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If need be, I've seen Lawrence of Arabia and Candyman fairly recently, that I might be able to write something up without rewatching them... but I think I want to rewatch them anyway. I'll just leave them for the end, just in case.
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As always if someone has seen a nom before and can remember it good enough to rank it on their ballot, then they don't have to rewatch it.
Yeah but that's not fun. I like to go all out .

I've technically seen the last 5 I need to watch already, but I'll watch them all again still.

Watching An Autumn Afternoon today.



Yeah but that's not fun. I like to go all out .

I've technically seen the last 5 I need to watch already, but I'll watch them all again still.

Watching An Autumn Afternoon today.
You're a trooper! and watch them all. I try to do that too. I'd seen 6 of the noms in this HoF but rewatched them all and I'm glad I did as they were worth a rewatch.

I usually try to nominate something that I want to revisit but haven't seen in sometime which is funner for me that way.



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You're a trooper! and watch them all. I try to do that too. I'd seen 6 of the noms in this HoF but rewatched them all and I'm glad I did as they were worth a rewatch.

I usually try to nominate something that I want to revisit but haven't seen in sometime which is funner for me that way.
Yeah I'm the same. I haven't seen An Autumn Afternoon in over 7 years.

My next nomination for the 31st I haven't seen in I believe over 5 years too.



Yeah I'm the same. I haven't seen An Autumn Afternoon in over 7 years.

My next nomination for the 31st I haven't seen in I believe over 5 years too.
Good nom, I loved An Autumn Afternoon. There's 5 noms that I'd be happy if they won. The rest were pretty damn good too. Though I can guess which one will be last

I'm still flip flopping on my nom for the 31st.



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An Autumn Afternoon



What a way to go out for Ozu. This is probably his best looking film, which makes sense because it was his last. The themes to a lot of his films are the same but I never really considered that a bad thing and this could be one of his better directed films here. The acting is on point and feels rather genuine. The story is a simple one yet seems to evoke a lot of emotion from me. Very well shot film in my book and the pacing is splendid. So yeah, watching this is just an overview to how much Ozu rocks for me.




I forgot the opening line.


Dead Man's Letters (Pisma myortvogo cheloveka) - 1986

Directed by Konstantin Lopushanskiy

Written by Konstantin Lopushanskiy, Vyacheslav Rybakov & Boris Strugatskiy

Starring Rolan Bykov, Vatslav Dvorzhetsky, Iosif Ryklin & Vera Mayorova

For reasons I still don't fully understand, the world became an especially fearful place in the 1980s as far as worldwide nuclear devastation was concerned. Perhaps this had everything to do with media depicting war in the nuclear age - a new wave of ultra-realistic, doom-infused films came out in this era, and most of them terrified an already wary public. After two world wars, the entire planet seemed to be waiting for a third to hit - and this time the stakes were as high as they could get. We now had the power to completely destroy ourselves. Threads (1984) left a mark, and the less realistic, but no less popular The Day After (1983) was seen by many. When the Wind Blows (1986) brought the horror to us in animated fashion, but it was no less visceral and terrifying. Across the Iron Curtain, Konstantin Lopushanskiy added to the apocalyptic series of horror with Dead Man's Letters (1986) - a sepia-toned dream-like view of life after the kind of poisoned destruction left in nuclear war's wake. It's familiarly depressing, and it's tone is as seriously dark as anything produced by the West.

A professor by the name of Larsen (Rolan Bykov) - a Nobel Prize in Physics laureate - shelters in the basement of an abandoned museum in a post-apocalyptic world completely destroyed by war. He tends to his sick wife, writes to a son he'll never see again, and is kept company by some compatriots who are sheltering with him. On their mind much of the time is a "central bunker", which obviously houses a fair percentage of the remaining population and could be either haven or hell. Larsen must brave the poisoned elements from time to time to barter and find his wife pain medication, but is hit hard when he comes across a group of orphans who are about to be abandoned to a grim fate. When his wife mercifully passes on, and after one of his fellow-basement dwellers commits suicide, it's Larsen who decides to become something of a father-figure and protector to the very young children left for dead. When he's gone, it's these children who will wander over the wastelands of jagged ruin, and sifting and irradiated dunes. It appears certain that they'll fall, one by one, until all that's left is the mournful wind spreading death and a chill to the rest of these unlucky survivors.

