17th MoFo Hall of Fame

Tools    





Yeah I agree. Sorry Cricket. I think the last one of yours I enjoyed was Mommy.
It's ok, I think I've been nominating a lot of movies that are similar in tone or style.



Women will be your undoing, Pépé
@Miss Vicky




The Dressmaker

I'm back, you b@stards."

With that opening, like with so many films, lies the mood and idea of this film.
Taken from her home as a child, Kate Winslet's Tilly returns home, ready to go to war.
Though, when she gets there, her resolves begins to wane and falter as past hurts and emotions come flooding back. Starting with dealing with her mom, Mad Molly, (Judy Davis) who steals the show and pretty much every scene she's in.

Tilly, as a child, is labeled a murderer for allegedly killing the town (president??)'s son. Who, of course, as we learn, was a d#ck and got when he had coming, anyway.
As does this town of vindictive, cruel, self-indulgent A-holes and b#tches.

Armed with the ability to make the denizens of this ugly town gorgeous as a seamstress, she rallies forth to learn what really happened that day, and finds far more ugly truths than she cares to.

It's a fitting touch that Macbeth is mentioned and used as the town's summer play when the third act comes to a rather splendid dark demise across the board.

What would appear as a simple comedy/drama with hints of romance, is merely the frills and lace of the trappings of some exquisite costumes. What this is, with a dark comedic air, is something far more delicious and, while at times, sad, quite entertaining and d@mn right f@ckin delightful.
__________________
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





Ghostwatch (Leslie Manning, 1992)
Imdb

Date Watched: 09/27/18
Cinema or Home: Home
Reason For Watching: 17th MoFo Hall of Fame, nominated by @HashtagBrownies
Rewatch: No.


Yet another horror movie. I suppose this is what I get for hosting a general HOF this time of year.

I don't have a whole lot to say about this one. I thought the premise and the way the film was constructed was interesting, but the execution just didn't quite work for me. I don't know if this is owing to the film's age or what, but this did not look or feel like a live TV broadcast to me. It felt very staged - like, literally staged. I don't know if they actually were, but many of the exterior shots felt very much like they were filmed on a sound stage and I found that very distracting. Couple this distraction with my general dislike of the horror genre and I was left very detached from the whole thing. It's probably more of a 2.5 popcorn box movie for me, but I'll give a little extra credit for the interesting concept.









The Aviator (2004) comes with a very unfortunate problem, it's basically a two for one deal. You've got one half that is excellent and then you've got another half that's good. Cate Blanchett plays Katharine Hepburn and she just chews up the scenery but while she's doing this we're seeing the effects of Hughe's mental breakdowns continue to manifest themselves. But then we lose Cate and we get Kate and the Ava Gardner years and here's where the film crashes into mediocrity. Beckinsale just does nothing with this critical role (a common problem ask John C. Reilly) and it just looks terrible next to Cate's tour-de-force. But here's the twist...I was more engaged with the Senate hearings and Alda then I was with anything in the first part. Scorsese has his Lord of the Rings material and he just sort of crams it into this brisque three hour film.



But then you get into the problem with Leo...it just feels like a little kid playing an older man. Orson Welles managed to go from 20's to 60's in Citizen Kane, Robert Downey Jr did the same great job in Chaplin, Dicaprio just doesn't have it. The OCD stuff was okay I feels a little over the top and dated now. But then can turn it around and focus on how good the senate hearings are with Baldwin and Alda who both walk that fine line of evil yet still with a degree of humanity. Both men are corrupt men of the times and they have a reason to want to push out this crazy person in Hughes and that allows your sympathies to fester.


And the other thing that pushes this film over the top for me is Scorsese and DP. This is a film with plenty of CGI but it's the really good kind that looks better than stuff that comes out 15 years. So yeah this is a four star movie for me, it's got issues it's not a top ten Scorsese film, I think it's my least favorite Dicaprio/Scorsese collaboration. But if this win's I'd be okay with that.


So there you go @rauldc14 this is going to get a good score from me.



The Aviator (2004) [...]

This is a film with plenty of CGI but it's the really good kind that looks better than stuff that comes out 15 years.
This is likely because the special effects aren't wholly computer-generated, since they used scale models for the airplanes and anything those planes would interact with (like the buildings damaged by the test flight crash). I find that practical effects, when done well, tend to age better anyway.

I think I read somewhere that they chose to make models due to how poorly received the CG planes in Pearl Harbour were. So if that's true, at least something good came out of that movie haha.



28 days...6 hours...42 minutes...12 seconds
Checking in. I am finishing up some B-Movie stuff, then diving head first into this.
__________________
"A laugh can be a very powerful thing. Why, sometimes in life, it's the only weapon we have."

Suspect's Reviews



We're just about two weeks into this HOF now and if my count is correct, we already have 50 write-ups posted.

I plan on watching Incendies tonight. That'll just leave rewatches of The Aviator and The Assassination of Jesse James for me.





Incendies (Denis Villeneuve, 2010)
Imdb

Date Watched: 09/28/18
Cinema or Home: Home
Reason For Watching: 17th MoFo Hall of Fame, nominated by @CosmicRunaway
Rewatch: No.


