What three (3) films best describe your film taste?

[Sven]

This is something different than what you consider your favorite films to be, unless you consider your favorite films to be exemplar of the reasons you watch films. For example, my three would be:

Playtime, for its emphasis on shape, design, and overall geography

Lessons of Darkness, for its languorous, snaky, contemplative photography and playing with the difference between fiction and documentary

Snake Eyes, for its unabashed intention to thrill the audience but without forsaking dedication to craft, as well as its deliberate toying with several concepts of photographic reality

Any takers?

[Russ]

Good topic. I like that you included capsule explanations -- much better than just a simple list of three titles.

Challenging, but I think I can narrow it down. Will check back in later.

[lovejuice]

love this thread.

8 women: a combination of my four favorite genres: musical, play, murder mystery, and movies starring lot of chicks.

godford park, or any top tier altman's: altman's order-out-of-chaos approach is influential to me, not only in film taste, but also in literature and my own writing.

inglourious basterds: for how qt masterfully exphasizes and plays with audiences' expectation.

i might come up with better answers later. this is quite challenging indeed.

[number8]

Yeah, this is pretty tough, actually.

A Snake of June describes my attraction to loose narratives, celebration of profane sexual portrayals and surreal imageries.

3-Iron shows great care in composition and deliberate toying with audiences, not to mention a stubborn rejection of spoken text. If I were to be a director, this is how I wish my films to be like.

Battle Royale, as an example of how even the most profound social commentary and examination of human nature can still be delivered in a relentlessly fun (though skillfully made) camp—nor does it need to be subtle. Subtlety is overrated.

[Dead & Messed Up]

Probably Ghostbusters, Unbreakable, and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. They respectively represent my sense of humor, my interest in the unknown, and my fuck-reality optimism.

[Philosophe_rouge]

Suspiria- My love for horror, baroque imagery, feminine perspective and protagonist, and evocative childhoods.

Catch-22 - How I love my humour, both absurd and close to tragedy. Stunning imagery, Alan Arkin, non-cohesive plot-lines.

Other Men's Women- I love me old Hollywood, tonal shifts, overblown but somehow insignificant romances, beautiful moments of laughter and nothingness.

That seems pretty good.

[Ezee E]

What would also be neat is seeing others pick three films that describe other posters.

I've thought of one, but need to figure out two others. Boogie Nights seems too much like Goodfellas as far as describing my taste.

[Sven]

Originally Posted by Adam

And I realize I just cheated by naming four extra films, but whatareyougonnado?

Reported.

[megladon8]

Le Samourai - my love of inventive camerawork creating truly iconic shots, coupled with my love of both crime and western films which often tell simplistic stories riddled with complex morality.

Superman - superheroes and the magic that movies are capable of.

The Haunting - my love affair with horror films is perfectly summed up here, in what remains one of the scariest movies of all time. Still captures the "less is more" philosophy, which even applies to films with tons of gore and monsters, because even with all that snazzy stuff you need something else for the audience to grip on to, whether it be strength of plot, character, style, or whatever it may be.

[Adam]

Have you seen Le Cercle Rouge, meg? For my taste, it's gott essentially all you say you love about Le Samourai, except it's slightly better in every way.

[Adam]

And yeah, this is a nice thread. I'll go with...

Cache Okay, well firstly, I tend to dig movies that take their time. In addition to its pacing, Cache's mise en scène (forgive me) is flawless and this is also basically a clinic on how to successfully make a genre film with a point and which isn't at all shallow. It's stupefying how well Haneke walks the tightrope with this film in not sacrificing the narrative once to nail what he's trying to do thematically. I actually have a pretty huge problem with the grander message about how we're all apparently to blame for the sins of our fathers, but yeah, Cache is still more or less perfectly representative of a buttload of my favorite filmmakers/films, so I feel like it has to be here

