About Chocolate Parfaits

I love you Phillip Morris

Haha, so Gorp loves the film (this is why I watched it) and Shii didn’t like it (his comments on it prompted me to finally watch it it). Almost expectedly, I share neither and both of their sentiments.

It all probably comes down to how I think the film is not as dumb as its exaggerated pathos might seem, but the pathos of the film didn’t quite hit me as hard. Some films, like “Brokeback Mountain”, are pathos-laden and had a firm on grip emotionally. When pathos fails to do that, it is most often because it is used in a completely dumb setting like cheesy TV dramas. I love you Phillip Morris is one of those rare cases where a film is actually great, but whose character’s suffering largely left me untouched.

From every other standpoint, I love you Phillip Morris was totally up my alley. Ever since my love for Catch me if you can and my current addiction for White Collar, it is probably obvious that I love con man stories. This film is a delightful one, with much less redemption than the others but a little more comedy. I really liked how Russell’s escape attempts are portrayed as lovable failures, even though in real life he probably had some mad con man skills. More than anything, I liked his relationships. I loved how driven he was by his crazy love for this other guy and the way he is only able to show that love through drastic measures. I might not have been touched to tears, but I thought this aspect of the film was very well-written. I even liked Morris’s character, who is perhaps the most naive and oblivious titular character ever, but oh God, I have never seen Ewan McGregor this cute? Yep, Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor have some great chemistry here, it’s almost a cliché. Another aspect I liked about the film was Russell’s gayness was introduced so naturally, and with so many funny scenes. It’s not like he started a new life because he was gay, but being gay was only one aspect of the overall confusion about his identity. Unlike some other films (V for Vendetta, ugh, where you slip on the cheese), I actually think that gays are portrayed in a positive, lovable way in this film.

I am slowly beginning to understand why Jim Carrey is much better at serious roles than funny roles. Certainly Russell is portrayed in a funny way here, and Jim Carrey’s exaggerated facial expressions work well for me, but I perceive the undertone of this film as a tragedy after all. Apparently the real-life Phillip Morris totally distrusts Russell nowadays and believes that he has just been used and betrayed. That also is kind of tragic, because the truth is so blurry here. Can you really say it was love? Can you really say it was NOT love?

By the way, I am amused that just like in Knocked Up, Leslie Mann plays this incredibly stupid annoying married lady named Debbie. Debbie is such an un-name now. XD And Leslie Mann is so awesome. (“Does this gay thing and this stealing thing go hand in hand?” Ahahaha.)

I think Pixelmatsch needs to watch this movie too.

Summer Hours

With the US elections coming up, I have absolutely no understanding for rich people problems. I’d even say that the worst thing about rich people is their problems, and it’s just like how a friend of mine said – fights about money are always about the money you have, not about the money you don’t have. Personally I am of the opinion that the lower middle class has enough money to live with some luxuries – I know that very well because it’s my own range of income.
I recently heard that Trader Joe’s only exists in places where within a certain radius there is a specific amount of people with a college degree and a yearly income of over 65,000 USD. I have a college degree, but I don’t even make half of that amount per year. But even I buy groceries at Trader Joe’s regularly. (Speaking of which, we are out of oatmeal and the ones at Trader Joe’s are my favorites.)

Anywhere above the poverty level, most of our problems dealing with money are unnecessary. In that sense it is indeed completely ridiculous when the Downton Abbey characters mourn about having to leave Downton for some smaller house but which is ten times as large as our own. It is also silly that “Summer Hours” is all about the melancholy of selling some house nobody is going to use anymore. Yet, luckily, “Summer Hours” is a little more than that. An art collection can be something very personal, and breaking it up is quite sad. It’s like finally forgetting about that person. I also have something which comes close to what art collections might be for other people – books. In the past, I have encountered several people with an extensive book collection, like our old neighbor, Loris’s parents, etc. etc. I envy them deeply. It’s unfortunate that my family, despite having been avid readers, have never owned many books thanks to the convenience of libraries, and the ones they had disappeared due to them moving around. Therefore I can understand some of the sadness in the film, where the stuff being sold represents some cultural heritage that even the children are sad to let go.

