Category: Movies

Les demoiselles de Rochefort

After I learned that, it became much easier to come to terms with the sheer… silliness of musicals itself. “Les demoiselles” are very, very American (especially the dance style!) yet at the same time, the core elements of the film – ballet, quasi-classical music, romantic fated love, wanting to go to Paris – are all very French. And boy I loved it. The “jumelles” song is amazingly catchy and the dresses they wear in the scene are beyond glorious.

Unlike “Les parapluies de Cherbourg”, which was sad and emotional and almost deep, this film is all about the looks and the songs and the dances, but that’s okay. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and I might still be looking for my brain which I probably left at the door. With that said, if you like musicals just a little bit, you will have to love this movie.

Saranghanda, saranghaji anneunda

… but maybe it’s just the hunger, hahahaha. Especially the procedure of pasta-making, I can barely believe I have ever seen such a surprisingly good-looking food-making scene. Wow this movie just hurt so much, and I don’t even know why. It’s somewhere in my subconscious, silently creeping up on me. Breaking up is the saddest thing in the world, it makes you think it’s something that should never happen.

I loved the simplicity of the premise. The film does nothing else but depict a couple which has broken up and nothing more happens besides the female character packing and preparing to leave. That’s it.

The only aspect I felt somewhat unhappy about was perhaps aforementioned female character. When the film just started, he began packing some of her cups and other things. The way he did that, so careful and loving! Oh my God, how can a woman in her right mind ever leave a man like that? It’s just… not fair.
But then again, these things happen. None of the two ever talk about their relationship, which is fairly unusual for a relationship movie. However, even that makes sense. There is some beauty to it, to show that they still care for each other, that they delve in memories together yet both know that there isn’t anything else to say. This is a film that doesn’t talk, but shows.

And everything else was just plain wonderful. The slow pacing totally contributed to its beauty, both actors are absolutely splendid in their role, and Hyun Bin is perhaps the only good-looking Korean actor who acts well. I am thoroughly impressed. Most of all, however, the style of the film is just amazing. “My Dear Enemy” was nothing special in that regard, but this house is just… the house I want to live in! I want to make pasta like that, even though it looks like they are using way too much oil and eat them out of these large restaurant-style plates. Maybe one day life will look like that.

I am generally in a contemplative mood today, and it’s hard to say whether it was because of the film or the other way around – I watched it because I felt contemplative. I wouldn’t recommend this film due to its slowness, but it’s special. After “Ai no Mukidashi”, this was probably the second best Berlinale film.

Ohayo

My impression of Ozu is clouded by “Tokyo Monogatari”, an incredible borefest almost impossible to sit through. “Ohayo” is everything that “Tokyo Monogatari” is not. The Japanese awkwardness is present, but since Ozu is making fun of those antics, it’s awesome!

In “Floating Weeds”, you can see glimpses of the humor so omnipresent in “Ohayo”. It just has everything – all characters are amusing or lovely or both, the actors are all splendid and the visuals are amazingly stylish. I can almost not find a single fault with the movie, unpretentious yet sophisticated, critical yet subtle, stylish yet it only uses a small set. To top it off, it’s just so, so funny; I am seriously considering recommending it to Loris, and that means something.

Why is “Ohayo” not on the list of 50 movies children should see before they turn 14? This is an amazing example, and Minoru’s little “monologue” on how adults talk too much should become a classic in Japanese culture. Discovering that Ozu can be so funny was a revelation like reading the humorous newspaper articles Chekhov wrote when he was young. Ozu = Chekhov. Both were extremely observant and master the art of subtle humour.

According to a Criterion review, the “loose” neighbors have a poster of The Defiant Ones on their wall. That is quite an interesting movie to be displaying there (I want to see it!), and it shows how aware Ozu was of his surrounding – and of American influences. All Japanese directors, including Ozu, are American in some sense, and that might be the most interesting aspect of Japanese cinema, which is so lovely in its Japanese style.

The film is one of Shii’s favorites, and I can definitely see why. Perhaps there are other films that made me laugh more than this one, but it stands high as a great comedy coming from somewhere else than my usual sources (i.e. screwball or modern films).

The Wrestler

Some of you might remember how much I disliked “Requiem for a Dream”. To be honest I couldn’t even finish watching it, and that is despite my appreciation both for Jennifer Connelly and Jared Leto. Something about the film just annoyed me deeply, I don’t even know how to describe it.

For the first 10 minutes, I thought “The Wrestler” is going to be the same. I was not a huge fan of “Black Swan” – of course it was a great movie, I just didn’t thought it was as great as advertised and, as always, Darren Aronofsky overly exaggerates everything. I don’t like that, especially not about something I hold as dear as ballet. That the film is an exaggerated portrait of the main character still holds true for “The Wrestler”. At first, I couldn’t relate to Randy at all and was almost grossed out by the somewhat bloody portrayal of wrestling, which I knew nothing about. For instance, I had no idea it was all just show and still think there is something strange and disturbing about wrestling. It’s all about seeing people being violent – and it’s just a show too. That’s on the same level as gladiator games which I think was the perfect indication that the Roman Empire had to go down. Although I found wrestling itself despicable, it didn’t take too long for me to appreciate the depiction of people in the film. Oh wow. Mickey Rourke was great in the role, and Evan Rachel Wood was cast perfectly. Certainly it was a film about a wrestler, but at the same time, I thought he was a character easy to relate to in his existential struggles. Darren Aronofsky can do them so well, this existentialism, and “The Wrestler” is probably his masterpiece at it.

