragic disservice to the film. An analysis that works chronologically through the film, however, highlighting moments of major importance, and mimicking as closely as possible an immediate viewing (without, of course, ever being able to return to its innocence) will hopefully prove fruitful in gaining an understanding of the film’s particular ebb and flow of expression, its currents of connotation, and its seductive slack. This seductive slack works on at least two levels: the play of discourse between the two main characters and the play between text and viewer, the latter facilitated through the triad of actor/character/author.

 

 

It is within the first meeting between the couple that we can map out a seductive schemata. The action is played out in a deceptively simple shot/reverse shot pattern: Céline moves back toward Jesse, turns her back to him and stores her bag above her seat. Jesse “checks her out”—his eyes flash from her upper torso to her lower torso in a long lingering look. As she sits down, Céline gives him a glance, then another. Jesse glances again; Céline gives no response. Jesse wipes his brow, sighs, and continues to read. This pattern of glances, set in the context of ill communication (i.e., the continuous sound of the quarrelling German couple—sound not intended to be understood on a denotative level by either Céline, Jesse, or the viewer), begins the couple’s seductive play. It is interesting to note that Linklater inserts a shot of Céline “to be looked at,” one in which she does not return Jesse’s stare. Rather than reducing this shot to Laura Mulvey’s notion of the “male gaze,” this insert must instead be understood as the catalyst for seduction: it is not Céline’s “to-belooked-at”-ness that is seductive, it is her lack of a returned gaze. Seduction is the power of weak signs over strong. Here Linklater gives the seductive power to Céline, one that Jesse can not help but reciprocate. Thus he is the first to break the silence between them, asking if she has any idea of what the German couple are fighting about, adding the corollary, “Do you speak English?” in response to her puzzled look. Here the confusion over language is doubled: different languages, different modes of discourse. It is within this confusion that the couple actually meet. Seduction here comes full circle: after Céline replies “My German is not very good,” Jesse turns away from her gaze, a seductive gesture Céline cannot help but reciprocate, asking, “Have you ever heard as couples get older they lose their ability to hear each other?” Here is the beginning of a pattern that will play itself out through the rest of the film."

- Norton, Glen. "The Seductive Slack of Before Sunrise." POST SCRIPT-JACKSONVILLE- 19, no. 2 (2000): 62-72.

 

From the Filmmaker

 

 

From the Critic

 

"The hip ennui that Richard Linklater conjured up in “Slacker” and “Dazed and Confused” seemed rooted in Texas, but it transplants beautifully to Vienna, where his fourth feature, from 1995, is set. The movie is provocatively plotless: Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Céline (Julie Delpy) meet on a train, decide to get off together, and have themselves a fine, sleepless time before parting the next day. That’s it: various threats loom up and fade away, and the only suspense comes from wondering whether the two characters (who are pretty much the only characters) will stop talking long enough to have sex. The extended takes and lazy conversations bring the movie within inches of boring, but there is real audacity in the casual bookishness of the script (by Linklater and Kim Krizan) and in the shrugging rhythms of the direction. The charm—the midsummer enchantment—never feels forced; it steals up and wins you. A true romance." - Anthony Lane, The New Yorker

 

 

From the Public

 

"There's a quietly breathtaking grace to the film's deep-focus way of simultaneously accessing the most intimate moments of Jesse and Celine's interaction - the music shop booth scene is the obvious example, but see also, for one of the countless examples, the bit right after the first kiss when she seems to be leaning in for another one, but then, in the last second, goes for a deeply felt embrace, perhaps realizing how rare such connection with someone else is - and seeing the big picture of them as figures in transition, and their experience as something not just lived right here and now but lived to be remembered and treasured later; the dialogue is both convincingly spontaneous and loaded with reminders of time and mortality, the images casually surround this particular couple with others and, in the end, return us to all the now-unremarkable places they'd been to, as if the entire story was a secret we were gently let in on. Still virtually without equal as a feature-length close-up on that process - so often ditched by films that call themselves romances - when a meeting results in connection, which then becomes mutual infatuation, which then becomes love."  - @Jake Gittes

 

Factoids

 

Previous Year's Rankings

2012 - Unranked, 2013 - Unranked, 2014 - Unranked, 2016 - Unranked, 2018 - #84, 2020 - #72, 2022 – Unranked

 

Director Count

J. Cameron (2), A. Hitchcock (2), A. Kurosawa (2), J. Lasseter (2), S. Leone (2), R. Linklater (2), D. Lynch (2), C. Nolan (2), R. Allers (1), R. Altman (1), P.T. Anderson (1), F. Capra (1), J. Coen (1), M. Curtiz (1), J. Demme (1), J. Demy (1), C.T. Dreyer (1), M. Forman (1), W. Friedkin (1), T. Gilliam (1), T. Jones (1), W. Kar-Wai (1), M. Kobayashi (1), S. Lee (1), K. Lund (1), L. McCarey (1), F. Meirelles (1), R. Minkoff (1), J. Peele (1), S. Raimi (1), A. Russo (1), J. Russo (1), M. Scorsese (1), R. Scott (1), M.N. Shyamalan (1), V.D. Sica (1), S. Spielberg (1), Q. Tarantino (1), G. Trousdale (1), B. Wilder (1), K. Wise (1)

 

Decade Count

2000s (10), 1990s (9), 1960s (5), 1950s (4), 1980s (4), 2010s (4), 1940s (3), 1970s (3), 1920s (1), 1930s (1),

 

International Film Count

France (3), Italy (3), Japan (3), Brazil (1), Hong Kong (1), United Kingdom (1)

 

Franchise Count

Before (2), WDAS (2), Nolanite Cinematic Universe (2), Pixar (2), Toy Story (2), Alien (1), Avatar (1), Exorcist (1), Fargo (1), Gladiator (1), Hannibal Lecter (1), Hawkguy Cinematic Universe (1), Man With No Name (1), Monty Python (1), Spider-Man (1)

 

Genre Count

Drama (12), Historical Fiction (10), Comedy (8), Epic (7), Horror (7), Romance (5), Animation (4), Black Comedy (4), Fantasy (4), Musical (4), Sci-Fi (4), Adventure (3), Crime (3), Mystery (3), Noir (3), Religious (3), Thriller (3), Western (3), Action (2), Comic Book (2), Jidaigeki (2), Satire (2), Spaghetti Western (2), Superhero (2), Tragedy (2), Alternative History (1), Christmas/Holiday (1), Coming of Age (1), Neorealism (1), War (1)

 

 

A Recipe

 

Paula Deen's Vanilla Milkshake

 

Ingredients
8 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
4 cups vanilla ice cream
2 cups milk, less for thicker milkshakes

 

Directions here: https://www.pauladeen.com/recipe/vanilla-milkshake/

 

 

 

[TalismanRing]

1 hour ago, The Panda said:

Have to say, a bit crazy this film always makes it, despite really only being defined by a single scene.

