My Week in Film (10/19 - 10/25)

The Smiling Lieutenant (1931)
(Directed by Ernst Lubitsch)

Maurice Chevalier unknowingly smiles at a princess (and winks at her! The scandal!) and she gets all crazy and things happen and there are things which do not happen and songs are sung and there's sex everywhere and Chevalier is a true Viennese and you just can't uproot him like a tree and I'm not sure how much I like Colbert (she was amazing in The Palm Beach Story) but that was a different roujin and while I appreciate her garter-givin', I'm just not how sure I dug everything that went down (she's a sophisticated lady though) and Chevalier will not drink the water and sometimes The Princess just has to sex it up (and that is the hottest thing ever) and the frenchman can't resist and you got yourself some HOT STUFF and roujin is amused and roujin enjoys being amused and he specially enjoys lacy lingerie and things like that (well, you can't have it all) and the only reason this isn't as good as One Hour With You is just because there's not enough good jokes and, even at 90 minutes, there's not enough distribution of the music/jokes/whateverz and although while I love Chevalier, that cheeky son of a gun, we can't win all of them and well, roujin, SHIT IS REAL. I must agree.

★★★

Scenario de 'Sauve qui peut (la vie)' (1979)
(Directed by Jean-Luc Godard)

Godard basically comes clean about the reasoning for a lot of the techniques he uses in his 1980 film, Slow Motion and they're pretty fascinating. He talks about he doesn't like shot/counter shot stuff because it reduces dialogue to something like a ping pong match or a competition. He talks about his use of crossfading not as just linking two images, but, that he sometimes he starts with a sequence as an image and he says that he sees cross-fading images as "doors" that will either open or close to new ideas and shit. He talks of his use of slow motion as slowing down to see if there's anything even there. Godard talks about a lot of times music is used to highlight emotion in events so he had various actors wonder out loud where the music was coming from and always saying that it was coming from the neighbour's radio. And that leads us to the amazing ending of Slow Motion and although I didn't love that movie, it was always interesting and I imagine watching this film can only unlock more and more stuff from that movie and I'm eager to check it out and I am not gonna change my name to godardfan27 OKAY. But, yeah, fascinating stuff.

★★★

Sink or Swim (1990)
(Directed by Su Friedrich)

Composed of 26 short vignettes, each for each letter of the alphabet, but presented in reverse alphabetical order, Sink or Swim is about Friedrich's relationship to her Father. A young girl comes on the soundtrack to tell stories about her Father and about herself all while home footage (?) plays. The stories are sometimes shocking like when the Father basically almost drowns the children (twice) and sometimes kind of funny. Sometimes the links between the names of the sections and the stories/images aren't that clear and sometimes they are, but that goes only to show that none of these elements take us toward a single answer that wraps up everything nicely. By the end of the film, the girl from the previous stories is grown up and her relationship to her Father is still ambivalent, still ill-defined. Anyway, this was really good. roujin is watching movies again! (but only short ones)

★★★


Jhon's Movie of the Week is... Sink or Swim

My Week in Film (10/12 - 10/18)

Dil Bole Hadippa! (2009)
(Directed by Anurag Singh)

I bring you 2009's finest crossdressing cricket musical romance extravaganza! I wish I had watched it in the theater to experience all the great colors in the musical sequences (which are basically glorified music videos doubling as montages) and because I like the ambience and just the experience of going to that theater but watching it at home turned out fine. I didn't have the greatest subs but the story was so cliched and typical that it didn't matter. I've pretty much given up expecting something aesthetically interesting out of these movies so I just focuses on the actors and how awesome they were and the big smiles and the cricket action (I still know nothing about this sport even though I've played). The search continues for a Bollywood movie that I can proudly say is actually good... This is still a lot of fun, though.

