Opinions on BFI 2022 Sight and Sound Poll

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Your perspective does make sense to me. It sounds like you define 'favorite' as what you like most and 'best' as what you appreciate most. Since I have the same definition for both, my two lists would be exactly the same. I wouldn't dismiss my love of cheesy action movies and replace them with culturally significant dramas. I think you can understand why, to me, trying to take personal taste out of the equation comes off as a little less honest. For that reason, I enjoy reading 'favorite' film lists more than 'best'. Like I said earlier, we all have our different criteria for these silly lists and that's okay.

As far as I go, there's either a favorite, or there isn't a favorite. That's why when I order lists, it's usually from the perspective of my personal criteria for good art. It's dishonest for some people, and I imagine many critics would even lie about their favorites for the reasons that we on the forums never really need to worry about. I mean, Citizen Kane isn't really a desert island movie for me since it's not the kind of story I usually like or write, but I'm not gonna deny that everything about it was not only technically perfect but also incredibly gripping as a story of its type. To deny its art in place of something I'm aware of the flaws from would seem dishonest to me.



Victim of The Night
Your perspective does make sense to me. It sounds like you define 'favorite' as what you like most and 'best' as what you appreciate most. Since I have the same definition for both, my two lists would be exactly the same. I wouldn't dismiss my love of cheesy action movies and replace them with culturally significant dramas. I think you can understand why, to me, trying to take personal taste out of the equation comes off as a little less honest. For that reason, I enjoy reading 'favorite' film lists more than 'best'. Like I said earlier, we all have our different criteria for these silly lists and that's okay.
I see where you're coming from and I can understand that.
I don't think I take personal taste out of the equation, really though. In maybe a few cases I do, to some degree, but still not completely because I love movies and I love movie history and I love the way movies are made, so I do have a "taste" for Battleship Potemkin, say, even if I more admire it than enjoy it. My admiration for Smokey and The Bandit is much lower (though, as I've said, to make a successful film, and I mean that the film succeeds at being a good movie, not box-office success, from the premise of a couple of truck-drivers taking a bet to illegally run beer across state lines is a nice trick) but it's a lot more fun to me. It's a little more nuanced for me than just "personal taste" because I have a taste for Jackie Gleason telling some young car thieves not to masturbate on his highway and I also have a taste for the artistic majesty of the Odessa Steps. But it would be hard to compare those things as if they are not different things, so it's hard to put them on the same "list".



I see where you're coming from and I can understand that.
I don't think I take personal taste out of the equation, really though. In maybe a few cases I do, to some degree, but still not completely because I love movies and I love movie history and I love the way movies are made, so I do have a "taste" for Battleship Potemkin, say, even if I more admire it than enjoy it. My admiration for Smokey and The Bandit is much lower (though, as I've said, to make a successful film, and I mean that the film succeeds at being a good movie, not box-office success, from the premise of a couple of truck-drivers taking a bet to illegally run beer across state lines is a nice trick) but it's a lot more fun to me. It's a little more nuanced for me than just "personal taste" because I have a taste for Jackie Gleason telling some young car thieves not to masturbate on his highway and I also have a taste for the artistic majesty of the Odessa Steps. But it would be hard to compare those things as if they are not different things, so it's hard to put them on the same "list".

Obviously the key difference between "favorite" and "best" is not "personal" verses "matching the popular opinion" or even "subjective" vs. "objective." It's closer to "feelings / emotion" and "logic," whereas the level of feeling or logic incorporating into each other varies from person to person, depending on their decision of what seems appropriate. Therefore, the discussion remains almost purely personal in regards to just how much overlap is acceptable, even in regards to exceptions to a debatable "general rule" pertaining to the overlap.



I don't actually wear pants.
Yeah my tastes do not line up at all. There's one Korean film and only a couple of Japanese films, which is a far cry from what I like. I also hate French films, and yet that country dominates the poll. The list is very arthouse, whereas my tastes are much more stylistic. I won't call the list bad, but I certainly can't agree with most of these choices.
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Thanks again, Mr Portridge.



Those kinds of films are the hardest to judge, I think. How much do you reward a film for succeeding in its goal, versus critiquing the goal itself? There is some degree to which we must take all films on their own terms, but that does not extend infinitely, and it's pretty hard to decide where that line goes.
I'm not entirely sure what you're getting at with the underlined. I'm not giving the film extra stars just because it's tackling a subject I think is important. I think it's a great film and my appreciation for how well it portrays the situation of its main character has only grown as I have come to know more real life people in related situations. I think that any goal for a film is a worthy goal---it's about how the film chases that goal.

