Personal Recommendation Hall of Fame VI

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I thought A Separation was good, but not great. I've seen three films directed by Asghar Farhadi and I rated all three an 8/10. About Elly would be my favourite of his that I have seen, followed by The Salesman and then A Separation.



I should definitely see this again. I've really liked pretty much everything from Farhadi. About Elly remains the favorite though
It's alot like About Elly in story structure, but I think we get closer to the souls of these people in A Separation. I know I felt very strongly about the characters and that doesn't happen to me often.



A Separation was the winner of the 5th HoF, nominated by Sane. I just now read what he said about his own nomination. I have to say it mirrors what I just wrote.

My comments: I'm not sure there has ever been a better written movie than this wonderful drama by Farhadi. It isn't filled with quotable lines but from start to finish it builds a range of characters with real depth and motivations. At various stages of the film I was unsure of who was in the right and it builds such great engagement with the characters that I would have tears in my eyes due to the level of understanding of a character's situation ... when five minutes earlier I thought they were in the wrong...Sane
The only difference is I never wavered or changed my mind about who I thought was right and who I thought was in the wrong.



Loved A Separation. Pretty sure I saw it for that Hall. I really need to rewatch before making my 2010’s list.

Interesting you say you hadn’t previously loved any Iranian films, but did this one. The dialogue you mention seems to owe so much to Kiarastomi and Panahi. That always something bubbling beneath the surface feeling. The way it pulls you along. Beautiful
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If I remember correctly, a lot of us didn't know anything about A Separation when it was nominated in that HoF, but everyone loved it and it won easily. I liked About Elly and The Salesman, but I view A Separation as far superior to both.



Women will be your undoing, Pépé


Belle de Jour (1967)


This is my first foray into Director Luis Buñuel, who is considered "The father of cinematic Surrealism." While I've been a bit wary due to the alleged more shocking aspect of his films, this was, quite honestly, an ideal premiere into this genius' cinematic achievements. And yes, the fact that Catherine Deneuve is the pivotal "frigid" housewife who becomes a prostitute in the afternoons does play into it. And like the few others of her film, she truly brings a multitude of layers to her character that raises it far above what could easily be cliche into a more sublime shift of emotions and dark fantasies.

From my exceedingly minuscule research of Buñuel, I wondered, in the tier of the intensity of scenarios played out in his films, where this resided. The interwoven sexual fantasies of Deneuve's Séverine danced around a kind of Marquis de Sade theme without delving into any sex act. A well played as and far more tantalizing construct as reality and dreams interchange so deeply there is no departure from one to the other. The greater impressive maneuver is the seamless flow of it all I was more enraptured by the characters and where the final/vague conclusions lay than whether what occurred was real or a fantasy of Séverine.

Along with many of the actors in this film, the most violent of Séverine's clientele is the most striking for me, a leather coat-wearing cane using Pierre Clémenti. A dangerous thug with an aristocratic air that became the ideal outlet for Séverine's darker fantasies.

BRAVO
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Belle de Jour was one of my "overrated" movies for me. Good movie but I never understood what was so grand about it though. Kind of like salad for me as you can taste it, but can not find the beauty of it. Learn more in the "Movies You Are Disapponted With" thread.



I forgot the opening line.


Laura - 1944

Directed by Otto Preminger

Written by Jay Dratler, Samuel Hoffenstein & Elizabeth Reinhardt

Starring Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, Clifton Webb
Vincent Price & Judith Anderson

This reviews contains some spoilers

Laura invests a lot in it's characters, of which there are 5 major players. Five involved in a murder that becomes the central mystery of this film - a film which verges on noir but seems to lean more towards murder/mystery, suspense and drama. These characters are fully fleshed out, and have a significant amount of depth added to them - you will probably start to care about what happens to them the deeper into the film you get, in a positive and negative sense. The steady hand of Otto Preminger was necessary to pull this off - Lord knows Darryl F. Zanuck didn't want it to be that way, but found that time and again he had to return all of the decisions behind the film to Preminger's judgement, which was a wise decision to make. If he'd stuck with his original director - Rouben Mamoulian - less people would talk about Laura today.

This central, titular figure is figured to be the identity of a corpse that has been shot in the face with a shotgun - Laura, a young woman who worked as an advertising executive. Investigating is detective Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews), writing about the murder is Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb) - a close friend, and engaged to marry her is hard-up socialite Shelby Carpenter (Vincent Price). Laura's aunt, who happens to be someone very much romantically keen on Shelby, is Ann Treadwell (Judith Anderson) - she's also a suspect. Playing Laura in flashbacks is Gene Tierney - a presence felt from early in the film due to her large portrait hung above her apartment's mantlepiece. The film spends a lot of time in her apartment and those of the suspects, with McPherson devouring all the information he can. When he starts to get an impression of her from her diary and letters, he begins to fall in love with the alluring ghost. The film looks closely at those involved :

Waldo Lydecker is relatively effeminate - and not the only character in this film that happens to be so. I've read a lot about what people think about this theme of the film - it's set up so that Lydecker seems to be in love with Laura, but his bathtub meeting with McPherson which opens the movie and mannerisms do seem to suggest Lydecker is at least a little fruity and possibly making a pass at the detective, who he describes as "muscular and handsome" with a "lean, strong body". When he's not being like that, he's being arrogant and narcissistic - praising himself and his prose, and passing judgement on most of the people he knows. Lydecker grows so fond of Laura after meeting her that he starts compiling 'dirt files' on the people she meets and befriends. A charismatic newspaper columnist, Lydecker's obvious motive would be jealousy. He's played in very regal style by Clifton Webb, and well enough that the actor disappears and only the character shows up. He was nominated for an Oscar for this performance.

