The Girl Cut in Two

The Girl Cut in Two asks us to empathize with Ludivine Sagnier, an attractive and capable young woman torn between the adulterous lecher who whores her out to his buddies and the murdering child molester who wants her for his very own.

How very French.

Thing is, I’m not French.  The lecher creeped me out.  The murderer scared me.  The woman, well, I didn’t understand her.  These two men aren’t the only two men in the world.  I couldn’t understand why she didn’t tell both of them to hoof it and go find herself a nice young man who was neither an emotional nor physical threat to herself or others.

So there I sat, watching characters I didn’t care about behave in ways I didn’t understand.  Oh, and looking at my watch.  The Girl Cut in Two gave me no “in,” no one to root for, and nothing to care about.  It looked professional, Ludivine Sagnier is a great beauty, and I enjoyed see The Transporter’s François Berléand play the lecher.  In the end, however, these people behaved in ways that made no sense to me and that I couldn’t imagine.

Then again, I’m not French.

13 Assassins

13 Assassins is as good as movies get.

The picture, a “men on a mission” story set in pre-Meiji Japan, opens with a samurai committing seppuku, a ritualized form of suicide in which the individual disembowels himself.  It’s incredibly difficult and painful, and 13 Assassins presents it in all its horror by not showing it to us at all.  We see the samurai prepare, then we see his face in closeup as he goes through agonizing pain and exertion.  Understand that seppuku was normally committed with a “second” standing by, sword raised to decapitate the samurai after he makes the first cut, to spare the man the agony of disembowelment.  This man has no “second.”  Music plays, sound effects suggest what’s happening below the frame, and our stomachs curl and our hands clench and our hearts break for this man.  We’re only two minutes into this movie, and we feel moved and involved and completely engaged in the world of the samurai and the repercussions of this act.  Later, another samurai commits the same act under different circumstances.  He has a “second,” and this suicide takes on an entirely different aspect of nobility and technical excellence in its portrayal.

I’m not arguing that suicide is cool.  I’m saying that seppuku was a part of feudal Japanese culture, and that 13 Assassins approaches this subject dramatically, artfully, and with perfect technical execution.  I use the film’s portrayal of seppuku to illustrate what the film does throughout its 2 hour and 21 minute run time: it nails feudal Japan, from its social structure to its mythology to its code of honor and even to its view of suicide.  It does so with class when appropriate and with horror when appropriate, and it does so with the absolute surety.

13 Assassins is not some kind of Merchant-Ivory historical fetishization.  That first seppuku propels a “mission” film that rocks every beat, from the gathering of the team to the cohesion on the road to the laying of the traps to a final battle that compares with the absolutely fundamental Seven Samurai.  Its characters are interesting.  Its jokes are funny.  Its action set pieces, including the aforementioned (45-minute long) final battle, are both cool and comprehensible.  This is a good time at the movies.

Credit director Takashi Miike, whose Ichi the Killer and the short film “Box” from Three Extremes suggested talent, but not on this level.  Kôji Yakusho, aging very well since 1996’s Shall We Dance?, is suitably wise and commanding in the Takashi Shimura ‘Samurai Leader’ role.  Gorô Inagaki, new to me, does petulant villainy as well as I’ve ever seen it done and gives us a character we can really love to hate. 

Y’know, I could go right down the credits list, telling you how great everything and everyone is.  I could probably figure out a way to compliment the Key Grip.  But here’s the bottom line: 13 Assassins is a flat-out classic, successful in every way.  If you care about movies, you need to see this as soon as you can.

One Hundred Nights at the Movies

Recently, a friend challenged me to list my 100 "Essential" movies. Of course, there are no such thing as essential movies. The essential things are shelter, water, food, and physical security. However, here's a suggestion for one hundred movie nights. These films; a combination of classic, genre, foreign, and just plain good; will leave you with a reasonably good feel for the medium. Have fun!



