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Author Topic: Top 100 Club: 1SO  (Read 51339 times)

oldkid

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Re: Top 100 Club: 1SO
« Reply #130 on: February 28, 2019, 11:01:13 AM »
You mentioning Cagney brought Footlight Parade back to me.  I forgot that my Letterboxd list lingers behind my more thorough ICM listing.  Good film with some great scenes and I would recommend it, but I prefer other Berkley films.

I will catch The Music Room for certain, I'll try to catch up with Tin Star (and maybe other westerns on your list because I love double-spotting) and Threads if I can (because the whole nuclear holocaust genre was fascinating to me in my late teens).
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PeacefulAnarchy

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Re: Top 100 Club: 1SO
« Reply #131 on: March 01, 2019, 01:29:27 AM »
What will I be watching? There's a lot to choose from even though I've seen about 2/3 from each list.
Ones that stand out at first glance:
Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962)
Park Row (1952)
Wichita (1955)
Manhattan Melodrama (1934) [for the leads]
The Good Earth (1937)

Margaret (2011) [I would have watched this already if it weren't so long. Shoulf I watch the even longer version?]
La vie d'Adèle (2013)
Under the Shadow (2016)
Mary Poppins Returns (2018)

1SO

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Re: Top 100 Club: 1SO
« Reply #132 on: March 01, 2019, 02:17:13 AM »
Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962)
Park Row (1952)
Wichita (1955)
Manhattan Melodrama (1934) [for the leads]
The Good Earth (1937)
Manhattan Melodrama stands up great on its own, but if you're familiar with the chemistry between William Powell and Myrna Loy it's even better.

The Good Earth stars Paul Muni and Luise Rainer as Chinese farmers. On the surface, that sounds problematic, but I think they go the full Daniel Day-Lewis level of commitment, which makes them an exception.



Margaret (2011) [I would have watched this already if it weren't so long. Shoulf I watch the even longer version?]: I've seen both versions. First long, then short. The short version feels like stuff is missing and the long has parts that don't seem necessary. The best scenes are present in both.

La vie d'Adèle (2013): The difference between the two lists is my Best of the 2010s has titles I'm not all that into having a discussion about, but it's an excellent film

Under the Shadow (2016): Very under-rated Horror. Perhaps similar to The Babadook, but with its substance more on the surface. I think Shadow tells a better story but I think that's an unpopular opinion.

Mary Poppins Returns (2018): On DVD in 3 weeks. It's magic and the best film Rob Marshall will ever make.

Sandy

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Re: Top 100 Club: 1SO
« Reply #133 on: March 02, 2019, 02:24:35 AM »
Sandy,

No Name on the Bullet: THE Audie Murphy movie that convinced Antares and I.
Thanks Antares, I would love to see a movie with Audie Murphy and one that's Shane and Wilson simultaneously? An added bonus.

Silver Lode: It's also a Noir. Dan Duryea in one of his best performances, menacing Lizabeth Scott.
Lizbeth Scott and Dan Duryea were a great pairing, both wicked smart and nasty pieces of work, and perfect for each other.

Wichita: Top Joel McCrea and the director of Canyon Passage
I believe, I've only seen McCrea in Sullivan's Travels, so can't help in the "what makes [him] such an appealing Western hero?" You've got me curious.



I wonder how close Corndog is to Silver Lode in his Marathon? Seems he might get to it this month too.

Amazing your retrieval abilities on this forum! :D Either you have an incredibly memory, or you have advanced search technology!

Looking forward to these movies. Thanks for bringing back these thoughts, so I can build on them as I watch.

I'm also going to watch The Ballad of Buster Scruggs and do a chat review with Knocked Out Loaded. Should be fun!

Antares

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Re: Top 100 Club: 1SO
« Reply #134 on: March 02, 2019, 05:35:24 PM »
Sandy,

No Name on the Bullet: THE Audie Murphy movie that convinced Antares and I.
Thanks Antares, I would love to see a movie with Audie Murphy and one that's Shane and Wilson simultaneously? An added bonus.

You can kill two birds with one stone if you watch it, with March being westerns month.  ;)
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smirnoff

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Re: Top 100 Club: 1SO
« Reply #135 on: March 03, 2019, 12:20:36 AM »
Warrior

Mike Tyson gave an interview once where he said that his kids could never do what he did in the ring, because they haven't grown up like he did. "What my kids have at 14, I fought my whole life to get". And I don't think he just means money.

The rough upbringing of the two brothers in this film, and them being fighters, it's all easy to accept. Even the bit about one of them having become a physics teacher and then transitioning back into fighting is something that has actually happened. Rich Franklin was a math teacher who went on to be a UFC champ.

I could nitpick the actual fighting, but movie fighting not looking real is par for the course and not always a bad thing. Anyways, that's not really where my problems lie. I think ultimately I just wasn't that invested in the characters' stories. Nick Nolte's character was who I rooted for most. Maybe he deserved it least, but I unlike Tom Hardy, he was at least pleasant to be around. Hardy's character was understandably angry, and bitter, etc, but he also didn't necessarily seem to want to change that. I dunno. He was just really hard to like to root for. And Joel Edgerton... I found his story kind of annoying in other ways. The scenes between him and his wife, and she's telling him not to fight etc, I just felt like saying to the screen "give it up, don't you realize you're in a movie? It's pointless to resist!"