Just like Gorp said, the end of “Black Swan” = the end of “The Wrestler”. The film has completely overwhelmed me to the point of being incapable of properly writing about it. Definitely recommended. I’d even say I want to see what else Aronofsky made.

Being There

I expected something like “Harold and Maude”. In fact, it was nothing like “Harold and Maude”, but perhaps they share some glance of oddity as well as social commentary that is almost unique to Hal Ashby.

At first, I wasn’t really sure what the film would be about. Without having seen too much, the story first made no sense (who is the old man?) and it seemed to take a direction into the tragedy “Of Men and Mice”, with Chance being thrown out of his house. It was only afterwards that I realized this would be a comedy, and quite a dark and satirical one at that. Chance is too strange, too otherworldly to be somebody you can relate to, unlike Forrest Gump or the main character from “Of Mice and Men” or even Dostoevsky’s Prince Myshkin. But Peter Sellers easily makes up for that by giving one of his greatest performances. Chance is an incredible enjoyment to watch. He is a plot-driving comical relief at the same time. So awesome.

I was surprised at how good the main female character was, and did not realize it was Shirley MacLaine… at all. How did I manage to overlook that? She is so great in the film! Her “relationship” with Peter Seller’s character is the best thing in the world!

Oh the controversial end. It makes no sense, that is for sure. But there is something strangely beautiful about it. It’s a scene worthy to become cult, so memorable. Life is a state of mind indeed.

“Being There” did not hit my heart like Beirut’s newest album did (I have been listening to the title song, “The Rip Tide” on repeat today, and oh God, it’s crushing me almost as strongly as Phoenix’s “Armistice”), but instead it’s touching my intellect. Politics are one fine ridiculous circle-jerk, and there aren’t enough sophisticated movies about it.

Arsenic and Old Lace

Considering that “Arsenic and Old Lace” is such a classic and two of my favorite actors are in it, Cary Grant and Peter Lorre, it is surprising how long it took me to watch the film. It was on my Netflix to-watch list for ever and when I finally started watching it, I had to interrupt my viewings more often than I ever did before. Now, something like two weeks and a paper deadline later, I finally was able to finish it.

What can I say, the film was so different from what I expected. It’s obvious how the film originally was a play, but strangely enough I don’t quite like the elements of the play in the film. Most characters, especially the old aunts and Teddy, who incidentally are just the actors from the play, sound like they are from a theatre play, but sadly the film still looks like a movie. With Cary Grant doing nothing much but panicking throughout the entire film, that combination of a play in the film doesn’t work for me.

Certainly the film is interesting, certainly it has some great funny scenes, but most of them didn’t click with me. With a story like that, even the greatness of Cary Grant or Peter Lorre cannot help. It is also undeniable that the film looks great, with its horror-like style and references to silent cinema, and that everything in the film is perfectly timed and written. No doubt about that. But is it really funny when a lot of suspense in the plot comes from the stupidity and ignorance of the characters, or the fact that they just don’t turn around their head in danger? Awesomely enough, however, the end of the story was awesome. When everything was almost good, the plot escalated into a fast-paced sequence of great scenes. It’s too bad Elaine ruined the last 30 seconds just a little bit, but apart from that, I was strangely reminded of “Singularidades de uma raparinga loura”, in which the last minute also was extremely crucial to the story.

In general, I recommend “Arsenic and Old Lace”. I can see how someone can enjoy this film very much, and it’s good on many levels. It just didn’t really mesh with me, I suppose?

Stagecoach

I finished a proof and am secretly proud of myself. (The advisor™ did not seem to think so, at least he didn’t say explicitly it was good.) Normally, when I finish something, the first thing I do is to watch a film. Which one should it be today, I wonder?

Two days ago, I spent a day with one of my professors from 2 years ago, and of course I talked about movies most of the time. Since everybody watches them, I tried to find out what he has seen. It turns out he grew up with all these movies that are considered classics today, including western and some spaghetti western. We had some minor overlap, mostly war movies (Jarhead! Letters from Iwo Jima!) but most of the times he saw movies I have never even heard of. The only film he mentioned that I knew of was “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly”, everything was just completely obscure to me. I didn’t even know ménage à trois French movies he saw. It was probably the strangest conversation of film I have ever had. I am also too forgetful to remember any of the titles he mentioned, but it probably wouldn’t have been my type of movie anyways. Who knows.

