Friday, July 1, 2011

The Hannah Movie Awards: June 2011

I watched 28 movies throughout the month of June. So here are some pretend awards.

Best Actor
-All That Jazz (Roy Scheider)
-Buried (Ryan Reynolds)
-I’m Not Scared (Giuseppe Cristiano)
-Marooned (Gene Hackman)
-Midnight in Paris (Owen Wilson)
-New York, New York (Robert De Niro)
-Peeping Tom (Karlheinz Bohm)
-The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (Martin Sheen)
-The Third Man (Orson Welles)
-Yojimbo (Toshiro Mifune)

There are a bunch of contenders this month, and it's rather hard to choose, because I honestly loved every single one of these performances. Sometimes they were the best part of an uninteresting movie (Martin Sheen and Orson Welles) and sometimes they were just part of what made the movie great (Giuseppe Cristiano and Owen Wilson).

I think in the end although I'd love to give it to Wilson, I have to give it to Welles for The Third Man. I wasn't enjoying the movie at all (couldn't stand Joseph Cotten's character), when along comes Orson Welles for just a few minutes of screen time, and he made the whole movie interesting again. The fact that that small role captured my attention really stands out, so I think he has to get that award this month.

Best Actress
-Another Woman (Gena Rowlands)
-New York, New York (Liza Minnelli)
-War and Peace (Audrey Hepburn)

No contest here. Gena Rowlands made that movie.

Best Character
-Another Woman (Marion)
-I’m Not Scared (Michele)
-Peeping Tom (Mark)
-The Big Lebowski (Brandt)

Again, although I really enjoyed all these characters, Another Woman got a rating of 4.5 stars from me because of that main character.

Most Disappointing
-Blue Valentine
-Raging Bull
-Splice

Blue Valentine gets this one. I should have liked that movie. I can't put my finger quite on what fell apart, but I wanted to like it. With Raging Bull I knew there was a chance I wouldn't get into a boxing movie, even one by Scorsese. And Splice was never good enough to be that disappointed by.

Best Scene
-Let the Right One In (the pool scene)
-M (the town's paranoid citizens accuse everyone of being the murderer)
-Yojimbo (the samurai approaches the whole group at the end)

Those are definitely some interesting scenes, but I'm pretty sure Let the Right One In has to take this award. When I think of the movie, that is the one moment that comes to mind. It's a visually fascinating scene. And a horrifying one.

Best Script
-Another Woman
-Closer
-Grave of the Fireflies

Another Woman has swept a couple other awards, and I would love to give an award to Grave of the Fireflies, which broke my heart, but Closer definitely gets this one. It holds very true to the play script (not surprising, since the playwright also wrote the screenplay). There's not a lot of fancy plot points or visual elements to Closer. It's held up entirely by the actors and the script.

Looks like those are all the ones I'm handing out this time around.

I will probably be watching not nearly as many movies this month, since I'll be working at a camp for 3 weeks out of it, so I'll be without as much free time or as many resources.

1 comment:

  1. Heh, I agree with most everything here that I've seen, except Blue Valentine is still sitting at the top of my favorite films I've seen all year. That film broke me in the best way.

    I saw Raging Bull for the first time a few months ago, and yeah, I wasn't really into it. I liked a lot of the things Scorsese was doing stylistically, but I just couldn't care about Jake la Motta at all, and the movie felt interminable.

    I shall have to seek out Another Woman. Gena Rowlands certainly blew me away in A Woman Under the Influence. Ooh, and Another Woman is Woody Allen? How did I not know that? I love Woody Allen. Yeah, definitely putting this on my list.

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