Author Topic: Top 100 Club: Teproc  (Read 23017 times)

Teproc

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Re: Top 100 Club: Teproc
« Reply #50 on: June 30, 2019, 04:01:18 PM »
I'll be gone for most of this month, but these are three movies I'd like to watch when I get back,

Only Yesterday
Burn After Reading
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (been wanting to see this for a long time)

Only Yesterday sounds to me like it'd be right up your alley, but I'm perhaps more curious to read what you'd think about the other two.
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1SO

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Re: Top 100 Club: Teproc
« Reply #51 on: June 30, 2019, 11:18:34 PM »
I always kept your Top 100 among my lists, but I prefer having a list of 250 to work on. Now, instead of 3 choices, I have 16 and except for Numéro deux, they're all from this decade, which works out well for me. (Numéro deux is by Jean-Luc Godard, so that's not going to happen.)

Mosty likely it will be Our Little Sister, which is also on my 2010s List now that I'm a fan of Koreeda.

If anything jumps out at you as something I should see or something you desperately want a 2nd opinion on, I'm pretty easy to convince. Just a recommendation from you to me would intrigue me.

Teproc

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Re: Top 100 Club: Teproc
« Reply #52 on: July 01, 2019, 03:09:04 AM »
Both Koreedas jump out to me as things you should see. Other than that, I think you'd like Foxtrot (bearing in mind that I'm not particularly good at recommendations), but I'd be most curious about what you'd think of Comment c'est loin, which I'd describe as an ode to laziness (made by a relatively famous French rapper, who plays the main semi-autobiographical role). Also it's a comedy. Whether or not that description entices you (or anyone) I have no idea, but there you go.
« Last Edit: July 01, 2019, 03:59:28 AM by Teproc »
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Bondo

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Re: Top 100 Club: Teproc
« Reply #53 on: July 05, 2019, 09:38:41 AM »
Louise By The Shore

If I had to describe this film pithily, I'd say it is Varda Without Varda. Focused on a somewhat quirky old lady who lives in a summer resort town, but summer has gone and it is now barren so she is left to live a purely introspective existence. It has a sense of the mundane that Varda so often makes magical. But this is without Varda so it mostly lacks the magic or energy that a personality like Varda can bring to the otherwise mundane so what we are left with is exactly that. It is certainly a more melancholic exploration that dives into various surreal aspects. I'm not entirely sure how to evaluate notions it comes upon like if one lives a happy life they don't need a memory. Maybe this is a roundabout way of saying unhappy people stew about the past and happy people live in the moment. In any event, it never quite broke through emotionally for me.

Teproc

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Re: Top 100 Club: Teproc
« Reply #54 on: July 05, 2019, 10:23:09 AM »
Louise By The Shore

If I had to describe this film pithily, I'd say it is Varda Without Varda. Focused on a somewhat quirky old lady who lives in a summer resort town, but summer has gone and it is now barren so she is left to live a purely introspective existence. It has a sense of the mundane that Varda so often makes magical. But this is without Varda so it mostly lacks the magic or energy that a personality like Varda can bring to the otherwise mundane so what we are left with is exactly that. It is certainly a more melancholic exploration that dives into various surreal aspects. I'm not entirely sure how to evaluate notions it comes upon like if one lives a happy life they don't need a memory. Maybe this is a roundabout way of saying unhappy people stew about the past and happy people live in the moment. In any event, it never quite broke through emotionally for me.

I hadn't thought about Varda at all watching it, but it may have been before Visages, Villages and the Filmspotting marathon which made me watch a handful of her movies, I can certainly see how this would evoke her.

I can see it not being very emotionally engaging, but I'm generally a sucker for old people reflecting on their lives so it worked on that level for me. This was also not too long after my grandmother died and she also lived in Normandy during the war, so there was some additional connection there which likely helped. I also love the aesthetic of it, and the melancholy tone.
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oldkid

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Re: Top 100 Club: Teproc
« Reply #55 on: July 05, 2019, 08:49:59 PM »
Nocturama

I don’t know what to make of this film, the narrative is told curiously.  We begin with  a group of young people planning something.  We aren’t sure what it is, but it’s secret.  And BIG.  But it’s all mysterious.  And when we find out what’s going on, the motivations and organization is still unknown.  The second half of the film is the conspirators in a department store, acting very Dawn-of-the-Dead-ish.  They like their consumer goods.  They seem less triumphant than questioning, paranoid and grieving. All very mysterious.

What am I supposed to get from this film?  Compassion for terrorists?  I got that., I guess.  A feeling that the activists had a contradictory viewpoint of their society?  One thing I reflected on is how they were both condemning and longing for elitism.  Is this a statement about revolutionists in general?

I feel that there is both too much and too little information.  Just enough content for me to not invent my own guesses at motivation and character, but not enough for me to make a reasonable guess as to who they really are.  It it fascinating and frustrating at the same time.

3.5/5
"It's not art unless it has the potential to be a disaster." Bansky

Teproc

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Re: Top 100 Club: Teproc
« Reply #56 on: July 07, 2019, 01:31:06 PM »
Nocturama

I don’t know what to make of this film, the narrative is told curiously.  We begin with  a group of young people planning something.  We aren’t sure what it is, but it’s secret.  And BIG.  But it’s all mysterious.  And when we find out what’s going on, the motivations and organization is still unknown.  The second half of the film is the conspirators in a department store, acting very Dawn-of-the-Dead-ish.  They like their consumer goods.  They seem less triumphant than questioning, paranoid and grieving. All very mysterious.

What am I supposed to get from this film?  Compassion for terrorists?  I got that., I guess.  A feeling that the activists had a contradictory viewpoint of their society?  One thing I reflected on is how they were both condemning and longing for elitism.  Is this a statement about revolutionists in general?

