"I cannot start my day with a confrontation" The 2017 ILX Film Poll Voting Thread - Ballots Due Sunday, March 4th at 7pm EST.

I def wanted to see On Body and Soul when MUBI was showing it but I didn't get round to it. Missed By the Time It Gets Dark in its one week run. Sadly there is only so much time.

I put The Nothing Factory in my ballot.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/jan/28/the-nothing-factory-review-unconventional-workplace-drama

This was like a summation of a lots and lots of political cinema of many colours, and its very knowing on how boring as well as exciting a lot of it was.

You guys are voting so early!

I always think of this as a poll of the films I saw in 2017, so in theory could have submitted my vote on Jan 1st. There's always next year's poll!

I put The Nothing Factory in my ballot.

I avoided this because the Glasgow Film Theatre booklet compared it to Gomes' The Arabian Nights, which I largely disliked, but based on your description I regret that now.

Its miles better than The Arabian Nights, whose 1st part I caught and also despised (oh they are both Portuguese and left-wing! So bloody lazy).

It's very much in the same tradition as Arabian Nights, a tradition that goes from Antonio Reis and gives so many Portuguese films such an ethnographic dimension. There's a bunch of Portuguese documentaries a lot like it, and you see aspects of it in Pedro Costa and Joao Pedro Rodrigues as well, just to name two other major Portuguese filmmakers.

Pedro Costa has a completely different rhtyhm and his films are the result of a specific project and even a politics (there is much empathy for the poor and it delves into Portuguese history and colonial history but its also very resigned about it all as well).

no Ward, no. eg, Phantom Thread is not a 2018 film, not no way, not nohow.

UK Release Date: Friday 2 February 2018

pish tosh

Just looked through the list from last year. I'm voting for at least four that got votes last year.

Also noticed that one of them, Eugene Green's The Son of Joseph, got one vote in English and one in French! Let's consolidate our votes this year, Green fans. Pick a language!

Tomorrow is the two-year anniversary of the premiere of The Son of Joseph. Great film.

It is great, and the most openly comic film of his I've seen. Of course there's comedy in all his films, and obviously Le monde vivant was pretty silly, but this one is classic farce.

"How do you feel about hipsters?"

"I hate them."

"Me, too!"

The Nothing Factory was some hot, flaming bullshit, and this is from someone who thinks Arabian Nights is one of the best films ever. To compare them is criminal. If you want to watch a film that will clumsily attack you for daring to watch it, for three fucking hours, be my guest. Dismal

And yeah, of course I'm aware the effect was intentional. That doesn't mean that the execution was good or that I'm happy to have been subjected to it

If you compiled all the scenes that took place outdoors then you'd have a decent ambient short tbf

Glad I'm holding my ballot. I've seen Good Time and Nocturama so far this week.

Really, really happy you hated The Nothing Factory, Louie. Tell me you didn't walk out? That's even better.

Or if you did please tell me it was around the 20+ min scene of the Capital I-intellectuals talking around the dinner table. I knew one or two ppl would walk at that and right enough.

Oh I stayed till the end, buddy

I'm aware the Intellectuals bit was meant to be satirical, but the point was so heavy-handed. 'film attacks its own bourgie audience' has been done, oh, very slightly better ;)

Some people did indeed leave during that bit btw

It wasn't satire. Its partly a play on some of the 60s/70s political films. Mainly and basically though talking about what is going on should be fine for the audience -- who are mostly educated (in the sense they come in with some familiarity with Marxist texts and current affairs) -- they ought to be staying with it. Especially given what happened later.

Every one of its intellectual flourishes was subsequently deflated - seemingly on purpose - but not in good ways. We are shown how the main guy is a horrible prick to his wife, the musical bit is a daft contrivance, the workers' discussions go in futile circles. Some of the actual theory was sound but nothing new - the rest felt like antagonism. For a film about the Struggle it really didn't seem to have many answers

It doesn't pretend to have any answers and you should not start looking for it ina film (you basically look for edgy stuff - hence the ambient comment - anyway). The worker discussion is documentary and it's exactly the kind of thing you should be listening to. They seized the means of production. Musical functioned as a break and it often has a part in certain political films.

Guy being a horrible prick to his wife is your male feminist logging on.

God knows how Fred is gonna sort this out.

Why would I sort it out? I saw it in a competition of debut films, I thought it was a promising but flawed film that seemed fairly typical of Portuguese cinema.

Just thought you had all the answers, that's all.

