Sunday, January 2, 2011

Cinematic Resolutions: 50 Films on DVD/Instant Watch I Will See in 2011 + 50 Films I'm Anticipating In Theaters

Structure of this whole post inspired by this.

Here are 50 films I would like to see in 2011 to fill my cinematic gaps. Some of it is from the TIFF Essential Cinema List, others I just feel the need to catch up with, and others I started but never finished:

1. Au Hasard Balthazar, Robert Bresson (which I have out from Netflix)
2. Fanny and Alexander, Ingmar Bergman
3. La Dolce Vita, Federico Fellini
4. The Passion of Joan of Arc, Carl Theodor Dreyer
5. Pulp Fiction, Quentin Tarantino
6. Ran, Akira Kurosawa
7. The Battle of Algiers, Gillo Pontecorvo
8. Playtime, Jacques Tati
9. Sonatine, Takeshi Kitano
10. The Decalogue, Krzysztof Kieslowski
11. Silent Light, Carlos Reygadas
12. Battleship Potemkin, Sergei Eisenstein
13. Andrei Rublev, Andrei Tarkovsky
14. The Ballad of Narayama, Shohei Imamura
15. The Koker Trilogy (Where is the Friend's Home?, And Life Goes On..., Through the Olive Trees), Abbas Kiarostami
16. The Apu Trilogy (Pather Panchali, Aparajito, The World of Apu), Satyajit Ray
17. Blissfully Yours, Apichatpong Weerasethakul
18. Satantango, Bela Tarr
19. The Conformist, Bernardo Bertolucci
20. Scenes From A Marriage, Ingmar Bergman
21. Band of Outsiders, Jean-Luc Godard
22. Casablanca, Michael Curtiz
23. Diabolique, Henri-Georges Clouzot
24. The Wages of Wear, Henri-Georges Clouzot
25. L'Avventura, Michelangelo Antonioni
26. Grand Illusion, Jean Renoir
27. The Rules of the Game, Jean Renoir
28. Black Girl (La Noire de...), Ousmane Sembene
29. Tokyo Drifter, Seijun Suzuki
30. Peeping Tom, Michael Powell
31. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Robert Wiene
32. Amarcord, Federico Fellini
33. Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring, Ki-Duk Kim (surprisingly in the IMDb Top 250)
34. Ikiru, Akira Kurosawa
35. F for Fake, Orson Welles
36. Sans Soleil, Chris Marker
37. The Birth of a Nation, D.W. Griffith
38. Jeanne Dielman, Chantal Akerman
39. Platform, Jia Zhang Ke
40. Shadows, John Cassavetes
41. A Woman Under the Influence, John Cassavetes
42. Three Times, Hsiao-hsien Hou
43. The River, Tsai Ming-Liang
44. The Child, The Dardenne Brothers
45. Persona, Ingmar Bergman
46. Rififi, Jules Dassin
47. Topsy-Turvy, Mike Leigh
48. Still Walking, Hirokazu Koreeda
49. Ugetsu, Kenji Mizoguchi
50. Yi Yi, Edward Yang

Others: Distant Voices, Still Lives, Terrence Davies; Chungking Express, Wong Kar-Wai; Beau Travail, Claire Denis; Ratcatcher, Lynne Ramsay; films by Otar Iosseliani; The Piano Teacher, Michael Haneke

50 Anticipated Films of 2011

Note: This is a list heavily inspired by the Time Out London and IFC.com lists. Some are 2011 premieres, some are festival films I haven't had the chance to see that will have their US releases next year. Of course, when I see this year's full Cannes and Berlin lineups, this list will change quite a bit.

