Personal Recommendation Hall of Fame VI

Tools    





Nice write up Phoenix. I love Dances With Wolves even if it took awhile for me to see it. I was a little upset that it beat Goodfellas at the Oscars so it was shelved for awhile but it's a worthy winner of one of them silly statues. I never thought of it as a "white savior" film though because John doesn't save the Native Americans from anything. He knows he can't save them so he does what he can - warn them about the incoming storm. And how about that Spivey? What a great character. He's on my list of worst, most easily hateable characters of all time. Guys like him, you want Quentin Tarantino to write an appropriate ending for 'em or have them take a trip to the Amazon with Deodato.

Titane, heard about it a while back and stuck it on the old watch list right away. Just waiting for it to stream on something I have.





Children of Men (2006)
Directed by: Alfonso Cuarón
Starring: Clive Owen, Clare-Hope Ashitey, Michael Caine

More than 15 years after its release, the grim future presented to us in Children of Men seems even more horrifyingly plausible than I probably would've guessed, had I seen the film a decade earlier. Anti-immigrant sentiment is on the rise world-wide, and the concentration camp imagery featured in the film is uncomfortably similar to the stories of border camps set up in the United States under its former president. We're even suffering through a global pandemic, albeit a few years later than the deadly flu that swept the globe in the film's universe. If infertility is next on the docket for us, I wouldn't even be surprised at this point.

Current day similarities aside, the world in Children of Men is one without hope. With an expiration date for humanity on the horizon, very few care to fight for the immediate future, let alone any lasting damage to society or the planet. Multiple scenes early on, where the main character casually goes about his day while violence and oppression happens all around him are incredibly fitting. Visually, the film is appropriately dreary, with dull colours and bland, worn-down urban landscapes. It's not aesthetically pleasing, but it does perfectly mirror that hopelessness, and lack of compassion felt by the general public.

Christian symbolism obviously runs throughout the entire film, but I appreciated that it was never overbearing or patronizing. There were a number of sequences that appeared to be long single shots, and they were so impressive, it made me wonder if I had missed a cut somewhere. I did a little digging and it turns out that they were digitally manipulated, but they were done so seamlessly that the editors really deserve more commendation for their work. I liked that there wasn't much back-story or explanation for events in the film, though admittedly I did expect a 28 Days Later-style twist at the end. Luckily we were given a somewhat ambiguous conclusion instead, which I definitely prefer.


Attachments
Click image for larger version

Name:	children.jpg
Views:	186
Size:	214.9 KB
ID:	88588  



Loved Dances with Wolves which won the 13th HoF and was my #1 on my voting ballot. I've seen it a couple of times now and it constantly impresses me on all levels. Costner is usually good in his movies and they're usually long too...and that's OK as I never felt the length with Dances With Wolves. There's an extended version that I have, but haven't watched, yet.



ikiru


i believe i watched seven samurai for the last one of these tournaments i participated in, at which point the only kurosawa's i had seen previously were yojimbo and rashomon. that makes this my fourth one, meaning he's one of the classic arthouse directors i have the least familiarity with, so i'm very glad to finally have had the push to see this one. i was already aware of the overall story and the structural gambit of it all, which is perhaps why i hadn't seen it yet, hoping that one day i would forget any details so i could go in fresh, but it turned out not to have mattered. it was very good!

the only criticism i could make (which barely counts as a criticism) is simply how direct it all is, lacking in any real poetry or abstraction save for a couple truly wonderful moments, but that seems to be kurosawa's style and he's quite good at it. in the same vein, shimura's performance is a bit one-note for much of the film, but he hits that note as clean and true as anyone ever has so it certainly isn't detrimental, although turning ikiru into a more well-rounded character may be the thing that could get me to properly love the film. i found myself wishing the film were longer so it might find the space for an extraneous subplot or two that could provide us a deeper glimpse at how ikiru behaves in the world when he isn't directly facing down his own mortality. the opening narration attempts to rectify this a bit, but it seems to betray an inability or perhaps unwillingness on kurosawa's part to pencil in minute character detail using the language of cinema, certainly in comparison to someone like ozu (on whom i'm also far from an expert). kurosawa's particular cinematic language seems to me most comfortable in bold strokes and sweeping gestures, which is obviously why he's such a purveyor of grand epics, in which it is readily accepted that characters stand in for certain ideals rather than characters in themselves. but i could easily be off-base as an admitted kurosawa neophyte, so please correct me if i'm wrong. certainly there is some lovely character detail among the town in yojimbo, although even that could lean rather broad.

