The Women Directors Hall of Fame

I've seen Alicia in Excessive Baggage with Bencio Tel Toro when it came out. Mostly for Del Toro having seen him in The Usual Suspects. Can't remember very much from it.

I had very mixed expectations for this movie going in. On one hand, I have had the most luck with Hall of Fame nominations from Thursday Next. On the other hand, she compared this to a Jim Jarmusch movie. I've seen two movies from Jarmusch and disliked both of them, and there's not many movies I dislike.

The second the movie started I understood the Jarmusch comparison. While I'm sure many people will praise the cinematography of the movie, I hated it. I don't know what the budget of the movie was, but I believe that black and white filming can cover up flaws, sometimes due to a lack of resources. There was no way I was going to love this movie with not liking the way it looks. I didn't think it always looked bad, for instance in closeups or when the screen is full. It's more bothersome for me when I can see most of the background. Moving on from that, the movie managed to grow on me a bit. I think it does a great job at creating the perfect mood, and that was the biggest plus for me. The story and performances were also solid, as was the soundtrack most of the time. I ended up enjoying it, although moderately. Also, the whole movie seemed to be in slow motion. I'm not sure how I feel about that.

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night

This is my second time watching it, and like many experiences, I was able to relax and enjoy instead of the usual "What's that? Who's that? What's going on here? I wonder if--?" that is all so common, and, doing so, I enjoyed it even more than the first time seeing it.
One thing I had forgotten is seeing Mozhan Marnò whom I know from the TV Show Blacklist, playing Atti The Prostitute.

And, yes, that is the actual name of the character. In fact, except for Arash, everyone has a title: The Pimp, The Junkie, The Street Urchin. Even the girl, is titled The Girl. Oh, and yes, the cat IS titled The Cat lol.

But enough of that, as previously stated, I had seen this when @Thursday Next wrote of it in The Last Movie You Saw thread as "out Jarmusches Jarmusch." And being a huge fan of Only Lovers Left Alive I was completely in.
In many ways, it does. But more importantly, it isn't an imitation of style because it has it's own style and it's own life. Which I found even more intriguing, seeing the similarities without it staying within said similarities.

What I also got to do, this time around, is look at this regarding the subject matter and Camo's excellent observation of the political aspect of such stark subject matter for what could be mistaken as an Iranian film. Which, having watched this a second time, it seems I did have a momentary insistence the first time around as several scenes, especially in the beginning, did not hold back. And since my experience with any middle eastern films have been incredibly minimal, I simply let it go as a misconception on my part.

Regardless of all of that, this is a very wonderfully shot film in black and white. Taking full advantage of the shadowing in so many of the shots, as well as composition.



There is also a solemn playfulness to many of the scenes. None of which I will mention and will wait for others to watch this to expand on that, except for a favorite involving a skateboard that made me smile.

I will also recommend, should you enjoy on a first watch, you will enjoy even more so on a secondary one.

@Yam12 what did you think of Morvern Callar? Saw your rating glad you got something out of it.

Yes, it has a list of cable companies, and you have to give it your cable account information to sign in.

I screwed that up a little bit because I thought I was creating an account for Watch TCM, but I didn't realize that it was actually using my cable account username and password to allow access to the TCM website. When it told me that I already had an account, I just assumed that I must have signed up for the Watch TCM account already, but didn't remember my password, so I had it change my password. Then, when Hubby tried to log into our Spectrum cable account today, he couldn't get in and he didn't know why.

@Citizen Rules i swapped the second and third posts so you don't have to go through the posters to get to the reviews.

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Haven't seen this since it first came out and enjoyed it for the reasons you spoke of, so I'm looking forward to a re-visit of this.

Before this Hall of Fame started I had no idea what was Lynne Ramsay about. I just watched Ratcatcher yesterday because having two films nominated I thought it would be a great opportunity to make a more exhaustive exploration. And what I found there and have found in Morvern Callar today is a thematic recurrence that I like a lot.

I see that there has been some controversy here about the acts and motivations of Morvern. Not that I do not understand this but to me that is the point. Lynne's perspective on tragedy seems to imply that her characters never manage to move on completely, affecting their relationships and their decisions in a way that from an outsider perspective feels awkward. Everything that Morvern does in this movie, from burying the corpse to her mood swings, is pure awkwardness. She is not rational in her acts and if she was the movie would miss the point that the weight of her past experience is constantly pushing her no matter how big the denial is.

That is, by the way, something I missed in Ratcatcher: way too often the movie simply deviated from its main theme and left it as a background scenario, which is why I wasn't too attached to the growth of the main character. In Morvern Callar, every action and decision of the protagonist can be traced back to her personal drama, which is something I find amazing. It helps that Samantha Morton is just THAT great and in every gesture she makes there's a lot of emotional significance and resonance to me.

Another aspect I would like to praise in this movie is the score, or more specifically, how it's used. This was already a very good trait of her first feature but I am specially fond of it here and how it shifts from extradiegetic to diegetic in the same scene, which makes it very immersive. The visual recreation is more of a grey area, I generally like it but I don't know if I'm totally into Lynne's fixation for mildly gruesome imagery at some points. Like, it doesn't bother me, but I do not see that much of an use to a detail shot of a worm apart from depicting Morvern's detachment from the surrounding world. Whatever, it's not a big issue and the movie is otherwise excellent.

downloading morvern. Hopefully gonna go on a small hof binge

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watching morvern, its bad

Awesome Jal Really glad there's at least one fan, great review.

Jal is the eighth member to start and three of us are already a quarter way through.

Morvern Callar

awful. Just a plain insult. Not much to say besides I think its very bad. Boring and annoying. I couldn't stop rolling my eyes at this film. My iq probably dropped 10 points watching it. All the characters made me want to jump off a cliff with how grating and annoying they are. Overall I just found this film very cliche and boring and it didnt work at all for me



1/5

What the hell is this garbage? What was bad about it? Couldn't care less if you didn't like it but this post is embarrassing, admittedly no less than i expected from you but i'm not accepting it. Expand or you're out of the Hall of Fame velvet.

ill add more

Velvet made a post right after the noms were revealed and dumped on all of them, without even seeing them...I can't find that post now, so he must have deleted it.

Just the very fact that a person would do such a thing, makes them a poor candidate for an Hof. Hofs are about mutual respect and working together as a group. All of us can do that, but I don't think Velvet is cut out for it and he has been given chances.

Camo if you want to kick him out, I would be in agreement.

I was just being grumpy with that post about the noms being bad. I just really didnt like that film but im being open minded

Exactly. I know how it looks but this has nothing to do with it being my nom. Some of you aren't going to like it and even think it's a bad film, i disagree but that's fine it has happened with my noms before and it will happen again. He's not here to watch and discuss movies with an open mind, he's here to imitate Minio just like he did with SC when he got here. He has already decided which films he likes and doesn't.

im not some supervillian guys

This is terrible. You're out of the Hall of Fame Velvet. Good riddance.