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ICM Forum Country Polls: United States of America
Favs/dislikes: 3:0. Poll conducted in November 2021. 52 participants 104 titles received 25+ points 529 titles in total -
iCM Forum's Short of the Day
Favs/dislikes: 3:0. Project created by Perception de Ambiguity. Forum index also maintained by Carmel1379. [url=https://forum.icmforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=2789]Introduction and Index[/url] Shorts unlisted on IMDb: #11 High-Tech Exploration par Johanna Vaude (Johanna Vaude, 2016) #18 Mlad i radostan / Young and Joyful (Mario Gaborović, 2017) #21 Interstice (Andrew Thomas Huang, 2016) #28 Couch Gag for The Sampsans Epasode Numbar 553 "Clown in the Dumps" (Don Hertzfeldt, 2014) #31 Arca - Now You Know (Jesse Kanda, 2014) #43 Holy Smoke - Fake DMT Commercial (Danny Merk, 2015) #58 Inhale Atlanta - Atlanta Season 1 Promo (Rebecca Joelson, 2016) #63 cows & cows & cows (cyriak, 2010) #64 L'Arrière-Saison (Philippe Grandrieux, 2006) #65 Telephones (Christian Marclay, 1995) #68 Pieces of Spaces (Cristina Álvarez López & Adrian Martin, 2017) #77 Monkey Cucumber Grape Experiment (2012) #78 Michael Cimino par Johanna Vaude / The End of innocence (Johanna Vaude, 2017) #80 I moved to London! (Jeremiah McDonald, 2017) #90 9006 (O[rphan] D[frift>], 1998) #95 Spring (Jamie Scott, 2017) #100 Shane O'neill skateboarding (2011) #106 Life Inside a Secret Chinese Bitcoin Mine (Motherboard, 2015) #107 Cyanide & Happiness thread #116 Transaension (Dan Baker, 2006) #127 Obrałem Ziemniaka (2011) #131 Walden Connection: The Thoreauvian Agenda in Upstream Color (Anna Catley, 2014) #132 That Mitchell and Webb Look: Alien Invasion #140 Lady Pank: Minus Zero (Zbigniew Rybczyński, 1985) #141 Blade Runner - Autoencoded (side-by-side comparison) (Terence Broad, 2016) #143 Zero-Day (beeple, 2015) #150 Fire ants colony floating! (Maggie, 2013) #153 PencilheaD (AMV for 'Right Here, Right Now' by Fatboy Slim) (Qwaqa, 2011) #154 Code Orange - The Mud (Dmitry Zakharov & Shade, 2017) #156 Inside Amy Schumer - Football Town Nights (Ryan McFaul & Nicole Holofcener, 2015) - imdb entry for the full episode is included in the list instead #165 Munchsferatu (Julien Lahmi, 2017) #169 Interview with the Lifelike Hot Robot Named Sophia (2017) #171 Horror Music Videos; Halloween edition (11 mentioned) #176 Lee Gamble: Mnestic Pressure (Kode9(?) from 'Hyperdub' & R.A.F. Walker, 2017) #177 Czego szukasz w Šwięta? | English for beginners (Allegro, 2016) #184 V A P O R W A V E (a collection of music videos? Not sure what this is as the post has mostly codes for special characters and is illegible) #185 Applied Ballardianism - Official Trailer (urbanomic media, 2018) #186 The Extinct Suite (Anna Malina, 2017) #187 離騷幻覺 Dragon's Delusion (kongkee, 2018) -
IndieWire's 25 Essential Prison Movies
Favs/dislikes: 3:0. The Playlist Staff Jul 23, 2015 2:03 pm Kyle Patrick Alvarez‘s “[url=https://www.icheckmovies.com/movies/the+stanford+prison+experiment/]The Stanford Prison Experiment[/url],” now playing in limited release, took fourteen years to get made, and finally arrived at Sundance 2015 with a stellar ensemble including Billy Crudup, Ezra Miller, Olivia Thirlby, Tye Sheridan and Michael Angarano. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the uncompromising nature of the film, the reception was divided (our own rave is here) but even those on the more negative end of the spectrum tended to use words like “compelling,” “vivid” and “effective” in their critiques. And those are adjectives that this film (which scooped the Screenwriting award for Tim Talbott) shares with the best in the wide and variegated genre of the prison movie. The microcosmic possibilities of life on the inside have been mined many times for dramas, comedies, spoofs and thrillers that, while set in penal institutions or situations that resemble them, actually comment on human psychology or on the society outside those walls. And we got to thinking about our own favorite prison movies through the ages. Here are 25 we’d consider a great primer in the genre. Honorable Mentions If you’ve seen all the above, you’re a) really into prison movies and b) probably hankering for more, so here’s another few titles we debated including (out of the many hundreds of films that qualify): [url=https://www.icheckmovies.com/movies/the+green+mile/]The Green Mile[/url], [url=https://www.icheckmovies.com/movies/cube/]The Cube[/url], [url=https://www.icheckmovies.com/movies/caged/]Caged[/url], [url=https://www.icheckmovies.com/movies/caged+heat/]Caged Heat[/url], [url=https://www.icheckmovies.com/movies/stir+crazy/]Stir Crazy[/url], [url=https://www.icheckmovies.com/movies/the+longest+yard-1974/]The Longest Yard[/url], [url=https://www.icheckmovies.com/movies/carandiru/]Carandiru[/url], [url=https://www.icheckmovies.com/movies/scum/]Scum[/url], [url=https://www.icheckmovies.com/movies/the+escapist/]The Escapist[/url], [url=https://www.icheckmovies.com/movies/victory/]Escape to Victory[/url], [url=https://www.icheckmovies.com/movies/the+rock/]The Rock[/url], [url=https://www.icheckmovies.com/movies/on+death+row/]Death Row[/url], [url=https://www.icheckmovies.com/movies/into+the+abyss-2011/]Into the Abyss[/url], [url=https://www.icheckmovies.com/movies/the+life+and+mind+of+mark+defriest/]The Life and Mind of Mark deFriest[/url], [url=https://www.icheckmovies.com/movies/tattooed+tears/]Tattooed Tears[/url] –Jessica Kiang, Erik McClanahan, Oliver Lyttelton, Rodrigo Perez [b]Notes[/b]: - List does not appear to be ranked. - I removed most of the HM text and just included the mentioned films. See also: [url=https://www.icheckmovies.com/lists/indiewires+our+15+favorite+prison+breaks+at+the+movies/fergenaprido/]IndieWire's Our 15 Favorite Prison Breaks at the Movies[/url] -
