2017 “Senses of Cinema” Ballot

Hypothetical ballot for the 2017 Senses of Cinema World Poll. Mostly based on 2017 New York City commercial releases.

1. Twin Peaks: The Return (2017, David Lynch)

2. On the Beach at Night Alone (2017, Hong Sang-soo)

3. Three Films From Ten Seconds Into the Future:
The Human Surge (2016, Eduardo Williams)
By the Time It Gets Dark (2016, Anocha Suwichakornpong)
Kékszakállú (2016, Gaston Solnicki)

4. Humanist Documentaries
The Work (2017, Jairus McLeary and Gethin Aldous)
Faces Places (2017, Agnès Varda & JR)

5. Independent Breakthroughs:
Princess Cyd (2017, Stephen Cone)
Good Time (2017, Josh & Benny Safdie)

6. Auteurist Franchise Works
Baahubali 2: The Conclusion (2017, S.S. Rajamouli)
Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2016, Paul W.S. Anderson)
Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017, Rian Johnson)

7. “American” Histories:
The Post (2017, Steven Spielberg)
Phantom Thread (2017, Paul Thomas Anderson)
The Lost City of Z (2016, James Gray)

8. Family Dramedys
Lady Bird (2017, Greta Gerwig)
The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) (2017, Noah Baumbach)
The Son of Joseph (2016, Eugène Green)

9. French Sensuality:
120 BPM (Beats Per Minute) (2017, Robin Campillo)
Personal Shopper (2016, Olivier Assayas)
Nocturama (Bertrand Bonello)

10. Old Masters:
Ex Libris – The New York Public Library (2017, Frederick Wiseman)
Song to Song (2017, Terrence Malick)

December 2017 Capsules

A Touch of Zen
The rare film whose greatness is both totally, utterly assured and constantly daring, pushing and probing at its own ambitions to create something more. The opening section alone evokes this seeming contradiction: Hu’s constant camera motions, cutting judiciously to closer and closer views of the central fort, tease out so much of the haunted textures that define roughly two-thirds of the film, but crucially never come close to spelling out the layout of the structure. It is a metaphysical realm even before the priests take the center stage, one defined by the delineation between standard society and the mystical forces that swirl just outside of the town square. Ku moves between these freely, defined by his indecision and complacency, serving as the perfect conduit and viewpoint from which to marvel at these barely superhuman figures. Methodical, explosive, eerie, A Touch of Zen seems to contain all of humanity’s attributes for good and ill, and then goes beyond in its final foregrounding of the mystical, the fundamentally unknowable.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Establishes itself from the outset, with the tactical equivalent of a prank call, to be an exceptionally perceptive, playful and loving subversion of practically every single convention of the closest thing post-20th century culture has to a modern myth. At times, Star Wars: The Last Jedi almost feels like a series of constantly escalating dares that Rian Johnson is issuing over the span of two and a half hours, willfully bewildering and perplexing the viewer with totally unexpected events, structural conceits, and even performance choices. But to reduce such a textually and aesthetically rich film to gambits is foolish: it is as much invested in reinforcement as it is in subversion, and the journey to the former while balancing the latter is rendered expertly.

Like its predecessors (and especially The Force Awakens), the galactic struggles are consistently cast in terms of the personal, focusing on individual reactions and motivations as reflections of a wider movement. The whittling down of the Resistance makes this register even more strongly, but the decision to fracture the narrative into roughly four parts (so jarring at first that I nearly missed just how carefully the movie was edited together, especially in those oh-so-crucial Force conversations) means that the viewer’s grounding must be, even more than normal, in the characters. Their essential uncertainty, their hesitation to stand in the face of monumental events, is what defines them, and the film is willing to lean into these flaws in order to access something deeper, more painful than I could have expected.

Non-Released Features

The feature films I have seen that, for one reason or another, (appear to) have not played in theaters for a week in New York City.

Main list.
Secondary list.
Tertiary list.

