love

Author Topic: Top 100 Club: Junior  (Read 17793 times)

Knocked Out Loaded

  • Elite Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 1914
  • I might remember it all differently tomorrow.
Re: Top 100 Club: Junior
« Reply #20 on: January 03, 2018, 03:15:56 AM »
I will try to get to Get Out to begin with. :)
Extraordinary (81-100˚) | Very good (61-80˚) | Good (41-60˚) | Fair (21-40˚) | Poor (0-20˚)

Junior

  • Bert Macklin, FBI
  • Global Moderator
  • Objectively Awesome
  • ******
  • Posts: 28709
  • What's the rumpus?
    • Benefits of a Classical Education
Re: Top 100 Club: Junior
« Reply #21 on: January 03, 2018, 08:35:21 AM »
Looks like time to fill in those Canonical Chaplin gaps!

Oh that's fun. Sometimes I feel like a bit of a fraud for not liking the lesser known of his movies as much as the famous ones, but damn those famous ones are famous for a reason. Enjoy!

Maybe hard for me to find something on the list of those that I haven't seen. Can I use the extended version of Handmaiden if all else fails? (I've watched the theatrical version)

I'd be interested in hearing about the differences. Go for it!

I will try to get to Get Out to begin with. :)

Bonus Filmspot catch up!
Check out my blog of many topics

“I’m not a quitter, Kimmy! I watched Interstellar all the way to the end!”

Teproc

  • Elite Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 3529
Re: Top 100 Club: Junior
« Reply #22 on: January 03, 2018, 08:44:13 AM »
This time I should get around to El laberinto del fauno/Pan's Labyrinth, and maybe Kaze tachinu/The Wind Rises too.
Legend: All-Time Favorite | Great  |  Very Good  |  Good  |  Poor  |  Bad

Letterbox'd

1SO

  • FAB
  • Objectively Awesome
  • ******
  • Posts: 36129
  • Marathon Man
Re: Top 100 Club: Junior
« Reply #23 on: January 05, 2018, 11:22:38 PM »

The Homesman (2014)
"If you lied to me, and intend on abandoning your responsibility, then you are a man of low character,
more disgusting pig than honorable man."

"Thank you for the kind words, sister. You're no prize yourself.
You're plain as an old tin pail and you're bossy.."


What the movie does to great effect is create a sense of place and tone which feels almost Coen-esque. It is a deadly serious movie that still has a few places for lightness in addition to acknowledging that the situation Cuddy and Briggs find themselves in is, let's say, a little absurd.

This made me think about how easy the Coen Bros have it. Their films are weird and unpredictable and don't fit a typical genre description, but they pack in the cast and let you know it's Joel and Ethan so you're ready for all that. Junior accurately puts "almost" Coen-esque, because that's a good starting point but Tommy Lee Jones' vision is like putting True Grit through a Robert Duvall filter. There's less calculation and more grizzle. Performances are less mannered and more lived in, though Jones' cast is just as ridiculously over-qualified, and you could enjoy the movie just watching who's going to pop up next. This film starts with Jesse Plemons, who is everywhere right now and ends with Hailee Steinfeld almost as if Jones was saying he would've made a better Rooster Cogburn.

While I loved the episodic adventures, they're secondary to the chemistry between Jones and Hilary Swank, who get along like a couple of old pros who enjoy getting under each other's skin on camera. Swank has two Oscars and outside of that it seems nobody knows what kind of role she can shine in. Jones does, and Swank has never been so natural on camera, even while the story has her going through all the emotions. In broad strokes and fine detail, Swank isn't just handed a great part, she brings these incredible moments that make it great.

A gem waiting to be discovered, The Homesman is an unconventional western, and I mean that in the best way. Sure some of the characters don't seem fully realized, the set-up of the three crazy women seems half-baked and the journey that's meant to be long and hard is undercut by too much picturesque scenery, but this is my 2nd Discovery in two days and one of the Top 10 films of 2014. I look forward to watching this again when building my Best of the Decade.
RATING: * * * - Very Good

PeacefulAnarchy

  • Elite Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 2132
    • Criticker reviews
Re: Top 100 Club: Junior
« Reply #24 on: January 06, 2018, 01:35:42 AM »
Mother! (2017) 9/10
Mother is great, I also don't think I watched the same movie anyone else did. I tried to avoid spoilers but I knew that the ending turned a bunch of people off, and something about biblical allegory. Except that as far as I'm concerned the whole film is a very cohesive and well paced descent into insanity and I'm not sure what exactly is supposed to have been people's breaking point. I can absolutely see it being a divisive movie, but that divisiveness permeates the whole movie. It reminds me of von Trier and also makes me, for the first time ever, curious to rewatch Repulsion which I didn't really like and have never had the urge to revisit. Mother is a striking and enveloping movie and it drew me in and didn't let me go and I appreciate that.

