Category: Movies

L’Aile ou la cuisse

La cuisse, bien sûr! I love love chicken thighs, though when it comes to a whole chicken, I prefer wings (they are typically more crispy and tasty somehow?). Today’s dinner is rice with two different types of bok choy sautéed in the grease of bacon, ahhh! So nice… it’s incredible how great simple meal can be – though unfortunately I am perhaps the only Asian in the world who does not own chopsticks.

I was happy to have immediately recognized “Duchemin” as Dumont and Michelin, both of which I have never paid attention to. In fact, I barely know anything about high quality food at all, and ultimately I think I prefer home-made or simple everyday food after all (well prepared, of course!). So for a comedy the premise is absolutely wonderful and almost impossible to beat. The only part I found a little weak was the son whose circus endeavours feel quite ridiculous. (Okay, there is another aspect I disliked: Marguerite serves no single purpose but to be a pretty face – even her actress is pretty shitty here.)

The part about taking down Tricatel is a lot of fun though; I mean, hey, factory food IS atrocious unless it’s lasagna, ahaha. The storyline is full of plotholes (how the heck did he get his taste back so randomly?!) but Louis de Funès’ funny faces absolutely make up for these kinds of details.

I think, my favorite experience of watching somebody cook was in a Waffle House at an intersection in North Charleston. A couple was taking care of the store, and while I was waiting for my chicken sandwich (a midnight snack), I had the pleasure to sit at the bar and watch the old man prepare one of those 6 dollar breakfasts: Eggs, hashbrowns etc. Everything was freshly made! I was fairly surprised and pleased… It totally made me want to have breakfast there but unfortunately I did not have an opportunity to.

All in all, it’s a very enjoyable film, very French. As a comedy, it worked wonderfully and I can very well see myself become a Louis de Funès fan now.

Trollflöjten

How weird it sounds in Swedish! It’s like hearing German Christmas songs in English – I always want to sing the original lyrics. The same thing happens here, but sadly I don’t know the lyrics here, ahahaha.

The loli in the audience is so incredibly weird! I understand that my facial expressions when watching operas are probably not particularly lively either, but she seems extraordinarily stoic to me. Of course she is cute and the subtle smile suggests that she enjoys it, but something just feels wrong. The children I have seen in actual performances look different to me – they are either completely bored or very into it and much more expressive.

Ah, it’s technically the third time I am seeing this opera. It’s to be noted that I have never seen any other opera more than once, and “The Magic Flute” was the first opera I have seen ever since high school is over. (They took us to the opera in high school too.) For many reasons, this is THE opera for me, the one opera that stands out in comparison to everything else. (I don’t even get why some people consider “Figaro” as Mozart’s best opera.) “The Magic Flute” has lovely characters, wonderful arias for many characters and singing children; it’s a fairy tale full of symbolism and an absolutely unique story. I can’t think of anything that could come close to this, with its catchy tunes and incredible potential to be produced in a grand way. Verdi and Puccini may be my overall favorites, touching my heart to the core, but when it comes to a single opera, it is this one, even before “Turandot”, “La Traviata” and “Les Contes de Hoffmann”.
Now here’s the curious thing: I think I have never been able to get the story. It’s like a puzzle where I have every single piece but I just can’t put them together. Bergman’s version is easier to understand than Mozart’s original (or more like Schikaneder’s, for that matter), that is actually nice.

The production, of course, is pretty old, but even then I am disturbed by how empire the dresses look like (why?) and how unnecessarily beautiful all the characters are. Even Papageno is very cute and the Queen of the Night outshines your standard opera singer even when she distorts her face.
All the singers are okay; this sound feels like it comes out of a studio instead of a live performance, and perhaps this is even intended. At any rate, I have a hard time figuring out how good these unusually young looking actors are – as actors, I thought Pamina was pretty bad, Papageno was pretty good and the others are acceptable. The best part of this production is how the mix between film and opera performance is achieved. On the one hand, this movie is a clearly a stage play; on the other hand, I liked the display of the audience very much, and was absolutely thrilled when they showed the actors backstage right before the second act. The dance scenes at the end are also extremely lovely… it totally made me think of Neuenfels, ahaha.

This is definitely not Bergman’s masterpiece (especially when compared with Persona it becomes obvious why) but it seems to be a fairly lovely side project.

University of Laughs

And I don’t know why. The few times I actually went into a theatre were rather disappointing. While I remember one single very good performance in my life (“As You Like It” performed in, uh, Austrian), I thought that literally everything else that I have seen was subpar. I have enjoyed stage plays but I can’t get used to them. They just always look different than I expected maybe? I have no idea.

