The 1981 Mini-List

[swo17]

ELIGIBLE TITLES FOR 1981

VOTE THROUGH MARCH 31

Please post in this thread if you think anything needs to change about the list of eligible titles.

[therewillbeblus]

Can you please add

Home Sweet Home (Nettie Peña)
Suddenly in the Dark (Go Yeong-nam)

[swo17]

Added

[yoshimori]

I'd vote for the short Godard made from the set of One from the Heart - "Une bonne à tout faire". I thought the Coppola was a 1981 film too, but apparently its release was pushed to 1982.

Please also add Werner Schroeder's Tag der Idioten.

Thanks, as always.

My "in the likely case you haven't seen it" recommendation for 1981 (in addition to the Schroeter) is Morita's No yohna mono [Something Like ...]. It's full of fun, poking sticks in the eyes of silly advertising tropes.

[therewillbeblus]

My "in the likely case you haven't seen it" recommendation for 1981 (in addition to the Schroeter) is Morita's No yohna mono [Something Like ...]. It's full of fun, poking sticks in the eyes of silly advertising tropes.

Do English subs exist for this anywhere? Even the BD seems to be uploaded to the usual places without any sub files added - I assume physical releases aren't English friendly, but I'm not seeing anything fan-made either

[swo17]

I'd vote for the short Godard made from the set of One from the Heart - "Une bonne à tout faire". I thought the Coppola was a 1981 film too, but apparently its release was pushed to 1982.

Please also add Werner Schroeder's Tag der Idioten.

Added

[yoshimori]

My "in the likely case you haven't seen it" recommendation for 1981 (in addition to the Schroeter) is Morita's No yohna mono [Something Like ...]. It's full of fun, poking sticks in the eyes of silly advertising tropes.

Do English subs exist for this anywhere? Even the BD seems to be uploaded to the usual places without any sub files added - I assume physical releases aren't English friendly, but I'm not seeing anything fan-made either

I've got the Japanese BD Morita set, and yes, only one of the discs has English subtitles. But I've also got (somewhere) a English-subbed version of the Japanese No yohna mono DVD from way back when. You're welcomed to a rip of that if you can tell me how to get it to you.

[the preacher]

Please add Le choix des armes, Alain Corneau's best.

[swo17]

Added

[TMDaines]

How is Das Boot handled? All cuts (theatrical/director’s/mini-series) all one work eligible for 1981?

[swo17]

Correct

[knives]

The first set of films I watched for the year largely weren’t good, but I have an immediate fondness for Visitor from the Galaxy. I’ve been a fan of Vucotić’s animations for a while with their minimalist designs and punchy humour so I had to run when I found out he made a feature with designs by Svankmajer.

The film itself, perhaps predictably, is too small and laid back to actually be great. There is something though to be said for a film willing to be just a fun joke.

Far less successful was Beresford’s Puberty Blues which is just this dour experience that doesn’t provide any justification for why the characters are so comfortable in their situation or why we should involve ourselves with these interchangeable people.

Alternatively I had some fun with Rankin/Bass’ The Leprechaun’s Christmas Gold which is fun while also being terribly made.

[swo17]

This was a fantastic year for shorts. I wouldn't fault anyone for making a top 10 out of just these:

Myth in the Electric Age (Alan Berliner)

Visually compelling found footage (methinks I spy some Mekas here) paired with philosophical musings on our then current times, which people from now current times will often say sound a lot like our own. "We live in one of the most creative periods in human history, but we are creating so rapidly, new images, that we create all the violence and explosiveness that goes with such discovery." An extra on Kino's Intimate Stranger DVD.

Bus Stop (Andrea Gomez)

Lovely, crude watercolor animation with a hauntingly elegiac score that brings to mind Gavin Bryars. Part of something called Tony Vegas' Animated Acidburn Flashback Tabu.

America Is Waiting (Bruce Conner)

Fear not, rest of the world: America is here to fix you. Killer soundtrack by Byrne and Eno.

Junkopia (Chris Marker, Frank Simeone & John Chapman)

One man's junk is another man's, uh, junkopia? These structures feel like museum pieces from another world, a better world probably.

