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The 50 Best Movies on Amazon Prime (April 2019)
By Paste Movies Staff | April 2, 2019 | 11:20am
Movies Lists Amazon Prime
Amazon Prime is an unheralded streaming treasure trove of some of the best movies to come out in the past couple years, though good picks can feel nearly impossible to cull from the sometimes overwhelming glut of weirdly terrible titles buried in Prime's nether regions. Take, for example, our recent discovery of just how deep Amazon Prime's stash of martial arts classics goes, with more than a handful of our top picks for the 100 best martial arts movies of all time. Same goes for their collection of Bollywood films, which we've recently ranked. And suddenly, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and Chinatown are back. Who knows how long they've been there. Or how long they've been gone. Who can keep track of any of this stuff?
Well, we can. Or, at least, we try. Plus, April is bursting with great picks, especially considering that Amazon Prime now hosts four of our top 10 movies of 2018, as well as others on the top 50 list, such as Lean on Pete, Zama and Leave No Trace, not to mention one of our favorite documentaries of 2018, McQueen. Also recently added: Tim Burton's Beetlejuice and Sarah Polley's Stories We Tell. Amazon Prime is proving to have an eclectic collection of stuff you won't be able to find anywhere else.
Really, what's changed on Amazon Prime in April is all good, except for their loss of such pre-2000 classics as The Matrix, A Fish Called Wanda and Brazil. Still, Prime can be refreshing in the wake of a service like HBO taking away everything you know and love every 30 days.
Here are the 50 best movies available to stream with Amazon Prime this month:
50. The Neon Demon
Director: Nicolas Winding Refn
If Nicolas Winding Refn—anthropomorphic cologne bottle; asexual jaguar—is going to make a horror film, Nicolas Winding Refn will make a horror film about the things that scare Nicolas Winding Refn most: asymmetry, sex, fatherhood. In The Neon Demon, every character is either someone's daughter or a deranged daddy figure, both thirsty for the kind of flesh only Los Angeles can provide, the roles of predator and prey in constant, unnerving flux. Part cannibal-slasher movie and part endlessly pretty car commercial, Refn's film about a young model (Elle Fanning) making it in the fashion industry goes exactly where you think it's going to go, even when it's trying as hard as it can to be weird as fuck. But despite his best efforts, Refn sustains such an overarching, creeping atmosphere of despair—such a deeply ingrained sense of looming physical imperfection, of death—that it never really matters if The Neon Demon doesn't add up to much of anything in the end. —Dom Sinacola
49. mother!
Director: Darren Aronofsky
Try as you might to rationalize Darren Aronofsky's mother!, mother! does not accept rationalization. There's little reasonable ways to construct a single cohesive interpretation of what the movie tries to tell us. There is no evidence of Aronosfky's intention beyond what we've intuited from watching his films since the '90s—as well as how often Aronofsky loves to talk about his own work, which is usually worth avoiding, because Aronofsky likes thinking the movie is about everything. The most ironclad comment you can make about mother! is that it's basically a matryoshka doll layered with batshit insanity. Unpack the first, and you're met immediately by the next tier of crazy, and then the next, and so on, until you've unpacked the whole thing and seen it for what it is: A spiritual rumination on the divine ego, a plea for environmental stewardship, an indictment of entitled invasiveness, an apocalyptic vision of America in 2017, a demonstration of man's tendency to leech everything from the women they love until they're nothing but a carbonized husk, a very triggering reenactment of the worst house party you've ever thrown. mother! is a kitchen sink movie in the most literal sense: There's an actual kitchen sink here, Aronofsky's idea of a joke, perhaps, or just a necessarily transparent warning. mother!, though, is about everything. Maybe the end result is that it's also about nothing. But it's really about whatever you can yank out of it, its elasticity the most terrifying thing about it. —Andy Crump
48. Like Me
Director: Robert Mockler
Like Me is an indictment of a life spent "extremely" online: a thriller in which the thrill is the threat of empty transgression; a body horror flick in which the body horror is the way social media and Tumblr and Reddit and YouTube transform us, make us grotesque, perverting basic physical functions into scary, dysmorphic representations of the flesh sacks we carry around with us whenever we're not online. Early in the film, writer-director Robert Mockler introduces us to the online world of our main character, Kiya (Addison Timlin, terrifying), via a disturbing barrage of hyperreal, gif-like images—close-ups of sugary cereal and milk chewed sloppily, of a viscous tongue mid-slurp, of Kiya doing weird kinesthetics in a dirty motel room while the camera capsizes and arises around her, this Manic Pixie Dream Girl who embodies each of those words as literally as possible. Though Mockler implies that these are all curated posts Kiya's put online, we believe that this is how she sees the world. Aided by some seriously heady opioids and hallucinogens, she can't help but digest her lived experiences without mitigating them digitally. As Kiya moves through Mockler's pink-ish, neon dystopia, DP James Siewert shooting Timlin as if she's stranded in the middle of a Michael Mann joint, everything seems on the table. Kiya lures a motel manager, Marshall (Larry Fessenden, better than excellent), to her room—another room, another motel, somewhere on this stupid planet—with the possibility of sex. Instead, he finds Kiya's redecorated her room like an outtake from The Cell, testing the lonely guy's willingness to go along with whatever insanity's in store. Of course, some icky gastrointestinal calamity occurs, but Marshall never flinches, so Kiya kidnaps him and takes him with her. Gorgeous and gross in equal measure, Like Me is a visual feast. Mockler conjures setpieces out of practically nothing, crafting each frame with a meticulous symmetry that belies the chaos at the heart of Kiya's impulsive odyssey. —Dom Sinacola
47. A Quiet Place
Director: John Krasinski
A Quiet Place's narrative hook is a killer—ingenious, ruthless—and it holds you in its sway for the entirety of this 95-minute thriller. That hook is so clever that, although this is a horror movie, I sometimes laughed as much as I tensed up, just because I admired the sheer pleasure of its execution. The film is set not too far in the future, out somewhere in rural America. Krasinski plays Lee Abbott, a married father of two. (It used to be three.) A Quiet Place introduces its conceit with confidence, letting us piece together the terrible events that have occurred. At some point not too long ago, a vicious pack of aliens invaded Earth. The creatures are savagely violent but sightless, attacking their prey through their superior hearing. And so Lee and his family—including wife Evelyn (Emily Blunt) and children Regan (Millicent Simmonds) and Marcus (Noah Jupe)—have learned that, to stay alive, they must be completely silent. Speaking largely through sign language, which the family knew already because Regan is deaf, Lee and his clan have adapted to their bleak, terrifying new circumstance, always vigilant to ensure these menacing critters don't carve them up into little pieces. As you might expect, A Quiet Place finds plenty of opportunities for the Abbotts to make sound—usually accidentally—and then gives the audience a series of shocks as the family tries to outsmart the aliens. As with a lot of post-apocalyptic dramas, Krasinski's third film as a director derives plenty of jolts from the laying out of its unsettling reality. The introduction of needing to be silent, the discovery of what the aliens look like, and the presentation of the ecosystem that has developed since their arrival is all fascinating, but the risk with such films is that, eventually, we'll grow accustomed to the conceit and get restless. Krasinski and his writers sidestep the problem not just by keeping A Quiet Place short but by concocting enough variations on "Seriously, don't make a noise" that we stay sucked into the storytelling. Nothing in his previous work could prepare viewers for the precision of A Quiet Place's horror. —Tim Grierson
46. Dressed to Kill
Dressed to Kill is as much an over-the-top, transphobic, atonal mess of an attempt at putting a Hitchcockian twist on an '80s erotic thriller as it is a compulsively watchable exercise in pure style and tension. Which means it might be the quintessential Brian De Palma joint. Sure, he may have practically parodied his own work in Raising Cain, but if you're looking for a much earlier expression of his most iconic traits—in a more straightforward thriller, wrapping sensationalistic sexual content around a pulpy noir plot—this is the best place to start. Dressed to Kill is essentially two short films spliced into one, the first act concerning the sexual yearning of an unhappily married woman (Angie Dickinson), infused with enough unease to the film's much more violent and explicit remainder. Considering De Palma's obsession with remaking parts of Psycho during the '70s and early '80s (see: Sisters), one can easily guess what happens to the married woman before we find ourselves in a straight horror/thriller about a transgender murderer stalking a high-priced prostitute (Nancy Allen) with a razor. The fact that the killer is transgender isn't a twist in the film, but his identity is, and if you keep following the Psycho connections, it's very easy to guess. De Palma may have tried to dissuade his film from controversy by including a levelheaded interview with a trans war reporter on TV, watched by two characters during a split-screen sequence, but that hardly matters when De Palma has admitted to creating his own version of Jekyll and Hyde, essentially turning a trans person into a monster. Problematic but emblematic of a great director, this sleazy flick is still worth checking out. —Oktay Ege Kozak
45. After the Storm
Director: Hirokazu Kore-eda
Depending on the filmmaker, After the Storm's storyline could be grist for a dark comedy, a tear-jerking melodrama or a bilious character study. But because it springs from the mind of Japanese writer-director Hirokazu Kore-eda, this look at a middle-aged man who's only slowly coming to the realization that he's a right bastard is gentle, wistful—serene even. The film stars Hiroshi Abe (who previously appeared in Kore-eda's I Wish) as Ryota. Years ago, he was a novelist of some acclaim—he even won a prestigious literary prize—but lately, the muse has run dry, leaving Ryota busily tending to his gambling addiction while taking a job as a private detective. And that's when Ryota is not snooping on his ex-wife Kyoko (Yoko Maki) to see who she's dating now, even cajoling his 11-year-old son Shingo (Taiyo Yoshizawa) to question her about how serious this new relationship is. If a melancholy, troubled tone is endemic in Kore-eda's work, so is his close chronicling of family dynamics. While Ryota fears turning into the same terminal disappointment as his father—or, perhaps, the disappointment he perceived him to be—he tries to win Shingo's affection, buying him gifts to assert his supremacy over his ex's new boyfriend. In Ryota's mind, it's how to be close to his boy in a way his father never was with him, but After the Storm knows better, recognizing all the ways that he's failing his kid—and also how, like its own kind of genetic gravity, Ryota is becoming his old man, unable to correct the mistakes of the past. But there's no scorn in Kore-eda's depiction of Ryota's transformation, the director's patience towards Ryota is both touching and despairing. After the Storm shows this man more kindness than perhaps he deserves, but the film has no illusions: Only Ryota can pull himself out of his own hole. But that's the thing about having faith in people—it makes it that much easier for them to keep breaking your heart. —Tim Grierson