But I do love my plays, and I love everything that deals with plays. A few years ago, when you asked me about my favorite books, literally all of them would be stage plays. This certainly is also the case for movies, I love “Dogville” and “Closer”, and when I found out that “University of Laughs” is adapted from a two-man play, I was extremely excited. At that point, I had no idea that the movie was actually about scriptwriting itself. But now, I found that my expectations were exceeded, by far.

When I watched the film, it felt like in those two hours, there was nothing in the world but me and the film itself. No homework, no research, no interhuman relationships, nothing could have distracted me from it. It’s not escapism, it’s like reminding yourself that there is more in the world than the (now very small!) realm in which I am living right now. There is such a thing as a creative mind confronting the authorities – and even if we didn’t have censorship today, this antagonism will exist by definition. It’s fascinating.

Yes, you have to die for the steak!

Words cannot describe the greatness with which the two actors played out this story, and its writing is just so, so brilliant. “University of Laughs” is humanity put into a single play and I think, if I have to recommend a film to Loris now, it would be this one. (I’m actually very interested in what he thinks, my unconditional excitement for the film makes me wonder if I have overlooked something, if there is anything wrong with it.)

Shinjuku Incident

Pixelmatsch is right, this is totally not a Jackie Chan movie (even though he is doing well!)

So yeah, on the one hand, I thought that Jackie Chan really works in this film. He is believable in this character he is playing, and since he is by far not just a one-dimensional actor (and old enough to have accumulated experience), it doesn’t surprise me that he could pull a film off like this.

There also is nothing to criticize about the storyline, which is suspenseful, engaging and in some scenes quite funny. It also helps that Jackie Chan was backed up by some fairly good actresses as well as Milchi! I didn’t even mind the fact that the movie was majorly anti-Japanese (who cares? I was surprised that nobody took offense at that though) and brought out literally every cliché Shinjuku offers. Silly looking western prostitutes, pachinko, goth and punk kids, you name it. “Shinjuku Incident” is not really a portrait of society because such a portrait wouldn’t use cheap clichés for whatever reason. The use of such clichés in fact makes the story less real, putting it into a world of fantasy which is much more suited for, well, a comedy.

But, what can I say? I was depressed after seeing the film. That is the fallacy of Jackie Chan making a sad movie – it makes me sad! Where I was hopeful and hoping for a good story, I was completely crushed! Very silly, I know. It’s not like I cried or anything, but I still thought it was amazingly sad.

Sad.

The King and the Clown

I am completely at a loss at what to say. This was the weirdest Korean movie I have seen ever since “The Good Lawyer’s Wife” (and hey, that one was just absolutely crazy) and I although this certainly is a better film, I still think it absolutely made no sense to me.

At first the film was indeed very funny, and I was rooting for the characters to make the king laugh etc. etc. I loved the sexual jokes, I liked the plays, I was very amused at the latent homosexuality in the whole film, I even liked the interaction between the king, his ministers and the main characters. At least at first, all the characters were funny and likable too. I am a big fan of the topic about clowns who tell the truth, there is some sort of lovely philosophical depth to it. I like criticism to the institutions (including the school), and the premise of this story is no exception. I’m very pleased that this film was first banned in China.
But from there, things just went… weird. So the king is a crazy paranoid idiot with a sad story, okay. But why would the main characters go all emo? During the last 30 minutes, I kept thinking “Why~~~?” I know what the end meant and I’m not exactly sure if I like that because the scene beforehand failed to touch me. Every touching South Korean film ends with a rewind to when the main characters were still together, and in most cases such as JSA and Welcome to Dongmakgol, I am moved to tears. This case just felt utterly lame.

Perhaps I was just incapable of understanding the film – I think something great could have come out of it. As it stands though, the film was not all too enjoyable. In my next life, I would like to be born as a grad student.

Elizabethtown

I thought it was surprisingly good! I mean, really, what more can you expect when you are dealing with a romantic comedy featuring Legolas?

The German Wikipedia article calls the film a “Tragikomödie” and the English one calls Kirsten Dunst’s character ‘bubbly, shallow cinematic creature’. I agree with the first assertion (the film was actually much more serious and attempted to be much deeper than I thought!) but the second one – what the heck. Neither the film nor its characters are oozing smartness, and I think that is completely besides the point. Characters in romantic comedies are way too overlooked: Because of all the clichés, they can seem amazingly stupid, but let’s face it. Humans are stupid. If they would act all smartly, they wouldn’t be real or have any value as everyday-type characters. And on the other hand, a ‘shallow’ character like Kirsten Dunst’s in this film can say things that seem silly but show some sort of reflection upon herself, the world and whatnot. These little truths coming out of the mouth of a girl from some small town in the south of the U.S. can just as well be as meaningful and, well, true as anybody else’s. If everybody’s life was so observant and full of those many little details in a Hollywoodian romantic comedy – the world would be a better, richer place. To me, Claire was a perfectly likable character.

