COLLIDER: Best overlooked SciFi movies of the last five years: underrated and out of this world!

HIGH LIFE (2018) by Claire Denis

A tough but rewarding watch. The film is a dark, intentionally uncomfortable, and thought-provoking exploration of humanity, benefitting from its enclosed space. Pattinson and Binoche make for compelling and entrancing leads.

Source: https://collider.com/most-underrated-recent-sci-fi-movies/
#scifi #underrated #film #cinema #RobertPattinson #ClaireDenis

I think Claire Denis has been hanging out with Hong Sang-soo a little too much because I never expected her to do a wordy romantic comedy. And the result is delightful! #LettheSunShineIn concerns middle aged divorcée painter Isabelle. Our disheveled heroine cries a lot, out of loneliness, in bed at night alone. Frustrated with her current relationship arrangement, Isabelle takes a trip to the countryside w/ her art circle acquaintances. While taking a walk w/the group, their pomposity & forced social niceties become too much for her. Yet she finds herself in the arms of a soulful country bumpkin on the dance floor. Would that fling last? Loneliness is a terrible thing. In a rom-com setting, Isabelle embodies a middle aged woman in the city dealing with these issues perfectly. After a couple of very dark films (White Material, Bastards), Denis is trying something different. Let the Sun Shine In feels much looser and lighter than her other films. #clairedenis #JulietteBinoche

Avec amour et acharnement might be seen too wordy and conventional for the die-hard #ClaireDenis acolytes who prefer her blissful visual filmmaking with colors and textures. But rest easy, because the film is nothing but. It contains enough visual/aural power and beauty, combined w/ blistering performances by #JulietteBinoche and #VicentLindon. Co-written by Christine Angot, Avec amour et acharnement treads somewhere Denis has not explored before, a domestic chamber piece mainly taking place indoors. It's a boiling teapot that never spills over, unlike the kitchen fire that is Bastards, nor nice cup of tea that is Vendredi soir. Angot seems to be the anchor for Denis to put her feet firmly on the ground, giving Claire Denis films more realistic depiction of life, before the esteemed director again goes off to do a bigger, higher concept, English language productions like High Life and Stars at Noon. But by no means the film is lesser Denis. #Avecamouretacharnement #bothsidesoftheblade

#ClaireDenis goes back to the colonial Africa & tells a story of a coffee plantation owned by a white family caught in civil war. Maria Vial, a matron of the family is perhaps a clueless, arrogant white woman, as she tries to hire fleeing locals to finish coffee harvest, oblivious to total chaos around her. It's her ingrained sense of entitlement that makes her a curio as she refuses to leave & calling other whites undeserving of the beautiful land. We are in the Denis territory and there are some amazingly blissful sequences- Maria riding a motorcycle on the dirt road, piles of child soldiers all doped up with pills & junk food spread out in the Vial house... #IsabelleHuppert’s glaring whiteness is used well against the black continent. #WhiteMaterial is not her most abstract film yet Denis still manages to keep the film absorbing and enigmatic without ever being didactic or boring. It's definitely headier and feels more substantial than her other works. It's invigorating.

It's all about basic human needs- eating, shitting, fucking and making little babies, in space. It's all about the human bodily fluids. Shit happens and people die. Doing Science Fiction, Denis goes about it with bare minimum - no grand establishing shots of the interiors, no extreme high-tech, anticeptic looking dingerdos, just because it's not her concern. There is a 'fuck box' where crew uses to get their rocks off. Denis pushed the limit of what is considered good taste with The Bastards. With High Life, she pushes even further - Taboo isn't taboo anymore. It has sharp edges like her other films. And It's those ecstatic moments, like in many of her other films - frozen bodies floating in space, meteor showers, baby eating dirt in the vegetable garden, dead dog in the stream, sudden burst of violence and emotions that puts High Life very much in the top tier of all Claire Denis-ean film. #highlife #clairedenis #robertpattinson #miagoth #scifi

France, an aptly named young girl, lives an idyllic life in northern Cameroon with her parents and black servants in her perfect sheltered life in a racist country. Everything gets shaken up when Luc, a former missionary turned laborer gets brought in along with the local black workers. France's parents, Aimée and Marc can't get a handle on enigmatic Luc. He is kind of an instigator using his white man gone native shtick against clueless whites and obedient blacks alike. Tension rises and the forbidden passion surfaces when a good servant Protée gets pushed by Luc's antics. Chocolat is a very subtle predecessor to Denis's White Material last year. You can see her progression as a filmmaker in those twenty years- loose structure, striking cinematography & visual poetry. What's not changed is her ability to capture those brilliant moments of alienation/contrasts, sexual tension and lurking-right-underneath-the-surface violence like no other. #clairedenis #IsaachDeBankolé #colonialism

Claire Denis loosely adapts Melville's Billy Budd- a story about the human desire to destroy something pure and beautiful, with a sensual, languid imagery. Arid, rocky Djibouti backdrop clashes with smooth, muscular bodies of young Legionnaires as they carry on their boring daily routines with no real enemies in sight. Galoup, a seasoned military man takes an immediate dislike to a beautiful, righteous new recruit Sentain and looks for excuses to destroy him. His feelings are mixture of desire, jealousy and envy. It's Lavant's physicality on full display here. His pockmarked face and athleticism dominate the screen. I thought Galoup's narration was unnecessary at first since it doesn't add anything much to the plot. Then again, Denis has little concerns for that. On this viewing, I can see how it accentuates Galoup's loneliness and isolation. The ending is definitely my favorite movie ending of all time.
#beautravail #clairedenis #denislavant #grégoirecolin #hermanmelville #billybudd

