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Post by Jeremy on Dec 24, 2019 6:56:00 GMT -8
There's really three reasons why I took to Monsters University. The first is the pop-culture maestros' effortlessly riffing on a branch of filmmaking I have very little time for, the frat-house comedy. There's something about the versatility of media that permits pastiche on an unwelcome theme to create something that's inviting in its familiarity - Black Dynamite does the same with the mostly-crummy blaxploitation genre. I've often heard (and agreed) that Pixar's magic formula is in appealing to all ages (this isn't really evident in, say, The Good Dinosaur), and there's admirable cheek in parodying gross-out stoopid humour in a family film. In the same vein is the summer camp scare scene at the end, where I felt the team milked horror tropes (the sound of scuttling, brief shafts of light from windows and doors etc) to better effect than most actual horror directors - I genuinely think that's one of the best scenes in the studio's history, and again, they shouldn't be able to get away with it in a "kids' film". The second factor is the believable and endearing spar-cum-rapport between Mike and Sully. When your average family picture settles for slight variations on 'plucky individuals head to the wilderness and recruit a sidekick or two before a showdown at the wizard's tower*', Pixar had enough confidence in their characters and world to reverse-engineer a buddy picture, and frankly it was a breath of fresh air. And finally, and perhaps most crucially, the colour palette is breathtaking. Whenever I think of the film (or see posters, or clips) I'm bowled over by the wealth of gorgeous blues, greens and purples, just as I was with Avatar. Every scene is so bedecked with colour it becomes an absolute candy-box of visuals that I just can't look away. You're going to cry sacrilege here, but I contrast this with how my interest flags in Frozen because of the overuse of white - white literally comes with the territory in that film, but to me it's subtly boring and robs me of immersion in locations when the backdrops are largely the same. (Most people have issues with the indiscriminate killing in The Dirty Dozen; I don't like it because there's too much green.) Interesting. I agree about the color palette; the film has brighter colors (and better monster designs) than its predecessor. But despite my own indifference to the frat-boy genre, I don't think Monsters University does enough with its premise. In fact, I'd argue that Party Central works better as a dude-bro movie satire than the film which spawned it.
For me, the thing that clicks about MU (and elevates it from mediocre to average) is the climax and final message. Disney has long pushed the message of "If you try hard, you can do it." Monsters University is interesting because its message is "Sometimes, even if you try hard, you can't do it." That's quite a grown-up message for a kiddie film, and I commend them for it.
I should imagine we're pretty much on par; I watched every Disney big-screener, every Ghibli, every Pixar bar Coco (didn't have the time), every Laika, about a third of DreamWorks and a couple dozen of them from other studios. You might not have heard of Miss Hokusai, Patema Inverted or Loving Vincent, but those are animations too. Never heard of those first two, but I've seen Loving Vincent. Gorgeous movie, although the story can drag at times. (I like Van Gogh, but not at the level the filmmakers want me to.)
As for my own ventures this decade: Apart from a few 2019 releases, I've seen every major animated film from Disney, Pixar, DreamWorks, Blue Sky, Illumination, Warner Animation, Aardman, Nickelodeon, and Laika, most of Sony, a few Ghibli, and a few dozen other films from foreign and independent studios. (Again, a lot of these films have been bad, and I do not recommend checking out all of them.)
In fact, your project is tempting me to list the "Top 100 Animated Films of the Decade," assuming I still have energy after the TV project.
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Post by guttersnipe on Dec 24, 2019 13:20:59 GMT -8
Hmm, I hadn't even heard of Party Central (I watched Muppets Most Wanted at home), but it does appear I can stream it.
And you should totally make that list if you've done all that homework. These evidently weren't strong enough to make my list but you may also want to bookmark Have a Nice Day, Tatsumi, My Life as a Courgette (I think it's Zucchini for you guys), A Letter to Momo, The Suicide Shop and the films of Makoto Shinkai.
