32nd Hall of Fame

I still have Missing left to watch and complete, I'll probably finish it tomorrow.

There's still hope I'll be first to finish!

How the hell did I miss this? Lol

Ed Horman is an American businessman who travels to Chile to search for his son. Charlie Horman, the son, a soul that seems to take joy in...I dunno I'm rambling here, hard to put this one into words. Long story short, the father comes to another country to find his son that has disappeared in a militarized state. Ed, with the company of his son's wife Beth, search for clues to what happened to Charlie, but are caught in a seemingly never ending circle of lies and misdirection.

I dunno if I would still call this one pristine, if you wanted to tell about it's faults I would humbly listen to your reasons. This is just something that clicks with me for this movie. The characters including the two leads (Lemon + Spacek) and the other leads (Shea + Mayron) seem to be such tender players in such a seething unstable atmosphere. It's filled with questions and situations that for me aren't that simple to digest and places the characters in such. A nicely understated score adds a nice seasoning to go with the unsettling sounds of the chaos going on throughout. Glad to have revisited this one again.

John is indeed first to finish and I've also retrieved his ballot!

I'm going to be second, by golly!

Dial M for Murder (1954)


The execution of the "perfect murder" and the inevitable failure is a staple of Hitchcock and a premise he not only has down to an exact science but one he could easily do in his sleep. For this one, Hitchcock used his tried and true science, cutting off all the fat and trimming it down to the very bare essentials of the process and the inescapable fallibilities of circumstance that undo all that was done.
Along the lines of that exact science, as well as his preferences, we have the blonde character (Grace Kelly) as the would-be victim. While an adultress, she is neither callous nor cruel to her husband and still very much loves him and is unable to stop loving another man (Robert Cummings). For his calm, cool, and collected husband attempting the perfect crime, like the other prime choices of actors, is Ray Milland. And finally, as the Chief Inspector, a genuinely British representation of policework is John Williams.

A very tightly bound, precisely executed thriller lathered with British aplomb. It's no easy thing to find yourself rooting for everyone in a film such as this. You're either firmly on one side or another, the victim, the villain, the police, somebody somewhere. But there was no specific individual I wanted to dislike or to root for fully. I did try and was quite ready to go with the cheated husband and hope the best for him, but for all sordid premise, I could not, by the end, find a reason to dislike any character, which I found both mildly agitating and quite a breath of fresh air. It added an extra layer of enjoyment to the experience, and I do imagine it is that added layer that will endear this film to me.

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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

You have to hand it to Greek filmmaker Costa-Gavras, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for in the end giving him exactly what he was due. He won a Best Writing (Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium) Oscar for Missing, and the screenplay was the crucial aspect to telling the various stories that needed telling here. First that of journalist and documentary filmmaker Charles Horman (John Shea), who was murdered. Secondly that of Ed Horman (father of Charles, played by Jack Lemmon) and Joyce Horman (Beth in the film, and the wife of Charles, played by Sissy Spacek). Lastly, that of the Chilean people, who were thrust into years of military dictatorship - helped by the movers and shakers inside the United States, and a political stance which dominated the Cold War. Telling all of those stories in the same film, and making it not only coherent, but easy to watch and compelling, was an extremely tough undertaking. In the end it's expertly paced, makes great use of it's shooting location in Mexico, and features two knockout performances from it's main two stars - Spacek and Lemmon.

Missing patiently gives us a lot of time to begin with letting us get to know Charlie and his friends, such as real-life murdered journalist Frank Teruggi (Joe Regalbuto). We see the coup taking place around these people who seem a little nervous, but still confident that their status as Americans makes them immune to civil strife in the South American nation. Once Charles disappears, we really end up feeling his absence after getting to know him - and then the film moves on to it's main narrative - that of Ed and Beth's search for answers as to what has become of him. This is where another really enjoyable parallel narrative takes shape - the gradual change that Ed undergoes the longer he spends time with the American diplomats, and the longer he witnesses directly what's going on in Chile. He starts with complete faith and trust in what the Americans are telling him, and with what they're doing - reserving his suspicion for the "kooky", and what he thinks is a conspiratorial-minded, Beth. As time goes on however he begins to realise that those calling the shots don't have his best interests at heart. He sees that what is going on is rotten.

