Author Topic: Top 100 Club: Bondo  (Read 21556 times)

Bondo

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Re: Top 100 Club: Bondo
« Reply #20 on: August 06, 2018, 03:54:56 PM »
I haven’t watched it since I saw it in the theatre but I recall a car chase/crash that seemed particularly poorly done. So I can definitely see the action being a weakness. I don’t quite get what you mean about ditching the social commentary. It seems woven into the premise at its core. Like, what’s the point if it isn’t taking on income inequality?

1SO

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Re: Top 100 Club: Bondo
« Reply #21 on: August 06, 2018, 08:19:28 PM »
It reminded me of Pleasentville. That had the great premise of a person transported into a 1950s world that is literally Black & White. As he wakes up the town in ways that are mostly sexual, they turn to color. Great premise, loved all the possibilities. But then it became an unsubtle commentary on racism and I checked out. While it was something that fit into the timeline of the 50s becoming the 60s, the social talking points were too heavy for a film that was doing great making it a sexual awakening.

The concept of Time IS Money has a lot of interesting avenues to explore, and the script does a really good job going over many of them without stopping to beat you over the head. When the concept was used for the broader purpose of the rich suppressing the poor and controlling the population by making everything too expensive to live, it sometimes became too on-the-nose.

jdc

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Re: Top 100 Club: Bondo
« Reply #22 on: August 07, 2018, 08:21:28 PM »
There are two here that I have access to if I can manage, Lady Bird and The Shape of Water.  Since I missed 2 months now, will try to get them in when I get home.
"Beer. Now there's a temporary solution."  Homer S.
“The direct use of physical force is so poor a solution to the problem of limited resources that it is commonly employed only by small children and great nations” - David Friedman

1SO

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Re: Top 100 Club: Bondo
« Reply #23 on: August 17, 2018, 09:38:31 PM »
I, Daniel Blake
★ ★ ★ – Good   (You achieved the full 3-star spread.)
I had this one marked at the start of the month because...
A) It gives me 100% completion of you Top 100
B) It's on 4 ICM Lists
C) It's directed by Ken Loach, who is someone I want to watch more of.

All that said, this one didn't excite me like the other two I watched this month. The material seemed like it could be preachy, and it's kind of amazing how much the film avoids dryness by making the characters interesting. They're not dynamic or one-of-a-kind. In fact I see a lot of myself in their struggles, and sometimes feel like I'm just a few rough months from living a life as difficult as the people in this film.

As someone who seems to frequently spend long hours dealing with health insurance companies and a court case that's now over a year old, I could recognize much of the bureaucratic runaround and those scenes were some of my least favorite by default because who wants to sit through others banging their fists against an unbreakable wall without that perfect witty response. (The depiction of government workers can seem broadly uncaring, but I find the way they hide behind their rules instead of listening to individual cases to be spot on.) It does seem the government's biggest way of punishing those below the poverty line is by making it impossible to ever navigate the overkill of paperwork.

Hayley Squires. The food bank scene was one of the best moments I've seen in recent cinema. It's perfectly set-up and timed by Ken Loach, but it's Squires that has to pull off the scene and I will never forget her because of this scene. It's so perfect, it makes a later moment of emotional breakdown come off as contrived. And maybe the moment is. (Bondo, it's when Blake runs into Katie prostituting herself.) A climactic spray paint scene also seems to engineered to be a 'moment' when the film was finding plenty of great scenes all along the way.

Bondo

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Re: Top 100 Club: Bondo
« Reply #24 on: August 18, 2018, 06:20:00 AM »
From a response side, it's interesting the difference between reading a review of Boy Meets Girl, that I've already watched 3-4 times, and I, Daniel Blake, which I've only watched once. The latter is actually the most recent film added to the list and thus should be freshest, yet compared to films I haven't seen in a while but have seen many times, my memory lacks specificity. I remember that the plot points you mention happened, but I couldn't speak to the good and bad in them. I mostly remember more generally the feeling the film left me with. I'm a sucker for films that can trigger a powerful sense of empathy.

Dave the Necrobumper

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Re: Top 100 Club: Bondo
« Reply #25 on: August 19, 2018, 08:02:41 AM »
XXY (2007 Lucía Puenzo)

Boy are you dropped right into this one, I spent much of the movie playing catch up in different ways. It is good to see a movie that naturally over the film lets you understand what is going on.

Alex and Alvaro are 2 teenagers and neither is sure of their place in the world. One thing is for sure they are emotional messes, one is forward and tries to project a confident image, the other shuts out the world. However when these two meet confusion reigns.

Inés Efron plays Alex brilliantly. I first saw her perform in Glue (2006), a rather dull and unremarkable film. Here just a year later, she is in a vastly better film. Efron depicts Alex's turmoil with emotion and a deep believability (sorry I am stuck for the right words). It is one of the best performances I have seen and will be in the next top performances list we do (if ever again).

