About Chocolate Parfaits

Hotel Rwanda

I don’t know how it is for you, but I have never really talked about the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Back in the day, I even remember that I used to watch news, but most of it was about the war(s) in Yugoslavia. They lasted for awhile, but they were also always on the news, especially in 1994. The more imminent political problems in Europe were obviously overshadowing whatever was happening in irrelevant, poor Africa, and until today, the only time I have heard of them was in geography class, in which I was more shocked about the obscurity of these massacres rather than the happenings itself. (More importantly, all we learned in class was that there was such a thing in Rwanda, that European colonialism was the root of it all, and that it ended with almost a million dead.)

“Hotel Rwanda” is one of those Hollywood attempts to make things right, similar to “Schindler’s List” or even that “John Rabe” movie. Out of all of these, I assume that “Hotel Rwanda” is the closest to the true story and I thought that was very nice. I also liked how they showed that the hero of the story was a constant fugitive himself, fearing more for himself (and his group) rather than putting his wings over everybody. This constant fear was what made the film so different from most of those hero stories, and kept me interested throughout the entire film.

With this, I have finally watched both of Pixelmatsch’s almost 6 year old film recommendations – yay me! It’s really not so easy to make yourself finally tackle a film like this, but I am glad I have finally seen it. Don Cheadle is the best, and you all have to watch “The Guard”. (hrr hrr)

Dogma

When I was 15 years old, I thought that whatever was wearable and “in style” was everlasting and would never change anymore. Even though history taught me otherwise, I couldn’t believe that I would ever want to wear anything else than what I was wearing back then. What boggled my mind even more was that I was unable to make out what this 00’s style was supposed to be, and actually I still cannot. What constitutes 00’s clothing style? Flip flops? Nevertheless, I was wrong. When I was 15, the hipster did not exist and I would never have dreamt that I would one day come to like oversized glasses. I can’t wait another 10 years to pass until I can put into words what went on there, but I know for certain that Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s hairstyles in the movie are absolutely ridiculous. If it wasn’t for Ben Affleck’s charming grin, I would have absolutely no idea what would make anyone go for these guys anymore. Today they look silly to me like the Backstreet Boys do.

Enough ranting though, because this movie is a classic, or at least I hope it will become one. Let me begin with this: For a parody of the catholic religion, the film feels much more like a loving parent rather than a bitter satire. There is this underlying endearment of the whole concept of God and the rest, and shows a general positive outlook of the world (which, after all that happened, deserves to be conserved after all). While most parodies are self-deprecating, this one feels openly loving to me. I mean, hey, it has a female God whose humour reminds you of Deep Thought, and she is Alanis Morissette no less. Ahahaha.

I have no strong feelings for the film, but I certainly know that I enjoyed it a whole lot. I think back at how somehow everybody I know has seen the film, but only very few people outright recommended it to me. I can certainly see where that is coming from – when a film has so little artistic subtlety to offer but is fun enough for everyone to know about it, it’s hard to say why you would want anyone else to see it. In my case, the interest to see the film has never subsided and yet I did not feel disappointed. I’d say that is quite a feat “Dogma” accomplished here.

The Front Page

Sometimes, when I don’t really know what to say about a film, I end up reading another blogpost and find myself agreeing with it practically 100%. In this case, Movie Outlaw perfectly hit the nail about the film’s strengths and weaknesses. I have never read the original play nor watched the 1934 movie, but I saw “His Girl Friday” and without a doubt, that didn’t help. “His Girl Friday” is stripped of the unpleasant cynism and a story on its own. I love the chemistry between Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant, and the story gets a whole new meaning as a love triangle where the main character has to choose between excitement and passion and, well, a nice but utterly boring guy promising a lovely but dull lifestyle. Throughout most of the film, Walter and Hildy are presented as equals, where neither can really live with the other and both have a bunch of good lines to beat the other with.