IndieWire's The 65 Best Movie Musicals of All Time, Ranked
Favs/dislikes: 3:0. From "In The Heights" and "Moulin Rouge!" to "Funny Face" and "West Side Story," these titles show the height and incredible range of the genre. BY WILSON CHAPMAN MARCH 19, 2024 8:00 PM The musical sometimes feels like a relic of a long-dead Hollywood studio system, but it remains a genre that captures movies’ ability to create story worlds that move freely between reality and fantasy. The worst examples come from filmmakers who give license to music, color, and movement to run amok; the best transcend artifice and integrate songs that become expressions of pure character emotion. Musicals offer endless possibilities, but success demands a complete mastery of the medium. The best movie musicals of all time have faced obstacles as varied as their creators’ styles and tastes. That’s in part because its integration of at least two art forms — music and film always, but sometimes also dance — demands an unusually high-caliber of multi-faceted talent from those attempting its complexities. After Lee De Forest invented the “talky,” the opportunity oozing from that new tech prompted an industry rush on musicals in the last days of the 1920s. That went over well with audiences at first. But by the end of the ‘30s, movie musicals were a dime-a-dozen, leaving people fatigued and rapidly turning music into the Marvel debate of mid-century cinema. Who needed another film with “Broadway Melody” or “Big Broadcast” in the title? Of course, historic hits throughout the ‘40s, ’50s, and ‘60s, including “Meet Me in St. Louis” and “Singin’ In The Rain,” meant Hollywood’s best movie musicals were still to come — with story and emotion put first. The genre saw another decline in popularity later in the 20th century when action flicks reigned supreme. But such is the ebb and flow of the genre, which has been (incorrectly) declared dead more than once. Even now, with the success of Steven Spielberg’s jaw-dropping “West Side Story” and more musicals (see Baz Luhrmann’s “Elvis” from 2022 or the zany “Dicks” from last year), movie musicals are offering yet another encore to audiences hungry for their lively energy. Sure, few current stars could learn the choreography of Busby Berkeley, Jerome Robbins, or Bob Fosse, and adapting a medium developed and most suited for the stage requires innovative direction. But the skills of contemporary movie musical champions, like Spielberg and Lin-Manuel Miranda, and the promise of Disney-backed animated musicals tell us the curtain will never close on this movie moment. From “A Star Is Born” and “Swing Time” to “Chicago” and “West Side Story,” here are 65 musicals that represent the height and the incredible range of the genre. Alison Foreman, Christian Zilko, David Ehrlich, Kate Erbland, Proma Khosla, Eric Kohn, Anne Thompson, Ryan Lattanzio, Jude Dry, Kristen Lopez, Jenna Marotta, Jamie Righetti, Michael Nordine, Siddhant Adlakha, Christian Blauvelt, and Noel Murray contributed to this list. [This list was originally published in June 2021 and has since been updated.] [url=https://www.indiewire.com/gallery/best-musicals-all-time-movies/]Old Source[/url] By David Ehrlich, Christian Blauvelt, Kate Erbland -
Kenji's Canada: A Collection of Contraband Curiosities
Favs/dislikes: 3:0. Kenji's list from MUBI "Some say it arrived stealthily by ship and landed at a tiny Newfoundland harbour, others that it started in the old time of Mad Jack Connelly the backwoodsman who thought himself a moose; some that it blew in on a dreaded Baffin island Nor’Nor’Easterly, others that it began with the wildest Winnipeg winter for many a year; some that it emerged from a Chinese man’s basket at Vancouver, still others that it had been in Canada as long as the Kwikwetlem people and the red upriver fish of British Columbia. A view now gaining currency is that it was born of the amorous conjunction of a mild bespectacled accordion-playing, sea shanty-composing Frenchman by the name of Ferdinand Hautbois Dutronc and a rebellious roving redhead Fiona Mactavish (a.k.a “The Tobermory Tornado”), a buxom lassie raised on prime Aberdeen Angus beef, renowned for her bare knuckle bust-ups and Highland “jumbo” jig which, along with her elan on the bagpipes, penchant for the finest malt from the isle of Muck, and concupiscent delight in publicly caressing her "husband"’s thighs (and the parts of other men besides), would enliven many a cold dark windy night in the saloons from Labrador to Manitoba. Was it a bug, a virus, a meteorite strike, or congenital abnormality, this collective eccentric, if not slightly crazy, nonconformity, this Carrollian urge for curiosities and go hang Hollywood? See also Owen Sound’s excellent and properly instructive list National Film Board of Canada, Kim Packard’s Cinéma Québecois and Gabriel Faucher’s Le Cinéma du Québec" Looks like Top 12 are now separated from the rest, with both sections arranged chronologically. -
Kenji's Essential Hitchcock
Favs/dislikes: 3:0. Kenji's Mubi List "His most essential films, and a basic A-Z of what to look for. We all know Hitch, more or less. While quite familiar with his films generally i’m not a completist and certainly no expert. My favourites: North by Northwest Vertigo Marnie 39 Steps Rear Window Notorious" -
