Category: Movies

Alles auf Zucker

I felt an impressive amount of homesickness today. Certainly this sounds silly, and I have gone weeks without having spoken German at times, but when I feel weak, I found myself to think or dream in English instead of German. That is truly scary.

So, without further ado, here’s a German film. I picked it before it was the first one that showed up in my list, and because I knew nothing about it except that it would be a comedy. I heard he also made that Hitler movie with Helge Schneider, which I assume to be a good thing as well, so my expectations were not extremely high but at least reasonable.

Finally, the movie turned out to be pretty much exactly what I expected: Less funny than the cult classics “Sonnenallee” or “Good Bye, Lenin!” because it suffers from the same strange- and awkwardness most German comedies suffer from (why do the children all have to be incestuous anyways?), but funny enough for me to laugh out loud a few times. Opinions on the film seem to be very divided and that is more or less what I feel as well. If anything, I would compare the film, soaked with the Berliner accent, to “Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis”; just think of the Jews as a lovely culture to be made fun of, and you have the Ch’tis exactly. Sure, there are all the politics etc. but in terms of funny Jewishness, this here is more like when Woody Allen makes fun of his family or “A Serious Man” making fun of Jewishness altogether. A certain light-heartness remains at the end, and I assume that the denouement of the film is indeed difficult to swallow. When the main character recounts how everybody lived happily ever after, it is to be expected that it’s at least 50% irony yet a part of the truth remains. I think the characters are now taking their life with a grain of salt, yet there are true feelings involved in the final get-together of the family. It did not fail to move my non-Jewish Berlinian little heart.

German comedies should never be watched outside of Germany (and in fact, there are not very many French comedies I find funny either), yet at the same time I think that parts of them call for improvement. Better sex jokes for example, or leave them out altogether. “Alles auf Zucker” for example is doing absolutely great as a family comedy. At the same time I want to see “Good Bye Lenin!” again; I only saw it once in a movie theatre and inappropriately made out with my then-not-really-boyfriend.

The House of Mirth

Uhhh, what a Sittenroman, what a period drama. I have not seen a great story about a woman ever since “Die Ehe der Maria Braun” which was just as brilliant, emotionally touching and entirely devastating. This film is perhaps just a different form of what I have come to get used to in “Madame Bovary”, “Anna Karenina” or even the dreadful “Effi Briest”. But every one of them is a little different, and besides the apparent main difference between “The House of Mirth” and the aforementioned stories (Lily Bart is unmarried), the protagonist here is inherently ‘flawed’. She loves luxury like Marguerite Gautier in “La dame aux camélias” and while Marguerite downfall comes with her attempt to become a better person, Lily is never really given the opportunity to. In fact, her problems could have all dissipated if she never took up gambling and just married Mr. Selden. But here is where the beauty of her story is, and why she is more interesting than all those characters who are not bad, but plainly incapable. She is the own reason for her downfall.

But, Lily cannot be a different person than she is. While “La dame aux camélias” is an ode to the power of love and highly romantic and unrealistic that way, Lily is much more realistic in how she is torn between herself. She has all the power of changing or choosing one life over another, and so painfully many occasions too, but she couldn’t. Love, luxury, gambling, arrogance, ignorance towards other people – if she had been able to free herself from a single one of these ‘vices’, she would not have ended so tragically.

On a side note, I was so annoyed with that “French poet” who can’t pronounce French properly and, on top of that, fails at reading poems with the proper tone. Luckily he finished reading very quickly, ahahaha.

I thought Gillian Anderson was brilliant and completely outacted the entire cast (except maybe Laura Linney who was quite great as main evil character as well). I especially liked the way she talked and the way she kind of throws her head a little and laughs. She might not be a dashing beauty, but she can play a dashing beauty, which I find absolutely amazing. Her charm is like a role model like Anna Karenina when she seduces Levin, perhaps one of the greatest short scenes in the book.

