The 12th Hall of Fame

Haha, yeah. I don't think the people who chose it thought about the intentions of the song that much. I get that they were trying to say that the fallen soldiers will always be young (since it was mostly young men who died and they were robbed of their adulthood, etc.), but that's not what the song is about.

It just occurred to me that that was more than 20 years ago now. That's kind of insane. That school doesn't even exist any more; someone's since built a house on the land. Am I officially old now?

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yes, yes you are.

Here's your walker and,



repeat this line and use it, whenever and continually:

"You damn kids GET OFF MY LAWN!"

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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're a NATURAL!!

see you at the Early Bird Special!!

The Man From Nowhere (Ajeossi) (Jeong-beom Lee, 2010)
Imdb

Date Watched: 01/24/17
Cinema or Home: Home
Reason For Watching: 12th Hall of Fame, RoyalWitCheese's nomination
Rewatch: No

I went into this movie completely blind. I did zero research and read none of the write-ups from the other HOF participants. And honestly I had kind of put it off because I just wasn't in the mood for reading subtitles.

But holy crap. This is the kind of movie watching experience that I hope for when I sign up for a hall of fame. And yet, it's not what I typically expect to see. This is no arthouse picture and there's no real deep meaning to it. What the film does offer though is an onslaught of action coupled with a really interesting story and some great characters.

I LOVED Cha Tae-sik. His combination of sex appeal, badassery, and sweetness was fantastic and an absolute joy to watch. But the bad guys were pretty cool, too. Though cooler still was the way they got their comeuppance - especially Jong-seok, the pretty boy brother of the main villain.

All in all, a great piece of entertainment and something I'll probably watch again.

+

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Unfortunately similar to Hiroshima mon amour, I did not find Joe to be particularly engaging. The performances from the main cast were good and I rather liked Dennis Patrick, but I wasn't invested in any of the characters or what they were trying to accomplish. I found Joe to be wholly despicable, and was disgusted any time he opened his mouth. I spent the entire film expecting some sort of escalation to occur, and was ultimately underwhelmed by what happened and how long it took the film to reach that point.

The themes of the film are still depressingly relevant today. It would only take some changes in clothing and slang to make the story believably modern, which just goes to show how little things have actually changed in the decades that have passed since Joe was released. I thought the commentary was done well, and it's very accessible and easy for any audience to grasp. Despite the fact that this was a film I didn't really enjoy, I'm glad I watched it and can see why it made an impact on a lot of people, particularly when it was new. It just wasn't for me though.

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While I like watching the films as well as writing and reading reviews, I'm not very good at ranking them at the end. It'll probably be a day or two before I actually submit my list.

At least this is a manageable amount though, because narrowing down my Sci-Fi "short"list (it's not even remotely short) for the Countdown feels like an impossible task.

Just posting to get you off the devil's number ...

I've had a comeplete stop in watching noms for this for about a week now, and it's because of this movie. It's the last one I found in the library and I wanted to go through all of them before moving on (being a lazy f*** I didn't want to make two trips ). For some reason I just didn't feel like watching it, but now I have..and the result?

It's ok.

To clarify, I didn't have a reason not to watch it. I hadn't heard of it before, I didn't read the back and the front was covered in positive blurbs and high ratings. I just wasn't in the mood, I guess.

The actors did a good job; Nina Hoss plays her character very well, mixing a impatience for leaving with an unwillingness to let the patients under her care suffer because she's unhappy with her current situation. She comes across as both uncaring and protective, cycling between the two extremes as her situation is in a constant state of flux. She seems to save all her care for her patients and largely ignores the staff of the hospital, including (at first) the resident head physician, who tries to welcome her to the hospital but get little more than a cold shoulder for his trouble. Said doctor is also well played here by Roland Zehrfeld. Starting of a bit flat, Zehrfeld gets more depth into his character as we progress, and in the end I think he did a very good job. The scene where he explaines why he ended up in the rural hospital is powerful, and despite managing to halt some tragedy, what he couldn't fix still haunts him. He has made a home for himself though, and seem relatively content to be where he is.

It's too bad that the story couldn't rise to the level of the actors. As soon as we got the setup, I could guess how the movie would end, down to the runaway girl with meningitis. The story as it was wasn't bad; well written and directed, but there was nothing original about it. A movie can survive that (I know I've watched some utter shlock and still felt entertained), but then it must take hold of you in such a way as to be memorable despite that, and this wasn't that for me.

Sorry Cosmic, but not much of a fan.



(Of this, at least. Of you, Allways )

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Why not just kill them? I'll do it! I'll run up to Paris - bam, bam, bam, bam. I'm back before week's end. We spend the treasure. How is this a bad plan?

Y Tu Mama Tambien....SPOILERS***

Where do I start?....there's a lot I loved about this film and a lot I didn't. I'll start with the bad news first, as it's always good to end on a positive note

The two guys Julio and Tenoch were annoying dumb asses. I felt like I was watching 14 years old. Which made the first part of the film seem like a Mexican version of Jackass the movie...And yes, I know they're portrayed that way deliberately, so that the director can set up the last shot which shows the coming of age scene in the cafe, where they're much more mature and serious. Still, they were hyperbolic and grated on my nerves.

