Author: Sasa

El Laberinto del Fauno

Whenever there is a film that I disliked, knowing very well that everybody and their mother loves it, I feel like I am in a really tough position. Today, I wrote an e-mail to a friend who I accused of being unable to confront his disagreement with me, and I know very well that this is generally something very, very hard. I love it when people like the same things I do, and there is a certain disappointment when people don’t like certain movies as much as I do (take Shii and JSA, or Shii and Hidamari Sketch, or Shii and… okay, that was actually all). I don’t think I mind it, but I would still find it sad. In consequence to that, I feel like I can rave away comfortably when I like a movie, but should back up my disliking for something with some sound arguments.

In this case, I guess the film was just something completely different from what I expected. I mean, oh my God. The whole film was just dark, gory and downright sad. There is no single character who was truly likable (except for the faun who, in my opinion, had some lovely antics), and the fact that it’s supposed to be a parabel cannot hide away how the film is full of clichés: The evil fascist and his maniac behavior, the mother who marries for money and is weak in almost every aspect and the little girl who escapes into her dream world. Sadly, at the end of the day, the main character doesn’t actually do very much. This is fairly normal for a little child, and very unusual for a fantasy film. (Actually, this is somewhat refreshing, but still depressing.)

On top of all that, the actions of the characters just make you cringe. The little girl mostly makes sense, though I believe that I would certainly not have given into my hunger just by looking at that creepy eyeless guy. But as a war movie, the film just had too many disturbing details: Why would they kill the doctor without questioning him nor considering the possibility that they will need him to cure the captain’s wife? Why didn’t Mercedes run away after it was obvious they will see the opened storeroom door? That is like outright telling them that she collaborated with the enemy, what in the world. The worst part was where she was chased by horses and not even been shot at. There is no obvious reason as to why they would rather shoot the doctor than kill her; besides making food she didn’t look like she was all that useful after all.

The main reason why the film ended on such a dark note is the fact that the rebels refused to tell the captain’s son about his father. This is what you do during a war, but with that, they just showed how they were no better than the fascists after all. And there is another one: I think the film can be interpreted such that Ofelia’s fantasy world is all just her imagination. Nobody else in the film ever gets into contact with the fantastic world, and everything in the real world could potentially have happened without her doing. In that case, it would mean that she died completely needlessly. Very sad. I think I don’t like needlessly sad movies anymore.

Burn Notice: The Fall of Sam Axe

So the writing block continues. There is nothing deep to say about it, it was a fun movie with a stupid plot. Oh my God, it was incredibly stupid, ahahahaha. I was cringing every time he kissed that woman who, sadly, was perhaps one of the most boring love interest characters I have ever seen in a film. It is to be expected, it was a movie for TV. In fact, I am not sure if I should continue blogging about these kinds of TV movies at all. They are expected to be bad and mostly for entertainment, but for completion, I felt like I should.

Another reason, of course, is that I can now rant about my favorite TV series! “Burn Notice” cannot technically be called favorite TV series because of its many, many weaknesses, but I think one has to admit their guilty pleasures freely, and “Burn Notice” certainly is one for me. Luckily the next season is going to be airing soon, ho ho ho. Even when it’s an artsy film, I tend to watch them mostly for entertainment purposes. I don’t think I would ever hold a film in high esteem if it did not entertain me in some form or another, but at the same time, I still would feel bad about “dumb” entertainment. “Burn Notice” is on the thin line between what I would generally say is very good and the kind of show that I watch because I have been burned out from work during the day (bad pun not intended, for realz). The series manages to hit a nerve with me; I love the show’s simple formula with a few main characters helping out people in trouble on an episodic basis, leaving you with a generally happy feeling after almost every single episode.

The film follows practically the same formula as the show itself, with the exception that we don’t have the backdrop of stylish Miami. But the ‘clients’ completely make up for it; they are so much more amusing and likable than usual. The film definitely got me into the mood of looking forward to the next season of the series!