“The Front Page”, as it was originally conceived and where the main characters are male, is totally not a story about how someone loves their job, it’s rather about how someone – for some practically inexplicable reason – is unable to get away from their job and subsequently gets screwed around by his idiot boss over and over again. In “The Front Page”, marriage seems to be a perfectly valid reason for Hildy to leave that shithole (and Susan Sarandon plays a perfectly lovely lady), so it boggles my mind as to why he couldn’t. Why are these workaholic stories always about journalists, I wonder? “Hataraki Man”, perhaps the only good anime for adults and about adult life, features a main character who destroys her private because she is too focused on her reporter career. What’s the point?

Coming back to the cynism I mentioned earlier, I think it was the biggest drawback of the film. I understand the point, and perhaps this is (to some degree) really how the journalistic world is, but this “hatred towards the world”, as the aforementioned Movie Outlaw post puts it, is not exactly pleasant to watch, isn’t it? The scene where six journalists were ganging up on that girl to the point that she jumped out of a window just feels out of place in a comedy. I can’t laugh when I feel that kind of disgust towards its characters, I am sorry to say. In general, the film had a few funny scenes at the beginning (especially with Dr. Eggelhofer, ahaha) but the last 45 minutes of the film were basically some mean-spirited people chasing a man who had to defend himself and Hildy driving away his fiancee. I think it’s a miracle that a movie by one of the best directors ever and starring some of the best actors ever could have failed so much to live up to expectations. Perhaps this is proof that the devil exists.

Auntie Mame

Rosalind Russell is something like my favorite older actress, like Cary Grant is my favorite older actor. I like that she is not beautiful and doesn’t even have a pleasant voice. That makes her great acting just so much more powerful. She has the face of a modern woman, making her perfect for Hildy in “His Girl Friday” (still one of my favorite movies of all times), and she seems like it is entirely impossible for her to play a wide-eyed dumb girl. Rosalind Russell is always a full-fledged woman and I love her so much for that. “Auntie Mame” is certainly no exception, where she is the core and without a doubt the most interesting character of the film.

I didn’t know what “Auntie Mame” would be about, and that it was a story in episodes throughout Mame’s and Patrick’s life. At times I was even wondering if the film is ever going to become sad, with all the drama that happens to Mame and the general instability of her life. But “Auntie Mame” was a lot like “Sylvia Scarlett” or even “A King in New York” in the way every troublesome conflict is resolved in the most carefree manner possible. This is Hollywood for you – everything gets resolved as soon as the characters break into song.

Hollywood has so many different ways of displaying rich people. Mame is certainly filthy rich, but her lifestyle is bohemian in some strange way because her way of obliviously stumbling through life and crazy partying suggests a rather superficial view on culture. Comparing that to the Upsons, their plump way of being “top-drawer” is also probably not timely anymore. The rich investment banker of today is into buying and selling arts, and prides itself with bourgeois knowledge of which the Upsons seem to have absolutely none. Some of these young, dynamic rich people today even talk like they are from some screwball comedy. Oh how I love Rosalind Russell’s fast talking – nobody is as great as her when it comes to that.

As you can see, “Auntie Mame” is not that much more than a means for me to be a shameless fangirl. However, despite its surprising length, the movie is actually a lot fun and immensely heart-warming. I recommend it for any evening where you have some time to kill and expect no less than great enjoyment.

Cloud Atlas

Yesterday I read that “Cloud Atlas” made less than 10 million at the box office last weekend, which is abysmal considering that the production cost was over 100 million. I don’t rule out the possibility that the film could still break even, especially when the media claims that people stayed home due to the hurricane, but it still doesn’t look good for the movie. Thinking back at how I have mixed feelings about the film and didn’t really know how to put them, I now actually feel sorry that it did that badly. Deep in my heart, I want to support every movie made in the Studio Babelsberg, and in many ways, “Cloud Atlas” is exactly the kind of movie suited for the studio.

