Category: (random lists)

over the top french action movies

now there’s a genre for you. i began this as a response to the michaels in the “garden state” discussion but decided it needed a place all to itself.

while being right generally about luc besson you’re all wrong about “the fifth element”. that film kicks ass– even though there is a lot deeply, politically wrong with it. but the rest of the luc besson catalog is all crap. however, i am a connoisseur of the scenery-chewing performance and besson has enabled some of the greatest of this kind in screen history. oldman’s performance in “the professional” may never be topped–though daniel day lewis does make a strong case in “gangs of new york”, but i digress. aesthetic problems with his movies aside, besson’s penchant for putting the female body in pain is somewhat disturbing. i think he may have issues.
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Guarded Stare

Garden State A FILM ABOUT TROUBLED YOUNG PEOPLE… WITH NO TROUBLES.

Is Zach Braff just not good enough – or confident enough – to let certain things remain unsaid? Or is the audience that dense that we need to have every little thing spelled out for us? Braff lets his cast off very easy in this film, particularly himself and Portman. Blinding headaches? Oh, they just go away halfway through the film. Been on lithium, Zoloft, Paxil for ten years and decide to take yourself off all at once? Well, the worst thing that will happen to you is that you’ll joyously shout while standing in the rain! Continue reading Guarded Stare

horror conventions and culture

in a comment over in the “the wicker man/spirited away” thread mark posted some interesting stuff about more “amoral” japanese horror vs. the christian ethic of the average american horror film. i think this might deserve its own thread and so am cutting and pasting the relevant portion of mark’s comments here.

What I did discover that interested me was the lack of morals of the spirits and whom they choose to reward and punish. This didn’t come up much in Spirited Away – for example the girl’s parents are turned into pigs not out of some god’s whim, but b/c they dared to eat food that belonged to someone else. They “sinned.” In the Japanese ghost story books I read, it seemed punishments were meted out for no good reason; that the spirits were simply mischievous, weren’t judging based on sin, and in some cases couldn’t even be classified as “thinking” (which reminded me of the Cthuhlu mythos, where the malevolence is pure, and the monsters aren’t even really capable of rational thought.)
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hollywood shuffle

not much high art of late i’m afraid. we watched “shrek 2” a few nights ago and last night we watched “friday night lights”. “shrek 2” is entertaining enough–jennifer saunders and rupert everett are great, as are eddie murphy (of course) and antonio banderas. i find it funny that even in animation voiceover the black guy still plays the sidekick. but there’s not much else to say about this. don’t do what i did and watch “faraway idol” with simon cowell on the dvd extras.

we thought “friday night lights” was really quite good. it is a genre film through and through, and towards the end the conventions take over to a large extent but it is fairly affecting stuff–much closer to “hoop dreams” than to something like “varsity blues”. there’s some weird stuff with race towards the end and in general the film skips over dealing with the question of race in a small texas town in the late 80s but still worth a watch. the dvd extra interviews with the actual now grown-up players (this is very closely based on real events, or rather a non-fiction book about real events) are quite moving in parts, as you see what became of the guy who when the movie starts out seems destined for nfl stardom.

Iranian Cinema

I’m pretty ignorant about Iranian cinema, but I watched Abbos Kiarostami’s Ten last night and thought it was damn good. J. Hoberman tells me it “questions the notion of film as narrative,” describing Ten as “conceptually rigorous, splendidly economical, and radically Bazinian.” That may very well be the critical kiss of death, but I was very much engaged by this complex glimpse of contemporary Iran. Are there other Iranian films out there I should see?

wes anderson

i started writing this as a response to mike in the “i heart huckabees” conversation but decided it merited its own thread:

anderson’s best movie is “bottle rocket”–the ne plus ultra of uncloaked, goofy sincerity. i love all his movies but none of them (or any of the later characters) move me the way anthony and dignan did. he needs to get out of his rut and write a new movie–everything since has been a new take on “bottle rocket” with the pleasures of a repertory company and a higher art direction budget taking the place of growth as a writer. though i must admit that he’s gotten better at writing women: inez in “bottle rocket” barely spoke, and olivia williams’ character in “rushmore” pretty much just raised her eyebrows–then again maybe its just angelica huston.

Bloodsucking Freaks, or… films you walked out of

Jeff left “Pet Sematary,” ignoring the fine fine work of Ed Gwynn as the Pepperidge Farm guy.

What films have caused you to get up and leave the theater? I admit that “Bloodsucking Freaks” was actually too sadistic even for me to bear, but I also admit that I simply turned off the video. And that’s not good enough: it’s easy to eject the tape, drop the dvd back in its netflixy pouch. Screw that: what did you pay hard-earned cash for, only to feel so aggrieved or aggravated that you up and walked out?

Me: Rustler’s Rhapsody. I can’t recall why the hell I thought I should see this in the first place.

what does scorcese have to do?

at our oscar gathering the consensus was that his best shot will be to make a holocaust movie about a black paraplegic who survives the camps and then single-handedly de-segregates alabama (jamie foxx wins best supporting actor as martin luther king). that or maybe a mussolini biopic.

not that any of us (at the gathering) have actually seen “the aviator”.

and oh, in your face, rwanda!

LOST

I keep waiting for this show to stumble but 17 hours in and I’m still hooked by the unusual depth of characterization as well as the series’ ability to maintain dramatic tension and narrative ambiguity. What first seemed to be a potentially hokey amalgamation of Land of the Lost, Lord of the Flies, and Gilligan’s Island has transformed itself into a potent post-9/11 story of human redemption. With its cast of Koreans, Australians, Iraquis and Americans, a crazy French lady and some polar bears; LOST may be the best hour of network television since . . . well, Freaks and Geeks (24’s “wham bam thank you mam” aesthetics and the convoluted machinations of Alias’ Rimbaldi plot do not measure up). Will it, however, be able to sustain itself into a second and third season, or will it flame out spectacularly like Twin Peaks?

Goodbye, Dragon Inn

I watched Tsai Ming-liang’s 2003 release last night. Anybody into this fellow’s films (a Chinese-Malaysian filmmaker who has lived and worked in Taiwan since his early twenties)? Goodbye, Dragon Inn was stunningly frustrating yet captivating all the same. There are basically two narratives that drive the action. Set in what once was a regal now dilapidated Taipei movie palace (a concrete mausoleum full of ghosts or maybe those mysterious men in the belly of the building are simply cruising for sex, I’m not sure), the film captures the theatre’s final screening before closing its doors and jumps back and forth between the handful of audience members and staff in the cavernous theatre with the 1966 King Hu kung-fu epic Dragon Inn being projected on the screen.

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