44. Some Like It Hot
Director: Billy Wilder
Is Some Like It Hot one of Marilyn Monroe's best films, or one of her most antithetical? Sugar Kane is, in a nutshell, the kind of character Marilyn struggled so hard to avoid playing for the bulk of her career: a ditzy blonde, a pure sex symbol, someone who exists in the context of the movie just to tickle the male gaze, whether within the story or without. She's given nothing to work with, as the bulk of the film's heavy lifting is accorded to Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon instead. Watching the film today, you may wonder why Billy Wilder slacked on investing Sugar with any level of empathy, why he wrote the character as a one-dimensional object, a trophy for Lemmon and Curtis to compete over. You may also not wonder at all. Some Like It Hot works, even if Marilyn has little to work with other than her persona and her co-star; it's funny, it's quick on its feet, and it sells its central joke—that nobody, save for the audience, can see that Curtis and Lemmon are obviously dudes in drag—perfectly, layering just enough self-awareness of its own ridiculousness to keep the gag from going sour. —Andy Crump
43. Henry V
Kenneth Branagh's directorial debut and an important part of his powerhouse-casting Shakespearean reboot-a-thon, Henry V is widely considered one of the best Shakespeare adaptations of all time. Its heavily laureled cast includes Paul Scofield, Ian Holm, Judi Dench, Christian Bale, Derek Jacobi, Robbie Coltrane and Emma Thompson, as well as Branagh himself in the title role, receiving Oscar nods for both Best Actor and Best Director. A darker and grittier version of the text than Laurence Olivier's 1944 Henry V, the film has a significantly edited script and incorporates some unconventional flashbacks, primarily involving Falstaff (Coltrane), who is technically only referenced in the play. Branagh's production is exceedingly accessible, a film well-designed to make contemporary audiences fall in love with Shakespeare, and a tremendous showcase of British acting power. —Amy Glynn
42. Platoon
Director: Oliver Stone
You can boil down Platoon to a single iconic image: Willem Dafoe, hands and arms held aloft as Vietnamese soldiers gun him down, his fellow infantrymen the sole audience to his grim and lonesome demise on the ground. Is he making an act of supplication in his final moments? Is he submitting to death itself? Or is his gesture meant to be interpreted as an acknowledgment of his helplessness, a pantomime outcry at his betrayal and abandonment? No matter how many times this scene plays out, its subtexts remain open to interpretation. What remains the same is our horror at Dafoe's exit from the film, and what it means in context within the narrative. Platoon, like any Vietnam war movie, is unforgivingly brutal, a picture show of relentless barbarity that recreates one of America's greatest self-made martial, political and international debacles. Also like any Vietnam war movie, or any war movie in general, really, it repurposes a host of atrocities as tense entertainment, folding the cathartic release of seeing the bad guy get what's coming to him within the bloody details of America's intervention in Vietnam. —Andy Crump
41. City of Ghosts
Director: Matthew Heineman
There need not be a documentary about the Syrian catastrophe to rally the world around its cause—just as, in Matthew Heineman's previous film, Cartel Land, there was no need to vilify the world of Mexican cartels or the DEA or the paramilitaristic nationalists patrolling our Southern borders to confirm that murder and drug trafficking are bad. The threats are known and the stakes understood, at least conceptually. And yet, by offering dedicated, deeply intimate portraits of the people caught up in these crises, Heineman complicates them beyond all repair, placing himself in undoubtedly death-defying situations to offer a perspective whose only bias is instinctual. So it is with City of Ghosts, in which he follows members of Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, a group committed to using citizen-based journalism to expose the otherwise covered-up atrocities committed by ISIS and the Assad regime in Syria. In hiding, in Turkey and Germany and at an event for journalists in the U.S.—in exile—these men, who Heineman characterizes as a very young and even more reluctant resistance, tell of both the increasingly sophisticated multimedia methods of ISIS and their hopes for feeling safe enough to settle and start a family with equal trepidation about what they've conditioned themselves to never believe: That perhaps they'll never be safe. Heineman could have easily bore witness to the atrocities himself, watching these men as they watch, over and over, videos of their loved ones executed by ISIS, a piquant punishment for their crimes of resistance. There is much to be said about the responsibility of seeing in our world today, after all. Instead, while City of Ghosts shares plenty of horrifying images, the director more often that not shields the audience from the graphic details, choosing to focus his up-close camera work on the faces of these men as they take on the responsibility of bearing witness, steeling themselves for a potential lifetime of horror in which everything they know and love will be taken from them. By the time Heineman joins these men as they receive the 2015 International Press Freedom Award for their work, the clapping, beaming journalists in the audience practically indict themselves, unable to see how these Syrian men want to be doing anything but what they feel they must, reinforcing the notion that what seems to count as international reportage anymore is the exact kind of lack of nuance that Heineman so beautifully, empathetically wants to call out. —Dom Sinacola
40. Society
Society is perhaps what you would have ended up with in the earlier '80s if David Cronenberg had a more robust sense of humor. Rather, this bizarre deconstruction of Reagan-era yuppiehood came from Brian Yuzna, well-known to horror fans for his partnership with Stuart Gordon, which produced the likes of Re-Animator and From Beyond…and eventually Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, believe it or not. Society is a weird film on every level, a feverish descent into what may or may not be paranoia when a popular high school guy begins questioning whether his family members (and indeed, the entire town) are involved in some sinister, sexual, exceedingly icky business. Plot takes a backseat to dark comedy and a creepily foreboding sense that we're building to a revelatory conclusion, which absolutely does not disappoint. The effects work, suffice it to say, produces some of the most batshit crazy visuals in the history of film—there are disgusting sights here that you won't see anywhere else, outside of perhaps an early Peter Jackson movie, a la Dead Alive. But Society's ambitions are considerably grander than that Jackson's gross-out classic: It takes aim at its own title and the tendency of insular communities to prey upon the outside world to create social satire of the highest (and grossest) order. —Jim Vorel
39. Crippled Avengers
Director: Chang Cheh
In a time when exploitation cinema seemed the standard for cheap movie houses the world over, no martial arts flick got much better than this Shaw Brothers staple, which eventually adopted the much more PC title, Return of the 5 Deadly Venoms. The blind one, the deaf mute, the one without legs and the brain-damaged "idiot": Together, they make an unstoppable force of vengeance against the local martial arts master who crippled them, as well as his son, who ironically lost his arms at a young age, and so sports dart-shooting cast-iron facsimiles. In other words, Crippled Avengers plays it cool, allowing our disfigured heroes few but important victories for most of the film, building up to its final 25-minute series of fight scenes, in which a blind man, a deaf mute, a man with iron prosthetic legs and an acrobatic "idiot" combine their individual strengths to defeat a kung fu master with, basically, robot arms. Movies like this give us reasons to get up in the morning. —Dom Sinacola
38. Les Diaboliques
Director: Henri-Georges Clouzot
Watching Henri-Georges Clouzot's Les Diaboliques through the lens of the modern horror film, especially the slasher flick—replete with un-killable villain (check); ever-looming jump scares (check); and a "final girl" of sorts (check?)—one would not have to squint too hard to see a new genre coming into being. You could even make a case for Clouzot's canonization in horror, but to take the film on only those terms would miss just how masterfully the iconic French director could wield tension. Nothing about Les Diaboliques dips into the scummy waters of cheap thrills: The tightly wound tale of two women, a fragile wife (Véra Clouzot) and severe mistress (Simone Signoret) to the same abusive man (Paul Meurisse), who conspire to kill him in order to both reel in the money rightfully owed the wife, and to rid the world of another asshole, Diaboliques may not end with a surprise outcome for those of us long inured to every modern thriller's perfunctory twist, but it's still a heart-squeezing two hours, a murder mystery executed flawlessly. That Clouzot preceded this film with The Wages of Fear and Le Corbeau seems as surprising as the film's outcome: By the time he'd gotten to Les Diaboliques, the director's grasp over pulpy crime stories and hard-nosed drama had become pretty much his brand. That the film ends with a warning to audiences to not give away the ending for others—perhaps Clouzot also helped invent the spoiler alert?—seems to make it clear that even the director knew he had something devilishly special on his hands. —Dom Sinacola
37. McQueen
Directors: Ian Bonhôte, Peter Ettedgui
The first fashion collection from Lee Alexander McQueen, titled "Jack the Ripper Stalks His Victims," announced an artist who wasn't going to play around. Models walked down the runway, horror on their faces, sometimes stumbling out onto the catwalk, the garments as provocative as textiles as the shows were transgressive. This was McQueen's MA graduation collection from 1992, and he was 23. More than 25 years later, directors Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui have achieved the nearly impossible, crafting a documentary almost as stunning as the artist it profiles. While McQueen, structured around the fashion "bad boy"'s five most important shows in his career, could be argued (rather reductively) to follow a "tortured genius" narrative, perhaps what makes it such ravishing filmmaking—biographical documentary filmmaking, at that—is not only its ability to embody and manifest the same kind of indenciary qualities as the works of McQueen, but that it actively probes at the ways in which mental illness and addiction shaped his life and work, without resorting to cheap sentimentality. McQueen is a moving testament to a once-in-a-lifetime artist, and, even moreso, an examination of just how human his art was. —Kyle Turner
36. Zodiac
Director: David Fincher
I hate to use the word "meandering," because it sounds like an insult, but David Fincher's 2007 thriller is meandering in the best possible way—it's a detective story about a hunt for a serial killer that weaves its way into and out of seemingly hundreds of different milieus, ratcheting up the tension all the while. Jake Gyllenhaal is terrific as Robert Graysmith, an amateur sleuth and the film's through line, while the story is content to release its clues and theories to him slowly, leaving the viewer, like Graysmith, in ambiguity for long stretches, yet still feeling like a fast-paced burner. It's not Fincher's most famous film, but it's absolutely one of the most underrated thrillers since 2000. There are few scenes in modern cinema more taut than when investigators first question unheralded character actor John Carroll Lynch, portraying prime suspect Arthur Leigh Allen, as his facade slowly begins to erode—or so we think. The film is a testament to the sorrow and frustration of trying to solve an ephemeral mystery that often seems to be just out of your grasp. —Shane Ryan
