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Berlinale 2017, Day 9 (Ciao Ciao)

I had one hour to get from “gog” to “Ciao Ciao” and afterwards I had to run home to attend a family outing, so this was a pretty stressful day up to that point. Thankfully the rest of the evening was nice (and had good food unlike the Saturday before) so this was actually the most pleasant of the social obligations I had to attend during this Berlinale.

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Ciao Ciao
China/France 2017, Song Chuan, 83′

After returning to her Yunnan hometown from Guangzhou, Ciao Ciao gets stuck in a marriage that quickly bores her while she gets close to hairdresser who claims to be from Guangzhou.

OK let’s get over this quickly. This was the worst movie I have seen this Berlinale, and it may in fact be the worst movie I have seen in all Berlinales I have ever attended. I could tell that the film would piss me off since the first 30 seconds, when you saw an overly saturated landscape (so green that it hurt your eyes, and the exact opposite of the pretty green you see in “Mushishi” or, to keep it within the Berlinale, “Honeygiver among the dogs”) accompanied by amazingly terrible Chinese techno music.

The techno music was present throughout the story, and so was the terribleness. The characters are stupid, their actions are inexplicable, their sex scenes cringe-worthy almost to the point of disgustingness and the storyline is absolutely unengaging. The dialogue contains tidbits like “if you love me, you have to give me big gifts, that’s what a man is supposed to do”, and portrays a despicable lower farming class. If I were a farmer in Yunnan, I’d be utterly pissed at how I was being represented in this film: lazy, greedy, treacherous and sex-crazed.

Loris was more forgiving towards “Ciao Ciao” and essentially said that he didn’t get the film, but in my opinion that the film was just so crappy that whatever was incomprehensible about it (like the characters’s motives) was due to the fact that the film failed to make sense. If anything the film serves as a reminder that the bad Chinese films are out there, and how infuriatingly bad they are.

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Berlinale 2014, Day 7 (The Midnight After)

We were considering watching “Ieji” today which, incidentally, I ended up not seeing at all and Pixelmatsch will blog about it. Instead, “The Midnight After” was going to be shown in Berlin’s best movie theater, the Zoo Palast, where we also saw “Calvary”. This time, it’s not a premiere but oh we couldn’t pass up another opportunity to go into the Zoo Palast. Hence, the evening of Day 7 only comprised on single film, and it was good that way because another movie after “The Midnight After” would mean a sensory overload detrimental to both films.

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The Midnight After
Hongkong/China 2014, Fruit Chan, 124’

Around midnight, in the middle of bustling Hongkong, a group of passengers boards a mini-bus going to Tai Po. The group’s 17 people is as diverse as can be – a few students of the University of Hong Kong, a druggie, a young man talking on the phone with his girlfriend and a young woman talking on the phone with her boyfriend, an arguing couple, a hipster who codes apps, two delinquent youngsters with nothing to do, a mafia member and finally the driver. When the bus reaches the highway exit to Tai Po, they suddenly realize that everybody else is gone – no people, no cars. In Tai Po, they quickly see that the city is empty while strange things are happening and people are dying in random ways. Why did everybody else disappear? What will the group do, and will they even stay together?
Death count: 6. (I think.)

When I went into the film, I had no idea that “The Midnight After” was going to be an utterly strange parody. I was an idiot for thinking that at some point there would be a big revelation of all these strange happenings, something that miraculously explains everything. There were people turning into zombie-like creatures and then into ashes, people completely disappearing, a guy having hallucinations about how a girl has an evil side, people in gas masks speaking Japanese trying to “save” the group, mysteries in the main characters’s past, phone calls suggesting it’s been 6 years since the film started, a containment field suggesting that some nuclear catastrophe has happened etc. etc. The film contained aspects of zombie, horror, viruses But then, pouf, the film was over when I felt like it could have gone on for another 2 hours. As a result, I think this expectation of getting an answer deterred me a little bit for taking the film as it is and enjoying it that way. Luckily I was too obsessed with it, and actually enjoyed myself lots. There is just so much to love in this film.

