Author Topic: Top 100: oldkid  (Read 34525 times)

oldkid

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Re: Top 100: oldkid
« Reply #10 on: March 01, 2018, 01:42:30 PM »
You guys are making me nervous about my choice of Lucky # Slevin.  I'll need to rewatch it and see if it just happened to hit me at the right time.
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Re: Top 100: oldkid
« Reply #11 on: March 01, 2018, 02:21:32 PM »
The Double Life of Veronique

Maybe it shows my relative lack of experience with Krzysztof Kieslowski, but if you asked me to describe his style in one word, fun wouldn't be the first to leap to mind. I guess I only have Blue as prior knowledge and that one is particularly, well, blue, but from what I know about his other films, I still wouldn't leap to anything like joy or delight. So color me surprised when the first half hour or so of The Double Life of Veronique was particularly fun. It starts with the opening shot, an upside-down cityscape at dusk on Christmas Eve. We soon see a little girl being held upside-down by her mother as she casts a spell over her daughter, telling her that the city lights are really stars in the sky, and that the last colorful light in the sky is really mists below the town. It's a thing kids do. If you tell them to look at something and then tell them what it is, they'll believe it, even if they know that they always see a city out that window. It's a thing movies do, too. They create a reality of their own and then show us what's inside it. If the movie's any good, we'll believe it too.

Shortly thereafter, we see Weronika, a young woman living in Poland who sings on the street with a choir. As she sings, a downpour begins. She continues to sing, delighting in carrying on as her company drops out. Yes! Here's cinema, friends. As she finishes her note, the camera lingers on her close up, we see her smile and look up at the sky. Then a cut! She's running through the street with her choir-mates and there's a giant statue of some dictator or another rolling down the street in the back of a big truck. It gets more and more imposing but she laughs at it and gets out of its way. Then she meets a man we soon realize is her boyfriend. There's another cut, this time to an alleyway where they make out and do other things. The camera sees the rain still pouring, but the lovers are covered and that's good enough for them.

Later, she's meeting with her aunt, who had a health scare. Her apartment is bathed in these crazy colors. The world feels both very lived in and almost alien. But Weronika smiles though. Her life is going well, then it isn't. Then we cut to a woman who looks a lot like Weronika but is named Veronique. We've seen her before, a tourist in the city Weronika lives in. They cross each other's paths for a moment then it ends. The rest of the movie is Veroniques. It's not as fun, but that makes some sense. Veronique tries to understand her sudden loneliness, a feeling expressed in words but also felt in her movements and through the filming. It's still colorful, lit beautifully, but now it's not quite as vivacious as it once was. Weronika ran everywhere, full of energy; Veronique drives around. She walks down a narrow sunlit section of the road towards the camera, but we see the darkness closing in around her as she does so. She watches a spectacular marionette show at her job as a school music teacher, but she pays more attention to the man performing the motions than she does the miniatures themselves.

Other things happen, there's a vague sense that while something left Veronique in the moment we cut to her, but there's also a sense that she's looking for something. She thinks she finds it, but it's a false hope. Maybe she'll never be whole again. That'd be sad, but understandable. When Freud wrote about the uncanny, he wrote about how puppets sometimes freak us out because they look almost human and distinctly inhuman at the same time. Doppelgangers, then, are the epitome of the uncanny. We know that they cannot be us, but we can also see with our eyes that they look exactly like us. Their existence is a threat to our own. If they are living, are we sure we aren't just a dream? Krzysztof Kieslowski's movie isn't about the horror of our doppelganger's existence but rather the sadness of their absence. If they are dead, are we sure we're still alive? Perhaps the only way to find out is to reach out and touch something solid.

A
« Last Edit: March 01, 2018, 02:24:57 PM by Junior »
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smirnoff

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Re: Top 100: oldkid
« Reply #12 on: March 01, 2018, 05:25:03 PM »
You guys are making me nervous about my choice of Lucky # Slevin.  I'll need to rewatch it and see if it just happened to hit me at the right time.

You're good. The bit where they both agree to say their favourite Bond actor on the count of three is one of my all-time favourite moments from any movie. It's so funny and charming and unexpected. Their reactions are great. :)

oldkid

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Re: Top 100: oldkid
« Reply #13 on: March 01, 2018, 06:21:22 PM »
The Double Life of Veronique

I've gotten into an argument with others about the underlying meaning or themes of the film.  But you got to the heart of it: it is intended to be experienced.  Almost any meaning is personal, and probably powerful because each and every image is powerful and it resonates in some way.

