Personal Recommendation Hall of Fame VI

This is what you're in for . . . (WARNING: Graphic violence)

Thanks Puma for posting that. I watched the first half of the video clip. Loved the way they showed the B-29 from a high camera angle and the side face shots of the pilots and the bombsite view of the forked river. Maybe I'll see that movie someday.

I watched Millennium Actress (2001) today. I bought a digital copy on itunes. It had the option to watch with the original Japanese audio or the US English audio. After much soul searching and quiet reflection, I opted for the Japanese version. The animation is very well done and has some cool looking scenes. I thought the voice acting was fine, although unremarkable. Performances were good, but no one really blew me away. I appreciated that they told the story in a different way, although it wasn't always as engaging or as interesting as it should have been. The only other film I have seen by this director is Paprika, which left me a little underwhelmed. I liked this one a bit more than that film, but not as much as some other animated Japanese films I have seen. This is a fine film, a worthwhile watch, but it is unlikely I will revisit in the future.

I've seen the 4 movies from director Kon and they're all good. Tokyo Godfathers was easily my favorite.

I'd put money on it

I've only seen Tokyo Godfathers once, but it was the only one of Kon's films I loved the first go around. His other features required a second viewing years later for them to really click with me.

Tokyo Godfathers and Millennium Actress are definitely my favourites, followed by Paprika, his contribution to Memories, and while that leaves Perfect Blue to sit at the bottom, it's still a solid film.

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I'm not a big fan of Satoshi Kon but Millennium Actress was probably the one I liked best.

On another note, I've just watched Titane. WTAF did I just watch?

I saw that just a few weeks ago. It's certainly a unique experience haha. I didn't even realize it was on a list here until I saw someone nominated it for you.

Tokyo Godfathers is easily my favorite Satoshi Kon film and Millennium Actress is easily my least favorite, though I still like it. I go back and forth on whether I prefer Paprika or Perfect Blue and I think both are excellent.

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BTW, if anyone in the continental U.S. would like a DVD copy of Millennium Actress, hit me up. I've got the Bluray/DVD combo pack now so I have no use for the DVD and don't know what to do with it.

Send it to me, I can sell it and pocket the money. Thanks!

Titane (2021)

Well, this was certainly... something.

In a way, it was like two movies welded together in some bizarre Frankenstein-like way. One was a frenetic horror about a troubled dancer with a thing for cars who violently murders people for no apparent reason, the other a muted, slower-paced drama about a grieving father of a missing son and the strange bond that grows between the two characters.

It's strange, unpleasant, overlong and unpredictable and I had to watch some of it through my fingers, I'll be honest.

The thing about horror movies, for me, is that when they get too horrible or uncomfortable, I disconnect. So whatever tension the movie is creating doesn't quite work as well. Another problem for me was that I hated the main character so didn't really care what happened and that also robbed the film of a bit of tension as well.

I did think the two lead actors gave good, intense, fearless performances. Some parts of the film were well shot with really good lighting. I did like the lighting. And the weird dancing scenes I quite liked too.

I tried hard to see what people (the Cannes jury, for example) see in this film, but I didn't see it.

I'm going to guess Cricket nominated this for me.

I don't have to work tomorrow so I was able to stay up and watch Children of Men. Since starting on Saturday, I've been able to watch one film a day, but I think that streak will be coming to an end pretty soon. It's nice to have a selection of titles I'm looking forward to watching, so I might need people to send me more recs once I've gotten through these haha.

I really enjoyed Titane, but I can definitely understand why it wouldn’t be some people’s cup of tea.

Guilty.

I put it on a couple of days before nominations were due not even realizing it was on one of the lists. Needless to say I loved it, and my first thought was that it was going to be my next HoF nomination. After a minute, I realized I didn't want to turn Citizen Rules into Citizen Drools, so I figured I'd pick it for someone in this. I picked you because we love some of the same movies that I think of as very lively and vibrant, like Strange Days, Shape of Water, Underground, etc. it was definitely a gamble, sorry you didn't like it more.

Yeah I keep trying to find films for you that don't leave you cold....

Rauldc - Scott Pilgrim vs The World (7th)
Rauldc - Whispers of the Heart (5th)

I'll take a different approach next time. I wanted to pick something for you based upon your Hall selections (emotional films about young people (Antwoine Fisher, Tower, About Elly) and try and do the same thing but in a different tone.