To be precise, there are two layers of what there is to love about the film. One is what the film is inherently great about, which only really makes up about 30% of it. The other are the homages and references the film pays to, and that may not be understandable for everyone. Just like genre films (of which we saw many at the Berlinale) can only really be enjoyed when you are into the genre, the enjoyment of “The Midnight After” heavily depends on your knowledge and enjoyment of Hongkong and horror films (and those films who are both). In my case, maybe I am just into parodies in general. I barely never watch any Hongkong or openly dislike horror films, but I loved this film. Similarly, I haven’t seen all that many James Bond films or spy films of the type, yet I love “Branded to Kill”. This case is similar, the way this film parodies the genre makes you love the genre and, even more amazingly, makes you love Hongkong. I have never been to the city, but the strong sense of local patriotism flowing through the film is so adorable that I really got into it. My feelings about Berlin are similar – somewhat dirty, somewhat chaotic, very diverse and so bustling with culture – I wish someone made a film about Berlin just like this.

I told Shii and 6451 that this is the no.1 Berlinale film they missed. I still think so, but I realize that my love for the film may be amplified by my love for parodies, for Hongkong trashiness and for confessions of love to a city. Even so, the film still has aforementioned 30% of layer one to offer. It’s a feast for the eyes, amazingly funny and just so incredibly well-written, turning a piece which absolutely makes no sense into a story where happenings at the beginning actually relate to what happen later. All characters are likable losers but each of them is in a different way, and their interactions are genuine and so much fun. My favorite scene is probably the one where Yuki is being asked to get a knife, and she can’t jerk out the knife she wanted of the wood. Instead she has the choice between a tiny knife and a cleaver, and each time she goes to get one, she ends up with the knife totally inappropriate for the task. The second best is the random Tohoku earthquake nuclear catastrophe insertion. (We joked about how we got to see Fukushima after all, having skipped on “Ieji” for the sake of this film.)
At the same time, the movie also never fails to show humanity. The ending where the insurance lady reflects upon her life and how she never really appreciated her mother’s help touched me to the point I almost wanted to cry. This little film showed more humanity and truth than many non-parodies, and that automatically made it become one of the most memorable films I have seen in recent years.

Originally, I had no idea what this film would be – I didn’t know about the web-novel it is based on, all I knew is that I have had Fruit Chan on my radar after seeing “Dumplings”, and I find him to be an extraordinarily good director. I can’t wait to see what he does next.

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Berlinale 2014, Day 7 (Bai Ri Yan Huo)

I got tickets for the film on the first day tickets were released, but after the fact I was annoyed at myself for having gotten tickets for the morning at 9.30. It was going to be a tough day with me having to go back home in the afternoon, and I was not looking forward to it. In the end, we saw this film and “The Midnight After” in the evening, and it almost became the best day of this year’s Berlinale, with both titles better than almost every film from 2009 (though I only saw 8 films during the festival at the time, so that may not mean that much).

Even though we only got there shortly before it started, we managed to get reasonable seats – a little far in front but very centered. We learn that not many people want to go to the movie theaters early in the morning on a weekday, and certainly not for a Chinese film.

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Bai Ri Yan Huo (Black Coal, Thin Ice)
China 2014, Diao Yinan, 106′

In 1999, pieces of a corpse are found in various coal mines. The protagonist, Zhang Zili, is a police officer investigating the murder case and can’t put it to rest even after some of his colleagues died and the case was closed. More mysterious deaths happen and they are all related to the same woman. As he tries to find out the truth, Zhang slowly falls in love with her.
Death count: 7. (I think.)

Usually my excitement for a film is somewhat proportional to the length of the posting I dedicate to it. In the case of “Bai Ri Yan Huo”, the length does not mean much. I think this movie a must-see, and considering that it won the Golden Bear at the Berlinale, it won’t take long until it appears at least on the internet. However, I am not into analyzing a film whose main characteristic is suspense. I could compare it to classic film noirs (especially “The Maltese Falcon” which I incidentally never saw, only read) or Hitchcock movies, but I think it’s pretty moot. Perhaps it’s worthwhile to mention that I really love film noirs, and it’s important to like the genre to like this film. “Bai Ri Yan Huo” is a very classic example of the genre, though I guess we have to call it neo-noir. The film works because the female main character is somewhat special (an somewhat phlegmatic ice queen, much unlike the typical passionate femme fatale) and very attractive, the male character does the slightly screwed up, rugged policeman very believably, and the setting is suitably dark and atmospheric. Add a few absurdly comic scenes (the chase scene on ice! Hahaha!) and you got “Bai Ri Yan Huo”, the film every film noir should be like.