An Injury to All (2026, Travis Wilkerson)
Hekla (2026, Michael Glover Smith)
The Rib of the Greater Bay Area (2026, Zhou Tao)
After Dreaming (2025, Christine Haroutounian)
Brand New Landscape (2025, Danzuka Yuiga)
Debut, or, Objects of the Field of Debris as Currently Catalogued (2025, Julian Castronovo)
Double Happiness (2025, Joseph Hsu)
Escape (2025, Adachi Masao)
Evidence (2025, Lee Anne Schmitt)
The Girls We Want (2025, Prïncia Car)
I Only Rest in the Storm (2025, Pedro Pinho)
isaiah’s phone (2025, Frédéric Da)
Pin de fartie (2025, Alejo Moguillansky)
Revelations of Divine Love (2025, Caroline Golum)
Room Temperature (2025, Dennis Cooper & Zac Farley)
We Are the Fruits of the Forest (2025, Panh Rithy)
Wild Foxes (2025, Valéry Carnoy)
Your Touch Makes Others Invisible (2025, Rajee Samarasinghe)
Abiding Nowhere (2024, Tsai Ming-liang)
Breathless (2024, James Benning)
Broken Rage (2024, Kitano Takeshi)
Carry-On (2024, Jaume Collet-Serra)
Cent mille milliards (2024, Virgil Vernier)
Death of a Saint (2024, Patricia Bbaale Bandak)
Eight Postcards From Utopia (2024, Radu Jude & Christian Ferencz-Flatz)
Escape From the 21st Century (2024, Li Yang)
Gaucho Gaucho (2024, Michael Dweck & Gregory Kershaw)
Good Bad Things (2024, Shane D. Stanger)
The Greatest Night in Pop (2024, Bao Nguyen)
It’s Not Me (2024, Leos Carax)
Measures for a Funeral (2024, Sofia Bohdanowicz)
Mongrel (2024, Chiang Wei-liang & Yin You-qiao)
The Other Way Around (2024, Jonás Trueba)
Pepe (2024, Nelson Carlos de los Santos Arias)
The Periphery of the Base (2024, Zhou Tao)
Rap World (2024, Danny Scharar & Connor O’Malley)
Rebel Ridge (2024, Jeremy Saulnier)
Savanna and the Mountain (2024, Paulo Carneiro)
The Serpent’s Path (2024, Kurosawa Kiyoshi)
Sleep #2 (2024, Radu Jude)
Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed (2024, Hernán Rosselli)
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Three More (2024, Wes Anderson)
Absence (2023, Wu Lang)
ALLENSWORTH (2023, James Benning)
The Beast in the Jungle (2023, Patric Chiha)
The Caine Mutiny Court Martial (2023, William Friedkin)
A Common Sequence (2023, Mary Helena Clark & Mike Gibisser)
DeadEndz (2023, Jon Jost)
An Evening Song (for three voices) (2023, Graham Swon)
Following the Sound (2023, Sugita Kyoshi)
Gift (2023, Hamaguchi Ryusuke)
Gush (2023, Fox Maxy)
Man in Black (2023, Wang Bing)
Murderess (2023, Eva Nathena)
Nowhere Near (2023, Miko Revereza)
The Plough (2023, Philippe Garrel)
Samsara (2023, Lois Patiño)
The Adventures of Gigi the Law (2022, Alessandro Comodin)
Astrakan (2022, David Depesseville)
The Blue Rose of Forgetfulness (2022, Lewis Klahr)
Cette maison (2022, Miryam Charles)
The City and the City (2022, Christos Passalis & Syllas Tzoumerkas)
Diary of a Fleeting Affair (2022, Emmanuel Mouret)
Divertimento (2022, Marie-Castille Mention-Schaar)
Don Juan (2022, Serge Bozon)
Every Day in Kaimukī (2022, Alika Tengan)
The Exiles (2022, Violet Columbus & Ben Klein)
The Fadings (2022, You Wenhu)
Fall (2022, Vadim Kostrov)
A Human Position (2022, Anders Emblem)
It Is Night in America (2022, Ana Vaz)
Kimi (2022, Steven Soderbergh)
The King of Wuxia (2022, Lin Jing-jie)
The Maiden (2022, Graham Foy)
The Mission (2022, Tania Anderson)
The People You’re Paying to Be in Shorts (2022, Jon Bois)
The Plains (2022, David Easteal)
Relative (2022, Michael Glover Smith)
Safe Place (2022, Juraj Lerotić)
Section 1 (2022, Jon Bois)
Shin Ultraman (2022, Higuchi Shinji)
Sister, What Grows Where Land Is Sick? (2022, Franciska Eliassen)
Tales of the Purple House (2022, Abbas Fahdel)
The United States of America (2022, James Benning)
Warriors of Future (2022, Ng Yuen-fai)
Where (2022, Tsai Ming-liang)
Where Is This Street? or With No Before or After (2022, João Pedro Rodrigues & João Rui Guerra da Mata)
The Woman From Myanmar (2022, Wang Xiuyue)
After the Rain (2021, Fan Jian)
Be Concerned (2021, Li Jia)
Can’t Get You Out of My Head: An Emotional History of the Modern World (2021, Adam Curtis)
Come Here (2021, Anocha Suwichakornpong)
Deception (2021, Arnaud Desplechin)
FIRST TIME [The Time for All But Sunset – VIOLET] (2021, Nicolaas Schmidt)
From the Planet of the Humans (2021, Giovanni Cioni)
Haruhara-san’s Recorder (2021, Sugita Kyoshi)
Home Sweet Home (2021, Leste Chen)
In the Morning of La Petite Mort (2021, Wang Yu-lin)
Limbo (2021, Soi Cheang)
A Marble Travelogue (2021, Sean Wang)
Medea (2021, Alexander Zeldovich)
The One Who Runs Away Is the Ghost (2021, Lei Qinyuan)
Our Eternal Summer (2021, Émilie Aussel)
Pebbles (2021, PS Vinothraj)
Rampart (2021, Marko Grba Singh)
Ripples of Life (2021, Wei Shujun)
A River Runs, Turns, Erases, Replaces (2021, Shengze Zhu)
The Sacred Spirit (2021, Chema García Ibarra)
Singing in the Wilderness (2021, Chen Dongnan)
Social Hygiene (2021, Denis Côté)
The Soul (2021, Cheng Wei-hao)
Summer (2021, Vadim Kostrov)
Topology of Sirens (2021, Jonathan Davies)
Vengeance Is Mine, All Others Pay Cash (2021, Edwin)
Virgin Blue (2021, Niu Xiaoyu)
Wet Sand (2021, Elene Naveriani)
Who’s Stopping Us (2021, Jonás Trueba)
All the Light We Can See (2020, Pablo Escoto Luna)
Atarrabi and Mikelats (2020, Eugène Green)
The Calming (2020, Song Fang)
The Eight Hundred (2020, Guan Hu)
The Last City (2020, Heinz Emigholz)
The Lobby (2020, Heinz Emigholz)
Love Affair(s) (2020, Emmanuel Mouret)
Minamata Mandala (2020, Hara Kazuo)
One Second (2020, Zhang Yimou)
Radiograph of a Family (2020, Firouzeh Khosrovani)
Roy’s World: Barry Gifford’s Chicago (2020, Rob Christopher)
s01e03 (2020, Kurt Walker)
Short Vacation (2020, Kwon Min-pyo & Seo Han-sol)
Striding Into the Wind (2020, Wei Shujun)
There are not thirty-six ways of showing a man getting on a horse. (2020, Nicolás Zukerfeld)
The Year of the Discovery (2020, Luis López Carrasco)
Belonging (2019, Burak Çevik)
Cenote (2019, Kaori Oda)
Chasing Dream (2019, Johnnie To)
A City Called Macau (2019, Li Shaohong)
Gyopo (2019, Samuel Kiehoon Lee)
Hellhole (2019, Bas Devos)
Krabi, 2562 (2019, Ben Rivers & Anocha Suwichakornpong)
Oroslan (2019, Matjaz Ivanisin)
Present.Perfect. (2019, Shengze Zhu)
Those That, at a Distance, Resemble Another (2019, Jessica Sarah Rinland)
A Voluntary Year (2019, Ulrich Köhler & Henner Winckler)
Acid Forest (2018, Rugile Barzdziukaite)
Amanda (2018, Mikhaël Hers)
Belmonte (2018, Federico Veiroj)
Coincoin and the Extra-Humans (2018, Bruno Dumont)
