In The Mood For Film

Images: The Telephone Book (Nelson Lyon, 1971)

2010-03-14T17:30:00.000-07:00

The Telephone Book Nelson Lyon, 1971

My Week in Film (3/1 - 3/7)

2010-03-07T19:55:00.000-08:00

Three Comrades (1938)
(Directed by Frank Borzage)

With this and Little Man, What Now?, Borzage shows that while he's all about all-out romanticism, he does not ignore the real world. The setting is post-WW Germany, and its a confusing time. There are a bunch of anti-fascism (?) rallies and stuff and there's fighting going on in the city. Things are tough. The titular three comrades come back from the war, start up their own business and go about their life, but soon Margaret Sullavan shows up, charms everyone (roujin included) and the movie takes off. She's magnificent. She speaks in this husky, throaty way that just melts me, and the relationship between the three dudes was so great. They just sit around being the bestest buddies, supporting each other to ridiculous extents and drinking lots. That kind of stuff just speaks to me in ways I will never begin to understand. There are two things that bothered me: the chase through the snow, and the ending. The first seemed a little strange in the context of everything else. I dug how it looked, but it didn't really seem to fit in with the rest. The ending is ridiculously beautiful and heartfelt and I was moved, but it is beyond cheesy (and I'm not entirely sure on the motivation behind it). But, these are quibbles really. There's too much greatness here. It can't be ignored.

Couples Retreat (2009)
(Directed by Peter Billingsley)

I hate myself. Just a compendium of all these different things that I guess are supposed to be entertaining and "funny" but really are nothing but soul-killing and hateful. The whole Davis/Favreau storyline really just made me want to puke repeatedly into a bucket, and there's just this whole bunch of hollywood cynicism about relationships and about what happy endings mean and the emotional highs and lows are so telegraphed and calculated into the running time like it was done in some excel spreadsheet or something and I don't know. This movie is just terrible.

Shutter Island (2010)
(Directed by Martin Scorsese)

I feel like I have a very large blind spot in terms of whatever movies Scorsese is working off of and referencing. A lot of it seemed really hysteric and blah blah blah. I really have nothing to say about it.

Wheels on Meals (1984)*
(Directed by Sammo Hung)

So I watched this again with some friends but it didn't hold up too well. I mean, I was having fun with the general goofiness going on but the friends didn't seem to be having too much fun with it and that brought me down and the kind of buddy movieness of it stopped working for a while, which was sad. I guess Project A would be the best out of these then. I don't know. My mind has stopped working. No more questions.

Images: Couples Retreat (Peter Billingsley, 2009)

2010-03-01T17:28:00.000-08:00

Couples Retreat Peter Billingsley, 2009

Images: Three Comrades (Frank Borzage, 1938)

2010-03-01T17:24:00.000-08:00

Three Comrades Frank Borzage, 1938

My Week in Film (2/22 - 2/28)

2010-02-28T17:20:00.000-08:00

The Grapes of Wrath (1940)*
(Directed by John Ford)

A high school classroom is not a good place to watch movies. Seriously. I remember really digging some parts when I was a junior in high school, and then spacing out and falling asleep and making jokes with the people I sat next to (this was probably the best class for that). So, although, I've seen this movie before, I hadn't really seen it. But, now, it's all clear. Well, not at all. Ford definitely goes all out. He's kinda showing off cuz that's how ridiculously beautiful this film is. Not only does he totally master all these dark as fuck scenes with characters barely resembling shadows but he shows why he's the ultimate landscape filmmaker. Sky battling Earth and winning. Seriously. He frames people against the skyline and it is an overwhelming experience. Sure, things get preachy, but Steinbeck's book had that, too. Basically, THE PEOPLE. They can run their own lives. They can...

"A fellow ain't got a soul of his own, just little piece of a big soul, the one big soul that belongs to everybody, then... "

whoa, whoa, STEINBECK, what you doing there?

I'm not really sure what happened this week...

Jhon's Movie of the Week is... The Grapes of Wrath

Images: The Grapes of Wrath (John Ford, 1940)

2010-02-24T18:03:00.000-08:00

The Grapes of Wrath John Ford, 1940

My Week in Film (2/15 - 2/21)

2010-02-21T17:46:00.000-08:00

Go! Go! Go! (1962-1964)
(Directed by Marie Menken)

"Yet for Menken, animation also became a way of radically transforming the world around her, reimagining postwar New York City, for example, in her masterpiece of single frame cinematography Go! Go! Go! (1962-64), a work that condenses two years of patient documentary filmmaking into a delirious and exhilarating vision of a hyperactive city."

Okay, I didn't find it delirious or exhilarating. Mostly it amused me how strange and bizarre some things look at that speed. The patterns of ships avoiding each other in the harbor or of people on the beach or of sidewalks and streets are made new again by seeing them this way. But that wasn't enough for me. Because I'm an asshole.

Living (1971)
(Directed by Franz Zwartjes)

A couple enter their new apartment, and it's creepy. They seem to be wearing this ghoulish makeup and the camerawork accentuates the off-kilter quality of the short. The camera is held by the dude (the director) as he films himself and the wife going around the apartment which is mostly empty. There's lots of strange camera movements that and there's some interesting editing when the wife lays down on the bed (?) and the music is pretty interesting (noisy nothings in the background), but ultimately I didn't take much away from it. Interesting experience, I guess.

Out of the Blue (1980)
(Directed by Dennis Hopper)

Linda Manz is a tough-talking punk who loves Elvis. She lives with her mom, skips school all the time, and gets into a whole lot of trouble. Her dad is played by Hopper. He's in jail. Things will happen. It's so goddamn sad and lonely. I love that entire part where she runs away from home to go the city and has all these crazy ass adventures that are actually pretty fucked up and terrible. I love that random singing dude in the street. When he finishes singing, you can hear Hopper behind the camera cheering him on. And Manz's smile when she gets to play drums with that one bad is so beautiful. The turns the story takes later on are kind of a little too over the top, but the rawness that the performers give the material just enough to survive for me. I mean, it's better to burn out than to fade away, right? GREAT FILM.

To Have and Have Not (1944)
(Directed by Howard Hawks)

I can see what my evil twin is talking about vis a vis this and Casablanca, but he's wrong. I mean, I knew this was really great early on and pretty much nothing changed my mind, but it doesn't reach the iconic heights of Casablanca for me. I think it has to do with the character of Eddie. He's just kind of annoying and is only there to make trouble for Bogart's character. Anyway, Bogart and Bacall are seriously amazing. So many damn cigarettes being lit all over the place. HOT! Also, it's hard to deny how cool Bogart looks in that outfit. Damn lean and handsome. And those were the things I noticed about the film. I don't know what they add up to, but I loved it nonetheless. It's just a feeling you get, and when you get it, you know it in your gut, "this one's a keeper." I like this Hawks fella. He sure knew how to make them.

Lucky Star (1928)
(Directed by Frank Borzage)

Janet Gaynor is sublime in this film. It's not anything special, really, just her face. She just makes you feel the moments of happiness and the moments of sadness, and all she has to do is slightly alter her face. Something like that. She's this little dirty child at the beginning of the film and by the end she's this mature woman or something and the transformation and the moments of beauty (like when she just looks up with wonder at that one dress) really melted my heart. The film exists in this strange space where downtrodden individuals can see each other through broken windows and really, truly believe that they can love. It should not surprise then that the ending of the film is unbelievable. Love conquers logic and reality. You know what? Fuck logic and fuck reality. Lucky Star is excellent.

Liliom (1930)
(Directed by Frank Borzage)

Really bizarre film. Charles Farrell plays Liliom a carousel barker who's apparently an artist even though we never see what he actually does. Mostly he just drinks and chases the girls. Then he meets a girl who seems to have nothing but devotion for him. The whole thing is some weird ass paean to the irrationality of love. The performances are all weird and mannered in their own way and everyone seems to be trying to deliver their line in the weirdest/slowest way possible. And what they're saying is bizarre, too. While Julie is on the ground comforting Liliom in what's supposed to be a really dramatic scene, the cops undercut it with some totally banal talk. And Liliom keeps calling Julie bird names (?) and none of it seems to make sense, and the end is like this totally messed up thing that's saying that there's beauty in abuse (he hit me and it felt like a kiss~). But some of this movie is ridiculously beautiful. That entire carousel bit casts the film the film in the realm of some bizarre fairy tale and so it's hard to take any of it very seriously and when the trains jump into rooms from huge ass windows, roujin's heart leaps out into the streets and dances like David Bowie.

Little Man, What Now? (1934)
(Directed by Frank Borzage)

As the movie makes clear, we are the little man, struggling against a universe which is indifferent to us. It is depression-era Germany and unemployment is widespread. If there is something I've figured out about Borzage from watching these three movies in quick succession is that he's a hyper-romantic (kinda like of Carax in a way). He treats his lovers as the center of the universe and the outside world is against them at every turn. What Borzage does is overwhelm the reality of their world thru artifice (miracle endings / studio shenanigans) in order to give them more hope. This film basically follows the lovers as the dude gains and loses jobs and he returns home every night to his wife, the source of his strength and happiness. They go thru up and downs and everything seems lost but then we learn that there's nothing too fear. Goddamn, those closeups killed me. Margaret Sullavan just glows! This is an ardently romantic and emotional movie. I loved it.

Jhon's Movie of the Week is... Little Man, What Now?

Images: Little Man, What Now? (Frank Borzage, 1934)

2010-02-20T17:40:00.000-08:00

Little Man, What Now? Frank Borzage, 1934

Images: Liliom (Frank Borzage, 1930)

2010-02-19T17:33:00.000-08:00

Liliom Frank Borzage, 1930

Images: Lucky Star (Frank Borzage, 1928)

2010-02-19T17:28:00.000-08:00

Lucky Star Frank Borzage, 1928

Images: To Have and Have Not (Howard Hawks, 1944)

2010-02-16T18:17:00.000-08:00

To Have and Have Not Howard Hawks, 1944

Images: Out of the Blue (Dennis Hopper, 1980)

2010-02-15T18:20:00.000-08:00

Out of the Blue Dennis Hopper, 1980

Images: Living (Frans Zwartjes, 1971)

2010-02-15T18:13:00.000-08:00

Living Frans Zwartjes, 1971

Images: Go! Go! Go! (Marie Menken, 1964)

2010-02-15T17:59:00.000-08:00

Go! Go! Go! Marie Menken, 1964

My Week in Film (2/8 - 2/14)

2010-02-14T19:17:00.000-08:00

Written on the Wind (1956)
(Directed by Douglas Sirk)

Why can't all movies look like this one? It's so awesome. It's basically the recipe for Gossip Girl and all that shit with rich heirs and heiresses turning out all fucked up and with all kinds of familial issues (CHUCK BASS) and turning to all these different things to deal with them. Robert Stack has his drink, and Dorothy Malone fucks anything that moves. Even with all the critique and the phalluses and all that cool stuff, it's still awesome. It's not as powerful as Imitation of Life, but it's hard to deny how damn entertaining all the melodrama is (even the ending). This film confirms what I kind of already knew: Rock Hudson is awesome. Seriously. I need to go through this filmography in worship and do dances to praise his strange way of talking. He's magnificent. Basically, you could probably spend forever and a half going through this movie and analyzing all the color schemes and the mirrors and all that stuff, but you'd get distracted with Malone's dancing and the way that Hudson carries himself and the overwhelming amount of things which mean nothing, but we ascribe meaning to anyway. It moved me. Please arrest me.

★★★★

La Collectionneuse (1967)
(Directed by Eric Rohmer)

The problem is that everyone in this movie is annoying. The two guys are lazy jerks whose sole plan for the summer is to regress back into some catatonic state where they do nothing. The girl is just a girl to them, one who sleeps around a lot apparently. The rest of the film is basically about those dudes being jerks to the girl, the girl kind of playing around with them, rejecting, succumbing, in equal measure, and their morphing relationship over the summer. Liking characters or finding them sympathetic isn't a dealbreaker for me at all. I think empathizing and identifying with characters is only a part of what makes movies great so even if one part is denied to me, there are other things to focus on. I liked the feeling of lounging around and doing nothing. I liked the ideals one sets oneself at the beginning of summer (kind of like new year's resolutions) that are quickly broken. I liked huge house. I liked the character's frequent trips to the beach. And I liked the ending. I liked the ending a lot. I mean, of what use is a house without people to ignore? Solitude isn't what you want, roujin.

