The 29th Hall of Fame

So far, I'm at 213 movies (not including rewatches). I plan to watch at least 400 this year.

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IMDb
Letterboxd

I haven't logged anything on letterboxd this year. I have no clue. I could go back and log them I guess.

Sounds great!

A $500 gift card to Criterion. Enjoy!

I'm at 328 films for the year, but that includes a couple of dozen short films. I have to watch over a hundred more than you to catch up.

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Enthiran (Shankar, 2010)

I've been on a big masala film kick lately so revisiting the first one I had ever seen was a delight. At the time of its production this was the most expensive Tamil-language film ever made and more money seemingly always means more crazy shit when it comes to Bollywood/Tollywood films and we love that. Obviously the standout moments are the action set pieces, which pretty much every action scene from this film went viral to some extent, and holy shit they go stupid hard. Like parts of this just had me screaming and hyperventilating still, just like the first time I saw it. The train fight is so wild, just all these stuntmen taking some of the scariest bumps I've seen in a minute in such a confined space. The choreography is so nutty here and throwing in wrestling moves always hits for me. Then there's the highway chase scene which (even though I'd seen it before) broke my damn brain. Just an escalating series of the most insane ideas. A bike cop gets thrown through a whole ass bus the long way! and the stuff after that is simply beyond description (and the "2.0" track we get for the first time here has been periodically stuck in my head for like a decade now). Shit is just 10/10 chains off the chain sicko mode shit. The final big set piece is a CGI nightmare of course but I love the "f*ck it we can literally do anything" vibe it has, that the whole movie has really. Its probably the least hype of the action scenes unfortunately, at least in terms of energy, but its still has crazy big ideas and the "I can't believe what I'm seeing" factor going for it.

Now, a 3-hour movie must be more than just three action scenes and don't worry shits still pretty wild even when its not going full-tilt. A lot of the early film is cute comedy stuff that's quite charming imo. The robot Chitti's fish-out-of-water antics, the bumbling assistants and despite playing it straight, the rival engineer/first-half bad guy is hilarious to me. Outside of some cultural barrier stuff and watching this with subtitles that aren't exactly localized at points, the comedy almost always hits for me to some degree and its kind of going a mile a minute with it. I mean, this movie has a scene where the robot confronts a bunch of mosquitoes? verbally? and its great??? This movie is really like the producers went "here's the most money ever put into a film in this language, k have fun bye". Nothing is ever reigned in and you never really know what's going to happen next. For a film of its length its packed to the gills with just, stuff. Fast-paced, always moving and I never for a second felt the runtime. You couldn't possibly talk about everything in this film and since I've already spent way too much time on this I won't lol. Just too many ideas and genres happening to ever give someone the full scope in a review (well, maybe Phoenix can idk) so I'll just quickly add that Rajinikanth is such a beast in this, especially once he becomes 2.0, I simply must see everything this dude has been in, the musical numbers (oh yeah, there's musical numbers btw) are fun but extremely the year 2010 and that its actually pretty impressive how seamlessly the genres blend and change with the story.

This is big, gaudy, spectacle filmmaking that just f*cking goes for it and (with the exception of Speed Racer) American blockbusters could never. Watch it with friends if you get the chance, its a great, high-energy party movie.

There's a lot to say about what Invasion of the Body Snatchers is really all about, but even if you take it at face value it's a lot of fun, and considering it's low budget it's quite well made. It's based on a serialized novel written by Jack Finney, and has been remade a few times, usually with endings at variance with what the novel, this first adaptation and other adaptations have gone with. Does the ending matter? Somewhat, yeah, and unfortunately with this first film version, studio heads forced screenwriter Daniel Mainwaring, and director Don Siegel to film bookends which change the feel of the whole film - but what I find is that if you know how it was originally meant to end, you can still get the chill you would have got if you just imagine it. For it was meant to be chilling, and for the most part it succeeds in being unsettling.

The film starts with a frenzied Dr. Miles Bennell (Kevin McCarthy) trying to explain that despite seeming crazy, he's in fact bringing them information that's important. He goes back and describes what has happened to him. On arriving back home from holiday, he was informed by Becky Driscoll (Dana Wynter) that he has a backlog of patients waiting to see him. It seems that people have been complaining about loved ones who seem suddenly very different - emotionless and changed despite looking the same and having the same memories. Suddenly, most of these people are no longer complaining, but Bennell is alarmed when Jack Belicec (King Donovan) suddenly finds a formless human body in his house, and when he rushes to Becky's place he finds a similar one in her cellar. When they all figure out that people are being replaced by alien beings born from pods, Bennell and Becky flee, but are soon being chased by all of the people in their town who have been converted. Miles Bennell must try and warn the rest of the nation soon, lest the entire world be in danger...

