Sunday, March 30, 2014

Darling Lili (1970)

Second viewing; first viewed on July 17, 1993.

During World War One, an English singer acts as a German spy. She is assigned with extracting military secrets from an ally flyer.

Here's a case of a good script (except for the absurd ending) which is made into a not so good film, reportedly because of producer's interference (I read that S.O.B., by the same director, is based on this incident). The excessive shifting in tone and pace (now mellow, now comic, now dramatic) gets in the way of a pleasant viewing experience (there is a director's cut which, it appears, improves the overall result, but I haven't seen it). And then there is the ending, of course, one of the most implausible of fiction's history.

Saw a 142 min version (actually, 136 min in my country's PAL system).
Saw it in pan-and-scan.

Rating: 50 (unchanged)

Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Hwanghae (2010)

English title: The Yellow Sea

A Chinese national of Korean ethnicity is in deep debt and is offered a hit job in South Korea as a way to settle it. His wife is down there and has long stopped making contact with him. He takes the job but everything does not go as planned.

This second feature by the director of The Chaser has some of the virtues of that film, namely, energetic direction, excellent performances, and a touch of gritty realism in the screenplay. Some thematic elements are very relevant today, as ethnic minorities in Ukraine and Crimea make the headlines. The film's problems, however, outnumber its virtues. Despite the realism in some details, a huge inverisimilitude prevails through much of the film. By the way, a similar combination of realism and inverisimilitude was, to a lesser extent, also a characteristic of his previous film, but here it simply goes out of control. Another feature of The Chaser which is present in The Yellow Sea is the plot's complexity. However, what was a virtue there becomes a vice here, thanks to the lack of a sense of proportion. It is nearly impossible to follow all the details of the plot, especially in a single viewing, and, what is worse, this exercise in deciphering just does not add to one's enjoyment. The user reviews and discussion boards at IMDb are useful for understanding some plot details and they offer very pointed criticism too (some liked the film more than I did, though).

Rating: 48

Sunday, March 23, 2014

The Flim-Flam Man (1967)

Second viewing; the date of the first one is doubtful, the possibilities being either the period 1983-1986 or 1991.

An aging confidence man meets a fugitive from Army justice, and the two become partners.

There is only so much fun one may have from watching people deceive each other, but this film complements the strictly criminal activities with thrilling chases, a love affair, and a bit of moral philosophizing. The result is entertaining.

Watched it in a pan-and-scan copy.

Rating: 54 (unchanged)

Friday, March 21, 2014

La cuisine au beurre (1963)

U.S. title: My Wife's Husband
Tentative English translation of French title: Butter Cooking.

A World War II combatant remains abroad way past the war's end. Upon returning to his native France, he encounters his wife remarried. The new husband is an amiable type, who now runs the restaurant that used to belong to the former husband, now with a different culinary profile.

Congenial low-brow comedy, which is worth watching mainly for the two comedians which star in it. Maybe the movie's most interesting aspect is how the jealousy motif is downplayed relative to the one of contrasting temperaments of people from different regions of France. I found the cinematography stunning, but this may be due to inevitable comparison with recent productions which invariably look like shit.

Rating: 43

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

The Rains Came (1939)

In British India's state of Ranchipur, in the late 1930s, several characters interact, and deal with a huge natural catastrophe.

Rather conventional (yet entertaining) disaster-movie based on a novel by an American conservative and conservationist. Its utter lack of anticolonialism would of course be unthinkable in a film of our days, even though India is one of the worst countries to live in (they now have "postcolonial studies" to justify that). The interesting thing is that there isn't much of a difference in structure between a political movie and an apolitical one such as this. In a politically-minded story, one would probably have an overwrought activist as protagonist, whereas here one has an equally overwrought doctor. It's always someone trying to make the world a better place. Well, good luck to them.

Rating: 52

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Indiscreet (1958)

An actress living in London has a love affair with an economist living in Paris. He tells her he is married but cannot get a divorce.

This is not a film without interest, and in fact it tackles some subjects concerning the dialogue of the sexes which are still important today, although not in the same terms. The problem for me was that it moves at a snail's pace for most of its duration (the pace suddenly picks up near the end). There is also the problem that this is the kind of film which focuses on wealthy people and distorts a bit their feelings  and attitudes so as to conform with those of the general audience of mostly working and middle class women. From the present day's vantage point this is a slightly dated film. Anyway, the bottom line in any age is that most women want to marry for economic reasons. In the movie both are rich, so I would have to guess whether some of the behavior depicted made much sense.