★★1/2

Eccentricities of a Blond Hair Girl (2009)*
(Directed b Manoel de Oliveira)

Okay, I've seen it twice now. And it's still very perplexing. However, I don't mind as much now. The first viewing was kind of filled with a bunch of nagging questions - where will this lead? Why does this even matter? What is the meaning of your existence, roujin? But that all went away this time around. What I noticed was the kind of old-timey morals of the thing: everyone acts by adhering to some sort of strict social code. The main dude defers to his older uncle; he asks the uncle for permission to marry and then is denied. While the story is situated in a modern city, everything else that happens seems highly peculiar. The characters end social gatherings in which a famous harpist plays Debussy and some random dude recites a poem. These are extremely fancy places and Oliveira pays as much attention to the artworks on the walls as he does to the characters. I think these sort of throwback morals (along with the literary dialogue) are what explains the ending; and, also, a slight foreshadowing (?) with that first encounter in the store. Whatever. I was transfixed throughout. Just thinking of that lateral tracking shot going over the incredibly furnished rooms as it enters the room where the harp's playing gives me goosebumps. Maybe that's all I need; just lush furnished rooms and interesting framings and hot kleptoroujins.

★★★

Nosferatu (1922)
(Directed by F.W. Murnau)

This was boring. Sorry.

★★

Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht (1979)
(Directed by Werner Herzog)

This was unexpectedly great. Follows more or less the same story as the original one with several deviations that I found to be worthwhile/better or whatever. It takes its time to get going. Herzog relishes Harker journey to Transylvania and spends a great amount of time on it; these are the film's best moments. The Popol Vuh score takes over and it's just one great image after another. Herzog also finds room for the gypsies and finds room for lengthy admiration of space and setting and all this awesome stuff. What monkeys are to Aguirre, rats are for Nosferatu. I like Adjani a lot. She's extremely pale and beautiful, but her eyes pop out in this bizarre way sometimes and it kind of grounds her for me and doesn't make her seem as ethereal and all this other obsessive roujin nonsense that is going on. Kinski is pretty great. He plays Dracula as this little wounded thing. When he finally gets Adjani all alone, he asks for only a little love and when she rejects him, he makes this little face/noise like a wounded animal. That's more interesting to me than Orlok in the original, who is more or less just a creepy... thing... that walks around. Herzog's documentary impulse and penchant for capturing strong images is also really great and is a good anachronistic touch for the story's gothic roots. He incorporates a child's sneeze into the scene where the townspeople board the boat. When pigs overrun the city square and they casually wander into the frame, he doesn't cut until he sees one shit ( ). When Harker roams about Dracula's castle, there's none of Murnau's expressionism or whatever, Herzog just follows him around in mostly unbroken handheld takes. Very interesting things. Very interesting things. roujin, what do you do now? Ride off!

★★★1/2

Jhon's Movie of the Week is... PHANTOM DER NACHT

My Week in Film (10/5 - 10/11)

The Public Enemy (1931)
(Directed by William Wellman)

Lots of fun, but I guess it lacked the gravitas and tragedy I felt in The Roaring Twenties although it does supply its own whopper of an ending. Cagney is pretty great here with his grapefruit and his stares. Jean Harlow is horrendous. I have no idea what the hell is going on with her. The guy who played Cagney's brother was pretty bad, too. Really, I just kind of liked Cagney and seeing him do all these awesome things. But, you know, that gets old and stuff and roujin was like "why is roujin getting bored with this movie?" and roujin answered himself "i don't know, i guess roujin is just dumb" and that confused roujin and the world stopped for a second or two or three and then everything made sense again and order was restored to the world and roujin was always right. always.

★★★

The Invention of Lying (2009)
(Directed by Ricky Gervais + Matthew Robinson)

This was actually pretty good. Gervais discovers that he can say something besides the truth and uses it to his own advantage. While that first half is pretty great and really mean and funny, I think the film gets more interesting once when the whole religion aspect is thrown in there. Mostly cuz it suggests that religion can only exist in a world without lying which to me is funny. But, it isn't just funny. It was genuinely moving to me. The scene with Gervais and his mother is the emotional lynchpin of the movie and from there on it becomes more serious and more probing and more interesting. Very, very interesting. All those movies look hilarious...