★★★

First Name: Carmen (1983)
(Directed by Jean-Luc Godard)

80's Godard may be the densest cinema around (I still haven't watched Histoire(s) - he goes even farther out?!). I don't know what it is about his (and Cotard's) eye that can make you see things anew again. It's like they can film anything and it's like a revelation. At the level of sound and image, I can't think of a filmmaker who makes more demands of his audience. It's impossible to keep up with everything that's happening. It's not only like the perfect staging and composition, it's also the sound work. Oftentimes, the sound will drop and waves crashing will come on the soundtrack or classical music. The film is kind of mixture of the modern and the classical, or something. There is a plot, but it's so digressive and the film undercuts it at so many turns that it's basically not all that important (watch the weirdest bank heist of all time!). And the visual metaphors (waves as fate? open windows?) and the cutting back to to the string quartet (that ties back to the sonic motifs and the actual plot of the story) and Godard playing a hilarious version of himself (maybe as funny as Keep Your Right Up), is awesome. I honestly don't get this film at all, but I do know that just like that damn coffee cup, I'll never look at the static on my TV the same again.

★★★1/2

Last Days (2005)
(Directed by Gus Van Sant)

Final film of Van Sant's Death Trilogy. I liked it more than Gerry and about the same as Elephant. The film is mostly composed of long takes of not a lot happening. Michael Pitt wanders throughout the forest region of around some huge house like a ghost, or just something clearly about to die. When people talk to him, he does not respond at all. He barely seems to be aware that they're there, or that they expect him to talk. He goes around the house wearing a dress and wielding a gun just because, he has a strange gait that seems slightly exaggerated, whatever. I liked watching Pitt wander about the dilapitated house and the forest around him. My problem is that pretty much every single character beside Pitt is annoying. Asia Argento shows up, Harmony Korine shows up, Ricky Jay shows up, Kim Gordon shows up, but for what? Or, I guess that I just found the cameos distracting (though Korine's made me laugh). I know that they're supposed to talk to him and see that he's far gone, but it just bothered me. Probably my two favorite parts where the long pull back when we're looking into that one window where he's messing out with the instruments. And that long take where he walks back to the house at night. Textures!

★★★

Gamer (2009)
(Directed by Neveldine/Taylor)

Kind of the more evil and disturbing cousin of Southland Tales (therefore, funnier?). It basically 90 minutes of complete disregard for spatial continuity, any type of decency and good taste, and, coherence. And it's kind of good. There are moments of complete brilliance (the intro to "Society" scored to the "The Bad Touch," and the incredible dance/fight/basketball sequence at the end). Actually, the picture it paints of America is so ridiculously dark and twisted that it borders on depressing. And, actually, it stays that way most of the time. Did I misjudge Crank?

★★1/2

The Navigator (1924)
(Directed by Buster Keaton + Donald Crisp)

Buster fights cannibals and duels with a swordfish using a swordfish. Good times.

★★★

Passion (1982)
(Directed by Jean-Luc Godard)

I have pretty much no idea what happened for about the first 30 minutes or so. It seemed like a flurry of quotations, weird sound/image manipulation (it seems like it never shows who's actually talking on screen, which makes things confusing), classical music, and stuff (all this stuff is common for Godard, I just couldn't make heads or tails of it in this one). Whatever story there is centers around a more or less failed movie production where the director is staging reproductions of famous paintings by Goya, Delacroix, etc. but won't film them because the lighting is bad and he gets exasperated when people point out that his film is both over budget and has no story. Then Michel Piccoli (of Contempt and Rochefort) owns some factory and he fires Isabelle Huppert (?) who's the director's lover? And Hanna Shygulla (of Fassbinder fame) is also in a relationship with the director and she owns the hotel where the crew of the film stay. I don't know. I just know that Myriem Roussel's only purpose in this film is to be naked, and Jerzy fights some guy dressed as an angel. It wasn't as beautiful as Carmen or Mary, and I actually found it more impenetrable than both. It eases up later on when you actually see some of the filming and stuff, but even so, it's hard for me to enjoy something if I have no idea what's happening. That's just the way it is.

★★1/2

The Great Piggy Bank Robbery (1946)
(Directed by Bob Clampett)

Daffy takes on the baddies, blows up all conventions of the detective genre, and makes out with a pig. Hilarious.

★★★1/2

I Love to Singa (1936)
(Directed by Tex Avery)

Owl Jonson is born into a family that hates jazz. Well, he has to change their mind. Moving.

★★★

Ceiling Hero (1940)
(Directed by Tex Avery)

Takes on the newsreel format to make various jokes about airplanes. My favorite may be the Only Angels Have Wings reference, or the polar bear on the wing.

★★★

Red Hot Riding Hood (1943)
(Directed by Tex Avery)

Little Red Riding Hood, the wolf and the grandma get tired of being in the same old boring fairy tale so they ask it to be spiced up. It's spiced up. The whole thing seems to exist in a perpetual state of sexual frenzy (the grandma tries to devour the wolf!). I laughed a lot.

★★★1/2

Who Killed Who? (1943)
(Directed by Tex Avery)

Pretty nonsensical and frantic. It just so happens that it's also really funny. The detective looks around the mansion where nothing seems to make sense or add up, tries to solve the crime, only to find out that the whole thing goes beyond cartoonland. Good stuff.

★★★1/2

King-Size Canary (1947)
(Directed by Tex Avery)

Pretty funny. A cat goes looking for food, finds some tonic that makes everything bigger, and it spirals out from there.

★★★

Bad Luck Blackie (1949)
(Directed by Tex Avery)

This thing is all kinds of hilarious. It's kind of a one joke shot, but it's a damn funny joke and there's always a variation on it.

★★★1/2

Little Rural Riding Hood (1949)
(Directed by Tex Avery)

Another variation on the "Riding Hood" story, this one has a country wolf going out to the city and being enraged with lust when seeing the performer there. It's the same joke, basically, only not as funny. The punchline at the end is what makes it work.

★★★

Magical Maestro (1952)
(Directed by Tex Avery)

I'm not sure things get funnier than this.

★★★1/2

Rabbit of Seville (1950)
(Directed by Chuck Jones)

He makes a fruit thingie majigger on his head

★★★

Feed the Kitty (1952)
(Directed by Chuck Jones)

So cute and funny.

★★★1/2

Duck Amuck (1953)
(Directed by Chuck Jones)

It's impossible to deny how great this is. Even for someone like me who knew pretty much all the gags before hand and wasn't ready for any type of sincere appreciation, it had me laughing the entire time. Loved it.

★★★★

One Froggy Evening (1957)
(Directed by Chuck Jones)

eh, it's good. Kind of obvious, but always entertaining.

★★1/2

What's Opera Doc? (1957)
(Directed by Chuck Jones)

Pretty hilarious. Not sure you can fit anything more into it. It stands as it is. Mostly perfect.

★★★1/2

Have You Got Any Castles? (1938)
(Directed by Frank Tashlin)

Basically, a bunch of characters inside books come alive. When The House of Seven Gables is shown, seven Clark Gables join in on the song. The screenshot above refers to The Thin Man. Get it? It's funny, but pretty whatever.

★★★

You're An Education (1938)
(Directed by Frank Tashlin)

Same thing as Castles except instead of books, it's travel brochures. Get ready for a bunch of politically incorrect depictions of minorities! But also some hilarious stuff. Canada is represented by mounties!

★★1/2

Light is Calling (2004)
(Directed by Bill Morrison)

Some footage of the 1926 film The Bells is manipulated in strange ways by Morrison. I liked that I could still out make parts of the action in the thing. I could see the girl, the horses and the soldiers. It was moving, actually, and I couldn't quite point out why. The score helped, I imagine.

★★★★

Window Water Baby Moving (1962)
(Directed by Stan Brakhage)

It's not hard to feel humbled and moved by the entire thing. It's so goddamn intimate, and even though some of the editing bothered me, it wasn't enough to detract at all from its power. Life is beautiful. Really, it is. Full of beauty and illusions. Life is great. Without it, you'd be dead.

★★★1/2

Jhon's Movie of the Week is... Written on the Wind!

Images: Window Water Baby Moving (Stan Brakhage, 1962)

2010-02-14T17:55:00.000-08:00

Window Water Baby Moving Stan Brakhage, 1962

Images: Light is Calling (Bill Morrison, 2004)

2010-02-14T17:52:00.000-08:00

Light is Calling Bill Morrison, 2004

Images: Passion (Jean-Luc Godard, 1982)

2010-02-13T20:39:00.001-08:00

Passion Jean-Luc Godard, 1982

Images: The Navigator (Donald Crisp + Buster Keaton, 1924)

2010-02-13T08:30:00.000-08:00

The Navigator Donald Crisp + Buster Keaton, 1924

Images: Gamer (Neveldine/Taylor, 2009)

2010-02-12T20:39:00.000-08:00

Gamer Neveldine/Taylor, 2009

Images: Last Days (Gus Van Sant, 2005)

2010-02-12T15:23:00.000-08:00

Last Days Gus Van Sant, 2005

Images: Prenom Carmen (Jean-Luc Godard, 1983)

2010-02-11T16:57:00.000-08:00

Prenom Carmen Jean-Luc Godard, 1983

Images: La Collectionneuse (Eric Rohmer, 1967)

2010-02-10T18:19:00.000-08:00

La Collectionneuse Eric Rohmer, 1967

Images: Written on the Wind (Douglas Sirk, 1956)

2010-02-08T16:34:00.000-08:00

Written on the Wind Douglas Sirk, 1956

My Week in Film (2/1 - 2/7)

2010-02-07T23:00:00.000-08:00

The Sun in a Net (1962)
(Directed by Stefan Uher)

Two teenagers living in the city deal with STUFF. They sunbathe in secret on top of a building where no one can see them. She takes care of her blind mother. He takes pictures of people's hands (the most beautiful part). They pass the time together. He is sullen. She is something. In order to get away, he goes to a summer work camp to farm and be a man and all that stuff, and because they left off on a bad note, the boy and the girl look for different partners. Things happen. Blah, story. Too many great compositions and individual shots and stuff (took so many screenshots) too count, and while there's some clunky inserts and editing, it's not enough to be distracting. I wish I got a handle on how the soundtrack was working or what it was doing/adding but I was mostly paid attention to the other stuff. HEHEHEHEHEHHEHEHEHEHEHEHEH

★★★1/2

Adieu Philippine (1962)
(Directed by Jacques Rozier)

Some young cad with an annoying moustache picks up two girls. He hangs out with them a lot. He tells them he'll introduce them to his other friend, but he never does. He wants them all for himself. He's due to get called up for Algeria in a couple of months so he figures he might as well have some fun. This is all very loose, very jazzy, often hand-held, shot on location, NEW WAVE. It's a tale of youth and romance and all that stuff, but it never gets all serious and shit and whatever implications there are just get left as suggestions and stuff. I really liked all the music in it, too, and how the music would make the whole thing reach deeper into another LEVEL of stuff. Crap, there's that one shot where the girls are walking down the street side by side and this really awesome song plays in the soundtrack and all of a sudden there would be a jump cut and the girls would be walking along another street and the entire thing was perfect and things and ideas were flying around the place just waiting to be grabbed and put to use. Yes, movies are good.

★★★1/2

3 Idiots (2009)
(Directed by Rajkumar Hirani)

Three hours of cliche. Sigh. Seriously, every single thing you expect to happen does happen. Every single plot strand gets tied up in just about the most predictable way. Every single time. Blergh.

★★

The Brothers Bloom (2008)
(Directed by Rian Johnson)

I don't have much to say about this other than I found a whole lot of it pretty uninteresting. Johnson is definitely enthusiastic and he's always doing things that are inventive, and the actors are charming and stuff, but when the story is basically 2 hours of people saying "this is not an adventure story" or "it's all a con" or "the lie that tells the truth," I get pretty bored. I just don't see anything more here than the whole cinema is a con game or a magic trick (hi, orson) stuff. Color me unimpressed.

★★1/2

La danse - Le ballet de l'Opéra de Paris (2009)
(Directed by Frederick Wiseman)

First Wiseman I've seen. The approach is faultless: no talking heads, no narration, no on-screen text to let us know what's what. Okay, cool. But... this is the part where I just lay out my personal situation thingie: I walked into this 10 minutes late and when I got there I immediately realize how fucking tired I was. So, yes, I did close my eyes a little too much in the last hour.