How depressing is that? At the very least, in comparison our world appears like heaven with juicy hamburgers, disease-free members of the opposite sex and sun-drenched meadows visited by flitting, tuneful birds abounding. No poison, pain or misery for the most part - which pretty much makes up these people's entire life from now until their imminent demise. Dead Man's Letters confines us in such a claustrophobic manner because of it's hazy, blurry and yellow-tainted visuals that are usually filled with various wreckage and waste. You kind of visually suffocate as your eyes struggle to make sense of what they're seeing - and although some of it's dissonant, misty and messy cinematography isn't intentional, a lot of it is and all of it works in the film's favour. It's as if the camera itself is half-dead and sick. Wrecked figures fill the frame, wearing ripped and dirty clothing - their faces covered with grease, muck and worse. There's an imperceptible wobble, changes in contrast and a smoky yellow film between us and those we see. Cinematographer Nikolai Pokoptsev expanded on Lopushanskiy's entire concept with the apocalyptic follow-up Visitor of a Museum in 1989.

Tinny sound and reverberating echoes even further remove us from anything that might feel natural about this world. It's not one of silence, but on the contrary a world full of both natural and unnatural impositions to quiet contemplation - voices contort under gas masks and rubber radiation suits, and an old man's breathless panting turns into lurid and sickly gasping. When silence comes, it's uneasy. Perhaps someone has died, or is about to. There's little musical accompaniment, but when the score does intrude it's uncomfortable - often one whining note, jangling or screeching strings - and never anything that sounds natural of beautiful. A distant roar like thunder perhaps. The most melodic it sounds is during the opening credits, but the tone it hits is still mournful - bells strike, and there's always that distant rumble. Lopushanskiy seems to want to make his film feel dream-like in all ways - an hallucinatory nightmare. Aleksandr Zhurbin - a composer of operas, and who has a PhD and has worked in the film industry since the mid-70s added his talents to the film.

Konstantin Lopushanskiy served as an apprentice to Tarkovsky, probably the most renowned of all Russian filmmakers - so he didn't come from nowhere. He adapted the signature style of Stalker to this film about nuclear war, which is where the arresting, tinted and bleak imagery comes from. I've probably become so used to slow plotting in films these days that I don't notice it too much in Dead Man's Letters - and in any case, any film about this subject matter will feature characters struggling from one activity to the next - almost all of them related to his own survival, or to that of his loved ones. Actor Bykov seems resolutely miserable, but probably had a lot of practice seeing as how he's a Soviet citizen. Any battle that takes place is in his mind, and it's a battle of his attempt to retain any kind of optimism. Of his son getting his letters, or perhaps he figures the fighting is over due to some seismological reports he talks about. Perhaps he can save these children after trying so hard with his wife. He's old, but he keeps going when most of the world has come to an ash-laden halt. He puffs and wheezes, avoids crackdowns by troops when he's out past curfew. While his basement-mates declare mankind a failure, his positive intuition tells him that we'll bounce back.

Larsen's positivity doesn't turn Dead Man's Letters into a fun, bright and joy-filled film. It's a horror, and a disheartening, dismal, pain-filled cinematic journey to extinction. The message is "don't let things get this far" - because once we do there's no amount of optimism and intuition that will get humanity to where it once was. Sting would have been well pleased to learn that the Russians loved their children too - even random assortments in orphanages, although perhaps the odd bureaucrat might refuse them entry into the "central bunker". I think perhaps any reasonable person could watch a film like this once per month lest they want to become incurably depressed and miserable. It really comes off like a dream - unusual in every respect, with production design and set decoration headaches that look like they necessitated the bombing of a small city. After an atomic war, it seems that humanity will divide itself into the realistically pessimistic, and unreasonably optimistic - with the latter category sorely lacking. That Larsen writes his son letters is part of what probably made him a remarkable person when the world hadn't fractured yet.

