The Personal Recommendation Hall of Fame IV

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Paris, Texas (Wim Wenders 1984)

Reaction: Impressed

They say if you can't remember a movie then it must not have been all that good. I don't buy that.

When I watched Paris,Texas a week ago I had zero idea of what it was about...It was a blind watch. I thought it was going to be so quirky, Lynchian-like 80s crime film. To my surprise, this was a prime example of 'slow-cinema', a film movement that I enjoy and I did enjoy Paris,Texas. Sure not much happens and the scenes go on for a long while, but like a slow cooked Texas barbecue the film was bursting with flavor.

A lot of that film-flavor is from Harry Dean Stanton who was born to make a movie like this. I read Paris,Texas was his favorite film that he worked on. I liked Dean Stockwell too. But what I really liked was the Jim Jarmusch like photography of small towns in Texas...I chose that photo, not because the kid actor or the scene were amazing, but because the composition is so amazing. It's so rich in background details that no real action is needed. The setting tells the story. The entire film was like that, those town-scapes told a tale that went beyond what was happening on the surface.

As strange as it might seem I don't really remember the movie after a week but like Harry Dean Stanton's character I know something real important took place.
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Currently watching Mustang (2015)
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Women will be your undoing, Pépé
Sports HoF, bring it on! I'd be in and I've not seen Bull Durham...I do like Kevin Costner's films.
Sports HOF would be cool sometime
I would also be into this
You'd suggested a Sports HoF awhile back, it would be great if you could host. I don't want to host, but I'd sure join.
That would make a great Autumn HoF.
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Women will be your undoing, Pépé
Paris, Texas has been on/off my watchlist and like you CR, it would be a complete blind watch which in itself has its appeal. I love your description "like a slow cooked Texas barbecue the film was bursting with flavor." Nicely put.




Room at the Top (Jack Clayton 1959)

Reaction: Much to my liking

I was expecting this to place middle of my list, but I gotta say it's going right up towards the top. I liked it that much.

In the first scene when we meet Joe (Laurence Harvey) I thought I had him pegged as being the handsome cad...a guy who used women, chewed them up and spit them out onto the cold pavement, without a mere thought of remorse. In the first scene it did indeed look like he would be the guy you 'love to hate'. I mean he did seem predatory at first, with his stalking of the daughter of the richest man in town. He was kinda creepy with his hellbent plan to marry her for money and social status, two things he sorely lacked.

But it was Joe's meager beginnings in a dirty northern England work town that made him who he was, and as the film went along we could see that the war, the loss of his family and his early life had shaped him into the person he was.

Along the way he does begin to change and realize that love is more important than money. But what I really liked is that the film never made that change in Joe clear cut, he was still a cad but a cad that could be understood.

Simone Signoret as Alice the older, married French woman that he falls in love with, made for a very realistic (for film) love story. She's very personable in this and their relationship felt dynamic. I liked the time the film spent on it.
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The Conversation (Francis Ford Coppola 1974)

Reaction: see review

*Spoilers*


Wow! The first scene in the city square with the inter-cut scenes of the couple under surveillance and the rooftop teams with those powerful recording mics, and Gene Hackman and his crew coordinating in a undercover van...were very powerful. They were filmed and edited like nothing I've seen in a movie before...I knew I was in for a treat.

In the next short scene with Hackman being tight lipped with his girl-on-the-side Terri Garr...it tells us just what we need to know about this man who's gone 'down the rabbit hole' in his surveillance job. I knew at the start of the movie that the story idea must have been inspired in part by The Watergate incident a few years earlier...In it's day this film must have resonated with viewers.

Then there's a scene with Gene Hackman attending a surveillance equipment convention and that's when the film starts to go astray. This man who goes to great lengths to keep his own life private and hidden, is now like a celebrity among his fellow surveillance experiments, which undid what was built on in the first scenes.

Then the film goes off the rails, when Hackman invites his competition back to his secret spy shop and shows them some of his equipment!....Nope, I'm not buying that he would do that. Then he stupidly allows a woman that he just met to steal his secret & very dangerous tapes. But wait a minute he had a cage with a lock...I guess he forgot to lock it.

Anyway the film is not well written and if it wasn't for Coppola's and Hackman's success with other films, I don't think this film would be so highly rated.

With that said I'm very happy to have watched it! It's a film I had really wanted to watch.

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Have not heard of that one, but by your write up, I am rather curious and I do enjoy Simone Signoret when I saw her in Army of Shadows.
Simone has a good amount of scenes in Room at the Top and is 10 years younger to boot!



3 in a row from CR with my favorite being Room at the Top. Paris, Texas is also excellent. I need to see The Conversation again as I was disappointed the 1st time going back a few years.



MUSTANG
(2015, Ergüven)



"The house became a wife factory that we never came out of."

Mustang is a Turkish film that follows the lives of five orphaned sisters as they struggle with the conservative beliefs and upbringing of their grandmother and uncle who are raising them. The above exchange comes at a point when the grandmother has had enough of the girls behavior and decides to isolate them at their home as she marries them off.

The film is co-written and directed by Deniz Gamze Ergüven, and apparently the catalyst event is inspired in her own experience as a Turkish girl. The "catalyst event" is nothing but an innocent game of "chicken fight" with some male friends at the beach; something that their grandmother (Nihal Koldaş) classifies as her "granddaughters, pleasuring themselves on boys' necks". That gives you an idea of the kind of "conservative" mindset they're trapped in.

After this event, the girls are taken off school, and groomed to be "perfect wives"; cooking, sewing, cleaning. Their regular clothes are traded by shapeless garbs which they refer to as "sh-it-colored dresses", bars are set in their windows, locks on the doors... and for every window barred and key turned, the girls grow up more determined to run away any way they can.

The comparisons with Sofia Coppola's The Virgin Suicides are expected, but I'll just say that I appreciated more Ergüven's approach which, unlike the former, manages to flesh out each daughter well enough for the story to have an emotional baggage. The performances from the girls, most of which weren't professional actresses, are also pretty good and they each manage to convey both a sense of individuality to each of them, as well as the endearing yet tragic bond between them.

There are some brief tidbits of narration, provided by the youngest daughter, Lale (Güneş Şensoy), which are not entirely necessary, but the dramatic weight and tension of what is happening is enough to make of this a very surprising discovery.

Grade:



Can any of you link gods help me out with one for Scarlet Empress? I thought I was going to be able to watch it on YouTube, but the one on there is unwatchable. I think someone recorded it with their phone from the TV. Brutal



Can any of you link gods help me out with one for Scarlet Empress? I thought I was going to be able to watch it on YouTube, but the one on there is unwatchable. I think someone recorded it with their phone from the TV. Brutal
Just sent you a message.



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I never could get the hang of Thursdays.
I was expecting this to place middle of my list, but I gotta say it's going right up towards the top. I liked it that much.
I hope there's room at the top of your list for it

I think Paris, Texas, Room at the Top and The Conversation are all really good films, so good luck ordering those.

Mustang is pretty good too, I can't remember if that was on my ballot for the directed by women countdown, but it probably was.