About Chocolate Parfaits

The Road Home

When I proposed to my parents to watch “The Road Home” with them, they were so happy! My father things that it’s Zhang Yimou’s second best movie after “Red Sorghum” which is quite a surprise for me, as I have always believed there could never be a better Zhang Yimou movie then “Huozhe” after all.

Consequently, it really was a lot of fun to watch this movie with them. The slow pace of the movie made it possible for my parents to comment and discuss the movie; while some people seem to hate discussing movies while watching it, it can greatly contribute my own pleasure of watching a movie. (Why else would you want to watch movies together with other people anyways?) In this case, my parents were overjoyed whenever they saw Zhang Ziyi’s longing face full of love and excitement whenever she ran across the fields to see the man she loves. It was incredibly cute to see, and I do admit that the recurrent image of a running, twin-tailed Zhang Ziyi in those red and pink peasants’ clothes that make her double as fat as she ever was, is incredibly charming and I understand why so much time is devoted to the repetition of this image at different times.

Apart from this, it was also interesting to see that nothing really happened in the movie compared to that spans different episodes of the main characters’ lives. For Zhang Yimou, “The Road Home” tells a surprisingly simple story with one single main actress who spends the majority of the movie’s screentime looking cute, miserable and hopelessly in love.

Finally, I don’t think we necessarily have to free ourselves from kitsch as critics of this movie seem to propagate. Of course an overdose of kitsch doesn’t result in a rush of emotions but make me rather feel cold towards a story or a speech, however, this light level of kitsch actually feels very naturally to me, and makes me go “awww” through the whole movie. When the mother heard her son holding a class, I felt like crying too. These kinds of subtle emotions are precious in my opinion and few movies actually make me feel like this.

My current ranking of Zhang Yimou movies looks like this:
1. Huozhe/To Live
2. The Road Home
3. Hero
4. House of Flying Daggers (which will be reviewed soon)
5. Keep Cool
Ultimately, I liked all of them a lot!

A King in New York

I realized this when I randomly decided that I want a poll and decided to go with the question you can see on the sidebar. I found it so difficult to decide what I like the best! Heh. By the way, there also is a poll archive page (oh goodness, 9 people are reading this blog? O.o), it’s hidden so far because the blog layout does not allow for more pages to display.

Similarly, I also find it difficult to choose a movie to watch. Sometimes I feel like there is way too much I want to see, sometimes I feel like there is nothing that caters exactly to the mood I am in for a certain movie. But right now, “A King in New York” seems to be exactly the right decision. After seeing “Modern Times”, I am now having a good impression of how Charlie Chaplin’s movies are like, or so I think. “A King of New York” is quite similar in my book: It’s somewhat communistic, randomly funny and throws its main character from one absurd situation into another, giving the movie a slightly episodic feeling.

First of all, I barely recognized Charlie Chaplin. Okay, the truth is, I did not recognize him at all – it’s only after I knew it’s him that I realized that King Shahdov’s movements and mimics are all exactly like Chaplin’s tramp. His way of moving and speaking is so incredibly original after all. I don’t think it’s an obvious thing to be a good pantomime actor and a good voice actor at the same time, and it seems Charlie Chaplin does this brilliantly.

Throughout the whole story, I have been alternating between finding the film amusing and infuriating. (“Man or Woman?” Ahahaha!) Ultimately, its hilariousness won over its annoyances, but sometimes I really was facepalming and getting worked up about another silly thing the poor king has to face himself with – without really being at fault at all. Of course I should have known that everything will turn out fine at the end, and perhaps I should just watch this movie again, having in mind that I shouldn’t take it all too seriously. ;) However, I must admit that I couldn’t stand Michael Chaplin’s voice. He was such a cute shota, but the fascistic screamings were just too much for me, I had fast forward myself through his speech in front of Atomic Commission.
With that said, I am not really sure whether I would qualify this a typical Chaplin movie, and I find it a little surprising that this movie was recommended to me on the ‘list that started my passion for movies’ instead of “The Great Dictator”, “Gold Rush” or “Modern Times”. I still find it to be really good and highly recommendable though – unless you can’t separate Charlie Chaplin from the tramp.