I am a sucker for road trips. If it wasn’t for that all so cheesy ending, the little part about the road trip perfectly makes sense to me. Normally road trip movies are all about the trip itself, finding yourself (or your love, for that matter) on the road, dealing with shitty interhuman relationships along the line; here, it is also about the things he saw and his interaction with the environment as some quasi-tourist – alone. He is doing the road trip I want to do, that alone is very valuable to me.

Apart from that, yes the story is silly, but a lot of fun. Paula Deen is lovely, the whole environment and the romanticism of the South is absolutely lovely (yeah, here’s a secret admirer of all things Southern speaking – turkey hashbrown casserole!) and finally, the film actually had a bunch of funny scenes. For me, “Elizabethtown” was one of the better romantic comedies, it felt very ‘me’, at least.

Silmido

What can I say: I thought this is some war movie (technically speaking, it totally is not) and, even worse, the main reason why I have heard of the film was that it was the highest-grossing Korean film from 2001-2003. I have been meaning to watch all of the highest-grossing of all times starting JSA (they are “Friend”, “Silmido”, “Taegukgi”, “The King and the Clown” and “The Host”) which should not be too hard since I have only have 3 more films to go.

“Silmido” is so incredibly much more than that. Oh my God MANLY KOREAN TEARS! I didn’t actually cry (unlike when I saw “Welcome to Dongmakgol” or “JSA”) but I was so incredibly close; perhaps even closer than for “Le salaire de la peur” when I thought I was already close enough. Especially since I had no idea about the premise of the story (except that I remembered the story was based on some true story), I was completely unprepared about the way this story would unfold. I expected them to die trying to kill some North Koreans, but it all came so much worse. Oh the tragedy – The candy! And they became such great friends too!
I am not cut out for seeing tragic war films. I was devastated after “Letters from Iwo Jima”, and for “Silmido” there were a few moments I lied in bed yesterday and scenes from the film would play in front of my eyes. It was just that sad.

Maybe “Silmido” is not actually a great movie (when, in comparison, “Welcome to Dongmakgol” and “JSA” are), but it surely was well-written, suspenseful and showed the whole breadth of the tragedy. I thought it absolutely deserved its success.

The Departed

How long has it been since I saw the movie the first time? It’s probably 7 years or something. Ever since, I have re-watched it more then a couple of times and I perhaps know every detail of the story inside-out. So it’s literally impossible for me to see this film without constantly thinking of the other.

First of all, the major improvement. It might seem like a lame plot device, but turning their respective love stories into one single woman was fairly brilliant. I liked how their relationships evolved and more than any other love story in awhile, I thought they seemed very realistic and, to some degree, very simple. They had normal-sounding mature interesting conversations and it was made very clear in what kind of way she was drawn to both of those men.

The rest, oh well. Jack Nicholson is a genius and Leonardo DiCaprio is actually great in this role, even Alec Baldwin was fairly suited for it. The only weaknesses of the film were the lady (she looks so… long!) and, unexpectedly, Matt Damon. I thought he was great as Mr. Ripley back then, and in general I have always liked him (I loved “Good Will Hunting” after all!), but in comparison to other higher caliber actors, he’s pretty weak.
Martin Scorsese is a great director, there is no doubt about that. Considering how much I love the original, I give him a lot of credit for re-interpreting a film I care about very much – and succeeding at convincing me. I found it a little silly how certain scenes in the new film were exact copies of the old one (that feels a little uncreative I suppose?), but in general, Scorsese was pretty great at giving the film the “Scorsese touch” while re-writing Sam/Costello’s character into a true Nicholson-ish devil.

The only problem I had with the film was how it totally changed the Matt Damon character. In the Chinese version, he was more real, more loving, more human in how he was doubting himself and willing to change. The whole beauty about the film stems from how this man finally put his life into his own hands and decided to become ‘one of the good ones’. This aspect has almost completely disappeared from Scorsese’s version.

I liked the film and totally thought the 2 1/2 hours passed in a minute. Perhaps next time when I re-watch Infernal Affairs (and this film totally made me want to re-watch it!), I will watch both together for comparison.