Number 59

 

 

 

 

[TalismanRing]

1 hour ago, cannastop said:

Which movie is more quotable. Star Wars or Casablanca? 🤔

 

Casablanca and they're better quotes because it's far better writing.

[TalismanRing]

1 hour ago, The Panda said:

 

176.    Aladdin (dir. John Musker & Ron Clements, 1992)
177.    All About Eve (dir. Jospeh Mankiewicz, 1950)
178.    Edward Scissorhands (dir. Tim Burton, 1990)
179.    The Prestige (dir. Christopher Nolan, 2006)
180.    The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (dir. Tobe Hooper, 1974)
 

 

People, what are you doing with your lives if you haven't watched All About Eve.  because there's no way if you watched it it would fucking 177.

[The Panda]

Number 56

 

 

"Can I say that curse word now?"

 

Synopsis

 

"Inside Out is a 2015 American animated coming-of-age film produced by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures. It was directed by Pete Docter from a screenplay he co-wrote with Meg LeFauve and Josh Cooley. The film stars the voices of Amy Poehler, Phyllis Smith, Richard Kind, Bill Hader, Lewis Black, Mindy Kaling, Kaitlyn Dias, Diane Lane, and Kyle MacLachlan. Inside Out follows the inner workings of the mind of Riley, a young girl who adapts to her family's relocation as five personified emotions administer her thoughts and actions.

 

Docter conceived Inside Out in October 2009 after observing changes in his daughter's personality as she grew older. The project was subsequently green-lit, and Docter and co-director Ronnie del Carmen developed the story, while consulting psychologists and neuroscientists in an effort to accurately portray the mind. Development took five and a half years on a budget of approximately $175 million."

 - Wikipedia

 

From the Scholar

 

" Traditionally, in the history of Western thought, the prevailing view has been that emotions are enemies of rationality and disruptive of cooperative social relations. But the truth is that emotions guide our perceptions of the world, our memories of the past and even our moral judgments of right and wrong, most typically in ways that enable effective responses to the current situation. For example, studies find that when we are angry we are acutely attuned to what is unfair, which helps animate actions that remedy injustice. We see this in “Inside Out.” Sadness gradually takes control of Riley’s thought processes about the changes she is going through. This is most evident when Sadness adds blue hues to the images of Riley’s memories of her life in Minnesota. Scientific studies find that our current emotions shape what we remember of the past. This is a vital function of Sadness in the film: It guides Riley to recognize the changes she is going through and what she has lost, which sets the stage for her to develop new facets of her identity.

 

 

...

 

This insight, too, is dramatized in the movie. You might be inclined to think of sadness as a state defined by inaction and passivity — the absence of any purposeful action. But in “Inside Out,” as in real life, sadness prompts people to unite in response to loss. We see this f irst in an angry outburst at the dinner table that causes Riley to storm upstairs to lie alone in a dark room, leaving her dad to wonder what to do. And toward the end of the film, it is Sadness that leads Riley to reunite with her parents, involving forms of touch and emotional sounds called “vocal bursts” — which one of us has studied in the lab — that convey the profound delights of reunion. “Inside Out” offers a new approach to sadness. Its central insight: Embrace sadness, let it unfold, engage patiently with a preteen’s emotional struggles. Sadness will clarify what has been lost (childhood) and move the family toward what is to be gained: the foundations of new identities, for children and parents alike."

- Keltner, Dacher, and Paul Ekman. "The science of ‘inside out’." New York Times 3 (2015).

 

From the Filmmaker

 

 

From the Critic

 

"My God, the brilliance of this! To take life’s first hardship, the first time the happy-go-lucky default of childhood is truly tested, and to turn it into an elaborate adventure involving Joy and Sadness trying to find their way home blends everything Pixar does so well: anthropomorphizing unlikely things and evoking our deepest emotions. Poehler is wonderful at Joy, making her a genuinely game and funny companion (not the grating cheerleader she could’ve been) and both the animation of Sadness—a roly-poly blue girl with serious looking glasses—and Phyllis Smith’s expertly mopey line readings are adorable. The inclusion of silly, sweet, and slightly dumb Bing Bong, long forgotten by our tweenage Riley, will remind you a bit of the discarded toys of Toy Story—but that doesn’t mean he will break your heart any less. The adventures themselves are funny and surreal—at one point, literally surreal—and the film shows us just enough of Riley and her parents and her life at school to be really invested in her as a person. Just for fun, the film occasionally takes us inside the minds of Riley’s parents—mom is still pining for the Latin lover who got away; dad thinks about hockey a lot—or a school teacher, or, in one hilarious moment, a pubescent teenage boy who’s the equivalent of the “Squirrel!” dog from Up, only with girls." 

- Max Weiss, The Baltimore Magazine

 

 

From the Public

 

"Pixar's best films take broad, ridiculous, what-if components (rat chefs, romantic bots, talking toys, houses that fly) and use them to tell just as universal but generally more painfully emotional stories about adulation, success, loss, maturity, and just about any other raw nerve you can think of. INSIDE OUT is perhaps the best example of why Pixar's formula works so splendidly--Docter and company turn the mechanics of the mind into complete metaphor to tell a thrilling, funny, fast-paced adventure that's literally all about a 12-year-old girl developing complex emotions and memories. This is the endless spacial imagination of MONSTERS INC. weaved with the coming of age complexity of UP. This movie is the real freaking deal, folks. Not to even mention it has possibly the best Pixar voice performance in Amy Poehler and the best Pixar score in Michael Giacchino." - @Gopher

 

 

Factoids

 

Previous Year's Rankings

2012 - NA, 2013 - NA, 2014 - NA, 2016 - #40, 2018 - #20, 2020 - #23, 2022 – #45

 

Director Count

J. Cameron (2), A. Hitchcock (2), A. Kurosawa (2), J. Lasseter (2), S. Leone (2), R. Linklater (2), D. Lynch (2), C. Nolan (2), R. Allers (1), R. Altman (1), P.T. Anderson (1), F. Capra (1), J. Coen (1), M. Curtiz (1), J. Demme (1), J. Demy (1), P. Docter (1), C.T. Dreyer (1), M. Forman (1), W. Friedkin (1), T. Gilliam (1), T. Jones (1), W. Kar-Wai (1), M. Kobayashi (1), S. Lee (1), K. Lund (1), L. McCarey (1), F. Meirelles (1), R. Minkoff (1), J. Peele (1), S. Raimi (1), A. Russo (1), J. Russo (1), M. Scorsese (1), R. Scott (1), M.N. Shyamalan (1), V.D. Sica (1), S. Spielberg (1), Q. Tarantino (1), G. Trousdale (1), B. Wilder (1), K. Wise (1)

 

Decade Count

2000s (10), 1990s (9), 1960s (5), 2010s (5), 1950s (4), 1980s (4), 1940s (3), 1970s (3), 1920s (1), 1930s (1),

 

International Film Count

France (3), Italy (3), Japan (3), Brazil (1), Hong Kong (1), United Kingdom (1)