Dead Horse Nebula (2018, Tarik Aktas)
Dear Ex (2018, Mag Hsu & Hsu Chih-yen)
A Family Tour (2018, Ying Liang)
Fausto (2018, Andrea Bussmann)
Film Catastrophe (2018, Paul Grivas)
Forever Young (2018, Li Fangfang)
A Land Imagined (2018, Yeo Siew Hua)
Liz and the Blue Bird (2018, Yamada Naoko)
Long Way Home (2018, André Novais Oliveira)
The Night Comes for Us (2018, Timo Tjahjanto)
Permanent Green Light (2018, Dennis Cooper & Zac Farley)
Sand (2018, Tsai Ming-liang)
Shoot the Moon Right Between the Eyes (2018, Graham L. Carter)
Sophia Antipolis (2018, Virgil Vernier)
To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (2018, Susan Johnson)
Yara (2018, Abbas Fahdel)
Your Face (2018, Tsai Ming-liang)
Amiko (2017, Yamanaka Yoko)
Common Carrier (2017, James N. Kienitz Wilkins)
Deidra & Laney Rob a Train (2017, Sydney Freeland)
Drift (2017, Helena Wittmann)
Fail to Appear (2017, Antoine Bourges)
The Foolish Bird (2017, Huang Ji & Otsuka Ryuji)
Forest Movie (2017, Matthew Taylor Blais)
From Nine to Nine (2017, Neil Bahadur)
Go, Toto! (2017, Pierre Creton)
SPL: Paradox (2017, Wilson Yip)
Radio Mary (2017, Gary Walkow)
A Skin So Soft (2017, Denis Côté)
★ (2017, Johann Lurf)
Streetscapes [Dialogue] (2017, Heinz Emigholz)
Tonsler Park (2017, Kevin Jerome Everson)
Twin Peaks: The Return (2017, David Lynch)
Another Year (2016, Shengze Zhu)
Bad Black (2016, Nabwana IGG)
Beduino (2016, Júlio Bressane)
Close Relations (2016, Vitaly Mansky)
Dark Skull (2016, Kiro Russo)
The Dreamed Path (2016, Angela Schanelec)
House of Little Deaths (2016, Scout Tafoya)
HyperNormalisation (2016, Adam Curtis)
Justin Timberlake + The Tennessee Kids (2016, Jonathan Demme)
Lemonade (2016, Kahlil Joseph & Beyoncé Knowles Carter)
Looking at the Stars (2016, Alexandre Peralta)
Lumière! The Adventure Begins (2016, Thierry Frémaux)
Ma’ Rosa (2016, Brillante Mendoza)
Sieranevada (2016, Cristi Puiu)
Victoria (2016, Justine Triet)
Aragane (2015, Kaori Oda)
Bitter Lake (2015, Adam Curtis)
Blue Strait (2015, Jon Jost)
Dead Slow Ahead (2015, Mauro Herce)
Despite the Night (2015, Philippe Grandrieux)
88:88 (2015, Isiah Medina)
Event for a Stage (2015, Tacita Dean)
Garoto (2015, Júlio Bressane)
Helios (2015, Longman Leung & Sunny Luk)
John From (2015, João Nicolau)
Journey to the Shore (2015, Kurosawa Kiyoshi)
The Leisure Class (2015, Jason Mann)
Minotaur (2015, Nicolás Pereda)
The Sky Trembles and the Earth Is Afraid and the Two Eyes Are Not Brothers (2015, Ben Rivers)
The Distance (2014, Sergio Caballero)
Hit 2 Pass (2014, Kurt Walker)
Journey to the West (2014, Tsai Ming-liang)
The Midnight After (2014, Fruit Chan)
Not My Type (2014, Lucas Belvaux)
Polizeiruf 110: Smoke on the Water (2014, Dominik Graf)
Silvered Water, Syria Self-Portrait (2014, Ossama Mohammed & Wiam Simav Bedirxan)
Violet (2014, Bas Devos)
Blind Detective (2013, Johnnie To)
Coming to Terms (2013, Jon Jost)
El futuro (2013, Luis López Carrasco)
The Guests (2013, Ken Jacobs)
Local Legends (2013, Matt Farley)
Miss and the Doctors (2013, Axelle Ropert)
Nobody’s Daughter Haewon (2013, Hong Sang-soo)
Our Sunhi (2013, Hong Sang-soo)
Sacro GRA (2013, Gianfranco Rosi)
Sentimental Education (2013, Júlio Bressane)
Seventh Code (2013, Kurosawa Kiyoshi)
3x3D (2013, Peter Greenaway/Jean-Luc Godard/Edgar Pêra)
Touching the Skin of Eeriness (2013, Hamaguchi Ryusuke)
differently, Molussia (2012, Nicolas Rey)
Don’t Let the Riverbeast Get You! (2012, Charles Roxburgh)
Easy Rider (2012, James Benning)
Egg and Stone (2012, Huang Ji)
Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo (2012, Anno Hideaki)
Game Change (2012, Jay Roach)
Krivina (2012, Igor Drljaca)
Me @ the Zoo (2012, Chris Moukarbel & Valerie Veatch)
A Month in Thailand (2012, Paul Negoescu)
Motorway (2012, Soi Cheang)
Romancing in Thin Air (2012, Johnnie To)
All Watched Over by Machines of loving Grace (2011, Adam Curtis)
Don’t Go Breaking My Heart (2011, Johnnie To)
Dreileben: Beats Being Dead (2011, Christian Petzold)
Dreileben: Don’t Follow Me Around (2011, Dominik Graf)
Dreileben: One Minute of Darkness (2011, Christoph Hochhäusler)
Elegy to the Visitor From the Revolution (2011, Lav Diaz)
Life Without Principle (2011, Johnnie To)
Low Life (2011, Nicolas Klotz and Élisabeth Perceval)
The Passage (2011, Roberto Minervini)
The Pettifogger (2011, Lewis Klahr)
Rosalinda (2011, Matías Piñeiro)
A World Without Women (2011, Guillaume Brac)
ANPO: Art X War (2010, Linda Hoaglund)
The City Below (2010, Christoph Hochhäusler)
Hahaha (2010, Hong Sang-soo)
Love in a Puff (2010, Pang Ho-cheung)
Love Sex Aur Dhokha (2010, Dibakar Banerjee)
Slow Action (2010, Ben Rivers)
Accident (2009, Soi Cheang)
Blondes in the Jungle (2009, Lev Kalman & Whitney Horn)
Disorder (2009, Huang Weikai)
It Felt Like a Kiss (2009, Adam Curtis)
Like You Know It All (2009, Hong Sang-soo)
Oxhide II (2009, Liu Jiayin)
Cape No. 7 (2008, Wei Te-Sheng)
L’Idiot (2008, Pierre Léon)
A Lake (2008, Philippe Grandrieux)
Parking (2008, Chung Mong-hong)
Sparrow (2008, Johnnie To)
Death Proof (2007, Quentin Tarantino)
Help Me Eros (2007, Lee Kang-sheng)
Secret (2007, Jay Chou)
The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom (2007, Adam Curtis)
Useless (2007, Jia Zhangke)
Dong (2006, Jia Zhangke)
Fabulous! The Story of Queer Cinema (2006, Lisa Ades & Lesli Klainberg)
Live Freaky! Die Freaky! (2006, John Roecker)
Oxhide (2005, Liu Jiayin)
Perhaps Love (2005, Peter Chan)
SPL (2005, Wilson Yip)
Through the Forest (2005, Jean Paul Civeyrac)
The Five People You Meet in Heaven (2004, Lloyd Kramer)
The Hand (2004, Wong Kar-wai)
Mulan II (2004, Darrell Rooney & Lynne Southerland)
My Stinking Kid (2004, Lee Kang-sheng & Tsai Ming-liang)
Triple Agent (2004, Eric Rohmer)
Vénus and Fleur (2004, Emmanuel Mouret)
Like Nothing Happened (2003, Hamaguchi Ryusuke)
The Missing (2003, Lee Kang-sheng)
PTU (2003, Johnnie To)
The Room (2003, Tommy Wiseau)
Running on Karma (2003, Johnnie To & Wai Ka-fai)
Turn Left, Turn Right (2003, Johnnie To & Wai Ka-Fai)
Chinese Odyssey 2002 (2002, Jeffrey Lau)
Fat Choi Spirit (2002, Johnnie To & Wai Ka-fai)
Film ist. 7-12 (2002, Gustav Deutsch)
The Friends of the Friends (2002, Dominik Graf)
Mischka (2002, Jean-François Stévenin)
My Left Eye Sees Ghosts (2002, Johnnie To & Wai Ka-fai)
A New Life (2002, Philippe Grandrieux)
On the Occasion of Remember the Turning Gate (2002, Hong Sang-soo)
