Ira Sachs, USA, 2005A nice effort but mostly moribund. Certainly lacks the beauty, or even the emotional resonance, of something like In the Mood for Love, although maybe this stuff just works better (for me) in subtitles.
Source: Capital DVD
26 February, 10:15 PM
Howard Hawks, USA, 1946I love Bogey! I can’t imagine what the 1945 version would be like, because when you’ve got a film where (as anyone will tell you) one of the murders isn’t even solved, it’s definitely all about the central relationship. Something I hadn’t picked up from The Long Goodbye (which I definitely should’ve watched after this, damn Blockbuster) is that Phillip Marlowe is a James Bond-esque player! Several women throw themselves at him, and he gets it on with at least one of them during a stake-out, then gives her a pretty callous brush-off when she pretty clearly wants at least to hook up again. I don’t think he had time for any more, but I imagine he did in the book (and all the action probably wasn’t contained off-screen, either). It does put a different spin on the whole relationship when you realize what a player he starts out as.
Source: Warner DVD
25 February, 10 PM
Don Coscarelli, USA, 2002It’s really a bad sign when you see a 90 minute film and you feel like it should have been at least 30 minutes shorter! It makes you realize that a real disservice has been done to the medium of film with the ghettoization of shorts. I’m no better, as when I look up a festival listings, I have no interest in shorts either! While Brokeback Mountain suffered from trying to stretch out a short story with new material, I get the feeling this film tried to be too faithful to what was there, and there just wasn’t enough for a feature. Bruce Campbell’s voice-over narration is largely inane, and you only get into some good bad-assedness near the very end.
Source: MGM DVD
24 Februrary, 9:20 PM
Phil Morrison, USA, 2005Not perfectly transcendent, but certainly successful at reaching towards it. My favorite moment is when the Blue State protagonist is listening to her Red State-raised husband sing a hymn (very well), and her expression goes through so many contortions, leaving you really uncertain as to whether she is offended by the possibility that he might still have some religious sentiment, amazed that he has hidden his proficiency at singing from her, or something else more nebulous. Her reactions and his singing combine to produce an interesting, sublime moment. I don’t know that I would have nominated Amy Adams for an Oscar though; I think Embeth Davidtz’s work here is more nuanced.
Source: Sony DVD
23 February, 8:20 PM
Walter Salles, USA, 2005This could be a constant refrain here, but nonetheless I really have to give credit to Walter Chaw of Film Freak Central for drawing this film to my attention, because the notion of another crummy “J-horror” knockoff with killer washing machines caused me to merely chortle that I’d never see that movie. Unfortunately this seems to have been a common reaction, as the film was a flop. I also didn’t trust my co-worker’s recommendation, as I figured that his taste was suspect. However, Chaw’s belated recommendation led me to give it a chance, and what I found was a very compelling and involving psychological thriller (not “horror” at all), filled with atmosphere and a surprisingly good performance by Jennifer Connelly, certainly better than what I saw from her in House of Sand and Fog. Fumbles the ending a bit, in execution if not in substance. I haven’t seen the original yet but I do doubt it will be as good. It just goes to show that just because the original impetus to make a film might have been bad (remake a foreign film because Americans won’t read subtitles), it doesn’t mean the film itself is bad. Seems obvious, but apparently I needed to learn this lesson again.
Source: Buena Vista DVD
21 February, 9 PM
(Geomi sup)One of those “what the hell is going on” movies, but, despite the “Asia Extreme” label (without which I imagine there’d be no Region 1 DVD release), not exactly one of those “pushing the limits of horrificness” films. By the end, you pretty much do know what’s going on, and it’s interesting but not exactly shattering. I found the mood to be well cultivated but the film to be a little somnolent at times, or maybe it’s the characters that weren’t involving enough. It’s not bad, but I don’t know if I’d recommend it to someone that had never heard of it.
Source: TLA DVD
19 February, 10 PM
Pradeep Sarkar, India, 2005Utter shit! I’m probably really being unfair to Bollywood, but I think I need more comedy in films like this. Pure melodrama is just too much. That, and perhaps it doesn’t really work in a quiet theater (this was part of the so-called Riverside International Film Festival), and you need audience response with your friends to make it fun. Whatever the case, I found this to be much less entertaining than Mohabbatein or especially Main Hoon Na, both of which I saw last year. Even the music wasn’t as good!
Source: UTV 35mm print
18 February, 8 PM
(Gegen die wand)Engaging, but uneven. There are definitely a lot of extreme moments and the characters are interesting, but it doesn’t reach the heights you keep hoping it will build up to.
Source: Strand DVD
17 February – 9:30 PM
(Dare mo shiranai)Sublime. I was afraid this would be one of those “so artsy it’s boring” films, and it might be for a lot of people, but I found this to be a very engaging story to base a largely improvised, silent series of performances on. There’s nothing and everything going on here.
Source: MGM DVD
12 February, 10:30 PM
James Wong, USA, 2006Blah. This is just not what I consider film to be, and I know that’s a close-minded statement, but let me just top it by saying that I don’t even like what this movie and others like it (or worse than it) say about our culture. How can we really go to a movie just to see kids get splattered across the screen, with no larger artistic, plot, or even overall entertainment purpose? How can that be the whole entertainment right there? I really don’t get it. It seems to require a certain contempt for reality. Sure, I don’t like those bimbo girls either, but they don’t deserve to die for it either. I guess this film actually “transcends” that paradigm in a different way than Buffy does, which is that the sympathetic characters get ripped up too. Yay? Admittedly I wasn’t as grossed out by it as I expected, and I even laughed at times, but I felt philosophically empty outwards, and that’s the scary part.
Source: New Line 35mm print
11 February, 2:10 PM
Park Chan-wook, South Korea, 2003Much as when watching A History of Violence, I expected to be grossed out by, well, the violence, but instead I was grossed out by… well it’d be a major spoiler if I told you. A lot of the violence isn’t even in your face at all. This is one of those movies that you would recommend to everyone except that you might get in trouble if you imprudently recommended it to more sensitive souls. I am not an entirely jaded person and so this movie did come close to making me sick, at least psychologically (it’s hard to explain). However, unlike some cheap horror film, the revulsion here is well earned because the characters matter and whatnot. Aside from that, it’s stylistically brilliant.
Source: TLA DVD
5 February, 9:40 PM
Robert Altman, USA, 1973I think that when you a person born in 1981, watching a character from the 1940s (Phillip Marlowe) whose adventures you are not familiar with, inexplicably (no reference is made to the incongruity, you have to read reviews or watch the special features) transported to the 1970s… well, it’s too many degrees of temporal separation. The 40s, the 70s… it sounds idiotic to say this since you’d think I could tell the difference between the two, but the anachronism of the Marlowe character wasn’t often very apparent to me, he just seemed like a slightly archaic hero. I also think I’m not the biggest fan of Robert Altman’s style, or perhaps I should just leave the subtitling on throughout the film. The thing is, if you’re never quite clear what everyone is saying, it’s like no one is saying anything after a while.
Source: MGM DVD
4 February, 10 PM
