18th Mofo Hall of Fame

I think I can help

The King of Comedy is another great film from 1982...speaking of 1982 how difficult it must be to be Gandhi when you look back at all the classics that came out that year and the big winner was Gandhi. I think I can say for certainty that the worst thing that happened to Gandhi was winning Best Picture in 1982 and looking like such a minor work 40 years later. Though...perhaps it was actually released in 1983 so never-mind Gandhi.

Anyways The King of Comedy is a very good film, it's basically a character study of Richard Pupkin a perfectly polite wannabe comic who lives in this fantasy world where he's a big shot comic. Jerry Lewis plays Jerry Langford a humorless Johnny Carson stand-in who spends an evening with Pupkin and makes him some false promises. Sandra Bernard plays a psychologically unstable bourgeoisie woman who wants Jerry to love her and Diahnne Abbottplays a bartender that Pupkin was obsessed with in High School and is now trying to woo.

You've got a number of quirks that I enjoyed in this film, the biggest one is that in this dark comedy most of the actual humor comes from the background characters and extras who are all old men. You've also got these surrealist moments like when we here about Pupkins mother in the background and then during his set he reveals that she's dead. I love how you've got all these weird tragic back stories of the four main characters that is simply hinted at. If this movie was made today you would see Jerry act like a dick to everyone around him (we don't it's only implied), we would see how Rita's life fell off the rails, we would see the results of Masha's madness on the rest of her family but in this film Scorsese exercises restraint.

When I first watched the film I didn't get the ending all the things Scorsese does and the powerful imagery he uses I get that now. We keep thinking that Pupkin's act isn't going to be funny, until we actually see the act and realize oh...he is funny once again great use of restraint.

Well we've got our first completely reviewed film...Bubba Ho-Tep

Abandon Ship 9/12
Brimstone 10/12
Bubba Ho-Tep 12/12
Extremely Loud and Incredible Close 5/12
The Florida Project 9/12
The King of Comedy 10/12
The Little Stranger 10/12
Perfect Blue 8/12
Road to Perdition 9/12
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs 11/12
Split 8/12
The Square 9/12



110 reviews are in with 34 left to go with 20% of those being Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close reviews

Good write-up, Siddon.

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I did watch Perfect Blue Tuesday. Review coming soon.

Perfect Blue

My third Satoshi Kon film. Strangely his films don't do much for me so far. I can appreciate the artistic work of this one but it's a story that I really don't get glued to, which I would say is it's biggest downfall for me. I also could never attach myself to the characters and it's hard to care for them much. Am I the only one who thinks the beginning of the film is rather strange? I also think the "rape scene"seemed a bit too much. Perhaps I'm being too negative about the film, it seems like it's pretty well liked, but it's not my type of film. I don't have a whole lot much else to say. I think it will be a pretty forgettable film, much like how I barely remember anything about Paprika although I just saw it a few years back.

So I promised to write some sort of a reply to common criticisms for my nomination Brimstone. I quickly read all of the reviews for this to refresh my memory. I also like to emphasize that this is not me telling that you're wrong but me explaining why I didn't consider these things as faults and how I felt that they're actually an integral part of the film.

So the common complaints are about wallowing in violence, characters serving no other purpose than allowing Joanna/Liz to suffer more, having a weak story that's only an excuse for the violent scenes and having unbelievably exaggerated antagonist. First thing I need to say is that all of these are correct... in a way, anyways. To me it seems just odd that people don't draw the obvious connection here.

Brimstone is about religion, about everything bad and dirty and stupid thing that's done in the name of one god or another. Being a Western film it obviously deals this through Christianity. And what does this (obvious) fact has to do with the complaints? Well, in my opinion Brimstone takes its structure and form directly from the Bible.

Just like in Book of Job only the antagonist matters while everyone else only exists to increase protagonist's suffering. Stories wallow in their despair, pain and loss (only in Brimstone Joanna/Liz doesn't submit to her tormentor like Job or Abraham do in the Bible). Violence needs to be harsh to hammer down the message of unfair oppression and Reverend isn't any more absurd villain than God or Satan in the Book of Job.

So yes, I kinda understand the complaints but I see them being a part of the chosen structure or form. Brimstone sacrifices some nuances to look more like the thing it criticizes. I though it was a working "style over substance" choice but then I'm a religion hating atheist myself. I loved the way it told its story in such a biblical manner.

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Interesting thoughts on it, but I’m not sure how obvious the connection is... yes, I think it may be about religion, but I don’t personally think the antagonist was or was even meant to be doing bad things in the name of religion... it was pretty obvious he really wasn’t that religious at all, just using religion as a tool for sex. But still, I enjoyed reading your thoughts.

The Little Stranger

This was better than I expected it to be, but still not one of my favorites in this HoF. I thought the visuals, characters, and acting were fantastic, but the screenplay, originality, rewatchability, and pacing were marginal. I thought the movie could have cut out a lot of unnecessary details to enhance the cohesiveness. I also really disliked the main character, I thought he was a creep and that didn't really help my enjoyment too much. That said, there are some fantastic moments and much of the structural and technical elements are really good, so it has a generally positive response from me.

The Square



I admittedly didn't get into this at all. Not only were the characters uninteresting to me but the story was just too bland for my tastes as well. I can honestly say sometimes I can get lost in the cultural barriers of films and perhaps this is what happened again, but that's just how it goes for me. The time seemed to drag on for eternity, honestly the film was just too long for the story it was telling. There were some cool scenes, I like d how that stairwell scene was shot for example. My least favorite scene was the guy acting like a monkey, annoying and just seemed to go on forever. Sorry but this certainly wasn't for me.

Just a question for the next hall of fame: Are we allowed to nominate movies nominated in previous specialty hall of fames? Say Up for instance, nominated for Pixar... can I also nominate that for this?

I think the only rule is that it can't have previously won a HoF.

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I really liked the monkey man scene in The Square and that's because I took it that he was an improvisational actor hired to do exactly what he did....but he took his performance to the extreme. He was damn good at portraying a cave man, I believed it! I'd give the actor an Oscar for that role. It couldn't have been easy pulling that off without making it look comical...but he played it deadpan serious. I thought the reaction by those at the dinner was very believable and more importantly interesting too. Their reactions piqued my interest. But I understand the film is not going to work for everyone and I thought it was a bit long. Still an interesting nom.

A shame, @rauldc14. Definitely sounds like it wasn’t for you. The apeman scene was one of my favorite scenes from that year, so yeah... we are in opposite directions on that.

But I definitely expected a lot to hate this, so it’s all good. It’s a polarizing film and was doomed to split viewers. I’m just glad that I do got people on different ends of the spectrum. And hey... what’s a HoF nom if it’s just a safe bet? You win and you lose.

Thanks for your comments, Raul!

What Yam said.

Sorry bro. But glad you joined and hope you will again!

Oh, okay. Thanks.

I swore the apeman was Jim Carrey before he showed up at the dining room. The projections of him were uncanny.

Watched Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close today. Write-up comes (hopefully) tomorrow. Like most others I didn't really enjoy this. Will likely rate it 1.5 or 2 popcorn.

Had a bad feeling about this and sadly it pretty much lived up to those expectations. Only one more to go.