25th Hall of Fame

About Elly



Upon my rewatch my feelings stay about the same. Excellent direction, some real good acting and just beautifully shot scenes. Amazing how we go from it being one tragedy and turning into something totally different. The pause button for this film doesn't even seem like it's a possibility as I become completely enamored with what is going onThe scenes on the water are something else. Liked I said the first time I watched it I love how the mystery seems to unveil step by step and emotionally we feel like we are right there at the very scene. That's the epitome of great filmmaking. And this is up their on my personal favorites, particularly foreign films but also films in general.

Sundays and Cybele (Serge Bourguignon, 1962)

Yes, I'm afraid the relationship depicted here is in fact gross and I don't think there's much wiggle room on that. Like, they're trying to pass this off as a pure, innocent friendship but (and maybe this is just a translation thing) the dialogue between the main characters is so sexually charged its hard to see it any other way. I mean, I've never talked to friends like that without being explicitly tongue-in-cheek about it. I was going to mention how the characters are all enabling each other in problematic ways as well but I just keep thinking in circles so I don't know if there's anything there or not. So yes, I think the film is without doubt morally dubious but I also don't really care. It's a movie and not real so who could possibly care. My problem with the movie is that its just not terribly interesting or entertaining lol. Like, its fine generally but it does get repetitive and has some really corny bits (ie the ending) and just doesn't really explore any aspect of the subject matter. The saving grace is just that its shot pretty well, a couple real banger shots in there. That alone puts it above most of the nominations tbh.

American Movie (1999)

I was pretty sure I’d seen this before but when I watched it I didn’t remember a single thing about it, so, given how awesome and memorable it is, it’s possible I was mistaken and this was my first viewing.

Either way, love it.

Rarely has a movie captured so many awesome parts of film in one package. This movie is alternate parts hilarious, poignant, thought-provoking, a deep character study, and a captivating look at real life in way that even most other documentaries don’t quite get right.

The movie is the story of Mark Borchardt, an aspiring filmmaker trapped in rural Wisconsin and devoted to finishing his short film, Coven (the title of which Borchardt mispronounces with a long ‘o,’ and then – when corrected, amazingly refuses to accept the pronunciation because “coven” shouldn’t sound like “oven”) a low-budget horror film, to generate funds for an epic feature. Mark is intense, driven, and pushy, all good qualities for an independent filmmaker, I imagine. However, his poor articulation, lack of funds (or a job for most of the film), alcoholism, and the ineptitude of his friends and family that serve as his production team present serious obstacles to completing the project. Despite taking several years and myriad twists and turns, Borchardt ultimately completes the short film, and triumphantly premieres it in a theater to a horde of friends and family.

On the journey with Mark is his delightful best friend Mike Schank, a guitarist and major-league burnout that somehow lights up every scene he is in. Mike is constantly jovial, supportive, and genuine. Indeed, in one such scene, at Thanksgiving, Schank bubbles over with joy because he won $50 on a scratch-off. Mike’s delight rubs off on a severely depressed Mark and, in one of the film’s most beautiful scenes, Mark explains to Mike that he has helped pull him back from what sounds like a suicidal depression. Mike also tells one of the most incredible, hysterical stories I have ever heard, involving acid cut with PCP and a lengthy hospital stay. As unlikely as that description makes it, the story – and most of all, its telling – are simply legendary. In short, Mike is the best thing in the film full stop – but there are plenty of other entertaining and engrossing characters.

Mark’s other friends and family are both a blessing (they are mostly, to a fault, willing to help and put up with him) and a curse. Mark secures financing from his 82-year-old possibly senile Uncle Bill, which is critical to the project’s completion. But a later attempt to get Uncle Bill to recite a single line results in one of the funniest sequences in the film, as Bill is utterly unable to remember or correctly recite the line - for countless takes. The relationship between Mark and Uncle Bill is both hilarious and touching. Mark provides significant emotional and physical support for Uncle Bill. At the same time, Uncle Bill’s refusal to take any **** leads to some fabulous moments.

At its core, American Movie may be most American film I have ever seen. It captures the American spirit of dogged determination in the face of long odds while simultaneously giving us a fascinating portrait of real, blue-collar American life. And it's damn funny. A terrific film. 10/10.

