The 11th Hall of Fame

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Samurai Rebellion (1967)



A very dry movie in my opinion. While tragic its impact felt a bit diluted in the minimalistic manner it was portrayed. While I loved Kobayashi's movies a few years ago apparently my tastes evolved through the consumption of enormous quantities of Japanese narratives. Now what once felt cool and exotic Japanese film, now feels like an outdated work that does not resonate in our own times (I think I should nominate a modern Japanese film like Kamikaze Girls (2004) to show how Japanese cultural aesthetics have evolved between the 60's and the 2000's.

Still maybe the fact that I watched this while being sick and with a headache negatively influenced my opinion of it. Its acting and directing are very good and the movie was carefully filmed and edited: I do not find anything wrong about it. However, while it's a very polished movie its drama didn't resonate with me, so that I did not care at all for the characters, although I was a bit moved in the end.





Bringing Up Baby (Howard Hawks, 1938)
Imdb

Date Watched: 9/22/16
Cinema or Home: Home
Reason For Watching: The 11th MoFo Hall of Fame
Rewatch: Yes, though I've not seen it since childhood and remember almost nothing about it


I hated everything about this movie: Every scene, every character, every line of dialogue. How this is considered one of the film greats is beyond me. David and Susan are possibly the two most aggravating film characters I've ever seen. He's a bumbling, spineless moron who spews made-up bullsh!t phrases and I don't believe for a moment that he's any kind of scientist. But he's a paleontologist? Spare me. "Intercostal clavicle"? F*** you.

As for her, I can't decide whether this bitch is crazy, stupid, or a combination of the two. What I do know is that I wanted to punch her repeatedly in the face from the moment she appeared on screen to the film's final scene. The supporting characters are not much better, but at least I didn't feel any violent urges towards them.

There were moments when I actually wanted to cry at how painful this was to endure. I'm going to be generous and give it one popcorn box on the off-chance that there was some sort of semi-redeeming feature somewhere in this mess that I missed.



Sorry, Camo.




Have you decided what you are nominating yet MM?
More or less, yeah.

But to be sure I'll possibly revisit it later and then post the nom before the end of today, friday. I hope that's okay with y'all.


Also, I just bought my first movie ever for a Hall of Fame. Flowers or War. Usually I get movies from elsewhere, but with my new 65 OLED tv and a movie like that for only about $2 on blu-ray, I simply had to go and buy it.



I was actually rather surprised at how much I hated it. I vaguely remember liking it as a kid. Perhaps I just liked the animals.



Now I gotta see Bringing Up Baby.
Ditto, I'll be watching that one tonight. Hint to all, it's a screwball comedy So farcical situations and crazy characters are to be expected. (That sorta sounded like Mark f...Oh well, I'm in good company then.)



They use to say that Katherine Hepburn was box office poison. Meaning the audiences didn't like her and her early films didn't do well. It almost killed her career as she was just too different of a type to fit into mainstream films. Now a days everyone loves Kate, but I'm not really a fan of hers. Oh sure I think she's one of the great actresses, but it wasn't tell she got older that I started liking her. So it'll be interesting (at least to me) if I like this one or not. The plus side is it has Cary Grant and I have liked him in everything I've seen him in.



Your review reminded me of my assessment of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? when I saw it a few years ago. I was absolutely annoyed by those characters, which completely turned me off from the film.



Bright light. Bright light. Uh oh.
I've been trying to keep from posting in these lately, but this may be worth a laugh. Classic screwball comedy doesn't get much screwier than this. Paleontologist David (Cary Grant) receives the intercostal clavicle of a brontosaurus which will complete his reconstruction of the fossil dinosaur for his museum and proceeds to the golf course to try to obtain a million dollars from the lawyer of a rich benefactor. He immediately becomes entangled with flighty Susan (Katharine Hepburn) who just happens to be the niece of the benefactor (May Robson). Susan is taking care of her brother's pet leopard Baby, and when David visits her home, Baby escapes and the family dog becomes interested in David's bone and proceeds to take and bury it somewhere. What started out as manic turns into insanity as a visiting big game hunter (Charlie Ruggles) tries to hunt the leopard, and another, wild leopard gets added into the mix. Grant is an expert farceur here and plays well against Hepburn's slightly-quieter, yet equally-outrageous manner. There is no doubt that there's sexual attraction between the two leads, at least as much as possible between scientific "Dr. Bone" who "just went gay all of a sudden" and a 12-year-old girl running around in a 30-year-old's body. (Trust me, that last line makes sense.) Screwball comedies are basically romantic comedies at heart, but they just try to disarm you with crazy laughter before you accept the fact that the couple is a match made in heaven... or at least in this case, movie heaven. Or in Miss Vicky's case, movie hell.
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Your review reminded me of my assessment of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? when I saw it a few years ago. I was absolutely annoyed by those characters, which completely turned me off from the film.
I found the characters in Virginia Woolf irritating too, but much less so than in this.



Your review reminded me of my assessment of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? when I saw it a few years ago. I was absolutely annoyed by those characters, which completely turned me off from the film.
I could totally see that, I loved it though. The writing is so sharp, brilliant.