★★★

Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985)
(Directed by Hector Babenco)

Anyway, this was pretty good. William Hurt and Raul Julia are both really good as two cellmates who over the course of the movie get to know each other better. Julia is a political prisoners, Hurt had sex with a minor. As a way to escape from the drudgery of his everyday existence, Hurt relates some of his favorite movies to Julia. The film recreates his movies in a totally stylistically excessive way. They're lots of fun to watch. Naturally, Hurt and Julia butt heads. First, about Hurt's dismissal of all things political and sometimes about Hurt's sexuality, but, naturally, they get closer. Of course, it isn't that simple and what seems to be happening isn't really happening. At least not for the reasons that the viewer thinks it is. Some fine acting all across the board and it never felt stagy to me even when it was just confined to the dude's prison cells. Very, very interesting...

★★★

Jhon's Movie of the Week is... Kiss of The Spider Woman

My Week in Film (9/28 - 10/4)

Ossos (1997)
(Directed by Pedro Costa)

Finally made it through this. I think I've seen the first 30 or 40 minutes of this like three times but something's always stopped me. It definitely reminded me of Bresson except less concentrated. Costa's editing got carried over from Casa de Lava. This shit is really confusing. Well, probably less so, but the editing doesn't really clarify, it probably makes things even more maddening and confusing. Except that they aren't. It's such a dingy film, too, probably the dingiest I've ever seen. Most of it takes in a slum of sorts and the contrast between the white walls of the city apartments and that place is huge. The acting is pretty mannered and stuff. They stand there staring off into space suggesting things that we couldn't possibly guess at. They also smoke a lot. Sometimes it gets a little ridiculous like when The Father just suddenly drops to a bed or when he refuses to move so Tina has to drag him through the floor. Really? That's just weird. While I was mostly just kind of not really interested in what happened, there is this one scene that I found to be completely heartbreaking. The Father sits with his son in some random bathroom stall. He takes small bites out of a sandwich, chews it up and then feeds it to the kid. After he does this, he takes swigs of alcohol. It's so fucking sad. Anyway, Costa, you confuzzle me. What do I do with you? TELL ME, SWEET BABY JESUS

★★1/2

Coming to America (1988)*
(Directed by John Landis)

This is definitely Eddie Murphy's finest moment. He plays it completely straight, always sticking to his character. His naivete and sweet honesty are the real anchor of the film while everyone else does a bunch of hilarious stuff. The barbershop stuff is completely hilarious and Murphy's interactions with Arsenio Hall are incredible, too. Yeah, yeah, everything's funny. The romance elements are pretty good even if by the end of the film the movie forgets to be funny and gets all sentimental on you, you don't really mind because Murphy is so great. It's hard to dislike a movie that incorporates zebras running in the background as a joke. Get it, it's AFRICA! What's also funny is that there's pretty much three people white people in the entire movie - Louis Anderson is one of them. This is Eddie Murphy's America. Funny, funny, funny. Soul GLO is one of the funniest things I've ever seen/heard in my life. The royal penis is clean, roujin. Well, what can you do?

★★★

Death and the Devil (1973)
(Directed by Stephen Dwoskin)

I liked Behindert's persistent sense of intimacy and that's also here in spades, but I guess I just wasn't in the mood for relentlessly invasive closeups. It's funny. I was really into the film at first but I guess it just wore me out. It also didn't help matters that I thought the 30 + minute dialogue scene was excruciatingly boring. It was just some talk about sex and women or something and while sort of interesting, it just was maddeningly slow for me and besides some stellar treatment of the human face, by film's end I was mostly just not very interested... I suck


★★

Zombieland (2009)
(Directed by Ruben Fleischer)

It was okay. Everything was played for comedy which suits me fine, but, I don't know. I guess it just isn't particularly special to me. It's just kinda whatever. I like Jesse Eisenberg but I got pretty tired of his voiceover pretty quickly. Yeah, I get it, you were a nerd and were wasting your life before all this happened and you've never had a girlfriend or something. Don't trust people! Jeez! Woody is great, duh, I liked his shameless crying. The sequence in the Hollywood mansion is definitely the best part. Lots of really funny stuff there even if it does put on hold their journey or whatever, but I guess you gotta pad out your running time somehow. So, laughs were had, blood was spilled, roujin was amused. Mostly. But... I really hated that on-screen text. I don't know why but that shit just annoys the hell out of me. Blergh. Average. Average roujin average ninjas average versus average self.