Kenji's Kazakhstan
Favs/dislikes: 3:0. Kenji's list from Mubi "Сәлем!, Қош келдіңіз! Welcome to a vast land of over a million square miles, larger than Western Europe, the 9th largest country in the world, yet a land steeped in mystery to many. Independent from the Soviet Union since 1991, it is a land of taiga, canyons, towering snow-capped mountains, steppes and desert, bordering Russia to the North, the Caspian sea in the South West, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan in the South to China in the East and close to Mongolia in the North East. A land rich in oil and mineral resources, traditionally of nomadic lifestyle. A land of bears, Caspian Sea wolves, camels, saiga, great bustards, beluga sturgeon, lynx, cheetah, snow leopard, storks and a range of interesting wildlife. The national drink is fermented mare’s milk. In 1997 the capital was relocated from Almaty (formerly Alma-Ata), Kazakhstan’s largest city, to Astana, the world’s 2nd coldest capital in winter apparently, being developed with grand modern architecture. The Chechnya-set film Prisoner of the Mountains was a Russian-Kazakh production. I’ve included the short Danish-Russian film Berik, set and filmed in Kazakhstan. The comedy Borat (in)famously used Kazakhstan as a suitably little known nationality to enable its eponymous character to explore foibles and attitudes in the USA, rather than critique Kazakhstan. The films below are in year order." #31 is featured for its short "About Love" by Darezhan Omirbaev Missing from imdb: #64 Doch' Chingiskhana [Daughter of Genghis Khan] (2018 Ilkham Jalilov) -
Kolar's Iceland: Land of Fire and Ice
Favs/dislikes: 3:0. Cinema of Iceland Iceland counts only 300.000 inhabitants. The North Atlantic island has, however, produced more than 80 feature films since 1980. And not just for the domestic audience but also for the international, which especially has noticed the tragi-comic and bittersweet outsider films by Fridrik Thór Fridriksson (e.g. Children of nature, Cold Fever, Devil’s Island, Angels of the Universe, Niceland), Baltasar Kormákur (101 Reykjavík, The Sea, A Little Trip to Heaven) and Dagur Kári (Nói albínói, Dark Horse). After a brief overview of Iceland ’s film history this lecture will focus on these directors and the present development in Icelandic cinema in relation to how it reflects the impact of modernization and globalization in a small nation that is usually associated with its sagas, its history and folklore as well as its breathtaking landscapes. (dogma95.media.ku.dk) The History of Icelandic cinema The history of Icelandic cinema begins in 1906, when a three-minute documentary was shot in Iceland by Alfred Lind. The first movie theatre opened in Reykjavík in 1906. Initially, most movie production in Iceland was foreign, largely Scandinavian, using the Iceland landscape for filming Icelandic stories and plays. List of Icelandic films on Mubi alphabetically (english title) Missing from icm & imdb: 49. Glósóli (2005 music video) 55. Hoppipolla (2005 music video) 96. Petites Planètes (Volume 9): Helgi Jonsson (2010 music recordings) 97. Petites Planètes (Volume 11): Erna Omarsdottir (2010 music recordings) 98. Petites Planètes (Volume 18): Gyde & Kristin Anna Valtysdottir (2010 music recordings) 120. Svefn-g-englar (1999 music video) 151. Untitled #1 (Aka Vaka) (2003 music video) 152. Viðrar vel til loftárása (2001 music video) 153. Varúð (2012 music video) -
Oprah Magazine's 47 Best Teen Movies That'll Never Get Old
Favs/dislikes: 3:0. By McKenzie Jean-Philippe Aug 27, 2020 Unrequited romances and house parties, here we come. Oh, adolescent angst. There's nothing quite like a movie that captures the teen spirit. Between stereotypical cliques (jocks in letterman jackets or nerds in glasses?), unrequited romances you thought you'd never recover from, your first house party, or applying to college as a high school senior, teen movies offer a certain kind of comfort and joy—even when your own experience was more awkward than depicted on screen. Lucky for us, Hollywood can't seem to get enough. With decades worth of coming-of-age movies—from 1955's Rebel Without a Cause to John Hughes films that dominated the 80s, plus Clueless, Mean Girls, and our latest obsession with the book-turned-movie, To All the Boys I've Loved Before—it looks like we'll never run out of hormone-fueled dramas and lighthearted teen comedies to watch, either. To help get you started, below are some of the best teen movies of all time that you can stream right now. Unlike us, these never get old. Note: List appears to be chronological and limited to films that were available for streaming at time of publishing. -
Paste's The 100 Best Vampire Movies of All Time
