we like to watch

This is a haunting, deeply affecting film, directed by Ki-duk Kim (of 3-Iron and Spring Summer Autumn Winter). I’m not sure how to review it without spoilers, so be alerted. A teenage schoolgirl raises money to go to Europe for her and her friend by prostituting herself; the friend helps to set up the encounters with men and stands guard despite being disgusted by what they are doing. When the first girl dies, her friend sleeps with all the men who had sex with the dead girl, and returns the money to them. It is a sort of homage to her dead friend, and she achieves a kind of peace as she crosses off the names of former johns, and overcomes her earlier disgust. Meanwhile, her father discovers what his daughter has been doing, is distraught and wreaks a measure of retribution on the men. He then sets off on a trip with his daughter to visit the grave of his wife, her mother. Continue reading Samaritan Girl (Samaria 2004)

I reached back in time and watched a tv movie from the early ‘seventies called “Pursuit,” directed by Michael Crichton and starring E.G. Marshall as crazed right-wing terrorist and Ben Gazzara as chain-smoking game-loving fed. It wasn’t very good, but I had this flash of nostalgia for the kinds of things I used to watch on television when young–mediocre movies like this one, which at 70+ minutes felt padded, but at least had some intriguing grit to it. Also watched the Italian crime film Revolver, which had Oliver Reed looking like Javier Bardem and plenty of very European pretty-boys and pretty-girls slumming about. It wasn’t very good, but it had awful dubbing (fun!) and a sleazy energy I kind of dug.

Oliver Reed. Maybe we should have a Reed retrospective. Anyone up for The Brood?

Okay, this is a television series, not a film. I do recall when Arnab first launched this blog (thank you Arnab) that discussing TV and teaching methods was verboten (Frisoli asked about the former, Jim Kincaid the latter), but since this blog has grown, we’ve included a lot of chat (actually some really inspired writing, tho never from me) about television. The Sopranos, Deadwood, Rome–basically really strong HBO and Showtime programming. Continue reading The Bronx is Burning

Two minor recommendations:
Robinson Devor’s Police Beat follows a West-African-immigrant police officer as he bikes his rounds outside Seattle and obsesses about his potentially-straying girlfriend. Be warned: the film is less about forward motion than surreal, sideways development. We often cut jarringly into the middle of some oddball bit of mayhem or crime, without much explication before or after, perhaps echoing Z’s experience of cop life or of America. (A postscript to the film notes that all of the depicted mayhem is taken from the pages of the Seattle criminal record.) Continue reading Atypical Cop Stories: Police Beat and The Negotiator

For my money, easily, effortlessly, the best thriller/action movie of the summer, the year, probably the decade. It is a little flabbier than the first installment but it is trying to do a lot more, so that can perhaps be forgiven. A few lines uttered by David Strathairn are clunkers, but very few. And the feel-good ending spoils the introspective, dark feel of the movie. But apart for that, I can’t think of a thing this movie does wrong.

The cinematography conveys a sense of place as we move from Turin to Paris to Tangiers to Madrid and then to New York. There are nice moments of tranquility within the mayhem, beautifully captured by a shot of a finger idly stroking a coffee cup, or Bourne alone in his thoughts, nursing bruised and bloodied fists. There is a great juxtaposition of flashbacks as Bourne recalls being waterboarded, immediately followed by an underwater scene from early in the second installment. Two scenes from the second installment of the trilogy are reinserted into this movie seamlessly. Paul Greengrass cuts it all together superbly.

The action sequences are simply unmatched. The word ‘taut’ is overused, but here it applies in spades. A long scene near the beginning in London’s Waterloo station sets a new standard for action choreography (and is another illustration of Gio’s observation that the cellphone has become the one indispensable item in a thriller). But there are at least three other fine action sequences that had me chewing on my fingernails.

In Joan Allen, David Strathairn, Albert Finney, Julia Stiles and, above all, Matt Damon, the movie has real professionals, adding a level of seriousness and self-consciousness to all the performances. And, to the extent that this trilogy has a message, it is about the cost of violence, and the remorse and pain that Bourne feels — and Damon conveys this mostly silently, through facial expression — for the damage he has done. I’m gushing, but if you like action movies, this one is in a class of its own.

jeff, mike, all well? please check in when you can.

we were on the 35 this afternoon, but nowhere near that bridge–though i think we went over it on sunday.