But when Luisa enters the picture the movie went up a notch for me. She made the film poignant and I felt for her character. Especially when she first gets the phone call from her husband and he tells her that he's cheated, she's so torn up, that you can see the pain on her face. Which later in the film is kind of odd, as she says she knew he had been cheating on her and multiple times. I guess hearing it was harder than knowing it for her, or maybe it's because she knew something that we won't know until the end. Luisa on the phone was a powerful scene and she's a fine actresses for sure.

I loved the you-are-there cinematography, as it was like we were along for the ride in the Mexican countryside. Some road trip movies short change the viewer as we don't really get to see much of the road trip, but here we get to see a lot of amazing scenes in Mexico. Which I enjoyed as it reminded me of vacations I took there.

And yea, it looked like that too, well except for all the swimming pools. Speaking of that I could have done without the dueling self-pleasure on the diving board scene, complete with post nasal drip good grief.

The narration that told the back and side stories, mostly took me out of the movie and made me aware I was indeed watching a film, like I didn't know that because it was on my TV...but you know what I mean.

Sometimes the narration added interesting stuff like the story behind the road side cross marking an accident which involved dead chickens and fatalities. I think that was important as it showed that while the guys were goofing around, life was a serious business with death right outside of their car window. That's a theme that will come back at the end of the film too.

There's lots of little bits of life in this film that we usually don't see, like the wedding party with a horse vaquero show and the dead pedestrian that marks the start of their journey. And the pigs on the beach! I don't know why but seeing them and hearing their story was cool All those little bits tie into the theme of life and death, so the director is very skilled and created an artistic film here.

If we did the The Special Award for the movie that added the most to the HoF experience...like I did in the 10th, Y Tu Mama Tambien would get my vote.

Yeah, that was definitely a stand out scene (and not in a good way). I thought it was really odd, but it's inclusion actually made me wonder for a moment if that was a semi-normal thing some guys did.

I wouldn't know, being a true blue guy But yea, I think the husbands confessing to her might be a semi normal response.

What I like about the director and story, was that there was a cause and effect for why things happened. Events happened that seem to make no sense, but, in the end those actions move the characters along the story path. and I like movies made like that.

Glad you loved some of it , i thought it might be something you'd enjoy but didn't want to jynx it. I don't agree with most of your problems but i can see where you're coming from. That was nice of you to say about the Special Award, i think for better or worse it has been the most discussed so far. Good review

I hadn't read any reviews or a plot summary beforehand, so this was a completely blind watch. That may have been a mistake in this case, as I was never quite sure what kind of movie this was supposed to be.

As soon as the movie started I thought the visuals were striking, and that feeling lasted the entire movie despite me not being able to pinpoint exactly how. At first, I thought this was simply going to be a movie about a woman trying to make a new life for herself. After meeting her friend in the woods, I thought it was going to be a thriller. Other times I thought it was going to be a love story. I don't think it excelled in any of these areas, but I thought it worked at least to some extent in each area. I just had a clueless feeling about the direction it was going in. It probably would have helped if I was more knowledgable about the political situation, which is a little sad since I'm part German. I liked the character of Stella and her substory, but I had little interest in the patient who attempted suicide. I especially liked the ending, and for the vast majority of the movie I was engrossed. I would have liked the movie much more if I connected with Barbara. I didn't dislike her, but I didn't especially like her either, and I was only slightly intrigued by her. Despite that, I felt like I was watching an excellent performance. I liked the male doctor's character quite a bit. I think it was a well done movie, but I just didn't love it.

Glad you liked most of it.

I think that not knowing about the political climate in East Germany in 1980 is more detrimental to this film than it would be say, to The Lives of Others. Barbara doesn't outright explain what is happening, and if you didn't pick up on the fact that the man talking to André as Barbara arrives is a Stasi officer, then I imagine that the reason for Barbara's coldness and the tense atmosphere probably doesn't make much sense haha. I was hoping it would still work for some people anyway, because I really liked it.

Also, I didn't know you were part German! Do you speak any German at all?

I don't speak any German and I've never been there, unfortunately.

I liked Barbara about the same as The Lives of Others.

Never Let Me Go


Ah, CR and your torch songs. . .

This was a very subtle, low-key movie. The passion and more raw emotions kept beneath the surface, much like the song that Kathy listens to "Never Let Me Go" by a pseudo-named singer, Judy Bridgewater that speaks of unfulfilled longing.
For the three main actors it is the "secondary" life that they lead. To know their life is not theirs. They will never have actual lives and their eventual deaths are far more imminent and therefore, palatable. Which makes it understandable that there is a solemn, submissiveness to everything that they do.
And that is not easy to pull off. To forget the passion beneath the surface is to lose the beauty of a measured life. And that is the difficult task that this movie attempts to project.
The question remains: does Let Me Go achieves that?
I think so. To a point.
And sadly, i cannot say the reason for this. Perhaps that lies beneath the surface as well, but I did enjoy this movie and did care for the characters and the shortened journey that was their lives and the reluctant acceptance of their eventual deaths.

A very good nom, CR. Thank you.

Thanks Ed, I like what you wrote, it's more fitting than my own review of it. I have a hard time talking about that film. I know what I want to say but I can never really find the rights words to express myself. It's like what you said, you know there's another quality there but it's hard to define.

Yes, I do love torch songs.

I'll have to go looking for your review.

Meanwhile, found this short snippet (about a minute and a half long) from the author about the meaning behind his book

Have any of you read the novel? I am interested in reading it, and I wanted to know if reading it before watching the movie would be the right choice.