The Godfather II

Blogging has become a chore lately, though I don’t really know why. Perhaps it is because I actually have seen the film a few days ago, and just like for the first film, have been wondering what I should write about this film.

The first time I have heard of “The Godfather” was when I went to the cinema for the first time to see “You’ve got mail”. Ever since, it was clear that I would have to read “Pride and Prejudice” (which I did, something like 10 years ago) and, of course, watch “The Godfather”. Now that I finally saw these films, I am at a loss of words.

Actually I had hoped that the second film would be better than the first, considering that it would have a larger budget and generally show more of Michael. I wouldn’t say that I was disappointed, but most of all, the film actually felt very strongly like a sequel. Of course I am very eager to know what happened after the first film, but it does seem to be very hard to keep up with the incredibly high quality that the first film came with. The atmosphere, the composition of the shots, the flow of the story – almost everything feels like “the same thing but less” in the second film. The characters come off as less evil, the story feels less dangerous, the intrigues more simple and boring… perhaps the only good aspect was how the character of the brother evolved. Fredo was a good guy until the end, he was just foolish and stupid; his death is the one which marks Michael’s final decision to becoming completely evil. At the end of the day, unlike his father, he pretty much failed everything that was dear to him – his business, his family and friends. But then again, was he too ‘soft’ since he clearly cared for certain people (namely his wives and his family) or too cruel (for not actually taking their own wishes into account)? It’s hard to say, and perhaps that was the most interesting aspect of the film.

I’m not so sure if and when I would want to see the last film of the trilogy. Parts of me really wants to (you cannot just watch the first 2 and not the last ones!), but another part knows that it would be a disappointment for sure. We will see.

The Godfather

I am obsessed with things. Old films, Tumblr, research, summer dresses, doing something with my hands, men (in some sense)… I am mostly obsessed about my own awareness of being obsessed. “Obsession” is my current favorite word, because love is supposed to be pure and beautiful and when you call it obsession, you do not have to feel as bad about it. You don’t have to ask myself whether this feeling to have towards something (or someone) is pure enough to be called love.

Currently, at this very moment, I am obsessed with “The Godfather”. How can one not be? It’s possibly the best movie ever made, especially since I know perfectly well that neither Hitchcock’s movies nor “Citizen Kane” take that spot, in my opinion at least. “The Godfather” is something like the incorporation of a well-made movie: Awesome actors, wonderful style both in terms of interior décor and clothing, an intriguing story making the film feel like 1 1/2 hours rather than 3, an impressively well-placed soundtrack and of course, an amazingly hot Al Pacino. Like everybody else, I only know Al Pacino from when he was relatively old and badass looking, so I probably was caught by surprise. How in the world can somebody like that look so cute when he was young?

Apart from that, nothing. I am agreeing with the consensus here. It’s not a smart film or anything, there is nothing to analyze. Certainly the women in the film are weak and strange and kind of boring, and don’t really add very much to this film which is just oozing manliness. But I enjoyed the film so much I could totally see myself watching it again. Now I am looking forward to the second part.

Le scaphandre et le papillon

It’s been a long time since I have had such mixed feelings about a film. They are mostly feelings, of course, but I cannot help it. I found it extremely odd that the girlfriend in the film never saw Bauby because she was afraid. Somehow it just feels like an unlikely thing to happen. It also came across as unlikely that the “wife” would take care of him that way. In reality, of course it was the true girlfriend who stayed by his side, and the “wife” who disappeared into nowhere. To top it off, the true “wife” was the person who made the film deviate from reality and Bauby’s book, solely to put herself into a better light and deprecating the girlfriend. On a human level, I find this so incredibly disgusting that it destroyed the mood of the film’s most crucial scene. It also didn’t help that the “wife” was beautiful and blonde, and the girlfriend had darker hair and a generally less pleasant face. Goodness.