As for the content, it's clearly an allegorical film, though for a while you can take it at face value even as the weirdness continually intrudes. I could see a bunch of the biblical references but, perhaps because I have absorbed the subject only through cultural osmosis, I didn't see it as a coherent allegory for that. What I did see was a depiction of two unevenly matched people with different needs struggling to bring themselves together only to tear themselves apart. Yeah, the way it's depicted is extreme, but I don't need a second metaphorical layer to make it work. I don't need to make the characters represent god and earth to see a woman struggling to find peace with her husband and a husband for whom it isn't enough and who has a compulsive need to be loved and destroys the relationship by ignoring her needs to fulfill his own desires, ultimately leading to the evisceration of everything they've built together, learning little in the process before starting anew. It's cohesive, it's effective and eminently applicable to the way we as people treat each other, ignoring others' sense of space and identity for our own selfish needs. It's the same fundamental lesson but from a much more directly human perspective. It's cool the film works on a second level and you can apply it to religion, politics and/or environmentalism, but the core is human selfishness destroying human harmony and that's applicable on every level. Working on it on as small a scale as relationships and friendships is just as important as doing so on the bigger scale.

Oh, and Lawrence's performance is excellent.

oldkid

  • Objectively Awesome
  • ******
  • Posts: 19044
  • Hi there! Feed me worlds!
Re: Top 100 Club: Junior
« Reply #25 on: January 06, 2018, 10:25:58 PM »
mother! is my favorite (so far) of 2017, and I think you hit on the fact that it is less biblical (only referencing a few stories of a huge text) and more mythic, dealing with Heaven and Earth and their children.  And it is about a man and a woman.  And it is about a person who demands fame connected to a person who demands solitude.  It is about many things and it is brilliant all the way through.
"It's not art unless it has the potential to be a disaster." Bansky

Bondo

  • Objectively Awesome
  • ******
  • Posts: 23082
Re: Top 100 Club: Junior
« Reply #26 on: January 07, 2018, 12:41:37 PM »
The Homesman (2014)

Is it possible that I idealize realism? There is plenty in the story, particularly the plight of the three women whose transport acts to motivate the film's plot, to undercut any attempt at idealism. A combination of hard land and hard men have left these women broken, needing to return East (to its gentler living conditions but equally vile male nature). And yet, I see myself in Mary Bee Cuddy (Hilary Swank) who is, as the kids would say these days, thirsty. Her first scene shows her working very hard to impress upon a bachelor that it makes sense for them to wed. The theme of prizing logic over passion is repeated a few times to the degree that the film brings up romance. In me it has a willing patron, in equal parts pragmatic and past due. Of course, as practical as Cuddy may be in love, she at times gets awfully sentimental about death, where George Briggs (Tommy Lee Jones) is supremely practical.

This among the film's other themes that might be distilled are all lightly put as the film is more content to exist in this world than allegory. There are aspects of redemption, of vengeance and a lot of moral gray area. With an ensemble of this caliber, these wafting esters are more than enough to work with for compelling viewing.

Junior

  • Bert Macklin, FBI
  • Global Moderator
  • Objectively Awesome
  • ******
  • Posts: 28709
  • What's the rumpus?
    • Benefits of a Classical Education
Re: Top 100 Club: Junior
« Reply #27 on: January 07, 2018, 06:52:18 PM »
What the movie does to great effect is create a sense of place and tone which feels almost Coen-esque. It is a deadly serious movie that still has a few places for lightness in addition to acknowledging that the situation Cuddy and Briggs find themselves in is, let's say, a little absurd.