 

Franchise Count

Pixar (3), Before (2), WDAS (2), Nolanite Cinematic Universe (2), Toy Story (2), Alien (1), Avatar (1), Exorcist (1), Fargo (1), Gladiator (1), Hannibal Lecter (1), Hawkguy Cinematic Universe (1), Man With No Name (1), Monty Python (1), Spider-Man (1)

 

Genre Count

Drama (12), Historical Fiction (10), Comedy (9), Epic (7), Horror (7), Animation (5), Romance (5), Black Comedy (4), Fantasy (4), Musical (4), Sci-Fi (4), Adventure (3), Crime (3), Mystery (3), Noir (3), Religious (3), Thriller (3), Western (3), Action (2), Comic Book (2), Coming of Age (2), Jidaigeki (2), Satire (2), Spaghetti Western (2), Superhero (2), Tragedy (2), Alternative History (1), Christmas/Holiday (1), Neorealism (1), War (1)

 

 

A Recipe

'Feeling Kinda Blue-Berry' Chai Latte (Loose recipe from DisneyWorld)

 

Ingredients

I
Blueberry Maple Syrup
2 cups frozen blueberries
3⁄4 cup maple syrup
1 teaspoon grated orange peel
1 tablespoon cornstarch

Blueberry Chai Latte
4 chai tea bags
2 cups boiling water
1⁄4 cup Blueberry Maple Syrup
2 ounces spiced dark rum (optional)
1 cup unsweetened almond milk
1⁄4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

 

Instructions

Blueberry Maple Syrup Instructions
In a small saucepan, combine blueberries, maple syrup, and orange peel.
In a small cup, dissolve cornstarch in 2 tablespoons water; add to blueberry mixture.
Cook, stirring constantly until mixture boils.
Reduce heat and simmer until the mixture thickens about 1 minute.

Blueberry Chai Latte Instructions
Divide tea bags evenly between 2 large mugs; pour in boiling water.
Stir 2 tablespoons of Blueberry Maple Syrup into each mug; steep for 5 minutes.
Discard tea bags. If using rum, add 1 ounce to each mug.
Meanwhile, pour almond milk into a small saucepan set over medium heat; heat, stirring occasionally, for 3 to 5 minutes or until warm and steaming.
Froth almond milk with milk frother; divide equally between mugs. Garnish with cinnamon. 

 

 

 

[Jake Gittes]

16 minutes ago, TalismanRing said:

 

People, what are you doing with your lives if you haven't watched All About Eve.  because there's no way if you watched it it would fucking 177.

 

Great movie. Would maybe make my top 300

[The Panda]

Number 55

 

 

"They are nice because they are rich."

 

Synopsis

 

"All unemployed, Ki-taek's family takes peculiar interest in the wealthy and glamorous Parks for their livelihood until they get entangled in an unexpected incident." - The Movie Database

 

From the Scholar

 

"Parasite is also a pertinent departure point to revisit some of Žižek’s theories on the issue of neoliberalism’s global fantasies and on Lacan’s four discourses. In order to do so, it will be necessary to reflect on the visibility of another global event: the revolts that have taken place throughout the world after 2008 (henceforth “post-2008 revolts”), and more specifically after the Arab Spring of 2011. Actually, they have intensified precisely during the year of Parasite’s release, 2019, in what some have called a new “Red October,” from Chile to France and Iraq. The question is whether both Parasite and the post-2008 revolts, with their common emphasis on class conflict, also share the complementary and symmetrical discourses of the analyst and the hysteric respectively.4 If Parasite seems to assert the discourse of the analyst, whereby the audience finally traverses the fantasy of neoliberal capitalism as the Other’s enjoyment, the post-2008 revolts appear to resort to the discourse of the hysteric, whereby they challenge the neoliberal discourse of the Master by posing the question of class (are we a class? are we in power or oppressed?) but ends up identifying with the capitalist elite’s desire (the desire of the Other), so that, like in any hysterical injunction, they ultimately reinforce a late-capitalist symbolic-economic order by avoiding the trauma of their lack. After all, the post-2008 revolts only seem to desire the restorat the hands of neoliberal capitalism, so that they identify with the desire of the capitalist neoliberal elite, i.e. with the desire of the Other, as the only way to continue to desire and be in late capitalism. In short, their object petit a cause of desire is social status (as class and political subject) in the neoliberal market, so that they can disavow the trauma of their lost middle-class position in the bygone welfare state.

 

If Parasite has been hailed as revolutionary, it is precisely because, in its violent logic, it unleashes the spectatorial drive and allows the audience to look at the terrifying maternal jouissance supposedly hidden in the mansion of the elite Park family. Yet, rather than full jouissance, the spectators attain the truth that allows them to traverse their fantasy: one is always excluded from the enjoyment of neoliberal capitalist wealth, regardless of whether one ends up as its prisoner (the working-class father, Kim Ti-taek, at the end of the film), remains outside fantasizing about becoming part of the elite for a good cause (the son, Ki-woo, fantasizes about buying the house in order to liberate his father, fully aware of the fantastic nature of his dream), or dies in the attempt to enjoy neoliberal elite wealth (the father of the Park family, Dong-ik, who dies knived by Ti-taek). At the end of the film, the fatherless neoliberal family vacates the house and sells it to a German family who has just arrived and is ignorant of the events, so that this foreign family too is bound to repeat the narrative of the film as capitalist drive."

- Gabilondo, Joseba. "Bong Joon Ho's Parasite and post-2008 Revolts: From the Discourses of the Master to the Destituent Power of the Real." International Journal of Žižek Studies 14, no. 1 (2020).

 

From the Filmmaker

 

 

From the Critic

 

"But Bong has never made a straightforward film in his life – that’s why he’s one of the great masters of the cinematic game (his awards recognition is long overdue, with Parasite landing six Oscar nominations). The director’s work is as playful as it is sincere and revelatory. He’ll make you feel at home, and then rip the rug out from under you. As his takes on the monster movie (2006’s The Host) and dystopian fantasy (2013’s Snowpiercer) already proved, the director has an affinity for genre cinema, but has never felt confined by its rules. Parasite doesn’t quite take place in our world, but neither is it fantasy. It happens in a world that would exist if people’s desires and motivations weren’t stuffed below the surface.

 

The director’s always shown an interest in class conflict. The train in Snowpiercer is just one big metaphor for capitalism, after all. But Parasite might be his most intricate examination of the topic so far. The “parasite” of the title applies to every character in this film; the rich leech off the poor, who in turn survive by attaching themselves to the underbelly of the ruling class."

- Clarisse Loughrey, The Indepedent

 

 

From the Public

 

"I saw this last night and it is fantastic: thematically rich; superbly crafted, weaving between genres effortlessly; excellent acting that feels grounded and real even as things quickly shift; great comedy and tension; visually interesting. The film just gives and gives. Like others here, highly recommended!"

