[M. Dale Prins]

: 94. A Moment of Innocence (4.89, 9 votes)

Yes. Yes. Oh happy yes. Some of the good in this new list I had some reasonable hope for, but I was not at all expecting The Bread and the Vase/A Moment of Innocence to make the list. I would like to hug my other eight voters.

All in all, there's seven new/returning from '04 films that I'm very happy to see, and there's no film that fell off the list that makes me particularly sad. Good job, voters -- a stronger list than list year, I really and truly think.

Dale, temporary steroid insomniac

[M. Leary]

This is a great list, excepting To End All Wars, and The Year of Living Dangerously. I haven't the slightest idea why this is a "spiritually significant" film compared to other choices from Weir's filmography.

The significant loss from last year seems to be 2001, perhaps its evolutionary connotations rub people the wrong way. It is very nice to have The Sweet Hereafter back.

[BethR]

Happy well-deserved vacationing, Alan! I'm pretty happy with this list. Some not-surprising choices, some possibly controversial--a good thing, IMHO.

Most of the new additions and the returning films seem like appropriate choices. As for those that slipped away...somehow I suspect they won't be gone forever.

Guess I'd better put Andrei Rublev back in my Netflix queue and finish watching it this time

[David Smedberg]

Two quick thoughts:

Rashomon fell off?! We must remedy that nexy year.

And now I have no excuse to put off seeing Koyaanisqatsi any more.

[Ron Reed]

Great stuff, Alan! Thanks for all your work on this.

Of the 145 films that have made an appearance on the A&F 100...
60 films have been on all three lists.
35 films have been on two of the three lists.
50 films have been on only one list.

Of the films which had been on both the 2004 and 2005 lists 7 dropped off in 2006;
2001: A Space Odyssey
Amadeus
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Life Is Beautiful
Lord Of The Rings
The Shawshank Redemption
Unforgiven

[Ron Reed]

Directors with 5 films on the 2006 list;
Bresson
Tarkovsky

Directors with 3 films on the 2006 list;
Bergman
Dardenne
Dreyer
Kiarostami
Rosselini

Directors with 2 films on the 2006 list;
Kieslowski
Kurosawa
Murnau
Rohmer
von Trier
Weir

Non-directing writers with 2 films on the 2006 list;
Foote

[Darrel Manson]

Additions I'm happy to see:

• AfterLife
• Places in the Heart (the one I really wanted included)
• Fiddler on the Roof (not sure how we ever justified it's absence).

It's nice to have Peter Weir back, even though the films here may not be my choice of his films to include.

I'll miss some that are going off, but it's nothing that challenges the integrity of the list.

[Ron Reed]

This is a great list, excepting To End All Wars, and The Year of Living Dangerously. I haven't the slightest idea why this is a "spiritually significant" film compared to other choices from Weir's filmography.

I'm sure this isn't the place to dig into this question, and I don't want to open (or find) a designated thread to do it up proper at the minute, but I will say this is the Weir film that affects me, personally, the most, and in ways that I would call spiritual. I suppose if my focus were on the love story (or the synth music) I might see it differently - that aspect doesn't seem particularly strong - but because my fascination is with Billy Kwan, and his relationships with the other two characters, I find most all of its central themes to be strongly connected with faith.

(Oh, what the heck. I kept writing, ended up with a paragraph or so, might as well cut it from here and paste it into an appropriate thread. The film is worth it.)

This post has been edited by Ron: 12 August 2006 - 10:48 PM

[John]

The list looks pretty good from here. Glad to see Hell House back, as well as Fearless. Though for my money when talking about Weir, The Mosquito Coast or Picnic at Hanging Rock should come in ahead of The Year of Living Dangerously.

I especially miss Pickpocket and The Virgin Spring.

Of the new additions I haven't seen, I am most looking forward to After Life, A Moment of Innocence, Stromboli, and Summer.

I'm not sure I've heard of Most before. Is that the one that was Oscar nominated for best short film a few years ago?

[Ron Reed]

The list looks pretty good from here. Glad to see Hell House back, as well as Fearless. Though for my money when talking about Weir, The Mosquito Coast or Picnic at Hanging Rock should come in ahead of The Year of Living Dangerously.

Because you see them as better films, or because they have a stronger claim on "spiritual significance"?

I'm not sure I've heard of Most before. Is that the one that was Oscar nominated for best short film a few years ago?

Yes indeed.

[John]

The list looks pretty good from here. Glad to see Hell House back, as well as Fearless. Though for my money when talking about Weir, The Mosquito Coast or Picnic at Hanging Rock should come in ahead of The Year of Living Dangerously.

Because you see them as better films, or because they have a stronger claim on "spiritual significance"?

Mostly because I think that on the whole, they are better films than YOLD (which, btw, I happen to like a good deal, in spite of the occasional synthesizer breaking into the action). Where YOLD makes an occasional misstep, I feel that in those other two, Weir largely avoids such problems.

[Overstreet]

Yes, Most is a short. Nicely crafted, with enough characters for a feature-length film, but definitely a short.

[M. Leary]

I find it odd that the rules governing shorts are so rigid but those governing the minimum number of votes required to be eligible are so elastic.

That's true, but I can understand the ruling for shorts. Even the best shorts every year are seen by a very few, and then are rendered hardly accessible to the average film watcher (unless they are interested in tracking down which annual DVD collection of shorts it may have popped up on and then trying to actually find this DVD through Netflix or something of that nature).

I would not at all be opposed to creating a smaller list of short films that fall out of the purview of the larger set. This could be quite helpful to someone wishing to broaden their film horizons even further. And, of course, would be fun.

[Darren H]

I've never heard of the 3rd most spiritually significant film. Does that mean I'm a bad critic or a bad Christian?

[M. Leary]

I think it just means you don't watch enough TV around the Christmas holidays.

[MattPage]

or Easter

FWIW, I reviewed it a while back on my blog, and did a scene guide shortly after.

Matt

[M. Leary]

That is a good idea. Perhaps we could start a thread concerning possible nominations so that people can have a year to bone up on classic short films before actually having to vote on them.

[SDG]

my review of the justly celebrated #3 film

one that brings nice diversity to the list. English language, family film, animation. and one of the more critically literate and responsible (yet reverent and devout) treatments of the Gospel text, AFAIK.

Matt, I read your review back when you first posted it. Nice piece! (Did the film really have a theatrical release in the UK? Cool!)

This post has been edited by SDG: 14 August 2006 - 10:08 AM

[MattPage]

Thanks!

Yeah it did, and it even showed in our local. Sadly only at 6pm so the theatre was quite empty. It worked out well actually cos at the time a mate of mine and I went to the cinema most weeks, so it was one of those natural opportunities to watch a film about Jesus with someone who wouldn't claim to follow him, and to be able to talk about it without it feeling like they were thinking they were getting the hard sell (which they weren't).

Matt (veering slightly off topic)