The 7th Voyage of Sinbad
2001: A Space Odyssey
All About My Mother
An American in Paris // Shall We Dance (1937)
The Apartment
Apocalypse Now
Army of Darkness
Babette’s Feast
Beauty and the Beast (1946)
The Best Years of Our Lives
Big Trouble in Little China
The Bride of Frankenstein
Bullitt
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
Casablanca
Children of Paradise
Chinatown
Citizen Kane
City Lights
A Clockwork Orange
Cool Hand Luke
The Crimson Pirate
Die Hard
Dr. No
Dr. Strangelove
Dracula (1931)
Drunken Master
Excalibur // The Fisher King
Fast Times at Ridgemont High
Fitzcarraldo
Full Metal Jacket
Galaxy Quest
The Godfather
Gojira
Gone With the Wind
The Grand Illusion
The Great Escape
Groundhog Day
Hard Boiled
Ikiru
Intolerance
It’s a Wonderful Life
Jaws
King Kong (1933)
Lawrence of Arabia
Letters from Iwo Jima
Lone Star
M
Manhunter
Mary Poppins
Metropolis
Miracle on 34th Street (1947)
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Night of the Living Dead
Nosferatu
Oldboy
On the Waterfront
Once Upon a Time in the West
Pan’s Labyrinth
Papillon
Persona
Plan 9 from Outer Space
Point Blank
The Princess Bride
The Professional
Psycho
The Public Enemy
Pulp Fiction
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Rear Window
Ride the High Country
Rififi
Rocky
Roman Holiday
Scarface
Shaft (1971)
The Sheik
Somewhere in Time
The Son’s Room
Spider-Man 2
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
Steamboat Bill, Jr.
Strangers on a Train // Out of the Past
Sunset Boulevard
Super Size Me // The Thin Man
The Terminator
The Thief of Bagdad
This is Spinal Tap
Throne of Blood
Tokyo Story
Triumph of the Will // Downfall
Truly Madly Deeply
Unforgiven
United 93
Waiting for Guffman
Wild Strawberries
Wings of Desire
The Wizard of Oz
Yankee Doodle Dandy
Yojimbo // A Fistful of Dollars

The Orphanage

Walking out of THE ORPHANAGE, I thought, "That's the best
horror movie I've seen since THE OTHERS!"

Like THE OTHERS, THE ORPHANAGE is an example of the fact that axe
murderers and fake intestines aren't scary. Atmosphere, acting, and
music are scary (Yes, I did just spend five minutes trying to find a
synonym for "music" that starts with the letter A. I'm a nerd.).

Here's a movie that knows that the reveal isn't the scary part. It's
the involvement in the characters, the foreboding, the slow burn
that's the scary part (There's an essay in there about great horror
movies as great lovemaking and slasher films as a wham-bam in a
bathroom stall, but I'm not in the mood to write that tonight.). But
when you can make those three elements happen, then deliver on the
horrific climax and note-perfect denoument, why, you've got yourself a
winner. The ORPHANAGE does that, trusting itself and audience enough
to take its time, work the burn, and come through when it matters.
What a picture.

Krrish

I just scouted around the internet for reviews of KRRISH, Bollywood's first big-budget superhero movie. The movie has a 100% positive rating on the tomatometer, and everyone seems to love it.

All of these people are on crack.

Somewhere in Krrish's two hours and fifty-five minutes of bloat, there's a solid little 85-minute superhero movie. Unfortunately, the filmmakers couldn't or wouldn't edit their work sufficiently ruthlessly to get to that good, fast-paced movie, so we're left with an incredibly long shampoo commercial.

Here's the setup: young Krishna is a supergenius whose grandmother hides him in a remote mountain village, far away from the eyes of evil men who would use him, if they could. The village appears to be populated by a gang of good-natured youths, a goofy sidekick, a brilliant dentist, the world's greatest hairdresser, and at least one guy who owns a gym and has access to steroids. Krishna grows up in an extended woodland idyll, maturing into an innocent gym rat with perfect teeth and hair that would put Robin Shou to shame. Oh, and he has superpowers.



Soon enough, the inevitable occurs. Krishna meets a girl, an ethnic Indian on holiday from Singapore, whose hair is even better than his.

He follows her to Singapore, where he dazzles the locals with his flowing mane.


But it isn't long before evil intervenes, and Krishna must assume a new identity - Krrish!- and save the day through the power of wind-blown locks (btw, Krrish's locks are always windblown. One of his superpowers must include the ability to levitate an invisible fan two feet from his face.).


Damn. There's slo-mo closeup of Krrish, having just risen from the sea, whipping his head about and sending perfectly lit drops of water flying everywhere. Google image search is turning up nothing.

Anyway, back to the recap. Krrish saves the world, wins the girl, and even gets a shave. There's your movie.