Yes - Sissy Spacek and Jack Lemmon are great in this film, and have to map out a slowly evolving relationship where they go from in-laws just putting up with each other to where they gradually become friends. Rome wasn't built in a day - and neither is Ed's view of Beth a rapidly developing phenomenon. He's apt to mutter infuriating asides that make Beth seem angelic in that she doesn't immediately slap him or kick him in the groin. He's old fashioned, conservative, and thinks Charlie and Beth were crazy moving to Chile - he has no concept of people "growing" or discovering themselves. He only knows that you get a job, you get married, you have kids and eventually you retire - and die. He immediately makes assumptions about Beth that paints her as a bit of a nut, and what he doesn't know is that in this situation he's the naïve one. When the diplomats keep asking Beth for a list of names (obviously an "enemies" list to be traded to Pinochet) he innocently thinks it's to help find Charles. It's the core of the story, and the arc these real-life characters are on.

In the meantime, in praise of cinematographer Ricardo Aronovich (who sometimes, but rarely participated with English-speaking films) - that shot of the hotel balcony with the helicopter flying over is beautiful - I mean it, what a shot. It flows from the back balcony to the road out front with jeeps and tanks on it - all in an unbroken shot. In fact, there are a number of great shots in this - many of them laying out to us the military coup in action. We have many a walk down a street, and many of these "coup is happening" shots with multiple groups of extras in action are one-take deals - my brain explodes trying to understand why he wasn't also nominated for an Oscar. I loved those dolly deals at fast pace down a street packed with action. How about the upwards pan with the bodies laid out on a glass ceiling at the morgue? Wonderful. What about the shot with the white horse galloping down the street? Unforgettable. I don't know. Maybe he needed to be part of a union to be nominated. I really loved the camera work in this film - marvelous for it's day.

The score from Greek electronic music composer Vangelis is also worth mentioning - it has some dramatic flow to it. A real emotional component - it's surprisingly driven by softer melodies, for a film that's set during a bloody and horrifying civil conflict. Vangelis had just had his triumph via composing the score for Chariots of Fire - one of those musical efforts in films which ends up indelibly imprinted on our minds. (He won an Oscar for that work.) Vangelis seemed to find it easy to reach out and capture whatever was needed in the audience's mind, and Costa-Gavras must have asked him to remember the links between the people rather than the general situation. The love between Charlie and his friends and family - not to mention the new bonds that are made during the sad, fruitless searching that takes part in this movie. There's a delicateness to most of it, though obviously tension and heaviness mark this film's most evil aspects. Harder tones that march to a strict rhythmic beat.

So - this is a hard film to briefly sum up. Politically, it was an absolute bomb that exposed America's involvement in bringing a nasty dictator to power. I'm not a big fan of the way the map of the World was treated during the Cold War - with the United States so determined to not see any small nations flip over to communism that they'd interfere, even if it were against the interests of those nations' populations. But, it's also a movie about two people - a father and a daughter in-law facing sad circumstances with diminishing hope, anger, confusion and eventually resignation - at least growing closer to each other despite the lack of success their search for Charlie had. It succeeds story-wise, performance-wise, in it's cinematography, score and location work - making Mexico a substitute for Chile. One of the films of 1982. I've seen it numerous times and it's grown on me over the years - I see what all the fuss was about. Lemmon and Spacek are marvelous, and their partnership is a heartwarming one - two greats at their peak. Of course, the real story is sad. So sad. But if there's one thing Joyce and Ed can take from what happened it's this - what happened to their son led to the book being written and this film, which led to people in America knowing and had a big impact. It was not for nothing - that's for sure.

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I finished the HoF a couple of days ago I just wanted to say that every film was a good choice! There are two films that I'm rooting for to win and a third that I wouldn't mind winning either...My nom isn't any of those.

Indeed. Peter Weir actively fought against any notion of it being solvable. He wanted something that had no solution.

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Ahh, the musician who has to record one more album because of a contract, does so with little application, but still makes a chart-topping toe-tapping pleaser. The sportsman playing a dead-rubber before the finals, who only half applies himself but still romps home for a win. The director, Alfred Hitchcock, who still has one film to make for Warner Bros and phones it in - still coming up with a time-honored classic that stands up to this day. You have to credit Frederick Knott and his mega-hit play though - with it's tantalizing tale of the "perfect murder". But a perfect murder only remains perfect when everything goes to plan. When an unexpected complication arises, it takes a cool head and a person with their wits about them to stay one step ahead of the law. This is the kind of story situated right up old Hitch's alley, and it's unusual in that it seems to have it's climax in the middle as opposed to it's end - not that we're any less attentive throughout.

