The Personal Recommendation Hall of Fame IV

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I never could get the hang of Thursdays.

Cabaret, 1972

In any event, I really enjoyed it and in particular the way that the musical numbers were filmed.
So glad you enjoyed this too, it's another of my favourites.

You had quite a few musicals not ticked off and I wasn't sure whether you didn't like musicals or just hadn't got round to seeing them. I feel like musicals are a bit of a risky bet to nominate for people unless you know they like them.


In this film, the performers go on doing their thing despite the growing tide of change. And the fact that the cabaret itself is home to many people who would be harmed under fascist rule (the gay MC, a transgender performer) creates a neat tension. How long will this cabaret and its performers hold out?
I know this is a rhetorical question, but the film Bent (1997) actually deals with this. I recommend it, but with caution as it is a pretty upsetting watch.



So glad you enjoyed this too, it's another of my favourites.

You had quite a few musicals not ticked off and I wasn't sure whether you didn't like musicals or just hadn't got round to seeing them. I feel like musicals are a bit of a risky bet to nominate for people unless you know they like them.
I don't mind musicals at all. It's just that they seem to be oddly thin on the ground when it comes to my streaming services.

I know this is a rhetorical question, but the film Bent (1997) actually deals with this. I recommend it, but with caution as it is a pretty upsetting watch.
I've seen Bent, as after watching Orlando I was interested in seeing more of Lothaire Bluteau, and yeah, it is rough. The whole sequence on the train is brutal, and a detail that I've always remembered (though it may not be 100% accurate as I watched it back when it came out in the late 90s) was
WARNING: spoilers below
the boyfriend saying he'd been forced to have sex with a dead girl
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Women will be your undoing, Pépé
If you still need it later, I'll get you one. I'm mowing the lawn now sweating my tail off.
that was my Sunday. Mowed, pruned, pulled gigantic weeds. . . and two days later, I STILL ache! lol
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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



I watched True Romance (1993) Directed by Tony Scott and written by Quentin Tarantino, the film has a fantastic ensemble, including Christian Slater, Patricia Arquette, Michael Rapaport, Bronson Pinchot, Gary Oldman, Dennis Hopper, Christopher Walken, Brad Pitt, James Gandolfini and Samuel L. Jackson. This is likely Slater's best performance and the rest of the cast deliver memorable and interesting performances too. The screenplay is sharp and clever and the film moves along at a brisk pace. There is some good action and the film builds to a satisfying climax. True Romance is an entertaining and wild ride, a good nomination for me, so thanks and good job to whoever picked it.



that was my Sunday. Mowed, pruned, pulled gigantic weeds. . . and two days later, I STILL ache! lol
And before I mowed, I came home from taking the dogs to the park to find a guy passed out in his car in my driveway after knocking over 1 of my lanterns. I had to deal with that so that's why I didn't watch a movie today.




I watched True Romance (1993) Directed by Tony Scott and written by Quentin Tarantino, the film has a fantastic ensemble, including Christian Slater, Patricia Arquette, Michael Rapaport, Bronson Pinchot, Gary Oldman, Dennis Hopper, Christopher Walken, Brad Pitt, James Gandolfini and Samuel L. Jackson. This is likely Slater's best performance and the rest of the cast deliver memorable and interesting performances too. The screenplay is sharp and clever and the film moves along at a brisk pace. There is some good action and the film builds to a satisfying climax. True Romance is an entertaining and wild ride, a good nomination for me, so thanks and good job to whoever picked it.
Great movie that I haven't seen mentioned on the forum much recently



Women will be your undoing, Pépé
Like raul, I was pretty blown away by the beauty of Red Shoes when I saw it during the 40s Countdown. Pretty amazing film.

Cabaret was nominated for me in a Personal Rec and gave me a chance to see this film I've always wanted to check out and never seemed to. You hit on a lot of points, Takoma that I loved about it as well. I also found new meaning to the lead song, "Cabaret" when they performed it at the end.

True Romance is a film I've watched over and over and over again. Helluva great film!



2022 Mofo Fantasy Football Champ
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World



I was surprised to see this was on a mofo list, and for a minute I thought it was a sneak pick for the millennium list as there was a lot of surprises on there. But alas it was the Comics list. It seemed a strange pick but I actually dug it a bit as a nice change of pace film. A pretty eclectic cast, I'm usually not a fan of Cera but he does well here (I think I said that about the last of his I saw too) and it was cool to see minor appearances from Evans and Larson. Interesting if this really is a comic book adaptation which it must be. I laughed quite a bit. The future joke was my favorite. A nice little surprise compared to what I thought.

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Dancer in the Dark, 2000

Selma (Bjork) is a Czech immigrant in 1960s Washington, working in a factory to save up money for a critical eye operation for her son. While she is supported by her good friend Kathy (Catherine Deneuve) and wooed--sometimes a bit creepily--by a man named Jeff (Peter Stormare), Selma hides from everyone else the fact that she is slowly going blind as a result of a degenerative eye disease. When her landlord (David Morse) pulls her into his own domestic woes, things get very dicey for Selma. However, Selma spends half of her time living as if she is in a musical, to the extent that she frequently daydreams elaborate musical numbers about the events in her life.

Okay, slow clap/hat tip to whoever had the nerve to see that I was hoping for shorter, optimistic films, and decided to give me . . . . this. Honestly, it shows the kind of dark humor that is also at the root of the film.

