It’s the five-year anniversary of the movie journal! Since that first short post on a Seijun Suzuki movie which Katy so hated, I’ve chalked up over 1100 features and over 800 shorts, many of which Katy has hated. She married me anyway.
In celebration of five years of movies, I’ve rescued a pile of must-see lists from my email archive. After all, the blog was started partly because of my obsession with movie lists, and it has happily coincided with them ever since (via the sortable list of entries and various other must-see lists posted every few months, all collected here). So these are project or theme-month lists left uncompleted, with titles I actually watched removed, and overlaps kept to a minimum.
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Musicals Month
In October (and November) 2007, Katy and I watched a bunch of musicals. I even made a musicals-month soundtrack CD. There were some rocky selections – Katy walked out on Pennies From Heaven and declared that Red Garters was not a proper musical, but she got to pick Grease and Fiddler on the Roof. This looks like a list of my own leftover picks, with a few Katy-concession titles and a couple recommended by Joanna.
New York, New York
Hairspray
Tommy
Quadrophenia
Hallelujah
Performance
A Star Is Born
Topsy Turvy
On the Town
Funny Face
42nd Street
Top Hat
A Night at the Opera
I Love Melvin
Dangerous When Wet
Annie Get Your Gun
Bells Are Ringing
High Society
The Muppet Movie
Hello Dolly
Les Girls
Blackfly / The Cat Came Back
Rhapsody Rabbit
Dixieland Droopy
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Documentary Month
From June 2008. One of the more successful theme months – we watched nine.
anything by Ross McElwee
The War Room
Lessons of Darkness (Herzog)
White Diamond (Herzog)
The Big One
The House Is Black
Forgotten Silver
The Power of Nightmares
Salesman (Maysles)
Sorrow and the Pity
Darwin’s Nightmare
The Devil and Daniel Johnston
My Kid Could Paint That
Taxi to the Dark Side
Nanook of the North
One Day in September
In the Shadow of the Moon
The Decline of Western Civilization (1981 punk)
The Filth and the Fury
No Direction Home
Thin Blue Line (Morris)
God’s Country (Malle)
Calcutta (Malle)
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Documentary Month 2
This January Katy said she wanted to do another doc month, so I made this list of movies I’ve already got which we could watch, but then we ended up doing a political-films month instead, during which we only watched two movies (the three-part The Trap, and Standard Operating Procedure).
Bye Bye Africa
The Living Dead (Adam Curtis)
The Way of All Flesh (Adam Curtis)
Showman (Maysles)
Disgraced Monuments
Listen To Britain
Qallunaat!
Monitor: Elgar
Canal Zone (Wiseman)
High School (Wiseman)
Nollywood
VHS Kahloucha
Sisters In Law
The End of Suburbia
Gershwin
Kestrel’s Eye
Winged Migration
Antonio Gaudi
Symbiopsychotaxiplasm
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2007 Movies
At the end of 2009 I thought I hadn’t seen enough 2009 movies to make any sort of best-of-year list, so I made a best-of-2006 list instead. At the end of 2010 I figured I’d do the same for 2007 movies and make it a tradition, but then decided that was boring and obsessive. This was my must-see list of ’07 movies to watch in ’10.
The Mourning Forest
Silent Light
Control
Aleksandra
The Last Mistress
Breath
Beaufort
Secret of the Grain
L’Aimée
Christopher Columbus, The Enigma
Go Go Tales
You, The Living
Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Gone Baby Gone
Trapped in the Closet
Aqua Teen Hunger Force Movie
Dr. Plonk
Nightwatching
In the City of Sylvia
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2005 Movies
Apparently I’d had the same idea in 2008, to watch a bunch of movies I’d missed from three years before. Looks like a list of stuff I thought I’d like, stuff I thought I’d hate, and critical favorites.