Personally, I suppose I have a thing for domestic love stories like “Chiisai Ouchi” and preferred it on a personal level, but from what I saw in the competition, I think that “Bai Ri Yan Huo” totally deserved its Golden Bear and wholeheartedly recommend to anyone who does not have an intense dislike against film noirs or crime stories. “Bai Ri Yan Huo”‘s win is proof that sometimes the simple wins over the pretentious, the moody over the beautiful, the underrated over the critically loved and finally, the story-telling wins over the (typically overtly political) meaning. The Berlinale jury finally gave the Golden Bear to something that is just a good film, no more and no less. That is awesome and that is why you all need to see this film to remind ourselves what movies are all about.

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Berlinale 2014, Day 5 (Tui Na)

After years of not having been there, I finally saw the Friedrichstadt-Palast from the inside again. Last time I was probably a little girl, accompanying my parents to see a regular show there. The interior is pretty much exactly what I expected – kind of dark and outdated looking, with many many inconvenient seats at terrible angles at the screen.

The good about seeing “Tui Na” in the morning is that not so many people were there, and I got a pretty good seat. On the last day, 45 minutes before screening there were huge lines going all the way down the stairs because people knew how early you had to get there to catch the few reasonable seats. However, I sat further to the side twice (for “Chiisai Ouchi” and “La belle et la bete”) and I didn’t think it was that bad – both films were suspenseful enough for me to ignore the bad angle.

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Tui Na
China/France 2014, Lou Ye, 114’

Xiao Ma was in a car accident which killed his mother and made him blind. When he grew older, he attended a school for blind children and got educated in doing massages. Shortly after, he joins a massage practice run almost entirely by blind people and falls in love with another colleague’s fiancé. A complicated love polygon with many, many sides ensues.
Death count: I forgot, but I think it was 0.

To be honest, “Tui Na” is perhaps the hardest title to blog right after “Calvary”. There are few films in the entire festival that I wanted to love more than this one, yet it is one of the hardest to love.

First of all, I must mention that I loved “Suzhou River” to pieces. On a superficial level, the two films seem to have nothing in common, but if you think about it, both are about rather obsessive relationships. Strangely enough, however, “Tui Na”’s strength does not lie in these relationships (it’s a pretty generic A and B are a couple, C is in love with B, D is in love with C, E is in love with D story), but rather in the unique choice of blind characters. Everybody of relevance in the film is blind, and the film contemplates the consequences of being blind with a certain thoughtfulness. The voice-over says a lot of somewhat philosophical things about being blind, and while it sounded like ramblings at times, I got the impression that much of it actually made sense. In the story itself, we see many aspects of these blind people’s daily lives and their struggles with the world full of people who can see. We are dealing with a protagonist who tries to kill himself over his blindness at the beginning of the film, and never laughs until the end where his laughing face is the last shot of the film. I thought it was a cute way to show that he was finally able to find happiness, which brings me to the cinematography. I understand why the cinematography of the film received a Silver Bear for it, because it is certainly unique and made a big impression on me. However, I am not sure what this particular cinematography is trying to transmit, artful as it may be. Essentially, we often see shots in which filters and other methods are used to make our vision of the world blurry or generally difficult to see. But that looks nothing like what a blind person sees, right? Even someone whose vision is very bad most likely sees the world differently than what this camera work suggests. So the cinematography can only be understood as figurative at best, and I thought that was rather odd because everything else in the film is rather literal.

The bold choice to make a movie about blind people, and treat their condition with seriousness, is one which I applaud, hence my desire to love the film. But then there is the story itself, and I couldn’t quite get behind it. The character’s feelings seem unmotivated even when keeping in mind that love doesn’t really make sense, most of them had no chemistry with each other whatsoever I had a hard time getting into the characters and caring for them in any other way besides feeling a certain degree of pity. Furthermore, did the main character really have to get saved by a prostitute? Judging from “Suzhou River”, this seems to be an idea the director really likes – the prostitute as an angel. Finally, the worst aspect of the film – and here it seriously bothered me – were those gratuitous sex scenes. You can make a decent love story without all that provocative panting disguised as passionate love, but Chinese directors these days seem to think they are not cool unless they put in some graphic sex.

