Author Topic: Top 100 Club: Bondo  (Read 21561 times)

jdc

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Re: Top 100 Club: Bondo
« Reply #100 on: September 07, 2020, 12:39:09 AM »
Netflix will be rolling it out but it won’t be offered on all devises, I believe tablets and phones and Laptops but not through the Netflix app on devices like Rohu or AppleTV.  My preference is normal speed, even podcasts and audio books I have a hard time listening at 1.5x speed but I probably should get use to it. I don’t care if others want to change the speed, but I am likely to just stop watching if I thought I needed to speed it up to get through it.  Both National Association of the Deaf and the National Federation of the Blind support the feature as well to help those communities. 
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1SO

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Re: Top 100 Club: Bondo
« Reply #101 on: September 09, 2020, 09:13:50 PM »
The Boxtrolls (2014)
Perhaps the biggest sign of my Disney/Pixar snobbery is my inability to distinguish other studios work. I thought the last Laika film I watched was Book of Life, but that was made by a different company, which may explain the fairly poor screenplay and more pedestrian animation. I watch Nightmare Before Christmas every year and often discover some new detail to marvel over, but Boxtrolls and Kubo may be the two greatest achievements in stop motion animation ever. These films seem to have no technical limitations, producing images and a fluidity of movement I simply didn't think possible. (The films are also as well lit as the most striking Pixar feature.) On that level Boxtrolls is a solid win.

As for the story... I mean it's not bad, it's just never took hold of its themes like Coraline or Fantastic Mr. Fox. Wes Anderson stop motion is crude, but the themes in the writing strike hard. Same with LEGO movie. Boxtrolls has some ideas about labels, but I never understood why the trolls lived in fear for so long, why they were so quick to change, why the Snatcher so badly wanted something that clearly was bad for him, and why he acted so oblivious to what was happening to his own body. This is where I give a slight advantage to Kubo, but this is certainly better than typical Disney knock-offs and Aardman, including Laika's own Missing Link.

Bondo

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Re: Top 100 Club: Bondo
« Reply #102 on: September 09, 2020, 10:46:32 PM »
Admittedly the main appeal for me in The Boxtrolls was its economic/political subtext and those are themes that typically connect with me more than you. If you wanted to, you could compare it to Parasite in a sense, you have a top caste that is kind of morally indifferent, then you have a middle represented by Snatcher that is desperate strivers willing to cross every line. But here the underclass is pure rather than the most filthy, morally. You also get sort of Marxist tiers in the societal design. In this sense Snatcher is the petit bourgeoisie...so intent to get in with the haute bourgeoisie, even if it kills him, and even if he has to lash out at the proletariat. So coming at it from a Marxist analysis it made sense that he'd strive for something even if it was bad for him, and why the Boxtrolls would need an instigating event to rise.

1SO

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Re: Top 100 Club: Bondo
« Reply #103 on: September 10, 2020, 08:09:58 PM »
Your Parasite comparison works.

Now that I'm done with Animation, I have a plan of attack with your list. First up is the one that looks the most interesting to me... 2018's Danish film The Guilty. After that will probably be The Second Mother.

Sandy

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Re: Top 100 Club: Bondo
« Reply #104 on: September 12, 2020, 12:03:52 AM »
Ruby Sparks



So much water in this movie. A series of Pools. The ocean. It is L.A. after all, but it feels more intentional than that. Is it baptism, like when Ruby splashes water on Calvin to 'wake" him up to his new reality, like a re-birth? Or, in a broader sense, does the use of water symbolize life itself? Creation out of imagination and born from loneliness. Like the Birth of Venus riding ashore on a clam shell, Ruby arrives fully formed and ready for love, except she's not a two dimensional painting, or words on a page anymore. No manner of manipulation will change that and trying to take her third dimension away, may break her. Now the wake up call comes in the forms of regret and tears and the rebirth is the realization of what it means to know and accept another human being on their own terms.