Let's start with the positives. I friggin' love Bjork in every sense of the word--her music, her vibe, all of it. She is weird in a way that feels like it genuinely comes from her soul, and she is a perfect fit to play Selma so that it doesn't feel like a contrivance. Further, she really holds her own in the musical numbers (naturally), and she is a delight to watch. She also proves capable of delivering on the dramatic front, filtering tragedy through the lens of this character with such a skewed world view. Bjork brings her odd timing and rhythms to the music, which excellently matches the idea that this woman is out of step with the world around her. I loved a late in the film rendition of "My Favorite Things" in distinctly Bjork style.

At its best, the film is deliriously, darkly hilarious. Selma runs around like some sort of demented Amelie, only if Amelie existed in a world completely devoid of magic and whimsy. As the film progresses, Selma's quirks and the musical numbers take on an increasingly absurd element. It's one thing for her to tap her toes and dance around to the rhythmic sounds of a factory floor. It's quite another thing to flounce around in a literal life-or-death situation.

There's this nice counterbalance to Selma's subjective experience of the world, and that comes from the supporting characters. They are all really well-acted, and they both heighten the absurdity of Selma's actions/reactions and give this element of tragedy as they try to steer this person they love away from the cliff's edge. At times this gets a bit tenuous--and it's a good thing that the setting is in an older decade--because Selma seems at times to maybe be actually seriously mentally ill.

On the downside, though, the film does start to feel a bit overlong, especially in the last act. There's this transition somewhere in the back half of the film where it feels less like the movie is observing a person make horrible, quirky choices and more like she is being intentionally put through the wringer in increasingly extreme ways. I get that this heightens the absurdity, but somewhere in the last third the effect that the film had been building suddenly plateaued for me. There are some interesting implications in the last third that the character might actually be really depressed and possibly might want to die, and I wish the movie had explored that a bit more. I also felt like, in wanting the character to make the worst choices possible, the film sometimes stepped out of its own internal logic. For example, there are times that Selma withholds information and it makes sense, but later she does so and it's like . . . what? Or times when she resists help or support from others that just doesn't seem to gel with her fantasy reality where everyone is nice to each other. This is where you start to feel the hand of the writer, and I got a lot less interested when it began to feel mechanical and manipulated instead of "naturally" ridiculous.

Style-wise, I thought it was interesting to see Von Trier's style intersect with filming musical numbers. Also, this is the second film in a row to have Joel Grey in a role. Also, loved seeing Udo Kier as the eye surgeon because, you know, RUN!!!!

I wish that the second half had matched the tone and pace of the first half. I get that stretching everything out is part of the joke of the arc of the character (and even more darkly, that it kind of puts the viewer on the position of being like
WARNING: spoilers below
"OMG just die already you little singing cherub!!"
but with 40 minutes to go I found myself mostly feeling annoyance instead of either sadness or humor.




Women will be your undoing, Pépé
And before I mowed, I came home from taking the dogs to the park to find a guy passed out in his car in my driveway after knocking over 1 of my lanterns. I had to deal with that so that's why I didn't watch a movie today.

holy sh#t!
Got a similar story.
Last summer, doing yard work, walked to the front of the house, and in the street, by the curb was a passed out woman, on her knees, forehead on ground, arms behind her.
It was the position that really caught me funny. A neighbor had already called the cops who already knew her, gave her a medical shot in the thigh, she woke up and they took her to the hospital.
Sat on my porch watching it all, shaking my head and chuckling, before getting back to yardwork.



Women will be your undoing, Pépé
Not a fan of Scott Pilgrim but that has a lot to do with the leading actor. Just don't care for him and his presence ruins a movie for me.

Dancer in the Dark sounds like a bad Alice in Wonderland Overdose. Scary AND intriguing.



holy sh#t!
Got a similar story.
Last summer, doing yard work, walked to the front of the house, and in the street, by the curb was a passed out woman, on her knees, forehead on ground, arms behind her.
It was the position that really caught me funny. A neighbor had already called the cops who already knew her, gave her a medical shot in the thigh, she woke up and they took her to the hospital.
Sat on my porch watching it all, shaking my head and chuckling, before getting back to yardwork.
Sounds like they have her narcan



Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

I was surprised to see this was on a mofo list, and for a minute I thought it was a sneak pick for the millennium list as there was a lot of surprises on there. But alas it was the Comics list. It seemed a strange pick but I actually dug it a bit as a nice change of pace film. A pretty eclectic cast, I'm usually not a fan of Cera but he does well here (I think I said that about the last of his I saw too) and it was cool to see minor appearances from Evans and Larson. Interesting if this really is a comic book adaptation which it must be. I laughed quite a bit. The future joke was my favorite. A nice little surprise compared to what I thought.

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It's based on a graphic novel. I think it is a bit uneven, but I'll admit to having watched it several times. I never fail to crack up at the Vegan Police, or some of the editing/camera moves, like when there's the pan and you realize Scott is in bed with both his roommate and the roommate's boyfriend.



Withnail and I: This and Sunshine are two I was hoping would be nominated for me, so I was very pleased to see both. Withnail has been on my radar too long despite me really knowing nothing about it. Maybe that’s why I never pulled the trigger. I was pretty disappointed unfortunately.

Drug comedies just don’t work for me very often. That’s pretty ironic here because Danny was the only character I really found funny, and he’s the biggest stoner of them all. Also the most over the top so probably why he’s the funniest to me.

Withnail is really a nothing character. He’s not funny and he’s not endearing. I really never had any response to him at all. That made the ending feel really unearned. Bummer of a watch.



Egads! I hated Withnail and I. It was nominated for the 12th HoF and that's where I watched it.
Withnail & I...is a British dark comedy. This was not to my liking and it took all of my effort just to get through it. I found the movie tedious, full of inane dialogue but with no emotion. There's no development, no story, no theme and personally I didn't find it funny either.
CR