All in all, I thought “Tui Na” was worthwhile to see, and definitely gives a fresh perspective on the art of film-making and draws attention to an unusual topic. But it may not have been the most enjoyable story to watch in the world.

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Berlinale 2014, Day 4 (Mo Jing)

The last two films of the day were chosen by Shii. To be honest I was surprised that he chose “Mo Jing”, and in the end it turned out to be a very classic Hongkong film, a very good example of its genre. As a result, most people in the audience did not seem to like the film very much and they flocked out the movie theater after the film was over. Or maybe everybody was just hungry and needed to get food before the next film started, like us.

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Mo Jing (That Demon Within)
Hongkong/China 2014, Dante Lam, 112’

Dave is a nice police officer who leads a simple life when decides to give blood to a wounded man who comes into emergency. It turns out that the guy is one of the most brutal gang leaders in Hongkong, having robbed and killed multiple policemen. While Dave tries to grapple with what he did, he sets out to destroy the gang by himself, but in the process, his dark past is slowly being revealed.
Death count: Many.

Like I said, everything in the story is pretty much standard Hongkong thriller fare, including the end which conveniently explains everything. In the credits at the beginning, there is a “choreography” and a “car choreography” entry. That made me expect big car crashes in the film until at the very end, it finally delivered. Boy, that car crashing into the gas station scene was quite impressive. Drawing upon a long tradition of Hongkong action movies, that scene’s visual splendor is far superior than your average Hollywood action flick’s. Story-wise, I thought “Mo Jing” was rather intricate, the revelations in the film happen slowly and as confusing as it may have seemed at first, everything in the film contributes to its dramatic ending, with a final flashback explaining what actually happened in Dave’s past. I even loved that last scene of the film, in which we see Dave helping out an old woman… it may all be a genre cliché, but within the genre it’s very well done.

“Mo Jing” is definitely a film that cannot be explained, only seen. There is so much going on, but none of it is particularly meaningful. It’s just a feast for the eyes and a suspenseful story, really. Much more than your average Asian film, “Mo Jing” necessitates a certain familiarity with Hongkong films to make sense, and you would only like it if you liked the genre in the first place. It’s like watching a film noir or a Western – when you are dealing with a genre, you have to be into the genre’s rules, even if you don’t take them seriously.

Originally, I was interested in the film because of Daniel Wu. I had seen him in “Europa Report” before, in which I thought he was terrible. But he is a big name actor and so I wanted to see something else to verify. Or maybe I am just into his pretty face. Well, in this main role as Dave, I thought he was absolutely brilliant and totally believable. Perhaps there’s just something wrong with “Europa Report” – every actor in the film seemed terrible, which is surprising because Anamaria Marinca was amazing in “4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days”, Sharlto Copley was great in “District 9” and Christian Camargo was quite good as the Ice-Truck Killer in “Dexter”. So yes, I would definitely want to see movies with Daniel Wu again. At least “Mo Jing” was very satisfying.

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Berlinale 2014, Day 3 (Einstein and Einstein)

The Generation i.e. children’s section of the Berlinale is so worthwhile because they are only 4 euros (and 2 euros when you have a student ID or something else that gives you half price). Last Berlinale, we also saw a Generation film (Mary and Max) and it was so great that I saw the film again at some point. This year, it seems that we are also following the tradition of seeing one marvelous Generation film.

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Einstein and Einstein
China 2013, Cao Baoping, 119’

Li Wan (her given name is the sign for “play”) is a rather introspective girl who talks about parallel universes and astrophysics all day. She even draws her life philosophy out of this theory – if a parallel universe exists in which we do the opposite thing of what we did, then there is no reason to regret any decision we have made. She lives with her grandparents because her father re-married and essentially cannot be bothered with raising her. Her entire family even hides from her that her stepmother gave birth to a little brother. When her father gives her a puppy to appease her, she responds angrily at this display of bought love. Over time, she gets close to the dog and names him Einstein. Then Einstein disappears, and that event reveals Wan’s frustration of being neglected by her family.
Death count: 1 dog.

“Einstein and Einstein” is a brilliant tale of abuse. Everything depicted in the film is true, and almost everything they do in that family looks exactly the same in mine (with the difference that Li Wan’s family is horribly low class). The most poignant scene was the one with the father’s boss, who is spouting the biggest nonsense in the world and calls Hawking’s books “child’s play”, but because he is the boss, everybody just sits there and nods or even praise his utterings. These nonsensical, seemingly wise but actually empty aphorisms are the pinnacle of the depravity of Chinese culture, and I heard them throughout my childhood over and over again.

