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Author Topic: The Top 100 Club (Episode III)  (Read 111694 times)

DarkeningHumour

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Re: The Top 100 Club (Episode III)
« Reply #870 on: November 30, 2017, 04:59:08 PM »
I can't wait for you to call one of my favourite movies an STD, or cancer or something.  ;D
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DarkeningHumour

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Re: The Top 100 Club (Episode III)
« Reply #871 on: November 30, 2017, 04:59:56 PM »
Definitely not a problem if you don't do a review ses.
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Sandy

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Re: The Top 100 Club (Episode III)
« Reply #872 on: November 30, 2017, 11:45:39 PM »
Magnolia



Placemarker. Need more time to mull over...



Edit:

Magnolia is a musical! No one told me this. But maybe it’s for the best, so I get to be happily surprised as the music weaves its way through the film. Between Aimee Mann and Harry Nilsson (the duo of double letters excess and sublime lyric skills), the songs take center stage, at first upstaging to the point where I wish Officer Jim Kurring would inform it it’s too loud, and again later when it becomes so compelling, the characters want to add their voices in agreement. The music is integral to the point where I want to re-watch just for the song choices alone.

Magnolia is religious-ish! I didn’t know this beforehand either. The symbolic religious punctuation mark, near the end, sends me deeper into introspection (I was already pretty far gone by this point)... My own wake-up call didn’t come in the form of frog plague. Quite the opposite really. It was a rational rain of information and support from others and a letting go of fear. I’ve been going through a faith transition for a while now, rejecting outright all that is categorically false, laying aside the pieces I cannot know and sorting through the rest, to determine what I want to hold onto and what is holding me back. Religion can be both wings and weights, building blocks and blinders, faith and fear. In a strict religion, the dogma immobilized and infantilize an individual, so for me, it was time to be an adult and walk through the opposition. "Wise up." The one recognizably devout character in the movie is childlike in his faith and earnest, which leaves me wishing for an “interventionist god” to bring him some happiness. Thank you interventionist PTA, for wising up the timid Jim. The beauty of the movie's wake up call is it reflects all the things that are good and right in the world: kindness, reparation, forgiveness, compassion, ... Religion or no, this is where it's at.
 
Magnolia is a PTA PSA. “We may be through with the past, but the past is not through with us.” Frank T.J. Mackey had it dead wrong and deep down he knew it. Sprinting headlong away from the past is a sure-fire way to slam back into it. "What is it in aid of?" Healing. Courageously face it, come to terms with it, and then let it go. I don't know who Steve Maraboli is, but I agree with him here, "The past will be your teacher if you learn form it; your master if you live in it."
« Last Edit: December 05, 2017, 03:50:41 PM by Sandy »

oldkid

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Re: The Top 100 Club (Episode III)
« Reply #873 on: December 01, 2017, 03:51:57 AM »
There isn't enough time to figure this movie out.  A review is just a leap in the dark.

I need to watch it again.
"It's not art unless it has the potential to be a disaster." Bansky

PeacefulAnarchy

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Re: The Top 100 Club (Episode III)
« Reply #874 on: December 02, 2017, 10:36:04 PM »
Meant to make this reply last weekend, but haven't found the time until now.

Margin Call 8/10
This is a very good performance and writing heavy film. It hits some really strong notes in its smaller scenes in particular, when it gives a little glimpse of depth for the characters or the momentary concerns within the bigger whirlwind. The bigger scenes don't quite match that, they're fine but the film stylistically tries to eschew big moments (a good choice I think) while still insisting on putting them there. They're subdued enough to keep the film's flow but still feel a bit forced. It's not a big deal, though, because what makes this film work is that it doesn't get caught up in making these people bad guys but also doesn't go out of its way to make light of their destructiveness. It's a peek into the banality of evil, or perhaps more accurately the banality of self-centered indifference, and an interesting one even if not especially enlightening.


I would like to know in what way you are so detached from normality, however.
I didn't say "so detached" but rather "detached enough"  :P
Basically, I've never had a sense of cultural or social belonging to North American (or really any) culture despite having been here since I was little. I went to school, played with the other kids, went to university, have a good job, etc, so I certainly don't see western society and its social and cultural traditions as an unknown, but I've never identified with them either. In broad strokes I've led a relatively normal life, with no great priviledge but no great troubles either, but my connection to society has always been superficial and I've always been aware of many of its strange quirks and hypocrisies. Not all, certainly, but the things the film highlights (consumerism, communal interdependence, social expectations, devaluation of knowledge) are all things I've spent plenty of time thinking about and observing from a perspective that is neither that of an insider or an outsider.

pixote

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Re: The Top 100 Club (Episode III)
« Reply #875 on: December 03, 2017, 01:33:06 AM »
































The King and the Mockingbird  (Paul Grimault, 1980)

I can't remember offhand the last time I finished a movie and immediately wanted to buy the score. It's not something that happens often. But Wojciech Kilar's music for The King and the Mockingbird is magnificent — equal parts romantic, hypnotic, whimsical, and haunting. (You can listen here.) If I remember correctly, Kilar's score for Krzysztof Zanussi's Quarterly Balance gave me the same feeling, so I supposed it's past time I learned his name and paid more attention to his collaborations with Zanussi, Polanski, and Wajda.

My experience with the film as a whole reminds me of the first time I watched Miyazaki's Castle in the Sky — that great feeling of watching something that feels so utterly fresh and original in its style, tone, and details, even while the film's structure and pacing take some getting used to. Grimault's film is a surprisingly understated affair, one that I expect to appreciate more on subsequent viewings, when I'm less impatient for narrative developments and focused instead on the great imagination and sense of whimsy. On this first viewing, for example, I kept waiting for the real king to return and challenge his doppelgänger, naively thinking that all those trap doors had to lead somewhere.