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Post by guttersnipe on Dec 24, 2019 13:47:56 GMT -8
100-11 (hope you guys like Almodovar!):
Amour Another Year Arrietty* The Assassin Bernie Beyond the Hills Biutiful Blade Runner 2049 Blue Valentine Boyhood Carol Certified Copy Chico & Rita* Corpo Celeste Dunkirk The Eichmann Show Endless Poetry Even the Rain The Forbidden Room Foxfire A Ghost Story Girl A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Gone Girl The Handmaiden Her Holy Motors Home from Home: Chronicle of a Vision House of Tolerance How to Train Your Dragon The Hunt I Saw the Devil Isle of Dogs Julieta The LEGO Movie Let the Bullets Fly The Light Thief Like Father, Like Son Like Someone in Love The Martian Midnight in Paris Miss Bala (Gerardo Naranjo) Moebius Moonlight Mr. Turner Museum Hours Ned Rifle Never Let Me Go On Tour Oslo, 31. August Our Little Sister Pain and Glory The Patience Stone Potiche The Prophet* A Quiet Passion Rango Renoir Rhino Season A Royal Affair A Separation The Signal Silence (Martin Scorsese) A Simple Life The Skin I Live In The Social Network Stoker Submarine Summertime (Catherine Corsini) The Sunset Limited Take Shelter The Tale of Princess Kaguya Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy Tomboy A Touch of Sin Trash Treacle Jr. The Tree of Life True Grit 12 Years a Slave 2 Days in New York Upstream Color Viva Riva! We Need to Talk About Kevin Winter Sleep The Wind Rises The Woman (Lucky McKee) X-Men: First Class You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet
* animated!
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Post by ThirdMan on Dec 24, 2019 16:29:28 GMT -8
I've seen 54 of those.
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Post by Jeremy on Dec 24, 2019 16:49:00 GMT -8
Curses, I've only seen 14 of those. And I do have some animation blindspots. (I was planning to watch Chico & Rita some time ago, but my Kanopy subscription expired.) Kind of impressed that X-Men: First Class made your Top 100, especially since I'd consider it only the second- or third-best X-Men film this decade. Logan is one of the best Marvel-based movies since... ever, and I could argue that Days of Future Past has a better story structure than First Class. So much catching up to do. I'll do better in the 2020s, I'm sure. And you should totally make that list if you've done all that homework. These evidently weren't strong enough to make my list but you may also want to bookmark Have a Nice Day, Tatsumi, My Life as a Courgette (I think it's Zucchini for you guys), A Letter to Momo, The Suicide Shop and the films of Makoto Shinkai. I think some of those are on Netflix - that's how I watched Zucchini. Haven't seen the others. On close reflection, a Top 100 would require me to dig into the average-to-mediocre segments of Western CG animation. But I shouldn't have much trouble making a Top 50.
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Post by guttersnipe on Dec 24, 2019 17:31:41 GMT -8
I'll then read the increasing quota per tier as tacit approval of their ranking.
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Post by guttersnipe on Dec 24, 2019 17:47:26 GMT -8
Kind of impressed that X-Men: First Class made your Top 100, especially since I'd consider it only the second- or third-best X-Men film this decade. Logan is one of the best Marvel-based movies since... ever, and I could argue that Days of Future Past has a better story structure than First Class. For me, the X-Men story will be forever nestled in the Civil Rights movement with Xavier and Magneto taking the Martin and Malcolm roles respectively - marrying that up to the then-relevant Cold War atmosphere was something that simply had to happen. The fact that it does so with great retro-futuristic art design and a starkness of threat (Shaw is genuinely chilling in a way that most comic book movies don't even attempt) are what take the formula and run with it. I was so engrossed I looked as horrified as Moira when Charles gets shot, and I knew what was in store for him. Though I'd agree that Jackman plays Wolvie like he's to the manner born, I'd simultaneously argue that Logan overshadows the X-franchise too heavily - his absence here allows the others room to breathe.
