Tag: Film

Dick Cavett’s Criterion Closet Picks

…
I guess this is sayonara. By the way, you ask people what sayonara means and they say, “Well, it’s Japanese for goodbye.”
We don’t need this here, but I’m going to say it anyway. Sa-yo-nara. It’s three words. And, brace yourself, it means “if it must be so.” Isn’t that nice? See ya.

See also:
https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/a24t19/why_do_most_people_translate_sayonara_as_goodbye/

Check out a couple of his books, highly recommended:
Talk Show: Confrontations, Pointed Commentary, and Off-Screen Secrets

Brief Encounters: Conversations, Magic Moments, and Assorted Hijinks

RIP – Marcel Ophuls

Filmmaker Marcel Ophuls has died at the age of 97. Recognized as one of the great documentarians of his era, he died on Saturday, as confirmed by his grandson, Andréas-Benjamin Seyfert.

Ophuls demanded — and commanded — his audience’s attention, in 4 plus hour documentaries like The Sorrow and The Pity and Hôtel Terminus.

Ophuls knew that by creating hours-long documentaries, he ran the danger of “not only seeming pretentious, but being pretentious.” But, as he told NPR in 1978, “there’s a relationship between attention span and morality. I think that, if you shorten people’s attention span a great deal, you are left with only the attraction of power.”

https://www.npr.org/2025/05/26/683323335/marcel-ophuls-dead

Philosophical Thoughts on Movie Watching from Siskel and Ebert

Why do we go to the movies in the first place? To have a vicarious experience. For two hours we sit there and if the movie works we stop being ourselves to some degree and become the characters on the screen. And then a review to some degree should talk about whether we enjoyed that vicarious experience. —Roger Ebert…

In a 20/20 interview, he took things even further. “When you disagree on a movie,” Ebert said, “you’re not disagreeing on the movie. You’re disagreeing on who you are. If I don’t like a movie and he does, then I’m not saying that the movie is flawed, I’m saying that he’s flawed.”…

Because the crosstalk was unplanned and unscripted, it occasionally ventured off into fascinating tangents. A Siskel & Ebert movie review could mutate at a moment’s notice into a debate about philosophy, morality, or spirituality. The occasion of the 1987 fantasy film Made in Heaven, about a young man who dies, meets his soulmate in heaven, then must return to Earth to find her when she is reincarnated in a new human body, inspired Roger and Gene to talk less about the movie than their own beliefs about the afterlife.

“I believe,” Siskel revealed, “that if you think of someone, whether it be here or in someplace else, that they come alive. I think the film had a religious content to it. So I found the film beautiful.”
“Yeah, but, of course, whether or not you believe in this doesn’t have anything to do with whether the movie is good or not,” Ebert countered.
“For me, it does,” Siskel responded.
“Okay, well, in that case you think every movie you agree with is good!” Ebert said.
“I have for years,” Siskel replied.

Opposable Thumbs: How Siskel & Ebert Changed Movies Forever
Matt Singer

Note – recommended

Gene Siskel, Best Films of the Year 1969-1998

Siskel compiled “best of the year” film lists from 1969 to 1998, which helped to provide an overview of his critical preferences. His top choices were:

From 1969 until his death in February 1999, he and Ebert were in agreement on nine annual top selections: Z, The Godfather, Nashville, The Right Stuff, Do the Right Thing, Goodfellas, Schindler’s List, Hoop Dreams, and Fargo. There would have been a tenth, but Ebert declined to rank the 9+1⁄2-hour documentary Shoah as 1985’s best film because he felt it was inappropriate to compare it to the rest of the year’s candidates.[66] Six times, Siskel’s number one choice did not appear on Ebert’s top ten list at all: Straight Time, Ragtime, Once Upon a Time in America, The Last Temptation of Christ, Hearts of Darkness, and The Ice Storm. Six times, Ebert’s top selection did not appear on Siskel’s; these films were 3 Women, An Unmarried Woman, Apocalypse Now, Sophie’s Choice, Mississippi Burning, and Dark City.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Siskel

For more Siskel ->  https://siskelebert.org/

2024 – Best Movies, Desultory Notes Selection of

In no order. Selections mine, description IMDB’s.

