18th Mofo Hall of Fame

The Pixar reveal influenced this today.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is the ultimate "I admire this film a great deal but I'm not a fan" movie. I watched it for for the 30s Countdown last year and feel much the same way watching it again now. As a child I remember liking it but as an adult I can't draw anything from it that's intriguing bar the film's visuals. The characters are one dimensional and flat. Particularly this version of Snow White. The musical numbers seem to mesh unmemorably together in my head with the exception of 'Heigh Ho' (It is still stuck in my head as I'm typing this haha). And that second act really seems to drag.

However, its influence is unquestionable and some of those 2D animated sequences are still quality. The sequence in the forest is one that has stuck with me through the years and it is fantastic visually for this period. Overall, the film captures a very charming and colourful vibe which suits it to a tee. The next few films from Disney build upon that but this one set a high standard right off the bat. Thus begins a century of Disney dominance.

Bubba Ho-Tep isn't a particularly good film but it is a fun well made one. This is the story of Elvis and JFK fighting a Mummy in a retirement home. The film takes this concept and plays with every sort of genre you can get out of it, moving from comedy to horror to what it is at it's essence a detective film.


The problem I had with the film was the padding it's a small movie that looks expensive but when you break it down it basically has a cast of 3 people. And a 3 person detective film doesn't really work. But the film is charming we get so many great montages and the story moves quickly attempting an epic plot on a shoe string budget.



I loved so many of the small parts of the film, the tiny anamatronic Scarab, the makeup design of Bubba, the great use of extras. Ossie Davis' JFK is a bit too undercooked for my liking I think if we had more balance to the two characters this could have been a four star film for me but for now I'm giving it 3 stars. Damn fine nomination @MissVicky

So we've got 52 reviews to go...you should expect an update after every 10-13 reviews from here on out.

Everybody has cleared the 4 review minimum except for @neiba

No film has been completely reviewed yet..

Abandon Ship 9/12
Brimstone 8/12
Bubba Ho-Tep 8/12
Extremely Loud and Incredible Close 5/12
The Florida Project 9/12
The King of Comedy 5/12
The Little Stranger 9/12
Perfect Blue 6/12
Road to Perdition 9/12
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs 10/12
Split 8/12
The Square 8/12

The King of Comedy



I would call this a good film, but I'm a big Scorsese guy and I do like a good chunk of his other filmography better. I had been hanging onto this one for awhile and had pretty high hopes, which were sort of met.

Really liked De Niros performance. It's hard to see another actor be able to pull this off as well as he did. I wish a bit more of the humor hit with me, but that's ok because the screenplay and the story were intriguing enough that the comedy didn't have to be the central theme.

It's weird because there isn't really a whole lot else to say for this from me. A good film but yet I wouldn't place it amongst Scorsese favorites for me.

I'm actually at the halfway point. 6 out of 12

__________________
What I actually said to win MovieGal's heart:
- I might not be a real King of Kinkiness, but I make good pancakes

~Mr Minio

Bubba Ho-Tep



It just didn't work for me, mainly because it struggled with it's identify of what it was trying to do for it's audience (or at least me). A lot of people have shined praise on Campbell for his role here but he really didn't do it for me.

I think it's biggest miss is I felt it trying to be a funny comedy film at times and the jokes just didn't hit me. The big bug scene didn't do much for me either.

I did like the look of the film and appreciated most of the score, but the characters just felt a bit too wooden for me when in reality they should have been much more entertaining for a film with as strange of a plot as this one.

I also dug the horror elements of this film and I wish that could have been expanded upon. I think that would have got me to like it quite a bit more.

Usually a Miss Vicky nomination is either a straight on hit or a full out miss. This one will join the latter group.

The King of Comedy (1982)

Being this one of the best regarded Scorcese films, I was curious when I started watching it. It follows the story of a talentless mentally deranged stand up comedian obsessed with a famous comedian, Jerry Langford (played by a real famous comedian, Jerry Lewis).

I look at this as I did look to Ed Wood or The Disaster Artist. I have no sympathy whatsoever for these type of characters, which makes it hard for me to care about them, and that evenutally hurts my experience.

Apart from that, great perfomances by DeNiro and Lewis, who kept a feeling of honesty through out the whole film, showing you don't need epic monologues or moving scenes to show what great acting is about. Sandra Bernhard was also really good as Masha.