A few other things put me off it. Like the principal character. He's the annoying person who shows up to a superbowl party and hasn't watched a football game in 12 years, but tries to get into it. Not the time! Anyways, the film keep cutting to insert his reactions, and I'm like, please don't.

The fact I recognized some of the background faces... people who are in the mma world directly or indirectly... like the guy who played the way over the top commentator (Bryan Callen). I listen to his podcast (The Fighter and The Kid) regularly. I know what he's really like. Also the commentary his character was given was dumb. And then in another scene Edgerton or Hardy beat up a real life MMA guy (Another "Rumble" Johnson), who's a legit nightmare. Seeing these people just kind of reminds me it's movie.

The film is weak on Nolte providing any value to Tom Hardy as trainer. Hardy's whole point of coming back to his father was strictly to get him to train him again, because "that's the only thing you did right". Fair enough, but then there's never any real training. Nolte tells him not to eat the food at the restaurant their at, since it's just a greasy spoon diner, and later he wake him up early in the morning (presumably to train), and Hardy ignores him. But that's pretty much it. There's no montage where we see Nolte's wisdom as a trainer come out, or where he gives specific fighting advice. There's no monent where Hardy trains at all from what I saw. Nolte just kind of mumbles general fight advice in the corner when Hardy is fighting, "keep your hands up", etc. Hardy doesn't even hear it. In that way, Nolte's character seems pretty unnecessary. It's just an excuse to slip him in the story, so this family drama can play out and he can be present for it.

Edgerton on the other hand has a lot of training stuff. We see him drilling, and hitting pads, and his coach is like an actual athelete himself, and not a 70 year old ex drunk we're told but not shown knows something about fighting.

Mostly it's the characters. I had a similar problem watching The Fighter, and Bleed For This. I find myself not liking the characters. Either because they are inherently unlikable, or because are likeable but keep being written to do dumb things. These modern fighting movies are tough to like. They're grittier, so their characters drink and beat women and have a million emotional problems. I miss the days of Rocky, when a fighter could just be a generally good person, poor but driven, and the point of fighting was to win, not to fix all your emotional problems or save a country or whatever else. David vs Goliath, not David vs Freud. :P

« Last Edit: March 03, 2019, 12:24:09 AM by smirnoff »

1SO

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Re: Top 100 Club: 1SO
« Reply #136 on: March 03, 2019, 01:16:59 AM »
I think the image of fighters and fighting has changed over time. In the 30s... heck through the 50s, they were naive and easy for managers and promoters to exploit. Fighting was the one thing they were ever good at. Usually there was a story about standing up to the bully and becoming the defender of the picked on. This was a way to get audiences to like these big, dim brutes. Then they became more noble heroes. They stood up to the bad managers and brought back the sense of two gentlemen whose job was to punch each other so that the working man got his money's worth. They were entertainers who saw physical strength as a way to rise above their situation. This seems to be the era you like most.

That all changed with Raging Bull. That kicked off focusing on the damaged psyche of people who damage their bodies for a living. If you knew the evening was going to end in stitches, bleeding and a trip to the hospital, what is the psychology of a person who agrees to that up front, who understands they are expected to continue after muscles have bruised and flesh has torn. Since it's impossible to think of someone being a really swell guy who just happens to do this, fighters became portrayals of damaged goods. These people needed psychological help more than physical therapy.

Where Warrior works for me is that I agree with your opinion of Tom Hardy's character, but Edgerton wasn't going to give up on him. It's about a guy who can't be redeemed and the older, wiser brother who refuses to treat this as a lost cause. Because of the lengths Edgerton will go to save his brother's soul, I root for that soul to be saved. Those two actors are perhaps never better cast, not for the individual performances so much as the way their paths play off each other.

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I do believe this film packs every sports cliché ever into one feature. Disapproving wife, alcoholic father, brother, hometowns. This film has them all. They appear one after another like a conga line.

smirnoff

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Re: Top 100 Club: 1SO
« Reply #137 on: March 03, 2019, 05:52:21 PM »
I think the image of fighters and fighting has changed over time. In the 30s... heck through the 50s, they were naive and easy for managers and promoters to exploit. Fighting was the one thing they were ever good at. Usually there was a story about standing up to the bully and becoming the defender of the picked on. This was a way to get audiences to like these big, dim brutes. Then they became more noble heroes. They stood up to the bad managers and brought back the sense of two gentlemen whose job was to punch each other so that the working man got his money's worth. They were entertainers who saw physical strength as a way to rise above their situation. This seems to be the era you like most.