This made me think about how easy the Coen Bros have it. Their films are weird and unpredictable and don't fit a typical genre description, but they pack in the cast and let you know it's Joel and Ethan so you're ready for all that. Junior accurately puts "almost" Coen-esque, because that's a good starting point but Tommy Lee Jones' vision is like putting True Grit through a Robert Duvall filter. There's less calculation and more grizzle. Performances are less mannered and more lived in, though Jones' cast is just as ridiculously over-qualified, and you could enjoy the movie just watching who's going to pop up next. This film starts with Jesse Plemons, who is everywhere right now and ends with Hailee Steinfeld almost as if Jones was saying he would've made a better Rooster Cogburn.

While I loved the episodic adventures, they're secondary to the chemistry between Jones and Hilary Swank, who get along like a couple of old pros who enjoy getting under each other's skin on camera. Swank has two Oscars and outside of that it seems nobody knows what kind of role she can shine in. Jones does, and Swank has never been so natural on camera, even while the story has her going through all the emotions. In broad strokes and fine detail, Swank isn't just handed a great part, she brings these incredible moments that make it great.

A gem waiting to be discovered, The Homesman is an unconventional western, and I mean that in the best way. Sure some of the characters don't seem fully realized, the set-up of the three crazy women seems half-baked and the journey that's meant to be long and hard is undercut by too much picturesque scenery, but this is my 2nd Discovery in two days and one of the Top 10 films of 2014. I look forward to watching this again when building my Best of the Decade.
RATING: * * * - Very Good

I never would have thought that this would be the one you'd watch, but I'm glad you enjoyed it as much as I did. I'd kind of forgotten about it and I'm delighted that your vivid review has brought it back to my mind. I think what I liked most about this one was the pairing of TLJ and Swank, who I hadn't seen for what, 5 years prior? She's so freaking good in this movie and it does the revisionist western thing so well. I'm sad that it didn't get as much love when it came out, but I'm so happy that you liked it as much as you did. I vividly remember the hotel burning scene as well, and that's pretty good for a movie I saw almost 3 years ago now.

The Homesman (2014)

Is it possible that I idealize realism? There is plenty in the story, particularly the plight of the three women whose transport acts to motivate the film's plot, to undercut any attempt at idealism. A combination of hard land and hard men have left these women broken, needing to return East (to its gentler living conditions but equally vile male nature). And yet, I see myself in Mary Bee Cuddy (Hilary Swank) who is, as the kids would say these days, thirsty. Her first scene shows her working very hard to impress upon a bachelor that it makes sense for them to wed. The theme of prizing logic over passion is repeated a few times to the degree that the film brings up romance. In me it has a willing patron, in equal parts pragmatic and past due. Of course, as practical as Cuddy may be in love, she at times gets awfully sentimental about death, where George Briggs (Tommy Lee Jones) is supremely practical.

This among the film's other themes that might be distilled are all lightly put as the film is more content to exist in this world than allegory. There are aspects of redemption, of vengeance and a lot of moral gray area. With an ensemble of this caliber, these wafting esters are more than enough to work with for compelling viewing.

I really love this last paragraph here, I think you capture the wonderful way that this movie gets under your skin by the end. It's a grower for sure, and that growth comes from the characters more than anything else. It touches on so much by way of the conversations and tribulations they face together. I think it's interesting that you found some connection with Swank's character. She's written as a tough woman to love (and so is Jones' character) and there's something great about how you really come to like the both of them despite and perhaps because of their prickles. The Homesman cabal is growing and I love it.

PA, I'm gonna rewatch mother! sometimes this week, so I'll get back to you with some specific thoughts, if that's cool with you.
Check out my blog of many topics

“I’m not a quitter, Kimmy! I watched Interstellar all the way to the end!”

PeacefulAnarchy

  • Elite Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 2132
    • Criticker reviews
Re: Top 100 Club: Junior
« Reply #28 on: January 08, 2018, 06:22:40 PM »
Yeah that's cool. I read some of the discussion in the spoiler thread which was interesting.

Sandy

  • Objectively Awesome
  • ******
  • Posts: 12075
  • "The life we build, we never stop creating.”
    • Sandy's Cinematic Musings
Re: Top 100 Club: Junior
« Reply #29 on: January 08, 2018, 06:35:46 PM »
Junior! You have West Side Story as #6! :))

Sorry to be late to the party. I'm not sure, but these are the ones I'm thinking about,

Fanny and Alexander
Hot Fuzz
Moonlight