Author Topic: The Top 100 Club (Episode III)  (Read 111719 times)

DarkeningHumour

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Re: The Top 100 Club (Episode III)
« Reply #880 on: December 05, 2017, 04:23:56 PM »
Saaaaaaaaandyyy!

Now there's another nigh inscrutable review I have to tackle. And in the middle of Dave's month too. However am I going to answer?
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Junior

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Re: The Top 100 Club (Episode III)
« Reply #881 on: December 05, 2017, 06:05:47 PM »
Damn I love a Sandy review. It says much of the film that you touched on a good deal of stuff and there's still so much you didn't even glance at. I love those kinds of movies. They let you dig on in without worrying about trying to do everything.

I think I like the religiosity of this movie is up my alley too. It doesn't proscribe the unlikely but it also focuses on tangible things that do, indeed, happen. There's so much energy in this movie that it becomes either off-putting or completely enrapturing. That's another kind of movie that I love.

On a personal note, I really want to compliment you on your ability to conjure a movie in your writing. It's something I work at and you do it so well. In most Sandy reviews I start off wanting to (re)watch the movie and I end it satisfied that I've got what I need to get just from your writing. It's a real talent and something I try to learn from. Sorry about the gushing.
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oldkid

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Re: The Top 100 Club (Episode III)
« Reply #882 on: December 05, 2017, 06:59:39 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!

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I need to watch it again.

oldkid, have you written about this movie?


No.  I have never been able to put my thoughts together.  That's why I need to see it again.  Perhaps I could just borrow yours?
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DarkeningHumour

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Re: The Top 100 Club (Episode III)
« Reply #883 on: December 06, 2017, 06:10:32 AM »
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (Edgar Wright, 2010)

So fun. Hard to say much more, because that's really the fim's raison d'ętre, and it accomplishes it very well. I mean it's a coming of a age story, but it kinda ends with a whimper there by making it about "getting the girl" (well, getting with the girl is perhaps more appropriate, she is a subject here) rather than self-actualization. Undoubtedly Michael Cera's best performance, and the cast as a whole is pretty impressive... though perhaps I found the ending overwhelming because part of me thinks Brie Larson and Mary Elizabeth Winstead should have switched parts. Winstead is fine, good even, but she doesn't quite have the charisma to make Ramona Flowers seem worthy of all of this at the end.

But you know, this is all nitpicking, because again: this is a very fun movie.

8/10


Glad you had fun. You don't seem to be completely in lesbians with this movie, but I'll take an 8/10. And of course Brie Larson should have switched places. She should switch places with everyone all the time. Brie Larson should play all female roles in all the movies. Of course. Alas, that cannot be. But yeah, Winstead could have been better.

Have you watched Superbad? I think Cera is perhaps even better there.

If I am not mistaken, in the graphic novel, the Cera character ends up with Knives when he realises she has been fighting for him this whole time and the many pixies dream girl is not worth the effort. I like the idea of that ending better, I think, even though the high school girl thing is creepy.

You should thank smirnoff. He is the reason I watched that movie to begin with.
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DarkeningHumour

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Re: The Top 100 Club (Episode III)
« Reply #884 on: December 06, 2017, 06:28:29 AM »
A Cabin in the Woods (2011 Drew Goddard)

I was looking forward to watching this, and a little wary of just how much gore was going to be in the film. I was fairly confident it would not be too bad. It did have me closing my eyes a few times, which is acceptable. Despite my general aversion to horror films I have seen a few and generally know the main tropes. Which is needed to appreciate aspects of this film, and I am sure those better versed in the genre would find even more to appreciate (DH are you very well versed in horror?).

I liked the way the film played on my views of different characters, in particular those in the control room. Definitely a film to watch for those who have watched a bit of horror, but if you are new to the genre, come back later when you will appreciate it a lot more.

Rating: 80 / 100

Am I well versed in horror? Absolutely, I've watched like eight of those movies. Happily however I was versed with some of the specific tropes the movie riffs on. Maybe it would have been better if I had seen Evil Dead prior, but I hardly could have had more fun as it is. Maybe that is a testament to how the tropes have become part of the culture, like how you don't need to watch Star Wars to understand the references, because the world is permeated with it, and you cannot help but pick up some of it.