Hommage à la Sarraz (Lutz Dammbeck)

Mow a Nazi down and you'll only create more Nazis. But artfully mutilate some vaguely Nazi-themed film stock and you'll, I dunno, confuse the Nazi long enough to run off with his keys and wallet? Look, I don't know how to deal with Nazis. I'm just writing blurbs here. DVD

New York Portrait: Chapter II (Peter B. Hutton)

This is available on Oscilloscope's release of Kelly Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy, and it would be worth the price of admission alone. Stunning black and white shots of candid New York moments, some of which are filmed so as to take on an abstract quality, like a blimp floating between two buildings that look like sprockets on a film reel, or a flooded street where the water could easily be mistaken for molasses.

The Man Who Could Not See Far Enough (Peter Rose)

A film frustrated by the limitations of the medium. Rose tries to capture the grandeur of solar phenomena but can only overwhelm us with boxed images. Then he tries to convey the scale of the earth but can only do so from as high as he can climb.

L'Entr'aperçu (Robert Cahen)

The film's title translates as a "glimpse" and that's about all you'll get of the scenes on display through all the psychedelic haze. Watch it on the director's website.

The Garden of Earthly Delights (Stan Brakhage)

Made in the same way as Mothlight only with plant pieces instead of moth parts, suggesting some sort of unholy reanimated vegetable Frankenstein's monster that must be destroyed at all costs.

Spacy (Takashi Itō)

Like Inception times 100 but without any talking and all the levels are a high school gym.

Tango (Zbigniew Rybczyński)

Like Groundhog Day divided by 12 but all the characters fit in one room. This won an Oscar!

[brundlefly]

Tango (Zbigniew Rybczyński)

Like Groundhog Day divided by 12 but all the characters fit in one room. This won an Oscar!

I like to think the kid that throws the ball through the window is the same one from "New Book."

[swo17]

But then why did he politely knock to get the ball back instead of simply climbing through the window? The guy in the red hat and jacket is definitely the same though

[brundlefly]

He's trying to avoid another scolding? And perhaps the intervening years have been hard. He has learned you cannot count on other people.

[swo17]

You may be right

[therewillbeblus]

Le choix des armes, Alain Corneau's best.

I'd be curious why you think so. I enjoyed this, particularly it's chaotic yet controlled energy applied to noir conventions, which reminded me of La chair de l’orchidée's revisionist approach to the genre (and, likely a modern ironic sheen corralling the source material), though I'd love to hear an impassioned defense that adds substance I may have missed or scanned without proper investigation

[knives]

Not a great set of films here either. I’m hoping this year doesn’t turn into another dud.

With all the talk of Choice of Arms I clearly chose the wrong French noir to start 1981 with. The Woman Next Door is really bad bordering on incompetence in moments. It’s shot in a very plain way that makes it feel incredibly cheap and just embarrassing to watch. That television sheen isn’t helped by the plot which is about on the level of a Lifetime movie. Truffaut has touched my heart often enough that I want to praise him, but here as so often elsewhere he gives me nothing to praise.

A fair bit better is Do You Remember Dolly Bell? There’s a lot of this and that here that separates it from your standard coming of age film, but the expected beats are so overdone that it’s hard to praise Kusturica as anything more than a talented enough small timer.

Finally though I’ve got an out and out good film from reliable Carlos Saura. Missing out on the whole of his ‘60s work Deprisa, deprisa both felt like nothing I’ve seen from Saura before and also essentially him. Turning from intellectual expression and family (at least in literal terms) Saura makes an experience that perhaps has more in common with his dance films than his narratives. The story here is simple and doesn’t get in the way as a the vibes take over and thought for me was processed solely through the aesthetic developed around it.

[ryannichols7]

a schoolgirl twofer that both somehow starred Hiroko Yakushimaru in the lead role, something I didn't know going in, and totally didn't plan them on the same day for such a purpose!

Sailor Suit Machine Gun: first Shinji Somai despite my calls for more of his films to be released by the various labels, in threads, etc. I bet that he would be my kind of director and he is. the negative-to-middling reviews on Letterboxd that this has are very amusing, as people clearly wanted more of a schlocky movie, which this is not at all. it's tonally a bit all over the place, at times being quite funny and a clear parody of the yakuza film, but then will actually have the emotional pulls that some of those movies have? it felt more like a Seijun Suzuki movie without his more in your face energy, moving at a more relaxed pace. I appreciated the comedy a lot more than say, the two Juzo Itami movies I've watched so far (the two Criterion have released) and liked the summery mood of the film, with a great theme song (and title card). that said, I feel like this could've stood to press more at the idol film like it did the yakuza genre, could've been quite interesting. therewillbeblus noted in the dedicated thread for this movie that this does owe a lot to noir, with the whole theme of an outsider (in this case, one of the more extreme cases of such!) being brought into the underworld. I really loved...