Looking for Tsai (2002, Patrik Eriksson & Erik Hemmendorff)
Batang West Side (2001, Lav Diaz)
Desperado Square (2001, Benny Toraty)
A Fine Day (2001, Thomas Arslan)
La libertad (2001, Lisandro Alonso)
Love on a Diet (2001, Johnnie To & Wai Ka-fai)
That Old Dream That Moves (2001, Alain Guiraudie)
Durian Durian (2000, Fruit Chan)
In Vanda’s Room (2000, Pedro Costa)
Joseph: King of Dreams (2000, Rob LaDuca & Robert C. Ramirez)
The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea (2000, Jim Kammerud & Brian Smith)
Petite conversation familiale (2000, Hélène Lapiower)
The State I Am In (2000, Christian Petzold)
Barren Illusion (1999, Kurosawa Kiyoshi)
Charisma (1999, Kurosawa Kiyoshi)
Little Cheung (1999, Fruit Chan)
The Mission (1999, Johnnie To)
My Neighbors the Yamadas (1999, Takahata Isao)
Silvia Prieto (1999, Martín Rejtman)
South (1999, Chantal Akerman)
Tempting Heart (1999, Sylvia Chang)
El Valley Centro (1999, James Benning)
Dil Se.. (1998, Mani Ratnam)
Eyes of the Spider (1998, Kurosawa Kiyoshi)
Film ist. 1-6 (1998, Gustav Deutsch)
Flowers of Shanghai (1998, Hou Hsiao-hsien)
A Hero Never Dies (1998, Johnnie To)
License to Live (1998, Kurosawa Kiyoshi)
The Longest Summer (1998, Fruit Chan)
Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World (1998, Tom Ellery & Bradley Raymond)
Sombre (1998, Philippe Grandrieux)
Xiao Wu (1998, Jia Zhangke)
The Odd One Dies (1997, Patrick Yau and Johnnie To)
Pooh’s Grand Adventure: The Search for Christopher Robin (1997, Karl Geurs)
Pride Divide (1997, Paris Poirier)
The Revenge: A Visit From Fate (1997, Kurosawa Kiyoshi)
Too Many Ways to Be No. 1 (1997, Wai Ka-fai)
The Day a Pig Fell Into the Well (1996, Hong Sang-soo)
Goodbye South, Goodbye (1996, Hou Hsiao-hsien)
Mahjong (1996, Edward Yang)
Roam Sweet Home (1996, Ellen Spiro)
Viva Erotica (1996, Derek Yee & Lo Chi-leung)
Tatort: Frau Bu lacht (1995, Dominik Graf)
Xiao Shan Going Home (1995, Jia Zhangke)
A Confucian Confusion (1994, Edward Yang)
In the Heat of the Sun (1994, Jiang Wen)
The Invincibles (1994, Dominik Graf)
100 Years of Japanese Cinema (1994, Oshima Nagisa)
A Taste of Killing and Romance (1994, Veronica Chan)
U.S. Go Home (1994, Claire Denis)
Wing Chun (1994, Yuen Woo-ping)
The Eagle Shooting Heroes (1993, Jeffrey Lau)
From the East (1993, Chantal Akerman)
Green Snake (1993, Tsui Hark)
Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance (1993, Alanis Obomsawin)
Tai-Chi Master (1993, Yuen Woo-ping)
Falling Lessons (1992, Amy Halpern)
Full Contact (1992, Ringo Lam)
Hill of No Return (1992, Wang Toon)
I Have Graduated (1992, Shi Jian and Wang Guangli)
Nemesis (1992, Albert Pyun)
The Rocking Horsemen (1992, Obayashi Nobuhiko)
Dirty Like an Angel (1991, Catherine Breillat)
Keep It for Yourself (1991, Claire Denis)
The Life of the Dead (1991, Arnaud Desplechin)
Sisters in the Struggle (1991, Dionne Brand & Ginny Stikeman)
Some Divine Wind (1991, Roddy Bogawa)
Surviving Desire (1991, Hal Hartley)
To Lavoisier, Who Died in the Reign of Terror (1991, Michael Snow)
Bullet in the Head (1990, John Woo)
Empire of the Dark (1990, Steve Barkett)
Troll 2 (1990, Claudio Fragasso)
American Stories: Food, Family and Philosophy (1989, Chantal Akerman)
A City of Sadness (1989, Hou Hsiao-hsien)
Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989, Hayao Miyazaki)
Meeting a Milestone (1989, Goutam Ghose)
Pedicab Driver (1989, Sammo Hung)
The Seventh Continent (1989, Michael Haneke)
Les Sièges de l’Alcazar (1989, Luc Moullet)
Tongues Untied (1989, Marlon Riggs)
Water and Power (1989, Pat O’Neill)
The Cat (1988, Dominik Graf)
Dangerous Game (1988, Stephen Hopkins)
The Discarnates (1988, Obayashi Nobuhiko)
Grotesque (1988, Joe Tornatore)
I Love Maria (1988, David Chung)
Uma Pedra no Bolso (1988, Joaquim Pinto)
School on Fire (1988, Ringo Lam)
An Autumn’s Tale (1987, Mabel Cheung)
A Better Tomorrow II (1987, John Woo)
A Chinese Ghost Story (1987, Ching Siu-tung)
City on Fire (1987, Ringo Lam)
The Death of Empedocles (1987, Danièle Huillet & Jean-Marie Straub)
Eastern Condors (1987, Sammo Hung)
Aces Go Places IV (1986, Ringo Lam)
A Better Tomorrow (1986, John Woo)
Bound for the Fields, the Mountains, and the Seacoast (1986, Obayashi Nobuhiko)
Double messieurs (1986, Jean-François Stévenin)
Faubourg Saint-Martin (1986, Jean-Claude Guiguet)
His Motorbike, Her Island (1986, Obayashi Nobuhiko)
Landscape Suicide (1986, James Benning)
Qui trop embrasse (1986, Jacques Davila)
Contact (1985, Alan Clarke)
Kuei-mei, a Woman (1985, Chang Yi)
American Dreams (Lost and Found) (1984, James Benning)
Long Arm of the Law (1984, Johnny Mak)
Threads (1984, Mick Jackson)
Wheels on Meals (1984, Sammo Hung)
All the King’s Men (1983, King Hu)
At the Top of the Stairs (1983, Paul Vecchiali)
Suffer Little Children (1983, Alan Briggs)
That Day, on the Beach (1983, Edward Yang)
The Wheel of Life (1983, King Hu/Lee Hsing/Pai Ching-jui)
Zu: Warriors of the Magic Mountain (1983, Tsui Hark)
In Our Time (1982, Tao Te-chen/Edward Yang/Ko I-chen/Chang Yi)
Nomad (1982, Patrick Tam)
Too Early/Too Late (1982, Danièle Huillet & Jean-Marie Straub)
At This Late Date, the Charleston (1981, Okamoto Kihachi)
Dirty Ho (1981, Lau Kar-leung)
Kagero-za (1981, Suzuki Seijun)
Merry-Go-Round (1981, Jacques Rivette)
My Young Auntie (1981, Lau Kar-leung)
Nightshift (1981, Robina Rose)
Tree of Knowledge (1981, Nils Malmros)
Here’s looking at you, kid. (1980, William Edgar Cohen)
Nights at O’Rear’s (1980, Robert Mandel)
Simone Barbès or Virtue (1980, Marie-Claude Treilhou)
Sunday Daughters (1980, Rózsa Janós)
Alexandria… Why? (1979, Youssef Chahine)
All Quiet on the Western Front (1979, Delbert Mann)
And Quiet Rolls the Dawn (1979, Mrinal Sen)
Black Jack (1979, Ken Loach)
From the Cloud to the Resistance (1979, Danièle Huillet & Jean-Marie Straub)
The Maids of Wilko (1979, Andrzej Wajda)
Le Navire Night (1979, Marguerite Duras)
A Scream From Silence (1979, Anne Claire Poirier)
Short Memory (1979, Eduardo de Gregorio)
Drunken Master (1978, Yuen Woo-ping)
Game of Death (1978, Robert Clouse)
Molière (1978, Ariane Mnouchkine)
Other People’s Money (1978, Christian de Chalonge)
Shades of Silk (1978, Mary Stephen)
The Star Wars Holiday Special (1978, Steve Binder)
They Are Their Own Gifts (1978, Lucille Rhodes & Margaret Murphy)
The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (1978, Lau Kar-leung)