Nevertheless, it is without a doubt that the topic of the film is utterly boring. Like I said, rich people problems. It also doesn’t help that the film harks on this “things are so different today” especially with that dreadfully ugly garden party scene. Besides “La Haine”, modern France has absolutely nothing culturally worthwhile to show for itself. While the film sings its mantra that things must change, and everyone accepts it with heavy hearts, that scene makes the audience (or at least me) wish that it didn’t have to be like that.

Having complained about the underlying setting of the film so much, I have to say that “Summer Hours” is wonderfully written. I liked all the characters, even the annoying brother who considers running a sweatshop in China a bright future, and I thought their interactions were very unique. It is the dignity with which everyone discusses together calmly and gets over their shared grief, very much unlike in “Still Walking”, which make the film worth a look. Everybody is just so reasonable it’s almost utopic. But “Summer Hours” is a film more beautiful than it is realistic, and it treats its topic with a lot of finesse. Strangely enough, despite having claimed that I find the subject of the film rather boring and the fact that the film absolutely contains no drama at all, I was surprisingly never bored while watching the film. I just liked what I saw, I wanted to see what the characters would be doing next.

“Summer Hours” would have been a good PIFF movie, a strangely boring but good mood piece. I thought it was a very suitable film to wind down the day with, right before going to sleep.

Paper Moon

Recently, I have been getting back into one of those phases where I wonder about the meaning of life, or what kind of person we actually want to be. Just like you feel like every song on the radio is about broken hearts when you went through a break-up (not that anyone actually listens to the radio anymore in the ages of Youtube), you feel like every simple story is somehow about the meaning of life when you are in this phase I am in. Whether it is an episode of White Collar in which Neal wonders whether he truly can stop being a con man, an episode of Star Trek DS9 in which Kira has a change of mind of what she previously thought about Cardassians, or Paper Moon, a beautiful example of humanity despite its unrealistic sugar-candy-wrapped Hollywood storyline. Even that overly dramatic episode of Downton Abbey we saw today has these overtones of how one must accept changes in the world. Indeed we must do so. I’m not going to be shocked if my 10-year-old kid asks me about porn (though honestly, from my own experience I think a 10-year-old kid is actually disgusted by the full-blown, perverse stuff floating around the internet), but I won’t like the fact that they will be playing with electronics instead of frolicking around in the woods or reading books.

Now I am truly digressing. Maybe Paper Moon is not actually that deep after all, but underneath the sugar coating, it actually shows a rather cruel world in which Moze and Addie encounter only people who try to rip them off (ironically, since they are the con artists) or catch them. It is definitely a story in which the protagonists must fight for their survival in a harsh environment, and it is pure serendipity that allowed them to escape and get back on their feet again and again.

Like most movies with a young child (The Kid immediately comes to mind, especially with Addie’s first outfit!) Paper Moon is another example in which Addie’s character is the one who really lets the film shine. She is the reasonable one between the two and almost the more mature, since she has no other desires than making money. She is the perfect Ferengi. But at the same time, she is powerless and needs someone else to fulfill her dreams of ‘thriving business’, and that is where Moze comes in. They had absolutely awesome chemistry, especially when they disagree (“Give me my 200 dollars!” Wahaha, good job, Addie.)

In the end, Paper Moon was this inexplicable mix of fun and seriousness. Maybe that is the reason why Shii never recommended it to us? Even I am not sure who would be the right audience for this film, and I am only glad it found one.

Snatch.

I normally don’t blog about movies I have already seen. In this case, the exception is reasonable because I don’t remember the first time I saw it. In fact, I think I saw it without subtitles and practically didn’t get the storyline at all. There were a few scenes which were memorable (like Mickey’s mother’s caravan burning) but overall, I can say with certainty that I never quite understood what the whole story was about. Fast-forward a few years, I thought it would be a good idea to just see the movie again.

Now I can finally say that I love the film. It’s just the kind of thing you have to see, and I totally understand why it became a cult classic. Heck even I would want to watch it again. The movie is extremely fast-paced and has so many details to discover. In many aspects, it’s a lot like action TV shows nowadays, except that the shots in TV series à la White Collar are never as well-timed and refined as in Snatch. It’s like the shining example of a movie everybody would want to make. There is no point in talking about the plot, it’s all about the storytelling. The characters are all awesome and well-developed despite the huge ensemble cast, the storyline is suspenseful and a good chunk of the lines are very entertaining, even Turkish’s ranting is funny.