Shelby Carpenter is even more effeminate and prancing than Lydecker, which seems to suggest that some point is being made in regards to Laura's unsuitable suitors. Although he acts as the very model of the high society socialite, Carpenter is often broke and being supported by a variety of concerned ladies. If he's out of Laura's sight, it often means he's attached to some other lady in a lecherous fashion and is very plainly untrustworthy. None of his alibis really add up, and there are plenty of suspicious circumstances surrounding him on the night of Laura's murder. Vincent Price puts in an especially enjoyable performance here, softly spoken and it's very easy to fall under his spell because he's so polite, loving and loveable. You'd swear that this baby-faced, weak-voiced little doddle couldn't possibly kill a girl with a shotgun, but this guy will do things you don't expect the moment your back is turned.

Ann Treadwell is the snooty, upper-class snob you'd hate to have anything to do with. She also happens to be head over heels in love with Shelby, which gives her a pretty compelling motive to get Laura out of the way - considering she's to marry the man. She's hopeless at hiding this fact, and although she dotes on Carpenter she's kind of a hard edged, sharp-featured hawk of a lady who seems more masculine in her ways than the two preening main suspects. She's got snooty down-pat. Judith Anderson, who plays her, was nominated for an Oscar for her role in Rebecca, which came out only 4 years previous to this. She's given the least to do, but what she does do makes her part of this very small ensemble of performers. She has just the right features and temperament for a role like this.

Mark McPherson is your typical hard-edged, relentless and troubled detective who becomes more and more haunted by Laura as the case drags on. He's swift with the questions, and he's straight up - just the facts and what's needed, no need for small talk. I'd say it's unusual for a detective to fall in love with a murder victim, but there you are. Laura is just that kind of person. Dana Andrews is an interesting actor - one of those whose career drifted over into b-films as the decades went by, eventually landing a role in Zero Hour - interesting to us Airplane! fans. He's about as far from effeminate as you can get, and our arbiter of justice and what's right. In the end he's the symbol of masculinity and goodness that Laura would end up with, typical with what a film from 1944 would be promoting. Personally I can never quite understand why people who have just met walk off into the sunset for a "happily ever after" - but this is movie-land. But Laura's dead - so how could that even happen? (*whew* saved the day with that.)

Laura Hunt just seemed like a nice lady - a little trusting, but determined to make a good career for herself. Independent, good natured and honest. Really didn't deserve to be shot in the head with a shotgun. If the murder victim happened to be someone else though, Laura herself would be one of the prime suspects. If she caught Shelby - her fiancé - carousing with some other girl in her apartment (going so far as to wear one of her dresses) then she'd definitely have a motive. But that's just speculation. As a matter of coincidence, I'd just watched Gene Tierney costar with Clifton Webb in The Razor's Edge only days before watching Laura. She could play either the innocent or the guilty - the good or bad, angel or devil - with much conviction. What was going on with Laura? What happened here? It's a decent mystery.

So with great actors giving some of their best performances, all of the other stars aligned for Laura to become one of the best-made films of the 1940s. It's sole Oscar win came by way of it's black-and-white cinematography. Joseph LaShelle was pretty new at being Director of Photography, having served a long apprenticeship under others with that role - Laura being only his fifth film in charge. He'd go on to film Marty and The Apartment amongst many other timeless classics. In this film, I noticed that there were many tracking shots, which would invariably show us examples of decorative opulence on some sets, or through entire apartments. Movement seemed to be the key, and when they weren't tracking they were panning around and zooming. It almost seemed like we were pacing like a detective, eyeing up everything and looking for clues. Also used, in an unusual sense, are "whip-pans", which rapidly pan from one actor to the other when questions are being shot out - our eyes on the move, and not sure what to hone in on as a possible source of truth or guilt. The feel is distant, unemotional, non-judgmental and mysterious. The camera doesn't want to give the game away. Shadows and darkness encroach with the mood of the film.