★★

This was a bad week...

Jhon's Movie of the Week is... Coming to America

My Week in Film (9/21 - 9/27)

Jackie Brown (1997)*
(Directed by Quentin Tarantino)

what struck me the most about this viewing, how concerned it is with aging, trying to stake out your own way even if the years are getting on. Ordell has his money, Max has his thoughts about getting out of the bonds business and Jackie, well, she has a plan. I guess the people that wanted Tarantino to grow up must've skipped this movie cuz it's by far his most mature and soulful film. all while grounding it firmly in a genre framework. It also contains bar none his most emotionally resonant sequence (Max Cherry: out-of-focus, alone). Not to mention Tarantino's most complex and human characterizations. Fuck, that reprise of "Across 110th Street" is one of the greatest things ever. Those lines on Forster's face say it all. I liked the languid pace and the funky soundtrack and the repeating mall sequence and its incredible soundtrack. May be his best film.

★★★1/2

What Time Is It There? (2001)
(Directed by Tsai Ming-Liang)

I intended to go all chronological with Tsai but it didn't work out that way (I lost my copy of Vive L'Amour somewhere...) Anyway, this is a fantastic film. I don't really know what to say about it. I kind of expected it to be a little boring but after a while I just started getting into the rhythm of the movie and the thought that "nothing is happening" quickly went away. In fact, the film is teeming with incident. Hsiao-Kang goes out into the streets after meeting a woman who's going to Paris and starts changing all the clocks to Paris time. Why does he do this? I don't really know. The woman she meets goes to Paris for no reason we ever know, wonders around, looking alone but not lonely? The film's best moment is the synchronized reach toward something. Well, you'll know the moment. Lest I make the film sound like nothing but Asian Ennui ™, I should also mention that it's startlingly funny. There's these little visual punchlines every once in a while that are both kinda sad but also, well, funny. My two favorites may be when Fatty, the fish, eats a cockroach and the dude who steals Hsiao-Kang's clock in the movie theater (that's gotta be one of the funniest things ever). And Jean-Pierre Leaud haunts the cemeteries of Paris, Hsiao-Kang watches The 400 Blows and it's apparently Tsai's favoritest movie. Hmmm, I need to watch The Skywalk is Gone now and then wrap it up with THE WAYWARD CLOUD. TSAI-FEST

★★★★

The Skywalk is Gone (2002)
(Directed by Tsai Ming-Liang)

The connective tissue between What Time Is It There? and The Wayward Cloud that sets up that film's porn/water shortage shenanigans. The girl comes back from France looking for the street vendor but... look at the title. It's typical that they actually do walk past each other at one point but only one of them recognizes the other... and then does nothing about it. Anyway, it's interesting (the camera moves!) but not nearly long enough to truly get into it.

★★★

The Wayward Cloud (2005)*
(Directed by Tsai Ming-Liang)

I'm really glad I watched it again. The first time the only thing I registered was this: long static takes, weirdo sex scenes and bizarre musical numbers. Now, after watching What Time and The Skywalk is missing, I think I'm closer to... well, something. It feels like a damn angry movie in its depiction of pornography as an essentially dehumanizing force. There's a shot of a woman's face post-money shot that's grotesque and bizarre. The film's sex scenes are all without pleasure and they're often ridiculous. One of them has Hsiao-Kang having sex with a woman in the shower. However, since there's a water shortage, the film crew has to use water bottles to recreate the water in the shower and at one point they run out before Hsiao-Kang, uh, finishes. There's also some scenes that suggest a romance that could be. Tsai has a weird homage to Annie Hall in there as the couple pick up crabs from the kitchen floor and the film's most loving image is that of Hsiao-Kang taking puffs from a cigarette that's being held in Shiang-chyi's toes. The film's most daring and shocking moment is its final 30-minute (?) or so set piece that will probably seal the deal on your view of the movie. It's both disgusting and oddly touching. It's like the decade's weirdest musical romance!