Okay, that's done. The film is built on process. The dancers rehearse and rehearse surrounded by mirrors, often being critiqued/praised by others in the room. One person points out something off in the dancer's movement, shows him/her the exact movement they should go for, and the dancer tries it again. There are a lot of rehearsal scenes. Early on, I was pretty in to the film. I dug how Wiseman and crew always found an interesting way to frame the dancers. They frame them so all of their bodies can be seen (ala Astaire) and we're witness to the full range of their movement. I found it very impressive. Wiseman doesn't just stay with the dancers though. We see the people who make the costumes, the lunch room, dark hallways, underground, some bee keeper on the roof and, perhaps most prominently, the head art honcho, who is seen in a bunch of administrative meetings regarding sponsors and the choreographers. That stuff is fascinating. But the film is 2 and a half hours long. That's something I didn't realize when I was walking into it. It seems a lot of Wiseman's films are incredibly long (his later stuff, apparently). I'm not entirely sure it benefits from it. I liked that a lot of the dances go on uninterrupted and we see the movement and the staging of these things, but I guess I'm just a dilettante or something (that's probably the wrong word) cuz I got tired of it all pretty quickly. I've never attended a ballet recital in my life or anything, but I don't think I ever want to (unless they're like The Red Shoes or something). All that said, I'm actually pretty excited to watch more Wiseman films now. I can see myself liking some of his films. I could've also seen myself liking this more if I hadn't been so tired. People looking for a "narrative documentary" should avoid, avoid, avoid.

★★1/2

Drama/Mex (2006)
(Directed by Gerardo Naranjo)

Surprisingly good. Or, rather, it doesn't start out that great and then it grows and grows and grows as all the participants get increasingly more and more fucked up drunk. It starts out with two old lovers reuniting. The dude basically breaks into the house, kind of fucks his way into it somehow, and soon enough the old lovers are planning some stuff. Problem is she has a boyfriend. Then on a totally unrelated plot strand, this old businessman goes down to a beach hotel to kill himself. A young girl goes down to the beach to turn her first trick. How are these things related? I don't particularly care. Naranjo scrambles the chronology a bit, too, except it takes a while for you to register that these events are supposed to be happening at the same time. Actually, Naranjo, I'm pretty sure, screws up the chronology in a pretty major manner at some point later on. Doesn't matter. Why? Because the character of Gonzalo is introduced. We first see him playing goalie in a soccer game when his friends show up and inform him that his girlfriend is cheating on him. What does he do? He starts chugging right there by the goal. Needless to say, the film had me by that moment. All his friends get totally shitfaced and go and sing "Motivos" and the whole thing is just a mess of "machismo, sand, futbol, and alcohol" as people are prone to put it. I didn't know that was something I liked. Too much of the film is perhaps in close up and Naranjo just kind of follows his characters around instead of actually constructing a scene (and that kind of got on my nerves at the beginning) but it grew on me (like fungus). The sun is out and I want some.

★★★1/2

My Night at Maud's (1969)
(Directed by Eric Rohmer)

Film #3 of the Six Moral Tales. I don't really know what to say about this other than I loved it and it illustrates a lot of what I like about movies, and it kinda deals mostly in the ways that we navigate the world or try to negotiate it and make sense of it, and there are moments of complete beauty, but they're mostly based on behavior and other things. I don't know. It's just great.

★★★★

Jhon's Movie of the Week is... My Night at Maud's

Images: My Night at Maud's (Eric Rohmer, 1969)

2010-02-07T21:08:00.000-08:00

My Night at Maud's Eric Rohmer, 1969

Images: Drama/Mex (Gerardo Naranjo, 2006)

2010-02-07T16:22:00.000-08:00

Drama/Mex Gerardo Naranjo, 2006

Images: La danse - Le ballet de l'Opéra de Paris (Frederick Wiseman, 2009)

2010-02-06T21:30:00.000-08:00

La danse - Le ballet de l'Opéra de Paris Frederick Wiseman, 2009

Images: The Brothers Bloom (Rian Johnson, 2008)

2010-02-06T21:27:00.000-08:00

The Brothers Bloom Rian Johnson, 2008

Images: Adieu Philippine (Jacques Rozier, 1962)

2010-02-05T05:31:00.000-08:00

Adieu Philippine Jacques Rozier, 1962

Images: The Sun in a Net (Stefan Uher, 1962)

2010-02-02T22:33:00.000-08:00

The Sun in a Net Stefan Uher, 1962

My Week in Film (1/25 - 1/31)

2010-01-31T22:22:00.000-08:00

The Lady in the Water (2006)
(Directed by M. Night Shyamalan)

This movie is fucking infuriating.

★

The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1944)
(Directed by Preston Sturges)

I don't have words other than "funny," "cute" and "stuff" because. . .

★★★1/2

35 Shots of Rum (2008)*
(Directed by Claire Denis)

Because this movie was still playing around in my head. It's basically moment to moment perfect and about things I care about and done in a way that I find endlessly watchable. That entire commodores sequence is pretty much a masterclass and emotional in all the ways that count, and the necklace shot is probably my shot of the year and i was kinda tearing up just at the beginning credits with that incredible score and the neverending rails.

★★★★

Whip It (2009)
(Directed by Drew Barrymore)

It's formulaic-to-the-max, but essentially harmless and forgettable and it goes down easily enough. The people are all good (really liked the friendship between Maeby and Juno) and all that was cool and I even dug the wardrobe and the glasses and all that stuff that reminded me of people that I used to hate but probably liked (even though they were all terrible and self-absorbed and deserved nothing). It's kind of girl power obvious and I suppose that's okay and I smiled at the Jens Lekman songs and the underwater kiss was kind of stupid in a way, but also pretty sweet and cute, and I was charmed (even though I don't like tattoos) and we was robbed and the whole thing stunk of desperation and calculation, but Barrymore managed to evoke a friendly and relaxed atmosphere. Or maybe I was in a good mood. Nah, definitely not. That makes no sense.

★★1/2

To Be or Not to Be (1942)
(Directed by Ernst Lubitsch)

Kindred spirits with The Great Dictator and Inglourious Basterds in a way (with the former's ridiculing of the Nazi image) and the latter's theater climax shenanigans. While Inglourious Basterds sought to end the Third Reich with cinema, Lubitsch's film is probably smaller in its ambitions. Its characters use acting as a weapon and also as a method of survival. Parts of this film actually come off as genuinely suspenseful and show that Lubitsch was comfortable working in different registers and doing these quasi-espionage set pieces. It was cool. Lest I make it all sound all serious and stuff, there's lots of hilarity to be found here. Really loved all the performances (particularly Lombard, and whoever played the guy who constantly went "Schultz!") and just found the whole thing REAL FUN. I didn't know I had it in me.

★★★1/2

Project A 2 (1987)
(Directed by Jackie Chan)

Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao’s presence is sorely missed. But, Jackie doesn’t miss a beat. You got your former pirates looking for revenge, corrupt police deparment (and plenty of chances for Jackie to show what an outstanding guy he is) and, of course, your awesome blooper reel at the end (with Jackie singing the theme song!). Plus, if there were ever any doubt of the Keaton/Chan connection, look no further than Chan’s homage to Steamboat Bill Jr. late in the film. You see a tall building, you go up it, you jump off it and hit things on the way down. You see a chair, you throw it at a someone. Use your environment, roujin. The world demands it.

★★★1/2

Police Story 2 (1988)
(Directed by Jackie Chan)

Again, not as good as the original. The bad guys from the first film are released from prison and they start messing around with Jackie and his girlfriend, Maggie Cheung. He’s demoted because of all the crazy shit he pulled in the first movie. And now there are some crazy blackmailers/terrorists out on the loose. The film loses a lot of “Jackie Chan Goes Rogue” feeling (and a general sense of “yeah, we’re pulling off some crazy shit”) and replaces it with Jackie actually trying to do police work. This involves bugging and tailing suspects and following orders, which is probably not as interesting (to me). Still, fun movie. What does this mean though? What does it mean to utilize all of the universe to ensure your survival? Whereas in Woo, bullets destroy the environment, in Chan, the human body is the destroyer. the roujin is near. can you feel him?

★★★

Jhon's Movie of the Week is... Project A 2 (shocker!!!)

Images: Police Story 2 (Jackie Chan, 1988)

2010-01-31T09:09:00.000-08:00

Police Story 2 Jackie Chan, 1988

Images: Project A 2 (Jackie Chan, 1987)

2010-01-30T23:21:00.000-08:00

Project A 2 Jackie Chan, 1987

Images: To Be or Not to Be (Enrst Lubitsch, 1942)

2010-01-30T17:27:00.001-08:00

To Be or Not To Be Ernst Lubitsch, 1942

Images: Whip It (Drew Barrymore, 2009)

2010-01-29T17:59:00.000-08:00

Whip It Drew Barrymore, 2009

Images: 35 Shots of Rum (Claire Denis, 2008)

2010-01-29T17:51:00.000-08:00

35 Shots of Rum Claire Denis, 2008

Images: The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (Preston Sturges, 1944)

2010-01-27T21:14:00.001-08:00

The Miracle of Morgan's Creek Preston Sturges, 1944

Images: Lady in the Water (M. Night Shyamalan, 2006)

2010-01-25T17:53:00.000-08:00

Lady in the Water M. Night Shyamalan, 2006

My Week in Film (1/18 - 1/24)

2010-01-24T22:12:00.000-08:00

Little Odessa (1994)
(Directed by James Gray)

Pretty much everything that makes a James Gray film a James Gray film is here. Somber, Brighton Beach, Russian immigrants, the mob, and family. Oh, yes, family. Anyway, that's garbage. Tim Roth plays a hitman who is ordered to go back to Brooklyn for a job. He doesn't want to do it, but he returns anyway, and soon he's having to deal with the father who hates him, the little brother (Edward Furlong) who looks up to him, I guess, and the mom who is dying. The story's told slowly and a lot of the film kind of relies on the sort of mournful tone that Gray and his players achieve. While technically, the film's just fine (lots of long takes, magnificently composed and shot), there are a lot of story problems. Mainly, the character of Edward Furlong is always at a place where he shouldn't be, and there's one action that really has just about no motivation. I also have problems with the ending and Tim Roth's final action because it's very unclear as to what it's supposed to imply (well, there's a meaning there, but I'm not sure why that particular image is invoked or whatever). So, pretty good film, lots of great individual scenes, but there were a few things that kept me from loving it. He definitely got better later on.

★★★1/2

Suzanne's Career (1963)
(Directed by Eric Rohmer)

Film #2 of the Moral Tales. This one is about two callous youths who more or less mess around with this one girl, Suzanne, for a while. One of them dates her even though to all extents and purposes he doesn't like her at all, and the other one kind of stands around not really sure of what he should do. These two characters reminded me a bit of the ones in Norwegian Wood - at least, the camaraderie between the two friends did. One does things the other disapproves of, but they both understand their relationship, and don't particularly want to change it. Anyway, making me think of Norwegian Wood (even in the context of the character's douchy behavior) is always a good thing. The things that didn't particularly work for me in Bakery Girl aren't here anymore or, at least, they're not as pronounced, and I was able to enjoy the thing a whole lot more. It's also a good 30 minutes longer and it's sadly relatable in a way but the film's ending is what makes it a whole lot better - a surprising reveal which makes us question where the film's sympathies have been all along, and things just get a whole lot sweeter.

★★★

What Have I Done To Deserve This? (1984)
(Directed by Pedro Almodovar)

Carmen Maura is a put-upon housewife who does nothing but clean and clean all day, and basically slave away at a household that's falling apart. To get her through the day, she constantly pops some kind of pill called no-doze. Her husband is a cabbie who's obsessed with some German singer he used to know, her oldest son has begun to sell heroin, her youngest son enjoys the company of pederasts (a plot point that's somehow hilarious, that visit to the dentist! lol!) and her mother-in-law picks up sticks in the park and adopts a lizard. And then things get weirder. Somehow this all stays under control, I don't even know how. A lot of this film is really funny, sure (seriously, that dentist!), but it all gets balanced by how suffocated Maura's life is. Everything is shot in a dreary manner, and I don't think it's just cuz what Almodovar is shooting is really plain and stuff. I'm guessing it's to counteract the melodrama and the weirdness, and I'm guessing he's criticizing how women kind of get stuck into these slave positions and how they have no other options (Maura's character is illiterate). By the end of the film, I was actually pretty moved (psychic powers and all) by this portrait of a crazy family. People move apart, sure, but everyone's still family. I don't know you at all, roujin. I don't know you at all.

★★★1/2

Sergeant York (1941)
(Directed by Howard Hawks)

Interesting film. It's very neatly bisected between York's farm life and his reluctant time in the army. One half's all about slow rhythms and everyday living, and the eventual reformation of York from drunken roustabout to a hardworking and devout religious man. The second half of the film's about the eventual reconciliation between religion and government: the bible tells us not to kill, but what do we do when our government asks us to go and fight a war? I found it interesting that it wasn't a straightforward "God is on our side" kind of thing. Gary Cooper is pretty damn charming all throughout. I really dug him when he was drunk and rowdy, but even more so when he was plowing the land, and looking for odd jobs. The shift from a drunk -> pious man is pretty erratic, but it's done in a really touching scene, and the film gives us some of that "old time religion." Anyway, I got the feeling that it felt pretty bloated at points (particularly the end), but I was pretty touched by the whole thing I suppose and didn't care much about it by then, and I was reminded me of nothing in particular and felt nothing in particular, just some things I picked up in school. Just nonsense really. That's all.