Favs/dislikes: 3:0. By Mark Rozeman, Jim Vorel and Paste staff | September 26, 2022 | 11:11am Existing in some form or another for thousands of years, these blood-sucking creatures serve as one of horror’s most creatively flexible monsters. Besides ghoulish monsters, they can be charmers, warriors, sex symbols, sources of comedy, nihilistic philosophers and aliens. Though mostly confined to horror, vampires have also bleed their way into everything from slapstick comedy to award-winning dramas. Oftentimes, these seemingly villainous predators can even serve as sympathetic protagonists or badass antiheroes. Moreover, vampirism itself has stood in as a natural metaphor for a great number of motifs—drug or alcohol addiction, sex, racism, xenophobia, religion, economic disparity and mental illness, to name just a few. Popularized in folklore and books, the vampire were a natural fit for the silver screen. Today, Paste is counting down the 100 greatest vampire films that cinema has to offer. First—a few caveats. One, unlike Paste’s previous lists numbering film noirs) or cinematic robots, there are far fewer vampire movies that one could classify as being truly “Great.” This scarcity of quality means that some of the earlier entries might be more problematic than those in the latter segment. In such cases, we have ensured that each installment has something of worth to offer viewers, whether it’s a great visual style, a clever story twist, a standout performance or production design so laughably strange and half-baked that it veers into “so bad, it’s good” territory. The Paste writers have also strived to curate a diverse selection of choices. Granted, filmmakers like Mario Bava and institutions like England’s Hammer Film Productions will be making multiple appearances, but we’ve worked to bring in variety whenever possibly. What’s more, though erotic horror is obviously a popular vampire subgenre, it’s one that we weren’t able to fully dive into without feeling as though we needed to have our souls cleansed afterwards. So if we’ve overlooked your favorite vampire-lesbian erotica, we apologize in advance. Finally—no, none of the Twilight or Underworld films are on this list. (A stand had to be made.) -
Paste's The 50 Best Monster Movies of All Time
Favs/dislikes: 3:0. By Jim Vorel and Paste Movies Staff | September 29, 2022 | 10:27am When you hear the term “monster movie,” you might think you know what to expect. A giant, irradiated bug stomping all over a modern metropolis, perhaps, or an inhuman beast stalking a group of campers foolish enough to blunder into its territory. The connotation of “monster” is a negative one, after all, but it’s also a term that reveals the inherent prejudice of those who use it. A “monster” is simply that which we find exotic, frightening and difficult to categorize—it’s an aberration in the natural order, and with that realization the fear comes naturally. We always fear what we don’t understand, as the likes of H.P. Lovecraft and Carmine Falcone have memorably opined. A “monster movie,” then, is a bit wider term than one might initially realize, composed of everything from man’s battles against the natural world (as in Jaws) to struggles with the repressed self, as seen in almost any werewolf feature. There are beasts aplenty here, and a smattering of snarling aliens, but also lovable monsters and misunderstood creatures that never wanted to do any harm. Some are unabashed villains, while others are actually the protagonists of their films. Here are the 50 best monster movies of all time, but first let’s discuss which movies you will and won’t see on this list. Defining a “Monster Movie” — The threat or focus of a monster movie has to be something inhuman. Human behavior can of course be “monstrous,” but a monster as we’re defining it here isn’t a human, unless that human has physically transformed somehow. By that token, an earthly animal (like the shark in Jaws, or the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park) can be “monsters,” per se, especially if they’re presented in unrealistically heightened ways, such as being bigger than normal, or operating with unnatural malevolence. A human can also transform into a monster, as in the case of a werewolf. — Alien creatures, likewise, are also capable of being monsters, but they’re far more likely to qualify if they kill by physically attacking you with tooth and claw. The xenomorph of Alien? Monster. The ray gun-wielding, chattering martians of Mars Attacks? Not monsters. — The monsters shouldn’t be supernatural in origin. By this token, a ghost is not a monster. Neither is a zombie, as they’re undead and not a flesh-and-blood creature. Disqualifying “undead” in general also keeps vampires off this particular list, but don’t fret: You can visit our list of the [url=https://www.icheckmovies.com/lists/pastes+the+100+best+vampire+movies+of+all+time/fergenaprido/]100 best vampire films[/url] of all time, or the [url=https://www.icheckmovies.com/lists/pastes+50+best+zombie+movies+of+all+time/panunzio/]50 best zombie movies[/url] of all time. — In order to keep the list from being completely dominated by entries from specific franchises such as the Godzilla series, we will hold ourselves to a maximum of only two entries per franchise. Never fear, we’ve ranked every Godzilla movie in the past, as well. -
Rolling Stone's 50 Essential LGBTQ Movies
Favs/dislikes: 3:0. From coming-out dramas to cult comedies, documentaries to blockbusters — our list of films that reflected and represented queer culture onscreen By DAVID FEAR & JERRY PORTWOOD & JENNA SCHERER & MARIA FONTOURA & TIM GRIERSON JUNE 25, 2020 2:45PM ET It’s grainy, faded, and, given the clip is now 125 years old, more than a little worse for wear. But this brief footage is not so ancient that you can’t clearly make out two men, waltzing together, as a third man plays a violin in the background. It was an experimental short made by William Dickson, designed to test syncing up moving pictures to prerecorded sound, a system that he and Thomas Edison were developing known as the Kinetophone. It’s known as “[url=https://www.icheckmovies.com/movies/dickson+experimental+sound+film/]The Dickson Experimental Sound Film[/url],” and dates back to 1895, the same year movies were