About Chocolate Parfaits

This is Spinal Tap

It doesn’t happen very often that I end up watching some film without getting a recommendation and without ever having heard of anyone participating in its creation. If that happens, the film is typically one of the films in 1000 films list from TSPDT (which finally got updated!) or, much more likely, it’s a film in the Criterion Collection. I have discovered “Metropolitan” and “Branded to Kill” in this manner, and when that happens I am always glad that such films exist. One can add “This is Spinal Tap” to the list.

I love how the band came to existence after the actual film. It’s the definitely the kind of film that just screams cult film to you. When we started watching the film, nobody in our party actually knew whether Spinal Tap was a real band or not – everybody first considered the possibility that it was. I think that the content of the film makes it absolutely clear that they are not real, but the acting and the cinematography are definitely good enough to fool people. I am not surprised that the film ended up being so popular amongst a certain group. If any movie can produce the reaction “Oh wow this is totally about me” I acknowledge that it must be good somehow. (Note the difference to the likes of “Twilight” or “Harry Potter” – those are franchises which rely upon wishful thinking, not on actual identification.) In the case of “This is Spinal Tap”, this goodness comes with a great dose of black humor. In fact, it is an unusual type of black humor because some lines just make you want to laugh out loud, which I think you don’t see that much in parodies and satires.

I still remember how just a few years ago, “It might get loud” had an emotional impact on me when I saw it (though most of it can probably be attributed to the fact that I saw it in theaters) despite the fact that I was not a fan of the people involved. From an intellectual standpoint, “This is Spinal Tap” is easily the more superior movie whereas the latter is just another instance of rather pretentious people talking about music like it’s holy or something. I have no intention to ever re-watch “It might get loud” while I could see “This is Spinal Tap” over and over again, yet I would say that my enjoyment of the film is of a rather emotionally distant nature. It shows how I prefer to laugh over this whole music business, and I don’t really have the emotional attachment to it anymore which I had as a teenager. I am finally grown up?

Perhaps this is the point where you are going to tell me that you have already seen the movie, and that it’s a famous cult classic. But hey, just let me be happy about having discovered this masterpiece ‘on my own’, alright?

Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

It’s not that easy to understand Italian sometimes, I see it most clearly during operas (on the one hand, languages always sound different when singing but you typically have a lot of time to think about what that line you heard meant, ehehe). Since I never really watch anything Italian, my vocabulary is absolutely terrible, and most likely I am falling victim to many false friends coming from French and Spanish. Even so, understanding some of the lines really helps getting into the feeling of films like this.

From what I can see, Vittorio de Sica’s romantic comedy films seem to get much more criticism than praise these days. I guess artsy people just want depressing neorealism and cannot imagine ‘their’ director to get into making movies for the big audience. I think it is quite obvious that nobody here is trying to show ‘the real Italy’ here; it is the exact opposite of neorealism after all. The first segment looks like a musical 90% of the time, the second almost exclusively plays in a car with only two characters and the last one is set in the apartment of a high class prostitute. There is absolutely no realism here, and the stories are all character-driven with a certain amount of suspension of disbelief necessary to enjoy it.

Overall, I liked the second segment the best, quite closely followed by the third. The second segment showed a more serious, much less likable Sophia Loren as the vain, materialistic wife of a rich guy. She’s probably as despicable as anyone can be, but what made her character nice was the way she managed to lie to herself and her lover about it. It is ironic how the particular moment in which she makes him believe that their relationship had some deeper meaning actually leads to a car accident in which she finally reveals her true colors. Of course her disdain for everything good is being hinted at beforehand, and those details lead to the climax of this little story quite nicely. Overall I thought this segment was beautifully concise and well-written, where the chemistry between Loren and Mastroianni shows a different side of themselves for a change. I liked that.

The third segment was partially silly, but perhaps that is exactly what I enjoyed about it. Mara’s apartment looks enviable and her dresses make me want to have that body so I can dress like that every day. The segment is not only a feast for the eyes, but also provides much amusement, mostly contributed by Mastroianni’s character who may be too cowardly to marry the woman he likes, but is attached enough to play along with her charades. It is nice to see that Mastroianni, who tends to play rather dignified characters in the veins of 8 1/2, is willing to make silly faces in front of an undressing Sophia Loren.