I don't know what else to say about such a painful movie. For it's time, and for it's people, it must have worked as well as Threads worked on me back in those days. It drills into those who don't know yet, that we've reached a stage in our development as a species where we can't afford to go to war anymore. We've become too good at it, and are able to do just about everything bar crack the entire planet in two. War like this favours those who die at the very start, and punishes the survivors in the most cruel way imaginable. I can't fault the artistry much at all, but even from a point of admiration it still gives me a heavy heart to recall all the scenes of misery put before us. Perhaps people will watch this in the future, and feel sorry for all the people who even lived under the threat of this happening. Watching it made me feel uncomfortable, depressed and sad. My only happiness can be found when I look around and see the world I have in contrast to the world in Lopushanskiy's film. All of that, and we have emails now, as opposed to a dead man's letters. We still have the bomb though. Hard to believe, those missiles sit in those silos as eat breakfast every morning - connected to switches that would fire them if anyone were crazy enough to decide to.

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Latest Review : Le Circle Rouge (1970)



I rewatched my nomination Fat Girl (2001). Brilliantly directed by Catherine Breillat, the film stars Anaïs Reboux as Anaïs,a chubby 12 year old girl and focuses on her relationship with her older sister and their ideas and experiences regarding growing up and sexuality. This is a powerful film that packs a punch. It's uncompromising, compelling, and memorable. I though young Anaïs Reboux is excellent in her performance. She is brave, bold, fierce, and vulnerable in a challenging and complex role. Roxane Mesquida is very good too as the older sister. Breillat isn't afraid to take risks in the film and makes some bold decisions that won't sit well with some viewers, but this film really worked for me. The ending may seem out of nowhere, but I thought it was really effective and well executed. There is some ambiguity in the film and what it may or may not be saying. I think it is certainly open to interpretation, at least in part, and for this type of film that approach works better. If there was an obvious stated moral to the story or message, it might dilute the power of the film. Granted, this is not always an easy film, but for me,it is a worthwhile and rewarding one.



Ship of Fools (1965) -


The "I wasn't engaged by much" kind of film isn't always my favorite type of film to review as I often struggle to come up with interesting thoughts to say, but I'll try my best here. As you can probably tell, I was kind of underwhelmed by this one. To cut it some slack though, it does have some interesting ideas here and there. For instance, Dr. Schumann's relationship with La Condesa is a compelling dynamic since the senses of doom and determination they both have make for a fine contrast. This is the kind of dynamic which should act as the emotional core of the film. Also, Lowenthal's friendship with Glocken has some potential since the two bond over both being outcasts (the former being Jewish and the latter having dwarfism). Also, Tenny's drinking problem in the film is colored when you consider actor Lee Marvin being a heavy drinker. Finally, since the film is set several years before the start of World War II, the fates of a few characters are colored by how their situations will grow worse in the years to come. In spite of this potential though, I found myself deeply unengaged by much of the film. Part of the issue was that, with so many main and side characters the film had to cut back and forth between, the memorable characters I mentioned up above didn't have enough time to leave a lasting impact on me. Rather, cutting away from them so much constantly broke my engagement time and time again. The sub-plot of the rich uncle and his nephew, Mary's characterization, and the Spanish laborers being deported back to Spain stuck out as the weaker aspects to the characters and, though their stories could've potentially worked in a different film, it probably would've been best to cut them from this film. In short, I'd describe this film as a compelling 90 minute film stretched out to 2.5 hours.

Next Up: To Live and Die in LA



I forgot the opening line.


Ship of Fools - 1965

Directed by Stanley Kramer

Written by Abby Mann
Based on the novel by Katherine Anne Porter

Starring Vivien Leigh, Simone Signoret, Jose Ferrer, Lee Marvin
Oskar Werner, Elizabeth Ashley, George Segal & Michael Dunn

This review contains some spoilers

Stanley Kramer and Abby Mann's painful post-war reckoning Judgement at Nuremberg had it's pre-war counterpoint in Ship of Fools four years later. It's a film that tackles much human drama and more than one theme, but one over which the shadow of Nazism looms threateningly. It's a film where, unforgettably, one German Jew, Lowenthal (played by Heinz Ruehmann), in a very relaxed manner asks, "listen, there are nearly a million Jews in Germany. What are they going to do? Kill all of us?" It reminds one of the complacency of those who sailed on Titanic, so sure are all on board that their place in the world is secure. In any case, it's obvious that anyone who exercises their conscience only asks for trouble. Look at the man who rescues the dog - it costs him his life (and the poor dog's owners can't understand why he did it.) Best to look the other way, shrug off the inconvenience and have a drink while sharing a joke. All things must pass, and common sense surely must reassert itself as the most natural and compelling law of the universe. Best to not even acknowledge that this is a ship of fools.