★★★

The Cassandra Cat (1963)
(Directed by Vojtech Jasny)

The film's basically about this small town who gets all shaken up when a magician rolls into town with a cat that wears glasses. The big deal is that whenever this cat takes off its glasses, it changes people into different colors - the colors of their true self. So if the cat turns you red, that means you're in love. If the cat turns you yellow, it means you've been cheating on your loved one, etc. So, this small town gets all shaken up when during a magic performance, the cat reveals everyone's personality. The film totally blows its load during this scene. It last a good 20 minutes with first this really surreal magic performance pictured above then with the orgy of color that turns into some really bizarre musical number. It's awesome. The grownups get all flustered about all these revelations and they band up against the cat, but the children, who are the bestest, decide to fight back. The film plays like some lost fairy tale, it's really cool. The ending of the film is actually kind of heartbreaking and there's this one shot of the this beautiful girl's eyes that kind of got me all sad and jittery and I couldn't speak for about a minute and, sure, it's an allegory about things but that's never mattered to me. I'm only interested in the truth. I've been digging for it for years. Tired beyond belief, he retired into the woods and was never heard of again.

★★★

Avatar (2009)
(Directed by James Cameron)

Is that all there is?

★★

The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans (2009)
(Directed by Werner Herzog)

Works primarily as a comedy, thanks to Cage. He's hilarious. But there's not just that. He's actually surprisingly layered, which shouldn't actually be surprising since his genius should be obvious to anyone who has a watched movie, ever. There's also a weird sense of desperation in the air. The air's sticky and heavy, and it feels like everyone's a little sweaty. Things are strange in this town. Cage walks through it with a weird posture and an even stranger gait as he holds up fucked up college kids while leaving the club, demands sexual favors, and does weird things. He starts out okay then turns worse. Is there anything more? Kind of. There's a small amount of tenderness reserved for Cage's scenes with Mendes. There does seem to be a type of connection there, and the film might even be called their weird ass love story and the lengths he'll go to to protect her (?). Things are strange at this time of night. The end is the beginning and smilies cannot accurately convey the appropriate feelings regarding the circus show that is that iguana/alligator cam nonsense. Is it glorious? Are you dancer, roujin?

As to Herzog, eh.

★★★

A Serious Man (2009)
(Directed by Coen Bros)

You can never be truly certain of anything, roujin. None of the things that are happening to you can be explained. Accept the mystery that is life and don't ask questions. Be a good person and stuff. Or, well, yeah. I can't explain the mysteries of life through physics. It's like he says, the whole thing is just a fable, meant to be illustrative, right? So many things happen to me that there has to be a reason for it, and there have to be consequences for the things that happen... in this office. I am just typing things without thinking about it, yes, it's true. goddamn, it's so densely layered and composed, and probably my only complaint is that kind of almost comical sound effect for the visits to the Rabbi. Well, that's not really a complaint since I did find it funny. I don't know the whole thing is kind some fully worked out creation with its own inner logic that allows for things to happen and not happen, like car crashes and stuff, and maybe God does exist, or maybe he doesn't, and by the end of the film, there's this really unexpected kind of quietly earth-shattering revelation through cross-cutting. Father and son. Father and son. It either is or it isn't. THIS IS NOT A THOUGHT EXPERIMENT.

★★★

Duck Soup (1933)
(Directed by Leo McCarey)

I don't really like Groucho that much, but I looooooooooove Harpo. So, I was really hating this movie until he and Chico showed up. There are a lot of funny scenes like the one with the hats and the mirror one (funniest thing ever). Again, it's all Harpo. Then the last 20 or so minutes happen and the movie embraces chaos and it's one of the funniest things ever. Again, it's all Harpo (that Paul Revere thing made me lol). It just tosses aside any semblance of structure and just tosses a million jokes at you, and I was happy. I felt happy. So, Harpo. What a guy! ::)

★★★

Drums Along the Mohawk (1939)
(Directed by John Ford)

Beautiful film. Great colors and landscapes and sunsets and horizon lines and costumes and things like that, which is what I usually say if the other things don't impress me (probably). Seeing Henry Fonda with a ponytail is probably something that slightly disturbs me to be honest. Claudette Colbert felt a little out of place though she does have some good scenes. Basically, Fonda marries Colbert and takes her out to the country to lead a pleasant country life and be farmers and stuff, but then the American revolution kind of puts a hamper on things and the English (or, really, just that one dude with the eyepatch) recruits the drunken Indians to just burn everything. Their life is uprooted. There are some tender scenes and most of the film is actually just them trying to build a life and have a kid and stuff and the fighting and the burning feel more like interruptions. But, I don't know. Whereas the community aspect of other Ford pictures really hit home with me in this one it just didn't. I don't know. I just felt really slow and the story and the particulars weren't that interesting to me and I was a little sad because I wanted to like this film and then I didn't and the people in the house were sad. Sad that roujin had let them down and squandered his wages on the usual things and had been found in a gutter three nights previous with nothing in his pockets but mints and toothpicks. The light is just a dream.

★★

Jhon's Movie of the Week is... Little Odessa

Images: Drums Along the Mohawk (John Ford, 1939)

2010-01-24T15:43:00.001-08:00

Drums Along the Mohawk John Ford, 1939

Images: Duck Soup (Leo McCarey, 1933)

2010-01-24T13:39:00.000-08:00

Duck Soup Leo McCarey, 1933

Images: A Serious Man (Coen Bros, 2009)

2010-01-24T08:31:00.000-08:00

A Serious Man Coen Bros, 2009

Images: The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans (Werner Herzog, 2009)

2010-01-23T21:05:00.000-08:00

The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans Werner Herzog, 2009

Images: The Cassandra Cat ( Vojtech Jasný, 1963)

2010-01-19T21:20:00.000-08:00

The Cassandra Cat Vojtech Jasný, 1963

Images: Sergeant York (Howard Hawks, 1941)

2010-01-19T16:21:00.000-08:00

Sergeant York Howard Hawks, 1941

Images: What Have I Done To Deserve This? (Pedro Almodovar, 1984)

2010-01-18T23:12:00.000-08:00

What Have I Done To Deserve This? Pedro Almodovar, 1984

Images: Suzanne's Career (Eric Rohmer, 1963)

2010-01-18T20:10:00.000-08:00

Suzanne's Career Eric Rohmer, 1963

Images: Little Odessa (James Gray, 1994)

2010-01-18T12:38:00.001-08:00

Little Odessa James Gray, 1994

My Week in Film (1/11 - 1/17)

2010-01-17T18:25:00.000-08:00

Scarface (1932)
(Directed by Howard Hawks + Richard Rosson)

Pretty, pretty good. Paul Muni rises through the ranks as he takes over the South and then the North side, ruthlessly killing everyone/thing in sight. The film's best sequence is the rat-a-tat-tat machine gun killing montage where Muni destroys all his opponents. I didn't particularly like Muni that much. He seemed like this hulking monster just ready to unleash all those incestuous feelings (hey, they copied that from De Palma's original!) raging inside him. Of course, you know how this ends, but it's still pretty awesome. All those X's, that long single-take opening with the whistling and the awesomeness, and even though sometimes it's get bogged down by crappy stuff that's annoying to me for reasons unforgivable, I still had a lot of fun with it, even though I couldn't understand anything that Muni said for the last 10 or so minutes.

Sadly, this is better than anything in the movie.

★★★

The Bakery Girl of Monceau (1963)
(Directed by Eric Rohmer)

Film #1 of the Six Moral Tales. It's about this college kid who keeps seeing this girl on the street. He becomes infatuated with her and tries to get her to go out with him. They agree to set up a date the next time they see each other, but after that, he can't seem to find the girl at all. So he starts walking around Paris, going to this bakery and always getting the same cookies and just trying to find things to do. He finds things to do. This was pretty charming. We get mostly voice over of the guy's inner thoughts as he debates what he should do. There's some clunky camera moves and needless jump cuts and zooms that feel misplaced (or misused or something) that detract from the overall experience. At 20 minutes, it's not really enough to really get into it, but I suppose it's a fine way to start this year's journey into Rohmer-dom. Rest in peace.

★★1/2

That Uncertain Feeling (1941)
(Directed by Ernst Lubitsch)

By far my least favorite Lubitsch. It just isn't any fun. Bored housewife tries psychoanalysis because she has nothing else to do but this makes her start thinking about all the things that are wrong with her marriage and about how she bored she is. The she meets Burgess Meredith (an individualist who hates everyone) and somehow they strike up a romance or something and there are painfully unfunny divorces, lots of "phooey" and just... nothing. Burgess Meredith gets a chance to be an asshole to everyone and to wife's Hungarian guests and I guess I just don't find the process of breaking up an entire marriage cuz they're bored all that funny or charming or anything because it did absolutely nothing for me. I was not prepared for that going into a Lubitsch film.

★★

The Village (2004)
(Directed by M. Night Shyamalan)

I'm not ready to join Cahiers du Cinema or anything, but there's at least half a really good movie in here. The first half of this film is this weird suppressed melodrama with all these intense brooding feelings under the surface (oh, it's Phoenix, of course) and there are all these unusual angles and shots that constantly surprise me. There's a gentleness here that's very inviting or something. The problem is: although Shyamalan is an interesting visual stylist, his writing is godawful, and the movie takes a big, big turn for the worse in the second half (pretty much when Phoenix stops being the focus, I lose interest) because the utter banality of the film's revelations and maybe because I don't think there's a really good way to handle this material in a way that's not completely awkward although the film's final image is a strangely powerful one. Some of the performances were pretty distracting, too (Judy Greer's confession to Phoenix had me on the floor heaving, and Brody's turn as the village idiot or whatever is just distracting) and the performers aren't really helped by some of the clunkier lines. So, yeah, really good first half, but then it goes up its own ass, climaxing with possibly the most annoying part of the film (Shyamalan's attention-grabbing cameo - oh, can you see my direction? THIS IS MY CAMEO! argh).

★★1/2

Fighting (2009)
(Directed by Channing Tatum)

Channing Tatum is a strange presence. It seems he's supposed to be this total hunk, but he really comes off as this as a mumbling weirdo that just happens to have washboard abs or whatever. Basically, Terrence Howard awkwardly recruits Tatum into joining an underground fighting thingie majigger which allows him to make improbable amounts of money in a quick amount of time. There are some personal rivalries going on, a love interest is introduced, and there's a big fight at the end. But it's all treated pretty weirdly. Running throughout the film there's a kind of eccentric spirit at the heart of it. I really love Howard's group or whatever that drives him around everywhere. They're always cracking jokes and bringing life into the film. Howard has this really affected way of speaking. It really drove me up the wall for a lot of the movie, but then those final scenes came together and he really sold me on the character regardless of the cliches that the movie uses because it doesn't even care they're cliches. And the romance is really sweetly played. Loved the grandma role and how all of that's handled. I don't know why I don't like it more. It was just really interesting. I watched the shadows play all day long just to arrive at this moment of truth.

★★1/2

The Informer (1935)
(Directed by John Ford)

Disappointing. The cinematography is ridiculously excellent. Joseph H. August's cinematography is pretty awesome. Dublin is a fog-shrouded hellhole, and there's no respite but drinking yourself into a stupor. The lighting is dramatic and the light sources are unexpected. Something about German Expressionism goes here. Whatever. The problem is that the story's nothing but a one-note thingie majigger following the titular informer as he goes around, drunk, trying to forget what's he done, failing, and then being unable to see anything other than the place around him. He originally informs to get his girl and him to America, but he gets one in drink in him and suddenly the reasons don't matter, there's just guilt, and what else to wash away the guilt with but with a little drink. Although McLaglen is pretty good, he just basically goes around being a brute and a drunk which is not particularly interesting to me. Then there's the cringe-inducing side characters of the noble IRA dude who's just trying to do his job and his girl and those final moments just reeked to me of blerghy stuff going on. It's all very unfortunate, really. The common man is a beast, destined to walk around aimlessly, waiting for reasons to fall into his lap. good luck, roujin, you know where you're headed.