For better or worse, I saw myself in the main character, and most likely it clouds my impression on the movie so different from “Distant Voices, Still Lives”. I thought the film was marvelously done, had a brilliant protagonist and as a result, it depressed me on many levels. Whether this means that the movie is so good that it made me feel depressed, or actually worse than I think because I associate myself too close with it personally – I do not know.

Distant Voices, Still Lives

The convenient thing about liking a film that Jonathan Rosenbaum liked is that he has most likely already written a very long, almost comprehensive review of the film, including analysis of key scenes, a discussion of the technicalities of direction and what they transport. It’s not like he never makes mistakes: for example, the first part ends with the birth of Maisie’s child, not Eileen’s. But all these things don’t quite matter; what matters is that Mr. Rosenbaum here has practically covered everything I would have wanted to say about the film.

On a rainy day like today, and after being disappointed by the sheer beauty yet emotional lacklusterness of modern blockbusters, I decided that I need a film which transports something. Unfortunately I have no access to the endless possibilities on Netflix, and after liking “A Man Escaped”, I figured I could pick one of the Monolith films.

I have heard that British films are horrible, and except for Kubrick or Hitchcock who don’t really count as British, I got the impression that Terence Davies might be a brilliant exception. I also have never seen anything by Ken Loach, but I am not very inclined to see them honestly.

I enjoyed the English slang of the film very much; it wasn’t over the top and actually surprisingly pleasant, making the characters very likable to say the least. Ultimately I don’t know very much about the British and their language (doesn’t that sound weird considering that British English is supposed to be “Standard English”?); just like “Harry Potter” taught me “Blimey!” I now learned “turrah”.

In my opinion, the songs are all the film is about. All of the humor, the liveliness of the characters despite their harsh life and finally the Hollywood musical the film pays homage to – almost all of the songs make the film surprisingly happy and optimistic. It is fascinating how much I can associate with this group singing habit – just as much “Distance Voices, Still Lives” is about an older generation in Great Britain, it feels a lot like my parents’ generation. There is something very beautiful about that. And it is strange because I find happen to find musicals shallow and fake; “Distant Voices, Still Lives” is giving such musicals a meaning beyond their own intentions. I wonder if this will ever happen to the James Bond movies. Does this mean that musicals have a potential for becoming meaningful than action thrillers, or does it rather mean that film-makers just don’t like action thrillers as much?

Considering that I probably take it out of context, “Distant Voices, Still Lives” is a great film almost unrelated to any other, for me at least. I am very fascinated with this little film and wish there was more like this.

Shutter Island

Today my advisor told me that he had a black grandfather, a blonde Hispanic grandmother, another blonde Hispanic grandmother and a Indian grandfather. In combination, he has black hair and, frankly, looks like your average Spanish/Italian friend. Very impressive.

Leonardo DiCaprio seems to be some weird combination like that too, and, surprisingly enough, I think he turned out well considering the high amount of Germanness in him, harr harr. However, in “Shutter Island”, he is mostly average. Perhaps this could summarize the film itself: Mostly average. You’d expect better from Scorsese indeed, and no amazingly nice looking Scorsese screenshots can leverage the comparably poor storywriting. Make no mistake, I enjoyed the film immensely and found it super suspenseful, but sometimes I wonder if it isn’t just me who happens to be the kind of movie-goer to feels suspense very quickly when watching a thriller like this.

Speaking of suspense, I have gotten into TV shows lately. I am slowly allowing myself to watch a small selection of them, and boy they are addicting, namely “Burn Notice” and “Better Off Ted”. (See the little page dedicated to them.) To be honest, they question my love for the “higher art”, i.e. cinema because whenever I have to ask myself what I would like to watch, lately it is the TV show. Feature films are just too long, too dragging and require too much energy to watch. Plus I feel compelled to blog them. This is a dire crisis here!