Just for its incredible realism, “Einstein and Einstein” deserves more attention than it gets. Even the topic itself – gender roles in China – is an unusual one and its problem manifest themselves only subtly, as it is shown in this film. The only thing I did not quite like about the film was the way it ended. All of a sudden, Wan is depicted as this genius kid who is able to win province-wide competitions. The “main character is a genius” trope kind of ruined the story of Wan as one which could have happened to any girl in China. The truth is that most girls in China experience something like that, but not everyone is able to get out of it like Wan did at the end of the film.
It may be of interest to note that I have never experienced any sort of neglect, or been subjected to your average girl’s upbringing. But my parents made a point saying that they raised me “like a boy”, as if only boys deserve to be the center of attention and are allowed to seek self-fulfillment and speak out their minds.

The director of “The equation of love and death” made another great film, and I will certainly continue to monitor what he does.

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Berlinale 2013, day 7 (the value of family)

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Mo sheng (Forgetting to Know you, ??)
China 2013, Quan Ling, 89′

TL;DR not really good people doing not really intelligent things. However loli.

The film shows, through our usual low-budget independent festival movie from Asia style, a slow spiral of a couple from an unknown small city (give or take a million people) somewhere near Chongqing from regular life with their incredibly cute little daughter who is the hidden star of the film, to distrust, lies and fundamental estrangement. Both of them have their flaws. They do not respect each other, they search through each other’s phones, the man visits cabaret clubs, the woman provokes his jealousy all the time with a young cab driver and of course there is his mother whose birthday is forgotten by the wife, which is the trigger to most of the following dissolution of their marriage. While it does not obviously employ the techniques of a soap opera it pulls you in like one and you start to wonder how low will they fall and if there is any solution for them to stay together and be happy.

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Will you still love me tomorrow?
Taiwan 2013, Arvin Chen, 104′

The quiet glasses salesman Weichung has been married for nine years to Feng, his plain childhood friend. They have a son and life rolls along smoothly until Feng decides together with her parents that she wants another child. While at the engagement party of his younger sister Mandy and San-san he meets through a chance encounter with gay wedding planner and old friend Stephen who encourages him to take up “being gay” again so he slowly starts considering it until he actually falls in love with a flight attendant who visits his shop.

TL;DR embrace the gay

While I did not watch his first movie “Au revoir Taipeh” which was shown in 2010, I have seen the very cute “Lane 256” (the one about the couple with the incompetent moving crew), which was a part of 10+10. I seem to have a new tradition: romantic comedies from Taiwan at the Kino International. A very nice tradition because both films have turned out very good so far. While the main characters occasionally are quite cliché gay it does not really hurt because as someone who has grown up in the Bay Area Chen knows the diversity of the community and most of his gay characters are “regular” people. Most importantly no one in this movie takes themselves too seriously and the dialogues are full of witty one-liners and most of the main characters get lost in wonderfully shrewd short delusional segments. There is also a hilarious subplot about Mandy not wanting to marry the timid but loyal San-san and Weichung’s gay friends trying all kinds of stuff to get them together again. Besides being a warm portrait of Weichung and his friends it also shows the painful way of life for many gay Taiwanese: While in the quite progressive Taipeh you can be openly gay in your 20s it is expected that you wind down, get settled and start a family for your parents when you reach thirty. In this case, with the now platonic love and understanding between Feng and Weichung after tensions they manage to find an agreement to both live comfortably while being parents to their son.
On a side note the movie is also hilariously current with Mandy watching Korean dramas and imagining the flower boy giving her life advice in Korean while she talks back to him in Mandarin or the gay bar playing Korean idol pop.

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Berlinale 2013, day 1 (the value of humility)

So it’s this time of the year again. As a blatant disregard to the concept of humility Wong Kar Wai is president of the jury and promptly decides to use his latest Zhang-Ziyi-and-Tony-Leung-vehicle as the opening movie. Not that it would stop me from watching, it’s a tradition after all and how could you stay mad at him when someone decided to decorate the trees in front of the theatre like that:
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Berlinale 2012, day 7 (Taiwan Day!)