Le Camion (1977, Marguerite Duras)
11 x 14 (1977, James Benning)
Hot Tomorrows (1977, Martin Brest)
Last Chants for a Slow Dance (1977, Jon Jost)
Omar Gatlato (1977, Merzak Allouache)
One Way Boogie Woogie (1977, James Benning)
Pafnucio Santo (1977, Rafael Corkidi)
Skip Tracer (1977, Zale Dalen)
Assault on Precinct 13 (1976, John Carpenter)
Bernice Bobs Her Hair (1976, Joan Micklin Silver)
Fortini/Cani (1976, Danièle Huillet & Jean-Marie Straub)
Insiang (1976, Lino Brocka)
News From Home (1976, Chantal Akerman)
Noroît (une vengeance) (1976, Jacques Rivette)
The Opening of Misty Beethoven (1976, Radley Metzger)
Autobiography of a Princess (1975, James Ivory)
Compañero: Victor Jara of Chile (1975, Stanley Forman & Martin Smith)
Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer (1975, Thom Andersen)
Fear of Fear (1975, Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
The Valiant Ones (1975, King Hu)
The Bench of Desolation (1974, Claude Chabrol)
Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974 (1974, Hara Kazuo)
Femmes Femmes (1974, Paul Vecchiali)
The Mouth Agape (1974, Maurice Pialat)
The Night of the Scarecrow (1974, Sérgio Ricardo)
The Illumination (1973, Krzysztof Zanussi)
Israel, Why (1973, Claude Lanzmann)
Part-Time Work of a Domestic Slave (1973, Alexander Kluge)
Réjeanne Padovani (1973, Denys Arcand)
A Simple Event (1973, Sohrab Shahid-Saless)
Going Home (1972, Adolfas Mekas)
Goodbye CP (1972, Kazuo Hara)
History Lessons (1972, Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Huillet)
The Inner Scar (1972, Philippe Garrel)
Liza With a Z (1972, Bob Fosse)
Nathalie Granger (1972, Marguerite Duras)
Out 1: Spectre (1972, Jacques Rivette)
Summer Soldiers (1972, Hiroshi Teshigahara)
The Way of the Dragon (1972, Bruce Lee)
Directed by John Ford (1971, John Ford)
Family Life (1971, Krzysztof Zanussi)
Fata Morgana (1971, Werner Herzog)
In the Name of the Father (1971, Marco Bellocchio)
Pioneers in Ingolstadt (1971, Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
La Région centrale (1971, Michael Snow)
The Cannibals (1970, Liliana Cavani)
Comrades (1970, Marin Karmitz)
Four Moods (1970, Pai Ching-jui/King Hu/Lee Hsing/Li Han-hsiang)
Hospital (1970, Frederick Wiseman)
Langlois (1970, Eila Hershon & Roberto Guerra)
The Man Who Left His Will on Film (1970, Oshima Nagisa)
The Scavengers (1970, Ermanno Olmi)
Wind From the East (1970, Groupe Dziga Vertov and Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin)
Zorns Lemma (1970, Hollis Frampton)
The Color of Pomegranates (1969, Sergei Parajanov)
Goto, Island of Love (1969, Walerian Borowczyk)
Harry Munter (1969, Kjell Grede)
Law and Order (1969, Frederick Wiseman)
Pigsty (1969, Pier Paolo Pasolini)
The Rite (1969, Ingmar Bergman)
The Arch (1968, Tang Shu-shuen)
Artists Under the Big Top: Perplexed (1968, Alexander Kluge)
Golden Swallow (1968, Chang Cheh)
High School (1968, Frederick Wiseman)
One Fine Day (1968, Ermanno Olmi)
Signs of Life (1968, Werner Herzog)
Three Resurrected Drunkards (1968, Oshima Nagisa)
24 Hours in the Life of a Woman (1968, Dominique Delouche)
Branded to Kill (1967, Suzuki Seijun)
Hugo and Josephine (1967, Kjell Grede)
Japanese Summer: Double Suicide (1967, Oshima Nagisa)
La Musica (1967, Marguerite Duras & Paul Seban)
One-Armed Swordsman (1967, Chang Cheh)
Scattered Clouds (1967, Naruse Mikio)
Tonite Let’s All Make Love in London (1967, Peter Whitehead)
Wavelength (1967, Michael Snow)
Almost a Man (1966, Vittorio De Seta)
Barrier (1966, Jerzy Skolimowski)
Come Drink With Me (1966, King Hu)
Hedy (1966, Andy Warhol)
Hit and Run (1966, Naruse Mikio)
Pearls of the Deep (1966, Jiri Menzel/Jan Nemec/Evald Schorm/Vera Chytilová/Jaromil Jires)
Roger la Honte (1966, Riccardo Freda)
Tokyo Drifter (1966, Suzuki Seijun)
Troublemakers (1966, Norman Fruchter & Robert Machover)
Yesterday Girl (1966, Alexander Kluge)
Bad Girls Go to Hell (1965, Doris Wishman)
The Epic That Never Was (1965, Bill Duncalf)
The Lion Hunters (1965, Jean Rouch)
Memorandum (1965, Donald Brittain & John Spotton)
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1965, Sergei Parajanov)
Sons of Good Earth (1965, King Hu)
Brick and Mirror (1964, Ebrahim Golestan)
The Enchanted Desna (1964, Yuliya Solntseva)
The Last Clean Shirt (1964, Alfred Leslie)
The Story of Sue San (1964, King Hu)
Yearning (1964, Naruse Mikio)
Flaming Creatures (1963, Jack Smith)
Hands Over the City (1963, Francesco Rosi)
In the Midst of Life (1963, Robert Enrico)
Magnet of Doom (1963, Jean-Pierre Melville)
Ro.Go.Pa.G. (1963, Roberto Rossellini/Jean-Luc Godard/Pier Paolo Pasolini/Ugo Gregoretti)
Suzanne’s Career (1963, Eric Rohmer)
Carnival of Souls (1962, Herk Harvey)
Garrincha: Hero of the Jungle (1962, Joaquim Pedro de Andrade)
Glory Sky (1962, Takis Kanellopoulos)
The Sea (1962, Giuseppe Patroni Griffi)
Siberian Lady Macbeth (1962, Andrzej Wajda)
The Sign of Leo (1962, Eric Rohmer)
Hercules Conquers Atlantis (1961, Vittorio Cottafavi)
The Story of the Flaming Years (1961, Yuliya Solntseva)
The Approach of Autumn (1960, Naruse Mikio)
Daughters, Wives and a Mother (1960, Naruse Mikio)
The Giants of Thessaly (1960, Riccardo Freda)
The 1000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse (1960, Fritz Lang)
When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (1960, Naruse Mikio)
A Simple Story (1959, Marcel Hanoun)
Ajantrik (1958, Ritwik Ghatak)
Conflagration (1958, Kon Ichikawa)
Poem of an Inland Sea (1958, Yuliya Solntseva)
8 Hours of Terror (1957, Suzuki Seijun)
Pyaasa (1957, Guru Dutt)
Shin Heike Monogatari (1955, Mizoguchi Kenji)
Sound of the Mountain (1954, Naruse Mikio)
Wife (1953, Naruse Mikio)
Lightning (1952, Naruse Mikio)
Mother (1952, Naruse Mikio)
Repast (1951, Naruse Mikio)
Spring in a Small Town (1948, Fei Mu)
Women of the Night (1948, Mizoguchi Kenji)
Great Freedom No. 7 (1944, Helmut Käutner)
Traveling Actors (1940, Naruse Mikio)
Three Sisters With Maiden Hearts (1935, Naruse Mikio)
Bad Seed (1934, Billy Wilder and Alexander Esway)
The Goddess (1934, Wu Yonggang)
Street Without End (1934, Naruse Mikio)
Dragnet Girl (1933, Ozu Yasujiro)
Where Now Are the Dreams of Youth? (1932, Ozu Yasujiro)
My Grandmother (1929, Kote Mikaberidze)
L’Argent (1928, Marcel L’Herbier)
The Seashell and the Clergyman (1928, Germaine Dulac)
The Child of Paris (1913, Léonce Perret)