Enough complaining for now. Ignoring the appalling background to the story, it is hard to deny that the film itself is fairly brilliant. Directing, style, storytelling, everything is extremely well done, and so naturally poetic. I am sure the book itself is also a great ode to what makes a human alive – his imagination and memory indeed. I like the premise of the film and enjoyed the encounters with his friends very much. It makes me wonder whether, if it had happened to me, who would stay next to my bed every day. Bauby, this seemingly unlikable bon vivant, actually had a lot of true friends. I feel deeply impressed by that, and it makes me wonder why. On the other hand, I wonder how many people in this world I would visit every day if this happened to them. (12.)
With that said, the best scene in the film was actually the one with the father. That one is likely to be not obscured by filmmaker’s politics, and I thought that it was absolutely beautiful. Ah, the poor father.

I am also a huge fan of Anne Consigny for no apparent reason. She always plays the same kind of role, but somehow I always find her very lovely with this worried face of hers.

I heard the members of “Explosions in the Sky” like movies. I think this is absolutely awesome, and I wonder how they’d feel about this particular film, especially since they used “Your Hand in Mine” for the trailer.

Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole

Of all people, this is a film that my cousin has recommended to me. Her tastes and mine typically don’t match (and it makes me actually wonder about what my other cousins like), but this was the first time she actually talked about a movie, and I was intrigued. More than anything, I liked the looks of the owls. They really are amazingly cute, especially since I normally don’t like anthropomorphic characters. But here, I am amazed at their cuteness.

The visuals are definitely the film’s main appeal – the designs are absolutely wonderful, the flights look so beautiful that you don’t mind that they might be a bit stretched out and the landscapes in the film are more beautiful than Ghibli’s. Anime needs a budget like this, for real. Except for the fact that the owls’s mouths are a little weird, I’d say that the film is doing everything in the department of looks. I am deeply impressed.

Coming to the story, I also don’t agree with the general critical opinion, saying that it’s too dark for little children to watch, and too predictable and stupid for older children. Maybe the film is actually for adults who are into small, cute things – like me. I don’t mind a predictable story; in fact, most stories are predictable. This movie is no more and no less predictable than, say, “Alice in Wonderland” was. Now you might say that “Alice in Wonderland” had better characters, but this film had its charming characters too. Plus, think of 50 years of Disney movies – how many great characters were there? Really, in terms of storytelling, direction, creativity and design, I don’t think any of those common criticisms apply to this film. I have no idea what it is that made people dislike this film, or give it a bad review, because my own problem with the film has never been mentioned at all.

I guess what I did not particularly like about the film was indeed how it portrayed the two forces, and its hypocritic idealism. This movie is just as ‘bland’ as “V for Vendetta” was, with this strangely communist system as the “good system” and the nazis (along with their uberowls and unterowls) are the “bad ones”. Curiously enough, the motto “Aid the weak against the strong” – well that is precisely what fascism did too – applies to both of them, if you dig just a little bit deeper into the story. Incidentally, Kludd was the weak one who felt finally accepted by… the nazis. Also, in the supposedly good world, we have a leader couple and the population is divided into workforces doing different things. Just like with the nazis, the best ones are allowed to be fighters. How belligerent is that? I was so pissed off when the hero of the story starts talking about how war is not heroic or glorious (very good!), but then goes onto saying “being a hero means to do the right thing”. Who says it’s the right thing? For quotes like this I truly think that the movie bringing children onto a bad moral path in which they believe the world is black and white. When it comes to that, “How to train your dragon” is the way to go here.

Personally, I liked the film a lot. I found it extremely beautiful, the characters were charming and, at times, very funny, and everything about the film was awfully well-made. I just hated its social system and the rotten morals that come with it. Educational this is not.

127 Hours

The story is based on a book, and therefore, even before watching the film, you know two things: The guy will spend 127 hours in agony and he will survive. But how does it happen? Can you really tell a simple story like that in 90 minutes? More than anything else, this film is a proof of concept. There is no such thing as a story too thin to make a good movie out of it (a criticism that goes towards many stories, like Igor Stravinsky and Coco Chanel’s love story, or Julie Powell’s “Julia” project to make all recipes from Julia Child’s book in one year). Under the hand of a skillful director and screenplay writer, every story can be turned into something great. As long as humans are involved, there is humanity in it.