And it's a perfectly fine template for a movie, but it doesn't quite work. The guy who plays Krishna, Hrithik Roshan, is a skilled dancer and a fine stuntman, but his three expressions seem to be winning grin, winning grin, and palsy. The gal who plays the eventual damsel in distress (oops - spoiler!), Priyanka Chopra, appears to be more talented, but director Rakesh Roshan (Hrithik's dad, which makes the lingering shots of Hrithik's muscles, hair, and teeth kinda creepy, now that I think about it) must've told her to play to the cheap seats, because there is absolutely no mystery in her face whatsoever. It's all right there. Add astoundingly poor special effects, a score that's a direct ripoff of Danny Elfman's work on SPIDER-MAN, and the incongruous musical numbers that Bollywood demands, and you have a movie that wears out its welcome at the 90-minute mark. Had this film been edited from three to 1.5 hours, the actors would have had less time to grate; the poorer CGI sequences could have been edited out, and we might have been left with a fun, masala-flavored masked avenger flick.

But wishful thinking gets us nowhere. As it stands, KRRISH is a three hour long mess. This time around, I took one for the team.

The Memory of a Killer

It's an old story: someone doublecrosses an assassin, and before long the bodies start piling up. You've got your good guys and bad guys trying to find the killer, and you've got your principled hit man working his way to the top, exacting revenge for the doublecross and bringing down The Man. THE MEMORY OF A KILLER, a Belgian picture from 2003, hews to this template, and it works as a character study and a police procedural. The character in question, Angelo Ledda, is a contract killer with early-stage Alzheimer's. The police procedural revolves around the detectives on his trail; and the genre-standard close calls, tantalizing clues, and conflicted detectives all play their parts seamlessly. It's a fine movie, but it's hampered by a head-scratchingly poor aesthetic choice.

TMK uses quick-cuts, flashing lights, and disorientation to indicate lapses in Ledda's cognition, but they do more than that. They annoy the the viewer. Additionally, it uses the hurry-up technique of cutting parts of footsteps and intermediate body language out of everyday events. I suspect that this is supposed to lend a sense of urgency to the proceedings, but it just gave the impression that the filmmaker's weren't sufficiently interested in the characters to let us settle in with them.

Don't get me wrong. THE MEMORY OF A KILLER (The Alzheimer's Case, in the original language), is a perfectly fine movie. But these choices relegate it to the second tier. Too bad.

Vitus

Thanks, Roger Ebert!

I'd never have heard of VITUS if Ebert hadn't reviewed it. It didn't pop on CHUD, which is where I go for movie news, and it didn't pop here, which is where I go for movie conversation. If Ebert hadn't given it a few hundred words, it would have disappeared.

But he did give it a couple of hundred words, and he had me sold at "Bruno Ganz," and I'm glad I sat down for it. VITUS is a Swiss film about a kid named Vitus who is so incredibly brilliant that his parents can't even comprehend how brilliant he is. I thought it was going to be a piano-oriented rehash of SEARCHING FOR BOBBY FISCHER but, when the film went on to show my that I couldn't comprehend how brilliant this kid is, it took me in a new direction, one I thoroughly enjoyed.

The light in this kid's life is his grandfather, played by the incredible Bruno Ganz. Ganz is one of those everyman-type actors whose comforting onscreen presence belies a sharpness that gives him the ability to act in films in a variety of languages. So far, I've seen him do German (in multiple dialects), Italian, and Greek, all while sounding like a native speaker. Here, he assays Swiss German, and it's extraordinary. As the kindly grandfather and font of vitally important folk wisdom, he gives Vitus the two things he needs: unconditional love and the chance to act like a kid, or act like a grownup, or act however he needs to act. And it's wonderful.

The conflict, well, it's not a "kid against the world" kind of thing so much as it is a story about "kid finding his way in the world." It's sweet, but not overly so, and it holds some pleasant surprises. I liked VITUS enough to re-screen it for my wife. I think she's going to like it, too. I had her sold at "Bruno Ganz."

Black Book

In 1977, a Dutch filmmaker named Paul Verhoeven garnered international acclaim for SOLDIER OF ORANGE, a brilliant film about WWII's Dutch Resistance. Like Rutger Hauer, the star of SOLDIER OF ORANGE, he moved to Hollywood. And like Hauer, he started strong in American science fiction, then tailed off into near oblivion. Unlike Hauer, who has accepted an American career of supporting roles as a reliable villain, Verhoeven finally moved back to Holland and returned to the setting of his greatest triumph: WWII's Dutch Resistance. And a wise decision it turned out to be. BLACK BOOK (or ZWARTBOEK) is a gripping, moving, surprising film that stands as its director's best work in decades.

