Top 100 Movies, Anyone Got Them?

[DrPepper21]

Originally Posted by Bullitt68

Well, what you consider depth, I consider pretentious. Ivan's Childhood has the emotional resonance that all of his subsequent films lack. With each subsequent film, Tarkovsky became more detached and more focused on the intellectual and the philosophical, neglecting the emotional, and the fact that, as the years went by, he became more and more arrogant and reached a point where he didn't give a shit about audiences and whether anyone found his films the least bit entertaining no doubt contributed to the meandering philosophical banality of his later films.

I feel absolutely no emotional connection to any of his subsequent stories nor any of his subsequent characters, save for the dead wife in Solaris (drawing a blank on her name). Ivan's Childhood, on the other hand, has one of the most poignant child characterizations ever put to film and the ending is very powerful.

One man’s pretentiousness is another’s genius, I guess.

I don't feel we need to argue the finer points of Tarkovsky's work as we've already done it before on a couple of occasions and it never goes anywhere, we both have our viewpoints of the director, so I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.

This one has eluded me thus far. I got my library to order Stalker when I was going through my first run-through, but they've been remodeling for a few months---and seem to be initiating a change to Blu-Ray, so help me---and they haven't been ordering any new films.

I'm especially interested in The Sacrifice, despite my overall dissatisfaction with Tarkovsky as a filmmaker, since, by all acounts, it's essentially his best Bergman impersonation. He even went to Faro to shoot, where Bergman lived and worked for decades.

As far as I know the movie is Tarkovsky's way of showing his respect and admiration for Bergman's work. As you say it's shot in Bergman’s prime location, he cast a couple actors who had worked almost exclusively with Bergman and there definitely a certain Bergmanesque feel about the film.

[Hart]

oops wrong director, similar name

[TFD]

Aronofsky and Tarkovsky are two different people.

[Deaf_Null]

Originally Posted by Bullitt68

I feel absolutely no emotional connection to any of his subsequent stories nor any of his subsequent characters, save for the dead wife in Solaris (drawing a blank on her name). Ivan's Childhood, on the other hand, has one of the most poignant child characterizations ever put to film and the ending is very powerful.

Well, I had a watch on Ivan's Childhood and bored the hell out of me. Another one I would cross off your Top-100 list Impressing camerawork and pictures, but the story was very 'flat' IMO and overall not impressed at all by the war seen through the eyes of a child and human cost of war. Günter Grass' filming of the novel Die Blechtrommel by a landslide compared to Ivan's Childhood IMO on this subject.

I'd even place Stalingrado above this Tarkovsky's one. Maybe not seen through the eyes of a child, but through the eyes of naive youngsters sent off to the front.

Back to Tarkovsky's Stalker, this movie has so much more layers and deeper meanings and superb camerawork (making every shot into a still), still my favorite one. Was striking though that Cuckoo sound in the beginning of Ivan's Childhood, came back in Stalker too. You need a rewatch on it, Bullitt. And finish it this time

[Bullitt68]

Originally Posted by Deaf_Null

Well, I had a watch on Ivan's Childhood and bored the hell out of me. Another one I would cross off your Top-100 list Impressing camerawork and pictures, but the story was very 'flat' IMO and overall not impressed at all by the war seen through the eyes of a child and human cost of war. Günter Grass' filming of the novel Die Blechtrommel by a landslide compared to Ivan's Childhood IMO on this subject.

Haven't seen the film you mentioned, but I'm surprised you disliked Ivan's Childhood, and the fact you can dislike that but love Stalker is confounding.

Originally Posted by Deaf_Null

Back to Tarkovsky's Stalker, this movie has so much more layers and deeper meanings and superb camerawork (making every shot into a still), still my favorite one. Was striking though that Cuckoo sound in the beginning of Ivan's Childhood, came back in Stalker too. You need a rewatch on it, Bullitt. And finish it this time

I have finished Stalker. Andrei Rublev was the one I shut off and have yet to finish.

And I wasn't impressed with the cinematography Stalker. It looked like shit, if you ask me. I've seen better image quality on student films. I guess maybe I shouldn't be too hard on Tarkovsky since his original film was destroyed in a fire and he had to reshoot the entire film, but if people can find his cinematography beautiful, then I can say it sucked.