35. Arrival
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Your appreciation of Denis Villeneuve's Arrival will hinge on how well you like being led astray. It's both the full embodiment of Villeneuve's approach to cinema and a marvelous, absorptive piece of science fiction, a two hour sleight-of-hand stunt that's best experienced with as little foreknowledge of its plot as possible. Fundamentally, it's about the day aliens make landfall on Earth, and all the days that come after—which, to sum up the collective human response in a word, are mayhem. You can engage with Arrival for its text, which is powerful, striking, emotive and, most of all, abidingly compassionate. You can also engage with it for its subtext, should you actually look for it. This is a robust but delicate work captured in stunning, calculated detail by cinematographer Bradford Young, and guided by Amy Adams' stellar work as Louise Banks, a brilliant linguist commissioned by the U.S. Army to figure out how the hell to communicate with our alien visitors. Adams is a chameleonic actress of immense talent, and Arrival lets her wear each of her various camouflages over the course of its duration. She sweats, she cries, she bleeds, she struggles, and so much more that can't be said here without giving away the film's most awesome treasures. She also represents humankind with more dignity and grace than any other modern actor possibly could. If aliens do ever land on Earth, maybe we should just send her to greet them. —Andy Crump
34. Paterson
Director: Jim Jarmusch
Like Chantal Akerman's ascetic classic Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, Jim Jarmusch's Paterson concerns itself with routine. The film conditions you to jive with its particular rhythm, in part so you might feel the impact experienced by our hero when the unexpected punctuates what's regular in this average person's life. Only, where Jeanne Dielman depicted the day-in-day-out of working-class life as a monotonous horror show, Paterson takes an altogether different tack. To Jarmusch, the everyday existence of blue-collar individuals like bus driver-poet Paterson (Adam Driver)—whom we observe across a single week—is so simple as to be near transcendent. Paterson's a classic nice guy, but Driver helps us realize there's more going on beneath that exterior that's so cautious to offend. It's a turn of minor gestures that lacks the obvious Best Actor grandstanding to, say, win an Oscar, but rest assured Driver's performance is one of the most impressive of its year. As with Jarmusch's beguiling film on the whole, once acclimated, you continue to feel it long after you've left the cinema. —Brogan Morris
33. Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father
Director: Kurt Kuenne
Kurt Kuenne was childhood friends with a man named Andrew Bagby, who, in late 2001, was murdered by ex-girlfriend Shirley Turner. Relieved he'd finally put an end to a turbulent relationship, he had no idea Turner was pregnant. So she killed him, then fled to Newfoundland, where she gave birth to Bagby's son, Zachary. This is how Dear Zachary begins: a visual testament to both Andrew Bagby's life, as well as the enduring hearts of his parents, who, as Kuenne chronicles, moved to Newfoundland after their son's murder to begin proceedings to gain custody of Zachary. Kuenne only meant the film to be a gift, a love letter to his friend postmarked to Zachary, to allow the baby to one day get to know his father via the many, many people who loved him most. Told in interviews, photos, phone calls, seemingly every piece of detritus from one man's life, Kuenne's eulogy is an achingly sad portrait of someone who, in only 28 years, deeply affected the lives of so many people around him. And then Dear Zachary transforms into something profoundly else. It begins to take on the visual language and tone of an infuriating true-crime account, painstakingly detailing the process by which Bagby's parents gained custody and then—just as they were beginning to find some semblance of consolation—faced their worst nightmares. The film at times becomes exquisitely painful, but Kuenne has a natural gift for tension and pacing that neither exploits the material nor drags the audience through melodramatic mud. In retrospect, Dear Zachary's expositional approach may seem a bit cloying, but that's only because Kuenne is willing to tell a story with all the disconsolate surprise of the tragedy itself. You're gonna bawl your guts out. —Dom Sinacola
32. Brawl in Cell Block 99
Director: S. Craig Zahler
In which we bask in Vince Vaughn's hugeness, witnessing S. Craig Zahler's pitch-perfect ode to grindhouse cinema draw the best of extremes out of an actor who's had a rough couple years crawling out from under the parody of himself. This is not Vince Vaughn playing Bradley Thomas, stolid brute willing to do whatever it takes to protect his family, it is the silhouette of Vince Vaughn, silent and bigger than everyone else in the room, a spectre of bruised flesh—so much flesh—descending circle by circle into Hades, his odyssey heralded by the likes of Don Johnson and Udo Kier (both seemingly born to be in this endlessly compelling, awfully fucked-up movie) and soundtracked by soul/RnB icons like the O'Jays and Butch Tavares. It confirms that Zahler—along with Bone Tomahawk—is on some Tarantino levels of modern genre filmmaking—which could honestly be a pejorative, were Brawl in Cell Block 99 less finely tuned, less patient and less breathlessly violent. By the time Bradley lurches into irrevocable action, foreshadowed by an opening scene in which he rips apart a car with his bare hands, which is exactly as that sounds, every life force he snuffs out with maximum barbarity also comes with pure satisfaction, the Id of anyone who's into this kind of thing stroked to completion. —Dom Sinacola
31. The 36th Chamber of Shaolin
Director: Lau Kar-leung
This is why any kung fu fan will always love Gordon Liu. The 36th Chamber of Shaolin is as classic as it gets: the definitive Shaolin movie, without a doubt, and the source of Liu's nickname, "Master Killer." He plays San Te, a young student wounded when his school is culled by the Manchu government, so he flees to the refuge of the Shaolin temple. After toiling as a laborer, he finally earns the right to learn kung fu, which begins the film's famous training sequences. The 36th Chamber of Shaolin is the rare film where those training sequences actually outshine its traditional fights, because they're just so beautiful, fluid and inventive. In each of the 36 chambers, San Te must toil to discipline his body, mind, reflexes and will. They make up the whole center of the film, and are unforgettable, bearing an iconic gravitas, imbuing kung fu with a great dignity. Because true kung fu can only be attained through the greatest of sacrifice. —Jim Vorel
30. Stagecoach
Director: John Ford
And just like that, with one swift zoom shot, John Ford gave John Wayne his breakthrough role, reintroducing American audiences to the man who would become one of their most lasting movie icons. Two Johns, making it happen. Still,Stagecoach isn't exactly a John Wayne movie despite the fact that John Wayne is in it; this was before the days of The Searchers, of She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, of The Quiet Man, even of Hondo, movies that each helped shape Wayne's persona and forge his screen legend bit by bit. In Stagecoach, he's just a man with a rifle, a mission of vengeance and a soft spot for a prostitute named Dallas. Rather than the tradition of Wayne, the film belongs to the tradition of strangers on a journey, about an unlikely and incongruous grouping of humans banding together to make it to a common destination. They ride a dangerous road, but Ford's great gift as a filmmaker is his knack for making peril buoyant and entertaining, and in Stagecoach he does both effortlessly. —Andy Crump
29. I Am Not Your Negro
Director: Raoul Peck
Raoul Peck focuses on James Baldwin's unfinished book Remember This House, a work that would have memorialized three of his friends, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and Medgar Evers. All three black men were assassinated within five years of each other, and we learn in the film that Baldwin was not just concerned about these losses as terrible blows to the Civil Rights movement, but deeply cared for the wives and children of the men who were murdered. Baldwin's overwhelming pain is as much the subject of the film as his intellect. And so I Am Not Your Negro is not just a portrait of an artist, but a portrait of mourning—what it looks, sounds and feels like to lose friends, and to do so with the whole world watching (and with so much of America refusing to understand how it happened, and why it will keep happening). Peck could have done little else besides give us this feeling, placing us squarely in the presence of Baldwin, and I Am Not Your Negro would have likely still been a success. His decision to steer away from the usual documentary format, where respected minds comment on a subject, creates a sense of intimacy difficult to inspire in films like this. The pleasure of sitting with Baldwin's words, and his words alone, is exquisite. There's no interpreter, no one to explain Baldwin but Baldwin—and this is how it should be. —Shannon M. Houston
28. It Comes at Night
Director: Trey Edward Shults
It Comes at Night is ostensibly a horror movie, moreso than Shults's debut, Krisha, but even Krisha was more of a horror movie than most measured family dramas typically are. Perhaps knowing this, Shults calls It Comes at Night an atypical horror movie, but—it's already obvious after only two of these—Shults makes horror movies to the extent that everything in them is laced with dread, and every situation suffocated with inevitability. For his sophomore film, adorned with a much larger budget than Krisha and cast with some real indie star power compared to his previous cast (of family members doing him a solid), Shults imagines a near future as could be expected from a somber flick like this. A "sickness" has ravaged the world and survival is all that matters for those still left. In order to keep their shit together enough to keep living, the small group of people in Shults's film have to accept the same things the audience does: That important characters will die, tragedy will happen and the horror of life is about the pointlessness of resisting the tide of either. So it makes sense that It Comes at Night is such an open wound of a watch, pained with regret and loss and the mundane ache of simply existing: It's trauma as tone poem, bittersweet down to its bones, a triumph of empathetic, soul-shaking movie-making. —Dom Sinacola
27. Zama
Director: Lucrecia Martel
Early in Lucrecia Martel's Zama, her dreamy intent and languid images begin to nestle into place. First we witness Spanish corregidor ("mayor") Don Diego de Zama (Daniel Giménez Cacho, whose eyes bear lifetimes of disappointment and resignation) on the shore of a nondescript river, in charge of a desolate Spanish colonial outpost in the middle of nowhere South America, though he seems to be more inhabiting it than litigating its quotidian. Catching a group of native women bathing, he steals a glance but is immediately found out, chased from the beach. Slapping one of the women to assert his dominance, Zama's violent reaction feels preposterous, the response of a person with no control over himself, or his lot in life. This land rejects this sad man.