born. While there’s nothing to outright suggest that these men were romantically involved or attracted to each other during the roughly 20-second length of their pas de deux, there is nothing that contradicts that notion either. It’s considered by many to be one of the first examples of gay imagery in film, and a reminder that homosexual representation has been with the medium from the very beginning. That clip appears in [url=https://www.icheckmovies.com/movies/the+celluloid+closet/]The Celluloid Closet[/url], Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s documentary based on Vito Russo’s study of homosexuality in the movies, along with countless examples of how gay characters showed up, per narrator Lily Tomlin, as “something to laugh at, or something to pity, or even something to fear.” The history of representation is long, and extremely storied, often shaping how the public viewed “the love that dare not speak its name” for better or worse. But since those two men first danced, there have also been scores of stories, characters, and filmmakers that have presented the varied, multitudinous aspects of LGBTQ experiences 24 frames per second that have gone past those stereotypes, or flipped them on their heads. Some have been documents of a moment or era of gay history, some have been used as correctives to decades of negative clichés, and others have simply celebrated the fact that the movies can be queer, they’re here, get used to it. In honor of LGBTQ Pride Month, we’re singling out 50 essential LGBTQ films — from comedies to dramas, documentaries to cult classics, underground experimental work to studio blockbusters. It is nowhere near a comprehensive rundown of every great movie to feature out-and-proud heroes and villains, or a queer sensibility, or even just visible (and/or risible) examples of gay life in cinema; we could have easily made this list twice as long. Rather, consider this a primer that helps illustrate the relationship between queer culture and the silver screen. Notes: 1. This list is in alphabetical order. 2. At the bottom they included "Watch these films with a 30-day free trial to Amazon Prime or a free trial to Hulu here" so it's possibly they only picked films that were available on either of those two streaming services. -
Seventeen's 55 Best Teen Movies You Can't Grow Up Without Watching
Favs/dislikes: 3:0. By Noelle Devoe, Tamara Fuentes And Jasmine Gomez Feb 8, 2021 Some days, all you want to do after you finish your homework is throw on a pair of comfy AF sweatpants and binge some iconic movies. Of course, there are all kinds of movie genres, but it's always fun to watch a flick that you can REALLY relate to. Because let's face it, there's really nothing better than a good teen movie. These teen movies cover everything from dealing with those awkward moments when you’re around your crush to figuring out how you’re going to deal with the college application process. So grab some popcorn and get ready to relate to all of these characters as you go down this list. These are the best teen movies that you definitely have to watch. -
Slant's The 100 Best Films of the 1980s
Favs/dislikes: 3:0. In 2019, Billboard teamed up with SiriusXM to determine the 500 best songs of the 1980s, with Olivia Newton-John’s 1981 pop hit “Physical” topping the list. It’s an apt choice for many reasons, foremost among them that the ‘80s, if mainstream American filmmaking from the era is any indication, might be called the decade of the body—of turning away from the more cerebral, auteurist cinema of the New Hollywood and toward star-driven genre vehicles, featuring the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tom Cruise, and Melanie Griffith, who in Brian De Palma’s delirious Body Double plays a porn star named—wait for it—Holly Body. Conventional historical accounts of the decade see this transformation through the lens of box office, as studio practices tended toward market saturation, and stardom became dependent on the potential to make viewers feel rather than think. But that narrative overlooks the plethora of small, seedy gems made by Hollywood filmmakers starring well-known actors still vying to challenge audiences with daring visions of the modern world. Such as William Friedkin’s Cruising, Michael Mann’s Thief, and Martin Scorsese’s After Hours, whose nocturnal animals discover new, and often unwanted, shades of themselves while moving through city streets. If the neon-lit cityscape is an essential image in ‘80s films for the way it expresses the allure and danger of living by night, it also points up how a fear of AIDS—and its association with city life—leapt into the collective consciousness. Maybe that’s partly why Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner seems to epitomize ‘80s aesthetics for many: The replicant, whose body often looks like an ideal and healthy human, is actually a machine. The city, though, need not be essential for the metaphor to work. In fact, author John Kenneth Muir argues that, in a film like John Carpenter’s The Thing, which is set in Antarctica, the necessity of a blood test to determine “what is really going on inside the human body” could be understood as a direct reference to the AIDS epidemic. If that potentially sounds like a grim diagnosis of the decade’s films, it actually points to the vitality of the decade’s cinematic artistry, as filmmakers from across the globe emerged to share their haunted visions of sex, music, and voyeurism. In France, Jean-Jacques Beineix, Leos Carax, and