BLACK BOOK stars Carice van Houten as Rachel, the perfect woman. She's smart, courageous, quick-witted, decisive, sexy, and man, can she sing! As the film begins in 1944, she's hiding out on a farm in the occupied Netherlands - a place where the farmer forces her, as a Jew, to recite from the New Testament before allowing her a meal of gruel. When circumstances force her off the farm and into the arms of a Resistance cell in The Hague, she adapts and survives. When duty requires her to seduce a mid-grade SS officer, she adapts and, well, that's when things get tricky. The officer, played by Sebastian Koch of THE LIVES OF OTHERS, isn't such a bad guy once you get to know him. Before she knows it, and rather to the amusement of her happily amoral friend Ronnie, our heroine is -gulp- involved. (Side note, there's a moment in the film that leads us to reevaluate Ronnie and realize that she's in an equally interesting movie of her own. I'd love to see Verhoeven do an _Ender's Shadow_ type of movie about her.) Moving at breakneck pace, the movie brings us to a thrilling climax involving the rescue of Resistance prisoners, a fancy-dress, and the possible redemption of the SS officer. And then it keeps going, and it keeps getting better and better, as twist piles upon twist until we're left, breathless, as the credits roll.

I attribute much of the film's success to van Houten, who delivers an extraordinary, virtuoso performance that leaves me utterly mystified regarding her lack of a Best Actress nomination. She's in nearly every scene, and she plays the layers of deception behind her eyes with masterful skill, letting us and us alone see the real woman underneath. When she experiences emotional crises, they feel earned because she's demonstrated how strong she is, how much it takes to get to her. Combine this performance with that of the reliable and likeable Koch, and you get two hours that fairly race by.

Apparently, BLACK BOOK got a mixed critical reception. Not from me. I loved every minute of it. BLACK BOOK is a winner. Now c'mon, Rutger. Catch a flight to The Hague. There must be a few more good Dutch scripts laying around.

Strings

STRINGS is a marionette movie with a, erm, twist. Instead of having
its puppets serve as humans and asking us to ignore the strings, its
puppets serve as puppets and embrace their strings. They have a
string-based theology, marionette-centered architecture, and a vision
of birth that's unlike anything you've ever seen before.

The story itself is standard faery tale stuff: a kingdom at war, an
evil usurper, a rightful king, and all the standard "hero's journey"
elements. If this were a CGI film, or even a live-action picture, I'd
probably recommend giving it a pass. But it isn't, and the absolutely
outstanding set design, art direction, and puppeteering make this one
worth the rental.

STRINGS takes you a world familiar enough to understand, yet alien
enough to delight and astonish you. Enjoy.

Persona

This week, I'm alone on a business trip. Celebrating my fleeting freedom of action, last night I permitted myself a rare indulgence: a tumbler of Maker's Mark bourbon, a Cuesta Rey cigar, and Ingmar Bergman's PERSONA. It was a tough decision. The local Cineplex is showing 3:10 TO YUMA and SHOOT ‘EM UP, both of which I’d like to see on the big screen. But I don’t often get the chance to watch a whole Bergman movie uninterrupted, and I couldn’t pass it by.

I chose well. While I’m confident that I’ll enjoy 3:10 TO YUMA and SHOOT ‘EM UP when I get around to seeing them, I’ll be shocked if either movie turns out to be as flat-out entertaining as PERSONA. Yep, an hour and a half of two women alone in a summer house, with one of the women uttering exactly one line of dialogue, makes for riveting, consuming cinema – the kind of cinema that makes you forget what time it is, where you’re sitting, even who you are. Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullman are just that interesting.

PERSONA begins with a series of WTF images that may explore the history of cinema, the deepest churnings of the unconscious, or even the flotsam and jetsam from which we pull together an identity. From another director, I’d dismiss it as so much self-important wankery, but I’ve seen enough of Bergman’s films to trust the guy’s mastery of dramatic narrative. Thus, I was willing to go where it took me, into a mind-state of disequilibrium and expectation. From there, we meet Ullman, a famous actress who, mid-performance, has chosen to give up interaction with the world and, instead withdraw into herself. Ullman has a fascinating face that, while not exactly beautiful, invites contemplation. What’s happening behind those eyes? How deep is her despair? What does she see that the rest of us don’t? These questions come to consume Andersson, a young nurse assigned to Ullman who agrees with a doctor’s suggestion that she take her patient to the doctor’s beach house for a long recovery (Note: if this is what universal health care looks like, sign me up!).