★★★★

The Brown Bunny (2003)
(Directed by Vincent Gallo)

It's good. Seriously, it's not that different from something like Taste of Cherry in that a lot of it takes place inside of a car. Mostly, we see a profile of Gallo's face as he drives his van. For extended periods of time, we see through his bug-splattered windshield as he drives across the country. Occasionally, a plaintive folk song will pop up on the soundtrack. It's just so damn lonely. I had this feeling about Buffalo '66, too, and this is a, well, not logical, but an extension of the same concerns of that film but carried over into a film that does not make the same narrative concessions that Buffalo made. This film will make you feel the loneliness... even if it bores you a little bit. Gallo goes through the country, his face stricken with pain or something, runs into several women named after flowers and then promptly leaves them. He convinces the first woman he meets to go away with him after like 2 minutes of knowing her (ha, Gallo, you dog, you!) but once she goes into her house to get her things, he leaves. In one of the film's best moments, Gallo meets a woman named Lilly in some rest stop (do all the women have their names visible somewhere?). Gallo senses something and sits next to her. Immediately, he's touching her hair and asking her if something's wrong and it's seriously one of the most intimate things I've ever seen. The whole thing is so quiet (does this film have one of the lowest sound mixes in history or something? I had to turn up my volume full blast to hear what they were saying) and painful and sad.

The film's last sequence has Gallo returning to Los Angeles to meet up with Daisy. Besides the unfortunate crack smoking, this entire sequence is masterful, revealing so much about this dude's issues with women and about his own self or something. By the time, Sevigny actually does what everyone expects her to do, we are completely with the film (even if we wonder about the necessity of that act). What I don't like about the film is what happens afterward. It's plausible that all the other women Gallo met on the way to Los Angeles were a way of trying to deal with his issues with Daisy, but the final revelation just makes him seem crazy... and this is what makes the film not pretty good, but only good. It's a psychological reveal that tries to "explain" or something and that didn't sit well with me.

★★★

Away We Go (2009)
(Directed by Sam Mendes)

It's bad. It's just a celebration of good old-fashioned values. You know, family, love, all that crap. Basically, take a sharpie and draw it on your foreheads: yay, we're boring!. ugh. Everything follows as you expect it to. The main couple are just trying to figure everything out. Hmmm, okay. So is everyone else. Well, they need to go on a journey to do this. Hmmm, okay. They need to be exposed to various different types of parenting so at the end we can come to the conclusion that, yep, what we got going on here, this is normal, this is how it should be. So, all those alternative ways of raising your children, that doesn't fly. The first two stops they make are ridiculous caricatures. I wanted to kill myself after suffering through Alison Janney's performance. It's so goddamn grating and hideous. Yeah, sure, that's what they're going for. THIS IS NOT HOW YOU RAISE CHILDREN. Got it. Next up is Gyllenhaal playing some kind of hippie mom, trying to rear her children in a non-traditional way. Well, our couple just won't stand for that. THAT'S JUST FUCKING WRONG. Sure, the characters are total cartoons but what they represent still stands. You just don't deviate from what's normal. no way! Then they go to Montreal where they meet some college buddies who've adopted... but... the wife feels so empty... because she can't conceive. That's right, adopting just isn't fulfilling. It needs to come out of her vagina for the child to feel like hers! Just nasty. I mean, some of this stuff is moving to me, too. I mean, I got the same ole boring values as everyone else but the way in which it's presented is just so boring. It's so bland and vanilla and whatever. NEXT.