It’s been 12 years since the film has been made, and unsurprisingly it feels a little dated. Not that it looks dated or anything like that, but it’s clearly not 2000 anymore. People don’t make these movies full of swear words anymore, now it’s all either about family drama or Avatar-like blockbusters – Hollywood vs. arthouse basically. Snatch doesn’t fit into any of that. When was the last gangster movie you have seen? Have movie nowadays really changed so much?

I believe that Snatch is going to stand the test of time, and will be enjoyed by many generations to come. At least I am hopeful for those generations.

Sleeper

I basically watch Woody Allen films out of context. I started off with Match Point, and then went to see his masterpieces Annie Hall and Manhattan, then saw some more younger films (Scoop, Vicky Cristina Barcelona) then his 80s and 90s films. All in all, I am not really familiar with how his work evolved. I know the post-2005 films pretty well, I know that Stardust Memories is from 1980, Play it again Sam is from pre-Annie-Hall times and I have a vague idea that A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy, Love and Death and Sleeper were made around the same time as Annie Hall and Manhattan. Bottom line – I don’t really know the chronology of Woody Allen’s films very well, but I am getting the strong impression that the year of production defines the film.

Sleeper for example is the perfect mix out of Love and Death and Everything you wanted to know about sex. It shares the humor of the former and the quasi-sci-fi setting of the latter. In general though, I think that Woody Allen’s science-fiction fad was mostly silly. I like the social commentary (especially the very last scene of the film) and the overall plot of having to kill the nose, but I was utterly unhappy with the implementation of this plotline towards the last third of the film.

Some critics write that they don’t like Woody Allen’s early films in which he basically throws around funny one-liners and brings his characters into absurd situations which are, ultimately, not that funny. You can clearly see that in “Sleeper” (and partially in the murder plot in “Love and Death” too). There are some lines in the film which I absolutely loved, yet at the same time I wish less of the humor would come from the fact that the characters are being clumsy or stupid. I am annoyed when Woody Allen and Diane Keaton infiltrate a hospital and bicker about their private issues, I just don’t know what is funny about that. The film started off with so many elements of pure comedic gold (haha De Gaulle is a chef!) and had great moments until Woody Allen’s rendition of Blanche Dubois but then ended with a completely silly chase. Oh well.
The other thing which bothers me in Woody Allen’s science-fiction attempt is the complete disregard of science itself, as evidenced by Allen’s line “I don’t believe in science”. It’s just tiny things like how they crush a nose so that it cannot be used to clone a human being anymore. The concept of DNA was well-known at the time and a crushed nose can be used to clone someone just as well as an intact one. Sure, it doesn’t really matter, but you can see how it bugs me, right?

Similarly to “A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy”, I think that “Sleeper” is quite underrated. Sure, neither of them is as great as Annie Hall and they all have their weaknesses, but these films are still amusing. Slapstick is generally underrated these days, and Woody Allen is on the line between great and silly when it comes to that.

Love and Death

Last time, when we debated whether to see “Shadow and Fog” or “Love and Death”, we ended up choosing the former. In retrospect, I have absolutely no idea why. While I really love silent films, if I have the choice between the parodies of silents and Russian novels, I’d normally have chosen the latter without fail. I really liked the humor in “Shadow and Fog”, but overall I think “Love and Death” was more amusing. It is only in those early movies that Woody Allen allows his women to be complicated, free-spirited and witty. (This praise might not be entirely justified, “Love and Death” is probably Allen’s only early movie in which Keaton’s character does not pose her trademark question “Do you think I am stupid?”). It is Keaton’s character who is the biggest source of the film’s amusingness. She is always a little silly, a little aloof and finally she is not really that into Woody Allen’s character. I also thought she was surprisingly likable for an early Woody Allen character, probably due to lack of the usual neuroticness.

One unique element of “Love and Death” is the parody of 19th century novels within his dialogue pieces. The metaphysical discourses are obviously ridiculous, but so they are in those novels sometimes. I actually enjoyed those tidbits much more than the name-dropping of Karamasov or the ‘plot-dropping’ of feeling guilty for murdering someone. Speaking of references, I really liked the end which evoked Bergman; somehow I thought it was a scene from “Cries and Whispers” but Imdb says it’s “Persona”.