The control room scenes were some of my favourite.

(Oh, and it's The Cabin in the Woods, just fyi. Things would have gone quite differently had they chosen some random cabin to stay in.)
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Teproc

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Re: The Top 100 Club (Episode III)
« Reply #885 on: December 06, 2017, 06:54:13 AM »
Have you watched Superbad? I think Cera is perhaps even better there.

I have seen Superbad, and Cera is good in it... I mean he's good in Juno too, maybe "undoubtedly" was a little strong, given how similar those performances are. But I feel like there's a bit more maturity here (he is, after all, a few years older) which make it stand out.
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Sandy

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Re: The Top 100 Club (Episode III)
« Reply #886 on: December 06, 2017, 02:47:25 PM »
Saaaaaaaaandyyy!

Now there's another nigh inscrutable review I have to tackle. And in the middle of Dave's month too. However am I going to answer?

:))   Here's a plan. Just let my mysterious meanderings go and tell me something you love about the film. Sound good?

Damn I love a Sandy review. It says much of the film that you touched on a good deal of stuff and there's still so much you didn't even glance at. I love those kinds of movies. They let you dig on in without worrying about trying to do everything.

I think I like the religiosity of this movie is up my alley too. It doesn't proscribe the unlikely but it also focuses on tangible things that do, indeed, happen. There's so much energy in this movie that it becomes either off-putting or completely enrapturing. That's another kind of movie that I love.

On a personal note, I really want to compliment you on your ability to conjure a movie in your writing. It's something I work at and you do it so well. In most Sandy reviews I start off wanting to (re)watch the movie and I end it satisfied that I've got what I need to get just from your writing. It's a real talent and something I try to learn from. Sorry about the gushing.

:') Thank you, Junior. You are a writer through and through, so your gushing is a great gift to me!  I wrestle with what to write, so your compliment is genuinely encouraging. :) You said, "there's still so much you didn't even glance at." I know, right?! I could have spent all my time on one character, or one theme, because it's a huge film, content wise! I didn't even really say anything about Phil Parma. If I could date anyone in the cinema universe, he'd be right up there! That would be a great top 5, wouldn't it? Top five film characters you'd like to date and it could be in two sections -- realistic characters and "in our dreams" characters. :))

oldkid, have you written about this movie?
No.  I have never been able to put my thoughts together.  That's why I need to see it again.  Perhaps I could just borrow yours?

Deal! I've wished to use your reviews a lot!

DarkeningHumour

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Re: The Top 100 Club (Episode III)
« Reply #887 on: December 09, 2017, 05:52:27 AM »
All About Eve

I really like going into a movie knowing little about its contents. It makes the experience of watching more fun, especially older movies that have become part of the public consciousness. I managed to have that experience with All About Eve, only knowing that it had a pretty good cast and that one line, "Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night." Well, she was right. There's a lot to like about this showbiz drama, but the best thing is its complex characters.

It still boggles my mind that you hadn't seen this movie. It's like a fourth of a Fanny and Alexander, and how many times have you watched that? I checked the Mankiewicz thread out of curiosity and couldn't find your entry, so have I got homework for you.

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Who's the good person in this movie? Is it Margo? She's seeing the end of her career coming and using the power of her voice and influence to grab hold of whatever she can. I find that admirable, but I also don't know that she took the best possible path. She's clouded by a history of narcissism even to the point where her correct assumptions are seen as delusional. Is Eve our hero? She's a young fan who stumbles into an acting career. Or is she? Is it Karen we should be rooting for? She seems nice enough, but she's always looking out for her own interests. Even her act of kindness early on in introducing Eve to her icon, Margo, seems more like a dig at her actress friend. Later, she muddles and the enacts a cover-up. The men in the film are equally complicated. Sometimes loving partners, otherwise cynical assholes. So we've got a movie full of half-contemptible, half-admirable characters and my sympathies changed from moment to moment. A bumpy night indeed.