★★1/2

Warriors Two (1978)
(Directed by Sammo Hung)

If I've learned anything watching Sammo Hung in the 13 or 14 films I've seen in him now is that the more kung phooey ones have the most epically awesome zooms used as graceful punctuation in their fight scenes. At least, that's how I remember it. The plot stuff isn't too fun in these. It's basically: Sammo is a good old fatty, and then there's a dead master, and revenge and some training, climaxing with a blowout in a non-distinct location. And that's fine. Because even though I wasn't very taken with the film for the first half, the training sequence was lots of fun even if the master or Cashier Wah aren't that interesting. He learns all these different Wing Chun techniques, and although it's not definitely not as thorough as 36th Chamber, it still had its charms. Then plot kicks in and the zooming dead awaken and Sammo gets to show off some of his awesome stuff and the villain has one of the most hilariously preposterous reveals I've ever seen. Is this fun? Let's find out at three in the morning with nothing in your pocket, the revelations are few. roujin, you have to tear down the walls.

★★★

Never Back Down (2008)
(Directed by Jeff Wadlow)

I wish I could tell you why I watched this. People do stupid things at three in the morning, I guess. . .

★

Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)
(Directed by Wes Anderson)

I could look at this film all day. I could find new things in it all the time, I imagine. That's how densely constructed and designed it is. Of course, that's par for the course with Wes Anderson, and that's one of the things I like him. He packs his films with ridiculous amounts of detail and feeling and sadness and humor and warmth and awesomeness. Fantastic Mr. Fox is pretty much the same movie he's been making all along except this time it's figurines and crap. We got the usual fathers and sons type deal and you got lateral tracking shots and you got awesomeness. I just pretty much had a smile on my face the entire time. And it all further cements that Wes Anderson is the best Anderson Best movie of 09, most definitely.

★★★★

A Christmas Tale (2008)*
(Directed by Arnaud Desplechin)

I first saw this film all the way back in Nov. 2008 when it came out in the States. I went by myself and sat in the back of the theater as I usually do if I'm by myself and I came out of the screening kinda feeling a little depressed, but I was also teeming with this weird sense of elation because I just had seen this incredible movie and I kept trying to form it all in my head and try to find out why it had such a reaction on me, but it always eluded me. I didn't know why I had responded to it in the way that I had. So I watched it last night (around 1AM, to be more accurate) as I'd always meant to (same with Kings and Queen and Ma Vie Sexuelle, even though I saw that last year, too) just to find out what it is that gets me all bothered about it, why it sends me reeling in so many different directions. To start, Desplechin is definitely novelistic. In the sense that there's a lot of backstory and his characters are intricately drawn and have lots of contradictory traits about them and things like that. But he's also very cinematic, which are two things I don't feel have to be exclusive or anything. I'm thinking of the cluttered widescreen compositions in the house (which is like another character, same as Summer Hours but even more so) filled with pictures, paintings, mementos, people. Yes, people. Personally, I liked all the characters, found them engaging and humorous even when they're cruel to each other or insult each other, and I liked the way that the film evokes myths in order to explain some of the ways that families deal with its history (when Amalric says in his direct address bit that he feels he's part of a myth, but doesn't know what myth it is), and that's not even without mentioning the very direct references to storytelling that are pretty much given away in the title (it's a tale, after all). It starts off with that shadow puppetry or whatever it is detailing the mountainous backstory of the family and then it invokes Shakespeare and Plato at the end, just saying it was all shadows on the wall. Watching the movie, I felt thrilled whenever Desplechin would cut or dissolve within a scene, showing us a new angle, or doing something unexpected because I felt it tied back with his cute little obsession with DJ scratches. And I don't know. I just felt glad to be in this world for 2 and a half hours. I'm an only child, but my mom comes from a large family and that's something I don't have in my life anymore so maybe that's why Desplechin (and Anderson, to a certain extent) hit me so hard. I'm not sure. I'm not sure of anything anymore, but when Emmanuelle Devos conjures up all her energy to momentarily overwhelm the film in the scene above, at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory…

★★★★

The Killer (1989)
(Directed by John Woo)

so, this John Woo fella, he basically just makes these manly melodramas, right? It's not that different from something that Michael Mann would do though Mann is more into setting a mood, I guess, whereas with Woo, just a shot like the above would suffice (I'm generalizing, but that's my right). There's also the whole two sides of the law thing here with Chow Yun Fat as the killer and Danny Lee as the police offer being kindred spirits or whatever. You just need to look at Heat for that. Although it's troubling that the two sides get so friendly that they ultimately start helping each other. Uh, what does that mean? Anyway, yeah, melodrama. And lots of it. Chow Yun Fat plays the titular killer. He accidentally blinds this one girl doing a job, and he decides he has to take care of her. But then there are double crosses, and cops who admire a serial killer (more or less) a little too much, and honor among men, and promises and things like that. Of course, Woo is really flamboyant in his set pieces, and the final one here is awesome. It's set in a church, and there are candles everywhere and doves are flying (that parody in The King of Comedy is really hilarious now; Chow poses as a stuntman who is being set on fire while the director decides if there should be a dove in the shot or not) and the guns are blazing and the men are alive and powerful. It's quite beautiful, and quite cheesy, but damn if it's not awesome.

★★★1/2

Jhon's Movie of the Week is.... A Christmas Tale

Images: The Killer (John Woo, 1989)

2010-01-17T16:32:00.000-08:00

The Killer John Woo, 1989

Images: A Christmas Tale (Arnaud Desplechin, 2008)

2010-01-17T08:55:00.001-08:00

A Christmas Tale Arnaud Desplechin, 2008

Images: Fantastic Mr. Fox (Wes Anderson, 2009)

2010-01-16T14:41:00.000-08:00

Fantastic Mr. Fox Wes Anderson, 2009

Images: Never Back Down (Jeff Wadlow, 2008)

2010-01-16T10:49:00.000-08:00

Never Back Down Jeff Wadlow, 2008

Or, more accurately

Never Back Down Amber Heard, 2008

Images: Warriors Two (Sammo Hung, 1978)

2010-01-15T22:58:00.000-08:00

Warriors Two Sammo Hung, 1978

Images: The Informer (John Ford, 1935)

2010-01-14T21:46:00.000-08:00

The Informer John Ford, 1935

Images: Fighting (Dito Montiel, 2009)

2010-01-14T17:38:00.000-08:00

Fighting Dito Montiel, 2009

Images: The Village (M. Night Shyamalan, 2004)

2010-01-12T19:59:00.000-08:00

The Village M. Night Shyamalan, 2004

Images: That Uncertain Feeling (Ernst Lubitsch, 1941)

2010-01-12T19:58:00.001-08:00

That Uncertain Feeling Ernst Lubitsch, 1941

Images: The Bakery Girl of Monceau (Eric Rohmer, 1963)

2010-01-11T20:01:00.000-08:00

The Bakery Girl of Monceau Eric Rohmer, 1963

Images: Scarface (Howard Hawks + Richard Rosson, 1932)

2010-01-11T19:06:00.000-08:00

Scarface Howard Hawks + Richard Rosson, 1932

My Week in Film (1/4 - 1/10)

2010-01-10T23:47:00.000-08:00

Thou Shalt Not: Sex, Sin and Censorship in Pre-Code Hollywood (2008)

eh, pretty boring. Just typical talking heads thingie.

★1/2

Night Nurse (1931)
(Directed by William A. Wellman)

Pretty good. Stanwyck was lots of fun. She plays a young lady who signs up to become a nurse, learns the ropes and then all out of nowhere stumbles on to a murder plot. The whole movie kinda rests on her performance pretty much, but that's OK because she's awesome in this movie. There's this one scene where she tries dragging a drunk woman across the floor and can't and so she just watches disapprovingly, her arms akimbo, being awesome. Clark Gable is all lean and mean as the chauffeur behind the plot, keeping the ladies dead drunk so they don't notice that their children are dying, and slapping girls when it needs to happen. Basically, Stanwyck is awesome. I need to watch Baby Face. She sleeps her way to the top! oh, roujin!

★★★

La Libertad (2001)
(Directed by Lisandro Alonso)

Gonna have to disagree with wormerino on this one. I didn't find much to like about this. The film follows some young Argentinian woodsman doing his thing. He goes out, chops down some trees, strips them, goes back to his hideout, makes himself a meal, takes a nap, goes and sells them, blah blah blah. There's like maybe three dialogue exchanges in the entire movie. Mostly, it's about observing process. It's about seeing a tree get cut down, it's about seeing a porcupine get gutted and eaten, it's about making a fire. IT'S ABOUT NATURE, YO! But, honestly, I found the presentation of it rather lacking. Most of the time I felt the framing was rather inexact and unengaging. The worst part of the movie is when the dude takes a nap and the camera goes around floating around the trees randomly without any sense of conviction of purpose behind it. Basically, a complete disappointment.

★★

Up in the Air (2009)
(Directed by Jason Reitman)

eh, nothing special. George Clooney is pretty good but that's to be expected of him. Vera Farmiga is cool and all that nonsense, blah blah blah. It's basically about an asshole who learns to love. Okay, not really. More or about realizing that those personal relationships that you've shunned all those years, well, they may have something of value. Who will attend your funeral, roujin? It goes about doing that showing how empty Clooney's life is - his apartment barely has anything in it (a marker of stability? nah, impossible). People are important. What? I hear they support you when you're fired. Where did I hear that? I heard it from this movie. Yeah, really. Who dares go through life alone? You don't want to get married? WTF? That's obviously wrong. Life, it's just these things we gotta do and then be disappointed by, and these commitments and bonds that we form with others that ultimately mean nothing because "we all die alone." *chuckle* Really, just not a very interesting movie outside of the actors and stuff and that only gets me so far most of the time. How does it all fit together? People are meaningless.

★★

Theodora Goes Wild (1936)
(Directed by Richard Boleslawski)

I like Dunne enough that I don't think this was a waste of time, but that asshole needs to stop his goddamn whistling!

★★

Lili (1953)
(Directed by Charles Walters)

Leslie Caron plays Lili a 16-year-old girl alone in the world. She follows some random guy and joins a carnival. She tries to make it in the carnival world by doing some waitress job but she's horrible at it and fails. She has no money and then plans to kill herself. Until she's talked out of it by some puppets. The whole movie is about this weirdly innocent girl and about how she has no idea what the hell is happening around her and she gets so lost talking to these puppets that she even forgets that there is a puppeteer behind the screen saying all the things they're saying and Leslie Caron has this one weird fantasy sequence that's totally this awesome sexual fever dream where she tarts herself up to attract the attention of this one playboy magician working at the carnival and, of course, Lili goes through some sort of therapy sessions with the puppets (or something) and it feels completely like a musical, and yet there's only one song. I liked it though. Things are weird here. So weird.

★★★

Born to Dance (1936)
(Directed by Roy Del Ruth)

Eleanor Powell is a gal new to the city looking to make it big in Broadway. Jimmy Stewart plays a Navy dude who's looking for love now that he's on shore. Things happen. Jimmy Stewart sings and dances! But, although he's awesome, he's not really the star of the show here. Eleanor Powell isn't that great of an actress but goddamn she can dance. I didn't really realize how great she was until the ending which is basically this ridiculous virtuoso performance where she tap dances you into submission and then makes you grin like an idiot. And, damn, those legs! And she kicks them high, way high. So, that's pretty much it. Jimmy Stewart makes all the other scenes good and Eleanor Powell makes the dancing ones good (I loved when she spun around in that heart thingie), but everything else didn't really land with me. Most of all would be all that Miss James stuff and the media manipulation or whatever. Eh, I haven't lost yet.

★★1/2

Ceiling Zero (1936)
(Directed by Howard Hawks)

Pretty much a trial run for Only Angels Have Wings but that doesn't mean it isn't great on its own. While I liked Cagney a lot in The Public Enemy and The Roaring Twenties, I loooooooved him here. Those short clipped sentences, playful banter with the ladies as he eyes them up and down, that goddamn moustache - he's superb. The first half of the film is more or less the same thing as His Girl Friday - a single room, lots of telephones, lots of one-liners, but then the film takes a startling turn that reminds the viewer of the dangers of flying. I'm not sure if the switch will work for a bunch of people, but it sure worked for me. There's a mysterious beauty to Cagney in this film, and I'm pretty sure it's all in the moustache, but even without that, I can't resist his magic. You need to put a banging donk on it.

