My Current Top 100

McCabe & Mrs. Miller is in my Top 20.... This is one of a few movies that are a must re-watch.


It's about America. And it's on YouTube for Free.

__________________
https://www.youtube.com/c/LoyalOpposition

I see this with criticisms of Suspira a lot. It's just visuals, it's not deep. But what's deep? Complaining about it's lack of depth seems only to undermine the complicated emotional responses a film like Suspira taps into. The movie is always pulling us in with its visual beauty, while at the same time pushing us away with masterfully constructed set pieces designed to frighten, repulse and confuse. The movie goes deep. It's effect is beyond language, so who cares if it doesn't have something specifically thoughtful to say about, what, Indo-China relations? If only more filmmakers could be half as inspired, we would have a lot more movies to get excited about. Suspira gets us to talk about the mystery and the beauty and the poetry of pure filmmaking. **** deep.

McCabe is one of the great mysterious and impenetrable Altman movies that, like Three Women, he probably never bettered.


Except he did. With Nashville. That's how good that guy was.

Deep Red and McCabe and Mrs Miller are two films From the respective directors that I like but don’t rate as highly as others. Argento had better films ( I have The Bird With The Crystal Plumage waiting to be watched on shudder , and I’ve yet to see Opera or Four Flies on Grey Velvet, ugh), as did Altman (I haven’t seen Nashville or The Player yet, double ugh).
I actually like Tenebrae, Cat O’Nine Tails and Inferno a bit more than Deep Red among his Giallo. And no, Suspiria, which I consider perhaps his best film, isn’t Giallo.

Well, the problem with calling a movie deep for its visuals and score alone is that the visuals and music of a movie are surface level details. What's beneath that? What's the message? What deeper meaning do the visuals and music serve? For a movie to be "deep" it must have a profound message, and teach you a lot about life, because that is the bar that people like Tarkovsky set. What was Susperia's message? As far as I can tell, it didn't have one. But for all the praise that Susperia's visuals get, the cinematography was actually quite poor, with a lot of boring shots, awkwardly framed shots, and awkward camera placements.




I don't get the position that Susperia isn't Giallo, like why not? It checks every box.


-Italian Produced
-Murder Mystery Horror
-Mysterious killer revealed in the final act


Is it not erotic enough? I wonder why people think it isn't, as every time I hear someone assert that they never explain anything or give any kind of reason. Like, I just googled it and there's an article saying it's not that doesn't give a single word as to why. But yeah, just google Giallo and Susperia appears everywhere, it's like the poster child for Giallo.

imo suspiria probably drops half a star without the razor wire scene. one of the most deeply unpleasant things i've ever seen in a film.

The best and most important part about the razor wire scene is, why is there a room full of razor wire? The fact that the movie sees absolutely no reason to explain this, and is not remotely bothered by the fact that it clearly can't be explained, is why we are in a special place with this movie (or really the best of any of Argento's or Fulci's films)

Having a message doesn't make a film deep. A school pamphlet about the dangers of crossing a road without looking both ways first has a message but wouldn't be considered deep.



And just because people by default call images 'surface level' doesn't mean they can't have depth. Suspiria has ideas about filmmaking, about the subconscious, about how images and music can combined to engage and disorient. It is full of provocations about what is real and what isn't. It reinvents the basic idea of how a horror film operates. These things have depth because they can be talked about at length and with deep analysis that could fill books.



Basically the whole idea that 'style over substance' means a film is nothing but an empty vehicle for surface pleasures and thrills is total nonsense that I reject completely out of hand.




Dude, don't even. How these shots are framed and composed, how the camera moves, where the camera is placed are exactly where many of the films ideas can be found. Maybe if they listened to you when they made it and didn't put the camera in all those 'awkward' places, then maybe the movie might not have anything to offer beyond its violence. And there isn't a single boring shot in the entire film. If one is worried about forward momentum regarding the story, that admittedly frequently stalls, and as a vehicle for storytelling Suspiria could probably pretty fairly be described as a failure. And so maybe that is what you mean by boring, because the story sometimes is. But....**** stories? Suspiria is better than that.



That's not every box. Also giallo's generally don't deal with the supernatural. And who cares what googling gets you. That just means a lot of other people misidentify the film (personally, I don't care if it's considered giallo or not, and I hate stuffing things into genres and subgenres....but by most standard definitions Suspiria really isn't one)

So what's the standard it doesn't meet? What are some boxes it doesn't check?

Giallo is generally a crime film, which Suspiria is not. They are often police procedurals, which this also is not.


Giallo is also not a supernatural genre, or arguably even horror, which Suspiria definitely is.


Also even stylistically, Suspiria exists in an almost surreal, allegorical, fairy tale world. Giallo's exists in an identifiably real, usually present day world.


Even by loose definitions, Suspiria is not giallo. It just happens to have murder set pieces similar to them, and is directed by a man who began his career in that specific genre.

I just googled suspiria and Giallo and saw several articles saying it isn’t Giallo. Heck, Argento himself doesn’t consider it Giallo. It isn’t even considered the poster child for it. That would be Deep Red
Giallo are murder mystery/thrillers with human protagonists while Suspiria is very much a supernatural horror film.

Well, Giallo is murder mystery in all it's subgenres. Even though they aren't typically supernatural, they're not excluded for being supernatural. Susperia is murder mystery, so... I haven't heard anything yet that excludes it, just that some people don't consider it.


It makes no difference to me, but I try not to base my opinions on hearsay.

I don't mind the razor wire scene itself, so much as how long it seems to take getting there. They seem to chase the girl forever. I just chalk the razor wire as a WTF? moment and leave it at that.

I get that my reasons for liking these sort of things wouldn't be for everyone, but I love scenes, especially in horror movies, that warp your perception of time. And having a chase scene go on for too long is one way to do that.



Hell, Texas Chainsaw Massacre rode that particular trick to infamy. And in the meantime, forged a weirdly beautiful tone poem for that special feeling of being chased to the end of time by cannibal hillbilly monsters. The best kind of tone poem, if you ask me.

The final chase scene in the original film is one of my favorite scenes of all time. You can practically feel the air from the chainsaw blade whizzing behind you. Chain Saw is in my Top 100.

Chainsaw would be in my top 5

It's a nice choice.

Also nice.

I utterly disagree with this statement.

Cheers.