Fellini’s Roma

Right after watching “Rear Window”, I have decided to go for a really, really weird movie. It has been 3 or 4 years since I have wanted to see this film, and I have had a recording from the german TV for about 2 years lying around. This mainly is due to a misunderstanding – I have thought that it would be a 3 hour movie (and I hate those typically, as you might know) and later, the simple thought of Rome made me depressed and emo. But now that all this is over, I have finally picked up this movie.

All I knew about this movie was Fellini and the fact that this is a portrait of Rome without a real ‘story’. That means that this movie would be either brilliant or horrible. Now, it turned out that “Roma” is brilliant and horrible. I am sure for many people this movie is simply a borefest.

Let’s start with the horrible: Rome was idealised and ridiculised at the same time. Especially the part with the church people was enjoyable but ultimately a little bit ridiculous. More than that, it shows Romans are uneducated, rude people. Oh well, I guess they really are. This brings me to my second, although silly point: No matter how meaningful and necessary it is, I really dislike noise, and this movie was full of it. Shrieking children, loud cars, people crying and bitching – oh well. And finally, a non-existing storyline is far from being a bad thing in itself, but it acts as an amplifier of everything I dislike about a movie, while a story could conceal its weaknesses. Thus, the expectations on such a ‘nothing happens’ movie are just much higher than for a ‘regular’ movie, and I cannot say that “Roma” meets my expectations fully.

The great things of this movie would be: The choice of topics and sceneries, the subtle and surprisingly laughter-inducing humour. I am not sure whether an italian would agree with me, and I am very sure that your average Italy tourist would not agree with me, but I think that the mix of Mussolini fans, whores, Ancient Rome and a clerical fashion show with rollerskaters and creepy neo-goth-looking skulls is quite great. It shows how Rome is at least as full of life and culture as Paris or New york are.
I think the scene that touched me the most was the one when some tourists discovered those ancient frescos that disappeared with the entrance of the air from the outside. Oh, quel horreur! I have found that particular scene much more frightening than most horror movie scenes I have watched, it really made me hold my breath. Seeing such a beautiful, stunning scene disappearing in front of your very eyes must be horrible.

I really should watch more Fellini and especially more movies on Rome. I am thinking about “Roma, città aperta”, “La dolce vita”, “8 1/2”, “Satyricon”, “Amarcord” And now, suddenly, I also want to watch “Rien sur Robert”. Totally random, I know.

Rear Window

Perhaps you have realized already that I tend to find it difficult to write about movies. I actually truly believe so, because whatever you want to write, it feels like it doesn’t do its movie justice. “Rear Window”, however, is the type of movie that is really, really easy to write about. First, I didn’t find it difficult to give a rating to it (it’s a masterpiece) and second, it is quite easy to explain why I have found the film to be a masterpiece.

When I was younger, we have studied the film in french class, and so I have known about the majority of what happens in the movie. But at that time, I didn’t know anything about movies at all and I found it utterly boring. (My my, how people can change, right?) Today, I can see perfectly why this would be the type of film you study in class: Content-wise, it has a simple story with many deeper layers you can analyze, and everything technical from direction to cinematography supports the content of the movie. There are thousands of details that fit together in this movie – and every high school teacher can see them and talk about this in class.

Even though I still remembered how the story would end, I forgot how it happened exactly, and so I was very, very curious to see how the story unfolds. Sometimes it felt like the story had some plot holes, but ultimately it all made a lot of sense. It does not surprise me that this story qualifies as a suspense thriller even though it does not look like it on the first glance and I haven’t felt the suspense back then when I watched it the first time at all.

I knew about the depth of the story, both concerning the people in the courtyard as well as the ethical problem of voyeurism, but I have never expected it to be so incredibly well-executed and funny. Apart from Stella’s hilarious comments, so many different types of funny situations and dialogue lines full of black humour appeared throughout the whole film, I was so surprised.