The first segment, which I have yet to mention, was not exactly boring but seemed very dragged out. I liked its premise and it had many funny elements, but the end of the story was rather anticlimactic and I kept wondering if somebody else was going to happen. The way it was, this part was rather written as a fairytale at which end everybody was happy. Nevertheless, it IS irresponsible to produce one child after another, and I don’t quite see how this film is a commentary on poverty in Naples. It’s just too silly to be considered such. In fact, if Vittorio de Sica has ever made somebody superficial and silly, it’s this.

There are tons of “foreign” movies whose Oscar I find rather dubious (“Préparez vos mouchoirs” is a good example), and this film is very borderline on that. I personally liked it, but apart from the second segment I find its merit rather questionable in comparison to similar films, like “Divorzio all’italiana”. With that said, I do want to see “Seduced and Abandoned”.

Matrimonio all’italiana

After having seen “Divorzio all’italiana”, I would have expected this film to be by Pietro Germi as well. But no, this is Vittorio de Sica of “Bicycle Thieves” fame. Criterion has tons of de Sica films, but this one (even though it got an Oscar) is not amongst them. I am not surprised. It seems like de Sica had a phase like Gus van Sant had with “Good Will Hunting” and “Finding Forrester” – he made a few films seemingly purely with commercial intentions, without much artistry behind it. But then again, if I had the choice between re-watching “Matrimonio all’italiana” and re-visiting “Bicycle Thieves”, I have to admit that I would rather go for “Matrimonio all’italiana”.

The Wikipedia article of this film suggests that the story has nothing to offer and could have been told in 10 minutes. Maybe that is true; if you kick out all the flashbacks, the barebone of the story consists of a simplistic “man gets conned into marriage, but by the end realizes that he loved the woman after all and marries her for real”. Nevertheless, the flashbacks provide emotional support for the character of Filumena. It’s no fun to see Sophia Loren play the cunning witch who coerces her rich guy into marriage because she doesn’t pull off unlikable characters too well, I think she only works if she can inspire sympathy. Surprisingly enough, sympathy is exactly what works so well in this film. There are some overly kitsch scenes, especially with those sons (all of whom cannot act and don’t even look alike), but it is those flashbacks in which we learn how Filumena’s love for Domenico grew and how much she went through in this relationship with him. Filumena’s character may be clichéd, but oh so likable. I guess I just have a weak spot for the woman who wants really wants to be with a man yet is unable to play the submissive girly girl that he desires.
I remember having seen many films with Sophia Loren on German television when I was young, and perhaps this film was even amongst them. From what I can remember, La Loren has never looked as great as she did in this film. The film looks like it was made to provide Sophia Loren eye candy, and for that it really works.

For the most part, I thought this was an amusing, enjoyable film. If only it had toned down its kitsch a little bit, I probably would have liked it as much as its “Divorzio all’italiana”. That film had a much better script and an actually witty ending, but “Matrimonio” wins for the lovely characterization of its main characters.

Week-end

The Berlinale has started! Just like in the last 4 years, Pixelmatsch will be blogging about all the films he sees, and I will subsequently try to get all the films he deems recommendable. Actually I was not able to see any of the films last year. Scandalous!

Well, what is more appropriate to see than a film which used to be in the run for the Golden Bear? Godard won it for “Alphaville”, but (not too surprisingly) was not able to do see two years later with “Week-end”. “Week-end” is considered Godard’s last Nouvelle Vague film, and in fact I have never seen any of his films after that period. Considering that his next phase is called the political one, I think that “Week-end” is already a good start into that (so is “Masculin Féminin” in my opinion). Most of the Nouvelle Vague films I have seen so far were never overtly political. Most of them may contain political and sociocritical elements, but with few exceptions they are almost all about relationships after all. In “Week-end” that elements is gone after the first 10 minutes or so, despite the generally interesting premise of a married couple where both seem to try to kill the other one. That plot line never comes back, and instead we are thrown into something like a surreal, almost episodical road trip.

The absurdity was actually what I liked best about the film, it led to quite a few humorous scenes and we all know how much I like black humour. But apart from that, the film was not exactly enjoyable to see. Our main characters are stuck in traffic for some 15 minutes or so, and all you can hear is constant honking – not exactly the thing you want for a somewhat relaxing evening. I literally got a headache from that. The middle part after they got out of traffic was the best in the film, but unfortunately the film had to end with a group of strange hippies whose political agenda is unclear, so I am not really sure how that part of the film relates to the rest after they reach Oinville, the actual destination of the road trip.