- @MikeQ

 

 

Factoids

 

Previous Year's Rankings

2012 - NA, 2013 - NA, 2014 - NA, 2016 - NA, 2018 - NA, 2020 - #27, 2022 – #19

 

Director Count

J. Cameron (2), A. Hitchcock (2), A. Kurosawa (2), J. Lasseter (2), S. Leone (2), R. Linklater (2), D. Lynch (2), C. Nolan (2), R. Allers (1), R. Altman (1), P.T. Anderson (1), F. Capra (1), J. Coen (1), M. Curtiz (1), J. Demme (1), J. Demy (1), P. Docter (1), C.T. Dreyer (1), M. Forman (1), W. Friedkin (1), T. Gilliam (1), T. Jones (1), B. Joon-Ho (1), W. Kar-Wai (1), M. Kobayashi (1), S. Lee (1), K. Lund (1), L. McCarey (1), F. Meirelles (1), R. Minkoff (1), J. Peele (1), S. Raimi (1), A. Russo (1), J. Russo (1), M. Scorsese (1), R. Scott (1), M.N. Shyamalan (1), V.D. Sica (1), S. Spielberg (1), Q. Tarantino (1), G. Trousdale (1), B. Wilder (1), K. Wise (1)

 

Decade Count

2000s (10), 1990s (9), 2010s (6), 1960s (5), 1950s (4), 1980s (4), 1940s (3), 1970s (3), 1920s (1), 1930s (1),

 

International Film Count

France (3), Italy (3), Japan (3), Brazil (1), Hong Kong (1), South Korea (1), United Kingdom (1)

 

Franchise Count

Pixar (3), Before (2), WDAS (2), Nolanite Cinematic Universe (2), Toy Story (2), Alien (1), Avatar (1), Exorcist (1), Fargo (1), Gladiator (1), Hannibal Lecter (1), Hawkguy Cinematic Universe (1), Man With No Name (1), Monty Python (1), Spider-Man (1)

 

Genre Count

Drama (12), Historical Fiction (10), Comedy (9), Epic (7), Horror (7), Animation (5), Black Comedy (5), Romance (5), Fantasy (4), Musical (4), Sci-Fi (4), Thriller (4), Adventure (3), Crime (3), Mystery (3), Noir (3), Religious (3), Western (3), Action (2), Comic Book (2), Coming of Age (2), Jidaigeki (2), Satire (2), Spaghetti Western (2), Superhero (2), Tragedy (2), Alternative History (1), Christmas/Holiday (1), Neorealism (1), War (1)

 

 

A Recipe

Jjapaguri

 

Ingredients
1 tsp vegetable oil
200 g sirloin steak
1/8 tsp sea salt
1/8 tsp black pepper
1 pkg Chapaghetti noodles
1 pkg Neoguri noodles

 

Instructions
Heat a frying pan over medium high heat. Add in the oil and sear the steak for about 2-3 minutes per side. Remove from heat. Transfer to a clean plate, cover and let it rest.
Remove the noodles from their packaging. Take out the sauces and seasonings and place to the side.
In a large saucepot, bring 4 C of water to a boil. Add in the noodles from both packages. Stir with a pair of tongs and cook for about 2-3 minutes, until al dente.
Drain the noodles in a colander, reserving about 1 C of the starchy liquid.
In a large bowl, add in the sauces and dry seasonings from both the Neoguri and Chapaghetti packages. Add in the reserved starchy liquid and mix together to make the sauce. Transfer the hot noodles back into the bowl and toss to coat with the sauce.
Cut the steak into cube sized pieces and add to the noodles.
Portion into bowls and serve hot.

 

From: https://www.curiouscuisiniere.com/jjapaguri-ramdon/#:~:text=Jjapaguri is a hodgepodge Korean,instant noodles%3A ramen and udon.

 

 

 

[The Panda]

 

171.    Fanny and Alexander (dir. Ingmar Bergman, 1982)
172.    Casino Royale (dir. Martin Campbell, 2006)
173.    What We Do in the Shadows (dir. Taika Waititi, 2014)
174.    Dune (dir. Denis Villeneuve, 2021)
175.    Up (dir. Pete Docter, 2009)
 

[The Panda]

Number 54

 

 

"You're gonna have to answer to the Coca-Cola company."

 

Synopsis

 

"Stanley Kubrick’s painfully funny take on Cold War anxiety is one of the fiercest satires of human folly ever to come out of Hollywood. The matchless shape-shifter Peter Sellers plays three wildly different roles: Royal Air Force Captain Lionel Mandrake, timidly trying to stop a nuclear attack on the USSR ordered by an unbalanced general (Sterling Hayden); the ineffectual and perpetually dumbfounded U.S. President Merkin Muffley, who must deliver the very bad news to the Soviet premier; and the titular Strangelove himself, a wheelchair-bound presidential adviser with a Nazi past. Finding improbable hilarity in nearly every unimaginable scenario, Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb is a subversive masterpiece that officially announced Kubrick as an unparalleled stylist and pitch-black ironist." - The Criterion Collection

 

 

From the Scholar

 

"DR. STRANGELOVE OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB (Stanley Kubrick, 1964) is one of the most fascinating and important American films of the 1960s. As a sensitive artistic response to its age, the film presents a moral protest of revulsion against the dominant cultural paradigm in America-what Geoffrey Hodgson has termed the Ideology of Liberal Consensus.' Appearing at roughly the same time as other works critical of the dominant paradigm-Catch 22 is a good literary example of the stance-Dr. Strangelove presented an adversary view of society which was to become much more widely shared among some Americans in the late 1960s. This essay will examine the Ideology of Liberal Consen sus, demonstrate how Dr. Strangelove serves as a response to it (espe cially to its approach to nuclear strategy and weapons), and look at how American culture responded to its radical reassessment of the American nuclear policy in the early 1960s.

 

The American consensus to which Dr. Strangelove responds was rooted in the late 1930s and in the war years. When Americans in the late 1930s began to feel more threatened by the rise of foreign totalitarianism than by the economic insecurities fostered by the stock market crash, a previously fragmented American culture began to unify. A common systern of belief began to form, a paradigm solidified during World War II, when American effort was directed toward defeating the Axis powers. Fueled by the success of the war effort and the economic prosperity fostered by the war, this paradigm continued to dominate American social and political life through the early 1960s.

 

 

The 1950s are commonly remembered as an age of conformity typified by the man in the gray flannel suit, the move to suburbia, and the bland ness of the Eisenhower administration. There were, of course, currents running counter to the American consensus in the 1950s-C. Wright Mills challenging the power elite and the era's "crackpot realism"; James Dean smouldering with sensitive, quiet rebellion; the Beats rejecting the propri ety and complacency of the era-yet most people remained happy with America and its possibilities. Much more than a passing mood or a vague reaction to events, this paradigm-the Ideology of Liberal Consensus took on an intellectual coherence of its own. According to Geoffrey Hodgson, the ideology contained two cornerstone assumptions: that the structure of American society was basically sound, and that Communism was a clear danger to the survival of the United States and its allies. From these two beliefs evolved a widely accepted view of America. That view argued its position in roughly this fashion: the American economic system has developed, softening the inequities and brutalities of an earlier capitalism, becoming more democratic, and offering abundance to a wider portion of the population than ever before. The key to both democracy and abundance is production and technological advance; economic growth provides the opportunity to meet social needs, to defuse class conflict, and to bring blue-collar workers into the middle class. Social problems are thus less explosive and can be solved rationally. It is neces sary only to locate each problem, design a program to attack it, and provide the experts and technological know-how necessary to solve the problem."

