Numéro deux (Number Two). Jean-Luc Godard, 1975.
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Edition screened: Olive Blu-ray, released 2012. French language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 88 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
Showing posts with label Elusive Top. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Elusive Top. Show all posts
Red Beard
Red Beard (Akahige). Akira Kurosawa, 1965.
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Edition screened: Criterion DVD #159, released 2002. Japanese language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 185 minutes.
Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.
Red Beard is a fitting sayōnara to a successful run of Hollywood-style Kurosawa films starring Toshirô Mifune. In a large supporting role rather than starring as the lead, Mifune masterfully portrays a 2010 Robert De Nero portraying a mid-1960s Mifune who plays a young doctor of the late Tokugawa shogunate.
The Wind Will Carry Us
The Wind Will Carry Us (Bad ma ra khahad bord.) Abbas Kiarostami, 1999.
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Edition screened: Criterion Blu-ray #1261, released 2025. Persian language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 118 minutes.
Summary: A turtle is marooned on his back but gets righted. An uncredited cameo by one of Iran’s leading dung beetle actors is a delightful scene in the film.
A rewarding and enjoyable experience, like every Kiarostami film I have seen.
Total Pixel Space
Total Pixel Space. Jacob Adler, 2024.
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Edition screened: Watched online. English language. Runtime approximately 9 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
A short film that reminded me how simple a wonderful thing can be and what the word wonderful means.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpAeygE4d1A&t=1s
Southland Tales
Southland Tales. Richard Kelly, 2006.
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Edition screened: Extended “Cannes Cut” included with Arrow Blu-ray, released 2021. English language. Runtime approximately 159 minutes.
Summary: Very brief discussion of monkeys used in a NASA-like flight, with a one-second image of a monkey sitting unprovoked in something like a space capsule or simulator. No particular depictions of violence or harm to any animals.
In a normal world Southland Tales would be a great YouGetItorYouDon’t film. Under the current regime of vulgar disfunction nearly identical to the film’s content, it’s more of a YouAllowYourselfToGetItorYouDon’t.
The Arrow release includes the theatrical cut, the longer Cannes debut cut, and the 2007 animated short This Is the Way the World Ends.
The King of Marvin Gardens
The King of Marvin Gardens. Bob Rafelson, 1972.
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Edition screened: Criterion Blu-ray #550, included in America Lost and Found: The BBS Story box set, released 2010. English language. Runtime approximately 104 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
A Safe Place
A Safe Place. Henry Jaglom, 1971.
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Edition screened: Criterion Blu-ray #548, included in America Lost and Found: The BBS Story box set, released 2010. English language. Runtime approximately 92 minutes.
Summary: Short, calm scenes of Orson Welles in a zoo; no depictions of violence or harm to animals.
You’re Human Like the Rest of Them
You’re Human Like the Rest of Them. B.S. Johnson, 1967.
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Edition screened: BFI Flipside Blu-ray/DVD set #25, released 2013. English language. Runtime approximately 18 minutes.
Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.
The BFI release of this engaging short film also includes other works by Johnson, all free of animal cruelty and most of rewarding intellectual and artistic content:
Paradigm (1968 B.S. Johnson, approx. 10 minutes)
The Unfortunates (1969 B.S. Johnson, approx. 45 minutes)
Up Yours Too Guillaume Apollinaire! (1969 B.S. Johnson, approx. 2 minutes)
Unfair! (1970 B.S. Johnson, approx. 8 minutes)
March! (1971 B.S. Johnson, approx. 13 minutes)
Poem (1971 B.S. Johnson, approx. 1 minute)
B.S. Johnson on Dr. Samuel Johnson (1972 B.S. Johnson, approx. 26 minutes)
Not Counting the Savages (1972 Mike Newell, approx. 28 minutes)
Fat Man on a Beach (1974 Michael Bakewell, approx. 40 minutes)
Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (Bir Zamanlar Anadolu'da). Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2011.
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Edition screened: Cinema Guild Blu-ray, released 2012. Turkish language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 157 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
Independencia
Independencia. Raya Martin, 2009.
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Edition screened: Second Run DVD #088, released 2014. Filipino language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 75 minutes.
Summary: A child playing among baby chickens creates a potential threat to the chicks, but all is well.