★1/2


Jhon's Movie of the Week is... The Wayward Cloud

My Week in Film (9/14 - 9/20)

Metropolitan (1990)
(Directed by Whit Stillman)

Such a sweet and funny movie. I really shouldn't like it cuz it's about a bunch of snooty white new york boring people, but they kind of came alive to me when I started realizing the ways in which this little corner of the world that's theirs is totally ridiculous. It also reminded me of Eyes Wide Shut in that it doesn't really feel real (and there's the way Whitman fades between scenes sometimes making his direction seem so fucking smooth and gentle). Of course, Eigeman is hilarious and all that. But I really found my way in with Audrey's character who's just so sweet and cute and all that stuff and that one red-hair dude's douche blatherings (that hurt her) who is all against this type of preppy nonsense. Probably my favorite part is near the end when they go on the rescue and they're talking near the beach and that one dude with glasses shows up in between them and he just stands there smiling. I should watch more of this man's movies.

★★★1/2

Barcelona (1994)
(Directed by Whit Stillman)

So funny. I guess the whole thing is like an antidote to other ridiculousness. It all goes down so smooth and easy and the talk and charm of the actor/characters makes it all that much more appealing. Basically, we follow two cousins who are in Spain. One of them strives to be a better, more decent person while the other one just wants to have a good time while defending America abroad. That his defense of America seems extremely reflexive and off-handed doesn't matter. People are insulting his country, he's gotta do something. The undercurrent of anti-American criticism going on in the movie gets handled swiftly although there is a point in the film where you could say things get "serious." And then what's his face goes thru some challenges to his faith or something. I don't know. I got lost in all the miniscule pleasures. It means nothing. It means everything. Hey, it's a Shakespearean comedy or something. Chris Eigeman is hilarious. Those ants!

★★★1/2

Last Days of Disco (1998)
(Directed by Whit Stillman)

This is probably my favorite Stillman film. It's not really all that different from his other ones although maybe they've gotten a little darker now. You got nudity (!), drug use (!) and venereal diseases (gasp!). Whoa! But it's all treated with his wonderful attitude. He takes the piss out of the characters ever so gently but loves them and wants them to do better. There's, of course, the whole trying to sort out what feels right and wrong for you but it's handled a little more frankly in this film than the others and it features what's probably the best cast he put together (WILSON!? WHAT THE FUCK?). Plus the whole end-of-an-era is even more prominent with the whole disco thing. But, anyway, what makes it the best for me is that I absolutely and unabashedly love disco. This is no joke. Seriously.

★★★★

A Thousand Clouds of Peace (2003)
(Directed by Julian Hernandez)

Works more as a mood piece than anything, but even then it's not engaging enough. The cinematography is pretty good. Very self-consciously arty and all that stuff which I don't really have a problem with, just kind of distracting sometimes. It just follows this one dude as he roams the streets of mexico, doing nothing, longing, pining. Once in a while he actually talks to someone but most of the time we just find him sullen, full of perhaps misplaced desire. It also reminded me of A Man Asleep a couple of times in the fact that this young dude's life consists of nothing but these things and there's nothing else (except in here it's love, in there's it's godknowswhat). I couldn't help but be reminded of Happy Together (LOL CUZ IT'S GAY), nah, because of the sort of wandering around going thru life being in pain. But that film is dynamic and poetic while this movie is just sort of repetitive and we gain little to no insight into anything. Hmmm, I'm hoping Broken Sky will be better.

★★1/2

Doctor Bull (1935)
(Directed by John Ford)

Will Rogers is awesome. It's just a fact of life. He goes around the little town taking care of people, telling them to drink castor oil and once in a while going up the hill to the widow's place for some conversation. But soon enough the town starts talking. They think he's up to no good with the widow, they think he's a pill doctor and that's all he can do, and they're just general gossipy small town folk. Anyway, that's all nice and all and the movie's all nice and all but I'm afraid that's about it. There's little of the visual grace of something like Young Mr. Lincoln and the script for this (and the characterizations) aren't as strong as Judge Priest. So, you just got Will Rogers being awesome and a pretty funny ending to tie you over. It was enough for me, ma. It was enough for me.