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Post by Incandescence 112 on Dec 24, 2019 19:54:45 GMT -8
100-11 (hope you guys like Almodovar!): Amour Another Year Arrietty* The Assassin Bernie Beyond the Hills Biutiful Blade Runner 2049 Blue Valentine Boyhood Carol Certified Copy Chico & Rita* Corpo Celeste Dunkirk The Eichmann Show Endless Poetry Even the Rain The Forbidden Room Foxfire A Ghost Story Girl A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Gone Girl The Handmaiden Her Holy Motors Home from Home: Chronicle of a Vision House of Tolerance How to Train Your Dragon The Hunt I Saw the Devil Isle of Dogs Julieta The LEGO Movie Let the Bullets Fly The Light Thief Like Father, Like Son Like Someone in Love The Martian Midnight in Paris Miss Bala (Gerardo Naranjo) Moebius Moonlight Mr. Turner Museum Hours Ned Rifle Never Let Me Go On Tour Oslo, 31. August Our Little Sister Pain and Glory The Patience Stone Potiche The Prophet* A Quiet Passion Rango Renoir Rhino Season A Royal Affair A Separation The Signal Silence (Martin Scorsese) A Simple Life The Skin I Live In The Social Network Stoker Submarine Summertime (Catherine Corsini) The Sunset Limited Take Shelter The Tale of Princess Kaguya Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy Tomboy A Touch of Sin Trash Treacle Jr. The Tree of Life True Grit 12 Years a Slave 2 Days in New York Upstream Color Viva Riva! We Need to Talk About Kevin Winter Sleep The Wind Rises The Woman (Lucky McKee) X-Men: First Class You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet * animated! Great animated selection, yet again. Rango, Tale of the Princess Kaguya, and How to Train Your Dragon are all in the top 10 animated films of the decade, to me. Rango in particular is underrated as hell. I might have also included Song of the Sea in there (don't know if you've seen it-gorgeous coming of age story centered around Irish mythology).
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Post by Incandescence 112 on Dec 24, 2019 19:59:25 GMT -8
I'm quite surprised to see a Hobbit film in there as well. But I really like his animated selection-the first two How to Train Your Dragon films are great. This is an unusual call as I've long struggled with fantasy - my English teacher gave me a copy of The Hobbit at around ten when she recognised that I was reading at a higher level, which I never admitted to her that I abandoned it midway due to pure disinterest. Philip K. Dick wrote an excellent piece on the difference between sci-fi and fantasy ("There must be a coherent idea in this dislocation"; I can produce the whole text if anyone wants it), and I've always struggled to care about the events unfolding in an impossible world (no matter how much it looks like Shropshire), not to mention how I often got fed up with the constant "It's because of magic" deus ex machina in tabletop games. So the fact that I did care about the events of Smaug is quite impressive, not least because of the immersive Dickensian charm of Laketown and the frankly gobsmacking scene of Bilbo in Smaug's lair - those locations and that monster are remarkable creations of the imagination, and as such my typical misgivings just fell away. I can care about a fantasy world if the author/writer cares. If the creator puts the time and effort to make it feel somewhat believable, at least. And Tolkien put in all the thought in the world into Middle Earth. Desolation of Smaug is the most propulsive film in the Hobbit trilogy. It never really slows down and is pretty entertaining the whole way through.
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Post by Jeremy on Dec 24, 2019 20:51:21 GMT -8
Great animated selection, yet again. Rango, Tale of the Princess Kaguya, and How to Train Your Dragon are all in the top 10 animated films of the decade, to me. Rango in particular is underrated as hell. I might have also included Song of the Sea in there (don't know if you've seen it-gorgeous coming of age story centered around Irish mythology). Song of the Sea was in his second tier. A lot of people seem to love that film, but I never connected with it - visually innovative, but the mythology really bogged down the storyline. That said, Cartoon Saloon's next film, The Breadwinner, is utterly fantastic, and definitely one of the 10 best animated films this decade. Still haven't seen Kaguya, but I'll add to the Rambo support. I didn't like that film on first viewing, but it's grown on me - the film's got an intriguing lead character and some of the best staging I've ever seen in CG animation.
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Post by Incandescence 112 on Dec 25, 2019 10:30:23 GMT -8
Great animated selection, yet again. Rango, Tale of the Princess Kaguya, and How to Train Your Dragon are all in the top 10 animated films of the decade, to me. Rango in particular is underrated as hell. I might have also included Song of the Sea in there (don't know if you've seen it-gorgeous coming of age story centered around Irish mythology). Song of the Sea was in his second tier. A lot of people seem to love that film, but I never connected with it - visually innovative, but the mythology really bogged down the storyline. That said, Cartoon Saloon's next film, The Breadwinner, is utterly fantastic, and definitely one of the 10 best animated films this decade. Still haven't seen Kaguya, but I'll add to the Rambo support. I didn't like that film on first viewing, but it's grown on me - the film's got an intriguing lead character and some of the best staging I've ever seen in CG animation. Indeed! My bad. I....haven't seen The Breadwinner yet. Sounds like I need to add that to my list. The best animated film of this century so far in my opinion is Coraline (sorry to The Incredibles and Spirited Away). But that aired in 2009, barely missing this decade. I wanted to bring it up anyway.
