23rd MoFo Hall of Fame

La piel que habito (2011)
aka The Skin I Live In

I'm not sure, but this may be the first Almodóvar movie I've seen. I've always assumed that his films wouldn't interest me. All I knew about this particular one is that it made our top-100 horror list, which achievement had landed it on my watchlist even before this HoF, and it has something to do with surgery.


I don't like the structure of The Skin I Live In. The whole second act is background, and the only reason for non-chronologic narration seems to be to mislead the viewer in the beginning. It's even worse when the film reveals its twist the first chance it gets (the shared dream), and most of the middle act becomes unnecessary fluff.

Other than the faulty structure, The Skin I Live In is a decent and somewhat unique take on the vengeance tale. I suppose some of the weirdness is there for its own sake, and a bit more restrained approach could have been better. It also bothers me that there doesn't seem to be any reason why the surgeon chose to exact his revenge in this specific manner.

It's not a bad movie, but it doesn't tell us enough to understand the odd decisions by its characters. Almost like Almodóvar thinks that his twist alone makes the film smart and daring. I can't say that I was disappointed, more like The Skin I Live In verified my prejudice towards the director.

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I also started watching Schindler's List and will hopefully finish it tomorrow.

Because that's what he does, his area of expertise and his passion.

Spoiler

Lol yea he's definitely twisted, but he was also interested in trying his experiments on humans. Who else would he use?

This.

Also, it's psychological horror as done by Pedro Almodovar. Being twisted for the sake of being twisted is kind of to be expected.

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Yellow Submarine (1968)


Drugs man..well I went from one extreme to the other from the depression of heroin in Christiane F to the wonders of LSD in the trip of the Beatles Yellow Submarine. For me the film is a mixed bag, each of the musical numbers are incredible, I do after all like the Beatles so I should love the film. The problem I have with the movie is the narrative structure is just so damn....annoying. RIngo is only beatle that kind of swerves into the story the other three are just background and boring. Also the metaphor of the blue meanies is the sort of thing you would expect from the sketches of a child.


I didn't hate the film, but I don't feel like I've been left with a lot to talk about.

I don't think I have too much to say outside of I really enjoyed my time with it. It doesn't run very long, we jump straight into the story, and there's no lingering. We only get one musical number, so there's not a lot of that bogging the film down. The animation looks good. The clocktower scene in particular stood out to me, as at one point I was wondering if they animated the film on black to create a similar look to what the Batman animated series would later do. I think there is a hard ceiling for films like this, at least within my own rankings, but there is also a pretty high floor. I'll always enjoy a silly, cartoon animal detective story. I had a lot of fun with it.

Film Yellow Submarine
Year of release: 1968
Directed by: George Dunning
Run time: 1hr 25
Starring: The Beatles

Yeah, I just don't get it. I mentioned that I had watched this previously and hated it. I tried to watch it with an open mind, but the result was the same.
A few things will have undoubtedly played a part in this and one major one is that although I like a few of their tunes, I am not a huge Beatles fan. If I was, I am sure that I would see things differently.
I just found it to be nonsensical indulgent wibble.

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"I don't want to be a product of my environment, I want my environment to be a product of me" (Frank Costello)

Attachments

 

Schindler's List

Itzhak Stern: It's Hebrew, it's from the Talmud. It says, "Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire."



What a truly exceptional film.
This actually took me three separate sittings of about an hour each through the week to watch due to time frames during work. Allowing me to, on some levels, to - for the lack of a better wording, absorb all that this film is and signifies. I imagine that a straight 3 hour viewing must be quite devastating emotionally. Which I will, at some future point, will experience.

Going into this, and this is also part of the reason I have never ventured a viewing of my own, I have seen documentaries, photographs and even a TV series called Holocaust that was run for 4 nights, each one about 90 min long in '78 when I was in 8th grade (13yrs old) a few books including The Bielski Brothers who hid over a thousand Jews in a forest for some two years. The imageries, films and books I have read from my youth and throughout my life still cause my heart to weep and my soul to shudder; aghast.
So, bracing myself and having no real prior knowledge of Oskar Schindler I began my sojourn into this film.
I was both impressed by and emotionally captured through it all by the humanity of the victims and the precious few survivors. Spielberg deserves every accolade he was given for making this film. There is a beautiful balance between the death that is, at times overwhelming, but, more importantly, the Life of those that suffered it.