There's always a lot of noise proclaiming this film to be about either Communism, or else McCarthyism - in relation to blind, thoughtless conformity which the pod people seem to represent, and the political climate in the United States at the time. My own personal favourite meaning is the simple focus on people in our society that lack certain attributes - imagination, love, emotion etc. It's no coincidence that the term "pod people" has been widely adopted in the years since this story became famous. It so aptly describes a real proportion of the populace who seem to go about their lives as if they're the alien interlopers in this story. When McCarthy's Bennell kisses Becky, and realises by her lack of response that she's been replaced, she's representing one of the people director Don Siegel described as having, "no feeling about cultural things, no feeling of pain, of sorrow." He denied there was a distinct political allegory to the film, but most still attach 'McCarthyism' as one, and they have as fair a point as any looking at the film and story for meaning.

I must mention that the film is exceedingly well shot, and cinematographer Ellsworth Fredericks goes absolutely beyond what is necessarily called for with low budget science fiction with some very striking shots - and when not impressing, the work is all the same expert and notably excellent. Fredericks was just on the verge of being nominated for an Oscar for his work on Sayonara. The score however, I found far too overbearing and dramatic - and I realise that "dramatic" absolutely reflects what happens in this film, but it doesn't need to be pounded into us like that right from the opening credits. Carmen Dragon, who won an Oscar for the score of Cover Girl in 1945, produced this vein of musical hysteria which absolutely fits, but at the same time turns me off when it's over-applied. Films from this era always did have a habit of having their scores overstate, and excessively underline what the film is about, or what's going on in a specific scene - and I much prefer subtlety.

Oscar-winning production designer Ted Haworth came up with the pods, and managed to duplicate many of the cast members with plaster-casts of their real bodies. He was teamed up again with director of photography Ellsworth Fredericks on Sayonara, where he won his Oscar, but his work here is good - and he was nominated many more times in his career. Daniel Mainwaring's adapted screenplay was probably one of his best, and the one he is most famous for. Actor McCarthy complained that the dialogue in it was too simplistic and too dissimilar to what people say in real life, but as far as I'm concerned it worked fine, and the story flows with the steady but speedy rate that it needs to prevent us from becoming impatient with what is going on. It's somewhat surprising that Bennell doesn't make more of the body found at Jack's place, but at the same time, the people in this don't take too long before they realising something dangerous is occurring. All of the actors are serviceable.

Growing up, I've always been familiar with the 1978 adaptation of this story, and until now had never seen the very first adaptation. It's very much a rung above nearly all of the science fiction you find from the 1950s - most of which really can't find the right level of balancing fantasy against reality. In this it's extraterrestrial seed pods which float through space, which is something I've often pondered - seeing as some seeds can survive the harshest of conditions and spring into life after eons of time. In the novel, which ends on a different note to the movie, the aliens give up on their colonization after meeting human resistance, and decide on their own initiative to leave - even though they would have had the ability to defeat us. It's our resistance that surprises them. The '78 version ends very bleakly. I'm not sure about other versions, but the main thing we take away from the film is a suffocating sense of paranoia once the invasion is underway, and it's that paranoia that made many think of McCarthyism when trying to understand what the film was about. During the 1950s, the U.S. had been beset by paranoia, and the feeling was very familiar.

So, this is a film with a very independent spirit, with what were at the time lesser-known actors - Don Siegel we most readily remember for the films he directed which starred Clint Eastwood, such as Dirty Harry, Escape From Alcatraz and Coogan's Bluff. It's a classic, and these days I like to sit back and really try to pretend I'm experiencing the movie in the frame of mind audiences back then would have been, without all of the remakes and subsequent science fiction that breeds too much familiarity. Coming in without all of that, this would have been a real scary thrill ride - being chased like Kevin McCarthy is in this film absolutely reminds me of nightmares I've had, and most people would agree it's a terrible prospect. Alone, outnumbered, and not sure that the next person you come across that seems friendly is indeed on your side after all. These classics of their respective genres should be seen from the perspective of their time - but otherwise, Invasion of the Body Snatchers still packs a punch and is entertaining, and artful. A science fiction film with a lot of hidden subtext, and one that lives on through generations.