Once at the beach house, we enjoy a pair of remarkable performances: Andersson all talk and existential longing, and Ullman, all contemplation and, perhaps, wisdom. When a violation of trust collapses the roles and walls between them, PERSONA gives us a brilliant exploration of the nature of identity and the quest for, well, something.

PERSONA is beautiful to watch, another successful collaboration between Bergman and his cinematographer, Sven Nykvist. The combination of light and shadow, image upon image, and simple physical composition makes PERSONA a film that surprises and delights from beginning to end.

It’s a whole different kind of entertainment from the offerings down at the multiplex, but it’s flat-out magnificent. I loved every frame.

The Flower of My Secret

Ok, here's the deal: Marisa Paredes is a popular romance writer who can't get her serious novel, written under a different name, published. As she describes the manuscript, we learn that the story is that of VOLVER. Some of the characters and settings, we see, mirror those in the later film, suggesting that, when viewing VOLVER, we're viewing something created by the protagonist of THE FLOWER OF MY SECRET. I kind of like a world in which VOLVER (2006) and THE FLOWER OF MY SECRET (1995) are part of the same reality, and that makes THE FLOWER OF MY SECRET worth watching for its coolness factor alone.

THE FLOWER OF MY SECRET showcases a clearly talented filmmaker who is still in the process of growing into himself. He directs the story of a talented but fragile woman who's on the road either to breakdown or rebirth, or maybe both, and he does so with empathy for her story and the sparklings of the kind of visual flair we come to expect in his later films. Interestingly, her story isn't quite as compelling as that of Penelope Cruz in VOLVER. Even in Almodovar's world, fiction can be, well, more dramatic than real life. And that's fine. Just keep 'em coming, Pedro.

L'Eclisse

I hated L'ECLISSE.

The film begins in the drawing room of Monica Vitti and Francisco Rabal. They're exhausted, both emotionally and physically. She's leaving him, things could get ugly, but they never do. That would be too dramatic. Instead, they end up simply going their separate ways, and the film follows Vitti over the next several days.

Unfortunately, Vitti is neither particularly interesting nor particularly pleasant to look at. She feels disaffected, she walks here and there, she falls into an unengaging relationship with Alain Delon; none of which happen with much passion (I know a film romance is in trouble when a doorbell rings and I think, "Maybe somebody will come in and shoot them. That'd add some drama."). Finally, the film ends with something I interpreted as a big "f you" to the audience: minutes and minutes of dull, empty cityscape. No drama. No story. Just images. F you, Antonioni. If I want images, I'll go to an art museum. Tell me a story.

I do respect that Antonioni is trying to do something here. Mine is not ire at poor craftsmanship or lazy filmmaking. L'ECLISSE certainly does not aspire to the mediocrity of, say, THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE remake, which I'm having trouble mustering the energy to write about. My problem is that Antonioni disregards the first law of narrative film: engage and entertain your audience. L'ECLISSE is two hours of people I don't care about doing things I don't care about for reasons I don't care about. I'm glad it's over.

Alphaville

I fired up ALPHAVILLE feeling neutral. I'm not a Godard fetishist, but neither do I repudiate the man. I was ready to take what this movie had to give and give it, in return, a fair shot. ALPHAVILLE began by puzzling me. Who was this supposed reporter from "LeMonde / Pravda"? Who were these people he was interested in? Why did some guy burst into his hotel room and try to kill him, and why did our supposed hero proceed to unwind by playing a little William Tell with his handgun and a hotel prostitute?

After a while, ALPHAVILLE went from puzzler to fascinator, as it rolled into a water ballet from Busby Berkeley's most depraved fantasies. In the process, it evoked the constant, all-pervasive fear that comes of living under a totalitarian regime and drew me into its world and its hero, one Ivan Johnson (or, as we would later come to call him, Lemmy Caution). As Lemmy came to understand Alphaville, its government, and its people, so I came to understand what was going on, who was targeting whom, and what the heck Anna Karina had to do with anything. As Lemmy took action, the scenario grew simpler still, 'til I was cheering him on and hoping he'd find both what he'd been sent for and what he needed.