There is no good person, just like in real life! How neat is that?

I have always believed Eve planned most of it in advance. She did not stumble into a career, she fully intended to leverage getting close to Margo to jump start herself (that sentence could be misinterpreted but I will leave it unchanged). Margo is a handful, and I think she is more often wrong than right in the movie. Karen is not only self-interested, she is the meek, submissive friend who lets herself be abused by everyone, and it's hard to respect her. The only character who is not multi-faceted is Addison, and he's just the best.


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But bumps can be fun, too. And heck yes this movie is pretty darn fun. With a script by director Joseph L. Mankiewicz, this movie moves even though it's mostly just people talking to each other. There's a high level of wit and inside jokes that mostly went over my head because I don't know the ins and outs of the theater biz in the middle of the century. The script is great, but it would be very little without the marvelous acting on display here. Bette Davis is a marvel, so are Anne Baxter and Celeste Holm. Hugh Marlowe and Gary Merrill are interesting to watch, and George Sanders is perfect as the one truly evil character (he's especially gross to watch now).

I assume that's a comment about the whole #metoo business and so forth? I disagree that Addison falls into that sort of category. He is not abusing or molesting women for his pleasure. His sole interest is the art, and he occasionally amuses himself with the way people treat each other. His and Eve's sexes are almost immaterial. Sure, there are undertones all over the place, but he doesn't try to touch her or sleep with her and never will.

What Sanders should have told Mankiewicz:


The script is indeed nigh perfect. This is perhaps the most flawless movie on my Top 10 along with Casablanca. The dialogue is scrumptious and not a second is wasted.

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I'll end by saying that this was a somewhat difficult movie to watch now. Sometimes I felt myself rubbing against the movie in a way that felt unintended. Are we supposed to rejoice at Margo's decision to give up acting and become a housewife? Doesn't that feel like she's succumbing to the sexist forces in showbiz? But maybe it is a victory for her, a person who has acted all of her life finds somebody she can be real with and no longer needs to become somebody else to feel something? Why doesn't her writer friend just write roles she is suited for, like she brings up early on? Why is that never returned to? Eve gets her prize, but the movie introduces an even younger wannabe actress in the last scene to show her the tainted fruits of her ambition. What's the end game there? Are we supposed to believe that people will just move on to being Phoebe fans? Does she get upstaged later by a middle-schooler?

The ending of the movie was exaggerated but Mankiewicz needed to make his point, and this is more elegant than doing a Twenty Years Later scene.

In my eyes, Margo gives up acting because she never completely comes to terms with her age. She has accepted she cannot keep on playing twenty year olds, but she cannot bring herself to play characters her own age. Her becoming a housewife is a compromise. I don't remember anything much sexist about it all.

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Here's a really great film that at points seems ahead of its time but never quite escapes the mire of 1950s sexual and showbiz politics. Had I seen this a year ago that might not have made as much of an impact on me, but last night I couldn't stop thinking about it. It's still great in part because it foregrounds the women and gives each of them compelling, complex characteristics that make them feel both real and deeply flawed in different ways. That's one of the things I love to see in movies, so I loved seeing it here, too.

A-

There's a typo there. You wanted to type in a plus but hit the wrong key. Easily rectifiable.


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DarkeningHumour

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Re: The Top 100 Club (Episode III)
« Reply #888 on: December 09, 2017, 10:54:07 AM »
Sandy, I am leaving you for last, as I would the most difficult algebra problem, or the tastiest chocolate.

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.


This review made me want to go back and rewatch the movie, so that's how I spent part of last Saturday. Such fun.

The movie doesn't judge the characters because it takes their POV, something a movie like Wolf of Wall Street doesn't do. They're not evil monsters out to screw Americans, they're regular people doing their jobs. The more questionable decisions we see them make are made out of necessity. They are not indifferent, we see some of them hesitate, we see them consider the implications, but they surrender to the laws of survival. They understand this is the system, this is how the game is played, even if the public will never understand that. I love how much

Chandoor understands his characters and what they do. I think part of the reason few movies about science are ever made is that rare are the artistic filmmaking types who care about it. I also think another part of the reason is that even fewer know anything about it. This script, though, is thoroughly intelligent, and far superior to something like Wall Street.

