What Director to Rank Next?

by Cláudio Alves

I don't know about you, but I had a lot of fun ranking Hayao Miyazaki's feature filmography. So much so that I feel inspired to do the same with some other beloved auteur. The only issue is deciding which director to rank next. In those write-ups, a commenter suggested David Lynch, so he's on the list of candidates, but there are many more possibilities, storied careers full of fascinating films. Why not put it to a readers' vote and let you choose who you wish to read about? That's exactly what we're doing, and you have ten possibilities to choose from, all of which have works I love and a filmography small enough to be manageable…

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30 Biggest Subtitled Hits (and where to watch them)

Our daily "Year in Review" lists have begun!

Even before the pandemic, box office reporting was becoming more secretive. Netflix was the chief disruptor since their Oscar hopefuls got theatrical releases but numbers were never reported. Other streaming distributors followed and once you added in the increasing regularity of movies simultaneously doing theatrical (generally reported) and VOD (generally not reported) it was chaos. The COVID-19 pandemic was the ultimate disruptor of course, changing global viewing habits, by virtue of Father Time. International cinema in the US has been increasingly demoted to streaming-only since adult audiences have been the toughest to lure back to the theaters. That said there are subtitled pictures that played theatrically this year and we wanted to honor them by noting the success stories...

Curiously the only foreign country that habitually reports big box office numbers in the US is India but those numbers are often reported as "estimates" in the way, say, European titles didn't tend to be. Furthermore Indian pictures, RRR being an obvious exception, don't tend to get much US media coverage even though they sell tickets, at least in specific areas of the country which makes it all kind of confusing in terms of "what is a success?".  But here are the numbers that were reported, some surely more accurately than others. The numbers are primarily drawn from two sites (box office mojo and the numbers). Titles with up arrows are still in theaters 

TOP 33 SUBTITLED HITS OF 2022 AT THE US BOX OFFICE
Rank for the calendar year / Movie Title / $ Estimate Domestic Gross / $ Global Gross
Figures updated as of 01/15/23

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Review: South Korea's Oscar Hopeful "Decision to Leave"

by Cláudio Alves

© MUBI

A woman stands in a room, alone. Wallpapered motifs encircle her in a swirl of blue-green something. Are they waves or mountaintops, those shapes repeated into infinity? Maybe they're both, maybe neither. Maybe they're everything. 

According to a Confucian proverb, the wise man admires water, the kind man admires mountains. Or maybe it's benevolence and virtue, some other translation across languages. Two complementing sides of the same person, perhaps a binary of human natures, these words reveal more than their scholarly meaning – at least, they do in Park Chan-wook's Decision to Leave. Ideas of duality percolate throughout the work, as does the attempt to understand the unfathomable reality of another person. We try to find order in chaos, logic in that which has none, pursuing an understanding that will always be out of grasp. Every single one of us is a mystery to others, and to try to transcend the impossibility of knowing someone else is a fool's errand, the most beautiful thing in the world, ecstasy holding hands with despair. It's love…

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First 3 International Feature Submissions for the 95th Oscars

by Nathaniel R

The incredible Tang Wei stars in Park Chan-wook's "Decision to Leave"

Finally some news on the Best International Feature Film Oscar race. It's the most exciting for us to track since you really have to play along to be in the know.  Earlier today we told you about the possibilities from Israel (they always select the winner of the Ophir... unless they can't for eligibilty reasons) and we also have our first three official submissions. They are...

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Cannes at Home: Day 7 – Death to Reality!

by Cláudio Alves

Park Chan-wook and David Cronenberg have arrived. Livening up the 75th Cannes Film Festival, the two auteurs debuted new works, prompting many to sing their hosannas in reverent tones. The Film Experience's own Elisa Giudici has declared Decision to Leave the film of the festival, a sentiment shared by many critics who've celebrated the picture's surprising romanticism and Tang Wei's performance. Cronenberg's Crimes of the Future was less ecstatically received, but the reactions are still positive. The verdict is that the film is less shocking than advertised but more elegiac in tone. Nevertheless, as the director predicted, multiple spectators walked out before the end credits rolled.

While anticipating these filmmakers' new offerings, let's remember their past works – Thirst's sicko love story and eXistenZ's visions of a violent future…

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