The basic premise of this film is the tale of a pair of twins, who after losing their mother, go on a journey to discover the truth about their father and about the brother they never knew they had. But the film is really about the horrors of religious warfare and the sickening cruelty of those involved.

Much of what is shown and discussed in this film left me feeling physically ill, which is a testament to the power of its subject, the beauty of its cinematography, and to the strength of its performances - particularly by Lubna Azabal as the twins' mother, Nawal. But the film is also not without its weaknesses. The big twist at the end seemed a bit too contrived to be believable and I found the constant use of Radiohead's music to be rather distracting at times. Still, overall a very moving film and a worthy nomination.

-



I found the constant use of Radiohead's music to be rather distracting at times.
I think it works for the opening scene, but it still seems a bit odd. I get the impression that Villenueve is a huge Radiohead fan since every other one of his movies features music from them haha.



IM sure if I made a movie, you'd hear some Stones and Skynyrd.
and if I made one, you'd hear Tom Petty and Lindsey Buckingham.

Unless of course I was making a movie set primarily in Lebanon with French and Arabic dialogue.




The Aviator (2004)

*&$@*! I just about bought a new TV yesterday because the night before I played the DVD of the The Aviator and the color in my 10 year old plasma TV had went out making this *&$@! ugly looking cyan color.

It really stressed me out and ruined the movie watching experience, as for the whole 3 hours of the movie I kept thinking, 'Damn! now I have to go buy a new TV set!'.... And I spent half the night messing around with the color settings on the TV, ugh!

Then...the next morning I pop The Aviator DVD into my computer and was very relieved to see the same yucky cyan color. So I knew, my TV was OK and it was just a cheap bootleg DVD that my library had, and I was going to tell them to throw it away!

...Then just now, I read Cosmic's review and seen she had the same reaction to the strange color...OMG, so this was Scorsese's attempt at art, ugh! I'm NOT impressed. I loved the movie, but the look of it is yuck. It will still figure high on my list, but the whacked out color did cause me not to be fully invested in the story.

BTW I just watched a Two Strip Technicolor film Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933) and the colors were much more pastel and pinkish, so I think Scorsese's addition of funky cyan color was like adding Sriracha sauce to a delicious double chocolate ice cream.

Attachments
Click image for larger version

Name:	b.jpg
Views:	493
Size:	150.9 KB
ID:	48452  



...then just now, I read Cosmic's review and seen she had the same reaction to the strange color...OMG, so this was Scorsese's attempt at art, ugh! I'm NOT impressed. I loved the movie, but the look of it is yuck.
Yeah, that choice of colour went on for far too long in my opinion. Like I mentioned before, it really felt like it needed a period of black and white photography before hand to make the transitions in colour technology more evident. I didn't think the fake two-strip aesthetic looked that bad until the scene you used a shot of in your review, but at that point it actually caused me to grimace a little. The end of that golfing sequence was when I decided to look up whether or not cyan or teal plants existed haha.

It seems like a lot of work for something that was ultimately not that effective. It was interesting, yes, but completely unnecessary and I doubt general audiences understand the significance of a restrictive colour palette.

On the plus side, at least you realized what was up before you bought a new tv haha.



Women will be your undoing, Pépé



Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain (Amélie)


Oui, nous avons des spoilers


Very often a movie poster/DVD cover will call out to me. Letting me know: here sits a new favorite. A movie I'll completely enjoy and will be viewing, time and again.
This one as been for the past year or more. And shame on me for ignoring it's call.
Especially after doing the research and seeing that I had seen one other of this Director's films in a previous HoF, City of Lost Children after recognizing, who seems to be a regular in Jean-Pierre Jeune's films, Dominique Pinon as the jealous ex in the cafe. Having enjoyed him so much in the previous film as the numerous clones/minions.

This is very much my kind of whimsical, with a delightful and at times, an almost diabolical adeptness at trickery in our main character. Played wonderfully by Audrey Tautou, whom I loved previously in The DaVinci Code.
I first got about 10 minutes into this, at work, when I knew I had to stop and share this with my room mate, who, equally, loved this film as well.
We chuckled, giggled, smirked and made all kinds of "awww!" noises by the very end of this. Enjoying this pixie of a girl with all the mischief and joy for life and love, while being too drenched in shyness to venture forth to experience it herself, Amelie decides to dedicate her energies and elaborate plans to aiding others.
Equally enjoyable, or perhaps even a little more so was when she exacted a kind of revenge.
Many of which were the source of many of the chuckles and giggles.
One of my favorite was near the beginning, in her childhood, on the neighbor who told her taking photos causes accidents. Or rather, his reactions as she'd pull the connection to his TV up on the roof, every single time his team scored a goal.
This came in second to the torment to the grocery owner. Those were priceless.

Couple these with the beautiful and delightfully eccentric moments of discovering the secret behind the torn up photos from the photo machine and the sprinkling of "bread crumbs" for the man she has a crush on and getting her dad to go on a journey by stealing his gnome and sending photos of him in different cities was adorable as all get out.
And I truly loved the romantic, happy ending. Their first kiss and the bike ride. Cue "awww!" noises.

THANK YOU, @TheUsualSuspect for the "bread crumbs" to this film!