Martín Piroyansky plays Alvaro a far less emotional character, making it harder to see his as a great performance. Still it is a richly fleshed character, brought to life.

Together their interplay strikes a harmonious cord, even though the characters are far from harmonious together.

The first part of the film drags a little, in part because of being dropped into the middle of a long story. I keep pushing up my rating of the film. I am very glad I have watched it.

Rating: 85 / 100

Sandy

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Re: Top 100 Club: Bondo
« Reply #26 on: August 25, 2018, 12:05:30 AM »
Innocence




*Spoilery*

I’m imagining the author of Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro, pondering on the film Innocence, knowing the director purposefully left it without answers and said to himself, I know an insidious outcome to such a situation. I think I’ll write a novel about it. I know this isn’t the case, but it helps me not be as frustrated with the ambiguity. Vague and open-ended stories (and lyrics) let us insert our own ideas and emotions into the empty spots and create our own narrations and outcomes. It’s a gift, even if it’s hard to take sometimes.

There is much building material to work with. The focus on nature, order and hierarchy, scaffolds the story enough to where I’m satisfied with it, if not very hopeful. I wish to be hopeful, for the ending scene brings it splashing about, but the rest of the film belies that moment, so I sigh and worry for the girls. There’s too much emphasis on obedience and beauty, for me to believe their lives will be anything more than what they’ve been groomed for.

Something that’s been niggling at me, but I can’t quite get resolution for. If men were clamoring to see these innocent girls doing rather innocent dances, how is the movie itself much different? Wouldn’t there be concern of showing these girls in their natural and innocent state to be an unintentional “price of admission” for similar men?

Bondo

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Re: Top 100 Club: Bondo
« Reply #27 on: August 26, 2018, 08:59:58 AM »
Innocence
Something that’s been niggling at me, but I can’t quite get resolution for. If men were clamoring to see these innocent girls doing rather innocent dances, how is the movie itself much different? Wouldn’t there be concern of showing these girls in their natural and innocent state to be an unintentional “price of admission” for similar men?

I suppose it is proof of the inescapability of patriarchy that even in creating a narrative conceit to critique it, it also serves it in a fashion. Obviously the creator's intent differs...the school in the film crafts these girls for the audience of men (both the patrons and in a broader sense for the men they will meet after they leave). The filmmaker is not crafting this story with the intent of satisfying a lascivious male viewer, but the film could still fill that function. Exploitation is often in the eye of the beholder, a problem that frequently comes up in any exploration of violence against women. I was just having a similar concern about Unsane, whether a film that in intent seems to be critiquing such violence while also including so much that one can imagine it whetting an unhealthy appetite.

Bondo

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Re: Top 100 Club: Bondo
« Reply #28 on: August 26, 2018, 09:13:55 AM »
XXY (2007 Lucía Puenzo)
Inés Efron plays Alex brilliantly. I first saw her perform in Glue (2006), a rather dull and unremarkable film.

Interesting you mention Glue. I caught up with it after XXY because of how much I liked her here. Like you say, that is a drop down as a film. The same director's The Fish Child also stars Efron and while certainly short of XXY is more dynamic than Glue.

Cinema has seen a fair number of stories about trans characters at this point, but I'd be hard pressed to think of any others that were as prominent as this one in featuring an intersex character (which depends on how prominent you consider Film Movement's curation to be). Predestination has an interesex character but it isn't about that identity to near this degree. Of course, the question becomes when do we start insisting on intersex actors play intersex characters. In any event, it is a reality that causes interesting introspection about the assumptions we make about gender and sexuality. And we see how those assumptions weigh on Alvaro.

Sandy

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Re: Top 100 Club: Bondo
« Reply #29 on: August 26, 2018, 04:03:01 PM »
I suppose it is proof of the inescapability of patriarchy that even in creating a narrative conceit to critique it, it also serves it in a fashion. Obviously the creator's intent differs...the school in the film crafts these girls for the audience of men (both the patrons and in a broader sense for the men they will meet after they leave). The filmmaker is not crafting this story with the intent of satisfying a lascivious male viewer, but the film could still fill that function. Exploitation is often in the eye of the beholder, a problem that frequently comes up in any exploration of violence against women. I was just having a similar concern about Unsane, whether a film that in intent seems to be critiquing such violence while also including so much that one can imagine it whetting an unhealthy appetite.

Thank you, Bondo. I knew I could bring up something difficult and you would understand and then bring more to the table to ponder on. There are no easy answers, but in art, that's the way it should be.

I didn't write in my review, but since I'm a girl, it was healing to go back to that time and remember what life was like, before things got complicated. I think I'll take my bike out and relive my young self's sense of freedom. :)