Cinemarch Madness: Mathias Division Poll
Brutal draw; the only thing I can rule out is Wild Hearts Can’t Be Broken, because I think it’s a bit lightweight, but that’s just me.
My votes? Precious and Capturing the Friedmans get honorable mentions, but in the end, it’s the merciless A Film Unfinished; Leaving Las Vegas and her dreadful cab ride; and the claustrophobic The Parallax View, probably the most unsettling and depressing thriller I’ve seen.
LLV may get into the semis, but I don’t think enough people have seen my other two to push them forward; it’s likely Dancer in the Dark and Melancholia rounding out the top three, with Bent a solid contender as well. Still: if you take nothing else from Cinemarch Madness, put The Parallax View on your wish list. Pakula’s a ninja.
Mathias Division: Vote for the THREE (3) harshest films.
- Leaving Las Vegas (18%, 107 Votes)
- Precious (17%, 97 Votes)
- Dancer in the Dark (16%, 94 Votes)
- Capturing the Friedmans (8%, 47 Votes)
- Gorillas in the Mist (8%, 46 Votes)
- Melancholia (8%, 45 Votes)
- Bent (5%, 28 Votes)
- Snow Falling on Cedars (4%, 26 Votes)
- The Parallax View (3%, 19 Votes)
- A Place in the Sun (3%, 16 Votes)
- Lilya 4ever (2%, 14 Votes)
- A Film Unfinished (2%, 12 Votes)
- Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken (2%, 12 Votes)
- M (2%, 11 Votes)
- In the Mood for Love (1%, 6 Votes)
Total Voters: 229
Loading ...Not sure what’s going on? You’ll fit right in around here (heh) but in the meantime, the Cinemarch Madness FAQ is here, and a poll overview is here.
Tags: A Film Unfinished Alan J. Pakula Bent Cinemarch Madness Dancer in the Dark Leaving Las Vegas Melancholia movies Precious Sean Mathias The Parallax View Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken
Just saw an older movie on TCM that fits this list “Germany Year Zero” is post-war Berlin by Roberto Rosselini 1948.
Oh my God, Lilya 4ever is the hardest gut punch I’ve ever gotten from a film. I literally started spontaniously crying two days later walking down the street thanks to that movie. It was amazing and I never, ever, ever want to see it again.
Oh sweet fancy Moses… Precious. I stumbled from the theater in a daze and just wanted to be asleep. Like, a heavy, drugged sleep.
Oh dear, “Dancer in the Dark”. Never in my LIFE have I been so traumatized by a movie. I’ve had films make me cry before, but this was the only time I’ve had to leave the theater durning the credits so I could run to the bathroom and FINISH crying. That movie should be declared a war crime.
“Leaving Las Vegas” was pretty damn depressing (death-by-alcohol AND a rape scene? Joy, really), and I had to vote for “Gorilla’s in the Mist” without ever seeing it (bad things happening to animals on a big scale make me hate humanity), but nothing comes close to DitD.
This is going to sound strange, but I found Von Trier’s other entry “Melancholia” to be gorgeous and wonderfully unsettling enough to watch TWICE. And oddly enough the endless wedding segment was WAY harder to get through than the end of the whole damn world.
I find myself voting more for the films I haven’t seen than the ones I have – there’s a reason I can’t bring myself to watch ‘LLV’ or ‘DitD.’ Most of the entries I’ve seen, I find myself thinking, “Well, it wasn’t THAT bad…” ‘Gorillas in the Mist’ I’ve seen more times than I can count (it solidified my Iain Glen crush at an early age) and I’m in the minority who found ‘Precious’ a ham-fisted directorial mess whose song-and-dance cutaways lessened the impact of an otherwise horrific story. (The book had its own issues, but on the whole, I found it much more affecting.)