Luc Besson each helped create cinéma du look as a hybrid strain of popular and art cinema with a lush visual style. Meanwhile, aging master Robert Bresson was making his last (and arguably finest) film. In Canada, David Cronenberg showed us how exploding heads, penetrative home video, and wayward twin gynecologists could encapsulate various maladies of the times. And in Taiwan, Edward Yang and Hou Hsiao-hsien were at the forefront of New Taiwanese Cinema, diagnosing the twin poles of urbanization and globalization as they started to define contemporary life. The number of singular filmmakers who emerged in the decade is extensive. Auteurs such as Abbas Kiarostami and Souleymane Cissé created works that helped further introduce the realities of their respective countries to audiences around the globe, while, back in the U.S., Lizzie Borden and Donna Deitch were making their first feature films, each of which has endured as a classic of queer cinema. The decade’s films help us understand that, in order to see all titles of consequence, one needs to remain open to movies playing at the multiplex, the arthouse, and the grindhouse. The latter includes numerous slasher films, itself a subgenre enamored with the dangers and pleasures of the flesh. We must remember that, sometimes, wisdom comes from unlikely places, so consider this seemingly throwaway line from 1982’s The Slumber Party Massacre as words to live by: “It’s not the size of your mouth; it’s what’s in it that counts.” Clayton Dillard Published on April 23, 2020 By Staff -
Slant's The 100 Best LGBTQ Movies of All Time
Favs/dislikes: 3:0. Cinema isn’t the sole mechanism for making our presence known, but it can be among the most powerful. Published on June 18, 2020 This list includes all versions of Slant Magazine's LGBTQ movies. View the list history to find the previous versions. All lists are chronological. V1: "[url=https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/50-essential-lgbt-films/]50 Essential LGBT Films[/url]" June 27, 2013 (also the same as [url=https://www.icheckmovies.com/lists/slant+magazines+50+essential+lgbt+films/sandero/]SanderO's icm list[/url]) V2: "[url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160625005638/http://www.slantmagazine.com/features/article/the-greatest-lgbtq-films-of-all-time]The 75 Greatest LGBT Films of All Time[/url]" June 21, 2016 V3: "[url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190608010804/https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/the-100-best-lgbtq-movies-of-all-time/]The 100 Best LGBTQ Movies of All Time[/url]" June 7, 2019 V4: "The 100 Best LGBTQ Movies of All Time" June 18, 2020 (current version) Original Intro: "You’ve sported a red equal sign on Facebook, watched Nancy Pelosi show Michele Bachmann her politically correct middle finger, and read some of those other lists that have compiled lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) films, hailing usual suspects like High Art and Brokeback Mountain as gay equivalents of Vertigo (oh, don’t Citizen Kane me; we’re talking regime upheaval here). Now, as you continue to celebrate the crushing of DOMA and Prop 8 (and toss some extra confetti for Pride Month while you’re at it), peruse Slant’s own list of LGBT movies you owe it to yourself to see. Curated by co-founder and film editor Ed Gonzalez, this 50-wide roster is a singular trove of queer-themed gems and classics, spanning the past eight decades and reflecting artists as diverse as Kenneth Anger, Derek Jarman, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder. You won’t find The Birdcage among our ranks, but you will find Paul Morrissey’s Trash, Ira Sach’s The Delta, David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, and Céline Sciamma’s Tomboy. Consider the list a hat tip to what’s shaped up to be a banner LGBT year, particularly on screen, with lesbian romance Blue Is the Warmest Color taking top honors at Cannes, and Xavier Dolan releasing the masterful Laurence Anyways, which also made our cut. R. Kurt Osenlund" Second Intro: "Last week, in the aftermath of the attack on Orlando's Pulse nightclub, one call to action rose above the din: “Say their names.” New Yorkers chanted it steps from the Stonewall Inn. The mother of a child gunned down at Sandy Hook penned it in an open letter. The Orlando Sentinel printed the names. Anderson Cooper recited them. A gunman murdered 49 people and wounded 53 others in the wee hours of that awful Sunday, massacring LGBTQ people of color and their allies in the middle of Pride Month, and the commemoration of the dead demanded knowing who they were. “These,” as MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell urged his viewers, “are the names to remember.” In the midst of mourning, the titles herein seem to me more essential than ever, a globe-spanning, multigenerational testament to our existence in a world where our erasure is no abstraction. From Carl Theodor Dreyer's Michael to Todd Haynes's Carol, naming and seeing emerge, intertwined, as radical acts—acts of becoming (Sally Potter's Orlando) and acts of being (Shirley Clarke's Portrait of Jason), acts of speech (Marlon Riggs's Tongues Untied) and acts of show (Jennie Livingston's Paris Is Burning) that together reaffirm the revolutionary potential of the seventh art. “My name is Harvey Milk,” the San Francisco supervisor, memorialized in Rob Epstein's The Times of Harvey Milk, proclaimed in 1978, less than one year before his assassination. “And I'm here to recruit you!” The cinema isn't the sole mechanism for making our presence known, but it can, if the films listed below are any indication, be among the most powerful, projecting the complexities of the LGBTQ experience onto the culture's largest, brightest mirror. There's rage here, and also love; isolation, and communal spirit; fear, and the forthright resistance to it. These films are essential because we are essential: The work of ensuring that we aren't erased or forgotten continues apace, and the struggle stretches into a horizon that no screen, no matter its size, can quite capture. But this is surely a place to start. Matt Brennan" Third & Fourth intros are essentially the same. -