It's raining. Hard. The camera descend alongside the wall of a building glistening in raindrops outside. The man in the building seems distressed. Then we cut to a naked teenage girl walking down a wet street. She seems to be in trance. Then it's Marco, a sea captain coming in to the harbor. This is how the film starts. With moody music by Tindersticks, I'm instantly hooked. Claire Denis goes all out noir on Bastards, a brooding, nocturnal thriller where innocents get punished and good men go die. With star studded cast - the mix of her regulars (Alex Descas, Vincent Lindon, Gregoire Collin, Michel Subor) and new to her clan (Chiarra Mastroianni, Lola Créton), Denis creates a film experience so seductive and mysterious which I haven't had since maybe Mulholland Dr. Its pulpy premise and fuzzy ending didn't really bother me. Tangerine Dream inspired soundtrack is also gorgeous. #clairedenis #noir

"My only love sprung from my only hate! Too early seen unknown, and known too late! Prodigious birth of love it is to me that I must love a loathed enemy."
❤️‍🔥Romeo + Juliet
.
.
#drama #teenage #LeonardoDiCaprio #ClaireDenis #movies #BazLuhrmann #90s #RomeoandJuliet

Nenette et Boni (1996) - Denis
Kékszakállú (2016) - Solnicki
#visualmotifs #film #gastonsolnicki #clairedenis

Stalker (1979) - Tarkovsky
L’intrus (2004) - Denis
#visualmotifs #film #andreitarkovsky #clairedenis

With tinkling orchestral score and a couple of unobtrusive & brief CG effects, Claire Denis creates fairy tale for grownups with Vendredi Soir. Without much dialog, it tells a one-night-stand taking place amid of a transit strike in Paris. Laure is on her way to her friend's house for dinner. But with the strike, the traffic jam is severer than the one in Week End. Laure picks up a handsome stranger Jean with the urging of radio broadcaster's plea to carpool. The attraction between the two is palpable. Denis makes the most of the City of Lights through the car window. Agnes Godard's fluid camera captures pulsating street and intimacy of the confined space. Even after their hook up, there are sequences suggesting other possible scenarios. Vendredi Soir treads on the subject of one-night-stands very lightly with maturity, avoiding all the pitfalls of crass Hollywood romance or tortured realistic drama. #clairedenis #vendredisoir #vincentlindon #ValérieLemercier #paris #film

So fluid and graceful. Denis's penchant for sketching out knitty-gritty lives of Parisians, both long time residents & newcomers are in J'ai pas sommeil. It involves two storylines, slightly brushing each other. Unlike Wenders and Jarmusch (both of whom Denis worked as an Assistant Director for) fish-out-of-water stories, I find Denis's sensibilities more modern & cosmopolitan. Her portrayal of human desire & yearning lensed by great Agnes Godard has no real parallel. #AgnesGodard #ClaireDenis

It's Lavant's physicality on full display here. His pockmarked face and athleticism dominate the screen. I thought Galoup's narration was unnecessary at first since it doesn't add anything much to the plot. Then again, Denis has little concerns for that. On this viewing of Beau Travail, I can see how it accentuates Galoup's loneliness & isolation. The ending is definitely my favorite movie ending of all time. #ClaireDenis #DenisLavant #HermanMelville #billybudd

Trouble Every Day (2001) - Denis
#ClaireDenis #VincentGallo #BéatriceDalle #tindersticks #vampire #horror

#BothSidesOfTheBlade dos #Tindersticks. Canção que fecha o novo filme, com o mesmo nome (em inglês), da #ClaireDenis. Enormes, a canção e o filme.
#música #filmes #cinema

https://youtu.be/5SfAu_MmvEw

A family drama so understated yet deeply affecting, #35rhums showcases #ClaireDenis ‘s versatility. It presents the life of an extended Parisian family, consists long-time neighbors in the same building. But it’s largely about Lionel and Jo. It's perhaps the tenderest father-daughter relationship drawn on screen. The film comfortably slips in to the universality of human conditions. Paper lanterns in Germany, rice cookers in an African household are completely in harmony w/their surroundings.

No Fear, No Die (1990) - Claire Denis
#clairedenis #solveigdommartin #alexdescas #isaacdebankole #frenchcinema

A couple of years before Nenette et Boni, Claire Denis did an hour-long film with the same principal cast (Grégoire Colin, Alice Houri and Vincent Gallo), commissioned by French TV. The series was called Tous les garçons et les filles leur age.... Naturally, US Go Home feels like a younger sibling to N & B- with Colin and Houri playing brother and sister in both. But the film is no less great. It's a pitch perfect movie about teens. #clairedenis #frenchcinema

As this year winds down I am trying somewhat frantically to finish my Goodreads goal, so I've been working through the "Contemporary Film Directors" series. Learned via the one on #ClaireDenis that TROUBLE EVERY DAY (2001) and IRMA VEP (1996) were both born of Denis and #OlivierAssayas planning to make a three-part movie set in a hotel, each part helmed by a different director. Two movies I never would have thought about together otherwise!