Finally, as always, I would also comment on the female main character ;) Well, Grace Kelly is such a beauty! When I was younger, I have always confused her with Ingrid Bergman (Why actually?), but have found her to be a splendid actress. Today, I still think so, and I think she fits this role of a smart, loving and absolutely wonderful woman perfectly. Considering that this is a 1954 film, I find it amazing how she emancipated is portrayed – not by showing more flesh, but by displaying obvious superiority to the man she loves both in terms of capability and intelligence.

When it turned out that the DVD for “Play it again, Sam” was broken, we were really depressed because it started off so great, but the greatness of “Rear Window” made me forget about this sad incident completely. I can’t believe Hitchcock never got an Oscar, especially considering that for a long time, he was the only movie director I knew (because of Three Investigators, in fact XD). The film is just so great on many, many levels and it makes me want to watch it again and read about it more. Next time, I also should finally watch “Vertigo”, “Psycho” and “Dial M for Murder”, but I already have this feeling that none of them would surpass “Rear Window” for me.

The Shop Around the Corner

Especially when they are a Lubitsch. As you might remember, I have bought “You’ve Got Mail” recently and have only known very recently that it is based on a play which Lubitsch used for one of his films. “You’ve Got Mail” features many more references to the Lubitsch movie than the play though, and I was delighted to have seen both in direct comparison. It was especially enjoyable because I can’t decide what I would prefer – the pure brilliancy of “The Shop Around the Corner” or the nostalgy of the first romance movie I have ever watched in my life.

This is easily visible in the way the one scene is shown that “You’ve Got Mail” copies nearly directly from the original. The older version features funnier dialogue (“But last week, we’ve had a very sad case with gardenias.”) while the newer had very individualistic characters. I could never imagine another couple besides Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan play these characters while the actors themselves seem to completely disappear in “The Shop Around the Corner”.

There is not much to say or blog about a comedy like “The Shop Around the Corner”, unlike “You’ve Got Mail” which is not only a love comedy, but also touches certain anti-capitalistic traits and shows a lovely portrait of New York. I also don’t think that the ‘love’ between the main characters are deep in any way, and their incapability of showing their love to each other is extremely cute, but ultimately rather superficial. In fact, the greatest feature of “The Shop Around the Corner” is its amazingly witty dialogue, along with Lubitsch’s splendid direction, bringing out the best out of the two protagonists. More than Kralik and Klara, the rest of the cast is pure comedic gold, in my opinion. With Mr. Matuschek being the only somewhat boring figure (what else could he be anyways?), I am a big fan of Pirovitch and especially Pepi. (Mwahahahar!) It is the interaction with their environment that makes Kralik’s and Klara’s love story so hilarious and smile-inducing. (“I feel psychologically mixed up.” XD)

What Lubitsch’s version also never shows is an insight into the letters between Kralik and Klara. While the e-mail exchange is documented in a very sweet, romanic way (perhaps a little too sweet even), we barely see anything from Kralik’s and Klara’s letters. Surely such ‘psychological depth’ would not be interesting within the movie at all, and I think that “You’ve Got Mail” is more than just a modern kitschy attempt at redoing Lubitsch’s movie by showing how a written conversation actually feels like and how it affects the characters.

Ultimately I have no idea why “The Shop Around the Corner” was not very successful as I have found it quite brilliant, even in comparison with “To Be or Not To Be”.

Edward Scissorhands

Today, when I just put up a wallpaper of Naked Lunch, I realized that I haven’t watched a film since then! Surely I won’t be able to watch all that much in near future either, and the thought of it makes me a little sad. But I have decided so, and I know that I always have had times when I watched more and times when I watched less films (perhaps one day, I should make some statistics ;) )

A really interesting thing about Edwards Scissorhands is that everybody I know seems to have watched it. Back then when I was in high school, girls were raving about the films and the incredible cuteness of Johnny Depp. Although they loved talking about the film, content-wise it seemed to have stopped at fangirling about Johnny Depp’s attractiveness. They didn’t seem to care about the story at all, let alone the characters. It seems Mr. Depp did his job really well – any random other actor definitely would not have been able to play this role in such a sympathetic way. Perhaps he’s the only good-looking actor who can act really, really well.