2017 Seattle Film Critics Society Nominations Ballot

Best Picture

  1. On the Beach at Night Alone
  2. Faces Places
  3. Princess Cyd
  4. Good Time
  5. The Post
  6. Resident Evil: The Final Chapter
  7. 120 BPM (Beats Per Minute)
  8. Lady Bird
  9. Phantom Thread
  10. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)

Best Director

  1. Josh & Benny Safdie, Good Time
  2. Bertrand Bonello, Nocturama
  3. Eduardo Williams, The Human Surge
  4. Steven Spielberg, The Post
  5. Paul W.S. Anderson, Resident Evil: The Final Chapter

Best Actor

  1. Robert Pattinson, Good Time
  2. Daniel Day-Lewis, Phantom Thread
  3. Claes Bang, The Square
  4. Adam Sandler, The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
  5. Ben Stiller, The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)

Best Actress

  1. Kim Min-hee, On the Beach at Night Alone
  2. Saoirse Ronan, Lady Bird
  3. Rebecca Spence, Princess Cyd
  4. Vicky Krieps, Phantom Thread
  5. Cynthia Nixon, A Quiet Passion

Best Supporting Actor

  1. Nahuel Pérez Biscayart, 120 BPM (Beats Per Minute)
  2. Robert Pattinson, The Lost City of Z
  3. Tim Robbins, Marjorie Prime
  4. Willem Dafoe, The Florida Project
  5. Dustin Hoffman, The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)

Best Supporting Actress

  1. Elizabeth Marvel, The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
  2. Lois Smith, Marjorie Prime
  3. Laurie Metcalf, Lady Bird
  4. Tiffany Haddish, Girls Trip
  5. Julianne Moore, Wonderstruck

Best Ensemble Cast

  1. Lady Bird
  2. 120 BPM (Beats Per Minute)
  3. The Post
  4. Marjorie Prime
  5. Mudbound

Best Youth Performance

  1. Millicent Simmonds, Wonderstruck
  2. Oona Laurence, The Beguiled
  3. Brooklynn Prince, The Florida Project
  4. Valeria Cotto, The Florida Project
  5. Ahn Seo-hyun, Okja

Best Villain

  1. The texter, Personal Shopper
  2. Fei and Lin, The Ornithologist
  3. Rose, Get Out
  4. Dr. Isaacs, Resident Evil: The Final Chapter
  5. James Murray, The Lost City of Z

Best Screenplay

  1. Hong Sang-soo, On the Beach at Night Alone
  2. Stephen Cone, Princess Cyd
  3. Greta Gerwig, Lady Bird
  4. Noah Baumbach, The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
  5. Matías Piñeiro, Hermia & Helena

Best Animated Feature

  1. Your Name.
  2. My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea

Best Documentary Feature

  1. Faces Places
  2. Ex Libris – The New York Public Library
  3. Starless Dreams
  4. Escapes
  5. Rat Film

Best Foreign Language Film

  1. On the Beach at Night Alone
  2. Faces Places
  3. 120 BPM (Beats Per Minute)
  4. The Son of Joseph
  5. Nocturama

Best Cinematography

  1. Sean Price Williams, Good Time
  2. Darius Khondji, The Lost City of Z
  3. Janusz Kaminski, The Post
  4. [no credit], Phantom Thread
  5. Ed Lachman, Wonderstruck

Best Costume Design

  1. Phantom Thread
  2. Nocturama
  3. Princess Cyd
  4. Good Time
  5. Lady Bird

Best Film Editing

  1. Nocturama
  2. Wonderstruck
  3. Ex Libris – The New York Public Library
  4. Lady Bird
  5. Thirst Street

Best Original Score

  1. Oneohtrix Point Never, Good Time
  2. Jonny Greenwood, Phantom Thread
  3. Carter Burwell, Wonderstruck
  4. Jon Brion, Lady Bird
  5. Bertrand Bonello, Nocturama

Best Production Design
N/A

Best Visual Effects
N/A

November 2017 Capsules

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
By no means a slow burn, and yet the kills come in swift and brutal fashion only after the atmosphere has been totally, completely set in place. Scenes are elongated and yet completely compact – the scene with the hitchhiker, conducted entirely within the confines of the van, contains its own taut, visceral fear even before the razor blade comes out. And Marilyn Burns’ perpetual screaming, at once continuous and unchanging and always impactful, the editing and score combining to create something utterly inhuman. The ending, with its brief hint of hope amid the horror still visible in the rearview mirror, still provides an overwhelming moment of catharsis, a small triumph that still registers.