That all changed with Raging Bull. That kicked off focusing on the damaged psyche of people who damage their bodies for a living. If you knew the evening was going to end in stitches, bleeding and a trip to the hospital, what is the psychology of a person who agrees to that up front, who understands they are expected to continue after muscles have bruised and flesh has torn. Since it's impossible to think of someone being a really swell guy who just happens to do this, fighters became portrayals of damaged goods. These people needed psychological help more than physical therapy.

That's a really good summary of the eras. I probably do prefer the Rocky era more... though there are so few examples that come to mind for any of the eras. I've been through the wiki list of boxing films. Feels like I've seen 10 total. So it could just be the right one hasn't come along for me yet.

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Where Warrior works for me is that I agree with your opinion of Tom Hardy's character, but Edgerton wasn't going to give up on him. It's about a guy who can't be redeemed and the older, wiser brother who refuses to treat this as a lost cause. Because of the lengths Edgerton will go to save his brother's soul, I root for that soul to be saved. Those two actors are perhaps never better cast, not for the individual performances so much as the way their paths play off each other.

That's respectable. I'm glad to know how you're seeing it what puts it on your list. It struck a good note for you. I know others have also given positive feedback on it here. Pixote... Sandy...

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I do believe this film packs every sports cliché ever into one feature. Disapproving wife, alcoholic father, brother, hometowns. This film has them all. They appear one after another like a conga line.


I'm glad it's not just me seeing that. Not that any of them are inherently bad.
« Last Edit: March 03, 2019, 07:02:56 PM by smirnoff »

PeacefulAnarchy

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Re: Top 100 Club: 1SO
« Reply #138 on: March 08, 2019, 12:10:02 AM »
Mary Poppins Returns (2018): On DVD in 3 weeks. It's magic and the best film Rob Marshall will ever make.
Hmmmmmm. Do you have a review that talks about this magic? It's very much a Rob Marshall film, which to me means a mess. I would have watched this anyway so I'll keep my review short and I expect the others I watch later in the month to be more up my alley.

Emily Blunt, even if she's not a good singer, gives a good performance, unfortunately it's the only good performance. Mary Poppins doesn't have much depth, but she's an enigmatic force of nature and Blunt captures that in a different way than Andrews does in the original. I imagine some with a strong attachment to the original might not be fans of this characterization but I'm not one of them so this works for me. The kids I actually had a bit of hope for at the beginning, but the film doesn't really know what to do there giving them a lot of screen time but making the film not really about them and making the youngest one annoying. All the adults are just bland. Also no one in this musical can sing. Not even Miranda, I assume because he's stuck with that 'orrible accent. The script, silly bank repo stuff aside, is actually not bad, so I'm going to blame this all on Marshall. 

1SO

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Re: Top 100 Club: 1SO
« Reply #139 on: March 08, 2019, 11:55:37 AM »
Mary Poppins Returns (2018): On DVD in 3 weeks. It's magic and the best film Rob Marshall will ever make.
Hmmmmmm. Do you have a review that talks about this magic? It's very much a Rob Marshall film, which to me means a mess.

I've written about the films twice. (1, 2) I've seen it two more times since, so I'm happy to talk about it fresh. I like thinking about your question in a very direct way. Where is the magic? There are scenes where this old dog who knows really how movies are made feels transported to another world because of how well all the elements come together. It starts with "Can You Imagine That?", which is clearly a green screen fantasia, but it commits to the aesthetic so that you're never asked to believe these things are really happening underwater. As with my other favorite moments, the lighting, costume, effects and choreography keep coming at you until I buy onto the possibilities of a person who can make dolphins fly into the air.

The two biggest moments for me are "Trip a Little Light Fantastic" and the entire Royal Doulton Bowl sequence. With Doulton, again it's the combo of live action and animation, the costumes, the songs, the sheer joy of it all. For "Fantastic" it builds to that underground fountain and the dance choreography, which I think is the finest movie musical sequence since I don't know when. (Literally. I went back through Letterboxd and the first one that struck me as being about as good is Streets of Fire.) And I say that admitting the bicycles are a mistake.


Emily Blunt, even if she's not a good singer, gives a good performance, unfortunately it's the only good performance.
She doesn't have Julie Andrews voice, but I think she's a fine singer. Perhaps more comfortable when she's playing it bawdy, like the way she belts "mu-sic Hall."

Mary Poppins doesn't have much depth, but she's an enigmatic force of nature and Blunt captures that in a different way than Andrews does in the original. I imagine some with a strong attachment to the original might not be fans of this characterization but I'm not one of them so this works for me.
I like how it's similar and how it's different, which reflects that perhaps Mary has changed in the years, or that she adjusts her enigmatic character to best suit the current situation.

The kids I actually had a bit of hope for at the beginning, but the film doesn't really know what to do there giving them a lot of screen time but making the film not really about them and making the youngest one annoying.
One of the most interesting aspects of both Mary movies is as a kid you may not realize it's not really about them and their fun outings. It's about fixing the parents, something Disney made more explicit with Saving Mr. Banks and here when she says she's come to "look after the Banks children."

Also no one in this musical can sing. Not even Miranda, I assume because he's stuck with that 'orrible accent.
Agree to disagree on both.