The story involves Margot Mary Wendice (Grace Kelly) and mystery writer Mark Halliday (Robert Cummings) in the midst of having an affair, and in the midst of being blackmailed by someone whom they don't know the identity of (over a letter between them that had been stolen.) Margot's husband Tony (Ray Milland) and his old university buddy Charles Swann (Anthony Dawson) feature in a more nefarious way, and as such Chief Inspector Hubbard (John Williams) is on hand to unravel the case, if he can. Both Dawson and Williams had a good grasp of the material because they were both performing the roles they'd had on Broadway. The movie was filmed in 3-D, but the process was so cumbersome by this stage that people started demanding normality and staying away in droves - thereby signaling the death knell of a 3-D fad. Feels pretty familiar that, having experienced a few of those during my time going to movies. Anyway - the hand you see outreached in the film's poster was it's biggest 3-D moment. (The movie actually had a Dial M For Murder 3D renaissance in the 1980s that went more successfully.)

Largely dialogue driven, this is a film full of exposition and yet miraculously exciting and mesmerizing all the same. It features a 22-minute scene with only Ray Milland and Anthony Dawson which is largely expository in nature, and yet Hitchcock manages to keep us on edge throughout by continually changing shooting angles, directing character movement and having a slow reveal as to exactly how diabolical the two characters they play are. Of course, the one scene Grace Kelly and Dawson have together is tremendously exciting, and very weirdly most of what's happening in the movie is being seen from the side of the antagonists - I wonder whose side most audience members are on as crucial moments come into play? Kelly and Dawson's deadly tangle is our huge murder moment and it's gloriously fraught and stressful. It's a typically Hitchcock moment, and it's those moments that make you wonder why the rest of the film industry was stuck with boring Joes unable to get us so far on the edge of our seats we're falling off them.

There's one great moment in the film that I want to highlight, as it goes a long way to explaining why the whole thing works so well. In it, Tony is suddenly thrust into a dilemma where he has to improvise - have answers to two desperately important questions that could spell his doom. He has to invent a reason as to why he was calling his wife, and he also has to explain why he was calling her, and not his boss as he told everyone he was doing. Just as I sometimes hold my breath when characters are underwater, to test my limits, I was also trying to think fast for Tony - and I had nothing! You think he's in trouble, but then all of the sudden, he comes up with a perfect answer. He comes out with a double whammy - one answer that solves both questions in a neat and tidy way, and I'm jolted by just how clever this slippery soul is, even when pushed for improvisatory time. Yes! Yes - sometimes a dialogue-driven movie works just fine when it's well written and co-exists with the visual acuity of a master filmmaker.

So, very simply this film works in both a wordy way with it's load of exposition, and as a visually inventive thriller even when it's stuck in a room with two characters for over 20-minutes. In fact, most of the film takes place in that one location. We're never stuck with reverse shots - but zip around from many different angles, often having characters framed by objects in the foreground. Terse and tense, it's a test of nerves and quick-thinking mastery of police procedure and dastardly murder. It's brilliant in it's simplicity. Who will be caught? Who will be killed? To pull off a perfect crime, you have to be alert to every tiny detail - and I think that's the grandest trick the movie pulls off. It has us so dialed in to those details that our heart races with the characters as details are missed, picked up, saves are made, mistakes make or break and the mind of everyone works at a thought per millisecond to keep ahead. That's excitement, and why over a hundred minutes of what's mostly dialogue keeps us sweating and nervous. To Hitchcock, that's a breeze. Something to reel off while thinking of much bigger projects. To us it's just awesomeness all the same.

A relaxing pause between pulling out Christmas decorations and writing up reviews, coffee at the ready, I read @PHOENIX74. Yay.
I just LOVE this opening line: Ahh, the musician who has to record one more album because of a contract, does so with little application, but still makes a chart-topping toe-tapping pleaser.. Seriously thinking of making that one a signature. Would you mind if I did? lol
I did not know the two lead men were from the theatrical presentation. It definitely explains the smoothness of their portrayals. Very comfortable in their characters' skins. Very nice.

Light in the Piazza (1962)

I am thoroughly and wonderfully surprised at just how much I enjoyed this film. More so, as I think back on it. I definitely hope to rewatch this light-hearted, warm & fluffy story of a loving mother who truly IS a loving mother, Meg Johnson (Olivia de Havilland), and her daughter, a child within a woman in her mid-twenties, Clara (Yvette Mimieux.) Her wish to skip and play worries both parents and distances each of them more. But, here, in Venice, her innocence, her purity of heart, is like a blessing and beloved. First, by young Fabrizio Naccarelli (George Hamilton) and then his father, Signor Naccarelli (Rossano Brazzi), followed by the family. What could have been a tense, conflicted story delving into mental illness is something delightful and life-affirming. I am oh, so happy to feel such pleasure in such films so well into my years. Cynicism is a phase that we all go through from, basically, our twenties into around our fifties. Or, if we’re lucky, we get it out of our systems or just done with impressing the cool kids by our early mid-forties. Then we take earnest delight in, along with everything else, such films as this. Yayyyy