the shot of ikiru on the swing is indeed iconic for a reason, the type of shot that is so laden with the accumulated meaning of the entire film, the purest expression of everything kurosawa wishes to say about this man's redeemed life. this thing is obviously filled with existential ideas, perfectly calibrated to get one reflecting on one's own life and impending death. kurosawa suggests that only one faced directly with his own mortality can truly live a good life, as the rest of us are left bickering over the credit for the good work that man did. in this sense, kurosawa's directness finds a clear purpose, forcing us to see everything through ikiru's point of view so that the audience itself can face it's own mortality and hopefully come to the same epiphany as ikiru and the funeral-goers at the end of the film. but of course kurosawa knows that much of the audience will go right back to their old indifferent vanity as soon as they leave the theater just as the characters in the film, so his only hope is that he can get through to that one person who returns to the park at the end of the film. unfortunately, that guy probably isn't me, but it's a nice thought.

__________________
Most Biblical movies were long If I Recall.
seen A Clockwork Orange. In all honesty, the movie was weird and silly
letterboxd
criticker




Children of Men (2006)
Directed by: Alfonso Cuarón
Starring: Clive Owen, Clare-Hope Ashitey, Michael Caine

More than 15 years after its release, the grim future presented to us in Children of Men seems even more horrifyingly plausible than I probably would've guessed, had I seen the film a decade earlier. Anti-immigrant sentiment is on the rise world-wide, and the concentration camp imagery featured in the film is uncomfortably similar to the stories of border camps set up in the United States under its former president. We're even suffering through a global pandemic, albeit a few years later than the deadly flu that swept the globe in the film's universe. If infertility is next on the docket for us, I wouldn't even be surprised at this point...

Christian symbolism obviously runs throughout the entire film, but I appreciated that it was never overbearing or patronizing...
I seen this in the 1st Sci-Fi HoF...all I remember is everyone liked Children of Men but me. I seem to remember it was a lot of action and chase scenes, I don't remember much else about it. Somehow to me a world with human infertility sounds like a blessing, so maybe I should see it again



Children of Men is one of those films that everyone else seems to love, but I found it underwhelming and disappointing. Ikiru is an absolute masterpiece and on my list of all time favourite films.



Thursday Next's Avatar
I never could get the hang of Thursdays.
I picked you because we love some of the same movies that I think of as very lively and vibrant, like Strange Days, Shape of Water, Underground, etc. it was definitely a gamble, sorry you didn't like it more.
Yeah, that makes sense, I see the connection with those movies. Titane was just a bit more extreme though.

A few more thoughts/ discussion points for people who have seen it:

First,
WARNING: "Titane" spoilers below
It comes to something where a scene in which someone basically has sex with a car isn't even in the top 5 of weird and disturbing scenes in the movie! At first I thought this was a dream sequence, but then it seems to result in a weird mechanical pregnancy and there doesn't seem to be any separation between 'real' and 'unreal' in this movie anyway. It sort of made me think of Rosemary's Baby... with all the flames on the car, it seemed like it was maybe from hell...although flames and fire are obviously a motif throughout the film.



Was it the accident that made Alexia how she is, or did you think there was anything else going on? There are hints that she has a weird relationship with her dad, but is that just because he knows she's a serial killer?


Was any of it a metaphor for anything? I couldn't really fix on any of it meaning anything.





A New Leaf (Elaine May, 1971)

I never even heard of this before...So I went and looked at the MoFo list and seen it was #67 in the Directed by Women countdown. Then I read the comments about the movie and they all said about the same thing...'I've never heard of it'. So whoever chose this for me took a bit of a gamble as it's apparently not a well known film....but...I loved it!

I didn't know who Elaine May was until just now. I looked her up on IMDB and seen she wrote, directed and co-starred in A New Leaf. But that's not all, she directed a film that gets a lot of love here at MoFo Mickey and Nicky (1975)...and directed a film that was widely panned by critics when it first came out, but I liked it, Ishtar (1987). She only has four feature films to her credit but wrote a number of scripts for some well received films. So yeah, I loved this and I'm now interested in seeing more of Elaine May's work.

