Category: likey

Two strong recommendations, for films which I only coincidentally saw in sequence yet share a comic narrative structure that seems complementary: the very funny Superbad and the very unnerving, sly and riveting The Death of Mr. Lazarescu. Both detail a one-night quest (for booze and sex, for medical attention) marked by many small and unforeseen conflicts and a reframing of the quest by journey’s (failed?) end, and both films display a compelling comic humanism, despite the derisive energies (scatological and satirical) which underpin the filmmakers’ visions. In each, the detailed and energetic search (to get laid, to get cured) is something of a mcguffin, and the movies open up to broad and specific portraitures of how we treat one another (and how we ought to treat one another). Continue reading The Comic Epic

Perhaps a beautiful refutation of my claims about changes in action cinema, Johnnie To’s exhilirating Exiled may be my favorite movie of his so far. Continue reading Johnnie Friggin’ To!

Based on Mariane Pearl’s account of her husband’s brutal murder by al-Qaeda operative Sheikh Omar Saeed, this is one of the best films I’ve seen all summer yet it is quickly disappearing into the late summer night as threequals, talking rats and John McClane gobble up audience attention. That’s too bad, because A Mighty Heart is a smart, well acted and directed police procedural that is very tricky about playing into and interrogating the spectator’s desire for justice and revenge (not to mention Western privilege). Sure, you know what’s going to happen, but the power of the film is in the details. At times disorienting, this film (shot in Winterbottom’s trademark documentary style) rarely slows down but carries the viewer into the discombobulating world that is Pakistan, cutting back and forth from Pearl’s affluent home (a makeshift headquarters for her and her associates as they wait for information) and the chaotic streets, restaurants and apartment buildings of Karachi where police search incessantly for witnesses and criminals. Continue reading A Mighty Heart

Shohei Imamura’s film is technically a true-crime story, documenting the capture (and flashbacking through the crimes) of a sociopathic lowlife in the mid-sixties. Enokizu (Ken Ogata) is something of a smiling cipher, who seems one thing in early scenes, a stonefaced whackjob, then emerges from scene to scene in ever complicating fashion–coming across as something of a naif, then a dumb thug, then a slick con man, and so on–and by the end of the film I hadn’t some simple narrative of his motivations but a rich, unsettling, and ambiguous portrait which never quite explains or resolves his actions.

Worse–or, aesthetically, better–the film’s portrait of the contemporary Japanese social milieu is equally unsettling. Enokizu’s violence and rage is echoed everywhere Continue reading Vengeance is Mine

to mark the recent death of ousmane sembene, i moved xala to the top of our netflix queue, and we watched it last night. it is based on his own novel (which, by the way, was one of two texts fredric jameson referred to in his notorious argument about all third world fiction comprising nationalist allegories). apparently, sembene moved from writing to film so as to be able to reach a larger audience than that of elite literary culture in senegal. keeping this in mind may be useful in making sense of the film’s aesthetic which is a blend of modes: beginning with a satirical parable and then moving in and out of a realist framing of events if not of psychology (by which i mean that character development, motivations, consistency etc. are not major concerns). all of this may makes it sound avant garde as opposed to populist, but i suspect that what is also being utilized is the structure and logic of folk forms. not being familiar with senegalese narrative traditions i am unable to confirm–though there do seem to be elements which bear such a reading out: a group of peasants and beggars who function as a kind of chorus and then make a substantial narrative intervention at the end, occasional comic interludes etc..

or perhaps that’s a multicultural copout on my part. but it did make me think of the international reputation of the great bengali director, ritwik ghatak, whose films, unlike ray’s did not fall into either a recognizable universal humanism in their thematics nor structurally resemble the international (really, european) art film–and who consequently is not as well known as ray. his films too often featured a realist frame sutured with the logic and structural elements of other forms, particularly folk theater.
Continue reading xala

so, this is the new hbo show, the one milch lost interest in deadwood for. most critics have savaged it. partly for this reason, and partly because i wasn’t ready to go straight from the sopranos finale to a new show, i didn’t watch it on sunday, but caught it tonight on the repeat. i understand critics get 3 episodes of shows/series to write their preview-reviews and maybe the next two are pretty bad, but i quite liked the premiere and don’t really understand why it was trashed in the particular ways it was: a common theme was that the show is a mishmash of genres that don’t come together. well, it does veer towards self-conscious weirdness, and most of the acting is pretty bad–the exceptions are whoever the guy is who plays the title character, al bundy, luis guzman, and stanford from sex in the city–but i thought it pulled off the surf-scifi-noir thing quite well. the writing is generally decent, though some lines sounded like the actors were auditioning for twin peaks. it held my interest more than the first episode of deadwood had. i’m signed on for at least another 3 episodes. i don’t know if there’s a whole lot to be said about it at this point. jeff? anyone else watching?

i’ve become more than a little lackadaisical about posting regularly to the blog. not sure why, but i’ve been more regular with comments on existing threads on movies i’m watching than with new posts. perhaps some blog-weariness? or just inertia since so few of us are making new posts? mark urged recently in a comment that we not hide posts about movies that don’t yet have topics of their own in comment threads for topics from years ago, and since it is rare that mark makes sense, here i am to post briefly about battle royale, which sunhee and i watched last week (on mark’s recommendation).
Continue reading battle royale

i’m somewhat embarrassed to say that i liked this. i kept waiting for the schmaltziness to make me cringe, but it never happened. maybe i have high schmaltziness tolerance tonight, maybe it’s just a good movie. anyway, i realized only when i saw the special features that will smith chose an italian director to do pursuit. the guy barely spoke english at the time of the shooting. the funniest parts of the whole dvd are the ones in which muccino communicates with smith using the gesticulations for which italians are famous around the world while making some incomprehensible but frenetic sounds with his mouth. god, it must have been dreadful for him. i get a headache just thinking about it, because i have of course been there. with hindsight, i can see the italian style. unless we try to make american audiences go gaga, we italians are a surprisingly unemotional people who find wearing positive feelings on our sleeves mortifying (we are just fine with negative feelings). we like american movies, but wouldn’t imagine for a second that people might actually talk to each other like that in real life.

some nice shots of san francisco, no gratuitous nastiness (it’s life that’s getting gardner in the teeth, no people’s cussedness), no gratuitous miracles (no one shows up in the nick of time to rescue him), great restraint in showing gardner’s slow but determined climb into solvency, and fantastic chemistry between smith and his son. fast and effective editing, good pace. i enjoyed myself.