It turns housework into both an alien and completely horrifying familiar landscape.
One of the things I found most interesting watching the film was the push-pull I felt watching that everyday routine play out. On one hand, housework can be kind of a zen activity, and there can be a real joy in slowly preparing a meal or tending to a living space. But then you realize that this is every day, and that her life doesn't have the variety needed to make those quiet moments a respite and not a prison.

Im going to assume if this was instead designed to detail the life of a man on an assembly line, being slowly drained of his will to even exist as his job just continues amd continues and hardly even recognizes him as an independent being, there would hardly be such an amount of cry baby bullshit by the detractors of this.
Yup.

Your perspective does make sense to me. It sounds like you define 'favorite' as what you like most and 'best' as what you appreciate most. Since I have the same definition for both, my two lists would be exactly the same.
I'm with you on this one. I think that there are two levels on which I assess a movie. The first is technical--my opinion of the craft (the writing, cinematography, acting, etc). The second is emotional--my personal response to what I'm seeing. Obviously the two categories overlap, sometimes in big ways. But when people talk about the "best" movies, I tend to associate those picks with films I admire on a technical level but not always on an emotional level. I'd rather read a list of "favorites" any day.



I never did use Hulu so I missed that. But I guess the Criterion having a movie and the movie being "well known" are two very different things. I just looked at Criterion the other day and they have lots of movies that are probably good that I've never heard of.
People are countering what I'm saying with "no, it (Dielman and Cleo) was always around, this is rigged", but I tell ya, I have been on movie forums for 16 years as of October-passed, and maybe I saw Varda's name mixed in late with some other French directors of the 60s, and sure, maybe there was a thread once a long time ago on a lost-to-time forum about Cleo, and who knows, maybe someone had even mentioned Dielman somewhere in all that, but most of the movies on previous lists have been talked about ad nauseam, way past the point where there is anything left to say. Portrait Of A Lady On Fire? Obviously good enough to get a shit-ton of people to vote for it so why was there almost no talk about it anywhere? Especially when everyone I know personally who did see it (on my recommendation), reported back that it was "amazing"? I don't think it's because it wasn't a good movie. If there is a conspiracy afoot at Sight & Sound, I think it is probably that the breadth of voices heard was far too narrow for far too long, not that including more voices was the conspiracy to woke-up their list. (Oh shit, I said what everyone's been dancing around to keep Yoda at bay!) If anything, including more voices creates less (perceived) collusion, not more.

What I'm hearing, and I'm talking about me, through my ears, just the way it sounds to me, is that a lot of people just don't like change. I mean, Vertigo moving from 2 to 1 a decade ago was this huge freaking deal. So yeah, more voices included in the process resulting in a film by a woman about a woman that a lot of men may be bored with if they can't focus on the artistry of the film shooting up to No.1 can feel like too much change for some people, I get it. But that's what it sounds like to me. People angry about too much change and looking for a boogeyman to blame it on, in this case, poor Jeanne Dielman.

One other thing. The recency of films has never mattered in this poll, so it shouldn't matter now. L'Avventura debuted as the No.2 film of all-time when it was just 2 years old. Hiroshima, Mon Amour was 3 years old when it debuted on the list at No.11 all time. Marienbad had been out just over a year when it debuted at 26.
So there is no conversation to be had about recency and that I really don't want to hear.

Finally, I do think Get Out deserves to be on the list, low, sure, but on the list (I wouldn't be mad if it was 110 or 120 either) and I honestly feel like people who can't see that haven't watched the film honestly or need to re-watch it or maybe make sure that their television works right or something. It's an amazing film.

All of that was just about your first paragraph.
No, I'm kidding I'm really just responding to the general tenor I'm hearing around here, which I had really hoped would not be what I heard when I came here, but I knew it was possible and it is what it is. It's disappointing, but then again, I expect if the list was all old films that were all pre-approved by the cork-sniffingest of our constituency here, there would still be outrage and argument over the order or how could such and such possibly be left off or whatever. That's just the way the cookie crumbles I suppose.