I wonder who your MVP was?

You had the most interesting pairing of everyone during the month - a movie about people at the heart of finance one one hand and another about anti-capitalist hippies on the other. Was this on purpose? Your second movie is literally what everyone in Captain criticises all the time. Does Margin Call prove them right in your mind?

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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.

This sounds a lot to me like the regular distance any person prone to self-reflection has to their native culture. 
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PeacefulAnarchy

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Re: The Top 100 Club (Episode III)
« Reply #889 on: December 10, 2017, 12:43:38 PM »
Chandoor understands his characters and what they do. I think part of the reason few movies about science are ever made is that rare are the artistic filmmaking types who care about it. I also think another part of the reason is that even fewer know anything about it. This script, though, is thoroughly intelligent, and far superior to something like Wall Street.
That's an interesting observation, and yeah it's probably right, although "know" is probably more important than "care." There are a decent number of movies about science out there, but their focus is often elsewhere. Something like Hidden Figures comes immediately to mind, where as central as the math is to the movie it's treated in a way that could be totally interchangeable with anything else. The movie would play exactly the same with all the same beats and insight if it was about the FBI and tracking down a spy, or a political campaign. It's not a movie that understands science. The comparison to Wall Street is apt, even if I don't agree that this film is far superior to it. Wall Street, even if it ostensibly takes us inside, is a film with an outside perspective, whereas this ties itself deeply to the inside perspective.

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I wonder who your MVP was?
I gave this some thought, and I don't think it'd be possible to say. Everyone was good, but non one really stood out besides Irons who was the most bombastic but I'm not sure that makes his performance actually better, and Tucci which was really more about what his character represents than the actual performance.

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You had the most interesting pairing of everyone during the month - a movie about people at the heart of finance one one hand and another about anti-capitalist hippies on the other. Was this on purpose? Your second movie is literally what everyone in Captain criticises all the time. Does Margin Call prove them right in your mind?
Not on purpose. I'm not sure this is really what Captain criticizes. Rather it criticizes the society that allows this to exist and be celebrated (monetarily if not culturally). They're thematically adjacent but don't really speak to or about each other. In fact, the few references to life outside the wall street bubble show a similar perspective towards "normal society" only with the conclusion of "let's exploit it" rather than Captain's "let's escape it."


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This sounds a lot to me like the regular distance any person prone to self-reflection has to their native culture.
Yes and no. The insights and conclusions are probably pretty similar (at least from what I can tell from reading/hearing/seeing/ other people's views), but the perspective and particularly the experience is different. It's hard to really explain my experience without going in to much more detail than I want about my life, and I don't claim to have any super special insight but here's an example. Thanksgiving is a big holiday around here (not as big in Canada as in the US but still a no school or work, family and turkey day), but to me it is entirely meaningless and something I have no real first hand experience with, but it's something that I've always had awareness of despite the lack of identification. This is different from someone who grew up with it and at some point rejected it, it's different from someone who's own family never celebrated it but who otherwise identifies with the society that does and it's also different from someone who came here at an older age for whom it has always been something other people celebrate. We may all have similar opinions and judgements about it but the experience and perception is different in each case. None is better or worse than the other, or easier or harder to experience, but they are different. I've experienced all of the perspectives above in different things (there are also a ton of things big and small where I'm very much part the society and culture I live in sometimes willingly sometimes not, sometimes with self awareness and sometimes not). Captain Fantastic is as much a film about the different perspectives of its characters as it is about their views or the film's views on North American society and it's that perspective on perspectives that I was getting at. The film's commentary on society is fine, but it's not super insightful or complex, it's the film's in/out group dynamics and how they tie into the commentary on both North American Society and the family's own created pseudo society that give it a unique twist by trying to force the viewer into a different perspective that is different from self reflection even if self reflection can see the same things.

 

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