This film’s greatest strength is indeed its focus on the main character. The way he reflects upon his own life through those hallucinations are amazingly gripping, and when it comes to the question of cutting off that arm, I felt… alive. It was a feeling of blood rushing through my veins, beautifully orchestrated by the fitting music. I kept wanting to look away, but it’s a bad idea to run away from such an experience. And I know that, if it happened to me, I would have given into the pressure. I also liked how the guy is just a simple, normal human being, a little weird (like we all are, right?) but ultimately from a fairly normal family with a normal life, running into the biggest experience of his life. It’s brilliant.

I think that James Franco did a good job, but considering how everybody hails him as the new star in the acting world, I was perhaps less impressed than I could have been. There are not many young actors who could have pulled off this role, that is for sure, and he is very believable indeed, but I thought he was even better in “14 Actors”. And oh God! I think he looks like Joseph Gordon-Levitt. XD

Note that I have updated my “current top 30 movies” list. Since the previous lists were from 2005 and 2008, this year marks the date of the next list. So far, there is 1 movie from the 20’s, 3 from the 40’s and 50’s respectively, 2 from the 60’s and 70’s respectively, 1 from the 80’s, 4 from the 90’s and a total of 14 from the new millennium. The majority are still American films, with 14 films, followed by Japan with 4 films. Instead of Jarmusch and Wilder, Lubitsch is now the only director with 2 films in the list. In comparison to those, “127 Hours” has no chance to figure on a list like my personal favorites, even if I do think that the film was very good and preferred it over Black Swan. At this point, a movie has to make such an impact on me that I have obsessed about it for awhile before it can appear there. But when it comes to the other important criterion for the list – whether a film tells us something about humanity (and why “Some like it hot”, of all films, has fell out of that list) – as I mentioned before, “127 Hours” absolutely excels at that.

Otoshiana (Pitfall)

It actually took me a long time before I got into the mood of seeing a film like this. It goes well with my late tendency of watching films which might not be the most accessible or obviously enjoyable to watch; obscure modern titles but also something avantgarde like this. At least the music was certainly very, very avantgarde – you’d think it’s some random noise until you start discovering some sort of pattern in the atonality of the music.

Among Criterion’s 3 films by Teshigahara, “Pitfall” clearly stands out as a ‘beginner’ film. It’s less crazy, less stylish, a little less existentialist and much more funny than any of the other Teshigahara x Abe cooperations. There is something very down-to-earth about this story, even to the point of being extremely realistic – if you consider the existence of those ghost a plausible thing. Within the universe of “Pitfall”, they perfectly make sense. The realism of the story comes from the characters who, except for the child, never behave in an absurd way. Even the mysterious man in the white suit makes sense somehow, and one could consider that he is just some corporate goon with a very perfidious plan of destroying the unions. Why not?

The child is the true mystery of the film, and where the existentialism of the film culminates. Sure, there are the dead characters asking themselves why they died (which is very human). But the kid is much more interesting, because everybody completely ignores it. It is as if people lived in a world in which sex is pointless and there is no future (i.e. no children to take care of), and the true ghost is actually the child who sees everything but doesn’t say anything. It is no surprise that the last take of the film indeed shows the kid running through the meticulously geometric looking ghost town.

On top of that, there are some politics involved… As to be expected from Abe, almost every aspect of humanity can be found in this film, death, relationships, the aforementioned politics, work and money, crimes and morals, even your predictable rape scene of the day. Maybe the movie is not as visually striking as “Woman in the Dunes”, or as elaborate as a story like “The Face of Another”, but personally “Pitfall” might even be my favorite. I think it’s a forgotten gem with so much potential as an exposé to existentialist questions.