The Personal Recommendation Hall of Fame

Why oh why was Mystic River nominated for Miss Vicky! She will tear it apart!

I had my best friend of 25 years look at the list of nominations and Mystic River was the one movie that she thought I might like. So, we'll see.

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I thought Peeping Tom was a pretty good try for Miss Vicky but it just didn't work out. For me personally I enjoyed it much more the second time around.

Gee Miss Vicky if you were going to hate everything people picked for you next time it'll just be musicals.

Because Eyes Wide Shut and Peeping Tom are “everything.”

I might as well come clean....I chose Brick for Miss Vicky.
*runs away*

I didn’t hate it. I was just kind of apathetic to it.

It’s fine haha. Like I said earlier when I first selected them, I know some of my picks weren’t going to pan out, but I wasn’t interested in whether anyone actually liked them. I was mostly interested in what they had to say about it.

Road to Perdition


Gangster films usually have a certain feel to it. When I think of gangster films, I’m reminded of such films as The GodFather 1 and 2, The Untouchables, White Heat, The Public Enemy and so on. The characters act and behave in a certain way. Violence follows them like their shadows.
You don’t get that feeling in this movie. For one thing, Michael Sullivan (Tom Hanks) comes off as too much of a nice guy. Hanks never gets the part nailed down to my satisfaction. He isn’t the only one. Daniel Craig seems completely lost in this, and Jude Law never quite locks down his menacing hitman for hire.
The movie looks great, but it doesn’t ever really dig deep enough into the pathos of the father-son relationship that’s at he heart of the film. Sullivan doesn’t want his son to become like him, but rather then any actual meaningful moments between them, he turns his son into an accomplice as they rob banks. The film loses itself on the few scenes where they bond, mostly because it doesn’t seem to work.
The use of rain during the murders is interesting, as is anytime a murder is committed there is some form of water near by. Snow during his family’s murder. Connor (the aforementioned Daniel Craig) Is taking a bath when he meets his end. And of course the ending takes place at a house at the beach with a great view of the ocean. I won’t ruin it here, but the ending supplies the only real genuine part of the movie to me.
It’s a shame the rest of it couldn’t quite live up to that ending.

I liked it a good bit more than that, but I've only seen it once and at this point I don't remember it too well.

I was really disappointed by it. Couldn’t believe how much so, because Hanks is usually so great. I forgot to mention Paul Newman in my review, but he was decent but his screen time was so minimal you never get to appreciate it.

Sound like you wanted a more atypical gangster film, which is fine, as we all have different taste...That's why this HoF is so cool as we can see what our individual movie taste are. I'm 180 degrees in my viewpoint of Road to Perdition, I loved it and I rated it a 4.5/5. I reviewed it here

An excerpt from my review:

I seen Road to Perdition some 15 years ago and I always remembered it and that I liked it...and that's saying a lot as I must have watched many 1000s of movies since then. I didn't remember the story line on my second time watching, but I did remember the 'feel' of the film. To me a film's ambiance is as important as the story. I just love the slower, more relaxed style of film making which permeates the film. That style might seem like an odd choice for a gangster film, but that introspective view is what makes Road to Perdition something special. I actually prefer this to The Godfather.

The one thing I didn't totally love about the movie was the one thing that you did love, the ending. I thought it was too much, to grandiose for the overall tone of the film.

Road to Perdition won the 18th HoF

It doesn’t have to follow the same formula as other gangster films, so that wasn’t a problem really. The acting was the biggest issue. I didn’t buy that these guys were cold hearted killers, as most gangsters were. And the father-son relationship felt.....forced? Awkward? It just didn’t work. It could have gone deeper into their respective relationships and made it more meaningful but it never wanted to commit to the theme.

The Wicker Man (Robin Hardy, 1973)
Imdb

Date Watched: 03/21/2020
Cinema or Home: Home
Reason For Watching: The Personal Recommendation Hall of Fame, no clue who picked it.
Rewatch: No.

I don't care much for horror. I'm not overly fond of British films and, well, the 70s really isn't my decade when it comes to movies. Add to that the fact that my best friend described this film as "terrible" and the result was that I went into this film with really low expectations. Really low.

I actually found myself pleasantly surprised - though not overly so. The story and the premise were interesting but I didn't feel any sense of dread or tension with this one either. Sure the idea of it is horrific, but the execution just came off as kind of silly (though probably much less so than what I've heard about the infamous remake). That silliness did keep me entertained enough for its 88 minute runtime, but had it gone on much longer (or contained any more singing ) the outcome for me probably would've been quite different.

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My next several HOF nominations will all be musicals just for the pleasure of forcing Miss Vicky to endure the process of reviewing them 😆
I’m only half serious about this. 😏

Not all musicals are terrible. Just 99.9999999% of them. Roughly.

Ahem. Go watch Hedwig.

Hedwig and the Angry Inch is one I’ve been meaning to watch since it first came out.....so, about 18 years now? I should get on it. 😎

yeah, it was a last hope pick for me, had really no clue what to give you. Oh well, I knew you prob wouldn't love it hehe

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You should.

Judging by the list I got, I don't think you were alone on that.