The directing by Scorcese is really tight, with a nice pace, beautiful cinematography (the relation between Pupkin suits and the set in particular is particularly well made) and the ending sounds more inevitable than predictable which is nice.

As I said, not caring about the characters ruins the whole experience for me, even if I see some value in the film as a whole.

-

Just popping in to say that I'll watch my remaining three films after I finish my horror countdown list.

__________________

I'm at 8/12. I'll watch Snow White and Perfect Blue next week. Then I just got to find The Square and Brimstone.

3/4 through Bubba-Ho Tep. Should be knocking the final bit of it late tonight.

So for you sympathy is equal to a great character and no sympathy is the opposite? I’m totally putting it up black and white here I know, trying to force a discussion.

But it’s just that I always see it to be a shame when I see people not liking a film or a character because you don’t symphathize with it/them. I mean, do you have to care for a character to be interesting? I have no sympathy for Hitler, but he’s a great and deeply interesting character to study. You know what I mean?

__________________
/watching movies for mark f/
MovieMeditation's Cinema Reviews // Film Diary 2015 // Letterboxd Profile // MovieMeditation's Top 50 Horror

Oh, it is a good question indeed.

I wouldn't say I have to like every character, but there's always a emotional response that the director is wanting me to have in relation to the character. In this case I felt Scorcese was going for sympathy, as if somehow the perseverance of Pupkin excused him of being ultimately bad at what he does, and having no real will of getting better (which annoys me even more).

When someone plays Hitler, 90% of the times they will want you to hate him, so if you do it means it's working.

For me the emotional conection I feel to a film is through the characters psychology. If that fails I can't feel invested in it, you see?

Yeah, I got you. Thanks for the explanation.

To me, I didn’t feel like Scorsese wanted me to sympathize with Pupkin, per say. But honestly, I would have a hard time saying exactly what kind of emotion Scorsese wants us to have, because I haven’t really seen many characters like that of Pupkin. For me, Pupkin evoked not one singular strong emotion, but a lot of fragmented ones, also coming off that way because he is a fragmented character overall. He is uncomfortable to look at, but admirably persistent and intelligent, yet also distancing despite drawing you in because of his off-beat way of acting. He is too pushy and too perculiar to be completely normal yet too normal to feel like a complete madman. This imbalance is very exciting to watch and thanks to De Niro it feels very real to me. This facade hiding a more twisted guy than what meets the eye at first.

To me Pupkin is a great character to study. I don’t know if you have read my review yet if not you can follow the link on the first page that Siddon provided. I became very happy with that write-up.

Watched King of Comedy, write up soon.

The King of Comedy

Very twisted, disturbing movie... and that's why I liked it. It has a spectacular performance from Robert DeNiro, and a great character study in Rupert Pupkin... one of the most fascinating of all the characters so far in this HoF. I wasn't a huge fan of the structure and the ending, but I think it was successful nontheless in portraying the shocking effects of the need for popularity on all of us. This will probably rank fairly high on my ballot, and I hope it does well in this HoF.

Perfect Blue

Another very disturbing film, I would say not quite so disturbing as The King of Comedy, but definitely still messes with your mind. I also didn't like a lot of the techniques used over and over again in the movie, but other than that, it is a fascinating study on one character and the tricks her mind plays on her... and I actually found a lot of similarities between King of Comedy and Perfect Blue, although that might just be me making connections that don't exist since I watched them back to back. But each has a main character, one who rises to a fake comedic glory, and another who falls from their glory (if only in their mind) to a world of panic and hysteria. Deeply interesting film, really enjoyed it.

Just finished Bubba Ho Tep. Interesting watch. Will review it tomorrow

I suspect it will do well.

Brimstone



I'm surprised this has gotten as much backlash on here as it has. I thought it was very entertaining and maybe a more modern version of Night of the Hunter. Now obviously, Robert Mitchum was much better in his than Guy Pearce here, but overall I felt the story was pretty engaging here.

I liked 3 of the 4 parts. Part 1 was really really good for me. Part 2 was good as well. Part 3 seemed at times a bit useless to the overall impact of the film, and part 4 helped to bring it all together.

The cinematography was probably the best part as the film looked really really well.

But yes Guy Pearce wasn't all that great so it took it down a bit of a notch. Not a terrible performance but sometimes it felt over the top. I thought a good job was done with Fanning's character and having us empathize with her. And I liked seeing how the story played out with the name switcheroo.

Overall, a pretty fun ride certainly.

I thought the same when I watched it.