★★★★

The King of Comedy (1999)
(Directed by Stephen Chow + Lee Lik-Chi)

Unlike the image above might suggest, this is not some self-reflexive film about Chow the comedian or anything like that. Somehow I'm disappointed. But, it's still really funny either way. Chow is a serious actor, big on the theory, but not with a lot of experience. He constantly goes to the movie set to try to get work as an extra and somehow always messes up (this leads to a really hilarious John Woo parody with guns blazing, doves everywhere and Chow as a dead priest who just won't die). This stuff about Chow acting and teaching others to act is hilarious. The scene where he teaches a Triad member how to collect money is frame-for-frame hilarious. Sadly, the film's tone is completely all over the place. Not that I really expect consistency or anything, but it still seemed wildly erratic, even for me. I think this has to do with the whole love story aspect of it. The scenes between Cecilia Cheung and Chow are actually really touching, even for this lug, but, I don't know, the way they're incorporated into the movie feels weird. It feels like a separate thing and some of the plot turns and shit feel very strange to me (like that totally out of nowhere undercover stuff at the end). So, I don't think it's a masterpiece like some poor misunderstood soul does, but it's Chow, so it's a whole lot of fun either way. Just some little shit in love with your eyes, Chow.

★★★

Kiss Me Kate (1953)
(Directed by George Sydney)

Lots of fun. Divorced Broadway couple reunite to stage The Taming of the Shrew all while their long-simmering rivalry/romance spills over to the stage along with a couple of gangsters and some alterations. I had no use for Howard Keel until he put on that crazy ass makeup and earring. He just bugs me for some reason. But I really loved Ann Miller in this movie. She's a ton of fun in this movie just in the way she carries herself and how she shows off her legs in the beginning. The whole thing is pretty colorful and delightful and everyone here at casa roujin had a gay ole time. But it's just me. More films should use spanking women's behinds as a plot point

★★★

Throwdown (2004)
(Directed by Johnnie To)

What a weird movie. It's about this disgraced former Judo champion or whatever that does nothing but drink and gamble all day but then this random guy comes in and challenges him and everything changes. I don't think I've ever seen a Judo film (still need to see Sanshiro Sugata, a film that's referenced here a lot apparently) but it's kind of a weird looking. Why? Because it gets kind of comical seeing people being thrown on the floor over and over again. I think To understands that which is why this huge brawl that starts out in a nightclub and spills over into the HK streets feels as much as musical number as it does a fight set piece (is there really a difference?). The film's tone is very strange, too. There are a lot of playful scenes where the gang steals money from gangsters (gangsters that hang out at arcade stores beating kids at fighting games) and then there are scenes that are extremely sentimental, bordering on mawkish. What happens then? I don't know. It just felt weird and at the end of the day I was unsure of what it added up to.

★★1/2

The Quiet Man (1952)
(Directed by John Ford)

A nuanced and realistic portrayal of the Irish people.

Okay, not really. I actually kind of loved it. It's basically this totally sentimental and nostalgic version of an idealized homeland. John Wayne is a boxer who comes back home to Innisfree to settle down in the cottage where he was born, but he sees this heavenly apparition in the figure of Maureen O'Hara (who is really great) as she herds the sheep in the rolling countryside. It's really wonderful. It's a beautiful moment but. . . too bad that the DVD is total shit. There is a ridiculously beautiful film somewhere here and I could see moments of it here and there (the wind in the house where the door opens and John Wayne pulls O'Hara close, and the flat-out brilliance of the graveyard kiss part, I cried) but I can't even begin to imagine the power of this film's technicolor greatness can have in a version that doesn't completely suck ass. Also, the film's final 20 minutes are completely hilarious. Yay, Ireland!

★★★★

My Man Godfrey (1936)
(Directed by Gregory La Cava)

Lots of fun. Liked it more than The Thin Man. William Powell plays the titular character, a bum living in the city dump who through some strange coincidences becomes the butler of some very rich people. William Powell is a lot of fun. He serves everyone, keeping quiet, deflecting trouble as long as he can, but trouble is inevitable, and so is a social conscience. Or something. What? Who? What is it? And who are you, roujin? Carole Lombard is fun here, too, though she got on my nerves a bit too much. There are laughs to be had here. I had to find them in the rooms and in the drapes or hidden in drawers or under mattresses that can be easily flipped over. So what is going on here? Nothing. Just some words.

★★★1/2

A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)*
(Directed by Steven Spielberg)

This is my new favorite Spielberg film. I don't dislike Spielberg. I think he has a lot of really good films (most of them during this decade. . .). He's an excellent craftsman and visual storyteller and can make me cry like a little girl about nothing. So, A.I. is about, I guess, what makes us "human" and all that stuff since, well, Osment wants to become a real boy that involves actually laying out what would make him human. Deep stuff or something. I can't help but stand in awe of this film as it goes on ahead in its own scary route and as the film's brilliant 15 or so minutes play on, I'm almost in tears (this is not a happy ending, it's bitterly fucked) because WE WILL ALL DIE.

★★★★

Jhon's Movie of the Week is... Ceiling Zero

Images: A.I. Artificial Intelligence (Steven Spielberg, 2001)

2010-01-10T22:28:00.000-08:00

A.I. Artificial Intelligence Steven Spielberg, 2001

Images: My Man Godfrey (Gregory La Cava, 1936)

2010-01-10T15:30:00.000-08:00

My Man Godfrey Gregory La Cava, 1936

Images: The Quiet Man (John Ford, 1952)

2010-01-09T23:23:00.001-08:00

The Quiet Man John Ford, 1952

Images: Throwdown (Johnnie To, 2004)

2010-01-09T20:10:00.000-08:00

Throwdown Johnnie To, 2004

Images: Kiss Me Kate (George Sydney, 1953)

2010-01-09T13:20:00.000-08:00

Kiss Me Kate George Sydney, 1953

Images: The King of Comedy (Stephen Chow + Lee Lik-Chi, 1999)

2010-01-09T08:56:00.000-08:00

The King of Comedy Stephen Chow + Lee Lik-Chi, 1999

Images: Ceiling Zero (Howard Hawks, 1936)

2010-01-08T22:29:00.001-08:00

Ceiling Zero Howard Hawks, 1936

Images: Born to Dance (Roy Del Ruth, 1936)

2010-01-08T17:47:00.000-08:00

Born to Dance Roy Del Ruth, 1936

Images: Lili (Charles Walters, 1953)

2010-01-06T16:52:00.000-08:00

Lili Charles Walters, 1953

Images: Theodora Goes Wild (Richard Boleslawski, 1936)

2010-01-05T22:38:00.000-08:00

Theodora Goes Wild Richard Boleslawski, 1936

Images: Up in the Air (Jason Reitman, 2009)

2010-01-05T19:57:00.000-08:00

Up in the Air Jason Reitman, 2009

Images: La Libertad (Linsandro Alonso, 2001)

2010-01-04T22:36:00.001-08:00

La Libertad Lisandro Alonso, 2001

Images: Night Nurse (William A. Wellman, 1931)

2010-01-04T20:08:00.000-08:00

Night Nurse William A. Wellman, 1931

Also:

Thou Shalt Not: Sex, Sin and Censorship in Pre-Code Hollywood 2008

My Week in Film (12/28 - 1/3)

2010-01-03T22:26:00.000-08:00

Hey, it's a new year! Let's celebrate with some movies.

Star Trek (2009)
(Directed by J.J. Abrams)

Kind of the story-before-the-story and it's good for that. It's the reboot so it's gotta set up all these relationships and get us acquainted with the origins before they can actually start doing awesome shit. I guess I should get out of the way the qualifier that I know pretty much nothing about Star Trek outside of the obvious cultural markers (Spock, William Shatner, that dumb sign) so it was never going to mean anything to me. It's just a fast-as-fuck action movie, basically, replete with your badass brash hero who's all like "rules? fuck! your rules!" It's complete nonsense really, but it's fun nonsense and it's edited to keep the story going at breakneck speed (blowing its load, arguably, with the Vulcan planet thingie majigger). From there on, it's never quite as good and, at the end, I thought it all turned out to be rather inconsequential. Not that I mind that, really. It just needs to do a little more than deftly fulfill its narrative obligations (hey now!) to get me to classify it with the others in the "adulation" basket.

★★1/2

Paris (2008)
(Directed by Cedric Klapisch)

One of those ensemble dramas, you know. Stars a bunch of pretty French people so I guess that makes it okay. Romain Duris plays some guy who has some heart illness and is going to die pretty soon. what does he do? He just looks out of his balcony. Binoche joins in his apartment cuz she's his sister and soon they're learning how to love life again. Then you got some professor who gets obsessed with Melanie Laurent (well, yeah) and begins to send her text messages. An architect fears having a baby, a North African dude tries to make it to France, some market workers work out their relationship problems. But, roujin, what does it all mean? Well, nothing. The film doesn't really work as much of anything. I dug the Duris/Binoche storyline the best as I thought they were lots of fun together. The Melanie Laurent one was okay. Really whatever stuff. Doesn't help that it brings up some random stuff about immigration for whatever reason (I guess to show the allure of the city, blergh). And, really, the film doesn't know when to cut back and forth between the storylines too well. Some are dropped for far too long and I lost interest or begin to wonder when they were going back to cut back to them. Just whatever stuff, but it has some good actors so it's never a chore to watch or anything. Cut me some slack! I'll save the philosophical implications of voyeurism for some other time.

★★

Sullivan's Travels (1941)
(Directed by Preston Sturges)

Not as funny as The Palm Beach Story or The Lady Eve. Instead, it's this weirdly ambitious film about Hollywood's attempts to make movies about the poor or, really, any kind of suffering. What right do they have? It follows Sullivan as he pretends to be a bum and find "trouble" so he can finally make his real dramatic picture (he's known as a comedic director). I kind of view it as the precursor to Music and Lyrics (Hugh Grant's excuse for making fluffy romantic comedies) in that it explicitly spells out why one would want to make comedies instead of serious dramatic pictures. Because it aims to do that, it kinda suffers from having extreme changes in tone. You have the slapstick race at the beginning coupled with the montage, and the stay with the farmer's wife coupled with Sullivan's imprisonment. It's a weird film. I did find certain parts really beautiful. When the inmates gather in the church to watch disney shorts and let out huge bouts of laughter, that shit moved me, brosellini. I was touched! Although the idea that the suffering poor might only want these dumb comedies (hi, Stephen Chow, you protean genius!) isn't that palatable either. I don't think that's what it's going for, really, just occurred to me moments ago while I was dancing up the walls covered in bees reading some pages from the book of verses. Hallelujah I'm a roujin!

★★★

Police Story (1985)
(Directed by Jackie Chan)

It's an excuse for a bunch of awesome stunts. I don't think that makes it very different from a Keaton movie or something like that. Keaton did all his own stunts, but the point there is that he does all this dangerous stuff and he never gets hurt. Jackie Chan definitely gets hurt, but that's part of what makes him fun. The whole point of these movies boils down to, basically, hey, watch Jackie Chan do some crazy ass shit, get beat the fuck up and live to tell about it. Jackie does that in style. The first set piece is a crackdown of some drug stuff in some random tenement. The bust goes awry and soon the whole thing turns into a mess and Jackie has to basically destroy the entire place (it's unbelievable) to catch the bad guys. It's hard to top that scene, but somehow later he does it. The plot's some random nonsense about Chan having to protect Brigitte Lin then getting framed and then getting angry all while trying to make his girlfriend, Maggie Cheung, happy (so young!). Anyway, Jackie treats his environment like a playground - he has this little routine with trying to answer four phones that's hilarious, he climbs walls, jumps off buildings, goes through both car windows in a single swoop. But, again, where Keaton keeps his cool, Jackie loses it. All his moves have a sense of desperation about them as he scrambles to twist his body into all kinds of crazy shapes in order to do his job done. You can see the bruises, the sweat, the blood on his face. He's just a man, a great man.

★★★1/2

Encounters of the Spooky Kind 2 (1990)
(Directed by Ricky Lau)

Don't know why I really can't get into Sammo's horror/comedy outings. I mean, I like them and all, but I can't seem to work up much enthusiasm like I can with his other films. This one has much more of a plot than what I remember from the original. Sammo meets a ghost and tries to help her, he gets his soul taken away, etc. It's fun/funny stuff but it doesn't leave much of an impression on me. Maybe because it's tied to all these traditions and tropes that I guess were developed even more through the Mr. Vampire films (I need to see them) and stuff. I don't know. I did finally find out the name of that one guy that's in a bunch of these movies, Lam Ching-Ying. He plays the master of Sammo in this one and I dug finally being able to put a name to the face and add him to my roster of Asian that guy's (R.I.P). Anyway, this has absolutely nothing to do with anything. Really, it's fun but pretty much worthless if you just don't enjoy watching Sammo. The first film was much better, sadly, mainly because it features one of the most brutal endings of all time. So great. What does that mean? Look it up in yr dictionary, bitch!