Aside from this, everything about this film was a surprise for me. I didn’t know who or what Edward was, and I had no idea that he would be taken in by some clichéd family in a hilariously clichéd 50s-US-banlieue environment. The portrait of those horrible housewives was splendid, especially the mother. Sadly, I really find the characters of Kim and her obnoxious boyfriend a little over-the-top. Personally I think he wasn’t as realistic as the other characters and was presented too much as the villain who doesn’t have any good. The story would have been even more touching if everybody around Edward would have been ‘normal’ people without meaning any malice on the surface, and then turn against him due to some misunderstanding that was not caused by an evil, rough boy.
I also didn’t feel so moved by the end of the story as others might feel, but the development in the relationship between Kim and Edward was actually portrayed in a very sweet way. And I admit that I have found it very cute how she confessed her love to him at the end.

All in all, I actually think highly of the film despite the underwhelming sounding review. Even though I prefer most of the other Burton films I have seen over this one, I thoroughly enjoyed the subtle comedy of this film as well as Johnny Depp’s great acting.

PS. Oh, let’s see how a Tim Burton ranking would look like:
1. Corpse Bride
2. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
3. Ed Wood
4. Edward Scissorhands
5. Sleepy Hollow
6. Big Fish
And yes, I know that I absolutely need to watch “Nightmare Before Christmas” and “Sweeney Todd”. ;) I’m not so sure about the Batman movies though.

Naked Lunch

Seriously, I have never seen something like this before. I have never seen Requiem for a Dream nor Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (although I plan on seeing both of them), so this movie definitely was quite a trip. Besides that drugs are involved, I had no idea what this film would be about, and watching it was a little bit of a surprise trip as “25th Hour” was – only that it wasn’t able to impress me that much (I actually doubt any film can impress me the same way as “25th Hour” did anymore).

What can I say else: This is an adaptation and most likely a rather good one, the direction and actors are brilliant, the amazing revelations of the story are well-made and the storytelling is great and made it quite suspense. However, I suspect that the book is better and in many ways deeper, so perhaps I will read it one day.
I think that the Wilhelm Tell game is somewhat intriguing, the ‘monster’ typing machines were absolutely cool and my favorite character of the film was this young gay boy who was just being nice and did nothing, heh. I guess my impressions of the film are mainly superficial, and ultimately it was primarily a very enjoyable, interesting film for me – and it will stay memorable for me because it was unusual in terms of style and storytelling, but I don’t have any interesting thoughts about it.

PS. I have no idea why there is this critic who calls this a “conventional bildungsroman“. I also love how the english Wikipedia has no example for a bildungsroman, the german has many examples (some of them which I don’t know) while leaving out the one book that I really consider a bildungsroman: L’éducation sentimentale by Flaubert, which – of course – is mentioned in the french Wikipedia *g* I have never read that book although I own it; but I definitely am going to, because Woody Allen’s character mentions it in “Manhattan” as one of the reasons for living, heh.

Tokyo Story

I am disappointed in you, Jim. Surely I will watch all the other films on the list, and I think that my irks with “Tokyo Story” is a rather personal one: While the ‘ennui’ of Jim Jarmusch films were always marvelous and never felt boring to me, “Tokyo Story” was a borefest from its beginning to… the point I stopped watching it. In fact, Pixelmatsch and I were talking about how annoyed we were with the japanese-ness and the overload of honorifics in their family (of course it is really well-made and just accentuates the pervertedness of their familial relationships) – and then, we decided to stop the film the next time she says “douzo”. This happened about 1 minute later, eek.

Besides the boredom I felt while watching the film, I was mainly unhappy about the society portrait. I totally understand what it wants to say, but I just don’t agree with it. I have never been such a badly educated brat as the children are depicted in the film, I don’t think old people are neglected, conservative and kind (most older people are still very independent and want to lead their own life) – and I especially think that most asian people are better children to their parents than the main characters in the film. Sure, this film is supposed to exaggerate a little bit, but I don’t feel like this is an adequate portrait of my family life or the family lives of people surrounding me.

At some point, I think I will finish the film, although I feel like this is nothing compared to the funny, witty and comparably suspenseful Ukigusa. It would just make me feel horrible if I hadn’t finished it, hm.