- Maland, Charles. "Dr. Strangelove (1964): Nightmare comedy and the ideology of liberal consensus." American Quarterly 31, no. 5 (1979): 697-717.

 

From the Filmmaker

 

 

From the Critic

 

"Stanley Kubrick directed several masterpieces but few such frontal assaults as Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. His most iconoclastic film resists much of the “truthful ambiguity” he sought to inject into his work, which usually invites the viewers to fill in meaning for themselves. Rather, his anti-atomic satire’s warning is unmistakable. Kubrick was interested in how people seemed resigned to the possibility of nuclear war and how they met their potential destruction by nuclear bombardment with stoic helplessness. Just as people tend to think of death as something that will never happen to them, they compartmentalize or remain blissfully unaware of how close they are to total nuclear annihilation. Humor became his alarm to wake people from their unprotesting acceptance that the human species might destroy itself. Kubrick satirizes that insane rationalization by depicting the world leaders and military personnel who preside over—and remain wholly unconscious about the inner workings of—the weapons that could one day bring about a global disaster. Dr. Strangelove is a film that hinges on a constant juxtaposition between the seriousness of human survival against the absurdity of humanity’s petty, everyday concerns. And it’s propelled by the irony that a plan designed to prevent human error backfires and does precisely the opposite. The result is one of the funniest films ever made, Kubrick’s most unequivocal commentary, and perhaps cinema’s most disturbing take on the illusion of our control." - Brian Eggert, Deep Focus Review

 

 

From the Public

 

"Excellent satire on nuclear war and bombs and the military, and absolutely hilarious, with clever dialogue. Sellers is brilliant in three different roles (easily his best performance) and George C. Scott is also great. The rest of the cast including Hayden, Wynn and Pickens also turn in stellar performances." - @Fancyarcher

 

Factoids

 

Previous Year's Rankings

2012 - #75, 2013 - #42, 2014 - #37, 2016 - #72, 2018 - Unranked, 2020 - #69, 2022 – #56

 

Director Count

J. Cameron (2), A. Hitchcock (2), A. Kurosawa (2), J. Lasseter (2), S. Leone (2), R. Linklater (2), D. Lynch (2), C. Nolan (2), R. Allers (1), R. Altman (1), P.T. Anderson (1), F. Capra (1), J. Coen (1), M. Curtiz (1), J. Demme (1), J. Demy (1), P. Docter (1), C.T. Dreyer (1), M. Forman (1), W. Friedkin (1), T. Gilliam (1), T. Jones (1), B. Joon-Ho (1), W. Kar-Wai (1), M. Kobayashi (1), S. Kubrick (1), S. Lee (1), K. Lund (1), L. McCarey (1), F. Meirelles (1), R. Minkoff (1), J. Peele (1), S. Raimi (1), A. Russo (1), J. Russo (1), M. Scorsese (1), R. Scott (1), M.N. Shyamalan (1), V.D. Sica (1), S. Spielberg (1), Q. Tarantino (1), G. Trousdale (1), B. Wilder (1), K. Wise (1)

 

Decade Count

2000s (10), 1990s (9), 1960s (6), 2010s (6), 1950s (4), 1980s (4), 1940s (3), 1970s (3), 1920s (1), 1930s (1),

 

International Film Count

France (3), Italy (3), Japan (3), United Kingdom (2), Brazil (1), Hong Kong (1), South Korea (1)

 

Franchise Count

Pixar (3), Before (2), WDAS (2), Nolanite Cinematic Universe (2), Toy Story (2), Alien (1), Avatar (1), Exorcist (1), Fargo (1), Gladiator (1), Hannibal Lecter (1), Hawkguy Cinematic Universe (1), Man With No Name (1), Monty Python (1), Spider-Man (1)

 

Genre Count

Drama (12), Historical Fiction (10), Comedy (10), Epic (7), Horror (7), Black Comedy (6), Animation (5), Romance (5), Fantasy (4), Musical (4), Sci-Fi (4), Thriller (4), Adventure (3), Crime (3), Mystery (3), Noir (3), Religious (3), Satire (3), Western (3), Action (2), Comic Book (2), Coming of Age (2), Jidaigeki (2), Spaghetti Western (2), Superhero (2), Tragedy (2), Alternative History (1), Christmas/Holiday (1), Neorealism (1), War (1)

 

 

A Recipe

 

Liquid Uranium

2 Oz of Honey Melon Liquor

1 oz. London Dry Gin
0.5 oz. Lime Juice

 

Preparation

Combine all ingredient and ice in a cocktail shaker. Strain into flute glass containing 2 small ice cubes. Enjoy.

 

From: https://bevvy.co/cocktail/liquid-uranium/kciy

 

 

 

[The Panda]

Number 53

 

 

"FUBAR"

 

Synopsis

 

"Saving Private Ryan is a 1998 American epic war film directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Robert Rodat. Set in 1944 in Normandy, France, during World War II, it follows a group of soldiers, led by Captain John Miller (Tom Hanks), on a mission to locate Private James Francis Ryan (Matt Damon) and bring him home safely after his three brothers have been killed in action. The cast also includes Edward Burns, Tom Sizemore, Barry Pepper, Giovanni Ribisi, Vin Diesel, Adam Goldberg and Jeremy Davies.

 

Inspired by the books of Stephen E. Ambrose and accounts of multiple soldiers in a single family, such as the Niland brothers, being killed in action, Rodat drafted the script, and Paramount Pictures hired him to finish writing it. The project came to the attention of Hanks and Spielberg, whose involvement, due to their previous successes, secured the project's development. Spielberg wanted to make Saving Private Ryan as authentic as possible and hired Frank Darabont and Scott Frank to do uncredited rewrites based on research and interviews with veterans. The main cast went through a week-long boot camp to help them understand the soldier's experience. Filming took place from June to September 1997, on a $65–70 million budget, almost entirely on location in England and Ireland. The opening Omaha Beach battle was the most demanding scene, costing $12 million to film over a four-week period, and using 1,500 background actors."