Director Lucrecia Martel and cinematographer Rui Poças (whose worked with Miguel Gomes and, recently, with João Pedro Rodrigues on the exquisitely pretty The Ornithologist) dedicate nearly every frame to Zama's melancholy maundering, though rarely allowing him the dignity to ever be the most interesting figure in any particular shot, that is, when they aren't up close, searching his lined mug for something representing courage or assertiveness. Stranded in a thankless government job, not so much forgotten by the system as just avoided, Zama is a colonist renounced by both the colonized and colonizers. Zama is literally post-colonial: Colonists negate Diego de Zama's colonialism by negating him, an equation Martel and Poças externalize by photographing with foreboding beauty the jungle around the pathetic man, reducing him to a meaningless, replaceable figure amidst effortlessly mighty landscapes. "Do you want to live?" Zama's asked at the end of the film. He doesn't respond. With her third film, Lucrecia Martel wonders, in wide swathes of unmitigated wilderness and weird, inexplicable poetry, just how far one's wants can go. Bewitching and masterfully rendered, Zama is an elegant, ravishing, often delightfully strange achievement. It is reportedly the result of an interminable production process, of a difficult and substantial edit, of a novel that resists adaptation. It wants little more than to reach out in all directions, to peer into the void, knowing deep down that the void can't be bothered to peer back. —Dom Sinacola
26. Lean on Pete
Director: Andrew Haigh
Lean on Pete flows with such gentle beauty that it may be hard to grasp precisely what it's about or where it's going. But the power of writer-director Andrew Haigh's sublime drama is that it can support myriad interpretations while remaining teasingly mysterious—like its main character, it's always just a bit out of reach, constantly enticing us to look closer. Based on Willy Vlautin's 2010 novel, the movie is a smashing introduction to Charlie Plummer, who was the kidnapped John Paul Getty III in last year's All the Money in the World. Here, he plays Charley Thompson, a 15-year-old living with his drinking, backslapping dad (Travis Fimmel) in Portland. Charley has a sweet face and a soft-spoken manner—when he talks, the last few words evaporate into the air, as if he's too shy to even be bold enough to enunciate—but early on, we get a sense that there's a craftiness underneath that demeanor. The first indication is his willingness to lie about his age to Del (Steve Buscemi), a craggy horse owner who reluctantly takes him on as a caretaker for his elderly racehorse Lean on Pete. Charley doesn't know a thing about horses, but he's anxious to find something to do now that he's in a new town with his father, their reasons for leaving Spokane unspecified but clearly dispiriting. Familiar narrative tropes emerge in Lean on Pete: the boy-and-his-dog drama, the coming-of-age story, the father-and-son character piece, the road movie. Haigh breezes past them all, seeking something more elliptical in this deceptively slim story. With the patience and minimalist command of a Kelly Reichardt, he doesn't dictate where his film goes, seemingly letting Charley's restlessness call the shots. The boy's journey gathers force and poignancy as it moves forward, and the more we understand about Charley the more unknowable he becomes. Along the way, we meet other people and see other worlds—the life of young military veterans, the reality of homelessness, the grind of the low-rent racing circuit—but Haigh views it all with the same unassuming compassion we see in Charley's quiet eyes. —Tim Grierson
25. Good Time
Directors: Josh and Benny Safdie
The hero of Good Time is one of the canniest individuals in recent cinema, which might seem like an odd thing to say about a scummy lowlife who screws up a bank heist in the film's opening reels. But don't underestimate Connie: Several of the people who cross his path make that mistake, and he gets the better of them every time. Connie is played by Robert Pattinson in a performance so locked-in from the first second that it shoots off an electric spark from the actor to the audience: Just sit back, he seems to be telling us. I've got this under control. The financially strapped character lives in Queens, unhappy that his mentally challenged brother Nick (Benny Safdie) is cooped up in a facility that, Connie believes, doesn't do enough to help him. Impulsively, Connie strong-arms Nick into helping him rob a bank. They make off with thousands of dollars, but what they don't realize is that they live in the real world, not a movie. A paint bomb goes off in their bag, staining the money and the criminals' clothes. Shaken and trying not to panic, Connie and Nick abandon their getaway car, quickly raising the suspicion of some nearby cops, who chase down Nick. Connie escapes, determined to get his brother out of jail—either through bail money or other means. As Connie, Pattinson is shockingly vital and present, unabashedly throwing himself into any situation. Following their star's lead, the filmmakers deliver a jet-fueled variation on their usual intricate exploration of New York's marginalized citizens. Good Time features no shootouts or car chases—there isn't a single explosion in the whole film. The Safdies and Pattinson don't need any of that. Like Connie, they thrive on their wits and endless inventiveness—the thrill comes in marveling at how far it can take them. —Tim Grierson
24. The Conversation
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
The really incredible fact about this film is that Coppola made it as a side project between Godfather movies. Starring Gene Hackman, The Conversation is the story of a surveillance technician coming face to face with the implications of his job, and the paranoia of being watched at every moment. It was nominated for Best Picture in 1974, an award that went to The Godfather, Part II. It's one of the rare times in film history when a director has lost to himself. —Shane Ryan
23. Leave No Trace
Director: Debra Granik
It takes all of Leave No Trace before anyone tells Will (Ben Foster) he's broken. The man knows, perhaps ineffably, that something's fundamentally wrong inside of him, but it isn't until the final moments of Debra Granik's film that someone gives that wrongness finality, that someone finally allows Will to admit—and maybe accept—he can't be fixed. Why: Granik affords us little background, save tattoos and a few helicopter-triggered flashbacks and a visit to the hospital to acquire PTSD meds all implying that Will is a military vet, though what conflict he suffered and for how long remains a mystery. As does the fate of Will's deceased wife, mother to teenage girl Tom (Thomasin McKenzie). As does the length of time Will and his daughter have been living off the grid, hidden within the more than 5,000 acres of Portland's Forest Park, a damp, verdant chunk of the city's northwest side overlooking the Willamette River. As does the pain at the heart of Leave No Trace, though it hurts no less acutely for that. Toward the end of this quietly stunning film, Tom shows her father a beehive she's only recently begun to tend, slowly pulling out a honeycomb tray and tipping a scrambling handful of the insects into her cupped palm without any fear of being stung. Will looks on, proud of his daughter's connection to such a primal entity, knowing that he could never do the same. Will begins to understand, as Tom does, that she is not broken like him. Leave No Trace asserts, with exquisite humanity and a long bittersweet sigh, that the best the broken can do is disappear before they break anyone else. —Dom Sinacola
22. The Florida Project
Director: Sean Baker
However useful a surreal approach to reframing paradise may be, Sean Baker's new film, The Florida Project, presents a more acute critique. Baker plunges his audience into his worlds through the lens of social realism, his camera on the same playing field as Moonee (Brooklynn Prince), her mother Halley (Bria Vinaite) and the manager of the motel they live in, Bobby (Willem Dafoe). The camera lives with the characters, watches them haul a bed-bug-infested mattress outside, or sit and eat pancakes by a small creek-ish ditch. Nothing climactic happens in these scenes, we just get to watch and not pass judgment—or pass judgment, whatever, it's up to us. Baker never interferes; the equality of these scenes under the eye of his camera makes his film's pointed ideas about survival and joy all the more striking. The film may be buoyed with a sense of humor and, occasionally, wonder, but Halley's life is framed by an internal struggle over whether humor and wonder can help her retain her autonomy at all in spite of her class status. The Florida Project is spattered with profound sadness, with moments of externalized, violent frustration at presumed helplessness, at practically being born into all this. To what degree you believe Baker to be condescending or patronizing or exploitive is up to you, but the film's bursts of light, its idea of what caregiving looks like when caregiving is a privilege, is handled with sensitivity. When the film switches from 35mm to digital in its final shots, Baker imbues his camera, now mobile, with freewheeling liberation. No matter what happens after The Florida Project ends, in those last moments, these kids are born to live. —Kyle Turner
21. Beetlejuice
Believing in an afterlife is a game for gamblers, but understanding why people toss the dice is easy: There's comfort in the thought that after shuffling off this mortal coil, you get to leave all worldly woes behind and move on to a new existence free of strife, stress and the mundane nonsense that weighs the human race down on a day to day—even hour to hour—basis. If there is an afterlife and the powers that be have a karmic sense of humor, then it probably looks less like the luminous paradise we're accustomed to and more like the bureaucratic nightmare seen in Tim Burton's Beetlejuice, in which the spirit world is structured like a DMV. It's Les Claypool's personal Hell. But hey, being stuck in a 125-year holding pattern waiting for your caseworker to free you from haunting in death the places you haunted in life, beats staring into a black void for eternity, right? That's until a carious ghoul, "bio-exorcist" Betelgeuse (Michael Keaton), appears and tries to "help" you scare the yuppies who've moved into your old home out. Beetlejuice could be the kind of movie that doesn't truly start until its namesake character shows up, but even when settled solely on Barbara (Geena Davis) and Adam (Alec Baldwin), it's plenty bizarre and utterly charming, a ghost story with existential concerns and a love of the macabre to equal its fondness for screwball comedy. Think of it as one part spooky carnival ride and one part attempt at coming to terms with life after death. —Andy Crump
20. Night of the Living Dead
Director: George A. Romero
It's not really necessary to delve into how influential George Romero's first zombie film has been to the genre and horror itself—it's one of the most important horror movies ever made, and one of the most important independent films as well. The question is more accurately, "how does it hold up today?", and the answer is "okay." Unlike, say Dawn of the Dead, Night is pretty placid most of the time. The story conventions are classic and the black-and-white cinematography still looks excellent, but some of the performances are downright irritating, particularly that of Judith O'Dea as Barbara. Duane Jones more than makes up for that as the heroic Ben, however, in a story that is very self-sufficient and provincial—just one small group of people in a house, with no real thought to the wider world. It's a horror film that is a MUST SEE for every student of the genre, which is easy, considering that the film actually remains in the public domain. But in terms of entertainment value, Romero would perfect the genre in his next few efforts. Also recommended: The 1990 remake of this film by Tom Savini, which is unfairly derided just for being a faithful remake. —Jim Vorel
19. Lady Bird
Director: Greta Gerwig