There are far too many moments in this film to remark upon and those of you who have seen this know the truth of it. I will remark that I thought the ending was a wonderful reminder of Life and Hope as the B&W changed to color and we see the cast giving respect to the real Schindler's grave.

I reiterate, what a truly exceptional film!!

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What I actually said to win MovieGal's heart:
- I might not be a real King of Kinkiness, but I make good pancakes

~Mr Minio

Hunger



My second McQueen film following 12 Years a Slave. I think McQueen likes to get a lot out of his acting and I would say Fassbender delivers. Unfortunately I can't be 100% sure due to the fact I know little to nothing about what the film is based on. And it seems like this is an overall negative to the film as it's hard to make any emotional connections to exactly what is going on.

The like the dark, gritty look of the prisons. It gave the film a rather dull and dooming attitude which seems to fit the overall films tone. One thing is I don't think specific scenes were as climatic as they needed to be and also felt overdrawn, like when Fassbenders character was talking to the guy by the table it seemed to drag forever.

I hate to dog the film but it will need to get a proper rewatch down the road. It's a hard film to rate because it does things well but leaves a viewer like me wanting to get more out of it while feeling pretty empty to what it had to offer with such a serious subject matter.

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Some of the Stephen King dialogue for children can be a little much. I feel the same way when watch It, but like It, Stand By Me overcomes that shortcoming to become something worthwhile. Stand By Me is better than It, but both films do a good job of putting the viewer back in time within their own life. Stand By Me has an extra little bit with the youngster dealing with the recent loss of a revered presence in his life. I don't know if I buy the behavior of the parents, particularly the father. I'm sure a lot of dads do care more for their athletic kid than the non-athlete, but whether it's the acting of father or the writing or whatever it is, I wasn't buying it that much. I'm just thankful King didn't take that idea out on the athletic brother like a lot of lazier writers might do. I thought the Lardass scene was a nice touch in world and character building. I enjoy the idea of this specific journey a lot. The acting left something to be desired, but that's a lot of pressure to put on children. I particularly didn't care too much for Corey Feldman's performance. I like the fat kid well enough, and there seems to be something about Stephen King writing fat kids to be the exact same character. Sutherland was pretty over-the-top, as mentioned before. I also don't know if I buy the kids brother sticking with the Kief against him like that. Maybe that's a real thing that's happened, but I need more information on why he'd do that before I buy it. Maybe that's just my own relationship with my brother making it hard for me to see things any other way. I enjoyed watching this film, but it'll never be a big-time favorite.

It's taken a while to get my Schindler's List review done. I've had other things on my mind the last few days (mainly related to the water damage to my bedroom caused by someone falling to drunken sleep in his shower two stories up). I'll try to get going on these again soon.

I'll take a link for Yellow Submarine if there's one floating around

Stuff like that is the worst part of living in a building with other people. Hopefully you didn't lose anything valuable!

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A look at the 1981 Irish Hunger Strike, with special attention drawn to Bobby Sands

Quite an interesting approach to telling a historical film: Instead of explicitly telling us about the conflict and the reasons behind it, the film simply presents us with random scenes from the struggle that give us a certain emotion, whether it be sadness, anger or shock. I do agree with the criticism that too little context is given and that the film should've provided some more information about The Troubles.
I quite like how Sands isn't even the main character really; half of the scenes are about the struggle of the prisoners. Another example of how this is quite an experimental historical film. Of course all of the acting and dialogue is good, otherwise that long talking scene wouldn't be as good as it is. The depiction of starvation near the end of the film is quite realistic and very painful to watch. The dark colour pallet works well for the feel of the film and the natural light is very visually appealing.

My favourite Steven McQueen film. Amazing pick @MovieGal

Finished and sending my votes