Unfriended
Looking at Unfriended from the vantage point of three years into the future, there have already been some drastic software changes that put me at a slight remove. The Facebook interface is overhauled, OS X is sleeker, just about every program or website here is reconfigured in some way. And there’s the fact that, though I watched it on my computer and am a contemporary of sorts with these teens if they existed in real life, I only sparingly used Skype in the same way, and my own desktop/browser/application dock/etc. are entirely different and less cluttered. But that doesn’t take away from the experience, and in some ways enhances it: the rapid blur of the cursor, the slightly-too-quick typing (even if it includes some extremely apropos typos), the excessive lagging all create a truly uncanny atmosphere, a disconnect between the way I look at my screen and the way Blair looks at her own. What exists on the screen is a heightened replica; there’s an odd sort of mise-en-scéne and blocking at play here, often cutting off half of the central Skype call and inadvertently creating two different reaction shots (creating six different reaction shots to a default profile icon is ingenious), and in general creating an almost 3-D feeling with the numerous layers of apps. The effect is natural enough that it feels spontaneous, but it’s still immensely striking. Gabriadze doesn’t need music, cuts, or unconventional cinematography to do this; it’s already created in the comfortable and familiar dimensions of the laptop screen, in our ingrained reactions to the sounds of notifications twisted by their contents. When even Google and Facebook aren’t functioning in the expected manner, it’s already too late.

The River
Tsai has obviously used stasis to extraordinary lengths and effects throughout his oeuvre, but halfway through I wonder if he’s employed it elsewhere in such a specifically patient manner. The style here isn’t vastly removed from that of, Vive L’Amour, but it’s applied to a much more specific and ostensibly insular societal institution. In Tsai’s world, the family is as amorphous and free-floating as the individuals that inhabit it, and part of the fascination that I had watching The River was seeing just how they would come together. Of course, the movie goes down immensely dark and upsetting paths, realized with some extraordinary plays with light and shadow, but the core images – rain, Lee Kang-sheng’s pained face, the decay of urban Taipei – remain the same. And Tsai (and I) wouldn’t have it any other way.

Night of the Living Dead
Almost certainly one of the most productive examples of a film effectively split in two. The first third or so – “They’re coming to get you Barbra” included – establishes an immense tone of melancholy and paranoia, buoyed by the dueling insular intensities of Jones and an effectively mute O’Dea. With both communicating the most fundamental fears and emotions with furtive glances and odd movements, Night of the Living Dead could conceivably have stayed in this vein for the entirety of its running time, especially with the radio providing clarification and more mystery in equal measure. But with more characters and the television comes necessary, even vital complications. Romero seems to be entirely truthful when he says that Jones wasn’t cast because of his race, but it adds a log to the raging fire that is this movie, only highlighted by the newsreel-esque footage playing under the credits. Primal tension is replaced by all-too-human tendencies towards self-destruction, so much so that the eventual resurrection by zombie bite is almost an afterthought.

September/October 2017 Capsules

Clueless
It’s all too fitting that Clueless at once hews closely to and sets itself entirely apart from the standard template of the American teen comedy. In outline it conforms, as girl tries to meet boy before realizing she’s loved another all the while, but Heckerling’s skill is such that it never feels remotely formulaic or inorganic to the development of Cher as both character and ideal. This is owed in small part to the stylistic devices (blatant voiceover, atypical stirrings of music) but the key factor is the surroundings, literally and figuratively sunny. Every character both does and doesn’t fit in with the Beverly Hills setting, which is an all-inclusive, ultimately deeply loving and caring environment. There is never the hint that things will go dreadfully wrong for any character, and that makes the whole thing sing.

October

Platform
As with most films, I kept going back to various works this reminded me of – Edward Yang in approach, To Live in rough thematic scope, and even Twin Peaks: The Return in editing and screenplay structure – but this is really a thoroughly surprising, immensely affecting work, in the way it mirrors the rhythms of everyday life. Duration helps with this of course, but even more key seems to be the structure of the scenes. This isn’t the realm of the memory film, where the events feel as if they are being recalled from a distant vantage point, but there is a similar weightlessness here, of time slipping away with each passing day in the way in which many events that are alluded to become elided or barely touched on before the next “non-event” occurs. Everything and nothing feels important in this decade-long span. In this context, the extended long shots and pans feel like the only logical way in which to film this, rendering each space with a tactility and sense of grounding that achieves a perfect, empathetic distance.

Ashes of Time [Redux]
Hadn’t gone in knowing about the various differences between the original and redux versions, and thus I’m wondering just how much of the pixelated smear that defines so much of Ashes of Time comes from Wong’s tinkering. Regardless, this is maybe shot-for-shot the most stunning looking film I’ve ever seen, radically reinventing itself and adapting with the utmost fluidity to each scenario and season. The main setting is the desert, but the smallest glances at another place, whether shown in hallucination or vision, sear themselves into the mind just as strikingly. Narratively, events sort themselves out in time, but the emotions and ruminations remain crystal clear from the very moment of their emergence, remaining ephemeral, haunting, yet transporting to the last.

Certain Tendencies [REAR WINDOW]

blinded

It is perhaps no accident that the one apartment glimpsed more than once that is not explored by the roving eyes of Jeffries (and, of course, the viewer) is the one of what appears to be a loving and relatively normal family. Implicitly, the audience can grasp that what attracts the voyeur is brokenness in all its forms, whether it be creative rut, the fading luster of a new marriage, a hunger for something more in life, or simply the damn heat of summer in Greenwich Village. And from those elemental building blocks, those concerns which when combined form a microcosm of society at large, Hitchcock weaves something truly indelible, something which might even be perfect.

Rear Window may even surpass its legendary status purely based on how much it contains beyond the justly famous murder mystery plot. This is patently obvious from the objects of focus throughout; the case of Lars Thornwald isn’t even spotlighted until around the end of the first third, and Hitchcock places equal emphasis until then on the action happening inside the apartment as he does on the voyeurism – though, of course, the latter informs the former to no small extent. Lisa and Stella especially are incredibly thought-through characters, neither falling into a set stereotype but instead emerging as credible sources of both repartee and a tenderness that Jeffries struggles to reciprocate, turning instead to the outside world.

And it is indeed a world, populated with people who overcome the lack of audible dialogue to inhabit a general sense of longing and not-so-private conflict. The degree to which Hitchcock establishes each object of attention is such that when the silence is broken, and the camera leaves the confines of the apartment for the first time, it feels like the natural course of action. The viewer’s sympathies lie with the grieving couple not only because of their loss but because they feel like more than just objects.

