The 11th Hall of Fame

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I have a sinking feeling that my nom (The Flowers of War) is going to scrape the bottom of the list That sucks as I really love this movie and believe in it's story of morality trumping violence.

I felt the opposite, the action scenes while well done, were the least important part of the story. For me it was the conflict between the school girls and prostitutes and the eventual mutually respect that came out of it.
Don't worry I will have it very high in mine. I found it to be among the most entertaining films of the entire set.



All right, watched all the movies, here are my ratings:

IDA - 3/5
Ronin - 4/5 (it's a very standard action movie, IMO I don't feel like it's an ideal movie for this type of competition (usually dominated by dramas) but it's very well made and I included it into my top 25 action movies list and is one of the most entertaining movies in here)
The Flowers of War - 4/5
Bashu - 5/5
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang - 3.5/5
The Dead Girl - 2/5
Samurai Rebellion - 4.5/5 (my "artistic" rating my "entertainment value" rating is 2.5/5)
Moonrise Kingdom - 4/5
Her - 4/5
Embrace of the Serpent - 4.5/5
Good Bye Lenin! - 4.5/5
Bringing Up Baby - 2.5/5



yeah i havent seen anyone being overly negative about it CR.one of my favourites aswell!
mine hasnt gone over so well,but i was prepared for that
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Lol. If someone likes something that's not murican/western more than most stuff that's murican/western, then someone only likes "not murican/western" culture?

Anyway, Flowers of War felt very Hollywoodish to me anyway.



All right, watched all the movies, here are my ratings:

IDA - 3/5
Ronin - 4/5 (it's a very standard action movie, IMO I don't feel like it's an ideal movie for this type of competition (usually dominated by dramas) but it's very well made and I included it into my top 25 action movies list and is one of the most entertaining movies in here)
The Flowers of War - 4/5
Bashu - 5/5
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang - 3.5/5
The Dead Girl - 2/5
Samurai Rebellion - 4.5/5 (my "artistic" rating my "entertainment value" rating is 2.5/5)
Moonrise Kingdom - 4/5
Her - 4/5
Embrace of the Serpent - 4.5/5
Good Bye Lenin! - 4.5/5
Bringing Up Baby - 2.5/5
you have to send them in order to camo



Lol. If someone likes something that's not murican/western more than most stuff that's murican/western, then someone only likes "not murican/western" culture?

Anyway, Flowers of War felt very Hollywoodish to me anyway.


Anyways, despite not having seen it yet, it does seem very "Hollywoodish"... guess I'll find out soon enough



You can't make a rainbow without a little rain.
Here's an interesting article, and it includes a nice surprise for someone who nominated a movie in this HoF:

IMDb Founder Col Needham Reveals His Top 10 Favorite Films for First Time Ever (Exclusive)

Check out the #5 movie on his list.
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OPEN FLOOR.



Well two people (other than me) have good taste in this thread and one of them isn't even a member of the site . Someone get Col Needham to board here!

Seriously though thanks for that gbg nice to see something positive about it and so glad you like it MM as i said to you in the post comment



Nothing good comes from staying with normal people
The Flowers of War (2011) Dir. Yimou Zhang



An american mortician arrives to a church in the middle of the japaneese invasion of mainland China. Inside he finds a group of young, female student hiding from a very bad fate. Soon he's also host to a group of courtisans seeking refuge. With the japaneese army banging on the gate, will he leave them to their inevitable end, or will he take on a role he never imagined?

...Well...you've probably allready seen the movie, so you know the answer to that.

Nanking, 1937. John Miller (Christian Bale) finds himself dressing up as a priest in an attempt to protect a group of 13 year old female students and a gang of courtesans from more than likely being raped and murdered (not necessarily in that order) by the japaneese troops scouring the area.

Christian Bale goes through a smooth transition al a Otto Schindler, from douch to hero in about an hour. Otherwise he's a thouroghly good performer, like most of his roles. The only thing I can think of is that he didn't interact with the girls or the courtesans all that much. He talks to one from each group, but we never see much of a group interaction. But then, talking for any length of time with 24 people would make for a very long movie. I thought the girls where well cast and acted naturally, at least as far as acting kids go. The main girl, Shu (Zhang Xinyi), made an inpact with an powerful and honest performance, especially in the scene where the girls climb the church tower intent on making sure the soldiers won't hurt them again. Not quite as impressed with the head of the courtesans, Yu Mo (Ni Ni), but a good performance for all that. As for the rest of the courtesans, they blend together for me, with the exeption of three, and then because one's an idiot and the other two gets brutally raped and murdered (again, not necessarily in that order).