1SO

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Re: Top 100 Club: Bondo
« Reply #105 on: September 12, 2020, 01:05:29 AM »
The Guilty (2018)
★ ★ ★ - Good
I have a special envy for this type of film that can tell a full cinematic story with minimal cast and sets. When the results are this effortless I kick myself for not coming up with such a solid premise first. My Shocktober list includes the 2013 Halle Berry thriller The Call, and I just know Hollywood is going to screw this up wit logic-defying turns and too much characterization.

Following Asger working through the situation with hardly any clues is more thrilling than any angry or emotional speech. He's calm and intelligent and the filmmaking has an eerie calm that reminded me of The Assistant. (This includes co-workers slightly out of focus in the background who seem oblivious to what's happening to our lead, or too wrapped up in their own problems.) You feel there's more to Asger's situation than what we're getting and it's revealed patiently. (I was ready for Asger to have a more direct connection to the crime instead of a parallel theme, but that's the Hollywood screenwriter in me.)

This film also reminded me of Locke, but that was more of a play on wheels, and this has the definite tension crank of a thriller. Jakob Cedergren may not be Tom Hardy, but he has the makings of a Tom Cruise intensity combined with a look that's like John Cena if he wasn't so jacked. He holds his end of the film, and I'm surprised he hasn't broken out yet.

This doesn't break my Top 100 of the Decade, but I am adding it to my 2020 Discoveries.
« Last Edit: January 01, 2021, 12:43:41 PM by 1SO »

Bondo

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Re: Top 100 Club: Bondo
« Reply #106 on: September 12, 2020, 01:27:09 AM »
You are digging deep on my lists such that arguably you liked the film more than me, though my rating is higher. Like you, the economy of the film is impressive as a ratio to how gripping and effective it is.

Sandy, I never quite know how to respond to your reviews but it seems you got much the same of what I did from Ruby Sparks.

1SO

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Re: Top 100 Club: Bondo
« Reply #107 on: September 12, 2020, 08:24:31 AM »
The Second Mother (2015)
★ ★ ★ - Good
While Roma is an artistic achievement, I found it dramatically as distant as a bad Christopher Nolan film. The point of that movie is that the family is oblivious to the inner life and turmoil of their maid. When they finally do see her, it's presented as the BIG moment before life returns to normal. The film does the same thing. It's Cuarón's tribute to his family's maid, that ultimately still doesn't understand the person inside.

The Second Mother is the opposite. While not dramatically crude, it's not more interested in a formal visual strategy than the conflict between two families. The housekeeper has become comfortable with the invisible  line of division between her and the family she works for. They give her a place to live, but except for one small room, she doesn't get to live in the place.

The arrival of the teenage daughter is a perfect bomb to drop into this situation. For financial stability, Val left her daughter Jessica to be raised by others so she could spend the years helping to raise someone else's kid. Jessica doesn't enter the scene with an agenda, but she bucks being treated like a lesser person in the place where she's staying. There's so much drama in that situation, the film doesn't need to overheat any of it. Just like how Jessica effortlessly attracts men (unwantedly) because she's naturally charming, the film is able to take an object like a swimming pool or a kitchen table and turn it into a fireworks factory of drama and social commentary just by the nature of their existence.

Another Discovery.

Bondo

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Re: Top 100 Club: Bondo
« Reply #108 on: September 12, 2020, 09:10:50 AM »
As the kids on reddit say: “Yes intensifies.” Probably too political to say that Roma is like the performatively woke take, very attention-grabbing effort to call yourself out that ultimately is self-serving, while The Second Mother is actually letting the other person speak. Or something, my concern with Roma was more tedium than its politics. Gets a bit of the conversation ET and I had about TSHDT, and the potential problem of feeling like you have to use drabness or misery to tell the story of disadvantaged people, or whether you can tell their story maintaining a sense of life amid the challenges.

1SO

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Re: Top 100 Club: Bondo
« Reply #109 on: September 12, 2020, 01:41:56 PM »
As a tribute to this type of worker, Second Mother is a present they would want while Roma is the present you think they should have. This speaks to them while the other continues to look down on them.



Next up will be 2017's The Work.