★★1/2

God of Cookery (1996)
(Directed by Stephen Chow + Lee Lik-Chi)

A lot of this really hilarious, but it has this really annoying subplot that bothered me (the whole "she's ugly, ah! I have to run away" thing is very annoying). Even more so when it leads to an incredibly overblown emotional lynchpin that causes Chow to get all serious and shit (it's way melodramatic although I liked how it's played by defusing it of the melodrama by jumping ahead in the narrative). Still, I probably don't need scenes of Chow crying and singing. But I'm willing to forgive this plot strand because 1) it sets up the whole "sorrowful rice" thing which I found very moving, and 2) introduce us to the 18 Brassmen of Shaolin Monastery who are hilarious. But the best thing about the movie is the final competition is the movie, which I can't believe the makers of Yakitate! Japan didn't commit to memory and play over and over while coming up with their own reactions. It's so hilarious and it escalates and escalates into the incredibly hilarious judge's V.O. and her fears and anxieties about delivering a verdict, but not before a literal deux ex machina occurs to set things right. That whole sequence pretty much blew my mind because I kept thinking back to Yakitate! and the reactions there and how much I wanted to see that show again (and I fucking will, god damn it!) and how roujin wished he could cook even just a little bit so he could share a little bit of himself and of his work to others (not really - see also: any and all of roujin's reviews contain this bit of exaggeration and weirdly desperate/disparate claims about his own humanity and his striving to connect with others, when it's really just a sham; he hates others). Basically, I kind of loved it, but am afraid of overration - a concept that Brazilian street urchins don't seem to understand.

★★★

Ruggles of Red Cap (1935)
(Directed by Leo McCarey)

Really funny. At first, I was taken back a little bit by Charles Laughton. I think it's the way he talks in this movie but then I started realizing that pretty much every single gesture that he makes is hilarious. It's all in the eyes, really, but he's pretty much a comedic genius all throughout this movie. But it helps that he also really good performers to bounce off. Charles Ruggles is so funny as this wild Washington man who'd rather drink beer and wear his cowboy hat or whatever than visit an art gallery. Anyway, the movie is more or less about how Americans want to adopt the fussy nonsense of Europeans and imitate all that dumb crap and visit art galleries and shit like that, but how when you get down to it, in America, you're free to do whatever you want. Like, say, open your own restaurant and speak your mind and things like that. Europe is dumb! This movie is funny!

★★★1/2

Project A (1983)*
(Directed by Jackie Chan)

I watched this again with some friends. It was 3 AM, I think, so I was pretty sleepy, but even with that, this film is as charming and winsome and all that shit as can get. This time we were all kinds of amazed at all the stunt work and kinda gasped a little when Jackie did that clock tower fall, and Sammo made us all laugh just by showing up, and Yuen Biao wore some fancy hat when sneaking into that pirate compound. Basically, about as much fun as you can have with any movie really.

★★★1/2

Angel (1937)
(Directed by Ernst Lubitsch)

huh, very weird stuff from Lubitsch. We come to expect a comedy of sorts. I mean, Edward Everett Horton has a supporting role, and Herbert Marshall, that suave motherfucker from Trouble in Paradise is back, but what we instead get is... Dietrich flies off to Paris for a day and meets a suave man. They form some strange connection but she runs off without ever telling him her name or anything. He calls her Angel. Herbert Marshall plays Dietrich's husband, who although loves her is absent a lot because of his important political job. Then things get complicated and confusing and strange. The touch is there, but none of the romantic or comedic pleasures are or, at the least, they're suppressed in favor of a striving toward a more realistic depiction of this situation. Personally, I bought it. And I bought how it tries to complicate the emotions of the viewers, I guess. It's a really sad situation and whatever choices there are available to the characters don't seem all that great. Very strange stuff. I think I died a little inside. Just open the door, roujin. Just open the door. Leave all these troubles behind.

★★★1/2

The Bad and the Beautiful (1952)
(Directed by Vincente Minnelli)

ah, two hours of beautifully cold and calculating emotional manipulation of the greatest kind. Kirk Douglas plays a Hollywood producer. The movie's about the various people he screwed over and how he screwed them. You have the director, the actress and the writer played by some dude, Lana Turner and Dick Powell, in that order. The whole story is told in flashbacks as we're told how that person and Douglas met and how their relationship soured. The best, by far, and the most brutal is the one with Lana Turner. Douglas finds Turner drinking herself into oblivion and helps her get clean and casts her in the lead of his movie. He figures out that a way to manipulate her into working. He says he "knows how to handle her." Douglas sees people as a means to an end and he'll do anything. That's all fine and dandy but it's the film's final image that really seals the deal for me - condemn them all to damnation. They're willing to hear after all.

Editor's Note: Gloria Grahame is awesome.

★★★★

Breaking News (2004)
(Directed by Johnnie To)

Lots of fun. The beginning is damn impressive. It's a 7-minute gunfight done in a single take that pits the cops that are watching the robbers vs. the robbers vs. the random street cops who stumble into the scene and mess it all up. It's, again, lots of fun. The whole thing gets out of control and the HK police force have a nightmare on their hand since the whole thing was caught by a news camera. So, the rest of the film is about tracking down those robbers and fixing the image of the HK police. But, although it gets way too heavy-handed and hilariously dumb with the "I'm a director" stuff at the end, this aspect of the story is done pretty well with the robbers using the internet in order to go against the image that police is trying to paint. Inside all that nonsense, there are narrow as hell corridors, the men that are inside them, their formations, etc. It's really tense and awesome shit. My favorite part of the movie is probably when the robbers stop everything in order to have lunch and broadcast it on the internet to show that they are in control. But, really, it's To so I know that even if the story isn't all that great, I can still have fun in other ways. With To, I know I'm in good hands.

★★★

Jhon's Movie of the Week is... Ruggles of Red Cap

Images: Breaking News (Johnnie To, 2004)

2010-01-03T22:03:00.001-08:00

Breaking News Johnnie To, 2004

Images: The Bad and the Beautiful (Vincente Minnelli, 1952)

2010-01-03T18:49:00.000-08:00

The Bad and the Beautiful Vincente Minnelli, 1952

Images: Angel (Ernst Lubitsch, 1937)

2010-01-03T14:58:00.000-08:00

Angel Ernst Lubitsch, 1937

Images: Project A (Jackie Chan, 1983)

2010-01-03T11:15:00.000-08:00

Project A Jackie Chan, 1983

Images: Ruggles of Red Cap (Leo McCarey, 1935)

2010-01-03T10:26:00.000-08:00

Ruggles of Red Cap Leo McCarey, 1935

Strictly 09

2009-12-30T20:45:00.001-08:00

10. (500) Days of Summer (Marc Webb)

09. Wake Up Sid (Ayan Mukherjee)

08. The Limits of Control (Jim Jarmusch)

07. Adventureland (Greg Mottola)

06. Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino)

05. 17 Again (Burr Steers)

04. Where The Wild Things Are (Spike Jonze)

03. Eccentricities of a Blond Hair Girl (Manoel de Oliveira)

02. Up (Pete Docter + Bob Peterson)

01. Phantoms of Nabua (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)

Images: God of Cookery (Stephen Chow + Lee Lik-Chi, 1996)

2009-12-30T12:07:00.000-08:00

God of Cookery Stephen Chow + Lee Lik-Chi, 1996

Images: Encounters of the Spooky Kind 2 (Ricky Lau, 1990)

2009-12-29T21:02:00.001-08:00

Encounters of the Spooky Kind 2 Ricky Lau, 1990

Images: Police Story (Jackie Chan, 1985)

2009-12-29T17:03:00.001-08:00

Police Story Jackie Chan, 1985

Images: Sullivan's Travels (Preston Sturges, 1941)

2009-12-29T13:03:00.000-08:00

Sullivan's Travels Preston Sturges, 1941

Images: Paris (Cedric Klapisch, 2008)

2009-12-29T08:27:00.001-08:00

Paris Cedric Klapisch, 2008

Images: Star Trek (J.J. Abrams, 2009)

2009-12-28T16:13:00.000-08:00

Star Trek J.J. Abrams, 2009

My Week In Film (12/21 - 12/27)

2009-12-27T23:04:00.000-08:00

Red Firecracker, Green Firecracker (1994)
(Directed by Ping He)

huh, I don't really know what to say about this one other than it kept me more engaged than the Roses movie. It's about this girl who inherits the family's firecracker business. Now, she runs the whole business, dresses like a man and is called "Young Master" or "Boss" by everyone. Due to some retarded family rules, the business can only be run by family, but, apparently, the girl can't marry according to the rules. Those are some dumb ancestors. Anyway, this one "itinerant" artist guy shows up and he's charged with painting the doors of the huge fortress where the firecracker lady lives. What will happen? She falls in love with him, duh, and starts dressing like a woman and things happen, terrible things, like fires and whippings and tortures, all because the firecracker lady wants to be seen as a woman. The film is kind of confusing sometimes. I think this may be due to the subtitles which aren't perfect although you can generally get the point. But also the narrative is just confusing: sometimes the artist seems to leave but then he's still there the next scene? And I don't think the subtitles convey what's really supposed to have happened between firecracker lady and the artist that well. There's gotta be some lost nuance going on here. Anyway, the firecrackers are some sort of sexual metaphor because no firecrackers are allowed to go off in the fortress where the firecracker lady lives (sexual repression!) and if you set one off, you get beaten the fuck up by a bunch of the people who work there. the whole thing is made even clearer when there's a firecracker handling competition (whut?) to see who can marry the firecracker lady and there's an apparent castration. It's some weird stuff, not all of it made sense to me. Largely, I think the appeal of the film is in the firecracker lady herself. Early on in the film, she's all distant and cold and upholding the family rules, but as the film goes on, she becomes more human and her performance shows that really well or something. Whatever. Doesn't matter. roujin's seeing red again.

★★

Yolanda and the Thief (1945)
(Directed by Vincente Minnelli)

Didn't get into this one as much as I hoped I would but it's still pretty good. You got Lucille Bremer as an innocent 18-year-old girl who just got out of the convent and can now finally take control of the millions and millions of dollars that belong to her. Yeah, she's the richest person in this fictional Latin American (?) country. You got Fred Astaire as the guy who pretends to be her guardian angel in order to get her money. The film isn't really all that funny aside from that one gag about the door and one other one I forgot, it did manage to consistently make me smile. As for the numbers, there's no defining moment. Maybe Fred's Dream could count as that since it was pretty long but outside from the ridiculously overblown designs and shit like that, they feel kind of bogged down and not really special to me. I don't know. I much preferred the final dance between Bremer and Astaire. Bremer is an interesting presence. She has this innocence about her that totally makes the film for me. When she's praying to her guardian angel, it's like her face reveals everything about her. It's transparent. And when she kisses Astaire even though she knows she shouldn't because he's an angel, it's all kinds of sad and cute and beautiful. So, it was an interesting experience in that the usual things didn't really jive with me (I was hoping for more delirious Pirate shenanigans), but it ultimately turned out to be pretty swell. Ain't that grand, roujin? You'll never see a finer review in your life.

★★★

Lover Come Back (1961)
(Directed by Delbert Mann)

So much innuendo! It's hilarious. Underneath all that, there's a surprisingly nasty take on relationships with Rock Hudson playing Doris Day like a sucker and manipulating her into bedding down with him. Of course, not before, a bunch of references to Hudson's homosexuality are made. It's a barrel of laughs! Then there's Tony Randall manic depressive (?) boss of the advertising agency which kinda recalls Rock Hunter except in a much less excoriating and devastating mode. Hudson and Day are a good match together. Hudson is shirtless a bunch of times and Doris Day wears a bunch of ridiculously silly hats. The ending is really bizarre, and probably a product of the times, but it really rings as very depressing. I think it's supposed to be all romantic, but nothing in the film really sets it up at all, and the only way to read it is as the only available option for a woman at that time. Weird stuff. Can't wait to watch Pillow Talk.

★★★

Summer Hours (2008)
(Directed by Olivier Assayas)

I don't know why I put this off for so long. I'm stupid. It's funny. My top 3 favorites of 2008 are now all about French families. Don't know what's up with that. Anyway, this is basically a film about rich people who own a lot of shit, and about what happens when they gotta get rid of it. Well, not really. It's about the significance that objects and places have in our lives, about the role of art in the home (or outside of it), and basically, about life and people and about ideas and all that good shit. Dramatized in part through the Gautier's fantastic cinematography and Assayas' assured direction (those opening 25 minutes at the Mom's birthday is probably the most brilliant thing anyone has ever made, ever). Can't forget the actors either who are completely relatable and all understandable and all that good shit. It made me think a lot about things I would do and how I would react if I were in such a situation, and considering it's Christmas, that's probably depressing, but it really isn't because the spaces and the characters are so alive and real to me that they're just like good friends who I've come to understand, FAMILY. And if I owned anything, I would probably think twice about its meaning in my life. Also loved that last scene at the house and that little off-the-cuff revelation. Warmed my heart so much. I'm just a big ole softie, really. Where are the tissues, young gentlemen? No, don't use your tongue, please.