This feeling is especially interesting because when the credits rolled, my first thought was “Damn, that was a lot of money put into a fairly silly and futile endeavor”. Halle Berry is the world’s worst actress, and even Tom Hanks is absolutely terrible in this film, perhaps due to their absolute lack of romantic chemistry. Without a doubt, Bae Doona is lovely and wonderfully cast, and I have a certain appreciation for all that cross-dressing which occurred (haha Hugo Beaving as modern Nurse Ratched). Nevertheless, Bae Doona as Englishwoman looks absolutely silly, and there just is absolutely no point to this cross-dressing whatsoever. In the end, it’s even hard to figure out what the whole point of these stories and connections were. Whereas the Cloud Atlas books make very clear and simple connections between the respective storylines, the interweaving of the stories in the film appear overloaded with pseudo-meaning and totally gimmicky. I don’t typically mind if a film means nothing, and I am perfectly okay if it merely transports an atmosphere, or a feeling, or pure fun. But “Cloud Atlas” sounds and looks like it wants to be very complicated and meaningful. You know this heavy, slow voice in which people talk about important things like “life” and “love” and sound like someone has died, last seen in a film like “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”? “Cloud Atlas” is full of that, coupled with practically meaningless nonsense sentences. (I think I wanted to shoot at the screen when this character said “My uncle was a scientist, but he believed in love.” UGH.) On so many levels, “Cloud Atlas” was really, really ridiculous. Maybe I am harking on this a little too much, but it’s annoying to see that, just like in “Looper”, the only important Asian character happens to be a damsel in distress who practically doesn’t do anything on her own. It appears that Roger Ebert loved it, but now we all know that Roger Ebert cannot be taken seriously anymore.
On a side note, I also was not a fan of the bullshit language in the futuristic sequence, but “true true” has become an enjoyable inside joke now.

Enjoyment on the base level is probably what explains my sympathies for the film despite the terrible review I gave in the above paragraph. It’s 3 hours of action and stunningly beautiful in so many scenes. My favorite was certainly the Neo Seoul part with its futuristic blue lights and gritty Blade Runner looks. The chase scenes there were certainly the best, although the part in the 70s came in as a close second. Story-wise, I especially enjoyed the humor of the film. Whenever “Cloud Atlas” was funny, especially in the part with Mr. Cavendish, I get a glimpse of what the film could have been – an epic action drama with lots of fun. Without a doubt, the nursing home storyline is the most enjoyable of all of them, because it is just so beautifully simple and heart-warming to see. My second favorite was the love story between Frobisher, the young composer, and Sixsmith, the nuclear scientist. Here, I am glad that the movie made a turn from the original storyline in the book, which featured Frobisher falling in love with some girl and killing himself over it. That he saw Sixsmith on the day of his death was perhaps the only scene I thought was emotionally powerful, and I am glad they worked it in.

I don’t actually think you should watch this movie, but if you do, make sure you see it in theaters because that is what the film was made for.

Looper

I have been chickening out from writing a blogpost about this film for 5 days now. I was rather busy for two of them, but it’s typically not a good idea to avoid writing about it when so many thoughts have crossed my mind about it. It all comes down to the “Brick” thing. “Brick” is still amongst my favorite movies of all times, and even though I have rewatched the film in the meantime, sometimes I wonder if I would still love the movie as much if I rewatched it today. And how would “Looper” compare to it?

I saw “Brick” in theaters ages ago, and I just knew that for fair comparison, I had to do the same thing with “Looper”. (On a side note, I have never even seen “The Brothers Bloom”.) However, I come to the conclusion that I am incapable of comparing those two films. “Looper” is awesome but so, so damn different from “Brick”. Without a doubt, I really loved “Looper”, but just like I loved “Moonrise Kingdom”, it won’t appear on my favorites lists despite getting very, very close. “Looper” is another tough one. In so many aspects, it is better written, better acted and so much more interesting than “Brick”, but “Brick” has the unsurmountable atmosphere and nostalgy bonus. Movies like “Brick” are the reason why I started watching movies in the first place. That doesn’t necessarily make the movie any better than others (after all, “The Dreamers” was a movie like that too), but besides holding a special place in my heart, I want to still believe that “Brick” was something special.

With that said, I was glued to the screen in “Looper”, and it hit me on so many levels. I thought the scenes in futuristic Shanghai were ridiculous and silly, but apart from that, everything was exactly the way I love it – a suspenseful, dystopian sci-fi story with some great characters. I especially loved the little kid, and the scene towards the end in which his mother told him everything was going to be alright actually made me tear up a little bit. Much like “Brick”, “Looper” has so much humanity besides all that action. It will never be as famous as “Matrix” which is food for thought for wannabe philosophical teenies, but for a big budget Hollywood sci-fi flick, it’s so much deeper, truer, everything.

