Movie Forums Top 100 of the 2010s - Group Watch

Now I am intrigued.

That is literally my nightmare.

Dude, face it. You are a celebrity here.

You really liked The Wise Kids and that's a 2011 film.

So is Jess and Moss which I just watched yesterday. Which at least means I won't have to watch it to refresh my mind. Im not in a rewatching kind of mood.
Or a recommending one. But if I've been sucked into the nightmare, I suppose that would be my choice




Not sure how readily available it is though

Jess + Moss seems to be on Kanopy and Mubi.

If you post your thoughts in the thread on the current nomination (Cameraperson, in this case), you get added to the pool of potential pickers for the next round. Simply pick a movie, DM me with it, and it will be the next film.

Also, here's the first post, which explains how this thread works:

https://www.movieforums.com/communit...42#post2332642

I promise this is a pretty low effort thread (compared to the Hall of Fames).

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Nomination #22

It's available for free on Tubi, Pluto TV, and Vudu, btw.

If I wasn't worried about posters dropping dead from irritation and despair, I would have nominated Silver's "Stinking Heaven", but I'm nothing if not a kind person. So instead only a dollop of discomfort and misery

This looks interesting. A black comedy about a stalker. Never heard of this one, and a quick google reveals it had a severely limited release in theaters.

Definitely looks interesting, and I’ll get to it soon.

This is also on Kanopy and it’s short so I may give it a go.

I have to say though that 5.9 IMDb rating does not sound promising.

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Unfortunately another that doesn't appear freely available to me. Starting to feel like I live in a cave in the middle of nowhere

Out of curiosity, do you have access to the streaming services mentioned above?

Unfortunately no access for me, sites like Tubi and Vudu are geo-restricted. It's fine though - I'm not exactly short of material to watch even without such options.

I should get to the movie later today.

Thirst Street, 2017

Gina (Lindsay Burdge) is an American flight attendant who, while on a layover in France, hooks up with bartender Jerome (Damien Bonnard). Gina is still reeling from the loss of her former partner to suicide, and so Gina's fling quickly turns to infatuation. Unfortunately, Jerome does not reciprocate her feelings, but Gina can't or won't take his hints and continues to try to insinuate herself into his life.

Oh, Gina. Gina. Baby. Sweetie. Darling.

I think that it would be easy to look at this film and just say, well this woman is crazy. But what really worked for me---to painful degrees at times--was the understanding of the emotional rollercoaster that underpins such behavior.

If you have ever suffered from moderate or severe social anxiety (as a permanent thing or just something that you dealt with for a while), you will probably recognize a lot of what Gina goes through. When she finds someone who makes her feel safe and appreciated, she becomes overly enthusiastic and attached, and her palpable neediness quickly becomes off-putting. Gina lives the nightmare that most people have experienced---attending a party where you only know one person---and her attempts to be fun and helpful continuously backfire. The patience and strained civility of the other party-goers is misread by Gina as genuine interest.

I think that the film also captures the way that, when you are an inherently timid, reserved person who is risk-averse, when you do finally talk yourself into doing something bold, it can be utterly jarring when your actions don't yield any results. It made me think a bit of that sequence in [b]Frances Ha[/]B where she takes the impromptu trip to Paris. We've been conditioned by movies and TV shows to think that if we just dress ourselves up and put ourselves out there, we are becoming the architects of a better future. No one ever tells you that you might finally work up the nerve to go to a bar or to go to a party or to go to a festival and that . . . yeah, no one will actually talk to you or notice you. Gina keeps making moves that she thinks will be the turning point for her, but at every turn she's unable to do much beyond making that initial move.

Maybe the worst part of it all is that Gina's single-minded ideas about what she wants her life to look like (namely a romance with Jerome) keeps her from capitalizing on the good things that do come her way. Her move to Paris puts her on the radar of Charlie (Lola Bessis) a friendly, queer young woman who befriends Gina and even puts up with Gina's various insecurities and unintentional slights. There are opportunities there for Gina to make real human connections, but she is so fixated on a single version of happiness that she lets people who care for her fall to the side. She leaves voice messages from her flight attendant friend unanswered, simply icing out someone who is clearly an ally and clearly rooting for her. While I was never fully on Gina's side through the film, a real turning point for me was her cruel dismissal of Charlie ("I'm not going to f*ck you!"). It's a level of unkindness that even the characters who dislike Gina have held back from.

Despite feeling a bit sorry for Gina because her miseries, anxieties and tics are, ahem, things that I have experienced in the past, the film is a great illustration of the danger of seeing yourself as the hero in your own story. Gina slowly and steadily crosses boundaries, and you understand why Jerome hesitates to be more explicit about his lack of interest. Late in the film he tells her that he was upfront with her, but I disagree. Jerome merely implied a lack of interest and by not being direct he allows Gina to make her own reading of his statements. The lengths Gina goes to in the final act are upsetting. While Jerome wasn't always the nicest person, no one deserves to be stalked. Gina's inability to think about how her actions must read to him is a huge red flag in terms of her very limited perspective and lack of empathy. Gina is a case study in the way that someone can be at once very emotionally sensitive, but only to their own emotions while being willfully oblivious to the feelings of others.

Burdge gives Gina a dangerous, wounded air. Gina is fragile, but fragile like a glass perched on the edge of a counter. One wrong bump and there's going to be broken glass in your foot. Bonnard does very good work as Jerome, giving Jerome enough charisma that we sense that he's overall not a bad guy and giving dimension to the victim of Gina's obsessions.

I'm not entirely sure where I come down on the very last act. Not only in the way that it ends in a literal sense, but the use of fantasy sequences. I much preferred the earlier use of colors and close-ups to indicate the intensity and degradation of Gina's mental wellbeing. (And I was particularly taken by the use of the intense neon colors and the way that they contrast with the more neutral colors of Gina's apartment).

Special shout out to Anjelica Huston's warm, quirky narration.

Special reminder to please not touch people who clearly have pink eye.

Yeah, no.

Just finished Thirst Street, and I really enjoyed it. I probably wouldn't have heard of it if it wasn't nominated in this thread, so glad it was nominated. I generally dig movies about obsession, and this one was no exception.

I watched Thirst Street (2017), but it was a very uncomfortable watch. Gina just seemed like a creepy stalker who's mentally unstable, and Jerome wasn't much better. Not surprisingly, this just isn't my kind of movie.

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