Sunday 12 June 2011

Play it again, VLC

My recent discovery in time management solutions is not the only brilliant idea I've had these days. At some point I realized that it's better to watch some good movie for zillionth time than watching something new that doesn't even seem good at first glance.

Seriously, how many times people throw themselves into watching a film even though they know it simply cannot be satisfying (because the story is a cliché, critics disapprove, cast sucks or whatever), only because it's newly released? Why bother and waste your time on some new, shiny crap, when you can go back to something good that you know that you've liked? I know that discovering and trying new things is exciting, but let's face it: if that freshly released film was really revolutionary, you would know it beforehand anyway.

I've got a few films that I like to go back to over and over again, and even though I've seen them several times, watching them again never feels like waste of time.

Here it goes:

Samotari (Loners)

A story of a bunch of young people living in Praha, whose paths cross in different, sometimes completely unexpected way. They love, cheat, fight, drink, seek for extra-terrestrials. Sometimes it gets funny, sometimes it gets ugly, but definitely not boring. Very 1990s movie, including the soundtrack.



film info @ IMDB

Cha no aji (The taste of tea)

Very weird and very cute movie, straight from Japan. The plot evolves around life of Haruno family residing in a village called Tochigi. Delightful sequence of images and sounds gives us an insight into the little world of each of the characters, not really telling us any story, yet a spectator has no idea when all that time disappeared when the movie's over. On top of that, ladies - Asano Tadanobu to drool on :) (and Shinji Takeda, but not much of him)



film info @ IMDB


Annie Hall

Couldn't miss Woody Allen's work in this list. Actually, when I feel like going back to some movie of my liking, then I could chose between few of his films, but this particular one would be, most of the time, my very first choice, because on top of classic Woody Allen "Neurosis and the City" theme, I adore Annie herself. She's crazy, complicated, a bit detached from reality, yet fun and very interesting. And that vision of LA - epic!

My favourite scene: Woody Allen approaches a random couple of beautiful, fashionable people in the street and demands to know the secret of their successful relationship. The answer pretty much says it all about relationships in general...



Les fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain

I love this picture for absolutely everything: Paris, humour, red colour, charming details, Mathieu Kassovitz, the cat, the dwarf...

I've seen this movie like 8-9 times and still counting. Lately I've been trying to watch the original version with no subtitles, discovering yet another aspect of the movie that I hadn't paid any attention to before. Quite nice language practice, may I say. I know this film so well that if all of its copies disappeared tomorrow, I'd be able to make this movie the way it was from scratch. True story.



"Harry Potter" saga

Cannot really say why exactly I like those films so much (the books were obviously much better), but the truth is Harry, Ron and Hermione have sort of moved in with me. My bf watches random scenes from random parts of the saga with his meals (like most of Internet addicts we eat in front of our PCs), I tend to watch HP when I have no energy to smile any more. Books aside, these pictures are just beautiful and charming. They are also incredibly good from technical point of view, take cast for instance - Rickman, Smith, Gleeson, Sutherland and many others, the fruit of the loom. My favourite part of the saga is "The Goblet of Fire", not only because it has Robert Pattinson in it, but also because of Malfoy turned into a ferret and the ship that Durmstrang gang came in. It cannot get any more awesome than that.




We NEVER use transfiguration as a punishment :D

Ame Agaru

You might think that I like only funny movies and treat watching them as a substitute for prozac. Most of the time I do, but there are some more serious pictures that I love as well. "Ame Agaru" is the last work of Akira Kurosawa, also claimed by himself as his most important one. It has all the features of samurai films, yet its message is far less obvious and one of a kind: what you do is less important than why you do it. The ending still remains open to guess and interpretation, to which I give my thoughts once in a while.




Tonari no Totoro (My neighbour Totoro)

One word: nekobasu :)




Dzień świra (Day of the wacko)

A day of life in Poland. Not sure if not too hermetic for non-Polish, but worth to mention. I still don't know who the real wacko here is: the main character or the people around him.




film info @ IMDB

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