Sometimes I wish the humor wasn’t so absurd. Films in which everyone is kind of idiotic only work when they were made by the Marx brothers. When Woody Allen has a murder plan, then comical elements like characters being too stupid to get the pistol to shoot are just downright painful. But next to these kind of idiotic seeming scenes, there are other scenes (such as the one in which Allen’s character did not get saved in the end) which suggests a clever storywriting.

At the end of the day, the film was enjoyable because of the many small details (basically one-liners) the film offered and because I thought it was quite refreshing. It has its ups and downs, making it one of Woody Allen’s better but certainly not best films. Certainly a must for any fan!

L’Apollonide: Souvenirs de la maison close

When one searches for “House of Tolerance”, you get to see girls in lush dresses and beautifully historical hairstyles. The trailer on MUBI captures this pretty well. In fact, the film is absolutely beautiful for the simple fact that its actresses are stunning and the costumes are splendid. I have admit that I have watched and finished the film purely because of its looks.

In terms of content, uh, it’s a worse “Utopia”. On the one hand, the film is marketed as “dazzling”, “erotic and “troublingly seductive”, on the other hand, it’s supposed to criticize how women are being treated badly. Come on, you can’t exploit feminine beauty and complain about said exploitation at the same time. This movie always shows sex as something kind of clean and disturbingly beautiful, yet at the same time there is a girl who catches syphilis and another one who tries to sticky champagne off her body. Sex in an actual brothel would never look as good as in this film, no matter how high class that brothel might be. In fact, why choose a high class brothel in the first place? Why showing the 1% lucky girls who ended up in a somewhat reputable establishment as opposed to showing the rest who are faring much worse? Yes of course it’s to please the audience with eyecandy. Sure, the film is eyecandy, but it also feels hypocritical to me. Needless to say that I also think the film is not, err, creepy enough? Just like “Sleeping Beauty”, the atrocities in the film are relatively tame (apart from the Joker face, which is pointed at way too much).

“Utopia” slips into none of these pitfalls. It doesn’t show sex a lot, and if it does, there is nothing erotic about it. The prostitutes don’t have feelings of love for their clients (I think those are just bullshit male fantasies), and they are not exceedingly beautiful. The film exploits the despair and perverse situation of the women much more deeply, not in this half-dreamy-half-cruel way. “Utopia” is much more real and honest about the job, and when comparing to “L’Apollonide”, I am amazed at the former’s accomplishments. Reviewers are raving about how beautiful the film is, and how it is stylish unlike most films about prostitutes. Just no. If you want style and beauty you can always make a movie out of “La Traviata”.

“L’Apollonide” was a feast for the eyes, but unnecessarily cruel and ultimately quite forgettable. It does make me realize that I like movies set in the fin de siècle. More please!

Shall we dansu?

But then again, in comparison to some other (more modern) dances, I find ballroom dancing strangely boring, despite my parents’ passionate love for it. Luckily, the film itself is not about ballroom dancing, although we are treated to some great eyecandy involving engaging dance scenes. Of course I absolutely enjoyed them.

After “1Q84”, which I liked, I ended up reading two books which I largely disliked. Interestingly enough, that almost completely killed my desire to read any other books. Similarly, most current anime are absolutely boring or they just don’t come out often enough. Loris calls the comfortable speed at which we watch series momentum and sometimes momentum can be lost on the greatest show, causing you to lose interest in it. For some reason, I strangely lost interest in watching films, and I notice that this rarely happens to me unless I get busy. Well, in some sense I was quite busy the last few months, but that really doesn’t explain this change of interests.

In any case, I am back. Amidst the huge list of Netflix films in queue, I randomly picked this film because Pixelmatsch has already seen it and I know now for sure that the people who didn’t want to watch it will regret it. Ho ho ho. It’s a lovely film, perfect for a relaxed evening. As I mentioned before, the film is not actually about ballroom dancing at all, it really is just about a man being bored with life to the point of depression – and then discovering a hobby he truly feels passionate about. The film takes a very human, simple problem (which most of us probably encounter), a bunch of lovable characters and a mundane society conflict – and turns it into a warmhearted, fuzzy film. Perhaps the movie is not perfectly realistic because every single character in it is lovable and means well, and perhaps it is too dream-like for anyone to discover a hobby and rediscover your own life through it. But who cares? What are movies for? Yes, entertainment. “Shall we dance” is entertainment at its best, it’s the embodiment of lovely and if you really want to think about it that way, the film is also a commentary on conservative Japan.