When I saw “Alphaville”, I thought the story was confusing and the film must be appreciated for its details. That also somewhat applies to “Week-end” with the difference that “Week-end” is more political and even more confusing, but less stylish and sci-fi at the same time. It is therefore probably no surprise which one of the two I like more. I haven’t seen a Godard film for years (in fact it’s been 3!) and it feels strange to see his work again. I definitely thought it was interesting, but I am not particularly impressed.

Chinatown

Now “Chinatown” is the kind of movie that is really hard to write about. My feelings about the film are rather unclear, and it is so incredibly highly acclaimed too. Plus Polanski is a household name and not only because of that rape story. Expectations are high…

What can I say, the film kind of grew on me in its second half when the events felt like they were rolling on their own. The more was revealed in the story, the more I was interested in its outcome. I also liked the visual style and its obvious hommage to film noirs especially in the scenes where you see Jack and Evelyn together in a car. At the same time, I can’t help but feel that the film has strange weaknesses. First of all, there may be interesting characters in the story (the main character is a typical Sam Spade-like guy and the villains are actually smart) but the main female character is completely boring. There is a scandal about her past (but it doesn’t feel all that scandalous in this film somehow) but her current self appears more like a whiny damsel in distress than a femme fatale who takes matters into her own hands. In fact, for most of the film she acts contradictory and panicky, rather than driven and vengeful (like most femme fatales would). All she does is running away, and she even fails to recognize the possibilities of using Jack or anyone else. She sleeps with him without the firm intent to use it for her, heck it even isn’t clear what feelings she has for anybody besides her daughter. If anything, she is totally an anti-femme-fatale besides her stylish looks which she never seems to even use for her own sake. What’s more, there is no such thing as a femme fatale who has something else to protect besides herself.

After finishing with my nagging on the main female character, there is nothing else about the film I want to go into detail about. I would like to mention how there are tons of crime films whose revelations were more interesting for me to see. I loved “L.A. Confidential” and when I think of an intricate and complex plot, I would rather think of “Miller’s Crossing” than this film. Heck the makers of the film weren’t even sure about the ending, where the last single minute defined the entire outcome. Also what’s up with that quasi-racist depiction of Chinatown (or any other Asian characters) in the first place? Since we are already speaking about political incorrectness, how come the good main character beats up a woman who does not fight back and is a rape victim? (Now you could say that Jack Nicholson’s character is not only portrayed as good, but certainly he is portrayed as moral… except for that woman-beating thing.) Feminism taken aside, no man can possibly aspire to be ‘good’ if he even considers beating up another defenseless human without giving him or her a chance to speak. It’s really that simple.

The more I happen to think about this film, the less I like it. Even though that one kind of objectified women as well, I thought that “Knife in the Water” was brilliant, and I really liked “Repulsion” but Polanski is strangely capable of making both sophisticated and dumb movies.

Antonio Gaudí

It’s very easy to blog about this movie. First of all, I liked it and can rave about it indefinitely, which is convenient because everybody enjoys listening to praises. A praise can be serious or funny – most of all it’s inoffensive, whereas criticism is best with some humor (which we all know I am terrible at). Second, the film is somewhat critically acclaimed. Criterion has 4 of Teshigahara’s movies, of which “Antonio Gaudí” is certainly the least accessible one, yet nobody will doubt that the film has some artistic merit. You won’t feel like reading a shiny example of bad taste when I tell you that I loved the film, much au contraire. Yet finally, and that is perhaps the most important point, the film is so obscure and weird that nobody will probably want to see it. Pip and I are rabid Teshigahara fans, which is the very reason we saw this movie to begin with, but most people at not. I can probably say whatever I want about the movie, and nobody will feel offended because they don’t know the film nor will they feel like watching it. This is an almost dialogue-free documentary about Antonio Gaudí aka the master of strange architecture after all. You will quickly see that you don’t really have any reason to see this film unless you are a Teshigahara fanboy (check!) and interested in Gaudí’s architecture (check!).

