Team Top Ten: Back to School Edition

Amir here, bringing you Team Experience’s latest top ten list.

It’s hard to think of a genre that gets less respect than the high school film, but try contemplating a list of the best high school films of all time and a never-ending stream of classics seems to rush forward. That’s exactly what our team decided to do this month, and to make things difficult for ourselves, we expanded our horizons to include school films about kids of all ages, from all countries. After all, teenagers aren’t the only ones going back to school next week. What about the younger kids?

As it turned out, our team was more enthusiastic about this poll than any we had done before. With more ballots and more votes than ever before, this list was a real hoot for me to compile; and the range and quality of the films that were left off the final ten only serves to highlight the wealth of options at our disposal. From bonafide classics like Splendor in the Grass and If…, to influential foreign films like Zero for Conduct and Where Is the Friend’s Home?, to more recent films like Elephant and Perks of Being Wallflower, to documentaries like Hoop Dreams, back to school gives everyone with any cinematic taste something to savor. And those are just the stuff that didn’t make the cut! Well, those along with Grease, Boyz n the Hood, American Graffiti, Heathers, Wet Hot American Summer, Back to the Future, Dead Poet’s Society, and… you get the picture.

So, without further ado...

 Team Experience’s Top Ten School Films

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La Strada

We close out our 1954 celebration with Amir on one of Federico Fellini's classic from the year...

Writing about canonical classics can be as difficult as it is rewarding. The larger amount of existing texts and the time that has been afforded to an artwork to cement its place in our cultural psyche allow for deeper familiarity and reflection in a way that is impossible with more recent films.  On the other hand, well, fresh angles are harder to find. What is there left to say about a film like Federico Fellini’s La Strada? Not much, but in truth, you can never talk too much about one of the best films ever made.

Growing up as an Iranian cinephile, and gradually getting into more serious films as a teenager, Italian cinema is the most natural foray outside of the local arthouse. Iranian cinema is not as indebted to any Western filmic culture as it is to the films of Italian masters; those films strike a particularly strong resonance. (Consider that the latest poll of the greatest films of all time voted on by Iranian film critics includes The Bicycle Thieves, La Strada and Cinema Paradiso all in the top ten.)

Fellini’s films are of a different breed than the neorealism of Zavattini, De Sica and Rossellini whose influence loomed heavily over the arthouse I was voraciously consuming at the time. To the dismay of some of his contemporaries, Fellini veered off quite drastically from his roots in neorealist cinema. [More...]

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Box Office: Straight Outta Competition

 

Amir here, to bring you the weekend’s box office report.

It’s a historic weekend of sorts. In this year of records being broken left and right, perhaps Straight Outta Compton’s position as the 6th biggest August opening of all time isn’t all that impressive, but considering the context, it’s mighty impressive. Despite the weight of the name of its producers, the iconic original album and the enthusiastic reviews, $56m is still way above expectations. (A cursory look at the films around Compton on the August all-time top ten list truly sets the film apart. N.W.A. is a brand but not exactly a ticket-seller at the multiplex.) Significantly for Universal, the biopic’s gross – nearly double the previous record opening for a musical biopic – means they have reached the 2 billion dollar mark for the year in August, earlier (by four months!) than any studio ever before.

WEEKEND’S TOP FIVE
Straight Outta Compton $56m new
Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation &17m (cum. $138m)
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. $13.5m new
Fantastic Four $8m (cum. $42m)
The Gift $6.5m (cum. $23.5m)

The other wide release, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. didn’t fare so well, which is a shame given at least of two of its four stars are very likeable (and exceptionally glamorous, too). On the limited front, one of my most anticipated films of the year, Noah Baumbach’s Mistress America, opened to rather disappointing returns on four screens, failing even to reach the mark set by Frances Ha, though we can never read too much into this super small platforms. Is it me or does it seem like no one is talking about this film, even though the few who are talking about it are very positive?

I had a splendid weekend: I binge-re-watched the second season of Bojack Horseman, which I wholeheartedly recommend to everyone, and also watched a soon-to-be-released film that currently tops both my best picture and best actress lists for the year.

What did you watch this weekend?

The Look of Silence

Amir returns to his favorite 2014 festival film, newly arrived in theaters...

Midway through The Look of Silence, Joshua Oppenheimer’s follow-up to the 2013 Best Documentary Nominee The Act of Killing, there is a seemingly innocuous moment that sends chills down the spine. The film’s protagonist, Adi, and a male companion are trudging through the forest as they discuss their assassinated family members. Slowly reciting the “Ashhad,” Muslim prayer for the departed, they arrive at a river that runs through the trees. The camera stops as they exit the frame. The forest’s natural humming and buzzing, and the slow movement of the water in dusk’s light lend the moment a haunting eeriness. The weight of their wounds lingers above the water; the emptiness of the space is terrifying.

This sequence is not unique to the structure of the film, a documentary whose emotional impact and, frequently, its thematic development, hinges on small, quiet moments; a shot of a motorcycle riding away toward the forests, a woman sitting still at the doorway of her house, a long gaze that captures the gravity of decades of history.  Every miniscule gesture is effective, and the cumulative impact of these small wonders adds up to a film that is, without hyperbole, one of the best documentaries ever made.

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Breaking News: Almodovar Will Produce Asghar Farhadi's Next Film

Amir here, to share really exciting news involving two of The Film Experience’s favourite auteurs.

Iranian director Asghar Farhadi's next international project has been announced by an Iranian agency and it will be produced by none other than Pedro Almodovar! The as yet untitled film will start shooting in Spain in October 2016 according to Khabar Online. 

Farhadi’s script for this France-Spain co-production has already been completed. Alexandre Mallet-Guy of Memento Film (which distributed Farhadi’s previous feature The Past) will co-produce the film along with Almodovar. The screenplay is written in English and Spanish and the cast will be comprised of American and Spanish actors. 

Reports suggest that Farhadi, who rose to international fame with About Elly and the Oscar-winning A Separation, intends to film another one of his finished scripts in Iran before travelling to Spain to commence pre-production. The film will be his second feature filmed outside of Iran, following the success of the Paris-set The Past. Almodovar, meanwhile, has his own film to deal with before moving on to Farhadi’s project. He is currently filming Silencio.