Honorable Mentions: Ten Movies That Didn't Quite Make the Cut
10 -
Funny Games (1997)
There are two common themes that will crop up among these ten honorable mentions. The first are films that are far more interesting (or far better made) than they are entertaining to watch. A second theme are films that stand a really strong chance to make my top 100 when I get around to rewatching it.
Funny Games fits comfortably into both categories.
I went into the film cold, knowing absolutely nothing about it except that it was foreign and came recommended by my film professor (I minored in Cinema Studies). I really wasn't expecting anything that I saw: simultaneously one of the most unnerving and interesting films I have ever seen. I absolutely loved the meta-fictive qualities of the film (not to give too much away) and its pre-determined ending (I actually shouted "That's cheating" at the TV during the climax). Intelligent, bleak and highly unusual,
Funny Games is easily one of the most surreal viewing experiences that I have ever had.
9 -
Battle Royale (2000)
I saw this one at a movie night a friend hosted.
Hunger Games (the film) had not yet come out and I had not yet read the novels (either for Hunger Games or for Battle Royale). Having now seen both films (and either read or am reading both novels), I can say that each has its own merits.
Hunger Games, I feel, works better as a narrative: developing and endearing us to characters and the situations that they find themselves in, whereas
Battle Royale works better as a Kafkan-esque experience - something that happens (largely without reason - and plays upon the viewer with out bizarre, grotesque and ultimately surreal the whole thing is. And for as much as I did love
Hunger Games, I am convinced that I will like this film even more when I get around to watching it a third time.
I wrote a full review on my blog a while back, in which I go into much further detail than I am affording myself to in this post. You can read it
here if you would like to.
8 -
Cloud Atlas (2013)
This film strikes me as somebody trying to apply a more traditional narrative to
The Tree of Life's sprawling, largely abstract experience. And while I don't feel that it really worked as well as its much celebrated forebearer, I couldn't help but be impressed by the film that did get released: intertwining storylines that create a whole far greater than the sum of its parts. Some segments of the film really couldn't work independent of the larger film (the segment focussing around a homosexual composer producing an opus that is the aurel embodiment of the film), while others were more than strong enough on their own to merit being expanded into a feature film in their own rights (the two future segments in particular). It had the courage to make the film that it needed to be - with actors appearing in multiple different roles across various segments, regardless of the race or sex of the character that they are portraying.
This is the kind of film that I think needs to be made more often: grand, sprawling epics that test the limits of the medium and try like Hell to create a unique viewing experience. Even if it falls short of its ambitions, the fact that it had those ambitions to begin with makes it entirely worth the effort.
7 -
In the Mood for Love (2000)
This is another film that I have reviewed
for my blog. This falls firmly into the category of "likely to make the list on the rewatch." Every single time that I have sat down to think on ths film (including this one), my opinion of it has improved, well beyond the mere 7.5 that I initially gave it. This is also another suggestion from my film professor, who's actually showing up on this list quite a bit (many of the films that made the cut I saw as a part of one of her courses). It's morose, meditative and meticulously shot: in a lot of ways like a foil to
Brokeback Mountain which, although sparse, was explosive. Of all of these honorable mentions (and maybe even my top 100 list), this is the one that I most want to revisit.
6 -
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
When it comes to 2001, I have some very mixed feelings. The first half of the films, despite its monolithic score, is one of the most boring and over-long stretches of film that I can think of. The second half, however, set in the "future," would, by itself, easily make my top 100 (likely just missing out of my top 10). I cannot help that my initial reaction toward the first half (first seen in high school) would be softened with time and that my appreciation to the second half will only have grown with what I have learned about film since then. Bu, as it stands right now, I cannot justify adding it to the top 100.
5 -
October (Ten Days that Shook the World) (1928)
Sergei Eisenstein is one of the most amazing directors that I have seen: with a jarring, distinctly un-American aesthetic that I cannot help but admire. Couple this with my inherent love of silent and early sound films and of Russian history in general, and I am actually surprised that he didn't make the top 100. But again, this will likely change after rewatching this (and the following) film. If anything, making this list is mostly serving to remind me of all of the films that I really need to revisit.
4 -
Battleship Potemkin (1925)
Pretty much everything that I mentioned concerning
October applies to
Battleship Potemkin as well. Revisiting it a second time, knowing fully what kind of experience I am getting into, will likely result in incorporating it into the top 100. This film features a more engaing narrative than the previous Eisenstein entry and, I feel, a far more brilliantly executed climax.
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3 -
Citizen Kane (1941)
I first saw this film in high school after the AFI's top 100 list came out. Being the kind of kid that I was, I decided to start at the top of the list ad work my way down (something which I have yet to completely finish). Given the decidedly old-fashionedness of the story, and the big shoes that it had to fill as "the best movie ever made," it's only natural that it would fall short of the impossible expectations that I had created for it in my mind. I rewatched it as part of a History of American Film course (same professor) and found a new appreciation for it, even if I failed to enjoy it any more than I previously had. And, like
Battle Royale, I feel that the third time might just be the charm that brings me to love this film.
2 -
Gone with the Wind (1939)
This is another that I actually reviewed
for my blog (in conjunction with its 75th anniversary). Like
2001, it features two halves of distinctly contrasting levels of quality (only in this case, it's the second half that falls short), although, despite this, it still remains entertaining despite itself (and despite the troubling historical revisionism that informs the narrative's core). And, like
Cloud Atlas my affection for it stems from its epic promise: the broad, sweeping scope of the fall of the Old South in the wake of the Civil War and its impeccablly high-quality while doing so. If it would have ended with that as its climax - the burning of Charleston and their old way of life "gone with the wind tha swept through Charleston" - ideveloping and wrapping up its various narratives accordingly, t would easily make my top ten. But because of its water-treading second half, it dips just far far to wind up on this list.
1 -
The Tree of Life (2011)
When I first expressed my opinion of this movie a good while back (probably near the end of 2012), I did not, I think, properly express my complicated opinion of this film in saying that it was simultaneously the most brilliant and most boring film that I have ever seen. While I still maintain the basic sentiment behind that statement, I can say now that it is perhaps the most brilliantly told non-narrative that Ihaeever seen: so brazenly non-traditional in what it was trying to tell that it becomes unknowable on any terms but its own. It is this lack of narrative engagement that keeps it from my top 100 (and my top 10), but its impossibly epic, broadly ambitious scope to encapsulate everying from the dawn of time to its inevitable end, and the way in which it so thoroughly lives up to its epic promise, that makes it such an experience to witness. The way in which it mingles in cosmic narrative with its more intimite (and mundane) one is the ultimate expression of Soviet Montage: deriving meaning not with how cohesively two images blend together, but by how dissonate they become when set against one another.
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