Why did I love it? Because the comedy was low key, coming out of the character's personalities and it didn't rely on gags or low brow humor. To me this is a perfect comedy. I'm not usually a fan of Walter Matthau as I find him a bit abrasive and course and that's the character he plays here but it works beautifully as he's this rich millionaire who's literally anti social and has no patients or need for anyone, but he ends up broke and has to marry a rich woman within 6 weeks. Elaine May is filthy rich and also social inept but still a sweet & kind person who's interest is in botany and discovering new species of plants. She's a clutz! and that was so funny as the way her clumsiness is handled for comedy effect was naturalistic and not bombastic. Loved the ending too.

See those two screenshots up there? I watched that scene several times over, freeze framing it and that was actually Elaine May hanging over a cliff to retrieve a fern sample. There's no edits and you can see it's her tied with a long rope and dangling over what looks to be about a 50 foot drop! I couldn't tell if the drop would be into the water or onto the rocks below, ouch. See that boat in the background, no doubt those were rescuers if needed.

Great choice for me that will most likely finish towards the top of my voting list. I have no guesses who chose it, but you can tell me if you want.

Attachments
Click image for larger version

Name:	a.png
Views:	85
Size:	263.5 KB
ID:	88594   Click image for larger version

Name:	b.png
Views:	85
Size:	313.8 KB
ID:	88595  



a new leaf was my nomination for you. i almost nominated the heartbreak kid and mikey and nicky for two other people in the tournament, two movies i think are masterpieces and i actually prefer a bit to a new leaf, but they both ended up as backup picks. a new leaf seemed right up your alley so glad to see you loved it, elaine may rules. i highly recommend checking out mikey and nicky and the heartbreak kid, which i believe is available on youtube.



a new leaf was my nomination for you. i almost nominated the heartbreak kid and mikey and nicky for two other people in the tournament, two movies i think are masterpieces and i actually prefer a bit to a new leaf, but they both ended up as backup picks. a new leaf seemed right up your alley so glad to see you loved it, elaine may rules. i highly recommend checking out mikey and nicky and the heartbreak kid, which i believe is available on youtube.
Thanks for the movie. I want to see Heartbreak Kid one of these day. I did see Mikey and Nicky in an HoF and wasn't really a fan, though everyone else seems to love it.



I didn't care for Children of Men the 1st time is saw it but I loved it the 2nd time. I had it as one of my contenders for Cosmic.

Ikiru is not a favorite of mine but I consider it a great movie. It becoming a favorite is not out of the question.

I am unfamiliar with A New Leaf but I am a fan of Mikey and Nicky and The Heartbreak Kid. Maybe I should check it out.



Was it the accident that made Alexia how she is, or did you think there was anything else going on? There are hints that she has a weird relationship with her dad, but is that just because he knows she's a serial killer?
It seemed like there was strong tension between them before the accident but I didn't notice anything being explained. I believe the metal in her head made her attracted to the metal in cars.


Was any of it a metaphor for anything? I couldn't really fix on any of it meaning anything.
I didn't notice anything but I also wouldn't be the person to ask. I think the movie ended up being about acceptance.




Howard's End:

I was pretty excited this showed up on my nom list as it has been on the edge of my radar, for a very long time, simply because I love Hopkins so much. Some might disagree, but what I like the most about this is how subtle the film is. The class politics are definitely always there but I feel like they are handled with a much lighter touch than other films like this. I feel like in most movies Hopkins character would be a big baddie, much more outspoken and obtuse than he is here. You can see why Thompson 's character would marry him. The film is extremely well acted, and the script is really good. I was expecting it to be more dynamic visually, but it did look fine. Enjoyed this one a good bit.
__________________
Letterboxd




The Long Good Friday:

This movie is right up my alley. By that I mean that I am going to say how much I love it and forget the plot within a week. That's okay though. Crime thrillers like this are just my jam and I will be happy to rewatch it in the future. Slow roll plot, which is very cool. A great lead in Hoskins, an actor I always find interesting. A nice seedy feeling setting. Plenty of squirmy moments to remind us we are dealing with real animals here.



Don't know much about Howard's End except that it's highly acclaimed.

The Long Good Friday is awesome. Before I saw it I didn't know Hoskins could roll like that. Great ending.



2022 Mofo Fantasy Football Champ
The Gunfighter



This had all the perfect essentials to a really great Western: a solid script from beginning to end, great supporting performances, and an excellent lead performances from Gregory Peck. Oh and the film looked great on the criterion version too! The dialogue between all the characters was right up my alley, felt as if I was right there with them. The film looked crisp and magnificent especially for a film from 1950. I really dug it.