The Personal Recommendation Hall of Fame

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28 days...6 hours...42 minutes...12 seconds
At 3 years old, how much of these movies does he actually understand?
You'd be surprised!!!!
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"A laugh can be a very powerful thing. Why, sometimes in life, it's the only weapon we have."

Suspect's Reviews



The trick is not minding
I really need to see Ed Wood yet.
I really liked Big Fish, Beetlejuice and Sweeney Todd.
I’d have to rewatch Edward Scissorhands. I didn’t care for it very much when I first watched it years ago. Maybe a second viewing will help.



I was hoping to review Funny Games before the reveal tonight, but clearly that's not going to happen. Maybe tomorrow.
I swear i’ll write mini-reviews on my last three movies in the coming days, but if anyone is particularly curious about my thoughts on their pick for me feel free to pester me until i do it.
Still waiting for you guys, something small will do

If nobody starts round 2, I'll do it once I'm done with the 23rd HoF and the Celtics season is over.



Still waiting for you guys, something small will do

If nobody starts round 2, I'll do it once I'm done with the 23rd HoF and the Celtics season is over.
When is the Celtic season over?



Still waiting for you guys, something small will do

If nobody starts round 2, I'll do it once I'm done with the 23rd HoF and the Celtics season is over.
So I'm done with the 23rd HoF and my Celtics pooped out. Just waiting for our last writeups to come through so I can close this thread and then we'll get this stinking show on the road.



alright, time to finish up my last reviews. they're gonna be very brief because i don't remember the movies in enough detail to write a full review but i'll do what i can. really sorry it took this long but here it is:

le cercle rouge: i prefer the minimalism of le samouraï but this is still incredible filmmaking by melville. still as slick and stylish as ever. i love his methodical approach to genre.
+

children of paradise: aside from the film's sterling reputation, i didn't really know much about the actual content of this one going in, and i think i was expecting something more in line with cocteau or renoir or something, rather than simply one of the most pitch-perfect conventional melodramas ever created. every character is so well-defined, every storyline carries serious weight. everything with the mime was especially beautiful. my interest waned at points in the last half but that's really only a minor quibble because i was enraptured by most everything else during the three hours.


kind hearts and coronets: really interesting dark comedy, alec guinness is great here as nine characters and if anything i wish he was in it even more. the film is at its best when it's committed to its schematic nature. it gets a little dull when it strays from its formula of introducing us to a cool new guinness character and then killing them off a couple scenes later, but luckily that stuff is still the majority of the movie.
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Most Biblical movies were long If I Recall.
seen A Clockwork Orange. In all honesty, the movie was weird and silly
letterboxd
criticker



alright, time to finish up my last reviews. they're gonna be very brief because i don't remember the movies in enough detail to write a full review but i'll do what i can. really sorry it took this long but here it is:
Congratulations Frightened Inmate, you are the 12th member to finish!

le cercle rouge: i prefer the minimalism of le samouraï but this is still incredible filmmaking by melville. still as slick and stylish as ever. i love his methodical approach to genre.
+
A great nomination for you. I liked it a little more than Le Samourai.

children of paradise: aside from the film's sterling reputation, i didn't really know much about the actual content of this one going in, and i think i was expecting something more in line with cocteau or renoir or something, rather than simply one of the most pitch-perfect conventional melodramas ever created. every character is so well-defined, every storyline carries serious weight. everything with the mime was especially beautiful. my interest waned at points in the last half but that's really only a minor quibble because i was enraptured by most everything else during the three hours.
As much as you enjoyed it, I was hoping for more, like a new top 10 favorite for you. I think it's one of the 10 best films ever made.

kind hearts and coronets: really interesting dark comedy, alec guinness is great here as nine characters and if anything i wish he was in it even more. the film is at its best when it's committed to its schematic nature. it gets a little dull when it strays from its formula of introducing us to a cool new guinness character and then killing them off a couple scenes later, but luckily that stuff is still the majority of the movie.
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I think this would be a good nomination for anybody.




