Team FYC: Stories We Tell for Best Editing

In this series our contributors sound off on their favorite fringe contenders. Here's Jose Solis on "Stories We Tell" It's winning Best Documentary critics prizes but let's talk another category.

Sarah Polley’s brilliant Stories We Tell isn’t as much a “documentary” as it is a psychological thriller. As the film begins she teases you suggesting this will be a simple case of “let’s find the truth about my mother” kind of film, only to then pull the rug from under your feet and reveal that she’s not exactly interested in delivering a beautiful conclusion tied up with a pretty ribbon. Delivering more twists and turns than any other film this year, Stories We Tell owes much of its success to its byzantine editing (by Mike Munn), which takes us on what feels like an emotional roller coaster ride.

Earlier this year, I spoke to Polley who explained how and why this structure came to be:

[instead of going for a traditional linear structure] what if we’re revealing information that is from before this story starts and reveal it halfway through this story, so that it gives a whole new meaning to what we’ve seen and for me it felt like it would give the audience a sense that was similar to mine. You know you hit bottom and a trap door opens, then you hit bottom again and another trap door opens and you never really got solid ground under your feet, because the amount that you can learn about something and its context is infinite.”

The fact that she wanted audiences to share her experience the same way she had lived it is admirable and humble, the fact that she pulled it off by reminding us that memory might very well be the essence of cinema is nothing if not brilliant.

Previously on Team FYC

Who Will Make The Movies Of The Future?

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JA from MNPP here - have y'all seen The New York Times' list of 20 Young Directors To Watch? I only stumbled upon it with the news that Beasts of the Southern Wild director Benh Zeitlin tells them what his next movie's going to be about therein, and seeing as how I'm not a Beasts of the Southern Wild fan that was a strange way for me to come upon it, especially when there are names therein I'm much more interested in.

My personal favorite picks of theirs would be Sarah Polley (who I fell in love with in The Sweet Hereafter and then really fell in love with, like squared, in Go, and then you just keep on multiplying that love every single time she does anything - I think me and her and our love affair are pretty much at infinity about now here in the wake of Stories We Tell), Yorgos Lanthimos (Dogtooth is what the inside of my head looks like, which yeah, I know, steer clear), Andrew Haigh and Na Hong-jin (both Chaser and The Yellow Sea gave me straight up heart palpitations), but I must admit there are several names I'm not familiar with - which is awesome! I'm always up for some learnin', and excited to check the less familiar folks out. Who do you love? And who do you think's missing? I'm personally sad to see a lack of genre moviemakers - whither Ti West?

But who knows - maybe some of these folks will end up making their way onto TFE's next list of our favorite directors of the 21st Century. Sarah Polley's already there!

Team Top Ten: Best Directors of the 21st Century

Steve McQueen didn't make the list but Fassy still loves him (as do many of our contributors)Amir here, to bring you the first edition of Team Top Ten, a communal list by all of Film Experience’s contributors that will sit in for our regular Tuesday Top Ten list once a month. For our first episode, we’ve decided to rank the best new directors of the 21st century. These are all directors who have made their first film after 2000. (Short films, TV and theatre work didn’t render anyone ineligible. Only feature length fiction and documentary films were considered.)  

I had a blast compiling the 18 lists of our contributors to arrive at the final ten because their submissions were incredibly eclectic and surprising. I’d made a bet with myself that Steve McQueen (Hunger, Shame) would top the list, and lo and behold, he failed to make the cut altogether, though by a very fine margin. Korean director Bong Joon Ho was also left off, despite showing up on more than a handful of lists. Jason Reitman, Joshua Marston, Rian Johnson and David Gordon Green all came very close too but this was a tightly contested race, evidenced by the three-way tie for our tenth spot. Overall, 71 directors got at least one vote. We travelled all the way from Japan to Portugal, from Greece to Mexico, via documentaries, comedies and superhero films. We loved stories about Muslim families, gay romances, World War II and the beautifully painted worlds of Sylvain Chomet. What we didn't like very much turned out to be actors-turned-directors, as current Oscar champ Ben Affleck got only a single vote, and George Clooney and Tommy Lee Jones failed to manage even that.