Just a note: As each of the Three Colors films are filtered with a certain color, this film is filtered with green.   The fact that Keislowski uses the same cinematographer makes this film almost a fourth part of that trilogy.
"It's not art unless it has the potential to be a disaster." Bansky

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Re: Top 100: oldkid
« Reply #14 on: March 01, 2018, 06:23:04 PM »
You guys are making me nervous about my choice of Lucky # Slevin.  I'll need to rewatch it and see if it just happened to hit me at the right time.
The director also did my 3 favorite episodes of Sherlock, including the one in my Top 100. So that raises my interest quite a bit.

oldkid

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Re: Top 100: oldkid
« Reply #15 on: March 01, 2018, 06:23:32 PM »
You guys are making me nervous about my choice of Lucky # Slevin.  I'll need to rewatch it and see if it just happened to hit me at the right time.

You're good. The bit where they both agree to say their favourite Bond actor on the count of three is one of my all-time favourite moments from any movie. It's so funny and charming and unexpected. Their reactions are great. :)

The smirnoff mark of quality is all I need. :)

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

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Re: Top 100: oldkid
« Reply #16 on: March 02, 2018, 02:00:32 AM »
Lucky Number Slevin (2006)
The success of this film opens the door to a re-evaluation of the entire sub-genre of crime movies that came out after Pulp Fiction. 12 years after Pulp this must've looked like the final wheeze of a type of movie beaten mercilessly into the ground. Even now, the dialogue is occasionally too clever, attempting wit where a simple yes or no would suffice. However, the brainy, verbose criminal has a rich history that goes long before Tarantino, passing Shane Black and reaching all the way to Humphrey Bogart and the All-Stars of The Maltese Falcon. Now that the film can be compared to more than just Pulp Fiction it earns the right to be one of the better films of this type, much like Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.

Much credit must go to the many, many, many familiar faces who show up to play, but the film also serves to remind how effective Josh Hartnett could be in the right part. (Where the hell is he anyways?) He walks through the funhouse, striking natural chemistry with every co-star he encounters, none more striking than Lucy Liu. That's another name I haven't seen enough of lately and she's adorable, a side I don't think I've ever seen in another film. Dressed like she's ready to spend the night on your couch binge watching Netflix - you made the dinner so she brought the ice cream - she projects a girl next door crushability.

Style points to director Paul McGuigan, who puts just the right amount of spin on the ball. The clever edits, keeping Hartnett in a towel for the lengthy set-up, parts of the score serve as a reminder for his Sherlock work.

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Re: Top 100: oldkid
« Reply #17 on: March 02, 2018, 03:24:18 AM »
Lucy Liu is so adorable in Lucky Number Slevin! Great film oldkid, just the type I'd put on this list. The tricks and the cleverness never feel overly manufactured even though we know we are in some heightened reality. You actually look forward to the next gotcha, the next tale, the next sensationalised story.
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smirnoff

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Re: Top 100: oldkid
« Reply #18 on: March 02, 2018, 05:20:26 AM »
I concur that Lucy Lie is adorbs.

oldkid

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Re: Top 100: oldkid
« Reply #19 on: March 02, 2018, 09:32:36 AM »
Lucky Number Slevin (2006)
The success of this film opens the door to a re-evaluation of the entire sub-genre of crime movies that came out after Pulp Fiction. 12 years after Pulp this must've looked like the final wheeze of a type of movie beaten mercilessly into the ground. Even now, the dialogue is occasionally too clever, attempting wit where a simple yes or no would suffice. However, the brainy, verbose criminal has a rich history that goes long before Tarantino, passing Shane Black and reaching all the way to Humphrey Bogart and the All-Stars of The Maltese Falcon. Now that the film can be compared to more than just Pulp Fiction it earns the right to be one of the better films of this type, much like Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.

Much credit must go to the many, many, many familiar faces who show up to play, but the film also serves to remind how effective Josh Hartnett could be in the right part. (Where the hell is he anyways?) He walks through the funhouse, striking natural chemistry with every co-star he encounters, none more striking than Lucy Liu. That's another name I haven't seen enough of lately and she's adorable, a side I don't think I've ever seen in another film. Dressed like she's ready to spend the night on your couch binge watching Netflix - you made the dinner so she brought the ice cream - she projects a girl next door crushability.

Style points to director Paul McGuigan, who puts just the right amount of spin on the ball. The clever edits, keeping Hartnett in a towel for the lengthy set-up, parts of the score serve as a reminder for his Sherlock work.

Lucy Liu is so adorable in Lucky Number Slevin! Great film oldkid, just the type I'd put on this list. The tricks and the cleverness never feel overly manufactured even though we know we are in some heightened reality. You actually look forward to the next gotcha, the next tale, the next sensationalised story.

I concur that Lucy Lie is adorbs.

I love these responses to L#S, some of the reasons I have it on my top films list and the reasons I wanted people to see it.  I felt that it was lost between the cracks, and it shocked me at how good it was when I watched it, because i'd never heard of it.  Sure, the action may be overly stylized at times, the dialogue overly clever, the plot overly written, but as a contrived action film, it is highly entertaining and deserves some love.  It is just a really good time, and I'm glad you guys had one with it.
"It's not art unless it has the potential to be a disaster." Bansky