Of course there were various things that didn’t really make sense. (This one is a good point which I did not notice and which Rian Johnson conveniently explains.) Ultimately though, I do not care about it as much, as long as it does not propose any blatant, stupid errors. I also wasn’t really happy with the ending because I thought it was just too convenient. After seeing “Butterfly Effect” and its various endings, it is just obvious how “Looper” had to end.

It seems that Pip didn’t like the film as much as I did (which just means that I am obsessed with the movie and he “only” liked it), and if you are in that camp too, prepare yourself, because I will defend “Looper” with all my might. It’s the perfect movie! But “Brick” is more perfect. (Sic.)

L’amour l’après-midi

Today, while watching this film (and also while doing other things), I have been eating a lot. Every time I eat I tend to get incredibly food-coma-ed, and now I am not sure if this is a good or a bad thing. It’s great that food tastes so good to me to induce a food coma, but it’s unfortunate that it basically me look like this (–.–) for about 2 hours. In such a situation the only thing I can do is continuing watch a film.

With that said, L’amour l’après-midi is significantly less difficult to watch than most of the other Contes Moraux. By difficult, I mostly mean the degree of reflection in the dialogue. While Ma nuit chez Maud had all that talk about Pascal and even Le genou de Claire had a bunch of complicated dialogue, L’amour l’après-midi is probably the most straight-forward Conte Moral. It is almost obvious what is right or wrong here, considering this is the first Conte Moral where the protagonist is actually married. It also does not help that Chloe appears to be quite a bitch who seems incapable of a serious relationship herself. She is more assertive than Haydée who is young and foolish but wants to be taken seriously (and certainly deserves more respect than she gets), and in general, Chloe knows what she wants, much like Maud. But while Maud appears composed and reasonable, Chloe gives off a wannabe feminist vibe with her “I’ll have a kid but the father is not allowed to see it” plans. It also seems nobody can do her any emotional damage even if she claims otherwise. If anyone did, she’d get her revenge anyways, so our feelings for her are probably colder than for most of the other women in the Contes Moraux.

For the dramatization and the storytelling, I am surprised how much this film works. For the first 30 minutes, I thought I would become more bored of this than the other Contes Moraux, whose ambivalence and complex storyline were the very reason I love them so much. But later on, especially as the character of Chloe gets further developed, I realized that there is an almost Maud-like erotic tension in the film, culminating in a wonderfully surprising break-up scene. I almost wanted to laugh when I saw that.

I didn’t like Zouzou very much. I was quite in love with Maud, Claire and especially Haydée, but this woman looks the least tempting out of all of them. It’s my personal taste I suppose. Much more interestingly, I loved the little fantasy scene in which most of Rohmer’s actresses reappear. That is such a nice gimmick for the last film of the series.

I thought that L’amour l’après-midi is a wonderfully realistic depiction of some of those bourgeois adulterous relationships, and I really enjoyed watching that. Rohmer’s has a great eye and he can put some interesting words into the most boring characters.

Overall, here’s how I would rank the Contes Moraux:
1. Ma nuit chez Maud
2. La boulangère de Monceau
3. L’amour l’après-midi
4. La collectionneuse
5. Le genou de Claire
6. La carrière de Suzanne

Lola rennt

Recently I feel a strong resurgence of my desire to watch movies. Most of the times this is prompted by watching a few good films in a row, and so I have been thinking about which ones they were this time. Result: There is a lot. Looper was certainly a masterpiece, I love you Phillip Morris was inspiring, Paper Moon and Snatch intrigued me so much that I was thinking about those films days later. This is especially surprising since I saw a bunch of okay films before that (except Shall we dansu? which I loved). Even so, I can’t believe I completely forgot about Run Lola Run.

If I had seen this film back when it came out, I might not have hated German movies so much. Certainly there are some aspects I would not have liked back then (God, why are German actors so bad sometimes?), but all German films I have seen at the time were slow and utterly boring. Only Goodbye Lenin (that was 2003!) was able to revert that impression. Afterwards, there were a few nice films (yeah Das Leben der Anderen!) which cemented the impression that maybe the German industry is able to produce something decent every once in awhile.

