September Film Challenge 🎬

[curious_slut]

Day 22: A movie by your Favorite Director

Not a whole lot of women in the director's chair back in Old Hollywood. I might not have a favorite director per se but Dorothy Arzner is a great one. Merrily We Go to Hell is a pre-Code gem if you ask me. As one reviewer put it on Letterboxd:
imagine your wife telling you she's bringing her side piece to a party and she shows up with CARY GRANT. would just cut my losses at that point honestly.

 

[UnquietDreams]

Day 22: A movie by your Favorite Director

Favorite director is like favorite films -- there is a list, and it changes depending on my mood, or the day, or who I am with, and so many other things. Last time I went for beauty and spectacle. Today, I am going to darker shades.

Vertigo, on one level, is a simple story of a former police officer, caused to leave the force due to a sudden crippling fear of heights and vertigo, hired to investigate someone's wife, and things get...complicated. It is the plot to numerous films noir. But like simple ingredients given to a master chef, Hitchcock does so much magic with this. Hitch lays out his psyche in this movie, with themes of obsession mistaken for love, voyeurism, fetishism, male control and destruction, deconstruction of reality, and the objectification of women, sexually and artistically. All the things that made Hitchcock both a beloved genius and an intensly questionable human being are all on display. His obsessions, his perversions, his idiosyncrasies, his love and hate for women, his charm and his creepiness. This movie is the director. And both are fucking brilliant.

"Vertigo," Alfred Hichcok (1958)

 

[SalaciousMonkey22]

Day 22: A movie by your Favorite Director

My favorite director only has two movies that I talk about too much anyway. Once a person’s ouevre expands it get murky. There are no directors universally love.

But there are a few directors that I’m always intrigued by even if I don’t always love the result. I love artists that swing for the fences every time

This is an example of a swing that is often considered a strike but is really a goddamn grand slam. I love the Wachowski’s and this is probably my favorite movie by them.

 

[UnquietDreams]

Day 22: A movie by your favorite director

A film directed by Ron Howard 99.9% of the time is going to be good.

 

[EndCreditsPart2]

Day 22: A movie by your Favorite Director

Technically, favorite directors.

 

[Bry1313]

Day 22 - Favorite Director

Gotta go with the Coens here

 

[ny_m_teacher]

Day 22: A movie starring your Favorite Actor/Actress

Sean Penn

 

[Whiskeyjack]

Day 23: A film starring your favorite actor/actress
Is there anything Helena Bonham Carter can't do?

 

[Grant55]

Day 23: Tom Hanks

The Terminal

Out of any actor of modern times, Tom Hanks is one whom I think has the most versatility. Going from the comedic to the dramatic, he always stays fresh.

 

[SalaciousMonkey22]

Day 22: A movie starring your Favorite Actor/Actress
this is a tough one too. Colin Farrell was a strong contender, but I’m going with this movie because it’s got both Sam Rockwell and Toni Collette (2 other top 5 contenders) in a sweet little coming of age movie (one of my favorite sub genres).

I can mention all the actors I want right? It’s just movies I gotta watch out for?

 

[lavendersilk]

Day 22: A movie starring your Favorite Actor/Actress

So many to choose from! I usually go old school but today I'm going to go with...

Poison (2024)

 

[curious_slut]

Day 22: A movie starring your Favorite Actor/Actress

So many to choose from! I usually go old school but today I'm going to go with...

Poison (2024)

Did you pick this for Dev or Benedict? Either way, excellent choice

 

[lavendersilk]

Did you pick this for Dev or Benedict? Either way, excellent choice

Honestly! Hard to choose... but it's my boyfriend, Benny of course.

 

[curious_slut]

Day 22: A movie starring your Favorite Actor/Actress

Emily Mortimer, David Tennant, James McAvoy, and Michael Sheen? Not liking Bright Young Things was never an option for me. The whole cast is stellar so I won't name them all but I do have to add that Stephen Fry both adapted the screenplay and directed so I highly recommend watching

 

[curious_slut]

Honestly! Hard to choose... but it's my boyfriend, Benny of course.

I always knew you were a woman of taste.

 

[lavendersilk]

I always knew you were a woman of taste.

You too!

 

[vagrantx]

Day 22: A movie starring your Favorite Actor/Actress

So many to choose from! I usually go old school but today I'm going to go with...

Poison (2024)

This was a hilarious trailer and I must watch this film....

 

[orangecurious]

Day 22: A movie starring your Favorite Actor/Actress

I don't really have any favourites, but Gloria Grahame would be high on a list if i did... mainly for this film

In A Lonely Place
a film so good Suzanne Vega and the Smithereens wrote a song about it

 

[vagrantx]

Day 22: A movie starring your favorite actress

It says a lot about an actress when the mere mention of her name will get me to watch absolutely anything and everything she's in. I'll even sit through that bland soup of blah which is Narnia just to watch Tilda Swinton act her heart out!

 

[UnquietDreams]

Day 22: A movie starring your Favorite Actor/Actress

This is an odd one -- an actor's performance in a movie that makes me sick.