Rating: 37

Monday, March 17, 2014

Sleeping Beauty (2011)

The life of a white lumpen-proletariat University student in Australia in the present age. To support herself, she has to work at several jobs -- at a café, at a research lab as a test subject, and as a prostitute. She answers an ad looking for women to work as high-class prostitutes who are required to perform some unusual tasks.

This movie by an Australian female underwhelmed some viewers (judging from the mediocre rating it received on IMDB), a fact which surprised me, and which I cannot explain with certainty. It's not that I liked the movie much more than them; it's that I was under the assumption that this, like most independent movies, was the kind of movie that was either loved or not watched at all. In fact, low ratings are rare on IMDB. People generally get what they asked for, and know what they are about to get beforehand. Anyway, in this case it apparently didn't work this way. Possible causes for this is that the movie has no plot, a somewhat abrupt ending, and, generally, little explanation for what happens (some scenes are downright enigmatic). For me, these were real flaws of the movie. But the fact that more than a few people did not like it may signal that the movie somehow expresses ideas, or exposes facts, that defy current ideologies among the "indie" crowd. For example, there is a case for it being interpreted as an anti-feminist movie. Its protagonist would, under this interpretation, stand for the modern liberated woman who has nothing but a huge vacuum inside of her. Also (and this is by no means uncorrelated to the first interpretation) it may be seen as a denunciation of the decay of the European ethnicity in Australia. This is the story of a white woman (a redhead, so there can be no doubt) in perfectly good health, whose only medication is "the pill", and who has no apparent family ties and no support group; her only friend is a young guy who is a chronic depressive and an alcoholic. In fact, the white people in the movie do not interact much, and show little or no sympathy for one another. The aging customers of the brothel she works at are quite probably the elite of Australia, and therefore share more than a little responsibility for the state of things in that country. One of them, who wears a Viking-like ponytail, tries to act out his primal fantasy of carrying a naked virgin in his arms... and fails. There are other peoples besides Maoris who once were warriors. It is about time this sleeping beauty awakens.

Rating: 53

Sunday, March 16, 2014

Chugyeogja (2008)

English title: The Chaser.

An ex-cop who is now a pimp has several of his employees gone missing recently and he suspects one of his clients is selling them. When he gets a call from his missing whores' last customer, he hatches a plan to capture him, but things do not go as planned.

South Korean thriller. Be warned that it has some graphic violence that may prove very disturbing to some. All the characters save (possibly) the leading one have very low IQ, judging from their courses of action. This gives it unmistakable satirical undertones which have put off some viewers who perhaps expected a more "serious" realistic approach. The narrative is complex, taut, and undeniably gripping. The fundamental core of the movie, perhaps, is a a critique of liberal-minded modernity which just gets in the way of efficiency and order. I am all for that kind of vision, naturally. Down with so-called universal human rights, "free" press, "democracy" and the likes of those. No hopes of anything good happening where I live, though. Criminals of all kinds will continue to roam the streets at night (and in broad daylight also!) and scare peace-loving citizens like myself for as long as I live, I am sure.

Thanks to the friend who suggested this movie to me.

Rating: 68

Thursday, March 13, 2014

7 Plus Seven (1970)

Alternate title: 14 Up.

Sequel to Seven Up! (1964), and a part of an ongoing series of documentaries which every seven years has been interviewing the same fourteen British persons, who were chosen from various social backgrounds. In this installment they are, you guessed it, 14 years old. The movie inserts scenes from the previous movie so you can compare the children at the two points in their lives. It is a fascinating experiment, and it is proving a fascinating viewing experience for me. I intend to see the whole series. I am not sure the interviewer did an ideal job regarding the choice of questions (I would bet that he votes Labour...). He insisted on the race questions (they were also asked in the first movie), and, curiously enough, only one of the boys seemed to be aware that blacks do not appear out of thin air in a country like England, and that immigration may upset the country's economy. Anyway, I enjoyed the movie, and the boys and girls came up with a lot of interesting stuff, so I guess it was a job well done after all.

I do not rate documentaries numerically, for reasons I cannot properly explain.

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

The Godfather: Part II (1974)

Second viewing; my first one was at some point between January 1983 and December 1986.

The film alternates between being a prequel to the first film and a sequel to it. The prequel sections tell us about Vito's childhood in Sicilia, his coming to America, and his beginnings as a crime lord. The sequel sections show the consolidation of Michael as the new godfather, his problems with Roth, with his brother, and with his wife.