Ultimately, I still can’t believe the end, the “revelation” which, for a change, was so cliché that I was able to easily predict it. I think I can’t forgive them for that. Apart from that though, the development of the story is quite a feast. And the actors to boot! Emily Mortimer, Patricia Clarkson, Max von Sydow (!)… I was highly impressed. Scorsese indeed.

Un condamné à mort s’est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut

Lately, Shii has been complaining about how I don’t watch as many “intelligent” movies anymore. Though I still think that “Ramen Girl” was incredibly horrible and “Mona Lisa Smile” is a guilty pleasure, I still love “Catch me if you can”. I remember times (go back over 10 pages through this blog, < a href=“http://www.naruhodou.org/choco/page/15/“>15 to be exact) when I thought that almost every film I have seen was excellent and just. Sadly, this is not the case anymore, but at the same time, I don’t feel like I am enjoying myself any less. I am striving to find a sweet balance between ‘meaningful’ films and those purely for enjoyment, as well as highly acclaimed, popular ones and completely obscure, lovely surprises. Finding a surprise is probably the hardest thing in the world to do, and I heavily rely upon mouth-to-mouth recommendation for that. *nudge nudge*

A couple days ago, I went back to my posting on “Le Trou” when I read Gorp’s comment on “A man escaped”. For some inexplicable reason, it gave me a strong desire to watch the film. Even now, after seeing it, I find it still inexplicable why I like the film so much. Maybe the suspense of whether he will be able to escape or not is totally gripping me? Maybe I see a deeper meaning (the biblical one maybe) in the happenings of the film and am fascinated by it? Or perhaps I just enjoy the technicalities of the film, the way he describes how he fabricates tools for his escape.

Faith, psychology, character who talk a little bit but not too much, I can’t believe I find this film to make much more sense than the slightly confusing relationships presented in “Au hazard Balthazar” (which is mostly only great because of Balthazar himself). I can’t say that I have become a fan of Bresson yet, but at least I’d say I find his films interesting. It could mean that I read too much into these films, it might also mean that I have not spent enough time finding out about them – either way, I totally want to see “Mouchette” now.

Source Code

In fact, surprisingly enough we do have a very nice movie theater close to university. It’s a modern one with good equipment and very comfortable seats, I loved it. They also have student tickets (9$ in comparison to the 12$), which is very pleasant. I have a feeling that almost everybody who goes here is a student though.

“Source Code” is one of those action movies with grand explosions and nice effects which work best in a cinema. I wonder if I would have enjoyed it as much outside of this environment – it’s just like how I am glad to have seen “Inception” in an IMAX. Apart from that, there is not too much to say about the film. I thought it worked very well and found it to be very suspenseful. Oh God, I was on the verge of crying when he called his father! That was so cute and touching…

But what can I say. First of all, the technobabble hurt my ears. I went all RAWWWRRRR when they said “quantum physics” for the third time! Ugh. Second, the end sucks. Or more like: The happy end is destroying the mood of something that could have been the perfect ending of the story… Screw you, Hollywood. I am aware that there was a foreboding (oh God, Anish Kapoor’s bean was so disturbingly prominent in the film?) about the end, but I didn’t like it. Third, the romance between the main characters were annoying as hell. I didn’t like the actress of Christina (though she wasn’t necessarily bad, just nothing special) and the development of that love story was just action-film-like shallow. And finally, how should I put it, the main character is a soldier who, uh, is being asked to “serve his country”. There is something about this conception of soldiers that irked me.

Apart from that, yes, the film was extremely enjoyable to watch. Suspenseful, a little funny at times and great because Jake Gyllenhaal is a great actor. He saves the film, making it believable and gripping. And he is so strangely manly in the movie? I also like Vera Farmiga now. While she annoyed me in “The Departed” (somehow, you’d expect an actress to be better looking in this role, or at least more sexy), I must admit that I have a thing for her now. There is something strangely beautiful in her eyes and in her face that fascinates me about her. I don’t really know what it is! Even so, if I was a man I would probably love the look she puts on when she acts worried, haha.