Emma Thompson is one of my favorite actors, and she proved she could do almost anything by winning that Academy Award for screenwriting a Jane Austin adaptation (an award later paired with an Oscar for acting, the only such double threat to date). She can do comedy, drama, thrillers, Shakespeare, period pieces, fantasy -- just an amazing range. I wanted to choose a movie she was in that I loved. But my mind kept coming back to one I hated, and continued watching for her anyway.

Love Actually is a modern holiday classic, beloved for showing the power of love, watched by people at Christmas, curled up before a fire and learning what love is all about. No. No, it isn't. It is a horrid, vapid, mean film where women are attractive because they are timid, passive, non-threatening, and available (or are tramps short dark hair) and men tend to try to sleep with women who work for them. Everyone falls deeply into "love," even though most barely speak to each other. The film is cruel, and creepy, and ugly. I hate another Christmas classic (hi @Bry1313!), but I only hate it. This film I absolutely loathe.

But there is one realistic, well-earned scene. Karen (Thompson) is married to Harry (Alan Rickman), and they genuinely love each other. But Harry's secretary, Mia (Heike Makatsch), she of the short dark hair, starts hitting on him with all of the subtly of a bad porn film, and he is sort of into it. She comes on to him hard, they dance at a party (Mia wears devil horns to the Christmas party, just in case you didn't catch what she was), and then asks him for a Christmas present. Harry almost gets caught buying an expensive gold heart necklace for her. Karen finds it in his pocket, and assumes it is for her. Come Christmas Eve, the family is together, and they each get to open a present. Karen picks the one that looks like the box she found.

Watching Thompson keep it together, then break, quietly, then pull emotions back under, stuffing them back down in order to not ruin Christmas for her kids is both heartbreaking and a masterclass in acting. She could easily go over the top, or undersell. She does neither, and hits the mark perfectly. It is shattering, and beautiful.

Love Actually, (2003), Emma Thompson

 

[lavendersilk]

Day 22: A movie starring your Favorite Actor/Actress

This is an odd one -- an actor's performance in a movie the makes me sick.

Emma Thompson is one of my favorite actors, and she proved she could do almost anything by winning that Academy Award for screenwriting a Jane Austin adaptation (an award later paired with an Oscar for acting, the only such double threat to date). She can do comedy, drama, thrillers, Shakespeare, period pieces, fantasy -- just an amazing range. I wanted to choose a movie she was in that I loved. But my mind kept coming back to one I hated, and continued watching for her anyway.

Love Actually is a modern holiday classic, beloved for showing the power of love, watched by people at Christmas, curled up before a fire and learning what love is all about. No. No, it isn't. It is a horrid, vapid, mean film where women are attractive because they are timid, passive, non-threatening and available (or are tramps short dark hair) and men tend to try to sleep with women who work for them. Everyone falls deeply into "love," even though most barely speak to each other. The film is cruel, and creepy, and ugly. I hate another Christmas classic (hi @Bry1313!), but I only hate it. This film I absolutely loathe.

But there is one realistic, well-earned scene. Karen (Thompson) is married to Harry (Alan Rickman), and they genuinely love each other. But Harry's secretary, Mia (Heike Makatsch), she of the short dark hair, starts hitting on him with all of the subtly of a bad porn film, and he is sort of into it. She comes on to him hard, they dance at a party, and then asks him for a Christmas present. Harry almost gets caught buying an expensive gold heart necklace for her. Karen finds it in his pocket, and assumes it is for her. Come Christmas Eve, the family is together, and they each get to open a present. Karen picks the one that looks like the box she found.

Watching Thompson keep it together, then break, quietly, then pull emotions back under, stuffing them back down in order to not ruin Christmas for her kids is both heartbreaking and a masterclass in good acting. She could easily go over the top, or undersell. She does neither, and hits the mark perfectly. It is shattering, and beautiful.

Love Actually, (2003), Emma Thompson

I actually love this film. Yes, it is sappy as fuck. (Oddly enough... that other film you mentioned is the only other one that I actually do not care for Alan Rickman's character in. Even though the character in the other film is probably supposed to be a good guy... I couldn't like him.)

The reason we accept certain period pieces but don't accept newer ones is because we should know better, right? But honestly, I watch Love Actually every. fucking. year.

But anyway... Emma Thompson is the shit!

 

[curious_slut]

Love Actually is a modern holiday classic, beloved for showing the power of love, watched by people at Christmas, curled up before a fire and learning what love is all about.

I can't stand this movie but it does have a great cast. Emma Thompson is a treasure.

 

[BreukelenAnima]

Day 22: A movie starring your Favorite Actor/Actress
Another tough challenge. One of my favorite actors in one of my favorite performances.

 

[UnquietDreams]

Day 22: A movie starring your Favorite Actor/Actress
Another tough challenge. One of my favorite actors in one of my favorite performances.
View attachment 2396356

Harris ot Hurt? Both are remarkably talented.

 

[ny_m_teacher]

I love all seeing all the movies I have watched and forgotten about, or ones that I've never heard of and added to my list of "Must See's".