Why don't I remember this being as good as it actually is, especially considering how it was able to accomplish something I don't think I've ever encountered before in fiction films. To call A Moment of Innocence "realistic" would be somewhat of a disservice. I've described many movies as that before, but in this case something feels a little different. It feels as though the film was able to tap into a different realm, a docu-realm, beyond the threshold of cinematic realism. The "characters" suddenly become just some regular people, and the "dialogue" becomes just what these simple people utter. Nothing feels artificial about their conversations, mannerisms, characteristics, or about the overall setting. It's as though the film is a newborn: full of innocence and purity, and yet it still manages to deliver an entertaining experience of meta-cinema. Sounds like an impossible and contradictory task, but it worked.

Let's elaborate a little more on what makes this film so good. First of all, the people in here are freaking hilarious. The cop specifically is a fantastic person to follow around. The scene where he chooses the most handsome guy in the lineup to play the younger version of him is a perfect summation of what he's all like. He keeps saying how much their eyes resemble each other, even though in all actuality they couldn't be more further apart. His interactions with the actor that ends up playing the younger version of him are all kinds of fun. He keeps trying to teach the kid how to act more like him, when in all reality he's trying to teach him how to act like how he wants to be perceived, and of course he does, the majority of people's perceptions of themselves are way off of people's true perceptions of them. He ends up looking somewhat like a hypocrite and a goof as he's preaching about staying alert at all times and never getting distracted during the job, meanwhile, back then, he got so distracted he fell in love with the girl in question. But it's these characteristics and flaws that render him so human and genuine, and that's what aids at manufacturing this overall sense of purity and docu-realism. The man just wants to be the good guy and hero for once, that's what makes him so wholesome.

I have yet to even mention the funniest scene of them all. It's when Makhmalbaf pays a visit to his cousin, and her daughter goes on this incomprehensible crying raging X-box gamer-like rant after she wasn't permitted by her mother to participate in the movie production. You just have to see it for yourself. But yeah, there's a lot of comedy going on, and it's not the kind where the script is actively trying to make you laugh, rather, it all comes from the people and their personalities. There's for example the actor who's playing young Makhmalbaf, as he's constantly going on about wanting to save the world, and then as an example of actions he would take, he says he would plant flowers all over Africa. Hilarious. A final one before I move on: there's a scene earlier on of the policeman walking away from the production after being refused to choose his own actor, meanwhile, the director and cameraman are looking on to him from the back, watching him drift farther and farther away, as they're discussing whether to chase after him or not. Makhmalbaf goes "Don't worry, he'll come back before he reaches that bent tree", and of course the guy passes it and keeps walking which prompts the director to nudge his cameraman to run after him. This was funny to me because it was such a stereotypical artiste-thing to say, and I could totally see Makhmalbaf saying something like that and not thinking twice about it.

You really learn so much about the Iranian community and culture through Makhmalbaf's movies. There are many choices he doesn't necessarily need to include, but chooses to add them in as they give more context to the society these people are apart of. For example, when the cop exclaims at the kid to knock twice on the left side of the door as that informs the owners that they're two men. It's the little things that one finds weirdly satisfying and informative. There's also this other weirdly interesting scene where Makhmalbaf is shooting a beggarwoman, and after giving her some money she says to him "Merci", which he snaps at and asks her to respond in Persian instead. In my mind, the beggar saw the camera and probably associated it with western culture so she naturally responded with merci, but Makhmalbaf is aiming to show with his camera the Iranian community with absolute authenticity, even if it means manipulating a situation. Whether that part was scripted or real, intentional or not, I found it to be quite the interesting oxymoron that compliments the meta aspects of the movie.

Speaking of which, there's still this whole other side to the film we have yet to talk about. The mere plot itself is meta as hell, and how it's executed is full of fun trickery you could almost sense Makhmalbaf's smirk behind some of the details he puts forward. For example, the first time we see the young girl, she asks the kid "cop" what time it is, and immediately of course we feel it's tongue in cheek and we think it's just the director trying to pull our nose, but then we get more context in the following scene which showcases the lead up from the others perspective, and it all circles back into making sense. This kind of play happens numerous times throughout, and it gives a sense of manipulating time and history, to the point where one feel like there's almost some sort of parallel universe situation going on here, or at least the younger actors are some sort of reincarnations of their older representatives. There's this part where Makhmalbaf's cousin's daughter, in the same hilarious scene I mentioned earlier, goes up to the young director, and suddenly starts talking to him as though she's playing the role of the young woman. There's definitely something weird going on with that part, and I'm still trying to figure it out. The blurring of the lines is even more apparent between the actor "Makhmalbaf" and the director Makhmalbaf. Their characteristics and stories start to merge together, at points you don't know if this is all part of the script, or if it's a way to contextualize even further how the original situation transpired. Mind you, all of this is happening while the movie remains super well structured without becoming messy at no point. I know, it's amazing.