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10+10 (???)
Taiwan 2011, Hou Hsiao-Hsien and 19 others, 114′

Initiated by the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival, Hou Hsiao-Hsien and 19 other Taiwanese film makers made 5-minute shorts free from limitations regarding content or form.

Like any omnibus film, this one spans a wide range of style, genres and quality. Comedies about offering a movie screening (what lovely meta) at an extremely remote miniature shrine, about the problems that arise when you need to shoot a film for the Mainland and your location has a ROC flag plastered over it, about a young couple and their incompetent moving crew. Short vignettes about a cute rural bus driver, about a 100-year-old man, about the importance of family, about old pop songs, about a girl with stage-fright who ruins her rehearsal but then accidentally becomes a great star, etc. Some are just outright strange, like the tourist ad, turning silent film, turning pointless rape attempt.
Unfortunately not everyone was able to produce interesting or high quality material. There are other, better films of this kind but if you are at least slightly interested in Taiwan you should have a look, there’s always the fast-forward button.

drrt

Love (?)
Taiwan, PRC 2011, Doze Niu, 127′

Yijia is pregnant with Kai’s child, who is her best friend Ni’s boyfriend. She contemplates abortion, as Kai is not interested in her at all. Ni shoots down Kai’s desperate advances to win her back. Meanwhile Kuan, Yijia’s brother who works at a hotel and a car wash meets the flirty but unapproachable Zoe Fang, who first wants to become the trophy wife of Ni’s father, because she thinks it is her only outlook in life. Mark, a successful business man wants to buy a courtyard house in Beijing where he meets a quirky single-mom real estate agent who, together with her little son and a little help from local police, quickly turns his whole life upside down.

This one is kind of strange: On one side it is the epitome of over-produced with beautiful people who are either rich or at least middle-class, aesthetically perfect surroundings, obstinate mood music and sickly sweet Mandarin-pop. On the other side it is a genuinely funny script with good actors and just plain enjoyable, with the honest-if-not-kind-of-naive message that everything will work out with love. It also deserves merit for promoting modern family arrangements over traditional values which is definitely not a given if you want to make a commercially successful film for a still rather conservative audience.

The Q&A with the director who also played Ni’s father and Mark Chao who played the businessman was surprisingly funny. Mark joked about being an innocent, cute character, totally unlike his film persona. Doze later referred to this as the reason why he cast him: He needed someone to portray how important smell is for attraction to develop but feared that if he gave himself those lines it would come out as perverted, so he needed a cute, innocent flower boy to utter them. Doze then went on to prove this by trying to smell the male Q&A-host and successfully demonstrating a lot of playful creepiness.
Mark who spoke Chinese even though he was perfectly fine with English also produced a wonderful moment with the translator: Asked about Vicki Zhao, his partner in the film he gave a rather tame answer which the translator apparently exaggerated a little, so Mark cut in in the middle of the translation asking if the translator is a fan of Vicki as Mark was not that explicit in his answer. To everyone’s delight, the translator enthusiastically admitted that yes, he is a big fan!

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Berlinale 2011, day 9 (fangirls encore)

Hyun Bin again. The Korean girl-mob was civil until, completely unannounced, the director was followed by Hyun Bin coming on stage for the Q&A. Girls of all ages went wild, even some non-Koreans in-the-know and the rest of the audience immediately applied their best WTF-face. The poor director stated that he’s quite nervous with so many people staring intently at him but then added that the vast majority is probably looking at Hyun Bin so he feels a little less burdened.

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Man Chu (Late Autumn, ??)
South Korea, Hong Kong, China, USA 2010, Kim Tae-Yong, 113′

Anna, a foreign-born Chinese woman spending a term in prison for murdering her husband gets bailed out for three days to attend her mother’s funeral in Seattle. On the way, she meets Hoon, a Korean call-boy who immediately takes an interest in her and they end up spending her time in Seattle together.

Beautiful disconnected people, walking through beautiful shots in a beautiful scenery. This movie feels more western than any wannabe-American action blockbuster Asia ever produced. Nonetheless it is a very charming piece about two people aimlessly disconnected from the reality around them, walking around in a beautifully foggy Seattle (including a Farmer’s Market, ahaha…) Maybe not a big revelation as a movie, but I can think of hundreds of movies I would have been less inclined to watch.