There are some films that have taken me half a lifetime to get to - and as far as Dances With Wolves is concerned, the reasons for holding off are varied - but not overwhelming or pronounced really. Of course, it's 180-minute length compounds any amount of wavering, so even after deciding I might like it, I've needed to be gently forced into finally taking the plunge. It's a similar story with me and epic Oscar-winning films like Braveheart and Gladiator - but with those films I was never quite sure if I'd like them or not, while with Dances With Wolves I figured I probably would. I'm not averse to Kevin Costner as a leading man - I mean, if anyone had the looks it was probably him, although he never tests himself too much as far as acting is concerned. With this film came his only Best Actor Oscar nomination. I don't mind the Western genre, and I admire any film that puts what happened to the Native Americans during the colonization period of North America into perspective.

In this film Kostner plays Lt. John J. Dunbar, and we meet him on an operating table near a battlefield during the American Civil War. He's about to have a leg amputated, but saves himself by painfully putting his boots back on, and staggering off - preferring to commit suicide by riding by the front lines. His suicide attempt fails for lack of a Confederate marksman with a good aim, but his antics distract the enemy long enough for a successful Union attack - and for this he's awarded adequate medical care to save his leg, and a designation to a posting of his choosing. Dunbar chooses the frontier (to see it before it disappears, he explains) and is ordered off to a deserted outpost by a mad Major. At this outpost Indians take delight in attempting to steal his horse, so Dunbar rides out to meet these Indigenous peoples - who he eventually gains the trust of when hunting buffalo with them. He ends up marrying a white women who has been raised by these Sioux Indians, learning their language, and respectfully adopting their traditions and ideas. The more time he spends with them, the less enamored he is with the way white people comport themselves - and as such, a future confrontation with soldiers and settlers involving him, and all Native Americans, seems inevitable.

So you see, Dances With Wolves eventually becomes a really sad meditation on what happened in North America over the centuries after the ships from Europe started coming. The party that considered themselves "civilised" were often the one guilty of massacres, theft, and the disregarding of their own treaties with Native Americans. John Dunbar, though, is a thoughtful man keeping a journal (very helpful for us - for we hear much narration through this film) with a great sense of honor and duty. One of the most horrible moments in the film involves both John and the Indians coming across Bison who have been killed merely for their pelts - hundreds of skinned animals slaughtered and left to rot, which will contribute to their gradual disappearance from areas like this. The ugly aftermath of unadulterated greed - and a shocking sight. Dunbar explains to us his sense of shame, which is transferred to most of us watching - and, if like me, anger will be felt also. This was not hunting for food, to survive. The way the Bison are treated gives some indication of the lack of respect Native Americans will be given - and this man, who they now call "Dances With Wolves", will feel the brunt of how Indians are treated himself.

Dances With Wolves has the benefit of having John Barry provide a sweeping score that makes the wide open spaces auditory - a musical translation of the beauty and majesty of the frontier plains. Barry won an Oscar for composing it, his fifth and last one - and once again, as I had with Midnight Cowboy, I could hear traces of what he'd done in the James Bond franchise. Barry's music has a signature quality to it which makes it recognizable. I believe it's one of the most enjoying facets of Dances With Wolves, and I'd enjoy listening to it any time. You can say it a million times, but it still holds true that without these scores none of these films would be what they are - so this crucial component was key to the film's runaway success. Whenever we see the opening shot to a particular scene, which is usually breathtaking in it's beauty, there's some heavy bass brass and powerful musical accompaniment which underlines what we're seeing. It never gets tiring, whether it's matched with wide open spaces or a massive herd of buffalo walking steadfastly onward - what it adds is impossible to weigh up, for it adds everything. The film also won the Best Sound Oscar for everything else that was added for us to appreciate.

Australian cinematographer Dean Semler was the director of photography, and his work matched that of John Barry and won him an Oscar as well. His earlier claim to fame would have been the great work he did on George Miller's The Road Warrior, and after continuing the Mad Max franchise he rose to international prominence filming the likes of Young Guns until his career took yet another step forward with this. He had his work cut out for him on the difficult shoot, but acquitted himself perfectly, providing Dances With Wolves with it's visual heft - not only with all those sweeping shots of South Dakota, but also the wonderful night shots, and battlefield scenes. Semler's achievement was almost his own curse, for with that prominence he ended up as director on photography on the likes of Last Action Hero and Super Mario Bros. He's also done some other great work though, for example the cinematography in Apocalypto is brilliant and his. In Dances With Wolves, when you get the score just right on shots at dusk with shadowed Indians riding horses on the crest of a hill, their outlines crisp with the sky a shade of purple and magenta, there's nothing better. There's another shot I loved, where the sky takes up much more than the even sky/earth ratio you'd see normally, and the wolf Dunbar befriends is the lone creature in it - which makes everything feel all the more enormous and desolate - there are many shots in this film I'll remember.