In the same sense that maybe the young director's traits are possibly the same as Makhmalbaf's 17 years ago, it feels like the showcased relationship between the former and his cousin could be similarly mirroring with exactitude the originals relationship. Or you could just take in their cuteness together and call it a day. Later on, we witness the young director crying his heart out, incapable of actually going through with the act. He doesn't want to stab the young policeman because he's all about "saving mankind". This got me thinking, we know that in the original timeline the young woman attempted to distract the policeman on multiple occasions, which means that Makhmalbaf must've gone through a similar obstacle back then before he finally committed the crime. I was also reminded of Aang from Avatar the Last Airbender and how in the last book he was so conflicted between killing the fire lord and finding a different method to defeat him while staying true to his beliefs.

The best and most genius part that's also the perfect cherry on top has to be the film's last scene, more specifically its last shot. After the policeman finds out the truth about the details of what truly happened that day, he summons some real fool me once shame on you fool me twice shame on me energy, and commands his actor to shoot the girl on sight next time around. However, in their ultimate encounter, at the last second, both he and the young director stay true to themselves and choose forgiveness instead. One hands the flower while the other delivers the bread. It's a truly wholesome message the film conveys. It shows how satisfying it can feel choosing forgiveness instead of violence. It makes me think that this entire movie was Makhmalbaf's apology letter to the cop. Instead of showing us their much craved interaction together, Makhmalbaf conveys his feelings through his art, and gives the man his flowers and bread as a gift of moving on. That bread looked tasty too.

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"A film has to be a dialogue, not a monologue — a dialogue to provoke in the viewer his own thoughts, his own feelings. And if a film is a dialogue, then it’s a good film; if it’s not a dialogue, it’s a bad film."

- Michael "Gloomy Old Fart" Haneke

I'd be shocked if Anomalisa doesn't sweep this tbh.

If a film has multiple cuts, wouldn't you wanna give priority to what people consider to be the best version? I mean I haven't seen Das Boot either, but I wouldn't want to waste my time watching a worse cut of a movie instead of an available better one just because of a length problem. Not trying to convince you or anything haha but you could always spread it out over a couple of days if it's truly an issue.

I haven't seen the 2.5 hour version of Das Boot, but the 3.5 hour version is actually pretty easy to get through. Really, if you got through The Travelling Players, you can get through that film as well.

I can't really say which version of Das Boot is better? I watched the mini series which is almost 5 hours, but like any mini series I didn't watch it all in one night. The thing about Das Boot is the movie is mostly about spending time in that cramped sub 'à la atmosphere', so it works well to watch it on multiple nights.

Oh...I was curious about the English dub of the Director's Cut so I did check it out briefly, but it just didn't sound right so I do recommend watching it in German regardless of the version.

I haven't seen the mini series yet, but I might get to it eventually.

I trust Citizen so I'm sure this is a decent film. I will watch what I can find. I don't mind war movies. I actually enjoy WW2 films, drama or otherwise.

Just as FYI I will be out of commission as far as watching movies for this Hall for about 2 weeks. I'll play catch up then.

The pay off was that iconic last shot of the film. If the policeman didn't find out the truth, he would've never urged his actor to use the gun and shoot, and the last scene wouldn't have half of its original emotional impact.

The movie obviously knows that that's what you want, that's why it didn't give it to you. If it did, it would be just another regular movie stripped of its meta elements. I feel like the film itself is the meeting between the two, and through it do they work out their past.

Wait, did I miss something? Because I don't remember the two you mention ever interacting with each other. I thought it was always Makhmalbaf with his actor, and the policeman with his actor.

If you haven't seen it you might like it. I read that the interior of the sub is an exact recreation of the WW2 German U Boat....OMG they were cramped. Das Boot was nominated for 6 Academy Awards including:

Best Director
Wolfgang Petersen
Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium
Wolfgang Petersen
Best Cinematography
Jost Vacano