A complement to the first film, which explains a little more about Michael's psychology, especially in the final sequence. It is a well-made film, which entertains, but is not exactly my kind. It is more like a miniseries, and I do not like this kind of narrative economy, which privileges small personal affairs of a multitude of characters. The film oscillates between curbed sentimentality and effusive displays of it. The notion of a man traveling from America to Sicily to get revenge does not, I suspect, have much to do with real life; neither does getting away with it as easily as he does here.

Rating: 65 (up from 58)

Sunday, March 09, 2014

Jury Duty (1995)

Unemployed Tommy gets a jury duty notification and, although initially inclined to disregard it, is compelled to change his mind, the reason being that he is now temporarily homeless and as a juror he will get free housing and food during the time of the trial. He chooses the case against a man accused of murdering several fast-food restaurant workers.

While this is not top-quality comedy, it is inventive enough for a few laughs and an overall good time. The curious thing is that it displays an above-average uninhibition to talk about certain subjects that no one seems willing to talk about lately, for example the problem of immigration in America. Part of this is done is a very disguised manner through the story of the man at whose trial the protagonist is a juror. The defendant is a very angry-looking white man who lost his job and is now being accused of making threats against and even murdering people who have the same kind of job that he used  to have. The immigration connection is probably barely distinguishable for the unattentive viewer, although the witnesses to his threats are all ethnic Americans. On the other hand, there are more explicit bits which involve another character, a hispanic juror who has just been granted the American citizenship. He continually praises America and the American system, and at one point the protagonist replies: "Yes, and you can even drink the water." Later in the film, the hispanic man states that in his original country the defendant would not have the benefit of a fair trial; and so on. Another curious bit from this movie is the quotation of a shot from Fireworks (the milk shower), a very weird short film from the 40s.

Rating: 50

The Godfather (1972)

Third viewing (previous one was on May 17, 2003).

The film starts immediately after World War II, and focuses on a family of Italian-Americans who control illegal activities like gambling and prostitution in the East Coast. The head of the family is Don Vito, and the film shows how his son Michael, initially destined to be the family's bridge to legitimate activities, ends up getting into crime himself and becomes the successor of his father. The film also shows the dilemma faced by the family concerning the drug trade, and how they decide to move to the West Coast.

A necessarily dull exposition of machiavellian strategies and tactics, with all its sordid details. Apart from the elementary political science education provided by watching it, there is also the intrinsic pleasure derived from well-staged set-pieces (Don Vito's death is my favorite). The film doesn't explicitly account for the changes in Michael's behavior. In the beginning of the film, he says to his girlfriend that he has nothing in common with his family, and then he changes completely to a zealous mafioso. One possibility is that he wasn't being sincere, just as he was not sincere in the end, to the same person. Another is that there was a vacuum that could only be filled by him, and blood ties did the rest. A recurring pattern in the film is the problem of getting the truth from someone. People are led to confess by several psychological tricks which necessarily involve a level of naïveté on their part (e.g., Carlo's confession). This is a requirement of the drama which wouldn't necessarily find a counterpart in reality. In fact, this is perhaps the film's biggest problem. One tries to be realistic, and sacrifices a good deal of the movie's dynamics to achieve it, but can only go so far. As a result, one ends up with a flawed realism, and a lot of dullness. I may only wonder about the reasons about this film's popularity. A very wild guess is that the essentially anti-liberal politics it puts on display may have found an echo among American audiences back in 1972. The stark contrast between a so-called democratic society that was sending its sons to die in Vietnam in the name of universal values, and the dictator embodied by Don Vito, who was ruthless to his enemies but acted as a protector to those under his wings may have signaled that a particularistic moral system is better and more honest than a universalistic one.

Rating: 65 (down from 70)

Sábado (1995)

English title: Saturday.

At the lobby of a run-down skyscraper in a major Brazilian city, a TV commercial is to be shot using one of its elevators, which hasn't been in use for a long time. The other elevator -- the operating one -- breaks down with people in it, amongst them a member of the film crew, two undertakers and a corpse. The lobby gets crammed with people. The production faces several problems and near-chaos ensues.

One of those "microcosmos" comedies, which tries to make satire out of the forced proximity of people from several social and cultural backgrounds. The targets are as varied as the smugness of the Brazilian middle class, the aversion to work of its lower class, the banalization of crime, the authoritarian traits buried deep within the little man's psyche, the consumeristic ideology sold by publicity, the tension between different regions of a big country, the exploitation of the poor by festering religious sects, etc. This all-over-the-place humor strategy feels contrived and unfunny, but perhaps might work had it been given a better script and direction than the ones we see here.