The animation itself was is a bit hit and miss for me. The backgrounds are impressive throughout — I love the geometry of this world — and I liked the color palette, but periodically I'd find individual details distracting, especially with lighting and effects like transparency. There also seemed to be some imprecision between cels and a lack of continuity between shots. Having some sense of the film's long, troubled production history, I was forgiving of most of this ... but it was still a distraction.

I'm not sure I ever laughed out loud, but it's a very amusing film, full of wonderful little touches. By far my favorite scene is the concert in the lion pit. That's everything I like about the movie distilled to a single moment. I also loved the rendering of the shepherdess and sweep, including their voices, and wish there'd been more of them. (There's something a bit "off" about the way they're drawn, but it still works.) The Disney-esque dog is super cute, too, and used well. As for the mockingbird, he's ... very French. Or maybe just very Jacques Prévert. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

The final shot is perfection.

Grade: B+

pixote
« Last Edit: December 03, 2017, 01:37:23 AM by pixote »
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DarkeningHumour

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Re: The Top 100 Club (Episode III)
« Reply #876 on: December 03, 2017, 10:15:46 AM »
There Will Be Blood

Yep, I watched this again just because it was on DH's list.  No other reason.  Yep.

It certainly had nothing to do with you loving the movie already.

Quote
It would be easy to see the themes of the film to primarily be between capitalism and religion.  That is only one relationship, that on this viewing I note isn't even the main relationship.  Plainview describes himself as two things: an oil man and a family man.  And in the first half of the film, he is certainly both of these.  He truly adores his son.  But a man, it is said, cannot have two masters, nor two loves.  They battle against each other and one will defeat the other.  Plainview had to make a choice between his son and his growing company.  So the primary antagonism is between one love of Plainview's and the other.

I love this paragraph. It gets at two things I believe about the movie. The conflict is not between business and religion and Plainview really does love his son.

I don't agree that the son loses to the company though. I think Plainview just cannot handle his handicap. He doesn't know what to do and probably feels guilty about it. He is also too much of a jerk to learn sign language. He buys help for his son but isolates himself from him by doing so.

As for the conflict, people often talk about the movie as opposing religion and business, and it does, but not in the way they mean. This is not about religion as a opposing force to the evil amorality of capitalism. This is about con men fighting for the right to take advantage of Americans. Religion and oil men are only examples of the myriad ways Americans are constantly being taken for a ride by ruthless, cunning men. Plainview does not embody Big Business capitalism. The company that wants to buy him out does (was it Standard Oil?). He is the self made man, but not any kind either. He is the Nightcrawler cold blooded killer.
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oldkid

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Re: The Top 100 Club (Episode III)
« Reply #877 on: December 04, 2017, 03:02:13 AM »
There Will Be Blood

Yep, I watched this again just because it was on DH's list.  No other reason.  Yep.

It certainly had nothing to do with you loving the movie already.

Quote
It would be easy to see the themes of the film to primarily be between capitalism and religion.  That is only one relationship, that on this viewing I note isn't even the main relationship.  Plainview describes himself as two things: an oil man and a family man.  And in the first half of the film, he is certainly both of these.  He truly adores his son.  But a man, it is said, cannot have two masters, nor two loves.  They battle against each other and one will defeat the other.  Plainview had to make a choice between his son and his growing company.  So the primary antagonism is between one love of Plainview's and the other.

I love this paragraph. It gets at two things I believe about the movie. The conflict is not between business and religion and Plainview really does love his son.

I don't agree that the son loses to the company though. I think Plainview just cannot handle his handicap. He doesn't know what to do and probably feels guilty about it. He is also too much of a jerk to learn sign language. He buys help for his son but isolates himself from him by doing so.

As for the conflict, people often talk about the movie as opposing religion and business, and it does, but not in the way they mean. This is not about religion as a opposing force to the evil amorality of capitalism. This is about con men fighting for the right to take advantage of Americans. Religion and oil men are only examples of the myriad ways Americans are constantly being taken for a ride by ruthless, cunning men. Plainview does not embody Big Business capitalism. The company that wants to buy him out does (was it Standard Oil?). He is the self made man, but not any kind either. He is the Nightcrawler cold blooded killer.

I agree that the handicap that causes the rift between them, but for Plainview, it caused a divide between his company and his son and his company won out.  His love for his son was all wrapped up with his love for his ambition, so when he son was separated from his ambition, either his son had to conform to his world, or Plainview had no use for him.  In the end, I believe, he had to separate himself from himself, because he was no longer an adequate vessel for his drive for power.  He killed Eli, not because of ambition, but because this is how he can show he won.  Thus, when he said "I'm finished," (close to the final word of Jesus on the cross), he not only meant his action, but his pursuit of power that this movie chronicled.
"It's not art unless it has the potential to be a disaster." Bansky

DarkeningHumour

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Re: The Top 100 Club (Episode III)
« Reply #878 on: December 04, 2017, 05:39:40 AM »
He also killed Eli because he was drunk and hated the guy.
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Sandy

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Re: The Top 100 Club (Episode III)
« Reply #879 on: December 05, 2017, 03:43:57 PM »
Magnolia

Placemarker. Need more time to mull over...
There isn't enough time to figure this movie out.  A review is just a leap in the dark.

As true as anything I know!

Quote
I need to watch it again.

oldkid, have you written about this movie?



DarkeningHumour. Since I've not been able to not think about this film, having it in your top 100 makes perfect sense to me. Here is my belated "review."

Magnolia

 

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