I would also like to mention that there are two other good reasons to watch the film, Koji Yakusho and Naoto Takenata. Koji Yakusho obviously needs no introduction and he was just as brilliant as always in this movie. As for Naoto Takenata, he is Stresemann/Milchi! To understand and appreciate his role, one must know that Takenata always plays over-the-top silly figures, and that the exaggerated speech and movements are his specialty. I am a big fan ever since Nodame Cantabile, and I couldn’t believe how lucky I am to see him so unexpectedly. It is a gift from heaven that Takenata’s role ended up being quite elaborate in this film, and as a duo, he and Koji Yakusho make the best friends possible.

There is one aspect which is unfortunately never really touched upon in greater detail. Two characters (one of which Takenata’s) were told by women that they were “disgusting” or “creepy”, which both of them didn’t really deserve and at the end of the story, it gets resolved without much of a conflict because they both found women who liked them. Sure, they were “just” side characters, but it would have been nice to see how they were able to find these people who accepted them. In the case of Aoki and the fat lady, it is being hinted at how they have good chemistry, but that is all.

As you can see, I am absolutely in love with this film. It was much more heart-warming and funny than I anticipated, and featured some of my favorite actors. What can I say, I would totally watch it again, but don’t expect it to be a revelation to you. It’s ultimately just a simple, unpretentious film.

Only Yesterday

My plan is to watch every single Ghibli movie out there. Luckily it means that I stumble upon things like “My Neighbors the Yamadas”, which is a lot of fun, but unfortunately it also means that at this point, I only have “Pom Poko” and “Earthsea” left, both of which I am expected to dislike.

I don’t even know why I have never seen “Only Yesterday” before, especially considering that it was in my Ghibli collection which included almost all of their other films. I saw all the others in quick succession and then stopped, although I highly anticipated “Only Yesterday”. From the description – a woman is looking for what she really wants to do, while reminiscing about her youth – it sounded like it’s the kind of story I would thoroughly enjoy. Unfortunately, the woman’s only irk with life seems to be that she is bored of city life and prefers the simpler ways of being a farmer. While the film does not hide the hardships of being a farmer, I was not able to approve of her reasons. Perhaps it is plausible that she prefers aforementioned hardships over the superficial glory of the city, but the film still romanticized farming too much for my taste.

Another thing was criticized was how ugly the animation looked. Yeah, they kind of failed at doing a “realistic Ghibli style”, but I am not too bothered by that. What I disliked much more was how not a single story about Taeko’s past seemed in any sense. She was bullied by literally her entire family as well as some random guy at school, and her first love stories didn’t work out for stupid reasons. Somehow “Only Yesterday” just completely failed at giving me the warm, fuzzy feeling that I expected. Maybe it is not intended that way, but the way it is depicted strongly suggests that it is supposed to evoke nostalgia for the times.

“Kokuriko-zaka Kara” did the nostalgy-fuzzy-feelings part right, but somehow “Only Yesterday” completely failed on me. My love for certain Ghibli movies stand uncorrected, but some of their films are just… mediocre.

Dzie? ?wira

So Pixelmatsch, Shii and I watched a movie together. Without Gorp, nobody dares to make a recommendation for what movie to watch, and that is quite troublesome. In the end, Pixelmatsch was unsure about his own suggestion, and we all encouraged him to make it. I can understand why it is hard to recommend this film. When a movie is funny in a black humor kind of way but not in a HAHAHA kind of way, you tend to wonder whether the other person would find it funny as well. Black humor is something so strangely regional that you can never be sure whether it would reach someone from another culture.

“Dzie? ?wira” is the perfect movie to watch with other people. Just like most comedies are better when you watch them with a bunch of other people laughing, there are so many scenes in the film worth making short comments about. Pixelmatsch also says that the film is very Polish, and I have a very small understanding as to what he means. The self-deprecating satire on how everyone hates each other – it looks quite familiar. Also, the bus repositioning scenes were absolutely brilliant, and hey I have my favorite spots in the subway too! I also hate noisy neighbors, and I am all too familiar with a society which complains about everything. Despite not being polish at all, “Dzie? ?wira” speaks to me like most Danish black comedies do.

In essence, the film is an unlikely gem and I personally found it extremely enjoyable. The world needs more movies like this.