It goes without saying that the outside goings-on reflect the inner turmoil of Jeffries to no small extent. More than anything, it is in the patterns and routines that he observes and his own pattern that he is forced to adopt due to both external influences (his confining cast) and his own obsession. Miss Torso dances and entertains men, the newlywed husband smokes forlornly out the window, the couple struggle to weather the elements, and all the while Jeffries can do nothing but watch. No wonder he fixates on the murder, a break in the monotony that, by proxy, affects the whole complex.

August 2017 Capsules

88:88
I could describe how I perceived the film, but I’m not even certain that my view was in any way accurate. Importantly, I almost totally missed the poverty aspect that seems to the focal point of many fine, laudatory reviews, and focused instead on the way in which it depicts a very specific type of navel-gazing, academic, young urbanite ennui. But in either case, I can’t truthfully say whether the aggressively abstract, functionally plotless and untethered style works in concert with the subject matter. It is alternately dazzling and distracting, and though that makes the little nuggets of information that aren’t dull mathematics all the more valuable, it still doesn’t provide a justification in a way that feels satisfying. 88:88 keeps moving until it comes to a stop, and while the invigorating feeling cannot be denied, it leaves me wondering what was trying to be said, what feeling was trying to be invoked.

From Nine to Nine
I wouldn’t even know where to begin with regards to the politics of this, though I was fascinated (if not pleased) by the predominant use of robotic filters on the narrators. This choice feels of a piece with the intentions of From Nine to Nine as a whole; unlike, say, 88:88, the film aims for that movie’s sense of alienation sans most of the abstraction. If the film feels a bit didactic and uncomplicated at times, it makes up for it with images that grow even more striking once the film samples are incorporated, adding a new, far more intriguing layer of interior thinking that does complicate the protagonist (who remains unnervingly blank the rest of the time). And of course, there is that sublime club scene, which to my mind could exist entirely separately as a truly beautiful short; the murkiness that elsewhere obscures, here magnifies a certain kind of otherworldly majesty.

The Wedding Banquet
Perhaps I place too much emphasis on traditions, on the respect paid to the past, whether represented in person (via Wai-Tung’s parents) or purely through the familiar customs of the wedding banquet, which have always been well-known to me, but Lee displays an admirable, astonishingly touching sensitivity to both cultures that Wai-Tung inhabits. It is a film equally about queerness as it is about the Chinese culture, and as such contains no small amount of specificity from both sectors: the Poison VHS, the Chinese scrolls (one of which is read in full), the martial arts serial, the pink triangle. All of this lends the plot, which at times lapses into something which lacks the studious and loving attention paid to establishing the web of relationships, a certain charge, a feeling of recognition and reconciliation. The Wedding Banquet is simply but handsomely mounted, but the layers of detail is no veneer; it is the lifeblood that defines what each character lives for.

Pickpocket
Benefits greatly from how stripped down and focused it is on Xiao Wu, whether or not one wishes to view it through a national critique lens. Pickpocket thus functions as equal parts sign of the times (in a very particular society and time period) and watchful character study, which Jia weaves together with a little bit of shakiness (surprisingly little, considering this is his debut) and a great deal of finesse. But the shakiness fascinates me even more than the expertly executed master shots or the kinetic montages, great as they are. Whether it be the handheld, the simultaneously foregrounded and interior performance of Wang Hongwei, or even the preponderance of small supporting characters, the roughness around the edges suggests to me something endearing, straining to coexist alongside the more clearly accomplished elements.

Sweetgrass
It’s odd to describe a film as doggedly realistic and faithful as Sweetgrass as shape-shifting, but that is exactly how it feels, even as it grounds itself in the hills and fields of Montana with unerring steadiness. The move from the electrifying focus on the sheep to the only somewhat less fascinating (and more disquieting) perspective on the ranchers is the most obvious of these shifts, but it is also, crucially, present in the aesthetic decisions. The frame seemingly opens up, stretching across the endless plains and mountains, and the audio becomes more and more intimate as the camera becomes more distant. The continuity of image is broken into gunshot flares and nighttime scenes, and the herds of both sheep and their herders is broken into solitary figures scrounging for artifacts and weeping and cursing the imminent death of the drive (and, in a way, the Western). These pivots are noticeable, but they all arise from the common foundation of the sheep, and this sense of the quotidian that arises in the second half lengthens the viewer’s perception, making something which by all accounts should be of mild interest into something approaching monumental, status. (It doesn’t hurt that it possesses some of the most arresting images I’ve seen recently, on standard-definition digital to boot.)

As Tears Go By
As Tears Go By begins with a shot that particularly encapsulates ’80s culture – a storefront view of a wall of televisions – and only gets more entrenched in the aesthetic as it goes along. But this being Wong Kar-wai’s debut, it still feels wholly his, and he finds fascinating ways of melding the more down-to-earth yet heightened sensuality that became his trademark. This extends to the often duelling narratives that Wah finds himself caught in the middle of, illustrated no better than in the early scene where a night out is interrupted by Fly breaking into the apartment. The film lives and thrives on these whiplash moments; it seems as if Wong hadn’t yet perfected the languor that I love so much about his films, and so there is no small thrill in the chases, or the extended scenes of almost sadomasochistic violence inflicted on and by Wah (often shot in extremely long slow motion shots), or of course the unspoken flirtations.

Leviathan
In a gambit by equal measures audacious and paradoxical, Leviathan continually seems to aim for inhabiting two separate approaches. Whether it be low or fast, meditative or dynamic, spare or visceral, Castaing-Taylor and Paravel somehow manage to achieve all of these contradictory moods by dint of the utterly inconceivable filming techniques on display. If the film were nothing more than a compendium of the possibilities of the digital camera, then it would still be spectacular. But its context is also key, the balance between the hulking, clunking machinery of the boat, the precarious situation of the fish and birds, the wearying monotony of the workers, and the crashing waves. These are of course pat concepts, but they feel alive when shot in such extreme close-ups, in the rush of the camera cutting through the water and air. Indeed, what seems to be the default mode is a curious cross between stasis (the long takes, some lasting for over ten minutes) and motion (with few exceptions, the camera is constantly rushing through its environment). In this setting, where darkness renders the slightest movement or light source into an impressionistic blur, there is the feeling that Leviathan is the realm of both the real and the fantastical, where senses are broken down into their base elements.

Manakamana
It says quite a bit about Manakamana that I can, at the same time, hold the structure and order of the rides and hop around within said order. It’s a little difficult to determine to what extent this is intended by Spray and Velez – though it’s hard to imagine a different order working as harmoniously – but such is the nature of this incredible work. It lives and soars on so many aspects – the quiet conceptual genius of simply observing no more than three or four bodies for ten minutes, the playful seamlessness of the blackout transitions (including mid-film sound collage) – but there is above all such fluidity, such linkage through motifs, both spoken and unspoken. Funny, melancholic, hypnotic, baffling, all both free of and plainly steeped in the specific context of the temple in Nepal. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts, to be sure, but to say so would deny the immense pleasures in each segment: a cat wandering on three band members, a perfectly executed water bottle birdy, the way so many look into the camera lens.