32nd Hall of Fame

I also watched The Girl Who Conquered Time about two weeks ago but am having a hard time trying to come up with something. May have to watch it again as it's starting to fade but it probably wouldn't be a bad idea to give it another run anyway.


And I'm still having a hard time finding A Light in the Piazza. For whatever reason the links I have didn't work but I'll keep trying them.

I've often daydreamed about being able to time travel. I'm such a nostalgic person - I usually go to sleep each night recounting this or that period in my life. I'd love to see old places, friends and relatives again. Being able to time travel a day or two at will would be the cherry on the cake - I'd use that to go back and ace exams, impress girls, learn instruments, play sport and generally enjoy the hell out of having foreknowledge. Said the wrong thing to my girlfriend? Go back and fix it. Been walking around for 10 minutes with toilet paper stuck to my shoe? Time travel will take care of that. Movies like The Little Girl Who Conquered Time interest me, because they take that fleeting, ethereal fantasy and play it out like it could really happen. I didn't quite get what I was hoping for though - this movie has such a light and delicate touch that it kind of feels like the time travel component was incidental. It's a very slow-moving, contemplative movie - and I'm never quite enjoying it while I'm watching it. It didn't quite mesh with my personal tastes.

Otherwise known as The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, this 1983 Japanese science fiction movie features Tomoyo Harada as Kazuko Yoshiyama. Yoshiyama is stargazing on a class excursion one night with friend Goro Horikawa (Toshinori Omi) when they both literally bump into Kazuo Fukamachi (Ryōichi Takayanagi). The trio form a close bond, but it's not long before Yoshiyama is having fainting spells, and at times feels like time is stuttering out of synch. To try and work out what's happening to her, she gets closer to plant-loving Fukamachi - someone who seems to have answers as to what's happening to her. When she starts waking up and reliving the same day over and over again, Yoshiyama feels her entire world coming apart at the seams - having foreknowledge turns out to be a benefit here and there, but why is this happening to her? And why is Fukamachi so obsessed with flowers and skipping days off school to go collect specimens? The answers will lead to a heartbreaking revelation for her.

This movie has some really nice features. Take for example the dimly lit cinematography in the science lab where Yoshiyama faints - it's very unique and it's own thing. As is also the frequent transitions from black and white to colour, which often intermingle whereupon there will be both at the same time. I often think of the contrast in terms of dead and alive, stagnant or creative - but I found the reasoning harder to pinpoint in this. Perhaps it was the presence of love's flame being lit, hope, joy or all of the above. Cinematographer Yoshitaka Sakamoto also worked on Nobuhiko Ôbayashi's insane (and very enjoyable) film Hausu. The score by Masataka Matsutôya was also exceedingly pleasant, and for me one of the most enjoyable facets to the movie. I had another couple of listens to his song, "Toki o kakeru shôjo" after watching the movie - and apparently it was very popular in Japan at the time, with many different versions being released. It's very cute and original having Yoshiyama sing the song to us during the closing credits while life goes on as normal in the background.

Features are features though - getting into the movie itself was much harder for me. It's a film with a protagonist walking around in a daze much of the time, and I never relaxed into it's ultra-slow incremental tempo. With some slow movies what I get in each moment is enough by itself, but with The Little Girl Who Conquered Time I was a little bit restless, and not totally in love with any of the characters or mood. Every now and then there's a little flourish with editing and visual effects which suit the manner of a filmmaker who would make a film like Hausu, but for the most part Yoshiyama is sleepily plodding through scenes lost in deep contemplative thought. Brief schisms in the universe don't do all that much to trigger any reasonably interesting development in the plot - and I'm left thinking that this is a movie where it's absolutely essential to love the mood of quiet Japanese neighborhoods, glasshouses, and classrooms. This has more to do with coming to terms with the challenges of approaching adulthood and falling in love than time travel itself. The quiet moments spent with someone you're developing feelings for.

As with time travel, I also think a lot about those quiet moments - and I can't help thinking that I was on the wrong track with this movie. It's a time travel movie with an extraordinarily different approach - and instead of gaining by flitting through the ether and teleporting here and there we lose, because love is very much of the here and now. The time we can trace directly. I think it was a nice touch having the little kissing statues in Yoshiyama's room - something directly related to childhood. This is a kind of coming of age movie about an awakening and a cleft between things we hold dear from the past, and the completely new yearnings and desires that seem to have sprung up from nowhere - always beckoning for us to let go of the past and move forward. To follow sudden and irrepressible urges. It doesn't feel all that different to Yoshiyama's anxiety-inducing zipping around in time. One day in class she's totally unprepared, and the next she's a completely different person - overprepared.

In the meantime, I appreciate a movie that pays tribute to memory, for as I said - I'm a hopelessly nostalgic person. While I didn't enjoy the movie as much as I thought I might, it feels good to at least be on the same page as to it's overall themes and contemplations. Time, is a strange and puzzling thing to think about - but that's why I love thinking about it. It's probably just as well I can't time travel - it looks stressful, and at times desperately sad. Best to take things one day at a time, and not do anything to disrupt one's precious memories of days gone by.