The japaneese soldiers are, quite understandably, demonized in the movie. If they're not running around trying to rape 13 year old girls, they're put to guard said girls to keep them from harm...until the bigwigs can get them and RAPE THEM TO DEATH! Other than that it's cold shoulders at plees of mercy and less obvious forms of malice, like telling a girl choir that they're going to perform at a party, but not mentioning that they're expected to provide other forms of "entertainment" as well. Simply put, you could've painted them red and given them horns for all the subtlety this movie provides.

Is this a good story? No, it's f****** terrible, but it's ment to be. Not much cause for giggles when someone's getting killed. Is it told well? Yes, about as well as a story like this can be told when you have to adapt a historical event to fit the basic tennants of screenwriting. I'm not ready to believe that every japaneese soldier raped and butchered every chineese person they encountered. Nor am I ready to buy that just because Bale's a white priest he was totally untouchable. If a frenzied soldier on the hunt for a woman to rape came across one and anyone not a fellow soldier or a officer tried to stop him, that someone would be dead.

Note though: I am not familiar with this part of history. It CAN be true that the japaneese where utter f****** basterds whitout any redeeming qualities, and that the chineese people where the best of folk. It CAN also be true that the japaneese soldiers wouldn't kill a white priest. My point is, I don't know. All I'm saying is that I don't trust the filmmaker to let the truth get in the way of a good story. Allways check the actual facts. That said, from what I've recently been reading, this might actually be a belivable representation. But with my reservations above still standing.
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The Flowers of War (2011) Dir. Yimou Zhang

The japaneese soldiers are, quite understandably, demonized in the movie. If they're not running around trying to rape 13 year old girls, they're put to guard said girls to keep them from harm...until the bigwigs can get them and RAPE THEM TO DEATH! OH JOY! Other than that it's cold shoulders at plees of mercy and less obvious forms of malice, like telling a girl choir that they're going to perform at a party, but not mentioning that they're expected to provide other forms of "entertainment" as well. Simply put, you could've painted them red and given them horns for all the subtlety this movie provides.

Is this a good story? No, it's f****** terrible, but it's ment to be. Not much cause for giggles when someone's getting killed. Is it told well? Yes, about as well as a story like this can be told when the creators are forced to paint the different sides in black and white to put the story across and have the audience root for the good guys throughout. Note though: I am not familiar with this part of history. It CAN be true that the japaneese where utter f****** basterds whitout any redeeming qualities, and that the chineese people where the best of folk. But life's seldom that simple, and neither are people. Most times there's a reason for the line of text that often pops up in the beginning of movies like this: BASED on a true story doesn't mean all you will see actually happend, or that it happened as shown.
Clazor, with all due respect, it sounds like you're applying your own world view, to this movie, and that is causing you to have a PC conflict with the film.

Before you decide that the events shown in this movie is some kind of propaganda BS, you should read about the Rape of Nanking. It's one of the most brutality disgusting events in the course of history.

The Nanking Massacre or Nanjing Massacre, also known as the Rape of Nanking or Rape of Nanjing, was an episode of mass murder and mass rape committed by Japanese troops against the residents of Nanjing (then spelled Nanking), then the capital of the Republic of China during the Second Sino-Japanese War. The massacre occurred over a period of six weeks starting on December 13, 1937, the day that the Japanese captured Nanjing. During this period, soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army murdered Chinese civilians and disarmed combatants who numbered an estimated 40,000 to over 300,000,and perpetrated widespread rape and looting.

Link to full story



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Nothing good comes from staying with normal people
Ronin (1998) Dir. John Frankenheimer



I said earlier that I picked this movie without beeing really sure why, only that I knew I liked it. Well, now I can actually tell why I chose it. Because it's awesome!

If we start with what the movie's famous for, we can move to the rest. I loved the way they decided to shoot the chases, especially the second one, after they picked up the package from the post office. Four destinct types of shots were used, two external and two internal. the internal ones weren't anything special, but the external, the low shot from the front of the bumper(which is more common now, but kind of rare then) and the more static shots when the cars blew by. The interesting thing with those was the fact that they weren't static.They followed the cars, both vertically and horizontaly, in a way most filmmakers doesn't bother with. couple that with the fact that they actually took the time to show how someone would react towards their surrondings in a cramped area during a high-speed chase. They show Deidre manipulating the lights from within the car and then the effect that has on the outside. No filmmaker today would have bothered with that kind of warning to other motorists (other than maybe showing the driver mashing the horn) to be alert.