In essence, I don’t think the film is all that ground-breaking, but I liked seeing it. “Groundhog Day” or even “Butterfly Effect” are probably better time loop/time travel movies to watch and I definitely have to watch the former, but even if I don’t find “Source Code” all that smart as some critics do, I think it’s a well-directed, well-acted and basically an all-round-well film.

Memories of Murder

Ah, what to say about this movie? It’s a typical Bong Joon-ho – funny and full of idiotic character who fight all the time. But, the film is so incredibly much smarter than you’d think at first glance, just like every single other one of Bong Joon-ho’s films!

I absolutely loved the character development in the film, the use of music – it’s indescribable how well the scenes work in the film. The film is like an avalanche; it gets better the longer you watch it, until it culminates in the ending where nothing is resolved but oh my God, the underlying meaning for the characters. The case changed them; and the incredible timing of these final scenes displays that in a way that I find beyond awesome.

As far as I can see, the internet is full of laudatios on the film. Much more than “The Host” (which I still think is Bong Joon-ho’s absolute best), “Memories of Murder” seems to be a moviegoers’ and critics’ favorite – very understandably so. I feel like there is not very much I can add to it myself except: Wow, Bong Joon-ho’s movies are all brilliant. If anything, I’d say “Mother” is the best film to start with, and if you liked that, you would probably enjoy the other films of Korea’s greatest master of black humor.

L’avventura

And I have no idea how he does that because I always get this strange feeling that Antonioni is too obscure, too sophisticated, too something. But what can I say, he touches my heart like no other. That does not actually mean that he touches my heart the most (that would probably be Almodovár or certain specific films), it means that Antonioni fills a gap that nobody can reach to: The emptiness of the soul, which is some piece of luxury for Sofia Coppola, but a tragedy and a question mark for Antonioni.

Antonioni is perhaps the only author who can depict superficial relationships in such a gripping way. I would like to believe that there is more to our relationships than what he is showing, yet I cannot see it, and that is haunting me. Perhaps we have now moved onto a world in which we are satisfied with entertaining and being entertained, yet Antonioni’s question of the purpose of relationships – of life even – remains unanswered. Perhaps we are now better because we are working (unlike his very idle characters) or because we are striving towards some greater good, but does that make us exist? Does that make our relationships any deeper, do they feel anymore real because of that? I doubt it very much.

The arbitrariness of love is so scary in this film; everybody seems to be succumbed to it, and perhaps that is one of the reasons why I found the premise of “L’Eclisse” as well as “Deserto Rosso” more intriguing. “L’avventura” practically shows the prime example of the completely worthless male, and if it were not for the amazingly pretty pictures, great cinematography and a wonderful Monica Vitti, the urge of wanting to jump at the male character’s throat is just too strong.

I love Monica Vitti’s grimaces. So not like her, and yet so brilliant?

Words cannot describe how much I love Antonioni’s pictures, and yet the boredom and depth of his films sometimes get at me. Now I have extremely high hopes for “La Notte”, even if a melancholic Monica Vitti will not be in it. Antonioni’s films are just that beautiful, both as pictures and as a characterization of ‘unreal’ people.

Mona Lisa Smile

Maybe this is the worst part of the whole film: The incredible shallowness of the place of art in the film. It’s as if modern art is the exact opposite of conservative ideals (sadly, it is not) and classical art is the embodiment of traditions (luckily, it is not).