The Second Run DVD also includes Martin’s 2007 short film Track Projections.
Vivre sa vie
Vivre sa vie: film en douze tableaux (My Life to Live). Jean-Luc Godard, 1962.
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Edition screened: Criterion Blu-ray #512, released 2010. French language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 83 minutes.
Summary: No animals or references to animals in the film.
A 1956 Gottlieb Sea Belles in the café at 8:20. A different unidentified table is first seen at 29:52 with a better view of the left side of the backglass at 35:35.
Anchoress
Anchoress. Chris Newby, 1993.
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Edition screened: Included with A Field in England (Disc 11) in Severin Blu-ray box set All the Haunts Be Ours: A Compendium of Folk Horror, released 2021. English language. Runtime approximately 108 minutes.
Summary: A woman cleans a chicken carcass during dialogue 1:14:07 - 1:14:19, and again 1:15:12 - 1:15:30. The camera’s focus is not on this action but we do see her reach inside the chicken and remove entrails.
Despite that, Anchoress is a visually rewarding and philosophically affirming viewing experience, reminiscent of November and Marketa Lazarová.
Eno
Eno. Gary Hustwit, 2024.
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English language. Runtime approximately 85 minutes.
Summary: Eno considers killing a fly.
A friend provides these comments at Letterboxd. Check their other content also!
A wonderful anti-auteur, non-linear music journal (the word “bio” is false here because it implies someone else is telling the story. Rather, here, the software is randomly selecting files from a database, which can be added to at anytime—even after the film has been aired). This is the first ever generative film with millions of possible variations making it different every time you see it.
But the generative mode of the film is but a complement to Eno themself who embodies the philosophy the film speaks to. Their emphasis on integration and surrender; the way they incorporate and are inspired by nature; their reframing of genius to scenius; and how they approach art as a fluid movement across a spectrum rather than remaining in fixed points; and even their equalising idea of suggesting that beyond all individual artistic conceptions, at the basis, all art is merely trying to convey emotion (similar to Deleuze’s affect theory); all this serves to show Brian Eno as one of the greatest living artistic minds and surely the first ever posthuman musician. Such an enjoyable experience. Every artist should see this!
(The one flaw was Eno wanting to kill a fly and so their symbiotic ideas of co-existence apparently falls short of including other animals. Eco, but still speciesist. Thus, eco Eno still has ego.)
Story of a Love Affair
Story of a Love Affair (Cronaca di un amore). Michelangelo Antonioni, 1950.
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Edition screened: NoShame DVD, released 2005. Italian language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 98 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
Werckmeister Harmonies
Werckmeister Harmonies (Werckmeister harmóniák). Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky, 2000.
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Edition screened: Criterion 4K UHD #1215, released 2004. Hungarian language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 145 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals. A taxidermy whale figures prominently but there is nothing visually alarming.
The BD in this dual format Criterion release also includes Tarr’s Family Nest (1979).
Merry-Go-Round
Merry-Go-Round. Jacques Rivette, 1981.
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Edition screened: Included in Arrow Blu-ray box set The Jacques Rivette Collection, released 2016. English language and French language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 160 minutes.
Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.
Journey to Italy
Journey to Italy (Viaggio in Italia). Roberto Rossellini, 1954.
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Edition screened: Criterion Blu-ray #675 included in 3-Blu-ray set #672, 3 Films by Roberto Rossellini Starring Ingrid Bergman released 2013. English language. Runtime approximately 85 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
The Journey to Italy BD includes good supplemental material, all free of animal violence although Ingrid Bergman does handle a chicken awkwardly through the last part of The Chicken.
- My Dad Is 100 Years Old (Guy Maddin short film, 2005)
- The Chicken (Roberto Rossellini short film, 1952)
- The Rossellinis on Capri (Swedish newsreel, 1953)
- Surprised by Death (James Quadt, 2013 film essay)
- Living and Departed (Tag Gallagher film essay)
- Ingrid Bergman Remembered (Gene Feldman comments, 1995)
- Rossellini Through His Own Eyes (Walter Hart comments, 1992)
- Comments by critic Adriano Apra
- An interview with twin sisters Ingrid and Isabella Rossellini
- Comments by Martin Scorsese
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