Piano Tuner of Earthquakes
The Sun
The Wild Blue Yonder
Sileni
The Bow
The Constant Gardener
Brick
Alone in the Dark / Bloodrayne
Manderlay
Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World
La Moustache
Junebug
Me and You and Everyone We Know
Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
Thank You For Smoking
The Baxter
Don’t Come Knocking
Fearless Freaks
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1930’s Month (August 2008)
Between Trouble In Paradise and Rules of the Game, Katy and I watched seven 1930’s movies, and I watched one more when she wasn’t around. These are the others I tried getting her to watch, along with my brief descriptions. I hardly ever give descriptions… must have been trying especially hard that summer.
Enthusiasm (groundbreaking russian experimental drama)
Gabriel Over The White House (angel-as-president drama)
Daybreak (french romantic tragedy, dir. of children of paradise)
Land Without Bread (bunuel’s mountain documentary)
L’Idee (30-min pioneering animated film)
À Nous la liberté (french left-wing satirical comedy)
Movie Crazy (harold lloyd wants to be in the movies)
Man’s Castle (pre-code spencer tracy romance)
The Milky Way (harold lloyd talkie, milkman becomes a boxing star)
Edge of the World (ahead-of-its-time british drama, scenic, tragic)
Grand Illusion (french war drama often voted a top-ten-ever film)
The Blue Angel (the musical that made marlene dietrich a star)
Boudu Saved From Drowning (renoir comedy w one of my fave french actors)
Sylvia Scarlett (cukor/grant/hepburn romantic comedy!)
Story of the Late Chrysanthemums (some kinda japanese masterpiece)
Threepenny Opera (musical from director of pandora’s box)
Scarface (howard hawks’ original gangster drama)
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Christmas Movies
Christmas Movie Week comes every December – this is the 2010 list, in descending order by how much I thought Katy would enjoy watching them.
The Bells of St. Mary’s
Comfort and Joy
I’ll Be Seeing You
Nestor, The Long-Eared Christmas Donkey
A Midwinter’s Tale
Christmas Holiday
‘Til We Meet Again
Bad Santa
Jesus of Montreal
In Search of a Midnight Kiss
Blackadder’s Christmas Carol
A Tale of Winter
The Ref
Frozen River
‘R Xmas
A Midnight Clear
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Westerns Month (Dec. 2010)
A very enjoyable six-movie theme month with Katy. And eighteen left on the list I made, so we only got to a quarter of it, which still seems an unusually high ratio. Other lists I make (things to fix around the house, albums to buy, restaurants to try) are just as unrealistic and unrealized as my way-too-long movie lists. Westerns are tough because all their titles sound the same to me.
Big Sky
Duel in the Sun
Annie Get Your Gun
The Gunfighter
Wagon Master
The Lusty Men
Silver Lode
Wichita
Man of the West
Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
Fort Apache
Red River
Bend of the River
The Far Country
The Misfits
Ride the High Country
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Late Films (Dec. 2010)
For the Shadowplay Late Films Blogathon I watched a week’s worth of final or near-final films by writers, directors and in one case, actors. These are others that I considered:
Lang: The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse
Franju: Shadowman
Chaplin: A King In New York
Nick Ray: Lightning Over Water
Walerian Borowczyk
Demy: Trois places pour le 26 or Varda’s Demy double-feature
Corman: Frankenstein Unbound
Jarman: Blue
John Hubley: The Cosmic Eye
Lubitsch: Cluny Brown, That Lady In Ermine
Melville: Un Flic
Oshima: Taboo
Satyajit Ray: The Visitor, Branches of the Tree
Sturges: Beautiful Blonde From Bashful Bend, The French are a Funny Race
Borzage: The Big Fisherman
Borzage/Ulmer: Journey Beneath the Desert/Siren of Atlantis
Jerry Lewis: Hardly Working, Cracking Up
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Russian Movies
Just last month I decided I need to see all the silent Russian masterpieces, and a bunch more Russian movies for that matter. I only watched one feature and a short. Anyway, I’ll get to it later.