★★1/2

The Sun Shines Bright (1953)
(Directed by John Ford)

Ford revisits the townsfolk of Judge Priest 20 years later. Things happen. I suppose it's kind of the same exact movie except this time it's much more pessimistic about the entire thing. It's too bad Will Rogers died back in '35 cuz he's amazing, but Winninger eventually won me over (probably around the time he finds himself in front of the jailhouse). Anyway, yeah, it's a whole lot sadder. In Judge Priest, the judge was much more laidback about the election, but in here the danger of losing is palpable. He goes out and campaigns and shakes hands and all that stuff. But, soon enough, things happen that are beyond his control and he's basically in an impossible situation that will pretty much guarantee his loss in the election. Anyway, that's not really the point. It never is. It's all about these small town events: the attempted lynching, "dixie," the dance, the funeral, the election, that reveal the true heart of the community. The funeral procession is probably the best thing I've seen so far in a Ford film. It's almost completely wordless and it's so goddamn beautiful. And, by the end, damn if I don't love this small town.

★★★1/2

Jhon's Movie of the Week is... Last Days of Disco

My Week in Film (9/7 - 9/13)

Graduate First (1979)
(Directed by Maurice Pialat)

Pretty, pretty good. It follows several teenagers as they make their first steps into adulthood (or not). It's pretty damn unsentimental (which could be a plus or a negative depending on the mood - but I think the Pialat from last night helped me be in a bitter mood Smiley ). I really liked all the scenes of them just hanging out. There was one in particular where they all were in a hotel room sprawled on a couple of beds, just hanging out, smoking or whatever, you know, being french. And they're all laughing and whatnot. Then I also dug the kind of assumption that some of these characters would just go on to be stuck in this little town just like the parents are. One of the girls gets married because, hey, she doesn't want to finish up school and she doesn't like her parents and it seems like a good escape from all that. A couple of them try and go to Paris, one of them sleeps around too much, other does this, other does that. Lots of douche stuff going around, too, but that just comes with the territory. I particularly loved the ending and the way that it suggests all kinds of possible outcomes. Also, Pialat thinks nothing about a car's windows blatantly catching the reflection of the camera crew. Who gives a fuck about that!

★★★1/2

Party Girl (1958)
(Directed by Nicholas Ray)

It's some kind of strange technicolor noir musical (okay, there are musical numbers, but it's not really a musical). Ray should've done more musical numbers, though. He's great at them. There's some fantastic interplay between Charisse's dancing and Ray's camera movement. Great stuff right there. The whole movie is I guess a throwback to 30s gangster pictures or something. Taylor's pretty good with his limp and with convincing juries to acquit murderers. Charisse isn't that great of an actress but she does well enough. Really, just watch it for the colors and for the artifice and leave the stupid story out of it. Eh, there's a tommy gun montage in there somewhere, too. Whatever. I had fun. It's like confetti or something. Leave me alone!

★★★

Love Exposure (2008)
(Directed by Sion Sono)

man, this movie is hilarious. Every movie should probably have metaphorical instant boners, right? Anyway, basically, Yu starts to find his priest dad distant from him. His dad starts forcing him to confess to him everyday, but Yu doesn't really have anything to say. So, he goes out into the world and starts committing sins that can he confess to his dad. This involves undergoing arduous training so that he can become a master at taking photos of girl's panties. Of course, this is barely the first hour or so. The film takes so many twists and turns and by one point, it actually becomes some kind of hilariously twisted romantic comedy (along with cross-dressing! lol!). Yeah. Of course, that's only strand of this massive 4-hour film which posits that admitting one's perversion is better than repressing it and that a faithful boner is as good as any way to express your love. There's also a bunch of stuff about how churches/religion can't really satisfy people's everyday needs or something. At the middle of it all, there's just one boy's extreme love story. And that's as simple as it gets. Sometimes it reminded me of Les Amants du Pont-Neuf in just the sheer exuberance and craziness that this dude's love manifests itself and at other points, it's just cheesy nonsense (king of the perverts! lol!). Everyone here's fucked up. The girls by their parents, the adults by religion (or something) and Yu... by love? There's a kind of repetitive lull late into the 3rd hour or so that basically consists of people calling Yu a pervert, but when the end is as awesome as it is, who cares. Also, I need download all these damn Yura Yura Teikoku songs. There's this one stretch where we get Yoko's backstory and it switches between these two or three songs and it's incredible (she hates men!). I don't think they were made for the movie though so it'll get my nod for best soundtrack. So fucking Awesome.