Before Christine "Lady Bird" McPherson (Saoirse Ronan)—Lady Bird is her given name, as in "[she] gave it to [her]self"—auditions for the school musical, she watches a young man belting the final notes to "Being Alive" from Stephen Sondheim's Company. A few moments before, while in a car with her mother, she lays her head on the window wistfully and says with a sigh, "I wish I could just live through something." Stuck in Sacramento, where she thinks there's nothing to be offered her while paying acute attention to everything her home does have to offer, Lady Bird—and the film, written and directed by Greta Gerwig, that shares her name—has ambivalence running through her veins. What a perfect match: Stephen Sondheim and Greta Gerwig. Few filmmakers are able to capture the same kind of ambiguity and mixed feelings that involve the refusal to make up one's mind: look to 35-year-old Bobby impulsively wanting to marry a friend, but never committing to any of his girlfriends, in Company; the "hemming and hawing" of Cinderella on the, ahem, steps of the palace; or Mrs. Lovett's cause for pause in telling Sweeney her real motives. Lady Bird isn't as high-concept as many of Sondheim's works, but there's a piercing truthfulness to the film, and arguably Gerwig's work in general, that makes its anxieties and tenderness reverberate in the viewer's heart with equal frequency. —Kyle Turner
18. Hereditary
Director: Ari Aster
Ari Aster's debut film begins in miniature. Later we learn of the trade Annie (Toni Collette), the film's family's matriarch, plies—meticulously designing doll-house-sized vignettes of the many domestic traumas she's experienced, and still does, throughout her life, not for children but for art gallery spaces—though in the moment, in the beginning of Hereditary, the effect simply alludes to Aster's ancestral preoccupations. From a tree house, pulling back through Annie's workshop window, cinematographer Pawel Pogorzelski's camera pans to a tiny recreation of the house we're currently within, then pushes into the simulacrum of high school student Peter Graham's (Alex Wolff) bedroom, which transforms into the room itself, perspectives already ruined so early in the film. Father Steve (Gabriel Byrne) enters to give his late-snoozing son the black suit needed to attend his late grandmother's memorial. Aster's intent, as is the case throughout Hereditary, is both blunt and oblique: worlds exist within worlds, shadows within that which casts them, or vice versa, reality represented like the rings of a tree or the spirals of DNA holding untold secrets within the cores of whoever we are. Colin Stetson's brain-churning score rattles the frame's edges; menace looms—and menace soon unfolds, tragedies upon tragedies. The Graham family unravels over the course of Hereditary, which derives its power from testing the binds that force families together, teasing their strength as each family member must confront, kicking and screaming (or in Collette's case: making the noise of one's soul fleeing through every orifice), just how superficial those binds can be. In the absence of a reason for all of this happening, there is inevitability; in the absence of resolution there is only acceptance. —Dom Sinacola
17. Midnight Cowboy
Director: John Schlesinger
In this film by British director John Schlesinger, Jon Voight plays a Texan with a troubled past who comes to the big city trying to make a career as a gigolo. Enter his pal, Ratso Rizzo, played by the great and grating Dustin Hoffman. Midnight Cowboy was rated X upon release for homosexual content that would hardly raise an eyebrow today, and remains the only film of that category to ever win an Oscar, much less the Best Picture award it captured in 1970. (The only other X-rated film to be nominated was Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange.) Second on the list of the decade's greatest actors is Dustin Hoffman. Along with Midnight Cowboy, he starred in the seminal The Graduate, the western epic Little Big Man, Sam Peckinpah's terrifying classic Straw Dogs, the controversial Lenny (a hopeless Best Picture nominee in the 1974 class with The Conversation and The Godfather, Part II), All the President's Men, Marathon Man and Kramer vs. Kramer. But his incredible turn as Ratso Rizzo is still the greatest performance of his career, and the chemistry between him and his physical opposite is one of the best and most unusual friend dynamics in film history, hilarious and ultimately heartbreaking. —Shane Ryan
16. You Were Never Really Here
Director: Lynne Ramsay
Lynne Ramsay has a reputation for being uncompromising. In industry patois, that means she has a reputation for being "difficult." Frankly, the word that best describes her is "unrelenting." Filmmakers as in charge of their aesthetic as Ramsay are rare. Rarer still are filmmakers who wield so much control without leaving a trace of ego on the screen. If you've seen any of the three films she made between 1999 and 2011 (Ratcatcher, Morvern Callar, We Need to Talk About Kevin), then you've seen her dogged loyalty to her vision in action, whether that vision is haunting, horrific or just plain bizarre. She's as forceful as she is delicate. Her fourth film, You Were Never Really Here—haunting, horrific and bizarre all at once—is arguably her masterpiece, a film that treads the line delineating violence from tenderness in her body of work. Calling it a revenge movie doesn't do it justice. It's more like a sustained scream. You Were Never Really Here's title is constructed of layers, the first outlining the composure of her protagonist, Joe (Joaquin Phoenix, acting behind a beard that'd make the Robertson clan jealous), a military veteran and former federal agent as blistering in his savagery as in his self-regard. Joe lives his life flitting between past and present, hallucination and reality. Even when he physically occupies a space, he's confined in his head, reliving horrors encountered in combat, in the field and in his childhood on a non-stop, simultaneous loop. Each of her previous movies captures human collapse in slow motion. You Were Never Really Here is a breakdown shot in hyperdrive, lean, economic, utterly ruthless and made with fiery craftsmanship. Let this be the language we use to characterize her reputation as one of the best filmmakers working today. —Andy Crump
15. Red River
Director: Howard Hawks
Howard Hawks' first Western pitted seasoned rancher John Wayne against his adopted son Montgomery Clift in what screenwriter Borden Chase described as Mutiny on the Bounty with saddles and stirrups. Wayne's Tom Dunson is a tortured, stubborn antihero whose early decision to leave his ladylove results in her death, and a lifetime of regret. He takes a young boy, the sole survivor of the Indian attack that claimed his sweetheart, under his wing and, accompanied by his wagon master, continues on, spending almost 15 years growing a cattle empire in South Texas. Following the Civil War, Dunson figures it's time for a thousand-mile drive north—with some 10,000 cattle on what would be known as the Chisholm Trail—but the taskmaster's grown son (Clift) comes to challenge his authority, to mounting peril. A divisive climax notwithstanding (Chase and Clift hated it), Red River is the quintessential Western, marked by a colonial "tough shit" approach to how Dunson takes his territory and a Shakespearean scope. It's a grand journey rooted in the most deep-seated of human drama. In his first screen role, Clift exudes an intense, neurotic charisma that pushed Wayne to newfound complexity on screen—the tension between generations, values, notions of masculinity and acting methods is palpable, to the film's benefit. (For another much-discussed relationship, The Celluloid Closet makes the case for a homoerotic subtext between Clift's character and John Ireland's Cherry Valance.) Cinematographer Russell Harlan expertly stages such majestic set pieces as the epic stampede, and Dimitri Tiomkin's classic score swells. Expansive, enduring filmmaking. —Amanda Schurr
14. High Noon
Director: Fred Zinnemann
One of the handful of films often touted as an archetypal Western, High Noon was actually quite atypical and possibly ahead of its time on its initial release. Director Fred Zinnemann was an unlikely candidate, a German Jew whose main exposure to the genre was through the fantasy Western novels of German writer Karl May. It was possibly the sole Western of its time to have a successful Hispanic businesswoman as one of its prominent characters; the film is often interpreted as an allegory of Hollywood blacklisting during the McCarthy era; screenwriter Carl Foreman was accused of being a Communist sympathizer, and remained bitter about that fact for the rest of his life. None of these interesting facts would matter if High Noon weren't a damn fine, gripping Western. Suspense builds with most of the narrative flow progressing in real time. Abandoned by his newlywed Quaker bride (Grace Kelly) and rebuffed by the townspeople, Sheriff Will Kane (Gary Cooper) grows increasingly desperate in his search to find an ally to face off against returning criminal Frank Miller. Due to arrive on the noon train, his old enemy has plans to assemble his gang in order to exact revenge on Kane for putting him away. Tight close-ups of faces, deserted city streets, empty windows, buildings and ticking clocks emphasize Kane's locked fate and dwindling options, a technique borrowed and expanded on to exaggerated lengths by Sergio Leone. John Wayne thought the film's themes highly un-American, and later joined forces with director Howard Hawks to film Rio Bravo as a sort of conservative riposte. The Duke was wrong: High Noon is a quintessential American story, expertly exploring the theme of one man, abandoned by those he considered friends, who stubbornly sets out to defy the odds by standing up for what he believes is right. —Joe Pettit, Jr.
13. Trouble Every Day
Director: Claire Denis
Messing with genre is more a means to an end for Claire Denis than it is a celebration of the Fulci phantasmagoria and giallo sensibility and Eureopean art house erotic thrillers she so clearly loves, and Trouble Every Day is her ultimately harvesting the misasma emanating from the ways in which she bends these kinds of movies to her will. The film stinks of sex and death, rolls around in it, characters licking it dripping from the corners of the screen. It follows newlyweds Dr. Shane Brown (Vincent Gallo, both hypnotized and hypnotic, as if a therapist permanently put him under) and June (Tricia Vessey) on their honeymoon in Paris, which gives Shane the perfect excuse to look up old friends Léo Sémeneau (Alex Descas) and his wife, Coré (Béatrice Dalle), with whom he appears to harbor an obsession secreted from his new spouse. With no fanfare, Denis draws us deeper into the nature of Shane's obsession, gradually revealing that the predatory hunger Coré has for young men is so strong she begs her husband, who locks her in their house daily, to kill her, lest she kill again. Shane seems to share Coré's affliction, contracted while working together in South America, ruining his marriage before it's even begun, generally avoiding June throughout their time in Paris—that is until, in a hyper-violent revelation, he figures out exactly what he must do to preserve his matrimonial vowa. A cannibalistic nightmare of an exploitation film; an absurdist fairy tale; the bleakest rom-com you've ever seen—whatever angle one wants to pursure with Trouble Every Day, the path toward any semblance of meaning splits, refracts and multiplies, a precise understanding of what Denis intends obscured by mounds of flesh and torn viscera, by the ever-present knowledge that Denis is going to show you something you probably don't want to see. Which must be the point: Human sexuality is an inscrutable thing, and monogamy strains against that inscrutability. Perhaps, Denis shrugs, we were never meant for one person; perhaps we were only meant to tear each other apart. —Dom Sinacola
12. To Sleep with Anger
Director: Charles Burnett
Charles Burnett's serio-comic masterwork opens with a dream sequence and ends with an image that's entirely too real: The body of a black American man prone on the ground, his dignity simultaneously kept and undermined by the sheet covering him from the eyes of the living. If you thought the Ferguson Police Department's neglect of Michael Brown's corpse back in 2014 was a new image, you thought wrong; authorities have left black bodies to rot for hours on end since always. At least in To Sleep with Anger, the body happens to be indoors instead of out on the street.
The body belongs to a major ne'er do well, too, not so bad that death's a fair price for his misdoing but bad enough that no one in the film truly grieves. The true reason to grieve for the incorrigible Harry (Danny Glover) is his postmortem treatment. At the same time, his death finally reunites the family fractured by his presence throughout To Sleep with Anger's episodic narrative. Harry's arrival on the doorstep of Gideon (Paul Butler) and Suzie (Mary Alice) realizes the portents of doom Burnett casts at the start of the film, a hazy scene that would feel right at home in Twin Peaks: Gideon, dressed handsomely in a powder blue suit, sits calmly by a fruit bowl that bursts into flames, giving no reaction as they engulf him. Harry doesn't set Gideon on fire, but his devotion to older ways nevertheless burns his family.