Rating: 25

Mona Lisa (1986)

Second viewing (the first one happened on May 31, 1987).

A small-time thug is released from prison and must find work. He looks up his former associate, now a big-time thug, and is given the job of driving for a black prostitute. Between the two of them an unusual relationship develops (gee, this is becoming a mandatory phrase in my synopses!).

The plot doesn't make a lot of sense, as is perceptively explained in the following two reviews I have lifted from IMDB (I do not agree with all they say, though).

[quote]

Effective film which gets away with its major flaws

8/10
Author: simon-118 from London
25 March 2006
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
I'm very fond of Mona Lisa. It's a story of innocence in a world dripping with sin, and Hoskins is perfection as the ex-con quite capable of dishing out a beating when he's up against it but childlike in his naivety to the horrors of child prostitution.

The two performances that really stand out for me though are Michael Caine and Clarke Peters who are both absolutely terrifying, Caine also very funny in places too.

The major problem with the film is that the plot is, frankly, rubbish! Why does Anderson spend years trying to find Simone when she's working for his colleague Caine as part of the same business? Why is Caine paying George to drive her around? If he is her pimp why doesn't Anderson know this? It's all rather odd. And also how come George just walks away from the climax scot-free? That, and also why the girl in the room who is from Ireland have a Birmingham accent...

But a haunting, touching and frightening film, although it's interesting that the film offers no sympathy to Tyson's character despite the fact that she clearly uses George because she by now only sees men as a means to an end.
[unquote]
[quote]
2 out of 10 people found the following review useful:

There Goes Mr. Jordan

4/10
Author: writers_reign from London, England
20 October 2006
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
Neil Jordan is a graduate of the Ken Loach I-Hate-England school of film-making which means that like Loach he spurns no opportunity to explore its worst aspects in loving detail. This time around it's the sex industry that sleazes its way into his spotlight. The story is improbable-to-ridiculous, one leave it out, guv, after another. Why, for example does Michael Caine's Mr Big wait til Bob Hoskins gets out of the slammer before hiring a driver for Cathy Tyson's hooker - what did she do before, take a bus? In turn why does Tyson wait until their initial antipathy has thawed before asking him to locate another hooker when 1) surely the world of London hookers is not that large, there's obviously some kind of network whereby one can locate another without charming a violent oak into doing the job and 2) for what she spent kitting out Hoskins with shirts, suit and topcoat in a trendy Men's Store she could have hired a private detective for a month but given how easy the hooker was to find he'd have taken about a day and a half tops. This leaves us with the acting; for Hoskins it's the mixture as before, all contained violence and effing and blinding, sure he was phoning it in by that stage, Robbie Coltrane is totally unconvincing and Mike Tyson could have done as well as Cathy. Okay, it's twenty years old - a freebie with a newspaper, just as well I didn't spend more than the price of a paper I buy anyway on this pap - and maybe at the time it looked better but it's way past its sell-by date.
[unquote]

Well, back to little old me, the film is reasonably stylish and eventful; also, it benefits enormously from the male leading performance (the black girl is not so good though).
What really struck me was the social background to this story, expressed, for example, in the following exchange near the beginning of the movie, after he visits his ex-wife's house:

[quote]
A: So where'd they all come from?  They live here? Since when?
B: Since you went inside.
A: Jesus!
[unquote]

He is referring to the black punks in the street. A little later, he tries to make contact with his daughter at her school, and we get to see the students' queue and its multiethnic composition.
All this, mind you, was back in 1986! In our days,  the pope keeps exhorting rich nations to extend a helping hand to people living in less-favored ones who would want to immigrate. Way to go, Francis. Now that Europeans have wised up about the futility of religion, just call on the poor uneducated masses from the third and fourth worlds to replenish the churches' seats.

Rating: 54 (down from 63)



Saturday, March 08, 2014

Tommy Boy (1995)

The heir of an auto-parts manufacturer takes over the factory after his father dies. The company is in poor economic shape and has a prospective buyer who wants to close it down and use its brand name. The young owner decides to make a last sales trip effort in the company of a skillful employee, in the hope of not having to sell the company.