Any hoots, my initial interest in this was seeing, for the first time, a young George Hamilton being such a fan of his parodies, Zorro, the Gay Blade, and Love at First Bite, along with Olivia de Havilland, who I’ve typically seen in the more tragic, hard-edged roles. Giving a flawless gravitas to her worries. But here, I get the pleasure to encounter that craftsmanship extended to the flip side of warmth and genuine love for the happiness of her daughter and the acceptance of the love of Fabrizio, who, wide-eyed with joy, plays and laughs with her.
My final delight was the amusing lechery of the Italian men in this film. From Signor Naccarelli admiring and appreciating Meg Johnson’s behind as he follows her from within a car to his other son’s pleasurable dilemma of being unable to decide whom he would wish to make love to first, mother, Meg, or his soon-to-be sister-in-law, Clara, and the sincere laughter and cheer it is met with by everyone present.

So, to whoever nominated this, a giddy BRAVO and two joyous YAY!!!’s

59/100 reviews are in!

Banshees of Inisherin

SPOILER ALERT

Scratches an itch for something a little offbeat, but doesn't go entirely surreal. Obviously very well acted with good chemistry. I wonder if I knew more about Irish folklore if I'd be able to pick up on more things throughout the film. The film does use a cheat code for generating sadness out of the audience with the donkey, but at least the donkey dies in a way that you can pin back on Padraic. Barry Keoghan was great as usual, the weird little f*ck. Kerry Condon was a delight, I love that accent on a woman. It's one of the reasons I am so charmed by Aisling Bea. I think I will need to watch it again to get a clearer picture of how much I actually like the film. It's good lucking, funny, sad, well acted, well-directed, has heart, so it has enough of the pieces to be great. I was delighted by the story the first time around, so some of those earlier elements need to be further explored to see where I place it among the likes of In Bruges.

I so, oh so heartily agree.

Not at all. Anything I write here is free for anyone's usage if it strikes their fancy.

This is my second go with Dial M and I have to say I liked it a little more this time. I was in the mood to slow down a bit after a crazy couple of weeks and this movie certainly helped with that. What I really enjoyed was that this adaption feels like a play (duh!). It's success is largely due to the performances of all the actors and the plot. Hitchcock is like a successful coach with loads of talent. All he has to do is not screw around or get cute and he'll have a winner on his hands. It's all tight. What he does add from behind the camera is usually so subtle it's barley noticeable. Little camera movements to direct your attention to....THIS. Now...THAT. Little touches like that is where Hitchcock is in a league by himself. I don't think this is a very suspenseful film and that's probably what leads to my main gripe.

Never for a second did I think that Grace Kelly would be convicted, much less set for execution, for what happened. I guess that's supposed to put a little urgency on the police to figure out what really happened but it never hit me as terribly urgent. I never thought she was in any real trouble. Very, very minor gripe.

I haven't seen many Hitchcock films but this this is top half of the ones I've seen. I never planned on watching this for a second time but having seen it for a second time I can now see myself watching it for a third time.

Daigo is a cellist who's who loses his job when the orchestra he's in is disbanded. He applies to a job thinking it has something to do with travel and while it might, it's certainly not the type of travel he's thinking of. He becomes an apprentice for a Master of Ceremonies, so to speak. Preparing corpses for the afterlife. It's a very elaborate presentation but not necessarily the most respected line of work.

I guess at it's core this is about a guy trying to find peace in his life and finding it in the most unexpected of places.

I found all of the characters and their relationships to Daigo very interesting and entertaining. Even the minor characters have a good backstory. I really enjoyed the secretary/assistant, Daigo's wife and the MC, his mentor, who drops little pearls of wisdom in a dry, matter of fact manner all throughout the film. He fills a void that Daigo has lived with for quite some time. Some of the acting seems a little over the top at times but I think that's just acting in Japan and I kind of like it. During some of the more comedic parts of the film this acting style really adds to the humor.

The scenes of the ceremonies didn't feel like too much to me. Every scene seemed to show a different aspect of the ceremony and while the scenes take some time it's often broken up with the deceased families reactions which range from sad, to funny to angry.

Maybe I'm a sentimental schmuck but this movie really hit a lot of high notes for me. Even the ending worked for me even if it was a little too perfect. So yeah, I liked this. I caught this on youtube which had shorter breaks than tubi but they are placed in bad spots. Just an fyi