Stacker's 100 Best International Movies of All Time
Favs/dislikes: 3:0. WRITTEN BY: Molly Pennington April 24, 2021 From 'Metropolis' to 'Parasite': 100 best international movies of all time International cinema has always had a profound influence on American movies. At the same time, many of the great films in languages other than English retool the styles and genres of popular American movies. Have you ever forgotten you were reading subtitles as you were swept up in the action on screen? Westerns, film noirs, and even romances tap into universal visual languages of movement, action, and emotion that draw in worldwide audiences. Stacker’s list of the 100 best international movies includes the science fiction masterpiece of German Expressionist style, “Metropolis,” with its epic, futuristic city and iconic robot gone bad. You’ll also find the smash hit “Parasite,” a taut thriller from South Korea that captured acclaim across the globe for its suspenseful, tragicomic look at two families from different classes. We feature work from major auteurs of European cinema like Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut of the French New Wave, Vittorio De Sica of Italian neorealism, and Spanish surrealist Luis Buñuel. Our list also includes major Japanese masterpieces from Akira Kurosawa, Masaki Kobayashi, and Hirokazu Koreeda, Hong Kong cinema’s Wong Kar-wai, Tawainese auteurs Ang Lee and Edward Yang, and contemporary films from South Korea’s Lee Chang-dong and Bong Joon-ho. International cinema often has a political or philosophical bent—a rebel core—as it frequently explores the human condition within histories of oppression. While African cinema and women directors are underrepresented on this list and across the international film festival circuit, Céline Sciamma’s “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” from France in 2019 masterfully reinvents ideas around gendered gaze. Get ready for films you’ve heard about and obscure gems that just may become your new cinematic obsession. Stacker compiled data (from July 2020) on all international movies to come up with a Stacker score—a weighted index split evenly between IMDb and Metacritic scores. To qualify, the film had to be directed by a non-American, be primarily in a language other than English, have a Metascore, and have at least 5,000 votes. Ties were broken by Metascore, and further ties were broken by IMDb user rating. Stacker’s list combines the scores from critics and audiences to give you a sense of a movie’s greatness. Check out our list to see what you’ve already watched—and what great and underappreciated must-see to add to your watchlist. -
The End of Cinema's Top 109 Kung Fu Movies of 1966-1997
Favs/dislikes: 3:0. By Sean Gilman A ranked list commissioned by Devin Sheridan. Using a fairly loose and somewhat arbitrary definition of "kung fu movies". -
Time Out's The 100 Best Hong Kong Movies
Favs/dislikes: 3:0. From Bruce Lee kung-fu flicks to Wong Kar-wai’s tales of romance Written by Time Out Hong Kong Saturday 12 March 2022 Hong Kong was once the Hollywood of the East. At its peak, around the early 90s, the local movie industry was the first in the world – in terms of per capita production and the second-largest exporter of films – second only to the US. The influence of Hong Kong cinema can be seen far and wide. Bruce Lee remains a global icon and his martial arts movies are classics. The groundbreaking action of The Matrix would never have come about if not for John Woo films and the action choreography of Yuen Woo-ping. Quentin Tarantino ripped off Ringo Lam’s City on Fire for his debut, 1992’s Reservoir Dogs. Moonlight owes much to the style of Wong Kar-wai films and the auteur was an influence acknowledged by Sofia Coppola when she collected the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for Lost in Translation. So with such a massive cultural legacy, what are the best Hong Kong movies of all time? We present to you this definitive ranking of the best films made in Hong Kong dating as far back as the 1930s. #19 (A Chinese Odyssey) & #71 (The Blue and the Black) both have two films in each entry. -
Top Must-See Tunisian Films
Favs/dislikes: 3:0. Tunisia is not well known to the outside world for its cinematic culture. Unlike some of its neighbors such as Egypt, it does not have the same rich cinematic heritage. Yet there are several notable films that stand out above the crowd. They are a reflection of Tunisia’s society and culture, and provide social commentary on uncomfortable topics. Tunisia Live presents a selection of popular Tunisian movies from before and after the 2011 revolution. By Zeineb Marzouk | Dec 29 2014 -
Vulture's The 50 Greatest Sports Movies of All Time