Weekend Bump

Saw and was inspired by too few new films to vote, though they didn't include Get Out or The Work or The B-Side or, I expect of greater relative interest to me, Mudbound or BPM or Ex Libris or The Four Sisters. I typically enjoyed the half-Varda and to a lesser degree Soderbergh and Winterbottom, but found them less interesting slight returns to somewhat familiar territory (same for the 2016 Assayas, which I saw that year too, though it might be worth a second look), and the Grateful Dead movie I more than willingly sat through four hours of was as advertised both long and a little strange but not quite a trip. Lady Bird was not without its minor charms, but I suspect I would have enjoyed a lot more with Gerwig rather than Ronan in front of the camera, and ultimately I was tempted to deem it the vaguely-indie coming-of-age-comedy cognate of the comic-book/sci-fi films whose artistic merit appears to have been inflated by whatever cultural importance there may be in their being helmed by and/or starring women and/or African-Americans, less interesting or substantive than, say, the more adult Columbus. Same goes for The Florida Project, which I found too aggressively awful in content, milieu, and lack of any particular point I cared to discern to be attentive to the extent to which it may have been well made by anyone other than the adult leads. While I'd felt similarly about previous McDonagh work, the somewhat-accidentally-seen Three Billboards felt sufficiently meatier in its storytelling and mild convention-subversion to overlook the complications and light weight; I suspect Wind River probably was too. The Hong movie seemed a bit more interesting than those I'd seen previously, but not enough to bother me that I was dragged out of it early on content grounds. My favorite 2017 film (excluding 2016s not seen in that year like Cameraperson or especially Robinson Devor's fairly compelling Pow Wow) was probably The Other Side of Hope, which felt most of and responsive to the moment.

Same goes for The Florida Project, which I found too aggressively awful in content, milieu, and lack of any particular point I cared to discern to be attentive to the extent to which it may have been well made by anyone other than the adult leads.

????????

not entirely wrong

Lady Bird was not without its minor charms, but I suspect I would have enjoyed a lot more with Gerwig rather than Ronan in front of the camera, and ultimately I was tempted to deem it the vaguely-indie coming-of-age-comedy cognate of the comic-book/sci-fi films whose artistic merit appears to have been inflated by whatever cultural importance there may be in their being helmed by and/or starring women and/or African-Americans

entirely wrong

Saw Good Time last night! Lovely nerve-shredder. I cried at the end

entirely wrong

― morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, February 19, 2018 11:25 AM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It may be that I'm just insufficiently suburban in origin, female in gendering, millennial in generation, or Catholic in upbringing to have more than modest feeling for a film that competed with food and drink, etc. for my attention as many increasingly do, but even putting aside the fact that for all her very good work Ronan never entirely registered as Sacramentian, the whole thing just felt less real than even the comic-book take of Ghost World, for which I had less feeling even before a recent screening highlighted its fairly reactionary/not a little creepy script. Part of that may also have to do with the slightly peculiar lightness with which Gerwig's (or, I suppose more appropriately, her teenaged/post-collegiate characters') happy-go-lucky vision/persona treats life's difficulties, but again I find that treatment more convincing when she embodies it herself.

The slightly peculiar lightness is a sensibility I've encountered more than a few times in adulthood, and only rarely have I seen it incarnated onscreen as fully as Gerwig does. Couple this sensibility with the editing and Ronan's acting chops and the result was a small miracle.

Ronan never entirely registered as Sacramentian

I didn't exactly feel that (someone like Christine could exist anywhere in the US, and it's up to the movie to show us what kinds of people there are), but if Ronan's own origins were creating some interference, that could work in its favour given that Christine is always dreaming of being away from Sacramento.

Yeah, sorry, I just saw a very good performance of teenaged suburban American identity rather than someone actually acquainted with it. It wasn't necessarily the specific geography I was hung up on, though I do tend to care about such things, but I did, like Richard Brody (who offhandedly appears to agree with me about Gerwig's absence), miss the absence of much specificity - https://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/greta-gerwigs-exquisite-flawed-lady-bird.

absence/presence

Voted.

Sent mine!

GG was not going to play a 17-year-old. Ronan's fine.

Not going to vote until the deadline, but I generally vote for anything I’ve seen prior to the poll even if its UK release was later as I don’t like to get left out of the US voting current and risk the lower placement or missing out of things I loved.

Really appreciate Cherish’s list upthread - I’ll definitely try to see at least one of those before voting. Any other suggestions for probably-missed films? The more intense the better. I have limited patience for slowcore atm

'limited patience for slowcore' waaaait we saw A Ghost Story like yesterday and you LIKED it

but yeah we're going to watch something tonight and it might as well be from that list, although I'm angling for Paddington 2

I DID NOT necessarily know what I thought of it beyond disconsolate crying.

Someone save me from Paddington 2

On body & soul was good!

From the fest here I liked kékszakállú and the forest of lost souls

I also recommend voting for twin peaks

By the Time It Gets Dark is pretty slowcore, fyi. Also my least favorite of the four.

Have you guys seen Wonderstruck?

I have not! It is not on my radar at all. Would you recommend? Thanks for the advice too. Definitely going to try and watch On Body and Soul and Berlin Syndrome before the deadline.

For now we are watching I Am Not a Witch, but everything mentioned is getting added to the list.

Paddington 2 is great, unless you hated Paddington 1

Paddington 2 is so deeply moving and emotional that it transcends traditional categorization

Would you recommend?

I do recommend it! It's a kids's movie, really, but carefully and cleverly designed for film buffs -- with its two story lines filmed in two distinct styles.

I think you'll really like the other two also. I'm always happy to pass on good movies!

Wonderstruck doesn't really work, but I kinda admire Haynes for trying it.

I’ve not gotten around to some key movies yet but I want to vote for Ex Libris. Hmmm...