Like I said before: The man knows how to shoot B&W. However, I've never been impressed by his color cinematography. The best parts of the train wreck The Mirror were the sequences in B&W.

When it comes to cinematography, he's merely the poor man's Kubrick, and when he's shooting in color, I'm just thinking to myself how much I wish he was shooting in B&W.

[TFD]

The image quality in Stalker looked like shit???



Easily one of my favorite images in any film. The camera movement that surveys the pool of water for a good four minutes while the three characters are resting is probably the most beautiful tilt in any film I've seen.

[Bullitt68]

Yes, it did. I can't say it enough: He should've shot all of his films in B&W.

[TFD]

All I can say is the KINO DVD transfer is awful, and yet the imagery still looks absolutely gorgeous. Look at the lighting in that shot; absolutely incredible. I love how he experiments with different types of sepia photography throughout the film. The color segments are good enough, notably when they make their way down into the cavernous areas, and the color becomes muddled and highly expressive.

And additionally, the image quality in Solaris is similarly beautiful, and the fluorescent orange hues that he uses both to create the atmosphere of the ship and in terms of film stock to capture the ethereal quality of the woman.

If you say that this

YouTube- Broadcast Yourself.
and

YouTube- Broadcast Yourself.
look like shit... I just can't comprehend it.

[Deaf_Null]

Originally Posted by Bullitt68

Haven't seen the film you mentioned, but I'm surprised you disliked Ivan's Childhood, and the fact you can dislike that but love Stalker is confounding.
And I wasn't impressed with the cinematography Stalker. It looked like shit, if you ask me. I've seen better image quality on student films. I guess maybe I shouldn't be too hard on Tarkovsky since his original film was destroyed in a fire and he had to reshoot the entire film, but if people can find his cinematography beautiful, then I can say it sucked.

Nothing bad about the camerawork and images in Ivan's Childhood, they were beautiful. Especially those flashbacks with his mother and towards the ending when the 3 of them took that boat over the river. The story itself is just too flat for me, I like to be intrigued by a movie as well. IMO cinematography does not suck at all in Stalker, quite the contrary. It has this nice granular touch and the color tones are beautiful.

Like I said before: The man knows how to shoot B&W. However, I've never been impressed by his color cinematography. The best parts of the train wreck The Mirror were the sequences in B&W.
When it comes to cinematography, he's merely the poor man's Kubrick, and when he's shooting in color, I'm just thinking to myself how much I wish he was shooting in B&W.

So what makes Ivan's Childhood so good for you? Is it merely the b/w and cinematography? Cause the story itself: I never felt anything for that little boy, nor was I emotionally touched or moved by this movie in general, apart from some short parts.

[Bullitt68]

Originally Posted by TFD

If you say that this [...] look like shit... I just can't comprehend it.

The first scene is from The Mirror, not Stalker, and while the clip's Youtube title made me laugh, I don't think that sequence looked like shit. The B&W sequences in the film look great, but of the color scenes, that clip is the second best in the film behind the sequence towards the beginning of the film where the guy is standing in the grass and the wind is blowing it all around him. Called to mind a similar shot with Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn in Sea of Grass.

That shot from Stalker, however, yes, it looked like shit.

Originally Posted by Deaf_Null

So what makes Ivan's Childhood so good for you? Is it merely the b/w and cinematography? Cause the story itself: I never felt anything for that little boy, nor was I emotionally touched or moved by this movie in general, apart from some short parts.

Everything about that kid was very resonant for me. The very idea of a child with no family and no one to care for him feeling so strongly about the Germans that he volunteers to be a spy for the Russians, that's pretty intense, and the way you see the tough facade he's built for himself sort of crack at different instances in the film, I thought that was very intelligent characterization.

And all of the dream sequences were great because you realize, for all of this kid's, for lack of a better word, maturity having been surrounded by war and death, he still has those sweet dreams about his mother, and the end. . .

Spoiler

Where he's been reported to have been killed and there's the glorious shot of him running on the water

. . .I found that an extremely powerful ending. I just loved the whole idea, I loved the way Tarkovsky painted Ivan, and I found several scenes very moving.