Starewicz 1912 Cameraman’s Revenge :13
Bauer 1914 Child of the Big City :37
Bauer 1915 After Death :46
Protazanov 1924 Aelita 1:51
Eisenstein 1925 Potemkin
Vertov 1926 A Sixth Part of the World 1:14
Vertov 1926 Man with the Movie Camera
Kuleshov 1926 Dura Lex 1:18
Eisenstein 1927 October
Dovzhenko 1929 Arsenal
Dovzhenko 1930 Earth
Vertov 1931 Enthusiasm
Dovzhenko 1932 Ivan
Kuleshov 1933 The Great Consoler
Pudovkin 1933 Deserter
Medvedkin 1938 New Moscow 1:16
Eisenstein 1945 Ivan the Terrible
Kalatozov 1959 Letter Never Sent 1:32
1967 Viy, Spirit of Evil 1:12
Protazanov 1969 The Queen of Spades 1:03
Tarkovsky 1975 Mirror 1:48
Sokurov 1979 Sonata For Hitler :43
Parajanov 1984 Legend of Suram Fortress 1:28
Klimov 1985 Come and See 1:13
Sokurov 1988 Days of Eclipse 1:06
Muratova 1990 Asthenic Syndrome
Petrov 1992 The Cow :10
Mikhalkov 1994 Burnt by the Sun 2:15
Sokurov 1994 Whispering Pages 1:17
Petrov 1999 Old Man and the Sea :20
Iosseliani 1999 Adieu Plancher 1:52
Fokin 2002 Metamorphosis 1:24
Muratova 2004 The Tuner 2:35
Sokurov 2007 Aleksandra 1:31
Zvyagintsev 2007 The Banishment 2:30
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SHOCKtober 2010
Going along with my plan to watch some of the “best films of the decade“, I thought for SHOCKtober last year I’d confine myself to horror movies from 2000-2010. But I didn’t end up doing that at all. So here’s the list I’d planned to use:
Taxidermia
Fear(s) of the Dark
In My Skin
The Orphanage
Inside
Wendigo
The Last Winter
Mother of Tears
Mysterious Skin
The End of Suburbia / Darwin’s Nightmare
Demons (Mario O’Hara)
Memories of Murder (bong)
Anatomy of Hell
They Came Back
K Kurosawa: Seance, Bright Future, Doppelganger
The Devil’s Backbone
Irreversible
Twentynine Palms
13 Tzamedi
Deanimated
Demon Pond
Vital
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SHOCKtober 2009
Told myself I’d watch stuff that I’d bought and rented, but of course that never happens – I just rent new ones. I think this is a mash of lists from 2007-2009.
Dr. Caligari 80min
Organ 104min
Vampyres 88min
The Baby’s Room (2006) 76min
Crawlspace 80min
To Sir With Love (2006) 93min
The Old Dark House 72min
Death Bed (1977) 78min
2000 Maniacs 84min
Mansion of Madness
Midori 49min anime
Atrocity Exhibition 102min
Haxan Witchcraft 76min
Rubber’s Lover 91min
Cthulhu
Fear Itself episodes
Possession by zulawski
Tideland
The Woods (2006)
Wizard of Gore
Sheitan
The Hunger
Necronomicon (1993)
Curse of Frankenstein 1957
The Mummy 1959
Strange Circus
Season of the Witch
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Shorts Month
November 2009 was Shorts Month, when I watched so many shorts that I’m still kind of sick of them. Here are some (not counting the ones that ended up on the auteur list) I’d intended to watch that month before I took a less focused approach and just devoured all the ones on my laptop.
Philips-Radio (Joris Ivens)
Un Chant D’Amour
more Chaplin
Borzage: Nugget Jim / Pilgrim
Free Cinema DVDs
Entr’acte (René Clair)
La Villa Santo-Sospir (by Cocteau)
Paris du par (anthology)
Godard/Mieville DVD
Greenaway: 26 Bathrooms, Fear of Drowning, Writing on Water
Herzog: Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner, Unprecedented Defence of Deutschkreuz, Nobody Wants to Play with Me, Handicapped Future
Hubleys: The Hat, Moonbird, Whither Weather
Kiarostami: Breaktime, The Chorus
Rohmer: Changing Landscapes
Ken Russell: From Spain to Streatham, London Moods, Shelagh Delaney’s Salford, Prokofiev, Variations on a Mechanical Theme, Antonio GaudÃ
various by Terayama Shuji
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TCM Essentials Month (Feb. 2011)
This was short-lived because Katy didn’t have much time to waste on movies, but we’ll come back to it. She missed having cable, so I looked up lists of Turner Classic’s “essentials”, then after each movie we’d read their online article explaining why it was so essential.