On Pather Panchali, the one thing I will say about that is that that is a film that has been talked about nearly to death. And has been for a long time. I don't know shit about Indian cinema either but I've heard that movie talked about practically as much as any non-Hollywood film, it has been championed by really famous people very loudly (Scorsese never shuts up about it and claims that he watches it every time he gets ready to make a film to remind him how to make a film) and I've even seen a short documentary about Ray's filmmaking and another about Pather Panchali specifically. So I don't think it's a great example of an obscure film that turned out to be a masterpiece and the foil for Jeanne.

Don't have time to reply now, but I saw someone somewhere on the topic of, "is the slow movement of the S&S poll not as fixed as you may think" posted this NYT article about the changes over time of the poll results:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...-all-time.html

I haven't had a chance to read it yet (and have to be somewhere today), but I'm really interested to read it (at least so far), just to get a better sense of how volatile the list was or was not in the previous iterations.



I'm not entirely sure what you're getting at with the underlined.
Not really "getting at" anything, I just think it's an interesting question in the midst of the discussion about this film, particularly the discussion about the techniques it employs to put you in the character's state of mind. Probably should've quoted crumbs in retrospect, since I guess I gave you the impression I was trying to address something specific to your post.



I’ve had trouble….I guess connecting is the word….with his few films I’ve seen so far. Woman under the Inlfuence, Killing of a Chinese Bookie for example.
I feel like I need to rewatch the latter because it was well over a decade ago and it’s possible I may not have been ready for his style?
Woman under the influence was more recent and I wasn’t a fan of Rowland’s acting.
Yeah, I agree; Bookie was just a dreadfully empty empty experience for me all-around, and while Influence was better, it still had a couple of issues holding it back from actual greatness, IMO.



Not really "getting at" anything, I just think it's an interesting question in the midst of the discussion about this film, particularly the discussion about the techniques it employs to put you in the character's state of mind. Probably should've quoted crumbs in retrospect, since I guess I gave you the impression I was trying to address something specific to your post.
Got it. I hadn't really addressed the "goals vs. meeting goals" aspect of the film, so I was trying to understand what was being responded to.

Planning on a rewatch this coming weekend, so I'll be interested to see how it strikes me the second time around.



Got it. I hadn't really addressed the "goals vs. meeting goals" aspect of the film, so I was trying to understand what was being responded to.
Probably just me being lazy and/or confused and misreading something or forgetting which thing I was quoting.



Obviously there are good goals and bad goals, whether it be for making a good film vs. a purposefully bad one, or whether or not it pushes specific beliefs, in which case judgement can rely on either the strength of the argument or whether or not it just pushes propaganda. The major factor here is whether or not the movie is sacrificing the artistic drive to meet that goal, and whether or not that makes it more artistic, kind of like how Eraserhead doesn't need character development to be incredible, and it's likely best that it didn't have much of it.



RIP www.moviejustice.com 2002-2010
Disappointed. This is what I posted on my Facebook as a resction:
Jeanne Dielmann is nearly unwatchable. It's in a similar vein to Warhol's Empire. Interesting idea, but is it cinema? Same goes for something like Russian Ark.

The real answer...

Gregg Toland - cinematographer
Bernard Herrmann- music
Robert Wise - editor
Herman J. Mankiewicz - writer
Orson Welles - star, producer and director

A bridge between the old and new of storytelling on film. A grand, amazing, and if you give it a chance and the focus, a marvelously entertaining and quickly paced piece of storytelling AND it packs an emotional punch. Mr. Charles Foster Kane is your man!

Say what you will about the "daring feminist rule breaking" Jeanne Dielman... lipstick on a pig and a rose by any other name... it's still, at the end of the day, despite the bold risk taking avante garde nature of it, a three and a half hour long snoozefest and exercise in monotony. To qualify as the greatest film ever, entertainment... no matter how cerebral your mileage is for entertainment (see 2001: A Space Odyssey) is an absolute required category on any grading rubric.

If I want great cinema with feminist overtones and/or strong central female protagonists, I'll watch Gone With the Wind, Queen Christina, Gaslight, Elevator to the Gallows, Johnny Guitar, Le Boucher, L'avventura, The Red Desert, A Woman Under the Influence, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Melancholia, Two Days, One Night and so on... all of which are more interesting and just plain better than Jeanne Dielman. No thanks Sight and Sound voters with your garbage, horse manure entry of the new greatest film of all time!

We all know the real answer to that question:
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Finally, I do think Get Out deserves to be on the list, low, sure, but on the list. I honestly feel like people who can't see that haven't watched the film honestly or need to re-watch it or maybe make sure that their television works right or something.

I've seen it. I watched it right. I understand what its about and it does that exceptionally well.

