14th Hall of Fame

If this film contained just the New York and Helsinki stories, I would've absolutely loved it. New York was entertaining right from the start, and the German cab driver was easily my favourite character in the whole film. He frequently spoke in English that was a direct translation of German phrases, which I found very amusing and appropriate. Helsinki had a more sombre tone, with this emotional edge to it that ended the whole collection on a bit of a downer, which is exactly to my tastes. Unfortunately, two of the remaining three stories were not very enjoyable for me.

I found the first segment in Los Angeles to be quite boring. I didn't care for either character, but especially not the cab driver. Overall I just found that story to be dull and predicable, but I didn't actively dislike it. Rome, on the other hand, was very unpleasant. I absolutely hated the driver at the start. He did tone things down a bit when he picked up the priest, but I still didn't like him very much. Since that segment is mostly just him talking, it was hard to get invested.

Paris was somewhere in between. I liked the dialogue and commentary, but found it hard to get engaged with the second half of the story, mostly because of the blind girl. She looked weird to me, with her eyes constantly rolling back into her head. Is that something blind people do? I've never seen it before, and it put me off a little, but perhaps that was intentional? As a whole, the film is quite uneven, but I think it's definitely worth seeing for the New York and Helsinki segments alone.