The score went on to become very famous - so I'd term that a success as well, although I always seem to prefer modern day scores to those of this era. "Laura" wouldn't just go on to become a recognizable tune, but would be recorded with lyrics by the likes of Frank Sinatra and others over the years. It was composed by David Raksin, who would go on to receive Oscar nominations for the scores of 1947 film Forever Amber and 1958 film Separate Tables. It was a huge snub for him not to be nominated for an Oscar for this - his score would become immensely popular when the film was released, and sheet music of it sold in massive quantities. When songwriter Johnny Mercer wrote the lyrics the song also became a hit. It's destined to play on a loop in your mind if you listen to it too often, a haunting kind of melody that mixes romantic feelings with a wistful kind of dream-like flow. There's a meeting of excellence visually, sound-wise and performance-wise here that makes Laura a film that stands out as better than most others of it's day.

All of this works in unison - I couldn't comment too much on aspects such as "Interior Black-and-White Art Direction" which was a category it was nominated Oscar-wise for - although I did notice the many knick-knacks and doo-dads added for scenes when the camera tracks along at Waldo's apartment. It's just a finely made film that doles out reveals every so often - there are a few surprises wrung from Vera Caspary's novel and the screenplay was also Oscar nominated, along with Preminger himself for directing. I found myself most enthusiastic about the performances and the characters - this film being an excellent study of the various nefarious characters recognizable from such fiction. Preminger always reckoned on the fact that this is why he was most suitable to direct the film - his knowledge and proximity to poisonous and unlikeable personality types. Laura just happened to hang out with and be related to some of the most odious people you can imagine - so much so that they'd all be immediately suspected of murdering her. It didn't particularly matter to me how the mystery resolved itself - I was into watching these actors bring us these despicable personalities.

Laura became a much recognized classic - a romance, suspense, mystery and noir all wrapped up in a finely crafted and well directed product. It's an interesting treatise on masculinity, and even snobbery - seeming to set in it's sights all of the character deficiencies people can have. It's a movie I'm glad to have under my belt - sure to be referenced and alluded to, and just plain fun to watch. Vincent Price thought it one of the best he appeared in. One with a central image of a siren-lake lady who seems to attract every character to her in the end, and the circumstances become fatal because of that. Once you meet her, Laura seems perfectly ordinary, but the picture of her on her mantlepiece seems to haunt the entire film, and even though Laura doesn't have wealth or connections, she attracts the rich and poor, the well-connected and the working man. She seems like a fantasy - and this poor girl is the receptacle of all the projections her suitors see. Whomever let fly with that shotgun, was the most ill of them - making a good case for staying grounded, even while in the throes of love. Laura had the bad luck to befriend a gallery of dramatic posers, and hopeless dreamers. The movie makes us feel glad to be humble, and realistic.

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Latest Review : Le Circle Rouge (1970)



Laura is pretty great. I have seen it twice now. Still trying to figure out why I love Noir so much when plot leaves my pea brain almost immediately after watching. I sure do love a lot of them in the moment though, and Laura is one that I do.



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Nightmare Alley

I saw the Guillermo del Toro version of this when it came out last year, and thought it was pretty good (with a couple of reservations about pace and characterisation).

This version is better.

It hooked me in right from the start, with Tyrone Power's smart and ambitious carnival man honing his craft - a mixture of codes, cheats and cold-readings - getting more and more convinced by his own powers until he bites off a little more than he can chew. At first it's a little ambiguous but it slowly becomes clear he will step on anyone in his desire to get ahead and discard those who are no longer useful to him. And yet he's also sympathetic, in an anti-hero sort of a way. You almost don't know whether to root for him or to root for him to get his comeuppance.

It's a really good performance from Power, he changes dramatically throughout the course of the film. The supporting cast are good too, especially Helen Walker as Lilith Ritter. It also has a noir-ish quality that the remake, with its polished, colourful period piece aesthetic doesn't pull off quite so well.

The only slight edge the more recent version has is that it is able to go to some slightly darker places more overtly - for example in the characterisation and backstory of Ezra Grindle - and it also ended in the right place, this one has a tacked on possibility of redemption that it really doesn't need.

I'd recommend this to most people; a fine film. I can tell I'm going to have trouble separating a couple of the films when it comes to ranking them!



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I never could get the hang of Thursdays.
Does anyone know if apple tv is the only place you can watch CODA? I can't seem to find it to rent anywhere, streaming or dvd, and I don't have any apple devices.



Does anyone know if apple tv is the only place you can watch CODA? I can't seem to find it to rent anywhere, streaming or dvd, and I don't have any apple devices.
It's exclusive to apple tv+, but you don't need an Apple device to sign up for a free trial. You should be able to do it through the apple tv+ website on any browser or multiple types of smart devices. Here's the website:

https://tv.apple.com/



I like Laura, but it is a fake HoF winner. No I won't let it go

I liked Nightmare Alley more. Forgot about the remake, just added to my watchlist



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I like Laura, but it is a fake HoF winner. No I won't let it go

I liked Nightmare Alley more. Forgot about the remake, just added to my watchlist
I vaguely remember it being a fake winner, what is the background on that again? You can pm me or leave it here



I vaguely remember it being a fake winner, what is the background on that again? You can pm me or leave it here
She never watched all the noms. Claimed to but it was not believable and she never even stated her opinion about several of them.