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Post by guttersnipe on Dec 25, 2019 10:36:34 GMT -8
I'll add to the Rambo support. I'm afraid I gave Sly a wide berth, in spite of him being even busier this decade than in his 80s heyday. So I was planning on saying a bit about the Top 10 but as it turns out I'm typing on my phone at my brother's house and that sort of thing isn't terribly sociable; I will of course be open for queries and explanations (I don't think the list has been responsible for too much spat coffee). Anyway: 10) The Turin Horse 9) The Dance of Reality 8) Experimenter 7) Toy Story 3 6) Burning 5) Stations of the Cross 4) Poetry 3) Cold Fish 2) The Master 1) Cosmopolis Happy holidays everyone!
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Post by ThirdMan on Dec 25, 2019 11:49:59 GMT -8
I've seen five of those, and Burning and The Turin Horse were two that I'd borrowed from the library, but never got around to. Fortunately, the former is available to view on Netflix (I've just got to set aside two-and-a-half hours for it). Cosmopolis is a really divisive film, mostly on account of its self-consciously stylized dialogue: I liked it, but I get why many others don't.
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Post by ThirdMan on Dec 25, 2019 12:25:41 GMT -8
I'll just list my favourite film(s) of each individual year, from the past decade:
2010 - Scott Pilgrim vs. The World - Wildly-inventive, with a great cast, and it generates so much humour through very clever editing and wacky action.
2011 - A Separation - A profoundly affecting domestic drama.
2012 - Moonrise Kingdom - Visually delightful, perfect deadpan humour, very touching surrogate-family premise.
2013 - Her - A terrific approximation of our disconnected times, with a really brave, unguarded performance from Joaquin Phoenix.
2014 - The Grand Budapest Hotel - My favourite of the decade, and as close to a perfect film as I've seen in recent years. You could frame nearly every image from the film on your wall. The cast is uniformly fantastic, and once again, we've got a surrogate father-son pairing that's more effective for being understated. A career-best performance for Fiennes.
2015 - Mad Max: Fury Road - I have no great affection for Miller's earlier MM films (find them rather hokey, TBH), and I am by no means a car enthusiast, but this is on a whole other level in terms of gorgeous visual spectacle. Theron is great, Hardy robust yet taciturn, but the action choreography and staging is the primary draw. And so refreshing to see a future dystopia set in bright, colourful daylight! Best live-action action film of the decade.
2016 - I really can't think of a single favourite film from this year, but to be fair, I didn't see many films in 2016.
2017 - Dunkirk and Phantom Thread (tie) - In terms of visual craft, Dunkirk is the best, most breathtaking film of Nolan's career, and the way it plays with time, structurally, is very unique. As for Phantom Thread, it's one of the most devious "romantic dramas" I've ever seen. The push-and-pull between the two leads is very compelling.
2018 - Spider-Man: Into The Spiderverse - Best Spider-Man film ever made, but more importantly, one of the most visually unique mainstream animated features ever. Also extremely funny.
2019 - Parasite - I still have many more 2019 films to see, but this one is certainly more than worthy of all the acclaim it's received. Some might expect a slow-moving arthouse film, but it's actually a satirical thriller about class warfare, where just when you think you're on the lowest rung of the ladder, a lower rung emerges. Great cinematography, wonderful score, vivid characters, darkly funny, emotionally resonant.
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Anyways, these aren't necessarily my ten favourite films of the past decade, but they ARE what springs instantly to mind for each individual year.
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Post by Jeremy on Dec 25, 2019 16:46:06 GMT -8
Indeed! My bad. I....haven't seen The Breadwinner yet. Sounds like I need to add that to my list. The best animated film of this century so far in my opinion is Coraline (sorry to The Incredibles and Spirited Away). But that aired in 2009, barely missing this decade. I wanted to bring it up anyway. The Breadwinner is on Netflix. Definitely worth the watch. Coraline is one of my top animated films of the 21st century as well, though there's probably a couple of Disney/Pixar films I'd put above it. I'll add to the Rambo support. I'm afraid I gave Sly a wide berth, in spite of him being even busier this decade than in his 80s heyday. This is why I shouldn't be writing posts at midnight. I have only seen one film in your Top 10. I dare you all to guess which one. (Also, I've seen 6 of the 10 films on J.C.'s list! That's almost a passing grade.)
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