The Long Goodbye - CONTAINS SPOILERS

This movie has been languishing on my watch list for a long time. Now that I finally seen it, it was worth the wait. I now understand why I've seen so many Philip Marlowe avatars on movie forums. Besides Elliott Gould being so good in the part, the man is just so cool! I'm not sure if he inspired the look of Spike Spiegel in Cowboy Bebop, but he may as well have. Then again, is Marlowe just so uncool? With his cheap suit and old school values, he probably is for the '70s, anyway. This could be said about many fictional detectives, but Marlowe reminds me of Chaplin's tramp character for he exists outside and thus critiques society. One of the values Marlowe holds dear - the movie's treatment of which resonated with me the most - is loyalty, or rather, the lack thereof. He's a man who still prioritizes it, and from his cat abandoning him over a food brand mix-up to the entire Terry Lennox affair, the movie is Marlowe realizing how easily it's bought and sold. It's an often chilling, often sad and often very funny realization, not to mention an always entertaining one. There's Gould's performance, Sterling Hayden's equally entertaining one as the equally boisterous and odious Roger Wade and of course the mystery. In true Altman form, it's refreshingly told via natural character interaction and with minimal exposition. The real star of the show, however, may be Vilmos Zsigmond's cinematography. Besides how the constantly drifting camera adds to the movie's cool atmosphere, there are shots that are simply amazing. The one where we see Wade's beachside demise before Marlowe and Eileen do is a standout as are the final ones that reference The Third Man. All in all, it's a masterpiece of the noir genre that may be my new favorite Altman; granted, I haven't seen many, but that's still saying something. Oh, and there's an unexpected and amusing Arnold Schwarzenegger appearance to boot.

Bicycle Thieves aka Ladri di biciclette (1948)

How do you confirm an already, rightfully so, praised film?

Going in, I didn't wanna be cryin. I didn't want to be sad. I was happy being happy. I did not want to watch something that would do any o' that. But I knew I needed to knock out some films, and this one called out the loudest to me. So, I sucked it up, knowing I was about to see something pretty extraordinary and heartfelt. With clenched shoulders, dreading the final shoe drop, the unfortunate ending, I watched Bicycle Thieves.

The shoe slipped and tumbled adrift as Antonio and his boy, Bruno, disappear into the congestion of people.
Quite the poetic, elegant end scene. Later discovering it was an homage to Director Vittorio De Sica's favorite filmmaker, Charles Chaplin, and a familiar ending to many of his The Tramp films. The poetry within that irony catapulting my appreciation.

Releasing the prior tension to discover happiness for having seen this film. The story's sadness is more of a beautifully told poem than one of a more heart-rendering one.
I smiled.
Because this wonderful film would not be, for me, a hard watch so that I may return and re-experience this.
I delved into the technical trivia since I knew zero of this film beyond the praise-drenched warning of no, this sh#t does not have a happy ending.
When I watched Rome, Open City, that did not have a happy ending, but, very similar to this, it had Life! Vibrant. Passionate.
And like ROC, I loved that Life. Because it even permeates misfortune as De Sica masterfully does here. My respect for that mastery was heightened when I read how EVERYONE was, basically, right off the street.
Especially when an annoyed De Sica at the overcrowding of people while shooting some initial scenes and saw this youngster in the crowd --


What ensued was an absolute highlight when this child was on screen for an absolutely excellent film.

__________________
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

The Green Years aka Os Verdes Anos (1963)

This was quite an entertaining surprise. Thinking I may end up being bored with the minimalistic story: A Boy and A Girl Meet. They take Idyllac Walks. They Contemplate living in a city as opposed to the small town they each come from.
Which, yes, at the root, it is. BUT, like taking a simplistic note and creating a unique melody, Paulo Rocha, along with becoming one of the founding fathers of the New Portuguese Cinema, creates something sublime and intriguing. From the POV of the Uncle, giving us a more second-hand view of the two youths to the everyday life of those who come in contact with them. The whole creating a more fascinating look at Life in Lisbon.
Admittedly, the supposed missing few minutes of the film does create a minor speed bump, but only because of what insight may have been garnered to assist in how the surprise ending came to be. Which, in itself, after my initial jaw-dropping, I found to be an excellent ending to this rather beautiful and, for me, engaging film. I also find myself feeling that even without those few minutes that may clarify a little better, it does not diminish my appreciation and enjoyment of the film.

I love that we delve, equally, into everyone else and not merely the young couple as well as the cinematic inclusion of the very city itself - a vibrant participant in this story all in its own. Location truly does matter when telling a story - even a minimalistic one. Bringing a richness and, when necessary, a more emotionally-driven scenario.

I am inquisitive to see how I receive this on a second viewing and truly hope to discover it at some point in the near future.

I re-watched The Long Goodbye so all that's left is Themroc. I'll take a link if anyone's got one

Your helpful host has a link, coming to you in 10 seconds.

I'll need a link for American Movie, please and Thank You

ok I've been slacking hard on this but gonna make a push to finish this this weekend wish me luck

I just seen your post and the link is on it's way

Whiplash (2014)

Good, not great. Crackerjack performances and impressive, technical work on the drumming (which is a lot harder to fake in a movie than piano!) but thematically messy. The film never seems to decide where it stands on whether Terence Fletcher’s (the Oscar-winning-for-this-role-deservedly J.K. Simmons) teaching approach is admirable or criminal. Since this is one of the core issues raised by the film, this muddiness is not ideal.