★★★★

Frontier of Dawn (2008)
(Directed by Philippe Garrel)

A lot of this film is a real slog to get through. The first 20 minutes were pretty hard on me. I actually didn't get really get a handle on the film at all until six hours later when I woke up. But, after being refreshed by sleep, I begin to let go of my roujin fears and just trust that the film would take me somewhere interesting. It did. I like how the film seems to be basically nothing but what it shows. What I mean is that there's very little outside of the lovers. Love, in this film, is something that overwhelms everything else. There is no outside world. There's just this. You and I or Me or Whatever. The idea of it seems really old-fashioned. So, plot: Louis Garrel plays some random dude who falls in love with an actress. However, she's married, and kind of unstable. Their relationship ends in tragedy as is the frenchie custom. One year later, Louis has met another woman and is about to settle down. Then things get all freaky. And there are mirrors, invitations through them, and all of it is played straight. I liked that. I'm kind of a moron in that I always buy what films are selling. I take a lot of things at face value and if a film wants to take me somewhere, I don't resist. I'm just built that way (got me cheap from the factory). The place this film goes to is kind of ridiculous in a way, but also totally honest and almost kind of tragic and I dug the sensuousness of the film's textures and how the film seems to be decidedly not modern. It's all very strange and not heady and kind of romantic. I think if you can get on its wavelength, the film can work for you. Otherwise, it's gonna be a toughie to get through. roujin: bringing you the greatest reviews since 1958.

★★1/2

The Taking of Pelham 123 (2009)
(Directed by Tony Scott)

Too ordinary. I expected something a little more interesting after Deja Vu which I thought had a surprising emotional pull on me, even with all silly stuff going on (that car chase ). This, however, is far too common, and not even Scott's visual tics can breathe life into the dumb screenplay. But that's not what really gets me about the whole thing. I think it's Travolta. Or, at least, his character. It's a very tired characterization and Travolta tries to punch it up by saying fuck every five seconds, and it just reeks of nasty ass nothingness. Washington looks all paunchy at the other end of the line, and the whole film bends over backwards to provide him opportunities in which to redeem himself leading to a very dumb final showdown or whatever. I still need to see Domino.

★★

The Headless Woman (2008)
(Directed by Lucrecia Martel)

Kind of a pseudo-remake of Paranoid Park except with the hipster skaters of that film replaced with Argentinian bourgeoisie. Sort of. Both films are about how people deal with potentially traumatic events and the feelings of guilt that surround them. In this film, however, that issue is treated through an extensive focus on class, and how basically her family gathers 'round her to make the problem go away. I didn't realize that at first so I kept wondering if she was imagining a bunch of this stuff. It only hit me later that the out-of-focus phone dealings of the husband were all related to it. Anyway, even though I was engaged on a thematic level and the filmmaking is really great (a bunch of oblique compositions utilizing shallow focus), it always kept me at a distance, which although fine with some movies, didn't really sit well with me for some reason. I agree with a lot of what skjerva said about it I think (I'll have to re-read his take in a bit), just it worked way more for him than it did for me, and that's okay. Know why? Cuz I'm eating a nice sandwich right now and nothing you can do can take that away. What were we talking about again? Oh, right, Martel frames her without a head LOLZ GET IT.

★★1/2

Where the Wild Things Are (2009)
(Directed by Spike Jonze)

I was a hopeless romantic, you were swine. I feel that way. Some things just aren't meant to be understood. Maybe childhood is one of those things. You can feel it or you can not feel it. Doesn't matter either way. So what's the deal with this movie? Jonze/Eggers problematize the childhood experience by packing as much as hurt and confusion into the moments of sheer freedom and fun as it can. What's the result? A bunch of mopey monsters that act as surrogates for the people/things/feelings that Max has run away from. Basically, a bunch of whiny kids. Max learns that it's tough being a family all while Karen O yelps in the background and Lance Acord captures all the brown muckyness. It's tough shit being a kid. Or, at least, that's how 30-year-old white dudes remember it being. I don't know yet. Anyway, I did enjoy a lot of it. It felt emotionally right, I guess, even if a lot of it was too morose. The music sometimes got in the way, sometimes fit perfectly. The film also includes the most shockingly violent moment I've seen in quite some time and it frames it in the way that a child doesn't really know why it's doing something. Weird stuff. Where are your arty blockbusters now, roujin? Huh, the broom closet?

★★★

Vengeance (2009)
(Directed by Johnnie To)

Another really solid To flick. This guy is a machine. Anyway, the only difference here is that Johnny Halliday shows up, and he kinda looks weird to me so I was more happy when the film focused on Anthony Wong and the fat guy (the most awesome fat guy of all time, Suet Lam), and Simon Yam wearing those cool glasses. Because at the heart of it, the story isn't very interesting and the whole "I'm losing my memory" angle of it is really dumb. The film plays it seriously though as it does pretty much everything else (these guys are on a Hawksian (?) mission to goddamn do their jobs and do them well) all the while To invokes memories of Le Samourai by directly referencing Delon through Halliday's name in the film, Costello. Whatever. It's all beautifully orchestrated gunfight poetry of the highest order, and either you buy into that shit or you don't. Me? Well, I think To does this kind of stuff really well and I have a lot of fun with his films. And I've really grown to love the dudes he uses in his films (Anthony Wong, Suet Lam, Simon Yam) which helps a lot with me for whatever reason. Ah, yes, so comfortable. So nice. So many squibs.

★★★

An Education (2009)
(Directed by Lone Scherfig)

I don't have much to say as to why I didn't like it outside of I just didn't find it very interesting or engaging or whatever. The whole thing just felt kinda safe and inoffensive and none of it really made an impression (good or bad). I did find that Paris scene darkly hilarious though (a trip to Paris is all it takes!). Don't know. Carey Mulligan is good though. So, make of that what you will.

★★

In The Loop (2009)
(Directed by Armando Iannucci)

British people say naughty words. Laughs are had.

★★★

Antichrist (2009)
(Directed by Lars Von Trier)

Misogyny! Alright, now that's out of the way. Man uses his (obviously) massive intellect to try and control the unpredictable emotions that turn up in his wife when their son dies (while they're fucking! lolz!). Immediately, Dafoe is like "nah, traditional medicine? I'm above that shit, son" and he takes her out to the woods to confront Gainsbourg's worst fears about herself... or something (she's the devil, bro!). So Dafoe's suffocating rationalism comes vs. Gainsbourg's guttural emotionalism. Audience wins. Why? Because when Von Trier isn't using annoying jump cuts and reframing his (dark as hell) compositions, this is a wonder of a movie to look at. Those five or so tableaux when Gainsbourg is walking through the woods on their way to the cabin are pretty much the greatest thing any of us will see this year and it's the highpoint of the movie. And I loved it when it gets all foggy at the end. Anyway, looks good, but looks can kill (not really). The movie's also kinda heavy into the symbolism and I'm useless at that so whatever. There are trees and references to the bible and their woody wonderland is named Eden as if the film needed more things to hang around its neck. It's kind of silly, too, I think (talking foxes!) and that's part of it's charm, I guess. Chaos reigns, I guess, but women reign supreme. Hey, what does the ending mean?

★★1/2

All's Well Ends Well (1992)
(Directed by Clifton Ko)

All's Well Ends Well is basically a Shakespearean comedy. There's three sets of couples and the film is about how they get together. Couple #1: Wong Bak-Ming and Raymond Chow play a married couple. Chow constantly cheats on her and basically treats her like dirt while Wong stays home and cares for the house and Chow's parents. Couple #2: Stephen Chow is Raymond Chow's brother and he lives at the house as well. He's a playboy and goes out with a bunch of girls. However, he soon meets Maggie Cheung, a girl who's obsessed with Hollywood movies. This leads to a bunch of gags involving early 90's Hollywood flicks (Ghost, Misery, Terminator 2) - that shit is hilarious. It's so weird seeing Maggie Cheung be totally silly. I always think of her in the WKW flicks and of her work with Assayas that I forget that she was also part of the HK scene and did these silly movies too. Couple #3: Leslie Cheung plays this extremely effeminate guy who teaches classes on flower arrangement. Teresa Mo plays his aunt (?) who is as butch as they come. They trade barbs all across the movie until they realize that they actually love each other, and then magically, Leslie Cheung starts talking like a man and Teresa Mo starts dressing like a woman. Ain't love grand. The best plot strand by far is that of Chow and Cheung, not only do you get Chow's comedic genius but Maggie Cheung is no slouch herself and can make the silliest joke work (she's first introduced as being a huge Madonna fan wearing those whatchamacallthems). Their relationship is so hilarious. And there's all these complications and mental illness and hilarity. The scene where he's almost caught two-timing is syllable-per-syllable hilarious. Raymond Chow's storyline is really weak. Basically because his character is a huge asshole and it's hard to make that funny. Anyway, watching this really led me to realize how integral those shitty subs are to the whole experience for me. There are some translations that are so awkward and strange that they add so much to the movie (this is probably my favorite). Anyway, it's not perfect, but it did make me laugh a bunch. More than In The Loop, which I saw earlier today and is much more sophisticated. huh, that was too much plot stuff, and you can tell that I liked it! That's gotta change! Okay, not really. You guys don't know much about these movies and I figure that part of this whole bracket thing is to raise exposure. Hence why you won't see any of my usual tricks in these thingiemajiggers. Well, kind of and sort of, but not really. You know, I'm just typing now. I flirted with turning this entire thing into a pop quiz format, but then I would have to add some footnotes abotu the reasons as to why I did that and my intentions and my worries, and really I'm just self-conscious about the entire thing now. So: here's some summational sentences.These movies are silly, but they make me laugh. I'm a simple man of simple tastes. It did need some talking foxes though.

★★★

Hail The Judge (1994)
(Directed by Wong Jing)

So Stephen Chow plays a government official, a judge. Hey, that's funny by itself. Seriously, this guy has reached Keaton and Lewis levels. I laugh just by looking at him. That said, the story of the movie is a mixed bag. Chow plays a corrupt judge. He takes bribes and generally doesn't care that much. Then all of a sudden, a very blatant frame is made accusing a girl Chow likes of killing 13 people. This entire sequence is brutal as hell depicting the government and everyone involved in the most terrible light. The girl talks about how she was raped and then it cuts back to Chow for a couple of seconds for a quick laugh. Weird stuff that doesn't work. Anyway, things turn dark as hell. Chow is also framed and now he has to try and fix everything. Sounds dark, right? Yeah, too dark for my tastes. Anyway, the rest of the film follows Chow as he tries to fix things - he stops by at a circus, at a whorehouse, etc. The whorehouse bit features one of the funniest things I've ever seen. It's a montage of Chow developing the ability to talk well. Previously in the film he was outtalked and outsmarted by other people. In the montage, he learns to talk and berate so well that he can bring back the dead (). Anyway, a lot of it was really funny, if too plotty for my tastes. That said, the final courtroom sequence where Chow goes to town on the other judges talking about their moms is pretty much the funniest thing of all time, and I think I peed myself a little when it happened (well, not really, but you get the point - it's funny). Good times were had.

★★1/2

Jhon's Movie of the Week is... Summer Hours

Images: Hail The Judge (Wong Jing, 1994)

2009-12-27T23:00:00.000-08:00

Hail The Judge Wong Jing, 1994

Images: All's Well Ends Well (Clifton Ko, 1992)

2009-12-27T22:57:00.000-08:00

All's Well Ends Well Clifton Ko, 1992

Images: Antichrist (Lars Von Trier, 2009)

2009-12-27T15:32:00.001-08:00

Antichrist Lars Von Trier, 2009

Images: In The Loop (Armando Iannucci, 2009)

2009-12-27T09:56:00.000-08:00

In The Loop Armando Iannucci, 2009

Images: An Education (Lone Scherfig, 2009)

2009-12-26T23:22:00.000-08:00

An Education Lone Scherfig, 2009

Images: Vengeance (Johnnie To, 2009)

2009-12-26T20:52:00.001-08:00

Vengeance Johnnie To, 2009

Images: Where The Wild Things Are (Spike Jonze, 2009)

2009-12-26T17:02:00.001-08:00

Where The Wild Things Are Spike Jonze, 2009

Images: The Headless Woman (Lucrecia Martel, 2008)

2009-12-26T13:03:00.000-08:00

A new feature on the blogzors. A bunch of screenshots from a movie that I happen to be watching that week (or whenever, really). Let's go!

The Headless Woman Lucrecia Martel, 2008