Why hello there, chum, and welcome back to The 300, a recurring feature on my stupid attempt to watch 300 movies in theaters in the year 2018. I’ll be watching new releases, classics, hidden gems, and festival films to experience the wide world of cinema in all its forms. I hope there’s something here for you to enjoy and share as well.
As always, there are three rules for The 300:
- The movie must be at least 40 minutes long, meeting the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ definition of a feature film.
- I must watch the movie at a movie theater, screening room, or outdoor screening venue.
- While I can watch movies I’ve seen before 2018, I cannot count repeated viewings of the same film in 2018 multiple times.
Lynne Ramsay’s You Were Never Really Here opened last week, and I was able to catch all of the Scottish director’s feature films in consecutive days starting with We Need to Talk About Kevin (The 300 Week 13). Seeing multiple movies by a filmmaker in close proximity calls attention to recurring motifs. I noticed a preoccupation with class and its limitations in her first two films, gold name necklaces and makeshift funerals in two movies, the intimacies of bath time and bathing, plenty of water imagery, a knack for depicting unease, and also a skill with carefully deployed needle drops. Ramsay’s such an idiosyncratic auteur with unmatched storytelling technique. I hope she gets to make movies more frequently now that there is additional attention on her work.
This week, I continue watching multiple films by the same filmmaker in close succession, this time the Argentinian director Lucrecia Martel, whose beguiling Zama was my favorite movie I saw in 2017. So long as the retrospective screenings do not sell out, I should be able to see all of her feature films. Keep in mind that An Elephant Sitting Still (the four-hour Chinese art movie I wanted to see last Sunday) sold out two separate screenings, so you never can tell what fortune will bring when it comes to NYC cineastes.
I’m so close to triple digits now I can taste it. This could also be the cinnamon in my oatmeal or the first signs of gingivitis. My goal is to hit the big 100 before the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival, which starts next week. As noted before, Jesse Lab and I will be catching many films at the fest, so check back here for our coverage.
And so, onward.
via destructoid https://www.destructoid.com/the-300-week-14-we-need-to-talk-about-lynne-ramsay-498187.phtml