Dune Part 2
Paul Atreides unites with the Fremen while on a warpath of revenge against the conspirators who destroyed his family. Facing a choice between the love of his life and the fate of the universe, he endeavors to prevent a terrible future.

Furiosa
The origin story of renegade warrior Furiosa before her encounter and teamup with Mad Max.

Sing Sing
Divine G, imprisoned at Sing Sing for a crime he didn’t commit, finds purpose by acting in a theatre group alongside other incarcerated men in this story of resilience, humanity, and the transformative power of art.

Souleymane’s Story
A Paris food delivery cyclist and asylum seeker named Souleymane has two days to prepare his story for a make-or-break interview to secure legal residency.

All We Imagine as Light
In Mumbai, Nurse Prabha’s routine is troubled when she receives an unexpected gift from her estranged husband. Her younger roommate, Anu, tries in vain to find a spot in the city to be intimate with her boyfriend.

eXistenz – trailer, quotes from

A game designer on the run from assassins must play her latest virtual reality creation with a marketing trainee to determine if the game has been damaged.

Allegra: So how does it feel?
Ted: What?
Allegra: Your real life. The one you came back for.
Ted: It feels completely unreal.
Allegra: You’re stuck now, aren’t ya? You want to go back to the Chinese restaurant because there’s nothing happening here. We’re safe. It’s boring.
Ted: It’s worse than that. I’m not sure… I’m not sure here, where we are, is real at all. This feels like a game to me. And you, you’re beginning to feel a bit like a game character.

Ted: Free will is obviously not a big factor in this little world of ours.
Allegra: It’s like real life. There’s just enough to make it interesting.

Ted: What was your life like before?
Gas: Before?
Ted: Before it was changed by Allegra Geller.
Gas: I operated a gas station.
Ted: You still operate a gas station, don’t you?
Gas: Only on the most pathetic level of reality.

Ted: It’s none of your business who sent us! We’re here and that is all that matters… God, what happened? I didn’t mean to say that.
Allegra: It’s your character who said it. It’s kind of a schizophrenic feeling, isn’t it? You’ll get used to it. There are things that have to be said to advance the plot and establish the characters, and those things get said whether you want to say them or not. Don’t fight it.

Allegra: What the hell was that?
Ted: That wasn’t me. That was my game character. I wouldn’t have done that. Not here anyway.
Allegra: Our characters are obviously supposed to jump on each other. It’s probably a pathetically mechanical attempt to heighten the emotional tension of the next game sequence. No use fighting it.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120907/quotes/?ref_=tt_dyk_qu

American Beauty – Quotes from

Brad Dupree: [reading Lester’s job description] “My job consists of basically masking my contempt for the assholes in charge, and, at least once a day, retiring to the men’s room so I can jerk off while I fantasize about a life that doesn’t so closely resemble Hell.” Well, you have absolutely no interest in saving yourself.
Lester Burnham: Brad, for 14 years I’ve been a whore for the advertising industry. The only way I could save myself now is if I start firebombing.

Lester Burnham: [narrating] Both my wife and daughter think I’m this gigantic loser and they’re right, I have lost something. I’m not exactly sure what it is but I know I didn’t always feel this… sedated. But you know what? It’s never too late to get it back.

Lester Burnham: When I was your age, I flipped burgers all summer just to be able to buy an eight-track.
Ricky Fitts: That sucks.
Lester Burnham: No, actually it was great. All I did was party and get laid. I had my whole life ahead of me.

Colonel Frank Fitts: Where’s your wife?
Lester Burnham: Uh, I dunno. Probably out fucking that dorky, prince-of-real-estate asshole. And you know what? I don’t care.
Colonel Frank Fitts: Your wife is with another man and you don’t care?
Lester Burnham: Nope. Our marriage is just for show. A commercial for how normal we are when we’re anything but.

Lester Burnham: I feel like I’ve been in a coma for the past twenty years. And I’m just now waking up.

Angela Hayes: Who are you looking for?
Jane Burnham: My parents are coming tonight. They’re trying to, you know, take an active interest in me.
Angela Hayes: Gross. I hate it when my mom does that.