I may have come into ALPHAVILLE feeling neutral, but I came out of it feeling energized and excited. Here's a movie that's willing to take risks with the conventions of filmed narrative, and here' s a movie that wraps its thoughtfulness in pulp and never takes its eye off the ball of any sound film's first priority: entertaining its audience.

ALPHAVILLE is a winner.

Man With The Movie Camera

Dziga Vertov's MAN WITH THE MOVIE CAMERA (1929) begins with a declaration that reads: The film Man with a Movie Camera represents an experimentation in the cinematic transmission of visual phenomena without the use of intertitles, without the help of a script, and without the help of a theater. This new experimentation work by Kino-Eye is directed towards the creation of an authentically international absolute language of cinema – ABSOLUTE KINOGRAPHY – on the basis of its complete separation from the language of theatre and literature." 'Great,' I thought. 'Here comes an hour of self-important, Marxist twaddle.' Only MAN WITH THE MOVIE CAMERA isn't an hour of self-important, Marxist twaddle. It's an energetic experiment with filmmaking, full of vigor and delight in the tools and techniques of the form.

MAN WITH THE MOVIE CAMERA chronicles 24 hours in an agglomeration of Ukrainian cities. "Chronicles" may not be the correct term, however. "Riffs on" may be more accurate. This film loves to play with multiple exposures, creative editing, and the mounting kinetic energy of quick cut after quick cut to give us a portrait of life, perhaps as lived and perhaps as dreamed, in the Soviet Union of its day. It's moved along by a delightful and wholly original score, performed by the Alloy Orchestra from Vertov's notes, that both speaks to the action onscreen and manages to remain intrinsically fascinating. This is a just a neat, entertaining glimpse into a different time and place. I was sorry when it ended.

Tokyo Story

The more I think about TOKYO STORY, the more I like it.

It's a simple story. Grandma & Grandpa leave their provincial home and come to Tokyo to visit the kids. The kids are busy, and the visit does not go well.

Some audiences may find the movie difficult to approach because it's very Japanese. Its characters do not boradcast their every emotion. They don't yell. They don't burst into song. They don't weep majestically. They smile, and bow, and hurt. In other words, they do the kinds of things that people do all over the world, bu they do it within the bounds of their cultural paradigm. Audiences who are willing to attune themselves to that paradigm will discover a movie that's uncomfortably close to home, that speaks to the ways marriages work and the ways generations deal with one another. They'll discover a movie that speaks to the creeping sense of discontent we sometimes feel creeping up on us, and they'll discover a movie that addresses all of these themes in a thoughtful, compassionate, and adult manner.

TOKYO STORY is a serious movie, well made and performed, that earns its place in our imaginations. It is time well spent.

Bob le Flambeur

I found BOB LE FLAMBEUR thoroughly captivating. It's held together by the titular Bob (Roger Duchesne), a guy who reminded me Burt Lancaster right up to the moment when he dons a tuxedo, at which point he reminded me of George Clooney. Bob's a high-roller, which is another way of saying he's a gambling addict, and you know what always happens to gambling addicts: they lose. Once, long ago, he'd been part of a heist (presumably to cover his debts) gone wrong, but saved the life of a police officer during the arrest. Now he's done his time and he's generally a good guy, but he loves chance so much that he has a slot machine in his closet. And, of course, you know what always happens to gambling addicts.

BOB is a film that deals in shades of morality and people who choose just which shade they'll be. It deals with nobility and weariness, and it offers one of the best heist setups I've ever seen. Jean-Pierre Melville shoots it with just the right combination of glitz and grime, and I believed everyone and everything I saw on the screen before me. What a treat.

Sympathy for Mister Vengeance

Chan Wook Park's SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE is a beautiful, horrifying, depressing, and thoroughly successful picture. With the exception of a final scene so implausible that it drew me out of the movie, SFMV captured and held my attention and imagination, even when I wanted to look away.

Park, the director behind JSA and OLDBOY, knows how to compose a scene. The color palette (Does green have special significance in Korean iconography?), set decoration, and placement of the actors themselves work together time and again to not only drive the narrative but generate stills I'd be happy to linger over in book form. While Park's composition can deliver real beauty, it can also deliver real horror. Be warned: SFMV is a horrifying movie, with many shots more akin to Miike than Malick. You may want to think twice before screening it for your friends, and I had to flip the screen down on my portable DVD player more than once to avoid disturbing those around me on the Metro.