I feel that there is both too much and too little information.  Just enough content for me to not invent my own guesses at motivation and character, but not enough for me to make a reasonable guess as to who they really are.  It it fascinating and frustrating at the same time.

3.5/5

It is a confounding film in some ways to be sure, especially in its first half, but that's a lot of what I like about it, the way Bonello slowly lets you understand what's going on. He generally leaves a lot of work to the viewer, but I would say the main idea here is not to make you sympathize with them (they are vacuous at best and reckless hypocrites at worst), but to simply look at them as human beings, which is why the ending really packs a punch for me. This came out about a year after the November attacks here, and frankly the ending did not feel very far from how a situation like this would have been handled at that moment (though the film was developed beforehand). Recently still, some French people who had joined ISIS were executed in Iraq (they did get a trial), and France did nothing. It's not clear that we should have, but what I'm saying is that where Nocturama feels vital to me is in the sense that it is a humanist exercise towards the kind of people that are most hated in our current Western society, and it doesn't hurt that it's stylish as hell.
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Re: Top 100 Club: Teproc
« Reply #57 on: July 16, 2019, 11:57:27 PM »
I'll start with a brief comment on Comment c'est loin. I was getting the feeling that too much of the film was being lost in translation. This was not a good subtitling job, tipped off by a line in the opening song, "I want to be suck." I pulled up subtitles to see how bad the problem was. For example...

During the film a character says, "Faudra pas qu'j'oublie bouger la mégane, j'suis garé comme un bico." This was subtitled as, "Better to not forget moving my car, I'm parked like a slut," which didn't make much sense to me, unless that's the style of the language. Google translate gave me, "I will not forget to move the megan, I'm parked like a bico." I looked further to learn 'bico' is slang for someone who does stupid things. The point being, I felt like I wasn't going to get the verbal style with the tools I had.


Our Little Sister
I've been watching a lot of 50s Hollywood melodramas this year, and this is the opposite in approach though it provides the same dramatic satisfaction. This was also my year with Ozu, and from the opening meal between the three sisters I clicked into expecting small, gentle changes instead of Big Drama. At first, folding the sister into the family dynamic had me observing how this new element had the other three sisters taking a closer look at their current life situation. It's as if the new sister was a gentle and positive person - unlike melodrama where she would bring emotional chaos and destruction - yet her very presence was moving everyone into a slightly new future. However, many of life's events were coming at them from the outside. Something bad happens to them and instead of three people supporting each other through the experience there are four.

It's a movie that isn't going to force anything onto you. You have to live within this dynamic and make observations. It's a film that got me to enjoy the quiet shifts along with the unpredictability. It's like the board game of life and you never know what each spin of the wheel will bring. There are also lots of meals. Perhaps not enough food porn shots, but plenty to eat and drink.

Teproc

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Re: Top 100 Club: Teproc
« Reply #58 on: July 17, 2019, 02:48:12 AM »
I'll start with a brief comment on Comment c'est loin. I was getting the feeling that too much of the film was being lost in translation. This was not a good subtitling job, tipped off by a line in the opening song, "I want to be suck." I pulled up subtitles to see how bad the problem was. For example...

During the film a character says, "Faudra pas qu'j'oublie bouger la mégane, j'suis garé comme un bico." This was subtitled as, "Better to not forget moving my car, I'm parked like a slut," which didn't make much sense to me, unless that's the style of the language. Google translate gave me, "I will not forget to move the megan, I'm parked like a bico." I looked further to learn 'bico' is slang for someone who does stupid things. The point being, I felt like I wasn't going to get the verbal style with the tools I had.

Ah, well that sucks. :(
It's certainly pretty informal language, but nothing a good translator couldn't convey.

Our Little Sister
I've been watching a lot of 50s Hollywood melodramas this year, and this is the opposite in approach though it provides the same dramatic satisfaction. This was also my year with Ozu, and from the opening meal between the three sisters I clicked into expecting small, gentle changes instead of Big Drama. At first, folding the sister into the family dynamic had me observing how this new element had the other three sisters taking a closer look at their current life situation. It's as if the new sister was a gentle and positive person - unlike melodrama where she would bring emotional chaos and destruction - yet her very presence was moving everyone into a slightly new future. However, many of life's events were coming at them from the outside. Something bad happens to them and instead of three people supporting each other through the experience there are four.

It's a movie that isn't going to force anything onto you. You have to live within this dynamic and make observations. It's a film that got me to enjoy the quiet shifts along with the unpredictability. It's like the board game of life and you never know what each spin of the wheel will bring. There are also lots of meals. Perhaps not enough food porn shots, but plenty to eat and drink.

It is very Ozu-like, though not as formally rigurous certainly. I remember walking out of it and dubbing it "sakura-cinema" (sakura meaning cherry tree), because the cherry tree imagery is used prominently there and fits the relaxed, feelgood nature of the film even though there actually is some relatively serious drama going on with the mother.
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Bondo

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Re: Top 100 Club: Teproc
« Reply #59 on: July 17, 2019, 04:40:01 AM »
I watched If... about a week back but don't have much to say. The whole boys boarding school setting is kind of a personal hell and that was a barrier to entry. I suppose maybe that would maybe make me more susceptible to valuing the radical shift the film takes but...I am not sure any of it feels justified or meaningful.

I also started The Hidden Fortress, which I was mostly checking out to catch the aspects that inspired Star Wars. I could vaguely see the influence. But this film has many of the aspects that have so sharply turned my favor against Kurosawa. I find the dialogue, and especially the performance, just entirely grating. It somehow cheapens the drama. There was a point when I had 3-4 Kurosawa films in my top 100 (Ran, Ikiru, High and Low...Dreams in a more extended list). I think High and Low is the only that would even be a consideration at this point.

 

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