- Wikipedia

 

 

From the Scholar

 

"To some degree Spielberg was the perfect person to direct an epic of World War I1 and a landmark of fin de siecle American triumphalism. In fact, it is somewhat surprising that he hadn’t made a World War II combat film prior to Saving Private Ryan because the war has figured so prominently in many of his films. Even before Schindler’s List (1993), Nazis were featured as villains in Raiders of the Lost Ark (198 1) and Indiana Jones and the Lust Crusade (1989, in which Hitler even makes a brief appearance). Always (1989) was Spielberg’s rather self-indulgent remake of the 1943 war melodrama A Guy Named Joe. Empire of the Sun (1987) deals with a World War I1 Japanese internment camp, and 1942 (1979), Spielberg’s sole and rather feeble attempt at slapstick comedy, was about the aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor. The teenage Spielberg’s first film was an 8mm version of a World War I1 film called Escape to Nowhere (1960).
 

Even more significant is the fact that Spielberg, who has directed six of the highest grossing films of all time, has added to his already glossy reputation as Hollywood’s most successful entertainer the aura of gravitas that came from his critically acclaimed and prize-winning Holocaust film Schindler’s List. Although Spielberg still  makes crowd-pleasing box-office films, such as Jurassic Park (1993), more and more his work has attempted to bear witness to great events and enduring issues, such as American racism in Amistad (1997) and World War I1 in Saving Private Ryan. Both the consummate entertainer and the homme serieux are on hand
from the first frames of Saving Private Ryan when Spielberg establishes a somber mood with images of a screenfilling American flag, mournful John Willliams music, and an elderly American man and his family passing by the graves of the honored Normandy dead. With a few broad strokes Spielberg touches the collective memory, evoking feelings both elegiac and patriotic. It is collective memory that Spielberg relies on in the film’s first twenty-five Goyaesque minutes of war horrors rather than the actual mind and experience of the aged veteran we see in the cemetery. Military historian Sir John Keegan called the scenes “the most terrifying, realistic thing ever done in the cinema” (qtd. in Gussow B 1 1)"

- Auster, A. (2002). Saving Private Ryanand American Triumphalism. Journal of Popular Film and Television, 30(2), 98–104.

 

 

From the Filmmaker

 

 

From the Critic

 

"A present participle in the title usually promises a film with light, ironical flavour: Driving Miss Daisy, Being John Malkovich, Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo. Not here. Screenwriter Robert Rodat imagined this colossal second world war blockbuster with absolute seriousness, loosely inspired by the real-life case of Sgt Frederick Niland, recalled to the US from the Normandy campaign on emergency compassionate grounds because all his brothers were believed (wrongly, as it turned out) to have been killed in action.

 

With this movie, re-released 21 years on, Steven Spielberg created one of his greatest films, an old-fashioned war picture to rule them all – gripping, utterly uncynical, with viscerally convincing and audacious battle sequences. It was a staggeringly effective action film with a potent orchestral score by John Williams, candidly inspired by Elgar’s Nimrod. And it was based on a redemptive, quietist premise: the point of the mission is not to engage the enemy but to rescue an American soldier and spirit him away out of danger. Yet when the time of great trial comes, of course, no one is ducking the fight."

- Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

 

 

From the Public

 

"I, like many young people had a grandfather that was in the war. I know he faced death many times but I don't know how many times or any of the details of his ordeal in WWII. He wouldn't ever talk about them, not even to my mother or her sister. Sometimes I could never understand that, but now I do. If this is really what it was like to be a soldier, no matter what war you are fighting, then it must be an incredibly difficult ordeal to drudge up memories that are this disturbing, this vivid and this real. I have never been to war and I hope that I never have to experience war, but after seeing this movie I believe I can tell you at least what it may have been like. This movie is that vivid and that honest." - @baumer

 

Factoids

 

Previous Year's Rankings

2012 - #29, 2013 - #67, 2014 - #49, 2016 - #83, 2018 - #22, 2020 - #41, 2022 – #31

 

Director Count

J. Cameron (2), A. Hitchcock (2), A. Kurosawa (2), J. Lasseter (2), S. Leone (2), R. Linklater (2), D. Lynch (2), C. Nolan (2), S. Spielberg (2), R. Allers (1), R. Altman (1), P.T. Anderson (1), F. Capra (1), J. Coen (1), M. Curtiz (1), J. Demme (1), J. Demy (1), P. Docter (1), C.T. Dreyer (1), M. Forman (1), W. Friedkin (1), T. Gilliam (1), T. Jones (1), B. Joon-Ho (1), W. Kar-Wai (1), M. Kobayashi (1), S. Kubrick (1), S. Lee (1), K. Lund (1), L. McCarey (1), F. Meirelles (1), R. Minkoff (1), J. Peele (1), S. Raimi (1), A. Russo (1), J. Russo (1), M. Scorsese (1), R. Scott (1), M.N. Shyamalan (1), V.D. Sica (1), Q. Tarantino (1), G. Trousdale (1), B. Wilder (1), K. Wise (1)

 

Decade Count

1990s (10), 2000s (10), 1960s (6), 2010s (6), 1950s (4), 1980s (4), 1940s (3), 1970s (3), 1920s (1), 1930s (1),

 

International Film Count

France (3), Italy (3), Japan (3), United Kingdom (2), Brazil (1), Hong Kong (1), South Korea (1)

 

Franchise Count

Pixar (3), Before (2), WDAS (2), Nolanite Cinematic Universe (2), Toy Story (2), Alien (1), Avatar (1), Exorcist (1), Fargo (1), Gladiator (1), Hannibal Lecter (1), Hawkguy Cinematic Universe (1), Man With No Name (1), Monty Python (1), Spider-Man (1)

 

Genre Count

Drama (12), Historical Fiction (10), Comedy (10), Epic (7), Horror (7), Black Comedy (6), Animation (5), Romance (5), Fantasy (4), Musical (4), Sci-Fi (4), Thriller (4), Adventure (3), Crime (3), Mystery (3), Noir (3), Religious (3), Satire (3), Western (3), Action (2), Comic Book (2), Coming of Age (2), Jidaigeki (2), Spaghetti Western (2), Superhero (2), Tragedy (2), War (2),Alternative History (1), Christmas/Holiday (1), Neorealism (1)

 

 

A Recipe

Red, White, and Blue Summer Salad

 

Ingredients
2/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/2 cup julienned fresh basil
1/3 cup white balsamic vinegar
1/4 cup julienned fresh mint leaves
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon pepper
2 cups cherry tomatoes
8 cups fresh arugula
1 carton (8 ounces) fresh mozzarella cheese pearls, drained
2 medium peaches, sliced
2 cups fresh blueberries
6 ounces thinly sliced prosciutto, julienned
Additional mint leaves

 

Directions
In a small bowl, whisk the first 9 ingredients. Add tomatoes; let stand while preparing salad.
In a large bowl, combine arugula, mozzarella, peaches, blueberries and prosciutto. Pour tomato mixture over top; toss to coat. Garnish with additional mint leaves. Serve immediately.

 

From: https://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/red-white-and-blue-summer-salad/

 

 

 

Edited July 28 by The Panda

[The Panda]

Number 52

 

 

"I'd rather not spend the rest of this winter TIED TO THIS FUCKING COUCH!"