In the end, these are the twelve men and women Team Experience considers the best (thus far) of the 21st century crop:

=10. Michel Gondry
Human Nature, Eternal Sunshine, The Sciene of Sleep, Block Party, Be Kind Rewind, etcetera

Gondry's films are shaggy fantasies powered by a boundless imagination. They're more than a little goofy, speaking quirky as if it were a language, and they have an endearing handmade quality, with their maker's fingerprints visible around the rough edges. Bent as they are toward romance and optimism, Gondry's miniature worlds provide a little solace from reality.
- Andreas Stoehr

11 more directors after the jump

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Curio: Alexa's Favorite Film Moments of 2012

Alexa here with my own contribution to the year in review. Everyone seems to agree that 2012 was a great year in film, and many are dissing 2011 in the process. Was 2011 really that bad? I would argue no...but I digress.  This week is about honoring the films of last year, and we will hear from Seth MacFarlane's loud mouth on Thursday which will get the most attention in the coming weeks. So rather than add another best-of list to the heap, I thought I'd share instead my favorite film moments of 2012: my best cinematic experiences, old and new, best film celebrations, and generally the moments that reinvigorated my love of the medium.

10. Discovering the joys of reform school
After finding a musty promotional packet for So Young, So Bad at a thrift store in Georgia, I found myself down a juvenile delinquent rabbit hole, devouring many films in the reform school girl genre, including Reform School Girl (1957), Reform School Girls (1986), La residencia (The House That Screamed) (1969), and my personal favorite, Untamed Youth (1957). 

9. Drowning my Oscar sorrows in pie
Overall I was displeased with the Oscars last year, primarily because my favorite Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was passed over in the few categories for which it was recognized. (Don't get me started on Gary Oldman's loss). So in the spirit of Minny from The Help, a transferred my anger into a pie that was all but annihilated by the end of the broadcast, yet without her secret ingredient.

Take This Waltz, Silver Linings Playbook and more... after the jump

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The Links We Share

Manuel Muñoz one of my favorite writers on his "sometime love" for director Hal Ashby
Vanity Fair on the Scientology auditions to be Tom Cruise's girl. He's been on 7 of their covers. Won't this spoil their chances at an 8th?
NFB Sarah Polley on her next film Stories We Tell 
Pajiba on "The Death of the Movie Theater" a super depressing but otherwise enjoyable read. It's really too bad the nation's theater owners don't get how they've let us all down.

 

I Need My Fix Alexander Skarsgard for GQ 
Guardian Shia Labeouf's antics keeps people talking
Hollywood Elsewhere Will Terrence Malick's To The Wonder inspire twitter brawls?
New York Times RIP. the legendary lyricist and Oscar winner Hal David ("Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head") dies at 91.
i09 first image of Lee Pace (yay) in The Hobbit as Legolas' father. My what good genes those elf boys have. (See also: Orlando Bloom 2001-2003) 
Gothamist reports on Leonardo DiCaprio filming with strippers for The Wolf of Wall Street. Is it just me or do you never think of Leonardo as a sex scene kind of star?

Awards Daily Oscar Watch 2013? Matthew McConaughey goes full on Bale as an AIDS victim for The Dallas Buyers Club. He's lost 30 lbs.
CHUD Guy Pearce is having a good year. But is his role in Iron Man 3 only cameo stuff? And even if he says so can you believe him? Remember that Cotillard continually lied about her role in TDKR to the press. You do what you gotta do to stop spoilers.
Gawker Nicolas Cage finally settled his overdue bill with a local video rental store; King of Comedy and A Star is Born cost him! (Even more shocking than the news that he rents from a DVD store is his good taste in movies! Too bad it doesn't show in his own filmography.) 

Finally, this video from Flavorwire is inspired by Lawless and a must for Costume Design devotees. Presenting: the coolest looking characters from Prohibition Era set movies.

I want a pin strip suit and a fetching hat, don't you?