>>What's your 5 or 10 if you include the movies on the 1000
>list
>>that you saw before you got the list?
>
>Simple, quick, and relatively bland list: Citizen Kane,
>Casablanca, Seven Samurai, Godfather, Godfather Part II, Do
>The Right Thing, Rules Of The Game, Apocalypse Now, Strangers
>On A Train, and Aguirre. Those were off the top of the dome.

Cool, cool.

>Tokyo Story,
>This was my first Ozu and I don't think I am ready to get into
>him yet. He is definitely trying to get as close to real
>life, and I commend him for that, but the reason why I watch
>movies is because real life can be pretty boring.

Sirk, to me, also tells stories close to real life. I see what you're saying, though, but I think movies that look at life even the mundane in an insightful way is exciting. Ozu poeticizes the mundane, though. (And the mundane don't make up a majority of his films.) That's an aspect I think you're overlooking.

>And this
>movie, while certainly different than most I had seen just
>because of its languid, almost lethargic, look at life, I was
>not exactly anxious to see more.

Honestly, if you're drawn to Sirk melodramas, I don't see why you wouldn't like Ozu melodramas. Give Early Spring and Tokyo Twilight a go; make them your next Ozus. For funnier Ozu, check Record of a Tenement Gentleman, Late Spring, I Was Born, But..., Passing Fancy.

I think Tokyo Story is a masterpiece, but I also despise it in the sense that it gives people the wrong impression of Ozu - slow, gentle, Zen-like, the most Japanese director, middle-class characters, middle-aged characters. He has brisk-paced films like End of Summer, Late Spring, and his comedies. He has dark films that look at the younger generation like Early Spring, Tokyo Twilight, and Woman of Tokyo. His characters can be crude and fart. They yell and hit each other. They get drunk. Gangster. Prostitute. Marital infidelity. Unwanted pregnancy. His humor is criminally overlooked especially in his dramas.

>Sansho the Bailiff,
>The title is misleading.

I don't think it is. I think the film is saying that the world we live in is an unequal and brutal one. Our world is for those in power. In the film it's the bailiffs.

>Ugetsu,
>This one knocked my socks off. It melds middle ages Japan
>with elements of the fantastical

He melds the supernatural seamlessly with the rest of the film. Great stuff.

>L'atalante,
>I enjoyed it more once it was done than while it was on. The
>first hour or so is textbook rom-com,

Some of it was kind of racy for its time, though, don't you think? Like, the characters' desires and urges.

>I haven't seen Mon Oncle yet, but I was a bit underwhelmed by
>Playtime because I was expecting Holiday Part II. I want to
>see Mon Oncle first, and then I'll watch all three again.
>Holiday though - I watched it prolly five times the first time
>I rented it. Then I bought it and everybody I have convinced
>to watch it has watched it at least three times themselves.

Playtime's greatness didn't fully hit me until the 2nd time. Not as funny as Holiday or Mon Oncle, but there's just so much going on in his frames and he's just as critical of society as Antonioni.

>>>Ikiru
>This IS my favorite Kurosawa, and I for one think the final
>segment is great. I liked it when I first saw it, but then I
>found out that it is (or was) a custom in Japan for the
>patrons of a funeral to get drunk afterwards and to pay homage
>to the deceased. The scene does run too long, but I think it
>is effective - we get to spend all this time with a man who we
>come to know, love, and respect, so when his co-workers and
>friends begin to bash him I naturally got very angry. But I
>think that is the point. Notice that afterwards one man walks
>away feeling something is wrong and he comes to walk past the
>playground the main character helped to create. We've just
>seen all of these men mocking him, but then we get to see what
>he actually did through the eyes of somebody who barely knew
>him, and I think it injects in the viewer an even deeper
>desire to try to get out into the world and do something
>positive with their lives.

I agree with all that. I just don't like the dialogue and acting.

>>Kudos on watching a Maya Deren, but where're the other films
>>by women directors?!! Unless you saw them prior to getting
>>the 1000 list and didn't include some of them in the 300 or
>>you had no access which is understandable.
>
>Mostly access, I don't know very many female directors. And
>let's be honest, they do not get nearly as much credit as
>their male counterparts.

But that has little to do with the quality of the films and more with the fact that male directors are given more opportunities then and now and we live in a male-dominated world which affects the processes and results of tastemaking, gatekeeping, and canon-forming.

Female directors do get as much credit as male directors it's just given out by fewer people if we're including the mainstream. But directors like Denis, Akerman, Varda, and Deren are lauded in film history books and film criticism.

Get moving. You're missing out.

>I want to get into Tarkovsky when I have the time to really
>dedicate to sitting down and watching several in a short
>period of time. I for one WAS very impressed by Solyaris, and
>it made me all the more unimpressed by Soderbergh's version.

IMHO, Stalker is a masterpiece and Solaris is an interesting good yet patchy film.

>>Celine and Julie Go Boating, man. Celine and Julie Go
>>Boating.
>
>tell me more...

The greatest film from the French New Wave-related directors. (I'm not counting Marker and Resnais as part of the French New Wave dudes.) For my money, one of the 10 greatest of all-time. Just watch it, man, like, now, no, like, yesterday.