SpoilerShow

the bittersweet ending. more like this please, in a French movie or something I feel like Izumi would've been unceremoniously killed off, but I love the pessimism so much more of the ending we got

I really can't wait to see more of Somai's work. I didn't love this movie, but did quite like it and think he can land a masterpiece with me at some point.

School in the Crosshairs: second Obayashi after House and I was expecting/hoping to be blown away and suddenly be taken by this guy. I know he has some ardent fans on some corners of the internet but this, much like the previous film, gets way too remarkably silly for me. it started promising, as noted above I just love the 1980s Japanese look and energy a lot, which this movie has plenty of. the title song wasn't as much my thing as Sailor Suit's which kinda worried me, and then the movie just goes all in on the anime-but-in-real-life goofiness that House does. Obayashi's fans claim there's a lot more going on here than just weirdness-for-weirdness' sake but I think I'm gonna need some sort of scholarly reading to try and get into that, something that Third Window thankfully included with their disc, which I'm gonna give a spin at some point. I'll keep trying with Obayashi, but I genuinely have no clue what this movie ended up being.

and for something not in that thematic pairing..

Time Bandits: I told my mother I was disappointed in her for never showing me this as a kid, to which she replied she wasn't a big fan of it, which is fair. this is a really brilliant, imaginative film, I think somewhere along the lines of The Princess Bride (which I also only saw for the first time as an adult, and loved) and kinda reveals what it would've been like had Terry Gilliam actually directed the Harry Potter films. Craig Warnock puts in a tremendous performance in the lead, something that's really required for this to work as well as it does. the adult actors are just icing on the cake, and it was awesome to see Sean Connery and Shelley Duvall in this, neither of whom I was aware of until the credits started. actually really loved that Connery was in this, and wish he did more movies of the sort. I loved the energy this movie had (typical for Gilliam) and think it's great something this genuinely weird and funny worked as well as it did. again, going back to the discussion in its dedicated thread about the ending...

SpoilerShow

I'm definitely on board with it, it's extremely Roald Dahl to me and I think that's pretty perfect. his parents were so awful to him! why should we care about them! who knows if he ends up an orphan or whatever, if it even matters. that last second pan out is genius and very, very Gilliam (even kinda lets you know how Brazil is gonna go!)

I hadn't seen one of Gilliam's movies in a long time, wasn't sure if Brazil would still hold up or not. this kinda tells me it will. also one more thing

SpoilerShow

the George Harrison song over the end credits is incredible and I'm glad Gilliam won out over Handmade on this being a GH-fueled musical. it's way cooler hearing him show up over the end credits

hopefully I don't forget to vote this month!

[therewillbeblus]

I'm glad you enjoyed that Somai! It's probably safe to blind-buy P.P. Rider and Typhoon Club, and probably a few others, since it would appear we're two outliers rallying for this one, and for many of the same reasons - though I believe I read more of a noir thematic influence beneath the yakuza dressing. Anyways, this was my first impression:

I haven't seen many Somais yet, but if this is among his worst, sign me up for the whole canon. While I thought this was pretty great (at least the extended director's cut, didn't watch the original shorter version), it's definitely inconsistently pitched, but that's kinda his 'thing', right? The same change-ups of style -with familiar juxtapositions of involving moving subjective camera/static aloof long shots clashing just as hard as pacing and plot shenanigans- are similar to those in P.P. Rider, though not as densely packed or successfully delivered in their tonal ambitions. The theatrical interplay culminates in some fun zeniths of artifice-meets-raw emotional truth, but whatever satirical aims bite on the surface linger with a bitter aftertaste as nearly every incitement.