Before Sunrise I'm an absurd romantic, above all else, and this is maybe the most romantic movie I've seen, so there you go. It's got two incredibly well-drawn and achingly real characters. Also very breezily and dreamily constructed, which I like. You kind of just float along with these two people in this foreign land for an a hour and a half and its just so delicately observed and pleasant and wonderful. Echoing number8 for a sec - If I were a director, this is the kind of film I'd wanna make

Modern Romance This is a tremendously cathartic movie for me. I go into detail about how hard Modern Romance and Albert Brooks in general jibes with my sense of humor and overall sensibilities here

But this is, of course, impossible. There are so many movies. I really, really wanna sub out Modern Romance and plug in Miller's Crossing or Floating Clouds or King of Hearts or especially Rushmore, but as of today, I guess three will have to suffice. And I realize I just cheated by naming four extra films, but whatareyougonnado?

[Adam]

Originally Posted by Sven

Reported.

Dang, sorry. I deleted and re-posted

[Sven]

Originally Posted by Adam

Dang. I deleted and re-posted

Dude, you're messing with time!

[Skitch]

Yeah, I may have to do several sets! . Off the top of my head...

Akira because its just got everything.

Fight Club because I just love its humor and off-kilter quasi-nihilistic romantic comedy irony.

Aliens because its endlessly rewatchable sci-fi horror, with dialogue that never gets old.

I wanted to add a Kim Ki Duk flick, but I can't remember the title. I just finished a double shift, with two more on the horizon, my scotch kicking in, and I can't be troubled to kick a sleeping cat off my lap and pause The Brak Show to go back to the media room to refresh my memory.

[Boner M]

Three random choices...

A nos amours - The full spectrum of human emotion; the uncanny evocation of the rhythms of life; naturalism used to poetic ends.

Gremlins 2: The New Batch - Hollywood cash-grab transformed into a gleefully anarchic playground of cinematic invention.

Moonrise (Borzage) - Melodrama played with a nearly primal, heart-on-sleeve sincerity; expressionist noir style but without the genre's glib fatalism.

[Fezzik]

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - Sci-Fi mind-screw with a totally accessible story and yet still far enough out there to exhilarate.

Casablanca - Smooth performances, gorgeous to look at and a seemingly effortlessly awesome screenplay. I revisit this one a LOT.

Monster's Inc - Sweet, charming, beautiful animated film with one of the most endearing characters ever put to screen (Boo). It's like huddling in front of a fire on a cold day.

[monolith94]

Delicatessen
The Thief of Bagdad
Dracula, Pages From a Virgin's Diary

[number8]

Originally Posted by monolith94

Dracula, Pages From a Virgin's Diary

I never figured you for a ballet guy.

[Melville]

Emak-Bakia, for encapsulating the beauty of moving images, their visceral power, their capacity to capture a moment.

Edvard Munch, for its use of filmic form, primarily editing, and metatextual commentary to directly convey subjective and intersubjective experience, with its layers of memory and awareness, reality and ideality; in particular, for its depiction of romantic love.

Possession, for going into the breach, for being wildly expressionistic, showing the existential calamities of life not as an objective sequence of events, but as they are felt—tentacled miscarriages and all.

Damn. That really leaves out a lot.

[Raiders]

A Man Escaped - Austere, minimalist--characters defined by movements, actions, visuals

Werckmeister Harmonies - Bold, defined by visual contrast in lights and darks, stark and loaded images, static long takes and elegant tracking shots

Sherlock, Jr. - Profound expression of cinema, deft use of the artform to critique itself, displays a genuine love of filmmaking

[Beau]

The Rules of the Game -- Not only my favorite film, but also one that unites (or gave birth to: chicken or egg situation) most of my obsessions: the endless interactions between humor and tragedy; the dynamism of human beings moving their bodies around in an effort to communicate something, conceal something, fuck something, one-up something, do something, or quite simply survive something; the beauty of little expressions and mannerisms, holding within their movement folds and folds of meaning and insinuation; and finally, the aura of night, the vibe of it, the feeling that anything can happen after sunset, and the melancholy sigh of those final hours of darkness just before the dawn.

