here is that TIFF list for anybody who is interested in it. i can personally recommend most of these movies! except a couple which stink and a couple which i haven't seen.

it's an overload but what i did was just save the list on my desktop and anytime i wanted to watch a film and didn't have any ideas in particular, i'd just pick one from this and watch. i think that's a good way to look at it.

Hidden content (Click to reveal)

# Syndromes and a Century (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand).

# Platform (Jia Zhang-ke, Hong Kong, China/China/Japan/France)

# Still Life (Jia Zhang-ke, China).

# Beau travail (Claire Denis, France).

# In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-wai, Hong Kong, China),

# Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, France/Thailand/Germany/Italy).

# The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (Cristi Puiu, Romania); Werckmeister Harmonies (Béla Tarr, Hungary).

# Éloge de l'amour (Jean-Luc Godard, Switzerland/ France).

# 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days (Cristian Mungiu, Romania).

# Silent Light (Carlos Reygadas, Mexico/France/Netherlands).

# Russian Ark (Alexander Sokurov, Russia/Germany).

# The New World (Terrence Malick, U.S.)

# Blissfully Yours (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, France/Thailand).

# Le Fils (Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne, Belgium/France).

# Colossal Youth (Pedro Costa, Portugal/France/Switzerland).

# Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse (Agnès Varda, France); In Vanda's Room (Pedro Costa, Portugal/Germany/Italy/Switzerland); Songs from
the Second Floor (Roy Andersson, Sweden/Denmark/Norway).

# Caché (Michael Haneke, France/Austria/Germany/Italy); A History of Violence (David Cronenberg, classified as a U.S. film despite the
director's Canadian nationality.); Mulholland Drive (David Lynch, France/USA); Three Times (Hou Hsiao-hsien, Taiwan).

# Rois et reine (Arnaud Desplechin, France).

# Elephant (Gus Van Sant, U.S.)

# Talk to Her (Pedro Almodóvar, Spain).

# The Wind Will Carry Us (Abbas Kiarostami, Iran/France); Yi Yi (A One and a Two) (Edward Yang, Taiwan/Japan).

# Pan's Labyrinth (Guillermo del Toro, Spain).

# L'Enfant (Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne, Belgium/France); The Heart of the World (Guy Maddin, Canada); I Don't Want to Sleep
Alone (Tsai Ming-liang, Taiwan/France/Austria); Star Spangled to Death (Ken Jacobs, U.S.)

# The World (Jia Zhang-ke, China/Japan/France).

# Café Lumière (Hou Hsiao-hsien, Japan); The Headless Woman (Lucrecia Martel, Argentina/Spain/France/Italy); L'Intrus (Claire Denis,
France); Millennium Mambo (Hou Hsiao-hsien, Taiwan/France); My Winnipeg (Guy Maddin, Canada); Saraband (Ingmar Bergman,
Sweden); Spirited Away (Hiyao Miyazaki, Japan); I'm Not There (Todd Haynes, U.S.)

# Gerry (Gus Van Sant, U.S.).

# Distant (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Turkey); Dogville (Lars von Trier, Denmark/Sweden/UK/France/Germany); The Royal Tenenbaums (Wes
Anderson, U.S.);

# Alexandra (Alexander Sokurov, Russia/France); Demonlover (Olivier Assayas, France).

# Atanarjuat, The Fast Runner (Zacharias Kunuk, Canada); Goodbye, Dragon Inn (Tsai Ming-liang, Taiwan).

# Longing (Valeska Grisebach, Germany); Secret Sunshine (Lee Chang-dong, South Korea); Vai e Vem (João César Monteiro, Portugal);
Far From Heaven (Todd Haynes, U.S./France)

I just watched Synecdoche, New York and it was good. It's a film by Charlie Kaufman, who is pretty famous and I am surprised this wasn't more of a hit than it was because I remember Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind was pretty big? Maybe that was because it had Jim Carrey in it.

It was abou how people are obsessed with themselves and believe they are going to be famous and are very important, but we are actually not any more important than anybody else and that we're all going to die! It was kind of depressing, and it's a deliberately disorienting film (it seemed deliberate, and it makes sense for it to be). I think alot of people thought it was pretentious. It had high goals I think but I don't think striving for something like this film did makes it pretentious because I thought it did actually have a some interesting things to say. It feels like it's a grand, big thing because the main character of the movie is creating this ridiculously large theatre production, but I think that how aimless and formless the production became is the point of all of this, not how big it is, or how big it seems.

Time passes really quickly in the movie, without you realising it at first, and that is the disorienting part. I think it's supposed to be because you really feel like things are moving very quickly and things keep changing without any explanation, and everyone gets old and is gonna be dead soon! Actually, most of the main characters are dead by the end of the film. I just realised that. So it's also about doing important things before you are dead.

The film keeps retreating on itself until everything is discussed from a second or third remove. The main characters all have counterparts within the production within the film, and some of these counterparts have counterparts. It's not confusing, because you don't actually need to follow exactly how it all breaks down. The important thing is that the main character, Caden, is obsessed with his own life and that all these actors playing characters in the film are demonstrating more or less the same thing, and that is his obsession and everybody's obsession with narrativising their own lives.

Maybe you don't do that and the film maybe does seem like a load of BS, but I do and I think I understood what it was trying to say and I enjoyed it.