Favs/dislikes: 3:0. By Tim Grierson and Will Leitch This story was originally published in 2019 and has been updated to include recent releases.* It is strange that sports movies are considered a genre since, all told, they really are just a setting. It’s like saying that “desert movies” are a genre, or “ocean movies” are. The best sports movies are independent of the sport they’re depicting, with universal stories that should appeal to anyone whether they love the sport or not. Though loving the sport does help. This is to say: Our favorite sports movies tend to avoid the traditional “meet hero, see hero overcome adversity, see hero win big game” sports movie structure, or at least deconstruct it enough to justify themselves. The thing audiences love about sports and movies, the thing they have in common, is that they are unpredictable: You never know when you sit down to watch either what’s going to happen. But for some reason, many sports movies insist on being predictable, adhering to the formula. Those are not the sort of sports movies you will find on our list of the 50 best sports movies of all time. The best sports surprise us: These great sports movies do the same. *The only recent release they included was The Way Back; I don't know which film it knocked off the list from their original one. -
12 Chinese Film Classics Available on YouTube
Favs/dislikes: 2:0. A dozen classic black and white Chinese films from the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s are now available for free on YouTube — with English subtitles. The movies represent some of the key highlights from China’s first “Golden Period” of cinema and are a Sino cinephile’s dream come true. The treasure trove of films is being made available courtesy of the [url=https://asia.ubc.ca/]Department of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia[/url] and includes Goddess and New Women, both of which star tragic silent screen legend Ruan Lingyu, plus, Street Angel, with singer Zhou Xuan. Also in the mix are Spring in a Small Town, Crows and Sparrows and Wanderings of Sanmao, titles which regularly feature when it comes to lists of the most important Chinese films ever made. Playlist from the [url=https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-Xdirs4_JYpeyWi46h8kdA/]Modern Chinese Cultural Studies YT channel[/url], last updated April 12, 2020. Article from [url=https://radiichina.com/classic-chinese-films-english-subtitles/]Radii China[/url] on April 16, 2020. -
African Arguments' Best of the 2010s: African films
Favs/dislikes: 2:0. BY WILFRED OKICHE DECEMBER 20, 2019 In the past decade, Africa’s film industries have shown a plucky ability to play in the big leagues. The rise of streaming platforms has democratised distribution, while filmmakers across the continent have increasingly been welcomed to major film festivals resulting in a wave of international co-productions. It is an impossible task to select the best films from an entire decade, but the incredible works below all reflect the quality of African films from the past ten years. These films didn’t just make a splash, but had something to say and have showed serious staying power. -
AMP's The 25 Best Asian Films of 2020
Favs/dislikes: 2:0. December 12, 2020 AMP Group 29 of the contributors of Asian Movie Pulse from America, Europe and Asia have voted the 25 Best Films of 2020, resulting in what we consider a great selection, despite the difficulties the current year presented to both the shooting and the availability of new movies. In that regard, the list includes films from Malaysia, Japan, Iran. S. Korea, Kazakhstan, Singapore, China, and Taiwan while crime thrillers, animations, shorts, LGBT, comedies, horror, black-and-white and even “quarantine movies” have found a place. Without further ado, here are the best Asian films of 2020, in reverse order. Some films may have premiered in 2019, but since they mostly circulated in 2020, we decided to include them, after an intense fight that lasted for 150 nights (give or take) and ended up with even more victims. Missing from imdb: #13 [url=https://letterboxd.com/film/sexy-sushi/]Sexy Sushi[/url] (Calleen Koh, Amanda Teo, Singapore) -
Best Chilean Films of the Decade (2000-2009)
Favs/dislikes: 2:0. Chosen by 22 Chilean Critics for the Mabuse Magazine (each one of them chose a top 3). 1st Place - 10 votes 2nd and 3rd - 7 votes 4th - 5 votes 5th - 4 votes 6th to 9th - 3 votes 10th to 13th - 2 votes the rest - 1 vote -
BFI's Dustin Hoffman: 10 Essential Films
Favs/dislikes: 2:0. From The Graduate to Rain Man, we celebrate the career of two-time Oscar winner Dustin Hoffman, one of the finest actors of his generation. In the early 1960s, if casting directors were looking for a leading man, he was more likely to resemble Paul Newman than he was Dustin Hoffman. Hoffman – skinny-faced and unprepossessing – was working as a jobbing stage actor in New York when he found himself in the running for the lead role in a new Mike Nichols film. After his audition out in Hollywood, the story goes that Hoffman reached out to shake the prop man’s hand and a pile of NYC subway tokens fell out of his pocket. The man’s response as he helped gather them? “You’re gonna need these, kid.” Luckily for all of us, he didn’t end up needing them. Instead, Dustin Hoffman would unexpectedly take on the lead role as Benjamin Braddock in The Graduate (1967). Since then, he’s been one of the most dynamic actors in Hollywood, continually defying expectations, casting vanity aside and refusing to be pigeonholed. Here are 10 of his finest films. Christina Newland Published: 31 May 2017
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