Most western I have seen were old, I saw some old silent John Fords (and loved them!), and now “Stagecoach”. I don’t recall the situation in which I heard of the film for the first time, and despite its title, I didn’t even suspect that the story would be similar to “Boule de Suif”. I used to hate the novella, because I hated its characters, but I remember it well. That probably means that the novella was actually good, because it was capable of producing such a hatred against the “established bourgeois class”. “Stagecoach” has a much more accessible plot where most characters are at least comical and when they were not likable, at least they were entertaining. I read that it was John Wayne’s first major role, and for that, he was already surprisingly good.

I should be able to say more about the relationship between “Stagecoach” and “Boule de Suif” as well as my happy surprise to have found a film version of the novella, but really, there’s nothing deep about it. A stagecoach is a fitting place to bring these different people together and provides a great backdrop some of the best characterizations, and both the novella and the film are doing an impressive job at implementing it. But apart from that general premise, there aren’t that many similarities.

All in all, “Stagecoach” is a very typical Western, overloaded with clichés (especially those about Mexicans and Indians), but beautifully crafted. I love John Ford.

Phone Booth

Considering that, by 2002, I had a cell phone which did not look like a black piece of brick, the movie is probably horribly outdated. Cell phones are nothing new anymore and were not at the time. Granted, The Matrix was only 3 years old but that was style; people still use screensavers with these green, vertically running Japanese letters just because it looks good, not because any of the screens nowadays need it. (Do you remember why screensavers were there in the first place?)

So parts of Phone Booth just looks ridiculous. In terms of “artistic vision”, Phone Booth has practically none. It’s pretty cool how it’s focused on just a single street and a single phone booth, but the beginning and the ending sequence were just too ridiculous for their own good. Bad directing could have screwed up the film, but luckily it didn’t.

In fact, Phone Booth was much better and much more suspenseful than you’d think from a generic Hollywood title. The makers were inspired by a Hitchcock idea of having the entire film play in a phone booth, and the implementation of the sniper who threatens him is quite awesome. The story of the film, i.e. Larry Cohen’s screenwriting, is surprisingly great. Having to base the entire story about the phone booth and make it sound believable is not that easy; Hitchcock, the master himself, gave up on it. Sure, the sniper is a psychopath who has a double morale by killing an innocent person and it would have been nice to get to know more about him, but ultimately this wicked character made for a good story. The main character, Stu, is also fairly interesting. From the beginning when we meet him as the wife-cheating, arrogant publicist until the point when he breaks down, he made through quite a bit of character development while staying believable. I even liked Forest Whitaker’s character who was comparably more bland but quite likable.

Instead, Phone Booth was a huge box office hit. It cost 10 millions to make and returned 97. Deservedly so, because the thing Hollywood really needs the most are fresh ideas like these. We started watching Phone Booth with the expectation that it’ll be a silly Hollywood film which we will be able to predict easily. Boy were we wrong.

Alien

…just like “Alien” has ruled them before. Okay, not really. The one most pivotal science-fiction movie in history is actually “2001”, but if Kubrick had died of measles as a small child, the spot would probably go to “Alien”. I mean, “Star Wars” is a mainstream space soap opera, I have never seen “The Terminator” but assume it’s the same, “A Clockwork Orange” (which, incidentally, also would not have existed in the hypothetical Kubrick child death case) does not really look like a space film, I don’t like “Solaris” that much and “Stalker” also doesn’t look like science-fiction at all. That leaves us with “Alien”, a film which takes place in a spaceship and where humans and aliens actually come into contact.

Two people I know count “Alien” among their favorite films of all times, so my expectations for the film were already very high. Just like with “Blade Runner”, a film I didn’t like as much partially because of high expectations, I went into “Alien” with the hope of a scientific revelation, something along the lines of “Brave New World” and “1984”, the two books that revolutionized my youth more than Horváth, Ibsen or Shakespeare ever did. “Alien” is less than that, and I am beginning to suspect that – when it comes to science-fiction – movies are generally less grand than books are.

“Alien” comes quite close to what I’d say is an epic film, and in many ways it reminded me of the first time I saw “Moon”. Not very much variety is given in “Alien”: It’s really all about the discovery of a malicious alien lifeform which then proceeds to trying to kill everybody. Nothing more than that. Unlike “Moon”, it doesn’t even have a lot of existential theory behind it, it doesn’t really ask any questions about life and beyond. But that would be a too easy way to dismiss “Alien” whose qualities lie elsewhere: Direction, style and especially the characters. Somebody mentioned how “Alien” differs from your typical science-fiction of horror film in how old the characters are. Indeed, the characters are not action types, they are smart and logical thinkers who don’t overreact to what is happening to them, but who deal with the situation in a level-headed way. (Except for Lambert, whose great fear of dying represents the audience’s fear and heightens the suspense.) For that reason, the characterizations are quite brilliant and the entire cast displays awesome acting skills.

All in all, “Alien” is a breathtakingly beautiful movie, revolutionary in its own way and totally recommended to everybody who doesn’t have an aversion against science-fiction films or menacing aliens. It’s almost the best horror movie besides “Shining” and is definitely up there in the realms of superior science-fiction films. I also think it’s better than “Blade Runner”, even though the latter might be more influential to contemporary science-fiction.