A Face in the Crowd
A Place in the Sun
A Star is Born (’54)
An Affair to Remember
An American in Paris
Ben-Hur
Black Orpheus
Bonnie and Clyde (’67)
Brief Encounter
Doctor Zhivago (1965)
Duck Soup
Fort Apache
Gaslight
Gilda
Grand Illusion
Gunga Din
I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang
Imitation of Life
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Jezebel
Kind Hearts and Coronets
Lawrence of Arabia (’67)
Leave Her to Heaven (’46)
Lolita
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Notorious
Now, Voyager
Out of the Past
Paper Moon
Paths of Glory
Psycho
Rebecca
Ride the High Country
Saboteur
Seven Samurai
Some Came Running
Stalag 17
Strangers on a Train (’51)
Sweet Smell of Success
The Bad and the Beautiful
The Big Sleep
The Four Feathers
The Grapes of Wrath
The Great Escape
The Hustler
The Letter
The Maltese Falcon
The Manchurian Candidate
The Merry Widow
The Misfits
The Mouse that Roared
The Quiet Man
The Sea Hawk (’40)
The Snake Pit (’48)
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
They Were Expendable
To Kill A Mockingbird (1962)
Tom Jones
Tootsie (1982)
White Heat
Winchester ’73
Witness for the Prosecution
Wuthering Heights
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Bonus List: Criterion Laserdiscs
I found a list of movies Criterion released before the DVD era, made note of the 80-ish I’ve never seen. I have an ongoing urge to watch everything the company puts out (as do many cinephile/collectors, I’m sure), but between their main label and Eclipse, I’ll never actually catch up to the point that I need to worry myself over these. It’s still an interesting group of films, though.
High Noon
Sabotage
Secret Agent
Young and Innocent
The Asphalt Jungle
Scaramouche (george sidney)
Show Boat (whale)
Forbidden Planet
Zulu
Darling (john schlesinger)
West Side Story
Shampoo
Miracle in Milan (de sica)
Burn! (gillo pontecorvo)
The Lacemaker (claude goretta)
King of Hearts (philippe de broca)
Silverado
Last Tango in Paris
Dr. No
From Russia with Love
Goldfinger
Bad Day at Black Rock
Lady for a Day (capra)
Carnal Knowledge (mike nichols)
Blackmail
The Prince of Tides
Jason and the Argonauts
A River Runs Through It
Damage (malle)
City of Hope (sayles)
Confidentially Yours
Edward II (jarman)
The Bridge on the River Kwai
Get Out Your Handkerchiefs (bertrand blier)
Evergreen (victor saville)
Polyester
Salt of the Earth (berbert biberman)
Bodies, Rest & Motion (michael steinberg)
Menace II Society
Two English Girls
The Prince of Tides
Woman Next Door
Dersu Uzala
Three Cases of Murder (david eady)
Once Were Warriors (lee tamahori)
The Atomic Cafe
Why Has Bodhi-Dharma Left for the East?
Waltz of the Torreadors (john guillermin)
El Cid (anthony mann)
Diva
The Entertainer (tony richardson)
Swept Away (lina wertmuller)
The Return of Martin Guerre (daniel vigne)
Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song
Montenegro (makavejev)
A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies
Supercop
Olympia I and II
Pink Flamingos
Five Corners (tony bill)
Godzilla, King of the Monsters!
Godzilla vs. Mothra
Godzilla vs. Monster Zero
Godzilla’s Revenge
Terror of Mechagodzilla
Sonatine
Switchblade Sisters