It turns out that even in the dark 90s, this “every once in awhile” manifested itself in Run Lola Run. I love love love the movie. It’s unpretentious and well-written, and I purposefully kept myself in the dark about what is going to happen exactly in the film to get the maximum suspense out of this film I had fairly high hopes for. Everyone who saw the film liked it! I think that is amazing.

Back in the day, when I read about Kieslowski’s Blind Chance for the first time, I was utterly in love with its premise and the idea that small events could change a human’s entire life. Run Lola Run is much less pretentious (and much more fun to watch), but sometimes I wish there was more of an explanation about those various people whose lives were changed so much just by Lola’s bumping into them. Then again, who cares? It makes for a good story and, in some cases, a grin on my face. That is enough.

Groundhog Day

Today, “About Chocolate Parfaits” is going to list 638 films I have seen ever since the inception of this blog. It’s not like this is a special number, I just happened to check it today. We learn that I have seen roughly 100 movies per year and that would thus take me roughly another 3-4 years to get to the infamous 1000 mark. I will be 30 by then! Terrifying.

Onto the topic, it appears that I have been enjoying fairly recent Hollywood films a lot. Besides whatever comes in theaters right now I have a tendency (almost like everyone else I suppose) to watch films which are either foreign and/or at least as old as the seventies. Most recently, I felt that “Paper Moon” was an incredibly old movie… yet it is so strangely timeless?

It doesn’t happen very often that I stumble upon a film which most people I know have seen in their childhood. It is entirely possible that I already saw this before on TV, perhaps around the age 12-14 or so. I vaguely remember seeing Sleepless in Seattle, Amadeus and the like – Groundhog Day feels like one of those films which appear on TV.

In fact, when I was younger, I used to watch the Muppet’s Christmas Carol every single year. Strangely enough, I could totally see myself watching Groundhog Day again and again. I might not have felt like crying and dancing around while seeing the film, but I derived a calm enjoyment from the film. It’s one of those films that make your heart go all warm and fuzzy, and it features one of those “bad guy turns good guy” kind of stories that I have loved ever since I saw the Muppet’s Christmas Carol for the first time. “Groundhog Day” could totally become one of those films I would enjoy watching with a small crowd, because it’s just so universally nice.

The only point of criticism of the entire film is probably Andie McDowell and her amazingly lame character. She’s the lovely Catholic French poetry loving girl who is kind towards everyone – eww. Of course it is nice that the main character only gains her heart after he was able to genuinely change (and not by wooing her with empty gestures), but did this female character really have to be so generic?

If you ever want to watch the film with me, let me know.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead

The characters of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern remind me a little of Händel’s Agrippina, because the Boston Lyric Opera also made this joke about how Pallante and Narciso are practically the same character and Claudio, at that point still emperor, confuses who is who. Unfortunately for this play, the Boston Lyric Opera only makes that joke once and it made me laugh, but for some reason this play/movie has a tendency to recycle jokes over and over. It might be the play’s biggest problem.

In fact, for the large part of the film I have been bored. I had to look up a summary of Hamlet again (it’s been so damn long since I have read it, and the storyline appears more convoluted to me than I remembered it), but even with enough knowledge of the Hamlet-related scenes most of the dialogue in the play failed to gain my interest. Is it because I am not into Shakespeare that much after all? (Unlike considering my intense love for his Midsummer Night’s Dream and how I enjoyed reading almost all of his plays.) Is it because I don’t like theater plays all that much after all? That is even less likely, and I love almost all movies referencing theater plays. It’s just that this film should have hit all the chords with me, but ended up not doing so. I didn’t exactly have high expectations for it, but I like absurd theater and I love pointless dialogue. But a good absurd play has something inexplicably deep underneath its seemingly senseless and simplistic dialogue, and the dialogue in this film just seems absolutely banal to me. I absolutely love the concept of characters who ignore whatever politics and meaningful bullshit is around them to enjoy the wonders of life with curiosity and questions about literally everything. It’s just that I wish it actually was literally everything. Instead, we get the same jokes over and over.

Next time I think I should go back to see one of the Monolith films instead.