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Me too: 1 like, 1 movie. https://twitter.com/abou_rijal/status/1331093981686427648
Paterson (2016): The antithesis of Dead Poets Society. I have lived this life, working in a convenience store & writing poem fragments on register tape kept in my pocket. Rings true to me. What's even more uncanny is that I look like Adam Driver.
JFK (1991): OK, Oliver Stone is one of the least subtle directors, Kevin Costner has no range, the film plays fast & loose with facts: all of this works *in the film's favor* imo. It's conspiracy theory as grand opera.
Master of the Flying Guillotine (1976): I'm no Kung Fu aficionado, but goddamn what a fun movie. A Tarantino & Wu-Tang touchstone, obviously. Some genius decided to score it with Krautrock, too.
Slacker (1990): A film that makes me feel good about life's possibilities; a portrait of Austin that needs no campaign to keep it weird; it walks a highwire, threatening to fall into unbearable pretention yet somehow never does (unlike its spiritual sequel, Waking Life).
Strozsek (1977) "So, your car is kaput, your girlfriend is gone, und dein house they have sold." The last 10 or so minutes of this are the most deliriously sublime I've ever seen, but it's all a miracle.
The Holy Mountain (1973): A surrealist, psychedelic, esoteric hero's journey, with such astonishing visual invention that it makes "special effects" movies with budgets hundreds of times larger look like games from the nickel arcade.
Jazz on a Summer's Day (1959): In the intro, a blistering rendition of "The Train & the River" plays over quivering water that looks like somebody did the sorcerer's apprentice trick on a Kandinsky painting.
Lonesome Dove (1989): Bit of a cheat, because this was a tv miniseries. Maybe the best thing ever made for the small screen. Larry McMurtry is like a Russian novelist mysteriously transplanted to Texas. Duvall/Jones an indelible duo, amazing supporting cast as well.
While it's on my mind I'll add a bonus, Bogdanovich's adaptation of McMurtry's novel The Last Picture Show (1971). I love 70's cinema. I doubt we'll see a creative era like this again, at least not in Hollywood.
Barry Lyndon (1975): Received wisdom is that it's a technical achievement, great to look at but not much else. Wrong. The story is fantastic, and has much to say about class, character, history, choice and fate.
Groundhog Day (1993): A story of profound spiritual significance is hiding within a zany 90's Bill Murray comedy, just as a world of love & joy is hidden from cynical Phil Connors within the silly podunk of Punxsutawny, PA.
It's set on "Groundhog Day" to hide the fact that it's actually a Christmas film. Essentially the same story as "A Christmas Carol" (remember that Murray took the lead role in Scrooged).
Stalker (1979): A hypnotic SF tale that's really about a spiritual quest to understand nature, god and our own souls. Tarkovsky made religious films in the nominally atheist USSR, in contrast to legitimately godless films of the religion-mad USA.
Billy Madison: 1 of the most insanely idiotic I've ever seen. At no point in its rambling, incoherent run time is it even close to anything that can be considered a cogent plot. Everyone is now dumber for having watched it. I award it no points & may god have mercy on its soul.
The Third Man (1949): Nearly every shot and line of dialogue in this film is iconic, and the soundtrack is amazing as well.
I'm Not There (2007): Can be quite pretentious, & how much you like Bob Dylan will determine how much you like it. But it is the perfect antidote to the common biopic that imposes a mythic form on a supposed true story, instead following the mythic pattern of the artist's work.
Wise Blood (1979): Prior to seeing this, I wouldn't have thought Flannery O'Connor filmable. In truth, her firm belief in grace isn't quite translated by Huston, but the strangeness & grotesque humor are there.
Barton Fink (1991): Bibliomancy is the practice of randomly opening a book, but especially the Bible, for the purpose of divination. There's a scene in which Fink does this, & the verse there provides the interpretive key to this fascinatingly odd film.