(But we all know J.D. Vance would)

 

Synopsis

 

"In the winter of 1982, a twelve-man research team at a remote Antarctic research station discovers an alien buried in the snow for over 100,000 years. Soon unfrozen, the form-changing creature wreaks havoc, creates terror... and becomes one of them." - The Movie Database

 

 

From the Scholar

 

"Upon its original release, John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982) was subject to notoriously scathing reviews.1 It was spurned by audiences, while critics almost universally rejected what they saw as excessive gore; as one commentator put it, the film was ‘overpowered by Rob Bottin’s visceral and vicious special make-up effects’.2 Others were quick to dismiss the film as ‘Alien on ice’.3 Vincent Canby, writing for the New York Times, declared it ‘instant junk’, attributing its supposed failure to a lack of a central monster, insisting that ‘[o]ne of the film’s major problems is that the creature has no identifiable shape of its own. It’s simply a mass of bloody protoplasm.’4 The impulse to characterise The Thing as a monster movie that somehow failed because there was either too much or too little monster is crucial. That the creature that gives the film its title (or non-title, given the elusive nature of the entity it seeks to name) confounds recognition, and even lacks discernible mass, is precisely what distinguishes it from ‘creature features’ like Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979), which displace human anxieties and concerns onto an anthropomorphised, vaguely humanoid Other.

 

 Rather than offering yet another metaphor for ‘Otherness’ (whereby characters contend with the familiar ‘category confusion’ of traditional horror and the gothic, testing and reaffirming the category of the human self against a threatening ‘outside’ located somewhere along a vector of difference), Carpenter’s The Thing, I demonstrate in this article, has much more in common with the cosmic horror of early twentieth-century weird fiction, whose chief proponent was arguably H. P. Lovecraft. The ‘weird’ (with its propensity for narratives that emphasise the incomprehensibility of a universe largely indifferent to human concerns) can be identified in Carpenter’s film precisely because the Thing’s paradoxical absence and excess of form, which early critics found so troubling, challenges human comprehension and categories of knowledge. Paired with an Antarctic imaginary that has, at least since early European exploration, been conceived of as an ‘alien’, unhuman space, Carpenter’s The Thing invites us, this article argues, to consider the coexistence of human and nonhuman agency within a universe that is immanently ‘weird’, a stance shared by contemporary strands of philosophy known as ‘speculative realism’."

- Brown, Michael. "The Thing in the Ice: The Weird in John Carpenter’s The Thing." Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies (2020).

 

From the Filmmaker

 

 

From the Critic

 

"Every October, I revisit John Carpenter’s “The Thing” to celebrate the month of Halloween, and every year I arrive at the same conclusion: it's one of the most effective horror films ever made. I know every scene, line, and frame by heart, but this year, the experience felt different. Like the shapeshifting monster imitating life forms, everything about “The Thing” looked the same, but the experience of it wasn’t. Something about it resonated more deeply this time around. It tapped into something familiar, something real, and I realized that it’s wasn’t the film that has changed, but the world. Watching this masterpiece during the pandemic brought its themes much closer to home.

 

In 2020, the world has been held hostage by an invisible enemy. Fear, anxiety, paranoia, and panic spread faster than the virus itself. Ordinary interactions suddenly were no more, and everyone seemed to be behaving in unpredictable ways. Carpenter’s film was a critical and commercial failure when it first came out and was generally perceived to be out of touch with the times—it was called too bleak and depressing. Had it come out the year of COVID-19, I’m sure it would’ve been hailed as instant classic. The most nerve-racking aspect about “The Thing” has nothing to do with the creature, but how the characters react to it."

- Wael Khairy, Roger Ebert

 

 

From the Public

 

"Why don’t we just wait here for a little while.  See what happens." - @DAR

 

Factoids

 

Previous Year's Rankings

2012 - Unranked, 2013 - Unranked, 2014 - Unranked, 2016 - Unranked, 2018 - Unranked, 2020 - #64, 2022 – #41

 

Director Count

J. Cameron (2), A. Hitchcock (2), A. Kurosawa (2), J. Lasseter (2), S. Leone (2), R. Linklater (2), D. Lynch (2), C. Nolan (2), S. Spielberg (2), R. Allers (1), R. Altman (1), P.T. Anderson (1), F. Capra (1), J. Carpenter (1), J. Coen (1), M. Curtiz (1), J. Demme (1), J. Demy (1), P. Docter (1), C.T. Dreyer (1), M. Forman (1), W. Friedkin (1), T. Gilliam (1), T. Jones (1), B. Joon-Ho (1), W. Kar-Wai (1), M. Kobayashi (1), S. Kubrick (1), S. Lee (1), K. Lund (1), L. McCarey (1), F. Meirelles (1), R. Minkoff (1), J. Peele (1), S. Raimi (1), A. Russo (1), J. Russo (1), M. Scorsese (1), R. Scott (1), M.N. Shyamalan (1), V.D. Sica (1), Q. Tarantino (1), G. Trousdale (1), B. Wilder (1), K. Wise (1)

 

Decade Count

1990s (10), 2000s (10), 1960s (6), 2010s (6), 1980s (5), 1950s (4), 1940s (3), 1970s (3), 1920s (1), 1930s (1),

 

International Film Count

France (3), Italy (3), Japan (3), United Kingdom (2), Brazil (1), Hong Kong (1), South Korea (1)

 

Franchise Count

Pixar (3), Before (2), WDAS (2), Nolanite Cinematic Universe (2), Toy Story (2), Alien (1), Avatar (1), Exorcist (1), Fargo (1), Gladiator (1), Hannibal Lecter (1), Hawkguy Cinematic Universe (1), Man With No Name (1), Monty Python (1), Spider-Man (1), The Thing (1)

 

Genre Count

Drama (12), Historical Fiction (11), Comedy (10), Horror (8), Epic (7), Black Comedy (6), Animation (5), Romance (5), Sci-Fi (5), Fantasy (4), Musical (4), Thriller (4), Adventure (3), Crime (3), Mystery (3), Noir (3), Religious (3), Satire (3), Western (3), Action (2), Comic Book (2), Coming of Age (2), Jidaigeki (2), Spaghetti Western (2), Superhero (2), Tragedy (2), War (2),Alternative History (1), Christmas/Holiday (1), Neorealism (1)

 

 

A Recipe

 

Gooey Butter Cake

Ingredients
1 (18.25 ounce) package yellow cake mix

½ cup butter, melted

4 large eggs, divided

2 teaspoons vanilla extract, divided

1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese

4 cups confectioners' sugar

 

Instructions: https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/8088/gooey-butter-cake-iii/

 

[The Panda]

Number 51

 

 

"Un poco loco!"