But movies can do their thing exceptionally well and not be something that should even be considered as top 100 of all time. Like........it just isn't there. And that's not a fault. Almost no movie is at that level. The notion that all of cinema has toiled away for over a hundred years, and painstakingly come by each of its revelations, and....Get Out is one of them?

Get the **** out of town.

Sometimes just being a really good movie isn't enough.

I think Florida Project is probably the best movie of the last twenty years. Or at least it is definitely my personal favorite. But if it showed up on this list I'd pull my hair out.

Being good isn't good enough.



mattiasflgrtll6's Avatar
The truth is in here
Interesting idea, but is it cinema? Same goes for something like Russian Ark.
I liked Russian Ark. It does tell a story, albeit one I didn't always fully understand. It's an experience not like many others, and although it won't be for everyone I think it perfectly meets the requirement to be cinema.

Hell, Cemetery Of Splendor, a bad artfilm I've complained about plenty of times I would still consider to be cinema. It just wasn't the type that I enjoy.
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Sorry if I'm rude but I'm right
Jeanne Dielmann is nearly unwatchable.
Maybe the problem is not the film but the watcher?
It's in a similar vein to Warhol's Empire. Interesting idea, but is it cinema? Same goes for something like Russian Ark.
Bruh, asking whether Jeanne Dielmann or Russian Ark is cinema. This is the first. Good thing you haven't heard of Howlings for Sade.

To qualify as the greatest film ever, entertainment... no matter how cerebral your mileage is for entertainment (see 2001: A Space Odyssey) is an absolute required category on any grading rubric.
Entertainment is required to be the best film ever?
If I want great cinema with feminist overtones and/or strong central female protagonists, I'll watch
Great movies. Jeanne Dielmann is great, too.
Hell, Cemetery Of Splendor, a bad artfilm
Bruh.
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Look, I'm not judging you - after all, I'm posting here myself, but maybe, just maybe, if you spent less time here and more time watching films, maybe, and I stress, maybe your taste would be of some value. Just a thought, ya know.



I don't actually wear pants.
Maybe the problem is not the film but the watcher?
Bruh, asking whether Jeanne Dielmann or Russian Ark is cinema. This is the first. Good thing you haven't heard of Howlings for Sade.

Entertainment is required to be the best film ever?
Great movies. Jeanne Dielmann is great, too.
Bruh.
Wow I didn't realize it's so important for everyone to agree with you.



Maybe the problem is not the film but the watcher?

Is it a film or an experiment? Having a depressed Belgium woman filming another depressed woman peeling potatoes for 20 minutes is that cinema or an modern art installation.



Maybe the problem is not the film but the watcher?

Not every movie is for everyone. I've never really fallen under the spell of Man With a Movie Camera. I'd like to, but it just happened yet, and maybe it never will. I've never actually tried to write about my feelings on it and if I ever did, maybe I have good criticisms against it, or maybe they totally suck. Probably a little of both. But I don't entirely blame myself for not liking it that much. I just let it be, and let others have it if it works for them.


But when someone dislikes or even hates a movie and will not accept that others might like it, that is a person who has failed the movie. They are really showing their hand when they can't even acknowledge a universe where the movie might be of value. And I think a movie like Jean Dielmann really unleashes the insecurity in those who want films to be a very specific thing and want to hit out at it because it changes the established ideas of what they expect to see up on that screen.



My father still can't help himself from screaming at the dutch angles in Citizen Kane. And while its kind of sad in many ways, its also kind of fun watching certain audience members get left in the dust of innovation. And Jeanne Dielman is simply way ahead of some people....and not necessarily because it is that good (even though it is). But because some people have simply stopped walking.



Victim of The Night
I've seen it. I watched it right. I understand what its about and it does that exceptionally well.

But movies can do their thing exceptionally well and not be something that should even be considered as top 100 of all time. Like........it just isn't there. And that's not a fault. Almost no movie is at that level. The notion that all of cinema has toiled away for over a hundred years, and painstakingly come by each of its revelations, and....Get Out is one of them?

Get the **** out of town.

Sometimes just being a really good movie isn't enough.

I think Florida Project is probably the best movie of the last twenty years. Or at least it is definitely my personal favorite. But if it showed up on this list I'd pull my hair out.

Being good isn't good enough.
I respect you opinion on this but I don't agree. Your comment on Florida Project I don't understand though. The best movie of the last 20 years is not good enough to be on this list?