This film owes more to noir than yakuza crime films, as the central principal's innocence and general outsider status plants her in a gravitational pull of doomed intersections of harm, and constantly reminds us of how devastating it is that these antisocial vehicles of violence are suffocating every crevice of the milieus she runs to and from. It's interesting that our lead is always rescued in some form by an older female, a kind of fairy godmother intervention which itself has unsettling implications for its implausibility, as if the rescue's function is to reveal how Somai needs to exhaustively insert an alien variable into his world in order to keep the film going; saving this little girl with pronounced omnipotent intrusion. Like P.P. Rider, there's a fluid yanking going in friction with the lead and the audience toward the liberating playground of imagination and the grounded sobriety to the corporeal threats among us.

The 'Fatso' segment was actually my favorite, bringing us into a mad-scientist/Bond villain type scenario only pitched at horror for the apathy of the perpetrator (and Somai's detached, apathetic relationship to him, making him an almost-Godlike enigma we're not able to engage with on any extremist level of interest or repulsion- when an extreme position is what we need to signal security) and the way the camera elided our lead casually and then with a jarring shift to a vacation behind the glass. This kind of setpiece would play out completely differently for the audience if we were 'let in' a bit more, but Somai is a master at alienating us when he needs to prove a point; though his 'points' revolve around imbuing uncomfortable sensations rather than asserting some didactic statement. So if this is satire, that aspect feels like surface-level gags coating a layered core of isolated vulnerability, fear, majesty, playfulness, social intimacy and disengagement, and deterministic influences and thinking patterns, which ultimately lands us with chillingly pessimistic final lines that secludes the speaker.. overlapping a visual representation of that narrator indulging in a interpersonally harmonic happy ending! Oof

[ryannichols7]

yeah I think Somai's style is more in line for me in terms of who I think of for 80s Japan (Itami and Obayashi). obviously open to finding other directors too. but it's neat to see the conventions and structure of a genre (noir) that was examined by Japan quite well in the 50s and 60s with Kurosawa and Shinoda et al digging in. seeing that applied to poppy 80s Japan was pretty wild, and effective! really can't recommend it enough to anyone, but just with the caveat that the title is a bit of a red herring and to adjust expectations accordingly

[the preacher]

Le choix des armes, Alain Corneau's best.

I'd be curious why you think so. I enjoyed this, particularly it's chaotic yet controlled energy applied to noir conventions, which reminded me of La chair de l’orchidée's revisionist approach to the genre (and, likely a modern ironic sheen corralling the source material), though I'd love to hear an impassioned defense that adds substance I may have missed or scanned without proper investigation

Sorry, I haven't rewatched the movie for a long time. James Travers' review fully matches my memories. 'Melvillian' is the key word. Nothing to do with La Chair de l'orchidée, whick I found (if memory does not betray me) more Viscontinian...

[knives]

Got a really good set here as I’m finally digging into some fun surprises with no discovery bigger then the pair of shorts by Lutz Dummbeck. I’m only familiar with Dammbeck through his film The Moon and so assumed that was his main mode of expression. That made Hommage to La Sarraz a real kick backwards. Instead we have this very adult philoso-historical epic utilizing a variety of 1920s historical techniques (Ruttman and Hammond get the largest shoutouts) to both damn and praise the German film community for its role in their own history. It’s a frankly apocalyptic look at the then last hundred years which everyone should hunt out.

Einmart is much more within expectations though it’s got this great Scarfe/ Laloux unworldly quality to it. I’m not sure if it’s quite so successful in expressing itself, but the imagery is potent enough and always exciting in a way that makes it easy to forego the depth it struggles with.

Mephisto is amazingly simple, I was expecting because of the poster an extravagant Russell type picture, in a way which underlines the effect of the whole. Szabo follows the actor, who comes across as a simpleton dumbly following the waves of success, in his rise and fall without judgement. It’s also g how easily the film makes his choices seem sensible all the while maintaining an air of menace. The film is both incredibly scary and relaxed. I can’t recall off hand anything else that has had that effect on me.

Shuffle is not as grand an aesthetic treat as some of Ishii’s other films in the same mold. Nonetheless the way he conveys psychology and characterization through camera tricks is impressive. It makes me wish the few excursions into storytelling didn’t happen.

[knives]

Here’s the cheat sheet; finished and hot off the press.

I know I for one am going to be nowhere near up to my viewing goal, but also whatever.