The lack of dialogue is probably the film’s most distinctive feature. But let me digress first. I have previously said that I expect good dialogue unless the director is Tarkovsky. Of course I said that on a whim, but it is mostly true. The same strangely applies to Teshigahara, but for a slightly different reason. At first glance, Tarkovsky and Teshigahara have a few things in common. They are both masters of visual beauty, probably more so than any other directors I know, and both of their films hinge on supernatural or science-fiction elements while uncovering some humanity or human condition. Even if the stories are entirely different, I get the feeling that Tarkovsky and Teshigahara are largely looking for the same thing in their films, which can often be understood as allegories or parables, making the films feel timeless. The existentialist “who are we?” question is ubiquitous in all of their films. They also both didn’t make very many movies and liked to adapt literature but that is rather minor and can be said about many others. Cultural differences aside (of which I don’t really see any), I find their use of image to be very different. Tarkovsky’s cinematography is utterly beautiful because it creates atmosphere. We accept that his films are slow because these beautiful images set the mood and are thus necessary to the experience of the film. In fact, I feel like Tarkovsky could make anything look beautiful, he’s like a pre-2000 Instagram except with a distinct personal style. To Tarkovsky, dialogue is meant to make an impact, and sparsity of it helps to emphasize the relatively thin, but important plot. Teshigahara seems to be the exact opposite to me. His films are not exactly lacking in dialogue (or at least it doesn’t feel like that to me), and we do not linger on shots for that long. But what really creates this feeling of density is my impression that these images have something to say. A long time ago I read in a review on “Woman in the Dunes” that the sand is the film’s greatest main protagonist. All these mesmerizing images in Teshigahara’s films have a meaning, symbolic or no, and one gets the feeling that these images partake in the storytelling and – partially – drive the plot. It’s not like Teshigahara’s films have no atmosphere, but I would say that the way he composes his shots goes beyond providing a ‘background setting’.

Long story short, I believe that if there is a director who can pull off a dialogue-free film it is Teshigahara, precisely because his images speak. The first ~60 minutes are composed and edited in a way that we actually learn about Gaudí’s work, by the “simple” juxtaposition of various imagery. A combination of panorama shots and close-ups of details shows aspects of the buildings we may not have seen if we had stood in front of them, and context is provided by the little dialogue we get, and more importantly by snapshots of secondary material such as construction drawings or shots of medieval artwork. What’s more, Teshigahara photographs everyday people interacting with these buildings. It is Teshigahara’s eye for beauty which allows this film to strive and bring out the best of Gaudí’s work.

The film ends with a quote translated into Japanese and Spanish written with the Sagrada familia in the background that was only shown for a relatively short period of time. I was amused to see that I was able to read and process the Spanish translation of the quote while the text was shown, but was practically unable to read the Japanese one. It’s not surprising, but a little sad! I never studied Spanish seriously and probably already spent way more time on Japanese. But vocabulary is a bitch…

The only thing “Antonio Gaudí” lacks is Teshigahara’s usual subtle black humor (which blatantly serious Tarkovsky completely avoids), one of the reasons why I like “Pitfall” so much. But hey this is a documentary, I expected to be bored and ended up quite interested in Gaudí’s work now. If that isn’t an achievement, what is?

PS. If you are still here after my tl;dr post, someone wrote an awesome review on the film.

RoboCop

Whenever I look at a list of 100 best science fiction movies (such as this or this or this or this), I feel like they are a collection of the most famous movies out there and, more importantly, that there probably are no more than 100 science fiction films in the world worth seeing. After all, I thought “The day the earth stood still” was awfully lame and against all odds, I am also not a huge fan of “Blade Runner”. Nevertheless, I would like to see all of these films, and if it is only because sometimes the science fiction genre can be a pleasant surprise. (Watch “Moon”!) With that said, I know someone who has seen virtually all of those movies… how scary?

Despite my general interest for science fiction films, I typically avoid the more Hollywood-ish types like “RoboCop”. At first glance, “RoboCop” is mostly an action film by the guy who also did “Starship Trooper” and “Basic Instinct” after all. Oh how wrong I was. It took awhile for the story to really get going (until Murphy’s murder, in fact) but then it was a rollercaster ride. I like pretty much everything about the film. There is something gratifying about a simple story like this, where good and bad are very clear and a platonic friendship between male and female main characters is possible. At the same time, there is a reason why this film is in the Criterion collection. The film sports a great, post-apocalyptic style (despite feeling awkwardly dated) and makes subtle humorous comments on society. How many other Hollywood science-fiction movies really do that?

Even Pip said he was surprised how much he liked “RoboCop”. The film was entertaining and made you feel good, but also contains a dark, humorous side which allowed it to land very high in my esteem.

PS. Ever since we got Netflix, I have done some more research and found a website which lists all Criterion films on Netflix. (Unfortunately the list is not perfect, “The Gold Rush” is missing for example.) Hulu Plus may have all the Criterion films out there, but honestly I am not even interested in that – I don’t even use it because the commercial interruptions annoy me too much.

Wasabi

Well, without a doubt, “Wasabi” will not be on that list. According to Wikipedia and Rotten Tomatoes, the movie did very badly with critics and its Imdb score is so low that I wasn’t sure whether I still wanted to see the film. Strangely enough, the reviews on Imdb all sing its praises. What’s going on here?