Whiplash is the story of Andrew Neiman (Miles Teller) an ambitious young jazz drummer in a New York City Music Conservatory who is fiercely driven to become an all-time great drummer. Fletcher finds Andrew practicing one day and invites him to a possible role in the school’s top jazz ensemble. Fletcher is abusive, cruel, and violent. He taunts his students, randomly explodes in bursts of anger, and terrifies seemingly everyone he encounters. At first the film seems to recognize the myriad issues here, by including a subplot in which Fletcher finds out that one of his best former students committed suicide. Fletcher is hit hard by this event, but, it seems, not enough to connect the dots.

Andrew wants to be an all-time great, so he is on board for whatever harsh treatment is required to put him on that path. Indeed, he becomes so dedicated to his craft that he cuts everyone out of his life, including his new, charming young girlfriend Nicole (Melissa Benoit), who rightly recoils when Andrew arrogantly tells her that he is great, she will never be, and she is in his way. Not a fantastic dating (or life) strategy. Despite his dedication, Andrew’s journey ultimately ends in disaster, as a mad rush to recover his sheet music to make a concert leads to a car accident that, despite obvious visible injuries, Andrew shrugs off to make the concert. Fletcher – seemingly mad mainly because Andrew is late and unkempt – and the rest of the ensemble is horrified when Andrew shows up a complete mess and nevertheless, attempts to perform.

Andrew is booted from the ensemble. Some time later, his father and an investigator persuade him to give anonymous testimony against Fletcher, in an inquiry that it appears the former student’s suicide prompted. Fletcher is fired, Andrew gives up the drums and tries to pursue a normal life. That continues until one day, Andrew comes across Fletcher in a club. Fletcher appears not to know that Andrew betrayed him and asks him to join him in a new ensemble that could launch Andrew’s career. Andrew is ecstatic. He immediately flips back into his former ways. But when the concert occurs, the first number is a surprise - a piece Andrew does not know and is therefore not prepared for. Fletcher reveals that he knows of Andrew’s betrayal and that this ruse is his revenge. Humiliated, Andrew walks out, pleasing Fletcher. He suddenly changes his mind, however, and returns, delivering an insane, very long solo that shows Fletcher he really does have what it takes. Fletcher smiles. He finally got through to the kid.

So is the film saying Fletcher was right all along? His hard love technique is, at least per the film (and as he claims late in the film, the only way to get the absolute best from his pupils, and particularly to produce an all-time great, which the film implies Andrew will become. This is hard to square with both the suicide (a subplot which seems inserted specifically to criticize Fletcher) and Andrew’s insane behavior (the accident, dumping his lovely girlfriend, and related acts). Is the film’s message then that this is complicated and there are no right answers? If so, it sure seems to let Fletcher (and Andrew, for that matter) off the hook for an awful lot of problematic (to put it mildly) behavior. Perhaps the idea is for the audience to decide, but the way the film glamorizes Fletcher and Andrew at the end strongly suggests it is on Fletcher’s side.

On the plus side, the main performances are fabulous. Simmons was born to play this part (see also his work in Oz and Party Down [really, see this episode if you haven’t, it’s comedy Fletcher!]). And Teller, who I was not previously familiar with, is utterly convincing as Andrew, almost to a fault. Their performances (and the technical work with the drumming) are so impressive they are good enough reasons to watch this film despite the film’s thematic quagmire.

Worth watching. 7/10.

Idk if you have it but it's on criterion now too

thanks raul, I don't but at some point, i really should get it.
CR helped me out and I watched it this afternoon before I came into work

The Long Goodbye (1973)

This is a fine, fascinating, difficult film. It is suffused with social commentary, atmosphere, mood, and genre conventions at the expense of story. In this case, the trade-off works well – it suits Altman’s neo-noir film equally as well as the overlapping dialogue and faded cinematography do.

At the heart of the film is the oft-portrayed-in-film private investigator Phillip Marlowe (Elliott Gould), perhaps Raymond Chandler’s most famous creation. But this Marlowe is not precisely like any before him. Part of this is due to Gould’s manner and easy charm. Gould is friendly, unassuming, and a wise ass. He does not seem to pick up much on subtext or innuendo. Indeed, the film is primarily about the juxtaposition of Marlowe, a hero straight out of the 1950s, with the less innocent world of the 1970s.

Marlowe is a man out of time. Altman himself referred to his version of the character as Rip Van Marlowe. Marlowe is always in a suit (unlike other characters), chain smoking (the only character in the film’s health conscious 70s’ LA to even smoke, much less compulsively), and wisecracking, oddly naïve of the true nature of the world around him and the loss of innocence in the 20 intervening years between Marlowe’s time and the then-present. Marlowe barely notices salacious elements of his surroundings. A practical colony of half-naked hippie women live next door and Marlowe seems oblivious to them as anything but helpful neighbors. He also seems to utterly miss come-ons from the film’s femme fatale. Finally, he is singularly unimpressed by a $5,000 bill(!) These contrasts do a lot to drive home Altman’s implicit commentaries on both film noir and the time and place the film was made.