The story comes from Michael Blake, who originally wrote Dances With Wolves in screenplay form, before Costner himself encouraged him to write it as a novel and have it published - for that would increase it's chances of actually getting made. He did just that, and it worked - Costner bought the rights, and championed the story. There actually was a real John Dunbar, but that man had little in common with the screen version, being a missionary who attempted converting Native Americans to Christianity. There was a real Fort Hays as well, although this too was different than Dunbar's desolate outpost in the film. Blake would also win an Oscar, for adapting his own novel - which almost feels like "chicken or the egg" considering it was a screenplay to start with. I clicked with the message at the heart of his story, of a man willing to leave behind the life he would have once had, once he found a better, and more spiritual, path. The Native Americans were much more in tune with the land they'd lived on for countless generations, and closer to mother nature. They were more spiritual than practical - and although tribes often went to war with each other, they seemed peaceful. Dunbar knows the tragic destiny of these people right away, and it eats away at his soul.

Kevin Costner, Graham Greene (as Kicking Bird) and Mary McDonnell (as Stands with a Fist) were all nominated for Oscars. They were beaten by Jeremy Irons (for his role in Reversal of Fortune), Joe Pesci (for his role in Goodfellas) and Whoopi Goldberg (for her role in Ghost) respectively. The film was also nominated for Best Art/Set Decoration and Best Costume Design. The film's main competition for Best Picture was Goodfellas, and I'd be willing to bet that there's a few that would think that's the film that should have won - but Dances With Wolves was deserving nonetheless, and I'm not of a mind to declare otherwise. Costner's stock went down significantly after he directed The Postman, but to retrospectively look at this film is to see it as one that's held up over the years and maintains it's standing amongst great epic films. Some people have noted that the problematic "white saviour" trope shows up yet again here, but looked at dispassionately, the Native Americans teach as much to Dunbar as he teaches to them - they both bring the best aspects of each other's background to combine into something good. That's something I find noble and worth teaching, although it's a shame the historic moment has passed.

I enjoyed Dances With Wolves, primarily because it's so pleasing to the eyes and ears, and for it's acknowledgement of how destructive colonialism was to Native Americans. My initial worry was that the film might just be aggrandizement for it's character and then by association it's director/actor Costner - but the film has it's eyes squarely on the story and beauty of the frontier in the days before it disappeared. I would have liked it a little more if Dunbar hadn't of had a convenient white woman amongst the Sioux to marry - and had married one of them, but having Stands with a Fist in the story did give the film a translator, and a way for Dunbar to learn their language - a lot of which is actually spoken in the film and subtitled. They didn't get the language perfectly right, but that's unnoticeable for most people - and I respect the fact they tried. It was interesting to see just how much Dunbar had become one of them - to the point he ends up cursing white interlopers in the Sioux language when they appear. As Dunbar gets closer to them, so do we, and that makes the realisations we have at the end all the more heavy and tinged with sadness and sorrow.

I'm happy though - happy that modern Westerns began to acknowledge the tragedy of what happened to Native Americans instead of demonizing them, as they still did in the early-to-mid 20th Century. Tarantino added slavery, and the plight of African Americans to Django Unchained, taking the Western further in that direction. I'm not saying these were the first films to attempt to do this - but they were a couple of films which reached mass audiences, and were direct and no-nonsense with their messages. Along with that, these films don't lecture us. If Dances With Wolves had of felt like it was lecturing us, or was condescending in any way, I wouldn't have liked it. But it really wasn't. It told a story, and never stopped or took itself away from it's narrative - everything else is implicit, and under the surface. Having to choose either this or Goodfellas as the better film would have been hard for me. They both paint on canvases which are much larger than other films, in a variety of different ways. We've come a long way if, as a movie audience, we're cheering the Indians and booing the cowboys - as I'm sure audiences in 1990 were. A great debt of gratitude is due Michael Blake and Costner, for bringing back the Western, and making the genre truly great, full of soul and epic.

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Good review on Dances With Wolves Phoenix. Glad you liked it, one of my all time favorites. I was a bug Costner fan and felt like I kind of grew out of it. I have revisited a couple thing lately and it’s renewing my admiration. He’s one of the greats.

I have Titane down to watch in Sept. Thursday has me rethinking that choice. I knew it was an uncomfortable movie, but Thursday’s review makes it sound pretty dreadful.

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Letterboxd

Nice to see some love for Dances with Wolves, another great movie that I finally got around to thanks to a HoF.

I think it's probably a divisive movie. I would describe it as Cronenberg to the extreme. Worth a shot IMO.