Finally, I really liked the fact that of the seven minutes the chase goes on, the fist four are totally without soundtrack. The only sounds are that of revving engines, people shouting and metal squealing as it's compacted in the crashes.

So, done, no more talk of cars and high-speed pursuit.

Guap might've had a point when he said that this pick wasn't optimal for a HoF, mainly because this is a movie where obscurity plays a major part. We don't know much about the characters because that's how they're designed. They're spies, mercenaries and criminals, a group of people who thrives on keeping personal info secret. The few things we get to know about Sam is that he's an CIA-agent, he's been shot before and he's got a soft spot for Grasshoppers. It doesn't leave much room for discussion. Or perhaps too much...depending on how you see it...What I'm getting at is it makes for a restrained performance when you don't have much to go on. That said, I did think De Niro, Reno, Skarsgård and McElhone did a good job with what they got. Skarsgårds dueling accents got a bit jumbled (he's a swede playing a german who worked for the KGB), so the german/russian was deliberate, but the swedish slipped in by accident. On the acting side I think De niros interaction with Reno and the frendship that forms between them are the thing that stands out most. It's the relationship that gets the most screen time and the one that gets the most depth.

Reno's friend with the miniatures allways reminds me of my grandfather. He's gone now, but every time I watch this I'm reminded of him and that makes me smile. I think it's somthing about the bushy eye brows and the beard, because Michael Lonsdale himself doesn't look very much like him. We get a dialouge here that might be the narrative center of the whole movie, the life of a mercenary seen through the filter of japaneese culture and how different it is for a "ronin" today compared to what it was then. De Niro scoffs at the honor based system and simply writes it off as "making the wrong choice." As I said, not one to waste words on elaboration.

The same can be said about the plot. It's a basic heist movie with a mid-point twist (so, a basic heist movie). It serves the movie and I like it.

To conclude, it's a personal favourite. A story with a slimed down, tight focus and a cast of talented people who does good work with what few detailes there is.



Nothing good comes from staying with normal people
And done. Now I'm finished with movies as well. Will send my ranked list sometime soon. Now to continue with the Sci-Fi watching.

Will of course still haunt the thread and contribute to discussion where I can.



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Moonrise Kingdom

I nominated this movie because it is a symbol for me of not giving up on a director. In years past I really didn't care for Wes Anderson, after seeing The Royal Tenenbaums and The Grand Budapest Hotel which are two movies that I really didn't care for at all. Yet I still seem to have movies from certain directors that I don't highly care for in which I like. I'm a bit of a Kubrick hater, but I really like Lolita and can appreciate 2001 for masterful filmmaking. Lynch has never been my guy but Eraserhead and Elephant Man are excellent. Tarantino has Jackie Brown which is his surprising favorite for me. And PTA has Magnolia. I almost gave up on Anderson but then there is a film like this which I really like (I also like Rushmore and Fox as well).

For Andersons quirkiness to work, I have to appreciate the story, and in this one, I do. I can somewhat relate to the characters feelings in this film. No, it's not realistic by any stretch of the imagination, but its a engaging story for me. I really like the characters , specifically Scout Master Ward and Suzy. Norton can be good if he's given the right role and I think Kara Hayward will be a star in the future.

We've already talked about the cinematography and camerawork, but I really think it's excellent. I love the vibrant colors that Wes Anderson uses to draw attention to his settings. The music and soundtrack and rock solid as well.

It's not anything I would call a masterpiece, but it tells me that deep down every filmmaker is capable of great things. Well, most of them anyways. Anderson, after starting 0-2 for me is now 3 for 5 and I'm looking forward to seeing a few more of his other films. This one will place really low (and Sean is to blame for it ) but i hope that everyone can use this as a way of not giving up on directors or genres just because you didn't like the other films.




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Is Embrace of the Serpent still eligible? Not trying to be an ass but we haven't heard from Swan much and I don't have a lot of free time for watching movies and don't want to watch that if I will have a hard time getting to others to begin with.



Is Embrace of the Serpent still eligible? Not trying to be an ass but we haven't heard from Swan much and I don't have a lot of free time for watching movies and don't want to watch that if I will have a hard time getting to others to begin with.
He claims he's going to finish, so I think right now it's still in. There's still just under two months to go before the deadline, so you could always put it off for later.

I chose to just go ahead and watch it early on because I was interested in seeing it anyway, but given Swan's history when it comes to participating in things like this, I'm not counting on him finishing.