23rd MoFo Hall of Fame

Gangs of New York

Bill: Everything you see belongs to me, to one degree or another. The beggars and newsboys and quick thieves here in Paradise, the sailor dives and gin mills and blind tigers on the waterfront, the anglers and amusers, the she-hes and the Chinks. Everybody owes, everybody pays. Because that's how you stand up against the rising of the tide.

I have always enjoyed this film and have seen it quite a number of times and, in all likelihood, quite a few more in the future.
It's a large scale film that, while it appears to center around a son looking to avenge his father, it is about the Five Points, the surge of Irish immigrants that poured in during the Civil War, and the political climate beneath Mayor Tweed. A juicy, bloody, torrid lil history lesson as a backdrop to the fictitious main characters and their own personal agendas to fight or be killed within the congested city blocks where everyone stole or was stolen from.
Scorsese has a very deep love for his city, New York and it shows with just how much local info he throws into the mix and, how in hell he was able to keep it all in check regarding the sheer mass of the production says a whole lot for the man and those who work with him.

Along with the top notch job of both Daniel Day Lewis and Leonardo DiCaprio, there are quite a number of solid actors in smaller parts. From Brendan Gleason to Stephen Graham, and Jim Broadbent doing a fine rendition of the corrupt Boss Tweed to countless others. And while Cameron Diaz is sorta lukewarm in her role, it still works for me.

I'm not sure if I would rate this in the top echelon of Scorsese films, but it is definitely one of my favorite watches by him.

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Stand by Me tomorrow for me

My wife and I started The Skin I Live In last night but we got into a fight about 2 minutes after the opening credits.

Try try again

What'd you do wrong?

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She was the same age as the character she was portraying. Maybe you're too used to seeing older actors playing teens? Also, the story is based on an autobiography of the same name. Drug addiction has no age limitations. Plenty of teens get hooked and plenty of parents are oblivious to it.

"H" is heroin, obviously.

It’s of course okay to not like the movie, CR.

But to me it seems like YOU HAVE NO IDEA how real this story is. How accurate the story is. Many of the complains you have doesn’t really make sense to me. They are “too pretty”? Like what does that even mean? These “pretty people” ends up looking like sh*t or dies. And why wouldn’t they look like that. They are young and life hasn’t hit them in any shape or form - and suddenly they are on this express downward spiral to hell.

You do know this is based on a true story, right? It IS real, like 95% of it.

That's why I find the movie so sad, because of how real it is, the fact that it is still happening, and how common it is.

Stand by Me



Probably in contention for one of my favorite coming of age movies, I can certainly see myself coming back to this film quite a bit! Rob Reiner nails it. These are the kind of stories that really help me connect with just how powerful film can be.

It was interesting to see all these people are kid actors, and boy what a shame what happened to River Phoenix. He had so much potential as an actor. Jerry O'Connell for whatever reason just has a great screen presence to me, loved him in the show Sliders!

The writing is what was particularly great. I knew Reiner was capable of directing great things, The Bucket List is one of my favorite films of all time. Glad to see he's not a one trick pony so to speak. So many really well made scenes, my favorite was probably that train scene. It was executed very well in my opinion.

There isn't a whole lot not to like, but that barf-o-rama scene just didn't do it for me.

Overall, an extremely well made film!

+

Yes, I said so in my review.

They looked like actors, more than the real deal, it's a casting issue for me. Not every actor can portray ever type of character. Compare the lead in this movie to the lead actress in Out of the Blue, in the latter movie as soon as I seen the actress I was sold I was seeing real people.

Like I said I didn't know it was based on a real story until I seen the end. Did anyone read my review? But being based on a real story and being factual doesn't mean that the script and directors choices of scenes brings out the nuances and motivations of the characters. I would have liked to seen the first third of the movie cover how troubled her life was thus giving us insight into why she would use 'H'.

I haven't seen Out of the Blue, so I wouldn't know.

But it's funny you have that complain. Again, you are entitled to that opinion and if you couldn't quite be convinced by it then you couldn't quite be convinced by it. Not much to do.

But it's funny, because the young actors and actresses were NOT actors and actresses. They were pretty much all no-names who hadn't acted before - including the two leads. Detlev has never acted since either. This was his only movie. They have actually gotten a lot of praise for being so natural and authentic in their roles and their portroyal of being under the influence of drugs. Personally, I agree a lot. To me they don't look like actors at all. Some of them are not would you would call an "acting face". They look like young people. Crazy hair, crooked teeth and all. The lead is pretty sure, but I also think that adds to the realism of how anybody can go down that road. Not every drug addict is a nasty bum.

I agree with this though.

Even the real Christiane F complained about this. Because her father was abusive and stuff. And they didn't cover that. I guess they hinted a bit, but they didn't go in depth about how miserable her life actually was.

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If that about her father had been in the movie it would've sold me (if the scene was done right). I could believe a young girl could use 'H' if we had seen her motivation in the opening act. I mean have you done 'H'? Why? or why not? I went to jr high, I never knew or even heard of any 14 year old kids who did 'H' at that age. Yes, I know it's a true story, but what I'm saying is the film focused too much of it's 2 hour 14 minute runtime on drug scenes with little set up as to why Christina would do this in the first place. To me it seemed like a gritty version of what we in America had on TV as educational movies for teens: 'After School Specials'. It seemed more preachy as pahak said, and seemed to want to show us the horrors of drugs without letting is in on the reasons for it.

Have you seen Lilya 4-Ever? similar story based on real events, and there I instantly believed the character was this troubled teen. She was a perfect casting choice. It's just like you wouldn't hire me to be a wise guy in a gangster film, I would be a bad casting choice, but I could be cast as the guy next door who mows his lawn at 6 am!

In the thread about the recent riots, you talked about how people are responsible for their own actions and should be held accountable for those actions. You thought it was deserving when a protester stood in the street blocking traffic and then was hit by a car. You said it was the protesters fault as he was being stupid and illegally blocking traffic and causing problems for the driver. So then what's the difference between feeling sympathy for a drug addict who is doing something stupid & illegal and causing problems for society...and scorning a protester who blocks traffic?

Really? That's a weird decision. The film portrays her life as quite normal. We're never given reasons why her parents are divorced and her mother's new boyfriend seems decent enough. Naturally, I assumed that she was just someone who tried drugs because everyone else was doing them.

To me, that enforced the educational feel of the film; no one is safe and the evil 'H' can claim even the seemingly happy and normal girl. It also made me feel less sympathetic towards Christiane as the movie presents her drug use as a series of stupid choices instead of a way to escape the misery of her life. Seems that there is even more wasted potential than I expected when writing my review.

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I laughed *

But no I haven’t seen it. It’s been recommended to me before on this forum I think. It’s on my watchlist. At one point I think I even had it downloaded but I never got around watching it.

We had some great HoF convos about Lilya 4-Ever. It's quite the intense & sad story...and true, you should watch it

Disliked Lilya. We will see what I think about Christiane F