★★★★

Dust in the Wind (1986)
(Directed by Hou Hsiao-Hsien)

It's a little more quiet and resigned than A Time to Live (it doesn't have the brawls, at least) but no slouch in terms of its oblique poetry. Its still distanced, but still manages to be highly emotionally resonant. Maybe it's because the images themselves seek to embody the emotions that underlie the scenes (maybe? I don't know, that seems like a good idea). I really dig how Hou sort of does away with any sense of time that may be building in the viewer. Two years pass by and you don't even realize it until later. Another year has passed without mention. Characters go back and forth between cities and you don't even realize it sometimes. The relationships are sometimes a little obscure, too, but sometimes the little glances inside the actions (helped by the framing or something), like the way that what's his face looks at Yuen when she drinks. There's this feeling for me that's inevitable. The way that the character grows up, goes to work and starts building his own life is very beautiful to me (and how he ends up smoking along with his father). This is one of those films that I think will finally start to hit me in like 3 or months or so. Whenever I'll think back on it, I'll just remember these fleeting images and feelings that make up all that I think is great in art and I'll finally relent and say it's a masterpiece or something. But, this is today. I can't live tomorrow inside my head.

★★★1/2

One Hour With You (1932)
(Directed by Ernst Lubitsch)

Pretty wonderful. Just like Love Me Tonight, it had me grinning from ear to ear. The dialogue is dripping with innuendo. Pretty much everything they say is about how much they like to fuck each other. It's hilarious. Maurice Chevalier is as charming as ever. This time he does these little direct address things that are so funny. He starts singing about what people would do if they were in his situation, it's kind of adorable until you realize he's talking about cheating on his wife. McDonald is also great (although again not as great as she is in Love Me Tonight) By the inevitable conclusion, there's actually some quiet moments and some pain which surprised me which is why it bothered me when the film wrapped up all nice and easy. Anyway, a little infidelity never hurt anyone, right? RIGHT? Oh, you weirdos. You need to be smoother, people. So smooth. Make it smooth for roujin. Then I might like you.

★★★1/2

Judge Priest (1934)
(Directed by John Ford)

So sweet and funny. I really love Will Rogers. It may or may not be one of my favorite performances ever. I'm still not sure. How can anyone not fall in love with his sweet and bumbling charm? I love the opening scene where he just listens to the arguments while reading the cartoons. Of course, that's when Stepin Fetchit is introduced and then it gets all weird. But then it gets subverted when Judge Priest starts asking what kind of bait he used to hook catfish. It's really funny. Actually, while Fetchit never stops being distracting, I really started to dig the funny relationship that Ford develops between both of them. Maybe it was around the time that Judge Priest impersonates Fetchit. That was hilarious. Anyway, it's kind of a precursor to Young Mr. Lincoln with all the courtroom stuff, except that it's not played for the beauty that Lincoln achieves just thru Fonda's characterization, but instead played for laughs. Although it's kind of amusing to me that everyone cheers valiantly because the dude fought for the south and Dixie is playing in the background. Weird people. Can't wait to see The Sun Shines Bright although I'll miss Will Rogers. God, that dude is amazing.

★★★1/2


Jhon's Movie of the Week is... Dust in the Wind