The story, such as it is, is set in motion by long-time Marlowe friend Terry Lennox, who shows up in the middle of the night and asks Marlowe for a ride to Tijuana. After returning home, two detectives show up and report that Lennox’s wife has been murdered. They believe Marlowe already knows this and that he aided and abetted Lennox’s escape to…somewhere. Marlowe refuses to cooperate and spends 3 days in jail as a result. He is only released when police learn Lennox committed suicide in Mexico. Marlowe refuses to believe either that Lennox murdered his wife or committed suicide. Something else, Marlowe is sure, is going on here.

Marlowe is then hired by Eileen Wade (Nina van Pallandt), a beautiful, wealthy woman, to find her missing husband Roger (the rightfully legendary Sterling freakin’ Hayden), a Hemingwayesque alcoholic novelist with writer’s block. Marlowe ultimately finds Roger in a private detox clinic and returns him home. He later learns that the Wades knew Terry and Mrs. Lennox and begins to suspect a connection. Separately, Jewish gangster Marty Augustine visits and threatens Marlowe, claiming that Lennox owes him $350,000, that he believes Marlowe knows where the money is, and that there will be serious consequences if it is not returned. Augustine’s threat is strongly bolstered by an absolutely shocking act of violence committed against his mistress (“If I would do this to someone I loved…”). I won’t spoil the ending other than to state that it changes both Marlowe and, fittingly, the way Altman shoots Marlowe.

The performances here are quite good, with Gould most prominent. Still, my favorite performance is the giant (in both stature and energy) Sterling Hayden. He is somehow just as or more effective than he was in the 50s. Hayden dominates virtually every scene he is in. Also, the interplay between Hayden and Gould (largely improvised because Hayden was always drunk and high and never learned his lines!) is fabulous.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the film’s extremely cringeworthy moments during the interrogation early on. Marlowe gets ink on his fingertips being fingerprinted and, to be goofy, decides to give himself blackface and act like he is in a minstrel show. Wow, that was hard to watch! That plus casual homophobia (with repeated slurs), neither of which seemed necessary, hurt the film in my estimation. Fortunately, there is nothing else even remotely like this thereafter, and the scene is early enough in the film that it fades a bit by the end. Still, this isn’t a great look.

In short, brief racism and homophobia aside, this is a truly great film, a masterpiece of mood and tempo by Altman. 9/10.

The Truth (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1960)

The film mostly floats by on being casually entertaining and likeable (both the courtroom and the events being told) and I particularly enjoy that even though so much of the film is a story being told directly to the viewer there's a surprising amount of breathing room in the narrative, though perhaps that shouldn't be such a surprise given that was always been the biggest boon of 60's French films for me. On top of that its really wonderfully paced, there's a couple real lovely shots here and there and there's not really any dumb plot twists or reveals for me to roll my eyes at which I was worried about given the genre. Though the film is extremely solid throughout there's really only a couple borderline standout moments and its just not quite enough for me to consider it a "great" film.

About Elly (Asghar Farhadi, 2009)

So I saw this listed as a mystery/thriller and I was dreading it immensely but fortunately its barely a mystery and not at all a thriller. For the first half I thought it was pretty great. Really dug the vibe and atmosphere of these families hanging out, very comfy and if it had stuck with being just that I probably would have been able to say that I loved it but I knew the shoe would drop at some point and it happened 40 minutes in, the textbook amount of time before the first "thing" should happen in a film (this is a well paced film). To my surprise though, the thing happens and the film didn't get any worse per se (not yet at least). Though the vibe is certainly not comfy anymore it hasn't taken a radical shift or anything, it still has a strong feel that isn't disconnected from the rest of the film and the narrative aspects don't suddenly take over the film either (which I was deeply concerned about). The downside here is that despite not derailing the film entirely, the mystery aspects do arise and lead to my least favourite parts of the film. Essentially, the characters are in a situation in which they need to lie to others and each other a bit for the purpose of creating tension and while I understand why this element of the film is intriguing its just not the kind of thing I could ever really get invested in. For the most part I can gloss over this though as I could still connect with the emotions but there is scenes where its just the characters coming up with what they're gonna tell someone the film just kinda loses the magic a bit. That seems like I'm making a big deal about something rather small but really the film just dropped from being like, just barely great to just barely not great. Certainly one of the highlights of this HoF.

Just under 2 Weeks until the Deadline August 1st

@edarsenal has 3 films
@rauldc14 has 2 films
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@ueno_station54 has 1 film

Well I actually only got 1, and 2 write ups

2 films, one write up lol