To Sleep with Anger creates a multifaceted portrait of a black American family and black American life, the kind we see today in the films of Barry Jenkins, Ava DuVernay, Ryan Coogler and Dee Rees. It's a pioneering work in keeping with Burnett's career spent opening doors and blazing trails for black Americans in the film industry, and its addition to the Criterion Collection as a piece of history and as one of Burnett's best movies reaffirms its essential status. —Andy Crump
11. The Handmaiden
Director: Park Chan-wook
There are few filmmakers on Earth capable of crafting the experience of movies like The Handmaiden so exquisitely while maintaining both plot inertia and a sense of fun. (Yes, it's true: Park has made a genuinely fun, and often surprisingly, bleakly funny, picture.) The film begins somberly enough, settling on a tearful farewell scene as Sook-hee (Kim Tae-ri) is carted off to the manor of the reclusive and exorbitantly rich aristocrat Kouzuki (Cho Jin-woong), where she will act as servant to his niece, Lady Hideko (Kim Min-hee). But Sook-hee isn't a maid: She's a pickpocket working on behalf of Fujiwara (Ha Jung-woo), a conman scheming to get his mitts on Hideko's assets. (That's not a euphemism. He only wants her for her money.) The reveal of Sook-hee's true intentions is just the first of many on The Handmaiden's narrative itinerary. Park has designed the film as a puzzle box where each step taken to find the solution answers one question while posing new ones at the same time. But you're here to read about the sex, aren't you? It's in the sex scenes between the two Kims that Park shows the kind of filmmaker he really is. The sex is sexy, the scenes steamy, but in each we find a tenderness that invites us to read them as romance rather than as pornography. We're not conditioned to look for humanity in pantomimes of a sexually explicit nature, but that's exactly when The Handmaiden is at its most human. There's something comforting in that, and in Park's framing of deviance as embodied by the film's masculine component. We don't really need him to spell that out for us, but the message is welcome all the same. —Andy Crump
10. Manchester By the Sea
Director: Kenneth Lonergan
Loss and grief—and the messy, indirect ways people cope with the emotional fallout—were the dramatic linchpins of writer-director Kenneth Lonergan's first two films, You Can Count on Me and Margaret. And so it is again with Manchester by the Sea, a commanding, absorbing work in which the sum of its impact may be greater than any individual scenes. As opposed to the intimate, short-story quality of You Can Count on Me, Manchester by the Sea bears the same sprawling ambition as Margaret, Lonergan draping the proceedings in a tragic grandeur that sometimes rubs against the film's inherently hushed modesty. Casey Affleck as Lee Chandler is quietly magnetic as a man who can't express himself at a time when he really needs to step up and be the patriarchal figure. Lucas Hedges and Kyle Chandler are also both quite good, their characters buried deep in the man's-man culture of the East Coast communities in which the film is set. But especially terrific is Michelle Williams as Lee's ex-wife, who has played haunted wives before, in Brokeback Mountain and Shutter Island. Here, though, she really pierces the heart: Her character never stopped loving Lee, but her brain told her she had to if she was ever going to move on with her life. In this film, she's actually one of the lucky ones. Tragedies drop like bombs in Manchester By the Sea, and the ripple effects spread out in all directions. The movie's ending isn't exactly happy, but after all the Chandlers have gone through, just the possibility of acceptance can feel like a hard-earned victory. —Tim Grierson
9. Stories We Tell
Director: Sarah Polley
With Stories We Tell, actress-turned-director Sarah Polley has proven herself a consummate filmmaker, transforming an incredible (and incredibly) personal story into a playful yet profound investigation of the nature of storytelling itself. The central mystery to her documentary—that the man she grew up believing to be her dad is not her biological father—is public knowledge at this point, easily revealed in the film's trailer and associated marketing. Yet Polley conceals and reveals information—starting with her relationships to her interview subjects—in such an effortless way as to constantly surprise, even shock, her audience without leaning into revelations for the sake of them. The result is a film that scrutinizes the ultimate purpose of truth—only to come up with a gorgeously rendered shrug. —Annlee Ellingson
8. Eighth Grade
Director: Bo Burnham
In Eighth Grade, the feature debut of comedian-singer-songwriter Bo Burnham, you're either a Kayla (Elsie Fisher) or you know a Kayla from your days as an over-it-all punk-ass. The distinction is key to your experience. The film stages a too-real reenactment of middle school's rigors, but it's the people we endure those rigors with who shape our turbulent pubescence. Sure, sitting through Ms. Hawking's ornithology lessons was hell, but hell's preferable to striking up conversation with your classmates. Burnham uses the awkward terrain of juvenile social interaction as Eighth Grade's focal point, painting the daunting exercise of talking to other kids as a stairway to embarrassment. We meet Kayla pre-humiliation, recording clips for her YouTube channel in her room, dispensing life advice in the coltish manner of a newly minted teen. She's extraordinarily inarticulate, but in her ramblings we find the profound insight only a 13-year-old can offer. "Aren't I always being myself?" she says to her camera, the sage instructing the benighted. "Well, yeah, for sure." She's a self-help layman, but her sincerity is charming. Don't change who you are to impress others. Words to live by. Kayla, like anyone else trying to stay afloat in the sometimes cutthroat world of middle school, sells out her ideals almost immediately, a defensive posture to deflect her loneliness. Being a teenage girl isn't easy. Occasionally, it's perilous. That Eighth Grade so genuinely conveys those difficulties and dangers is miraculous considering its source. Burnham invites us to recall our own adolescence, and also to consider how adolescence has changed in the time of social media. It's compassionate, radiating retroactive kindness for the children we all were to soothe the adults we are now. —Andy Crump
Director: Roman Polanski
When you look at Jack Nicholson's run of films in what could be referred to as the "New Hollywood" era, starting with Easy Rider in 1969 and ending with The Shining in 1980, it's truly astounding: There's barely a dud on the list, so it's really saying something that Chinatown, Roman Polanski's crime classic, stands out among the best. The film's central mystery is bold for its complexity, revolving around water rights in 1930s Southern California—a plot that remains relevant today, alongside which, like in much of Polanski's work, an ominous atmosphere creeps, shadowing every character in doubt and undermining the possibility of a clean conclusion. In Polanski's world, the mere fact that a mystery is solved doesn't mean there's a happy ending, and his incredible powers of ambiguity have never been so strong as in Chinatown. Nominated for 11 Academy Awards, it won for Robert Towne's original screenplay; add Nicholson at his most essential, along with a young Faye Dunaway and an aging John Huston, and this is more than an excellent film noir, but an American cinematic triumph. —Shane Ryan
6. First Reformed
Director: Paul Schrader
What makes a man start fires? What if that person were a man of God? Paul Schrader, now 71, has perhaps spent his entire career as a filmmaker attempting to ask that question, to breach the impenetrable truth of whatever that question's answer could be, beginning with Blue Collar, a story of auto workers and union members in Detroit compromising their values to survive in the shadow of forces too large and too immovable to compromise themselves. With First Reformed, Schrader's 20th feature as director, that question absorbs the whole film—not through cries of nihilism, as in his previous, garbage Dog Eat Dog, but as a sustained act of faith: What must the devout do for a world God has abandoned? The question lingers wetly in Ethan Hawke's eyes as he carries every frame of Schrader's film. Playing Father Ernst Toller—a minister who in a former life had a wife and a son and a military career, an end brought to all three by that son's death in Iraq—Hawke has spent the past 20 or so years sublimating the radical tendencies of his iconic slackerdom into a fiercely simmering anxiety, as if the purposelessness of his past malaise has left him stewing on how little he can or could do to change anything in this world. Not only does First Reformed directly butt heads with Dog Eat Dog, but it indulges melodrama without losing its calm. It works in obvious metaphors not for their own sakes, but as seamless extensions of theme. It's a gorgeous film, mourning the impossibility of being alive as it celebrates that which binds us, a conscious-rattling, viscera-stirring piece of art. And ultimately, it's a shocking film, powerful images gripping even more powerful fires within the bodies of those unequipped, as we all are, to put them out. —Dom Sinacola
5. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Arguably the greatest of the Italian Westerns, but also one of the finest Westerns ever made. Leone's penchant for turning the genre's sacred themes and obsessions inside out goes full tilt here. Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef are back for this third Dollars movie, but the addition of Eli Wallach adds a significant amount of caustic humor and even more cynicism to the mix. Set during the Civil War, though in a dry, barren landscape resembling the surreal panels of a Krazy Kat cartoon more than historical reality, Leone's epic is the sublime, gloriously cinematic creation that he was always gunning for. Composer Ennio Morricone's score ties it all together, particularly in the orgasmic "Ecstasy of Gold" finale. The director may have gone even more baroque with his subsequent Once Upon a Time in the West, but this is still his greatest achievement. Pop culture and the genre were never the same. —Derek Hill
4. His Girl Friday
Special effects have become so sophisticated that many of us have probably forgotten how much pure amazement you can wreak with a great story and a script that doesn't let up for one second. This amazing, dizzyingly paced screwball comedy by Howard Hawks stars Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell, and takes us back into two of the decade's hallmark preoccupations: The "remarriage comedy" and the intrigue and obsessiveness of the newspaper world. The minute Russell's Lindy Johnson stalks into the newspaper office run by her ex-husband Walter Burns (Grant), you know it's to tell him she's getting remarried and leaving journalism to raise a family, and you know that's not how it's going to end. No high-suspense mystery here. What puts you on the edge of your seat in this film is how you get there. Hilariously acted and expertly filmed, His Girl Friday derives much of its comedic impact from the incredibly clever and lightning-fast banter of the characters. Don't even think about checking your phone while you're watching this. In fact, try to blink as little as possible. —Amy Glynn
3. Blue Velvet
Director: David Lynch
Blue Velvet represents everything cinema can be: horrific, hilarious, heightened to inexplicable, nearly intolerable heavens. This is storytelling as symbology, a traditional American genre like noir picked apart with unsettling aplomb. David Lynch concocts an Oedipal nightmare out of Kyle MacLachlan's innocent boy and Dennis Hopper's evil "daddy," with Isabella Rosselini's sexy "mommy" as both an unobtainable feminine figure and a damsel in dire circumstances, demanding protection. As adorable Everyman Jeffrey Beaumont (MacLachlan) is seduced ever deeper into the disgusting underground of American domesticity, he tries to see the light in the world, while the psychopathic Frank Booth (Hopper) represents all that is dark—and yet, Lynch hesitates to allow Jeffrey to be a hero. "He put his disease in me," Valerie Lyons (Rosselini) repeats in the middle of a psychotic episode. She's a woman permanently broken by men both good and bad, and so, in black and white, Lynch finds blue: something deeply sad and normal. In the middle of Blue Velvet, Jeffrey, excited, exclaims, "I'm involved in a mystery, I'm in the middle of a mystery, and it's all secret." Horned up, he's ready to dig into all the nasty dirt his hometown of Lumberton has to offer. By the end of the film, we've barely scratched the filthy surface. —Dom Sinacola