Jeanne Dielman -- Formal rigor and a contemplative gaze; a slow-moving portrait hoping to pick up on patterns, echoes, resemblances; a musical film, built on repeated visual notes.

The Empire Strikes Back -- Beautiful pop-art, replete with stunning vistas and grand adventure, all held together by essentially sad undercurrents, a bittersweet combination of childish glee and adult weariness ending in a blood-soaked sunset.

[Melville]

Originally Posted by Boner M

Moonrise (Borzage) - Melodrama played with a nearly primal, heart-on-sleeve sincerity; expressionist noir style but without the genre's glib fatalism.

I keep hoping this will appear on Surreal Moviez. (I'm too lazy for that torrent stuff.) I've probably already asked you this, but how do Borzage's other films compare?

[Boner M]

Originally Posted by Melville

I keep hoping this will appear on Surreal Moviez. (I'm too lazy for that torrent stuff.) I've probably already asked you this, but how do Borzage's other films compare?

I've only seen History is Made at Night, which had similarly melodramatic sensibilities but not the dynamic visual style that was so present in Moonrise, although the wonderful chemistry of Jean Arthur and Charles Boyer made up for that. It's somewhat hampered by Borzage's need to throw PERIL! at his subjects for their love to transcend, but even at its most cornball it was still surprisingly engaging throughout. I remember Derek being really high on it, so your mileage may vary (I watched it on a terrible VHS copy, so perhaps my misgivings about the film's visual style are off-base).

[Brightside]

I'll have to come back to this one.

[Melville]

Originally Posted by Boner M

I've only seen History is Made at Night, which had similarly melodramatic sensibilities but not the dynamic visual style that was so present in Moonrise, although the wonderful chemistry of Jean Arthur and Charles Boyer made up for that. It's somewhat hampered by Borzage's need to throw PERIL! at his subjects for their love to transcend, but even at its most cornball it was still surprisingly engaging throughout. I remember Derek being really high on it, so your mileage may vary (I watched it on a terrible VHS copy, so perhaps my misgivings about the film's visual style are off-base).

Ah, I was hoping you had seen The Mortal Storm, which seems to be his most widely praised. I do love expressionistic melodrama, so I guess I'll check out some of his other stuff while waiting for Moonrise to somehow find its way to me.

[Brightside]

Originally Posted by Melville

Ah, I was hoping you had seen The Mortal Storm, which seems to be his most widely praised. I do love expressionistic melodrama, so I guess I'll check out some of his other stuff while waiting for Moonrise to somehow find its way to me.

There's this site a bunch of us use. It's called Karagarga. I'd be happy to send you an invite.

[Melville]

Originally Posted by Brightside

There's this site a bunch of us use. It's called Karagarga. I'd be happy to send you an invite.

Evidently you missed that sentence about me being too lazy. Trying to maintain some kind of ratio of downloads to uploads seems like an especial hassle.

[Brightside]

Originally Posted by Melville

Evidently you missed that sentence about me being too lazy. Trying to maintain some kind of ratio of downloads to uploads seems like an especial hassle.

It's easy as pie, especially with the free to leech torrents. I'd be more than happy to give you a few GBs to start out with, too.

[Melville]

Originally Posted by Brightside

It's easy as pie, especially with the free to leech torrents. I'd be more than happy to give you a few GBs to start out with, too.

Nah, it all seems too confusing. I can't be bothered with anything that requires any thought or effort right now. Thanks for the offer, though.

[Brightside]

Originally Posted by Melville

Nah, it all seems too confusing. I can't be bothered with anything that requires any thought or effort right now. Thanks for the offer, though.

No problem. If you wanna get started on it, just let me know and I'll hook you up.