 

Synopsis

 

"In Disney•Pixar’s vibrant tale of family, fun and adventure, an aspiring young musician named Miguel (Anthony Gonzalez) embarks on an extraordinary journey to the magical land of his ancestors. There, the charming trickster Héctor (Gael García Bernal) becomes an unexpected friend who helps Miguel uncover the mysteries behind his family’s stories and traditions." - Disney+

 

 

From the Scholar

 

"An archaeology of media approach guides this analysis of the film Coco, a 3D animated fiction movie inspired by the Day of the Dead or Dia de los muertos in Mexico, and released by Pixar Animation Studios, a subsidiary of Walt Disney Studios, in 2017. In particular, I explore the tensions and contradictions within Pixar's most successful movie at the box office in taking a stand against Donald Trump's presentation of Mexicans as "rapists and drug-trafficking criminals". I argue that this film, despite its praise by audiences and critics as a 'pro-Mexico' film, does ultimately not vindicate Mexico's "good people". Instead, it promotes an institutionalized nationalist image of Mexico's heritage and identity, which goes back to the nineteenth century. Considering that Disney has the largest global market share in the film industry, Coco's director Lee Unkrich's good intentions to make this film 'right' help to disseminate and support the Mexican government in its reconstruction of an imagined sociocultural homogeneity, which marginalizes non-dominant ways of life in a culturally rich and diverse country."

- ESTADOUNIDENSES, ENCUENTROS. "Approaching Pixar's Coco during the Trump Era."

 

From the Filmmaker

 

 

From the Critic

 

"If Disney-Pixar fans ever had any doubts about the studio’s ability to recover from its slump in recent years, they can rest assured that its new Mexican-centric animation COCO is every bit as thrilling as anyone could have hoped for. Although following a fairly formulaic trajectory of tugging at the heart strings whilst delivering a vital moral message, COCO offers a narrative which is so much more than the usual “triumph of good over evil” tropes we have come to expect from the outfit.

 

Setting the story amongst the weird and wonderful world of Mexico’s Day Of The Dead celebrations, directors Lee Unkrich and Adrian Molina offer their audiences an inspired departure from Disney’s Anglocentric traditions with this wonderfully colourful love letter to Mexico and its people. With an aesthetic inspired by artist José Guadalupe Posada and his “Dia de los Muertos” artwork, Unkrich and Molina manage to successfully incorporate his iconography in their own work, whilst cleverly avoiding stereotypes and by shaking off any doubts or accusations of cultural appropriation."

- Linda Marric, HeyUGuys

 

 

From the Public

 

"Now, Coco is a very intriguing film to look at using the principles of Barthes’ Camera Lucida, as it utilizes both photography and cinema in key plot points. Camera Lucida argues that a photograph is a moment that has been killed but preserved, essentially a corpse. You can see why this might be an important way to read a film mostly set in the land of the dead! A bulletin board of photos called an ofrenda is required for the dead to go visit their living relatives, and Héctor’s biggest hope comes from a lone photograph he has of himself alive. If Miguel can take it back and put it on his ofrenda, Héctor can visit his daughter, Coco (Ana Ofelia Murguia). Rather than killing him, the photograph can stave off his second death, although not permanently. The photo of Héctor throughout the film is treated as his lifeline. If the photo dies, so does he. Not only is the moment dead within the photo, Héctor’s death depends on it.

 

However, another argument has put forward on this principle of Camera Lucida, that brings it towards cinema. If photographs are dead moments, cinema is those moments reanimated, brought back to life in an unnatural but beautiful way. Although certainly one can talk about Coco in this sense since it is a movie, but more importantly, cinema exists for these characters in a very tangible sense. There’s a movie theater in the Land of the Dead, and Miguel’s idolization of Ernesto mostly comes from an old VHS tape filled with clips of Ernesto’s movies. Although Ernesto has been gone for over seven decades at the time of the film, to Miguel, he’s more alive than most of his living family thanks to these clips. However, Coco’s interest in cinema really only comes to life in the aforementioned reveal scene. When Miguel finally meets the deceased Ernesto, it’s at a lavish party where Ernesto’s films are playing as mere background noise. The dead have no interest in seeing any of themselves re-animated, despite Ernesto’s egotistical décor. However, Miguel paying close attention to these is the key to the revelation that changes everything: Ernesto murdered Héctor. One of Ernesto’s movies included the exact method of poisoning he did to commit the crime, and by Miguel’s belief that cinema is real, that is how he discover that Ernesto is a killer and more importantly, Héctor is his real great-grandfather."

- @Blankments

 

 

Factoids

 

Previous Year's Rankings

2012 - NA, 2013 - NA, 2014 - NA, 2016 - NA, 2018 - Unranked, 2020 - #94, 2022 – Unranked

 

Director Count

J. Cameron (2), A. Hitchcock (2), A. Kurosawa (2), J. Lasseter (2), S. Leone (2), R. Linklater (2), D. Lynch (2), C. Nolan (2), S. Spielberg (2), R. Allers (1), R. Altman (1), P.T. Anderson (1), F. Capra (1), J. Carpenter (1), J. Coen (1), M. Curtiz (1), J. Demme (1), J. Demy (1), P. Docter (1), C.T. Dreyer (1), M. Forman (1), W. Friedkin (1), T. Gilliam (1), T. Jones (1), B. Joon-Ho (1), W. Kar-Wai (1), M. Kobayashi (1), S. Kubrick (1), S. Lee (1), K. Lund (1), L. McCarey (1), F. Meirelles (1), R. Minkoff (1), A. Molina (1), J. Peele (1), S. Raimi (1), A. Russo (1), J. Russo (1), M. Scorsese (1), R. Scott (1), M.N. Shyamalan (1), V.D. Sica (1), Q. Tarantino (1), G. Trousdale (1), L. Unkrich (1), B. Wilder (1), K. Wise (1)

 

Decade Count

1990s (10), 2000s (10), 2010s (7), 1960s (6), 1980s (5), 1950s (4), 1940s (3), 1970s (3), 1920s (1), 1930s (1),

 

International Film Count

France (3), Italy (3), Japan (3), United Kingdom (2), Brazil (1), Hong Kong (1), South Korea (1)

 

Franchise Count

Pixar (4), Before (2), WDAS (2), Nolanite Cinematic Universe (2), Toy Story (2), Alien (1), Avatar (1), Exorcist (1), Fargo (1), Gladiator (1), Hannibal Lecter (1), Hawkguy Cinematic Universe (1), Man With No Name (1), Monty Python (1), Spider-Man (1), The Thing (1)

 

Genre Count

Drama (12), Comedy (11), Historical Fiction (11), Horror (8), Epic (7), Animation (6), Black Comedy (6), Fantasy (5), Romance (5), Sci-Fi (5), Musical (4), Thriller (4), Adventure (3), Coming of Age (3), Crime (3), Mystery (3), Noir (3), Religious (3), Satire (3), Western (3), Action (2), Christmas/Holiday (2), Comic Book (2), Jidaigeki (2), Spaghetti Western (2), Superhero (2), Tragedy (2), War (2), Alternative History (1), Neorealism (1)

 

 

A Recipe

 

Pan Muerto & Hot Chocolate (from Disney's Coco Official Cookbook)