1. The Tree of Life, Terrence Malick
2. My Joy, Sergei Losnitza
3. Shame, Steve McQueen
4. 13 Assassins, Takeshi Miike
5. The Skin That I Live In, Pedro Almodovar
6. The Grandmasters, Wong Kar-Wai
7. The Housemaid, Im Sang-Soo
8. City of Life and Death, Lu Chuan
9. The Congress, Ari Folman
10. We Need to Talk About Kevin, Lynne Ramsay
11. A Dangerous Method, David Cronenberg
12. The Last Circus, Alex de la Iglesia
13. Le Quattro Volte (The Four Times), Michelangelo Frammartino
14. We Are What We Are, Jorge Michel Grau
15. Outrage, Takeshi Kitano
16. The Future, Miranda July (even though I couldn't finish her last film)
17. Take Shelter, Jeff Nichols
18. Kinyarwanda, Alrick Brown
19. Tyrannosaur, Paddy Considine
20. Melancholia, Lars von Trier
21. Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame, Tsui Hark
22. Mysteries of Lisbon, Raul Ruiz
23. Nostalgia for the Light, Patricio Guzman
24. Submarine, Richard Ayoade
25. Tabloid, Errol Morris
26. Vanishing on 7th Street, Brad Anderson
27. Curling, Denis Cote
28. Cold Weather, Aaron Katz
29. Kaboom, Gregg Araki
30. Promises Written in Water, Vincent Gallo
31. The Trip, Michael Winterbottom
32. On the Road, Walter Salles
33. This Must Be the Place, Paolo Sorrentino
34. Black Venus, Abdellatif Kechiche
35. Attenberg, Athina Rachel Tsangari
36. The Ditch, Wang Bing
37. Post Mortem, Pablo Larrain
38. Carancho, Pablo Trapero
39. Passione, John Tuturro
40. Cold Fish, Sion Sono
41. Silent Souls, Aleksei Fedorchenko
42. Martha Marcy May Marlene, T. Sean Durkin
43. Another Earth, Mike Cahill
44. Coriolanus, Ralph Fiennes
45. Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow, Sophie Fiennes
46. Project Nim, James Marsh
47. Bobby Fischer Against the World, Liz Garbus
48. The Guard, John Michael McDonagh
49. Restoration, Yossi Madmony
50. Tuesday After Christmas, Radu Muntean (but since I was shut out in a rush line for this movie, my enthusiasm has dropped)

Others include Best Foreign Film submissions Incendies by Denis Villneuve and In A Better World by Susana Bier, which are technically 2010 movies but I wasn't able to see them then, plus Heartbeats by Xavier Dolan, The Time That Remains by Elia Suleiman, and The Princess of Montpensier by Bertrand Tavernier.

And (drumroll) I'm planning to go to the 2011 Telluride Film Festival! Which means that I'll be able to catch a bunch of premieres, Cannes flicks, and other stuff. Hopefully (as my resolution states) I'll be able to see upwards of ten films (in 3 days, mind you, which is hard business).

What are your most anticipated films? What classic films do you need to see that you haven't?

6 comments:

Unknown said...

We share a lot of them :)

S. M. Rana said...

I may have seen 75% of the first list andI see some new names.

Adelaide Dupont said...

Big wow that We need to talk about Kevin is on the list of anticipated films.

Will go through this much more deeply!

aspergiansarah said...

I think I'll do this project too, but we don't have the money to go to the theater fifty times, so I'll tweak it. I really liked "Pulp Fiction" & "The Grand Illusion," but I wasn't a fan of "The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari," the 20's overacting was too much. Some of these are on my to-see list too.

Nick Duval said...

@aspergiansarah If you're referring to list one (which is the one I'm holding myself accountable for seeing all the films on), you don't have to pay 50x theater admission, since all the movies are on DVD or Netflix Instant if you have an account.

If you're referring to list two, I think I'm only going to see a fraction of the films listed, as the majority will have limited or no release in the US. If you're interested in that list and can only see a few, I would stick mostly to the films in the first 25, since those seem like the best bets. Especially the Malick. Do not miss out on that one. Probably the most significant moviegoing experience you or anyone will have in 2011.

Colin said...

I'm a huge fan of Carancho, so I hope you get to watch it. Darin can do no wrong with me!