I could go on and on about the shallowness of the film, but it’s been done. Who cares. It’s not like you can expect anything like depth from a Julia Roberts film. Instead, you can be sure that, as long as she plays a cheerful character, you will be completely overwhelmed by her cheerfulness and the breathtaking smile, which turns her large mouth from a problem to an asset. Personally I have always liked the Julia Roberts type even when it’s a silly love comedy, and I generally like her as an actress.
But this film has so much more than just Julia Roberts. We see some of my absolute favorite youngsters including La Dunst, La Stiles and an absolutely wonderful Maggie Gyllenhaal (OMG I want to see “Secretary” now). I couldn’t care less about the girl who played Conny, but it’s not like she was dragging the cast unnecessarily. The way these people play together is perhaps the only reason why the film is a little bit better than your average silly chick flick; I have especially enjoyed Kirsten Dunst as the conservative yet strong-willed girl who, of course, ends up acknowledging what a wonderful person her teacher was. It is all very sappy, but this script makes those characters shine and I am perfectly happy with that.

Of course the storyline itself is relevant to my own interests. I have, to some degree, always wanted to be a “wife”, in some sense the partner to somebody greater and I know how incredibly untimely that is, and how it would be betraying femininity and all that. I am certainly not going to calculate the optimal temperature of a meat loaf, nobody would be satisfied with just that. But in some sense, the film is outdated – it is not the question of housewife vs. career woman anymore, it’s significantly more subtle than that. Or perhaps I should say that other questions, also apparent in the film, are more interesting: Why do “free-spirited” women need to be the ones who are being tossed aside? Why are you considered conservative if you want to marry and have a family?

The whole movie is so one-sided like its black-and-white view on art history, oh and I don’t even have to mention how I totally couldn’t care less about the main character’s awkward love story. (Her interaction with the students was indeed much more interesting.) There is almost no merit in the film besides the interaction of some of my favorite actresses in roles I was totally smitten with, but when it comes to that, the film certainly delivers.

Bullets over Broadway

My Woody Allen chronology works like this: There’s the Diane Keaton time, his early years which ended with “A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy”, his middle years which, for me, go all the way up to 2005 with “Match Point” and then his late years until today. These middle years span quite a lot of time and have some sort of variation to them, but ultimately, for me, they mostly sandwich Woody Allen’s best times (for me, at least). But incidentally, none of the films during that times really stood out to me, and among those, “Bullets over Broadway” is my absolute favorite so far.

So, what did I dislike about the film in comparison to Allen’s greatest masterpieces? Perhaps the fact that, similar to most Woody Allen films around the time, nobody in this film is having a serious relationship – at all. Not even the brilliant John Cusack can make up for it. He is doing a great job considering his young age, normally you’d expect somebody to have the age of Larry David to give off a believable Woody Allen alter ego. But then again, the last scene sort of makes up for it. Just like when Woody Allen realizes through the Marx Brothers that life is worth living, or comes to realize that he is in love with a 17-year-old at the end of “Manhattan”, Cusack’s character got the lovely redemption when he finally realizes that he is no artist. It gave the whole film something like a meaning, a lesson for life which elevates it over these films like “Everyone says I love you” or “A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy” which were very funny, but less, uh, meaningful. I probably like “Everyone says I love you” because I find Julia Roberts absolutely perfect for Woody Allen movies, and adore Drew Barrymore swallowing her engagement ring.
On the other hand, however, I thought the film was a little less funny. Sure, I have thoroughly enjoyed it, but without an overly neurotic main character a Woody Allen film doesn’t live up to its potential; sadly, John Cusack is a mildly neurotic character who is mostly just confused about himself.

On a side note, I am amused that Woody Allen’s trademark line “I can’t believe this!” has been spoken by the most unlikeable character of the whole film, the girlfriend with the horrible voice (what was her name again?)

There was something I cannot quite pinpoint why I enjoyed “Bullets over Broadway” less than certain other films of the master, but is that due to high expectations? In general, it’s a wonderful movie, one that wins on almost every account except for the lack of Woody Allen himself, and I can see how it is a little bit like Annie Hall in how it gets better the often you see it. In fact, “Annie Hall” is the prime example of such a film, and maybe one day “Bullets over Broadway” will enter the list of these films too.