The ship in question is travelling from Veracruz in Mexico, to Bremerhaven in Germany. On board are a disparate group including the ships doctor, Schumann (Oskar Werner), a condemned lady from Cuba who he falls for, La Condesa (Simone Signoret), an artist and his fiancé - David and Jenny (played by George Segal and Elizabeth Ashley), a failed baseball player called Tenny (Lee Marvin), an anti-Semitic businessman called Rieber (Jose Ferrer), a Jewish jewelry salesman called Lowenthal (Heinz Ruehmann), a dwarf called Glocken (Michael Dunn), an upper-class divorcée called Mary Treadwell (Vivien Leigh), a group of Spanish singers and dancers who turn out to be a pimp and his prostitutes, an older couple, the ship's captain, and hundreds of Spanish workers which the ship picks up in Cuba. The workers are of course herded into steerage, enduring cramped and unsanitary conditions. Race and discrimination comes up a lot, with Lowenthal, Glocken and eventually a man called Freytag (Alf Kjellin) whose wife is Jewish finding themselves seated at a table far away from where passengers dine with the captain. Romances, friendships and controversies abound during the voyage.

If there is one story amongst the story of all the passengers, it's that of Schumann and La Condesa - the relationship that blossoms between them really provides some of the most touching scenes in the movie, and both Werner and Signoret were nominated for Oscars. They provide enough vulnerability, angst, care and deep feeling to shine through in their scenes, and I enjoyed watching them very much. Signoret has a kind of weathered beauty, and her eyes light up the screen, while Werner's world-weariness and crumbling façade of strength play really well. Werner would lose to Lee Marvin at the Oscars, not for this film but for Cat Ballou. Signoret would lose to Julie Christie for her role in Darling. Michael Dunn would be nominated for Best Supporting Actor, losing to Martin Balsam for his role in A Thousand Clowns. One of Ship of Fools' most enjoyable strengths is that of it's actors and actresses giving great performances, and it's an ensemble who really comes through for the film. I have to give Heinz Ruehmann and Jose Ferrer a mention as well. Werner and Signoret were also nominated for BAFTAs and Golden Globes, but nothing would come of that. The only award either got was a New York Film Critics Circle Award, which went to Werner.

I first became aware of how good the cinematography was during the dancing sequences, with the way they were framed and the obvious careful planning that was put into the way the camera moved with the performers. Characters would be lumped together or separated by convenient parts of the ship's interior décor, and the camera itself danced with superb ease. This was the movie that provided the famous Ernest Laszlo with his sole Oscar win, from his eight nominations.* including three other Stanley Kramer films on which he was director of photography. This was filmed on a reconstructed ship at both Columbia studios and Paramount studios - it could be pulled apart, and thus gave Laszlo the freedom to film the action however he wished. There's a great choreography which takes place as characters move about the ship, and the camera really gets close to Simone Signoret, which I didn't mind one bit. I felt myself being drawn towards her, but perhaps that's exactly what Kramer and Laszlo meant for me to feel - a good cinematographer and director can make if feel as if you're guiding the camera.

The music of Ship of Fools mainly comes to us via the ship's band or the passengers themselves, and it has a Spanish flavour to it, although German songs also show up here and there. I loved the excitement of the opening credits tune, and most of the songs and pieces of music were composed by Oscar winner (Exodus) Ernest Gold. The films other Oscar was won by it's set decorators Robert Clatworthy (who would be Kramer's production designer on Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and once worked on Psycho) and Joseph Kish, who was coming to the end of a long career in motion pictures. It would be the only Oscar either man would ever win, but the impressiveness of Ship of Fools' sets obviously impressed the Academy, and it was a well put-together real-looking ship with furnished cabins that felt real. Supporting that whole look was Oscar-winning costume designer Bill Thomas (Spartacus) and Oscar-winning costume designer Jean Louis (The Solid Gold Cadillac) both of whom would earn Ship of Fools another of it's 8 Academy Award nominations.

The technical side was obviously done quite well for it's day, and the performances were great, but it's Katherine Anne Porter's story, and Abby Mann's adaptation which provides the weighty and most memorable part of watching this film. It was actually based on a 1931 sea journey the author kept a diary about - one between Veracruz and Bremerhaven just like in the film. It stirs feelings of anger and discomfort due to the prejudice and exploitation on display - a prejudice and exploitation which by all intents and measure seems to be accepted by many of the passengers. It's a morass of moral decline, and is timeless in the way this kind of behaviour is recognizable, and the way characters like those in this film still exist in society. The whole film is like a society in miniature, with it's classes, separations, lack of equality and lack of equal distribution. At the captain's table people can talk about exterminating the weak and spout racism with impunity, but in the lower classes a wood-carver has his knife taken away for fear he'll inexplicably start violence with it. The rabble are treated with disgust, and are feared by those who are wealthy. Abby Mann had won an Oscar for writing the screenplay to Judgement at Nuremberg - here, he was nominated, but lost to Robert Bolt, who penned the screenplay for Doctor Zhivago.

Watching Ship of Fools made me feel like a big dummy, because there was a lot of insinuation which flew way over the top of my head. For example, La Condesa is apparently an opium addict, and I thought her request for medication to "help her sleep" was just that - she wanted a pill to help her sleep. Also, I did not pick up on the fact that Schumann and the captain of the ship were having a gay fling - being released in 1965, the film had to be awful careful in the way that was communicated, and went so subtle on it that I didn't pick up on it at all. Worst of all, at the end, when a certain character is having a heart attack, I thought he was just having a panic attack and would be fine. I was actually thinking to myself "I had a panic attack, and that's exactly what it was like - well done movie." When "heart troubles" was referenced I thought they were talking about love - but it was literal. Still, for 1965 this film surprised me in the way it openly referenced sex. A character loses his virginity, and there's sex before marriage and out of wedlock, so for it's day, compared to films a few decades before, it felt kind of dark even while it made some of it's more risqué allusions come through in such a sly, obscure and finely-drawn way.

Overall, I really enjoyed Ship of Fools - it's a really solid film that tackles a whole range of serious moral, ethical and consequential themes. Other films would be made, and had been made, which used Germany's first serious steps into Nazism to examine how a population can completely lose their moral compass - but this one did it really well. I also enjoyed the fact that it took time to examine so many other things as well, and it's one of the best films I've seen which looks at characters who carry so much unbearable metaphorical baggage on their voyage, and how that poisons any attempt to have relationships with other people. It mixes so much together in it's dark Nazi atmosphere that it maintains a kind of unconscious eerie and uncomfortable vibe for it's entire run-time. Director Kramer had a wide range, and that opened up many possibilities when it came to the depth of what he created. The Sound of Music won Best Picture that year, over Ship of Fools, simply because the former was the joyful kind of film Academy members overwhelmingly voted for.

Finally, just a word on Lee Marvin, who I'm a fan of, and Vivien Leigh, who in her final film role made it hard to separate the crazy in her character from the legend. At times both were frightening in this - two lost souls who felt like they had hit the darkest of nights as far as their souls went. They were terrific, and another great addition to such an interesting film. Two characters who seem to have been lost all of their lives, and it's the generational passing on of heavy sorrows and prejudice that makes it so hard for this world to change, and so slow. It's not enough for people to stand back and assume the natural moral order of the world will always reassert itself without their help however. There's a whole lot of "what if" in Ship of Fools, from characters and their personal decisions to general attitudes, apathy and an unwillingness to change. "Too late" comes far sooner than most people think, and it's that approaching "too late" that haunts the corridors of that ship on it's journey to Spain then Bremerhaven.




*Ernest Laszlo was also nominated for an Oscar for the films Inherit the Wind, Judgment at Nuremberg, It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, Fantastic Voyage, Star!, Airport and Logan's Run.



Look forward to your elaboration
I'll write something later. For the moment, I just want to ease Citizen's mind by reminding him that I'm halfway through, or maybe a tad more. I just need to sit down and write.