Funny Games
(Michael Haneke, 1997)


Rarely have I felt as conflicted about a film as I do with the purposefully provocative Funny Games. The two tormenters, with their pristine country-club attire, are easily detestable, weaselly little sh*ts. One is rail-thin with noodle-like limbs, the other tubby and clumsy, yet their lack of physical intimidation only makes their cruelty all the more enraging, as it seemingly wouldn't take much of a slip-up for the victimized family to gain the upper hand (magical remotes be damned). Throughout the film Haneke toys with audience expectations, dangling false hopes (for example, the foreshadowed knife in the dinghy) and possible escapes, only to snatch them away at the last second. There's an unwritten rule in cinema that you don't harm animals or children. F**k that, says Haneke. I admire the audience manipulation, and I admire the film's craft. The acting is great -- Susanne Lothar's grueling performance, in particular -- and the camerawork, passively distanced with repeated long takes, accentuates the helplessness of the situation. Haneke never sought to make a horror-thriller (judging by interviews, he seems to think such genre fare is beneath him), instead envisioning Funny Games as satire in the form of imitation. The film is all about our complicity in on-screen violence. Haneke's target: moviegoers like myself who eagerly anticipate the next grisly decapitation in a film like Friday the 13th. Haneke aims to hold up a condemning mirror to our bloodlust, but in the end his overly didactic approach and trollish interference sabotage any potential self-reflection from consumers of violent entertainment.

"Why don't you just kill us?" asks the father, to which his tormenter responds: "Don't forget the entertainment value. We'd all be deprived of our pleasure." That meta line is obviously directed at viewers, but at least it works within the context of the film, unlike the majority of Haneke's finger-wagging commentary. "The film is for those who deserve it," Haneke has remarked in interviews, implying that anyone who watches until the end must be a sadist who finds entertainment in the suffering of others. Haneke's contemptuous attitude toward his audience somewhat sours me on the film, as his repeated breaking of the fourth wall eventually comes across like a stern lecture from an out-of-touch parent decrying the moral erosion of modern media. Another negative consequence of the obnoxious fourth-wall breaking is summarized in the following excerpt from Bilge Ebiri's excellent film essay on the Criterion website: “If we eventually see them [the family] only as objects, or as pawns, then Haneke will simply have achieved the very thing he’s trying to demolish—a movie that denies the complexity and value of human life.” No matter how realistic the performances or the painstaking attention to detail, it's impossible for me not to view the tortured family as pawns in the funny games Haneke plays with his audience, diluting both the movie's message and its horrific nature.

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My nominations for everyone:
Miss Vicky: The Fly
Siddon: The Gunfighter
Citizen Rules: Paper Moon
edarsenal: Dazed and Confused
Cricket: Paris, Texas
Hey Fredrick: Pink Flamingos
ahwell: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
John-Connor: The Last Picture Show
Frightened Inmate: Le Cercle Rouge
TheUsualSuspect: The Manchurian Candidate
Wyldesyde19: Double Indemnity
CitizenT: Pulp Fiction
Hashtag: Tremors
Neiba: Fitzcarraldo

My own ballot:
1. Hud
2. Naked
3. Amadeus
4. The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
5. Pépé le Moko
6. The Sound of Music
7. Funny Games
8. Yellow Sky
9. The Last Laugh
10. Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father
11. The Thin Blue Line
12. The Illusionist
13. Deep Red


Thank you, @cricket, for being a great host and being way too patient with lazy procrastinators like myself. This was a great idea for a HOF and I hope future versions of it are equally successful and fulfilling. My favorite aspect was trying to figure out who nominated which film, and I think I got all but one or two guesses right. Unfortunately I went through a bit of a mental funk for awhile with all the depressing insanity of 2020 wearing me down, and it seems like more and more time started to pass between the time I'd watch a nomination and write the review, which eventually made the process feel like a chore. For that reason I probably won't participate in any future HOFs as it's much more enjoyable for me to write about mindless horror/exploitation fare of my own choosing on my own time rather than the homework-like burden of HOFs with assigned movies and deadlines, but I still think these HOFs are the best thing going on the forum nowadays. I'm just better suited to read from the sidelines rather than actually participate.