21st Hall of Fame

I liked it. I liked the overall story, especially as it covered an interesting event in time that I'd never heard of. And I liked that it had the potential for rooting for the underdogs with a happy ending too. I thought the film was well cast and I liked the leads...and I even liked where it was filmed, as it seemed authentic to me. But I wanted more story. I wanted to know more about these people and how the times that they lived in effected them. It felt like each scene was more of a brief montage than a complete chapter. It's like the film jumps into the middle of a scene without giving us much time to experience any emotions. This made the film seem choppy and hard to follow at times.

It was all so: quick, fast and loud...and then the scene is over and the next one starts...In that way it reminded me of Suspect's sci fi nom Coherence (2013) feeling like a movie where everything starts and ends in the middle.

If Pride had been in the hands of a more capable director who was able to flesh out the individual stories more, this might have been an Oscar contender.

To my surprise I liked this...I wasn't sure what to expect, in fact the movie was different than I had imaged. I know I'm liking a movie if it gets me interested from the start and keeps me interested until the very end...and I don't start checking the time remaining. And Quills kept me interested.

Quills reminded me of another HoF movie, Perfume: The Story of a Murder (2006). Both movies took a fanciful, lighter look at distributing events and both were period pieces but done in a more modern stylish artsy way.

I loved the look of this film, the color palette was a washed out antique green, very cool and it set the mood. Geoffrey Rush was just amazing in this as the brilliantly talented and demented...and yet likable Marquis de Sade. Another actor might have made the Marquis too dark or too much a super villain type, but I like the balance that Rush brought to the roll. And I LIKE Kate Winslet she's so good, she could do so much just with a look on her face.

Amazingly enough I thought Joaquin Phoenix was rather bland in his role as the priest who tried compassionately to run the insane asylum. I do think Phoenix is one of the best actors working today, but for whatever reason he wasn't able to find an inner depth to his priest. I did like the gone-mad version of him in the last few minutes of the film though.

Michael Caine was another real standout. He's also likable and yet he's cast as the antagonist. I kind of like a movie where the antagonist are more likable than the protagonist.

I wasn't a fan of one scene though. Can you guess which one? I bet you guessed wrong! I didn't care for the scene where the inmates stage a play for Michael Caine. It just seemed so silly the way the inmates were acting that it reminded me of a Monty Python movie. Just too much over the top.

But overall I did like Quills. Good cast, good movie.