2. Stop Making Sense
Lester Bangs once wrote an essay about "Heaven," the Talking Heads song that kicks off Jonathan Demme's concert film. In it, Bangs fixated on one of David Byrne's iconic lines: "Heaven is a place where nothing ever really happens." Heaven, he explained, is—to Byrne's coke-addled mind—a way of life where all of the stimuli of modern society couldn't reach him. Couldn't affect him. Couldn't whip him up into a frenzy. This, according to both Bangs and Byrne, is truly Nirvana. Stop Making Sense happened over two nights at the Pantages Theater in 1983, and the second song on the setlist is "Heaven," set against a bare stage on the cusp of a drastic remodel. From there, the set, as well as the band, builds itself—instruments and writhing bodies and elaborately weird backdrops are added, one upon another, until the stage is absolutely seething with life. And so, not only was Stop Making Sense a document of a legendary band at the height of their powers, but it even today seems like an unheralded synergy of movement and sound, of image and artist—so much so that the band allows us to watch as they destroy, and then re-do, their own idea of Heaven. —Dom Sinacola
1. Moonlight
What's remarkable about Barry Jenkins' Moonlight is that it's hardly remarkable at all. It's actually mundane, though its mundanity can be mitigated—or, really, delineated—via qualifiers: buoyant, bitter, graceful, beautiful, harsh, coltish, doleful, vibrant. More to the point: Moonlight is familiar. If you strip away its exterior particulars, you'll be left with the bones of a coming-of-age story. Every film has a skeleton to support its musculature. Moonlight's just happens to look like Boyhood's and The 400 Blows'. Moonlight is painted with brushstrokes of silence: of Jenkins' unobtrusive direction, of Chiron's mute trepidation, of his friends and caregivers, who speak to him in the knowledge that he'll say little and less to them in return (if he says anything at all). But rather than make Moonlight inaccessible, silence opens it up. In film, silence is neither mortal nor venial sin—it's actually a virtue. Jenkins is fluent in silence and possesses an innate understanding of how silent moments can communicate more than heaps of dialogue. It's in glances that pass between Little and his surrogate custodians, Juan (Mahershala Ali, damn near ubiquitous in 2016 and at his best here) and Teresa (Janelle Monáe), the stillness Chiron responds with when in conversation with his chum-then-crush, Kevin. Moonlight is nothing if not empathetic. But describing the film solely in terms of empathy is a misguided oversimplification: All movies seek out empathy to degrees, after all, and so Moonlight does what any human story on celluloid has to do. Jenkins opts for sensation in favor of the sensational, eschewing flash and bluster while making old hat feel new again. Most of all, he invites our empathy at the cost of our vanity. He leads us away from navel-gazing to see the stunningly constructed drama he and his troupe have laid before us on screen. The film encourages self-reflection, but not at the expense of either its narrative or the viewing experience. That's the surest sign of a deft cinematic hand. —Andy Crump
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When I watch a film, I like to do a little research. I find it fascinating to see what the majority think before I devise my own opinion, especially since I often disagree with most. Unanimously, Getaway received some of the worst criticism I've ever seen and I'm not sure I can say much to the contrary.
Ethan Hawke stars as Brent, an ex-race driver, who comes home one evening to find his house wrecked and his wife, Leanne (Rebecca Budig), missing. Shortly afterwards, he receives a call from a mysterious (and I use the word "mysterious" very loosely) man (voiced by Jon Voight) who is revealed to be Leanne's kidnapper. In order to ensure her safety, Brent must complete a series of destructive tasks given over the phone, the first of which is to steal a customised Shelby Mustang, wired up with cameras and microphones to track his progress. Selena Gomez plays the computer hacking, car enthusiast daughter of a large bank's CEO known only as "The Kid," she is picked up during one of the earlier tasks and is Brent's only ally throughout the dilemma. There are no rules, only to avoid police capture and to follow all instructions without fail, but it is most definitely not an aimless game.
As far as plots go, it's actually not a bad idea – the only thing it needed was interesting main characters, an intriguing villain and unrivalled high-speed action scenes. Unfortunately, I regret to inform you all that not a single box was ticked. The villain is just an old man and Brent is as bland as unsalted chips; The Kid manages to bring a light flurry of brattish banter to the screen at times, but that's as far as it goes. Overall, the dialogue is simple, repetitive and unconvincing, and they all lack depth due to lack of character development. On a side note; since half of the characters aren't even given names, I can't help but wonder if this was a stylistic choice… if so, it failed miserably and comes across as nothing more than frightfully lazy.
Despite how it may sound, I don't think Getaway deserved to be torn apart the way it was. It could've been worse… I'm not sure how, but I actually took a nap half way through and still came back to finish it, so it can't have been THAT bad. Maybe the motive of the man on the phone induced a glimmer of curiosity or something, and for that alone it gets a few brownie points. Can't say I'd recommend it though, unless, of course, you've watched pretty much every other film in existence.


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text:
Frequently Asked Ayu Questions
23rd March 2007, 01:57 AM
devilayu
Please read this entire thread through before posting a question in the Enquiries forum.
More FAAQ questions will be added in time.
First and foremost, please refer to the Ayu Library for the following factoids:
* Lyrics
* Articles & Translations
* Databank
Please refer to (miss)information: Ayu Myths Checked for a detailed discussion on some other Ayu questions (certain facts may be pulled from there to add to this thread).
There are also interesting tidbits that I've listed in the 2007 TV Appearance Keypoints thread.
Additional Sites:
Masa's Translations
Last edited by devilayu; 1st April 2007 at 09:13 PM.
ABOUT AYUMI
Questions regarding very personal things, plastic surgery, religion, etc. will not be addressed as there is no confirmation from Ayumi on any of those things.
How do you write her name in Japanese?
Her given name is written as 濱崎歩 (Hamasaki Ayumi, family name first) (some people call this the "Chinese" way her name is written). [source: あゆろぐ]
However, she uses 浜崎あゆみ regularly for her career as a singer/producer/etc.
Is her last name Hamasaki or Hamazaki?
It is pronounced "Hamasaki" with an "s." Though the last name 浜崎 may be pronounced either way, her family name is "Hamasaki."
I heard her real first name is Kurumi, is that true?
False. "Hamasaki Kurumi" was a stage name that Ayumi used in her pre-Avex days (back when she was a teen idol and struggling actress).
Does Ayumi have a boyfriend?
In 2001, it was discovered that Ayumi was dating Nagase Tomoya of the Johnny's Jimusho band TOKIO. Though there are countless rumors of them either breaking up or getting married, it is generally accepted that they are still dating.
[edit] In a July 13, 2007 TeamAyu correspondance, Ayumi revealed that she broke up with her boyfriend (presumably Nagase Tomoya, though she doesn't mention him by name.)
Does Ayumi have a brother?
No, that was a mistranslation on the part of her HP's English site. She has no siblings. The only family member Ayumi ever mentions is her mother. She was also very fond of her grandmother, who has passed away. Her father left when she was very young.
Does Ayumi speak English?
Since late 2006, Ayu has been studying the English language. She even did part of an interview for CNN Asia in English. However, outside of that taped interview, not much is known about just how much English she can speak, or if she can carry on a conversation with a native English speaker.
[edit] In more recent making of videos, you can see Ayumi conversing in English with fans and her bodyguard.
Is MTRL her clothing line?
Upon visiting the MTRL site and reading materials on the brand, Ayumi's name is not attached to them aside from promoting the items. There is no mention whatsoever about her owning, co-owning, or founding the brand. Early on in the line's conception, Ayumi seemed to have designed some items (such as the denim jacket and mini skirt outfit featured in her "Rainbow" PV). In recent years, she has not promoted the line (aside from wearing shirts in concerts and photo shoots) and does not seem to have as much as an influence in the clothing they sell.
[edit] As of February 2, 2008, MTRL will officially be known as HEAVENARK. The old MTRL URL is still in effect but will only show HEAVENARK brand clothing.
Can Ayumi ride a bike?
For many post-Avex interviews, Ayumi has stated that she cannot ride a bike and on Hey! Hey! Hey! she demonstrated her poor skills. However, in an old Idol video she did as a teenager, she rides a bicycle very well. She has either forgotten how to ride a bike or has been pretending to be unable to ride for the sake of appearing cute.
Who is CREA?
This is Ayu's penname for when she composes songs.
How much school did Ayumi complete?
Ayumi is a high school drop-out. She quit school when she was 15 years old.
Who are her body doubles?
There are two to public knowledge: Atsuko "Minori" Kubota and Takami "Poroko" Desaki. They are generally used as stand-ins for PV's, CM's and photoshoots.
Does Ayumi play any instruments?
In the past, it has been said that she studied piano and learned some guitar but no one knows to what extent. There's been no mention of anything for a few years. There are no clips of her playing either instrument.
Last edited by devilayu; 6th June 2008 at 06:52 PM.
ABOUT HER MUSIC
Has Ayumi ever lip-synched?
There is no definitive answer to this question. Although by fan accounts Ayumi doesn't lip-synch in concerts, it is argued that she has mimed songs for certain taped appearances on non-live music shows.
Has Ayu ever performed in America?
No, she has not. She has only filmed PV's and done photoshoots in the larger American cities (such as New York, Los Angeles, & Oahu). Also, prior to her Avex debut, she went to New York City for vocal training.
I've seen screencaps of Ayu's 1999 Secret Live. Where can I get it?
That performance has never been publicly released in full. Those caps are either from a news report about the live or from her old HP.
Has Ayumi ever performed the remixes from her remix albums?
Yes, but only once at the Cyber Trance presents ayu trance release party. Again, the live was never publicly released and only seen in news clips.
Why does she use a different pronunctiation for a common character? (ex. Bokutachi vs. Bokura)
With lyrics and prose, writers can take liberties with how to pronounce words. Although those characters are usually read as "bokutachi," Ayu has decided to replace the reading with "bokura" (which means the same thing). She does the same thing in other songs (evolution).
Another example of Ayu replacing readings is in 'evolution.' In the line with the characters for "chikyuu" she replaces the reading with "hoshi." Although the meanings are slightly different, a planet is a star so it fits in context.
This happens a lot in novels and the changes in reading are usually marked with furigana.
Why does she even use "boku" in her lyrics? Isn't that for guys only?