Moderately enjoyable comedy, which however is not overly original. Farley is particularly brilliant in it. Among the films it has been accused of borrowing from are Plains, Trains and Automobiles and The Great Race. A curious critical mistake which is made about this film (even by people who admit, somewhat guiltily, to liking it) is stating that its humor is stupid; actually, a film about someone's lack of intelligence is not necessarily unintelligent. Another misperception, not unrelated to that, and which has a long history, has been observed among Tommy Boy's critics, consisting in assessing slapstick as an inferior genre. But I think that over time this film has garnered of fair amount of appreciation.

Rating: 52

My Week with Marilyn (2011)

A film is being produced in England starring a famous Shakespearean actor and a sexy American star. She is emotionally unstable and unable to be on the set on time. She takes a fancy to a young errand runner, who is henceforth used as a bridge between the director and her. Between the woman and the youth an improbable relationship develops.

Not a terribly exciting story, I'm afraid. The emotional content is at once too explicit and too shallow, and didn't resonate with me. Some people have complained that it was not convincing, but for me it was worse: I wasn't even interested enough to ponder about it. Perhaps you can assess my level of empathy if I tell you the thought that the sight of Ulysses at the protagonist's bedside table prompted in me (but please do not call me insensitive). My thought was that her interest in the book arose from an identification with the book's female protagonist, a slut married to a Jew.

Rating: 32

Friday, March 07, 2014

Around the World in Eighty Days (1956)

Second viewing (first viewing was on April 24, 1994).

Based on the novel Le tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours by Jules Verne, first published in 1872, in serial form in a newspaper.

An Englishman named Phileas Fogg makes a wager with his fellow club members that he will make a trip around the Earth in eighty days at the most. His newly hired servant Passepartout is taken along with him. Several unforeseen incidents appear along the way to delay them. To complicate things further, a Scotland Yard agent follows Fogg on the suspicion that he is the man who robbed the Bank of England.

It doesn't quite do justice to the novel in terms of excitement and pace, which are sacrificed for set-pieces like a bullfighting sequence, a Spanish dance sequence, and a balloon voyage which is not in the novel. Still, the set-pieces are somewhat enjoyable for their own sake, and the film as a whole has a reasonable amount of entertainment value. The English club sequence in the beginning is a very funny satire of the English character. Although almost a century separates the novel from the film, the societal values expressed by both are pretty much the same, implicitly praising European values and criticizing a backward society like India through a depiction of its fanatical practice of the suttee (in which a widow is sacrificed when her husband dies). Native-Americans are portrayed as mere savages (remember this is based on a French author who probably was neither aware of nor interested in the subtleties of Native-American history). All this would be inadmissible in our "politically correct" days and, in fact, the 2004 remake has nothing of the sort, and none of the values expressed by the novel.

Watched it in a pan-and-scan copy of about 150 minutes (the uncut version is about 180 minutes).

Rating: 51 (up from 47)

Wednesday, March 05, 2014

Grease 2 (1982)

Musical set in the early 1960s. It depicts the incidents at a High School establishment, which is somewhat upset by the arrival of a new student, an Englishman. The boys and girls group themselves in gangs (the film shows two rival gangs of boys, but only one girls' gang, if I am not mistaken). There is a musical competition which will award a prize in long-playing records to the winning performance. The newcomer remains an outsider, which proves an obstacle to his achieving the love of the school's most popular girl.

While not perhaps a great film, this was quite better than I expected, and an exceptional case of a film to which I awarded a greater score than the IMDb users' average. Both screenplay and direction are quite reasonable, with a greater leaning toward comedy than the first Grease, if I recall correctly after all these decades since I last watched that movie. The songs are not memorable, but work well within the movie's structure.

Rating: 50

Sunday, March 02, 2014

Intouchables (2011)

U.K. title: Untouchable.
U.S. title: The Intouchables.

A rich tetraplegic guy hires a black man with a shady past and a troubled present as his personal nurse. A friendship develops between them.

As IMDb user Bossa Nova puts it, this is "for very simple-minded people", who, I add, will not mind, for example, troubling details such as someone stealing a Fabergé egg and coming back to his victim's house the next day. One onumbersix, another IMDb user, shrewdly points out the similarity between Cluzet's looks and smiles to Hoffman's in Rain Man. Anyway, I guess after France opened its borders to all peoples of the Earth, it must periodically produce this kind of educational piece in order to keep the internal harmony from falling to alarmingly low levels. I presume the task at hand was a demanding one, but they have taken every care not to offend anyone; among other things, we learn that a beautiful redhead will only reject a handsome lumpen-proletariat black guy if she is a certified lesbian.

Rating: 14