oh man, i need to see this. preferably with several rounds of Mai Tais… or Zombies??
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Also, Michael Collins, SuBurbia, TRUE STORIES!!!
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It’s a stupid movie… and totally worth watching 
but if anyone checks it out i hope its fun for you too!
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But you’ll miss Amy’s embarrassing striptease at Club Scum.
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I thought this series was an engrossing, beautiful bout escapism.
Trust Netflix to make absolutely no fuss whatsoever about Asura, which could be the best drama it has put out in years. The lack of fanfare for the series, quietly released in early January, is genuinely baffling. It comes from the Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda, who previously made the gorgeous The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House for the streamer and was nominated for an Oscar for his majestic 2018 film Shoplifters, which also won the Palme d’Or. You would think those credentials might have earned this a bit of a push. Instead, we must rely on word of mouth, so here it is: this is a fantastic television series, and it would be criminal to let it pass you by.
There are seven hour-long episodes, and each is as strikingly beautiful as the last. It is stunningly shot, the sort of show where you want to linger on every detail. For non-Japanese speakers, like me, it urges a second watch, to catch those delicate moments you may have missed when reading the subtitles. The sisters express their personalities through their clothing, their homes, the things they eat and how they eat them. And there is a lot of food here, as should be expected from Kore-eda.
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I was gonna say… is Come and See on it, and it is… that is also the best anti-war film of all time.
Also… this line about 120 days of Sodom…
Fascism is a snuff movie.
YES!
I still haven’t gotten around to seeing Zone of Interest.
Oh, and I wonder why Stalingrad isn’t on that list?
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While masterpieces like Schindler’s List and Son of Saul profoundly address the Holocaust — history’s most horrific expression of the consequences of fascist thought — and war movies from The Dirty Dozen to Defiance vividly depict military resistance, we’ve chosen to leave them off our list to focus instead on films that explore the ideology of fascism itself: the systems, beliefs and societal impacts that enable authoritarian regimes to rise and thrive.
I assume that’s why Stalingrad didn’t make the cut.
ETA: Hmmmm… The Dirty Dozen would be an unusual choice even if military action films were being considered. Maybe the list compiler doesn’t know/like war action movies very much.
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ah! Makes sense! Thanks!
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Great list. The Conformist is so beautiful and devastating. But y’all probably haven’t seen Joint Security Area - please do
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Korean film? Yes, I saw it a long time ago. And I agree!
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I would add The White Ribbon (Das weiße Band).
I have not seen Rosenstraße which is on the list, but it got pretty abysmal reviews.
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I find the films on the list, that I know, to range from excellent to meh, but I suppose it could be argued the list has something for everyone, so I won’t nitpick.
But while we’re playing this game, I’ll recommend Young Torless, quite possibly my favorite from the New German Cinema.
The film is not as didactic as the trailer, I hasten to add.
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Oh, that’s a great movie…
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I rec Mr Nice Guy, Waiting For Guffman, The Year of Living Dangerously, Deathtrap, The Mission, SubUrbia, True Stories, The Science of Sleep, and The Big Tease
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The trailer for this movie just popped out in my Youtube screen. It is on theaters now, but I think I will wait for it being streamed. My wife bets it has a sad ending. She is usually right.
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I agree with many of those, not all. Here are a couple that should have been included. These two movies feature characters learning that fighting Nazis is not something that can be taken lightly.
“Sahara,” 1943
This is the only Hollywood war movie made during the Second World War about the Second World War that can and should be taken seriously. Perhaps it is a serious movie because it was directed by a European refugee.
It takes place during the US’s early involvement in North Africa. The Americans and their tank get caught in a chaotic retreat across the desert. Soon they encounter and bring along British soldiers, a French soldier, and a Sudanese soldier with an Italian prisoner. Eventually shoot down a German aviator, who they take as a prisoner.
The French soldier — who I should point out is the only French character in a Hollywood movie, past or present, who is portrayed as an actual human being — informs the American sergeant that they should not take the German as a prisoner because he cannot be trusted. He describes Nazis as being like “mad dogs.” I used to think this kind of dialogue was propaganda before the past 10 years.
French soldier - “He is not a German. He’s a Nazi. They are like mad dogs. You don’t understand because you are new to this. I’ve been fighting them since 1936.”
British soldier - “36?!
French soldier - “Spain!”
The Americans, British, Sudanese, French and even the Italian prisoner learn about each other as people. Together they have to stand up to an entire German battalion. One-by-one they die, but in the end prove that the pure “Master Race” can be defeated by a diverse group of people who stick together.
It’s a character-driven war movie, that could be played on stage.
“The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp,” 1943
I have no idea what the original intention was for this movie. The character Colonel Blimp was featured in a series of political cartoons drawn by David Low. He was a right-wing windbag who made pompous, self-defeating statements while hanging out in a steam room.
“The Archers” seem to have become more charitable to the character and made him an old-fashioned defender of decency in combat.
I don’t particularly care about this movie. It’s a bit long and over-indulgent. But I believe this movie exists for this one scene cued below, where Blimp is lectured by his German friend that the Nazis are not a normal threat.
“Clive, if you let yourself be defeated by them because you are too fair to hit back the same way they hit at you, there won’t be any methods but Nazi methods. If you preach the rules of the game, while they use every foul and filthy trick against you, they’ll laugh at you. They’ll think you’re weak and decadent.
As I mentioned above, I used to think this kind of talk was just hyperbolic propaganda. But over the past decade, I realize they know what they were talking about. Right down to the Nazi laughter.
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I just saw I’m Still Here, which should also be included. Excellent movie, I think it might scoop up almost as many Oscar’s this year as Parasite did.
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Watched The Apprentice last night because I was feeling particularly “fuck Trump”.
It was … pretty good actually. Sebastian Stan absolutely nailed Trump’s speech and mannerisms, especially as Trump got older and more terrible.
The Trump that was portrayed was so irredeemably awful — abusive toward his parents, siblings, wife, children, and staff. Trump was so awful in fact that by the end that I had a tinge of sympathy for fucking Roy Cohn of all people. As terrible as Cohn was portrayed as being (and oh man was he terrible), Trump was simply monstrous by comparison.
There was no real moral arc here. Everybody was terrible in their own way. There were people in the story who were victimized and abused by Trump, but they were not innocent parties at all. But it gave some interesting insights behind what made him into the hateful orange shitbag that he is today.
The film nerd in me really enjoyed the cinematography. Its use of an unconventional (for film) 4:3 aspect ratio, highly saturated colors, and subtle use of scanlines and film grain made gave it a cinema verite found footage feel. I thought it was very neat.
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