On SmapxSmap from February 26, 2007, Ayumi clarified that it's easier to say than "watashi" or "atashi" due to less syllables. She does not look at it as more masculine. Additionally, by using "boku," she feels that it separates the real Ayu from the voice of the speaker in her songs.
Has Ayumi released any songs in English?
No, she has not released any English songs commercially. She has, however, sung in English for promotions. In various lives, she has performed "White Christmas," "Silent Night," "Change the World," and "Can't Take My Eyes Off of You." She sang "White Christmas" for a Suntory CM as well. For Disney's Japanese release of the "Snow White" DVD, Ayumi sang part of "Someday My Prince Will Come" for the special limited edition mail-in DVD that coincided with the release.
Are there any songs on Ayu albums with lyrics that weren't written by her?
Yes, this is a list:
- "LOVE~since1999~" (LOVE~destiny single) was composed and written by Tsunku
- "Sotsugyou Shashin" (A Ballads album) was originally by Yumi Matsutoya
- "teens" (Startin'/Born to be... single) was originally a TRF song
Also, her pre-Avex album "NOTHING FROM NOTHING" had songs written by someone else.
Are some of the songs on (miss)understood cover songs?
This is a grey area. In Japan, various articles describe the songs in question as "covers" even though Ayumi rewrote most of the lyrics in Japanese to fit her own feelings. She was a big fan of GEO and that is how these compositions came to be on her album. These songs were originally composed by GEO and performed by Sweetbox:
- "Bold & Delicious"
- "Ladies Night"
- "In the Corner"
- "Pride"
- "Beautiful Day"
- "rainy day" (Sweetboxed titled this song "Every Step")
Is there a difference between the Live and DVD versions of her concerts?
Yes. Usually, the performance on the DVD's are taped from the last concert of her tour. The televised version (usually aired on a pay-per-view station called WOWOW) is usually a show in the middle of her tour, and the cuts/costumes/hairstyles sometimes differ depending on where she is and when she performed.
Also, there is sometimes redubbing of her singing performance for the DVD version of a concert. The reasoning may be any of the following: technical difficulty during the live, poor recording feed, or poor vocals on Ayu's part. Case in point, Countdown Live 02-03.
Is there a "Memorial address Take 1" or 'original' version of the song?
No, the only version of that song is titled "Memorial address ~take 2 version~" which was actually a bonus, 8th track on the "Memorial address" mini-album.
Additionally, "Memorial address" is considered a cover song in Japan because it is the same composition as the LOVER SOUND TRACK song "Kumo." Ayumi wrote her own lyrics for her version.
Other songs that do not have "original" versions are:
* Key -eternal tie ver.-
Is the song "monochrome" supposed to be cut-off, with a door slam and a man talking?
Yes, that is indeed the correct version of the song. It is meant to be cut-off mid-sentence.
What is the deal with the song "RAINBOW"?
On the album "RAINBOW" there was no title song. Instead, for the limited edition first press of the album, there was a track labeled "00 RAINBOW" on the sleeve. It was actually a short instrumental track that you could download via a secret website with a code included with the disc. On the site, Ayumi invited her fans to write a line of lyrics that fit with the music. In the final version of the song, Ayu in fact did not use a fan's exact lyrics. Instead, she claims that she read each and every one of the 100,000+ entries she received and then wrote a line that expressed the feelings she got from reading those entries. The full version of the song was later released on the compilation album "A BALLADS."
What is the "XX" in "A Song for XX"?
According to Masa's translation, Ayumi says:
"I'd like you to insert whatever words you like to the part XX. Well, I wrote this lyrics in my own manner thinking about the person I've told you now, which some of you may understand only by listening to this song."
It's also important to note that you do no pronounce the "XX" as it is a silent representation of an anonymous something or someone. For Ayumi, this someone is her mother, Mariko Hamasaki.
Additional thanks to kinix & DA1SUK1DAY01691
Last edited by devilayu; 21st July 2007 at 09:53 PM.
27th March 2007, 05:04 AM
What is an "ayupan"?
ayupan are the little plastic figurines that are based on Ayumi and are detailed with designs that match outfits she has worn in the past (usually from her tours or photoshoots). It is said that the "pan" in the name comes from Ayumi thinking they look like pandas. The average price of an ayupan is 500 yen (differs depending on when they were sold, where they were sold, and how detailed they are). They gained so much popularity that it spawned a line of ayupan-related goods (plushies, stickers, keychains, etc.) and for a time, there were even ayupan shops. There was even a short series of CG ayupan cartoons.
What is 'ayu ready?'
Official ayu ready? HP
ayu ready? REAL MUSIC REPUBLIC was a music program that Ayumi hosted, which aired from October 12, 2002 through March 20, 2004. It was a half hour program on Saturdays starting at 11:30pm. Most of the guests were also musicians and at the end of the show, Ayu would sing a song (sometimes with the guest).
Who is Max?
Masato "Max" Matsuura is Ayumi's producer and the man who "discovered" her. He is a high-powered producer for other Avex artists as well. He is often seen with Ayumi and greatly helped her career early on. Ayu seems to have great affection and respect for him judging by her comments on him. Max's Blog
Who is Bancho?
Kanako "Bancho" Miura is Ayumi's nail artist. Anytime you see Ayumi's nails, it is the work of Bancho. Official Site
Who is Mika/John?
Mika "John" Noguchi is the President of a popular lingerie line in Japan, Peach John. She is Ayumi's friend and is often seen in Ayu's pics. As a joke, Ayumi has called Mika her "Mother" because she is like a stage mom, drawing confusion amongst non-Japanese fans.
What are the names of her dogs?
On the Feb. 28, 2007 episode of 'Hanamaru Cafe,' Ayumi stated that she has 5 dogs. They are named after foods/desserts and are Marron (the only mini dachshund), Crea, Choco, Vanilla, and Purin. Marron in French means chestnut and Purin is a Japanese custard or pudding. Crea is the dog that Ayumi took her penname from.
[addendum]Popteen February 06. Here is what she has to say about her dogs:
* The white Yorkshire Terrier is her first dog. It's name was Lily (deceased).
* The first dog she got and named was Ringo, a Yorkie (deceased). Her mom named it Ichigo originally it seems but Ayu changed it back to Ringo.
* There was Melon, a black Chihuahua. She named it after an expensive fruit. (deceased)
* Then Crea, which she says was named after the Honda commercial she did for the Giorno Crea!
* Then she got Marron.
* Then she got both Purin and Vanilla at the same time.
* Lastly, she got Choco, a black Chihuahua.
* She says if she were to get another dog, she might name it Cookie in the vein of names after sweet foods.
At the time of publication, she states she has 5 living dogs.
As of September 15, 2007, Ayumi stated on Countdown Japan Radio that she has 6 dogs (no names were mentioned).
In the January 2008 issue of Deji Deji Diary, Ayumi revealed the name of her new miniature Yorkie, Cocoa.
Where was Ayumi when she stayed in Hong Kong? And where did she shoot the covers for "glitter/fated"?
She stayed at the Presidential Suite at the InterContinental Hotel Hong Kong. The cost is approximately $11,000 USD a night.
http://www.hongkong-ic.intercontinental.com
Where was Dearest filmed?
"Dearest" was filmed in California. The scenes with the windmills are specifically on a windmill farm in Palm Springs, CA.
Where was fairyland filmed?
The PV was filmed in O'ahu, Hawaii. The waterfall scene, specifically, was at Waimea Falls. The PV reportedly cost 240,000,000 yen to make. Part of the cost undoubtedly went into building the hut that was specifically made to be burnt down later.
Where were Bold & Delicious and Pride filmed?
These were filmed at the same time in uptown Manhattan, New York. It's filmed underneath the Riverside Drive/12th Avenue Bridge, at W134th/W133rd street, looking south. (thanks to zoomzoom)
Where was BLUE BIRD filmed?
"BLUE BIRD" was filmed on an island in Guam.
Where was Beautiful Fighters filmed?
Though it had a very American feel to it, the "Beautiful Fighters" PV was filmed on a stage in Japan. (confirmed in Getsurei the Television, August 2006 issue)
Where was Talkin' 2 Myself filmed?
It was filmed on location in Fukushima.
6th June 2008, 02:42 AM
How to join TeamAyu (Official Fanclub)
http://avexnet.or.jp/ayu/jp/teamayu/
http://fc.avex.jp/ayu/index.html
http://www.teamayu.com/index.html
First off, you must have a Japanese mailing address to join. There is no international fanclub at this time and so basically the only way to join is if 1) you live in Japan or 2) you have a friend who will register on your behalf. The fanclub is only in Japanese.
There are two types of memberships for TeamAyu:
Annual Fee: 6,000 yen
1) Original membership card
2) Subscription to the newsletter
3) Priority for buying concert tickets (however this is based on balloting/lottery)
4) Chance to mail order for concert goods or fanclub exclusive goods
5) Priority invites for tv and radio events
6) Video reports
7) Photo gallery
8) Screensaver downloads
9) Access to other TeamAyu exclusives, etc.
10) Web access
B Course
6) Updates via e-mail (inconsistent)
* you may upgrade to A Course from this package. Basically, this package doesn't include access to the daily Ayu pics & posts.
1) register with a valid email
2) if the email is valid, you will receive an email with steps on how to join
3) follow the directions in the email
4) you will receive a mail regarding payment
5) within a week of payment, you should receive a hard copy of the bill for joining
6) pay the fee (a yearly fee)
7) after paying, you should receive a Team Ayu confirmation letter
8) you should start getting Team Ayu mailings in about a month
At this time, I do not have any firsthand accounts of joining TeamAyu. All the above information is from the official sites. I will move to Japan this summer, so I will try to document everything it takes to register along with screencaps/pics if I can.
[August 17, 2008 Update]
The info on the site is pretty straightforward. After registering with an email address, you should receive an email within minutes (the email does NOT have to be a Japanese email, it can be with any email provider.) The information you provide to them upon registering is standard fare (name, sex, birthday, Japanese address, home or cell phone number, password.) Payment is by credit card or combini. If paying by combini, there is an extra 200 yen charge in addition to the fanclub fee. You have a month after registering to pay the amount in full.
Last edited by devilayu; 17th August 2008 at 05:18 AM.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Q: Lightweight WSO2 ID provided Access Token validation? How does one validate an OAuth 2.0 access token obtained from a WSO2 Identity Server?
More specifically, I am looking for a lightweight alternative that:

*

*does not involve direct or indirect SOAP requests (such as using stubs to call an admin service).

*has a small set of dependencies (in software libraries and/or required other middleware components).

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange