Personal Recommendation Hall of Fame VI

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the white ribbon

have never really been a haneke guy but i'd heard good things about this one so i was excited to finally see it, hoping this would be the one that clicked with me. unfortunately that wasn't the case and it mostly just clarified for me the reasons i don't care for him.

the main complaint people seem to have with him is his unrelenting bleakness, which i can agree with insofar as i don't his particular strain of miserabilism to be all that worthwhile or interesting from a thematic perspective, but i would be far more sympathetic to his cinematic worldview if any of his movies actually left me depressed instead of just bored. sorry to say that there is just nothing compelling here. i think the only scene i liked in the whole movie was when the kid asked his dad if he could keep the bird, mainly because the kid is pretty adorable and the actor who plays the father finds some interesting notes in his performance. otherwise the characters are just empty vessels, interior-less means to an end, the dullest elucidations on innocence and cruelty and blah blah blah. if haneke doesn't care about them, then i certainly won't be able to, and then the whole thing kinda falls apart. you're just left with sub-par bergman without any of the humanity or poetry.

i will say that it does look nice, and theoretically i am intrigued by the conceptual hermeticism of this fictional town, situated at this very specific point in history. it's probably too allegorical for its own good, but i do think there's something there. still think this was a good nomination for me, and i will probably continue to give haneke more chances even if i'm less optimistic. amour has intrigued me since it came out, and i've heard positive things about cache, code unknown, and the piano teacher even from fellow haneke-skeptics so we'll see.

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Most Biblical movies were long If I Recall.
seen A Clockwork Orange. In all honesty, the movie was weird and silly
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I remember The Scarlet Empress having some great aesthetics, including really interesting architecture.

I know I saw The White Ribbon at some point as well, but I really don't remember much about it. I recall not watching it all in one sitting, and that's about it haha.






Brother's Keeper (1992)

Documentaries have come a long way since 1992. This is a film of four brothers when one night one of them passes away. The film tells the stark contrast of the rural people of this upstate new york town and the city people who want to throw one of the brothers in prison for murdering his brother. Stylistically the film is dated 70% of it is just talking heads most of the characters are fairly one dimensional and interchangeable. Yet still the movie packs a punch.

Delbert the accused becomes a bit of a local celebrity you see the camera causes him and the people around him to change a bit. I think that would have been a better subject for the film than what was a fairly weak murder mystery plot. We don't get a lot in the way of answers or even compelling cases from each side. As true crime documentaries evolved this is something that would be unacceptable today but it's tolerable here.

When you are watching this film you feel a little bit of a gross sense of exploitation. The Lawyers, news people, and the worst the pathologist all come off as really fake. It's a startling contrast to the folksie townspeople who are rallying around Delbert. End of the day this was watchable and fairly good the sociological aspects are strong the murder stuff not so much but I'm glad I watched it.





Man of the West(1958)

A train robbery leaves three people stranded in the west 100 miles from the nearest town. This one of Gary Coopers last films it's called a "noir" but that's a stretch to me this is a prototypical western almost completely generic and sadly somewhat forgettable. He runs into his old gang led by an unhinged Lee Cobb. Cobb is good in this but he's not great the standout is Jack Lord the man that basically replaced Coopers character in the gang.

The film does a decent enough job building up the body count but nobody would confuse this for a Peckinpah film. Cooper just doesn't really work as a man with a past, I would almost say he's miscast. Anthony Mann does a serviceable job directing the film...it's a western so it's gorgeous but it feels cheap at times you have a lot of emptiness and isolation in the filming. This could be a good thing but Mann never really captures that tone it's another flaw in the film. But these are more small things that fade away over time.

Two of the scenes in the film could have been a bit more impactful but stand out as mirror scenes where two characters are stripped. It's the scenes that elevate this from a bad movie to an average one had they been handled better this might have even been a classic. But still it was alright



I liked The White Ribbon ok but it was some effort on my part.

Someone picked Brother's Keeper for me in a different personal rec and it did well on my ballot.

I can't remember Man of the West offhand. I likely watched it at a time when I was watching a lot of similar films.

Good work slackers!




Someone picked Brother's Keeper for me in a different personal rec and it did well on my ballot.

Good work slackers!

That was me! You're only the second person I ever recommended it to. I think it's a very good documentary but that one scene, I'm sure you know the one I'm talking about, is kind of a no go for a lot of people. I remember watching Siskel and Ebert rave about it and it always stuck with me.



I haven't heard from him but I've checked his profile and the last time he logged in was 2 days ago.
Ok that's good. I just saw that his last post was 29 days ago so I started wondering.



hud


really dug this one. fundamentally an elegiac film about change, but also just a really superb human drama. newman's performance lives up to it's reputation as one of the greatest of all time, and yet patricia neal somehow steals every scene with him. douglas is great too of course, and even brandon de wilde is surprisingly understated in a role that could easily have been a thankless cloying archetype.

the film posits hud's vile personality as a result of life under capitalism and the logical conclusion of a particular brand of rugged individualism. when the world seems like a series of grifts layered one on top of the other, playing by the rules seems an awful lot like shooting yourself in the foot. it's the kind of disaffection that only comes with the feeling that you're living at the end of something, as hud will never get to experience the promise of the west in the same way his father did. certainly a lot of parallels with modern works that deal with "the end of history" as was suggested in the 90s, as well as the other "revisionist" westerns from the same era (e.g. the misfits, the man who shot liberty valance, etc.). not surprising that this was based on a book by the guy who wrote the last picture show, and i'd say bogdanovich certainly borrowed quite a bit from martin ritt cinematically as well. the movie isn't exactly subtle in its evocations of the death of the west and the generational divide, and there are perhaps a few too many cutesy aptly-poetic lines, but otherwise the script is near-flawless so it's not a huge problem.

++



the red shoes


i've had the criterion of this one sitting on my shelf for years but was waiting for the right moment to finally watch it. obviously it's a masterpiece, i'm not sure what else i can say about it that hasn't been said a million times before. it's one of maybe a dozen movies ever made that feels like it's tapping into the full potential of what the cinematic medium can achieve. the famous ballet sequence in the middle is truly one of the best and most cinematic things i've ever seen. only real issue is that the character stuff, while perhaps better than your average backstage musical, suffers in comparison to how immaculate every other aspect of the film is. there are certain beats where it really works– the ending in particular is incredible– and the two lead performances are great, but i can't even imagine how much i would adore this film if i found the drama as compelling as the craft.