__________________

Second time watching this and I still feckin love it even if a fiddle player chopping off his fingers to prove a point doesn't make much sense to me. I think this is Colin Farrells best performance to date. Something about the way he looks just lends itself to this type of character. I can't think of another actor who can pull off the dim and confused look as well as Farrell. I was fully sympathetic towards him even if I kept hoping he'd just leave Colm alone. You knew it wasn't going to turn out good. The rest of the cast is equally impressive. Kerry Condon as the caring sister who is looking for any chance to get off the island and wants to keep the peace as much as possible until that happens. Brendan Gleeson is Colm, the fiddle playing, ex friend of Padraic who thinks Padraics two hour stories of what's in his horses shite aren't worth his time anymore and finally Barry Keoghan as the island idiot who isn't quite the dunce everybody thinks he is and has a whole host of his own problems to deal with. Problems that make what Colm and Padraic are going through seem trivial.



What bothers me about Banshees is I don't get the actions of Padraic and Colm but I don't have to to enjoy the film. I can understand Padraic a little but Colm, I don't get his reasoning at all. If I remember correctly this was my favorite film of 2022 and having seen it again it has cemented it's spot as the best of 2022.

Update let me know if I missed a review:

@cricket 8/10
@edarsenal 5/10
Rauldc 8/10
@Hey Fredrick 8/10
@jiraffejustin 4/10
@Siddon 2/10
@beelzebubble 0/10

Done
Phoenix
Citizen Rules
John W Constantine

Hey Raul, I need to bow out. I just don't have the time for this HOF. Have fun everyone!

Then there were 9.

Right on for me.

So what got disqualified?

That's what I want to know. Raul?

Banshees of Inisherin is out. Which is a damn shame because I fecken love that movie.

It was a good nom and an interesting watch. I liked it OK but had it second to last....there was just too much stiff competition for it.

I already watched Banshees, even though I didn't have the time.

It just wasn't meant for this mofo world.

Light in the Piazza

I wasn't offended by this film, but I don't think it or what it tries to do really works. I'm okay with a lighthearted film with a subject matter that is not lighthearted at all, I think that can work. This just didn't come out that way to me. I never really believed that the main character suffered a traumatic head injury that gave her the mental capacity of a ten year old, it seems to me like that would look much differently and would be very difficult to make into something so bubbly and bright. And head injuries can have all sorts of effects, they can change people's personalities and all of that, but I never believed it in this film. Which makes the whole thing not work for me. The film did look good, and I think the performances were all fine for what they were trying to do. But that's about as far as the positives go for me.

I'm going to set a date of January 20th for the deadline if everyone is cool with that.

As slow as I'm going now, that seems so far away.

Since everybody has already reviewed this I think a plot summary is kind of unnecessary. Going to admit it, this movie frustrated me. For the first half I just kept wondering why the mother wouldn't disclose her daughter Clara's condition to her suitor or his family. When that was explained away during the conversation with her visiting husband I thought, okay, I guess that makes sense, a little bit, but I still think she should have said something right away. With all the fathers faults, he is kind of douchey, I still thought he was the most logical person in the movie when it came to his daughter.

Now, I get what the Mother was doing. Seeing her daughter happy obviously influenced her decision but I'm not sure it was the right one even if she thinks it was. Is it all that different from what the father was proposing? I couldn't help but think of Clara's life in ten years. Fifteen, when she's still the same ten year old girl. Is she still going to be as adorable to the family and her husband or will she become a burden? We saw glimpses of how difficult it was for Clara's family to deal with her condition, now dump that onto a family on the other side of the world... Was the mother thinking long term? Maybe I'm looking too much into it but it didn't sit well with me.

Aside from that I loved the setting. Florence looked wonderful. Yvette did a fine job portraying the daughter. She didn't overdue it, in fact she may have under done it as I thought she seemed a bit more teenish then ten. Olivia did a fine job as well. The character annoyed me but the performance was good and I had the same feeling about George's Fabrizio. A character like that, today, would land you in the creepy guy Hall of Fame. He was a little stalker-ish. It wasn't a bad film for me even if it sounds like it, it actually kept me involved wondering which direction it was going to go, I simply disagreed with a lot of what ended up happening.

The Name of The Rose (1986)

Sometimes a film comes along and checks all the right boxes. A murder mystery in a strange time told with a cast of dozens with incredible production values. Man this movie should be one of my favorite films of all-time. It should be...but it wasn't.

A series of murders occur in an Abbey during the Spanish inquisition. Sean Connery is sent to investigate the murders by the Pope, he brings along a young Christian Slater who is the witness/narrator of this story. So the big fault with this film is the casting...the monks were basically picked for being ugly okay it's the middle ages makes sense. The problem is the accents are all over the place in addition to that Ron Pearlman plays a crazed hunchback who is basically mocking the messed up accents. So between Pearlman's blather and Connery's thick scottish accent I had a hell of a time following the plot.

F Murray Abarham shows up for a weeks worth of shooting. The man chews scenery like a character acting god and I start to feel like the film is getting back on track...but then it ends in a confusing cartoonish manner that just leaves a sour taste in my mouth. We get a reveal and it's just...dumb and a film like this should be smart and profound but it just left me very cold. I'm really not sure where I'm going to rank this one...I have to put a little more thought into it.

By chance if we all finish before the Jan. 20th deadline, I assume the reveals will follow right after that?

Yes I'm good with that.

I have two films left here, but I should get to them fairly shortly.