FanPost

Monday OT1, Jan 20 2020

SCHOOLLY's LIST

HIDDEN GEMS
My Guilty Pleasures are really Hidden Gems, they’re further down the list.
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Lilya 4-Ever (d Lukas Moodysson, 2002)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqrQBJNDMgo
I’m leading off with a pair of "Made me feel so awful I almost wish I’d never watched it"s. Yes that sabotages the goal of "turning folks on to a hidden gem." Having a movie break your heart can be transformative if you can take it. For me it’s the last word on the scourge of human trafficking.
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All About Lily Chou-Chou (d Shunjo Iwai, 2001, Japan)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kwlh-z2R8QE
The Theater Of Human Cruelty in a Japanese high schooll.
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The Other (d Robert Mulligan, 1971)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMmMqWkudgA
We all have our "First Movie That Scared The Hell Out Of Me And Continued To Haunt," and this is it for me. Check out that trailer!
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the European work of Danish director Susanne Bier
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0081540/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0
Oscar winner for In A Better World (International Feature 2010), this gifted filmmaker’s crossover to Hollywood has been mixed: Things We Lost In The Fire (2007), the puzzling flop Serena (Bradley Cooper & Jennifer Lawrence, pretty much straight to video!) (2014), Bird Box (2019), Amazon Prime’s The Night Manager (2016).
She hit a three-film every-other-year "sweet spot" with Open Hearts, Brødre and After The Wedding (2002-04-06). Hollywood liked these enough to remake Brødre (as Brothers) and After The Wedding in English with star casts.
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This brings me to a general question for you all: are versatile non-American actors just a little better when working in their native language and/or accent? Bier has brought out some of Mads Mikkelsen’s best performances. In that spirit I’m rec-ing <a href:" Brødre , mainly for the great performance by Connie Nielsen. She’s done plenty of Hollywood work (Gladiator) but I never gave her a second thought. She shines here – in Danish.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRv5uzM74cc
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Izzy Gets The F*ck Across Town (d Christian Papierniak, 2017)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avlt4aZOHEo
A recent Amerian indie that ran exactly one week at my multiplex. I was alone in the theater. What a cast: Mackenzie Davis, Carrie Coon, Alia Shawkat, Haley Joel Osment! The camera-loved Davis stars as a millenial f-up, and while her misadventures are funny/pathetic the movie’s heart is her difficult sister relationship with Coon.
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Terminal USA (d Jon Moritsugu, 1994)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xxvpa9Adl90
The most scurrilous project ever funded by PBS? Not sure what they were expecting from Moritsugu, a true legend of the American Underground Cinema, but what they got was a midnight movie skewering of Asian American stereotypes. When it aired as part of the "TV Families" series, all the drugs and sex were pixeled out and all the racy dialogue was scrambled. The master reels reverted back to Moritsugu, who <a href:"http://jonmoritsugu.com/product/terminal-usa-dvd/">)sells the unexpurgated DVD from his site.
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Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (d Todd Haynes, 1987)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H13d1nOorJM
Two things you need to know up front. One, this 43-minute docudrama is ‘acted’ by Barbie & Ken dolls. Two: it’s deeply reverent and empathetic toward Karen’s life and memory. An immediate cease-and-desist by Richard kept this an underground sensation for decades, as Haynes’s career blossomed (Velvet Goldmine, I’m Not There, Carol). The only semi-legit copy in Chicago was housed at the School of the Art Institute’s Video Data Bank, to be viewed on premises only. Now of course it’s on YouTube.
This is a hell of a digression but I’m guessing many of you have family or friends touched by Eating Disorders. I thought it was especially shitty of Dunkin’ Donuts to use a Karen sound/lookalike in an ad for their breakfast sandwiches.
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Shut Up Little Man (d Matthew Bate, 2011)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEDC8AluXVE
The trailer explains it better than I can here.