As Don alluded in his comments on HOSTEL, horror works best when we've invested in its characters. SFMV's cast, including JSA's Kang-Ho Song (also excellent in MEMORIES OF MURDER) and Ha-Kyun Shin, bring their characters fully to life and give us people for whom we hope and fear. I'd like to take special note of Shin, who says more with his deaf-mute character than some actors do with 90 minutes-worth of dialogue. This investment has a downside, however: SFMV is just plain depressing. It gives us people we like and proceeds to punish them, punish them, and punish them some more. But here's the brilliance of this movie: just when things are at their worst, it gives us a chance to say, "Wow, what a shot!" Its artistry actually serves to give us the distance to stay engaged in the film. Without it, the experience would be too much.

SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE works. It just plain does. On every level. This is the kind of movie I could watch again and again, finding more in the composition and structure, more in the events and performances. Rent it today.

Mostly Martha

I loved MOSTLY MARTHA.

Martina Gedeck, from THE LIVES OF OTHERS, is Martha. She’s obsessed with food, is incredibly Teutonic in her entire approach to life, and could really use a good holiday in Italy. Her kitchen is her inviolable domain, and the restaurant in which she works is an elite destination in her gray North German industrial city. She has issues, however: her boss is just as German as she is, she can’t relate to anyone except through the medium of food, and, well, she’s lonely.

Then, the changes start rolling in. First, circumstances force her to take custody of her niece, a role for which she’s entirely unprepared. Then, an Italian enters her kitchen as an assistant chef. Oh, the horror! An Italian! And he’s good! From there, the movie takes us on the journey of Martha’s development into a functioning woman who, while still obsessed with food, is healthily obsessed with food. That in itself is a rewarding tale, particularly if you enjoy gently romantic comedies. But what really makes this movie special is the way it gently pokes fun at Germans and German-ness, particularly in contrast to Italian culture.

MOSTLY MARTHA is sad, it's funny, and it's a joy to watch. DB and I will trade quips about tasting the sugar the other didn't use for some time to come.

Chungking Express

You know those movies in which everyone in town seems to connect with everyone else? The kind which depict a city as a fabric, with everyone's stories woven together? CHUNGKING EXPRESS (1994) is not one of those movies. CHUNGKING EXPRESS is a movie about disconnectedness, about the isolation we can feel in the unlikeliest of places.

The movie doesn't have a unified narrative, and it isn't all tied together with freak meteorological events. Think of it, instead, as variations on a theme of loneliness. In the first variation, RETURNER's Takeshi Kaneshiro plays Number 223, a not-particularly-effective Hong Kong police officer. He's working through a difficult breakup, and the woman ( Brigitte Lin) he needs may be the worst possible woman for him. In the second, Tony Leung plays Number 633, another officer in similar circumstances. He meets Faye Wong, and I suspect that she's trouble in her own way.

The details of their stories aren't particularly important. What is important is the ways in which they try to order their lives, and how, even though they're sometimes only .01 centimeters apart, they may never connect. I suspect that, somewhere in China, there lives the girl who broke Wong Kar Wai's heart. We need to thank her, because his variations on a theme of loneliness are a beautiful thing, finding connections deeper than those any freak storm can create.

Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels

There's a moment at the beginning of the endgame of LOCK, STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS (1998) in which all the pieces are assembled on the board, but the interlocking stories and plots are jumbled together and everything appears to be headed for total chaos. Watching it, I thought, "How the hell is this guy (writer / director Guy Ritchie) going to pull this off?"

He pulls it off with dash, flair, humor, and not a little bit of gratuitous violence. The same could be said of the entire film. LOCK, STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS is a fun, vibrant picture that isn't afraid to tell a raucous story raucously. Ritchie clearly enjoys writing dialogue that, if not entirely natural, is a pleasure to hear. Additionally, the guy knows how to craft a story that's inherently violent without giving it any real sense of danger. His characters and situations are so outlandish that they feel like characters and situations, not like real people, and that adds to the movie's sense of fun.

LOCK, STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS could have gone wrong in any number of ways. Fortunately, Ritchie avoids them and delivers an energetic, amusing picture.

What a pleasant surprise.

PS There's a whole other side to this movie, the investigation of which was inconsistent with the upbeat tone of my remarks. LS&TSB does some interesting things with the nature of class, cleverly delineating various levels of "us-ness" and "them-ness." This is the kind of movie that could take you from a fun time at the theater to a fun time over coffee later, as you consider how calculated the film is, and how complicit you are, in its presentation of class and ethnicity.