All in all, it’s a pure comedy/action film with a pinch of satire thrown in. If you see the film because you expect something like “Leon” because of the Luc Besson/Jean Reno combination, then you’d be sorely disappointed. It’s a fun film (though apparently to some people in this world, fun is not enough to make a film interesting) without much real emotional drama. At the same time it’s packed with clichés which are so bad it’s good. Sometimes I even felt like I was watching a period film because the over-the-top-crazy style just looked so hilariously dated. Even the stereotypical view of Japanese youth is so outdated that it was a delight to see. Maybe this type of in-your-face humor is too ‘French’ to enjoy for some, but it’s certainly enjoyable to me.

The only thing I could truly criticize about the film is the long exposition in France. If this is a French cop in Japan movie, I would like said French cop to be in Japan within the first 10 minutes thankyouplease. The scene with the French girlfriend was totally not necessary and only added unwanted drama. The woman never appears in the film anymore anyways. The film is only roughly 1 1/2 hours long, there is not all that much time to waste. The way the film is written, it takes quite awhile to even see Yumi, and when the viewer get accustomed to her, some more screentime and development would have been nice.

Speaking of which! Ryoko Hirosue, seriously? I literally exclaimed WTF when I saw that it was the girl from “Okuribito”, ahahaha. She is an absolutely terrible actress, but when the movie progressed I also realized that she is perfect for this role. Her multitude of cute facial expressions is quite unique – her mouth is definitely her biggest asset (she shares that with Tomomi Itano and Jessica Paré, even though the charm of the latter works completely differently).

I would most likely write about this film differently if I got paid to write reviews within some other medium than my personal blog (the above paragraph certainly would not be in there, ahaha), but this is a personal blog, and personally, “Wasabi” is right up my alley. To me, Jean Reno’s wasabi eating scene is almost as memorable as RoboCop’s “You have 10 seconds to comply”. (Oh yeah, I still have to blog about that one!)

The King’s Speech

In 2011, Pip and I decided to watch all the nominated films for the Oscar that year. In the meantime, we actually managed to watch all of them, besides “The kids are all right” whose story doesn’t sound appealing to me at all and – well – the winner, “The King’s Speech”. Until today, I have absolutely no idea how that happened, since we planned to see and, on top of that, 314 explicitly recommended it. Luckily, the film is on Netflix!

After seeing “Winter’s Bone”, I got into a strange slump in which I didn’t really feel like writing about the film. Most likely it was another case in which I wanted to praise the film, but I didn’t really know how. Whenever I feel like I have a hard time justifying my impressions of a film, I easily slip into a writer’s block which could take over all the films I see afterwards. Yesterday, I tried to make a list of films I have seen recently, and almost forgot that I saw “The King’s Speech”. (This is how I sometimes watch movies without blogging about them!) I am quite surprised, because throughout the duration of the film, I was extremely pleased with it.

It’s quite a miracle really. Not that much actually happens in “The King’s Speech”. One can easily summarize it with “Guy has problems with stammering, takes on an unconventional teacher, becomes king and by the end of the movie, gives a speech fluently”. Even though I was a little tired and realize that the film was on the slower side, I never felt like the film was slow. The main characters in the film were pleasantly likable, yet with enough weaknesses to be believable. “The King’s Speech” is Hollywood’s dream movie really – funny but not silly, melodramatic without being kitsch, predictable yet still enjoyable, and most importantly, somewhat sophisticated yet emotional at the same time. I also don’t have to mention that I thought the film was beautifully shot as well. When the film pauses on a close-up of Colin Firth’s face, it actually creates dramatic tension.

With that said, of course it turns out that the film is not exactly historically correct at all. To heighten the drama, it is suggested that it took Bertie years to get better, some characters are vilified (such as Wallis Simpson) and others introduced where they probably have not been historically (such as Churchill). I had a feeling that would be the case, because stammering is probably the kind of thing that you can either cure quite easily – or not at all. It sounds unlikely for someone to go through years of agony and therapy to go from stammering to a proper speech.

So if I liked the film so much, why did I almost forgot that I saw it? Well, the film is forgettable in some sense – there is no deeper humanity in it, no big revelations to be gained from it, all it was to me were 2 hours very well spent. It’s a wonderfully crafted film, and totally deserved its Oscar (even if I may have enjoyed “True Grit” and “Winter’s Bone” even more).