The 29th Hall of Fame

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movies can be okay...
If anyone else is interested in the Dardennes filmography, and you have Tubi, The Child and Lorna’s Silence are both available there.

I plan to watch both along with The Promise to compare.

Eventually I’ll get to their other films.
Haven't seen L'Enfant, but Lorna's Silence is great...up until that batshit crazy nonsense ending. I'd like to re-watch it though, just to see how it would hold up knowing where it's heading.
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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



movies can be okay...
I know one you and your wife would enjoy of Mads..its called After The Wedding. Watch the Danish not the American remake.
I concur.



movies can be okay...
@Okay , I think your feelings of the other ATJ may have influenced you or maybe it's just not your type of comedy.
TBH I already forgot about most of the movie, but I do remember trying my hardest to like it. It's not the style of the humor in of itself that I didn't like, but rather its presentation. The humor actually wasn't even my main criticism. It was just a sloppy movie.





That's some writeup, Okay! I didn't know that about Lakme and I like the idea that Kaufman is criticizing how ordinary and interchangable the typical movie is these days.

So that this thread doesn't exceed the Hall of Fame word count, I'll write the rest of my reviews with just emojis.



I forgot the opening line.
I think there have been some great discussions and reviews by everyone in this Hall of Fame. Loved your review @Okay

Voting for films on this one will be particularly tough.
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Remember - everything has an ending except hope, and sausages - they have two.
We miss you Takoma

Latest Review : Le Circle Rouge (1970)



movies can be okay...
I still have a lot of catching up to do in this thread, since I'd like to add my two cents into some of the discussions I missed. I'll leave that until tomorrow I guess.



...Voting for films on this one will be particularly tough.
It's going to be really hard for me when it comes time to vote. So many of the noms have been stand outs. So far it's a solid field...I'd say everyone brought their A game to this HoF.



movies can be okay...
I found the main character to be fairly uninteresting and not that likeable. I would have preferred if he was a minor character and if the movie focused on the girl instead. She was a much more interesting and more likeable character.
TBH, there is something to be said about this kind of format. It probably comes down to the movie coming from a time where audiences would rather watch a guy watch a fully-formed female character go through the core drama of the story than watch a movie with the fully-formed female character as the lead. I personally didn't mind it in this specific case and thought it worked really well.



movies can be okay...

Adam's Apples (Anders Thomas Jensen, 2005)

I think it's trying to do the terrible characters get redeemed by the end thing but I don't really think that happens and the characters aren't really developed enough for that anyway. Like, am I supposed to be happy for the guy who ten minutes before the end of the film was trying to rape someone? and this certainly didn't do enough to make empathize with a nazi. I think the film is maybe a bit morally dubious but its also just kind of boring and why on earth does the score have bits that sound like Danny Elfman??
Agreed on pretty much all points, especially about the film's morality. That's the aspect I still struggle to have a solid grasp on. In many ways, the movie was trying to have its cake and eat it too, resulting in a quite muddled final message. It also really rubbed me the wrong way the manner of which Mads Mikkelsen's trauma was depicted and resolved in the end.



movies can be okay...
A Moment of Innocence

I can't get over my feeling that the two most interesting aspects of the story were practically ignored. Maybe it's a cultural thing, but the real act of violence committed by one party onto another doesn't seem to be given any type of resolution. It's as if the ex-cop simply accepts it as something that just happened. He's more concerned with the girl he loved, which strangely I was also more concerned with.
I love the fact that the policeman and Makhmalbaf never interact throughout the film, and rather speak and resolve their issues through the film and the art. I imagine their love for cinema was what facilitated their reconciliation in the first place. I talked about this more in my review.



I love the fact that the policeman and Makhmalbaf never interact throughout the film, and rather speak and resolve their issues through the film and the art. I imagine their love for cinema was what facilitated their reconciliation in the first place. I talked about this more in my review.
Now that you mention it, I suppose it would've been impossible to have their initial reunion in the film. It would've had to have been recreated which wouldn't have fit in with the rest.



movies can be okay...
And in A Moment of Innocence, there were a lot of times when I wondered if characters were acting or were not.
Yuppp. Especially during the scene of Makhmalbaf's cousin's daughter (what do you even call that?), out of nowhere, switching from having a normal conversation into seemingly reciting lines from the script? For me it's definitely the most baffling part of the whole movie, and it hugely contributes to the amplifying of the overall otherworldly feel and atmosphere.



movies can be okay...
Except the final shot was between people who had nothing to do with the real incident. Unless of course it's just meant as representation.
The ending works on multiple levels, the most basic one being that the two younger actors reject violence, both refusing to use their weapons despite being instructed to do so. Then you add the fact that they're recreating a scene from the director's past, who has obviously written this movie in of itself, and decided to end it with an altered conclusion to the incident in question, that to me is a confession of his true feelings towards that whole situation.

It simultaneously wraps up the character arcs for both the younger actors, and the older participants.



The ending works on multiple levels, the most basic one being that the two younger actors reject violence, both refusing to use their weapons despite being instructed to do so. Then you add the fact that they're recreating a scene from the director's past, who has obviously written this movie in of itself, and decided to end it with an altered conclusion to the incident in question, that to me is a confession of his true feelings towards that whole situation.

It simultaneously wraps up the character arcs for both the younger actors, and the older participants.
To me the most challenging part of the film was separating the movie from the real incident, or knowing when not to.



The trick is not minding
Vengeance is Mine

It starts with the main antagonist in police custody. As they drive him towards his destination, they remark on his killing spree, and he meets their questioning with barely any interest, instead muttering about how cold the prison will be.

That disinterest is unfortunately reflected in the film, as we barely get to know the killer. The structure doesn’t help much either. The films starts with his capture, back tracks to two of his murders, then hops back to his life as a child on through adolescence. We suddenly see him jailed for fraud, with no set up. We see his marriage crumble, with an odd side story involving his wife and his father who have a mutual attraction to each other.
Yet the movie never quite takes off, for me, as the entire time we’re still kept at arms length in understanding the killer. Maybe the aloofness was intentional? I consider it likely, but the film suffers somewhat for it.

The last scene were also a head scratcher. What is It trying to say here? I found myself at a loss for explanations, but perhaps that just further magnified the issues I had.

It’s not all bad. There some really good acting, the sound was decent, and the beginning scene was actually shot well. But the rest of the film doesn’t quite live up to its reputation.

It’s a near miss for me, but I’m still intrigued by the Director's other films.



The trick is not minding
I’ve been Rethinking Vengeance is Mine over and over and trying to get a firm grip on it. I think the aloofness portrayed by the killer throughout the film is intentional, obviously, as is the films aloofness itself.

It’s not meant to give us “answers”, and we’re not meant to understand the killers motivation. Greed paid a part of it, obviously.

Maybe I was a little too harsh in my assessment of it.

And the ending…it vexes me.

It’s a movie I definitely need to watch a second time.