The Twilight Samurai (Yoji Yamada, 2002, Grade: B)

This film is a welcome surprise. There are only three brief action scenes in this beautiful film, but it's crammed with humanity, love, honesty, fear, regret, comedy, romance, history and familial devotion. Hiroyuki Sanada is fantastic as the title character, a poor samurai, living at the end of the warrior age. His concerns are for simple things. He has no ambition other than to watch his two daughters grow up and be happy with them. But circumstances put him to the test when a childhood friend turns up, and his clan gets caught up in a power struggle. This film is so right about so many things that I even recommend it to people who wouldn't be caught dead reading a subtitle.

To the one who just watched "Millenium Mambo", check out "The Flowers of Shanghai". same director--and it's my favorite of his films (i like Millenium Mambo a lot too--but "Flowers of Shanghai" is like a slowburning heartbreak.)

Get Out Your Handkerchiefs (Bertrand Blier, 1978, Grade: B+)

I think this absurdist black comedy about sexual politics is director Blier's best, most-sustained film. The story of a husband (Gerard Depardieu) who'll "do anything" to make his bored wife (Carole Laure) happy, including getting her another man (Patrick Dewaere) defies expectations at almost every turn. When this menage doesn't make things any better, the trio go to work at a boys' summer camp, and a 13-year-old (Riton) gets introduced into the mix. Blier's films have always been on the edge, but this one seems even better than Buffet Froid and Going Places.

Ive already posted it on other topics but i might as well post it again-Oldboy

If you arent too squeamish and dont mind reading subtitles, its the best movie ive seen in a while (it got top honors at the cannes film festival)

Ditto A romantic fantasy from South Korea. This reminded me in someways of "Frequency" though instead of that film's crime melodramatics, this movie goes for political upheavels and romantic twists. So-eun (Kim Ha-neul) is a college student in 1979. Somehow she's able to communicate with In (Yoon Ji-Hae) in 2000 via ham radio. I enjoyed this movie, the cast and the storyline There's another Korean movie with similiar themes, Il Mare, that I'll will be seeing soon- now that it's arrived in the mail.

Koma A 2004 Hong Kong thriller. Forced organ donations (kidneys) is the odd crime here. Chi-ching (Angelica Lee of "The Eye") witnesses a woman leaving the scene of a live kidney theft at a hotel. The suspect, Ling (Karena Lam) also seems to be having an affair with Chi-ching's doctor boyfriend. Enemies at first, the two women later become friends and attempt to find the real culprits. It's somewhat predictable but the two actresses work well togather, so well that I wish they had better story to work with.

Musa Tracked down this dvd because I'm a Zhang Ziyi junkie. A Chinese film from 2001, set in 1375 China (the Yuan dynasty is ending, the Ming beginning). The film follows some Korean envoys as they try to head home. Along the way they take refuge in a camp which is visited by Yuan soldiers who have taken hostage the Ming princess (Zhang Ziyi). The Korean leader takes it upon himself and his men to capture the princess and use her safe return as a means of safe passage home. The movie is basically an overlong western with repetitive battle scenes. The excellent cast does overcome a formula script though some editing still would have been nice.

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie [Luis Bunuel, 1972, Grade: B+]

This is my favorite Bunuel film. It's the one which nonchalantly thrusts the most bizarre, random occurences into the most perfect semblance of surrealistically-illogical logic. The use of a fictional South American country, terrorists, ghosts, drug-dealing ambassadors, dreams, unrequited food, sex, and walking down roads which come from nowhere and lead nowhere all contribute to a one-of-a-kind experience. Yeah, most Bunuel flicks are one-of-a-kind, but this one seems to let the audience more in on the joke.

Uzumaki A Japanese sci-fi horror from 2000 and based on the manga of the same name. Pretty Kirie Goshima tell us how her town came on some bad times- a town cursed by spirals (uzumakis). Locals are becoming obsessed with the spiral shape, including Kirie's father and the parents of her boyfriend, Toshio Saito. A nice mix of horror and comedy with some beautiful & haunting spiral visuals keeps the film spiraling togather regardless of the plot spiraling out of control. Good acting on part of the lead character from Ericko Hatsune.

I caught an interesting film called THE SYRIAN BRIDE this week that is currently playing in theatres. It is an interesting flick set in the Golan Heights and involves a Druze bride who is engaged to a Syrian and wants to move there. The plot includes the complications of her trying to get of the Heights and into Syria. An excellent film that gives an interesting picture of that corner of the world. The film doesn't take sides, but shows how petty the disputes in that part of the world can be.

Inner Senses A 2001 Hong Kong thriller, featuring Karena Lam ("Koma") the late Leslie Cheung. A troubled young woman sees ghosts in her new apartment. She begins sessions with a psychologist who we soon learn has his own ghostly visitations. Part "Dark Water", part "Sixth Sense", this film still holds its own as a slightly different psychological ghost story. More talky than thrilling, don't expect to scared.

Oldboy (Can-wook Park, 2003, Grade: B+)

This film is pretty mind-blowing. It's a Korean variation on/conglomeration of Chinatown, A Clockwork Orange, Pulp Fiction, Fight Club. The thing which makes this film SUPER is that the script is mind-bogglingly cohesive and intelligent, the direction is mind-bogglingly alive to everyday setups and the beauty found in the banal, the acting is just right for a film so extreme, plus, even though it makes complete sense, it allows the viewer to interpret certain things for themselves. This has my favorite musical score of the 2000s too (yeah, even better than Walk the Line and The Lord of the Rings flicks), so WOWEE! I'd say that this is a post-Millenium classic, and I don't know too many of those.

quote:

Originally posted by lesbangs:
To the one who just watched "Millenium Mambo", check out "The Flowers of Shanghai". same director--and it's my favorite of his films (i like Millenium Mambo a lot too--but "Flowers of Shanghai" is like a slowburning heartbreak.)

I caught up with FLOWERS OF SHANGHAI on Friday. It screened at the Brooklyn Academy of Music as part of a Tony Leung retro. This film is considered to be Hou Hsiao-hsien's masterpiece and some high brow film critics (The Nation's Stuart Kalwans, the Voice's Jim Hoberman) consider Hou Hsio-hsien as the world's greatest working director. I'm not that fond of him and wasn't all that crazy about MILLENIUM MAMBO when I caught up with it earlier this year. I went into FLOWERS with some trepidation, but I was pleasantly surprised. It is a real sumptious looking film.

Zatoichi ("Beat" Takeshi Kitano, 2003, Grade: B-)

Beat Takeshi's homage to the blind swordsman Zatoichi is a fun flick to watch. Some of the storytelling is a little herky-jerky, but it makes up for it in the stylized swordplay and Takeshi's own performance which is both a tribute to all the Zatoichi films and a spoof on his own film persona. This is my fave Kitano film so far. Zatoichi's laugh is killer in this film! (Too bad for certain likable characters.)

I'm Not Scared (Gabriele Salvatores, 2003, Grade: B)

I enjoyed this film on many levels. First off, it's beautiful to look at, just like the director's surprise Oscar-winner Mediterraneo. This film also reminded me of a dark variation on one of my faves, My Father's Glory; a sun-bathed landscape is used to show a boy the truth about his father. This film is mainly recommended because it's a very unusual take on a timeworn tale. What that means I can't tell you right now, except maybe that it involves a boy in a hole. But if you like your movies unusual, engrossing and gorgeous, I'd check this one out.

The French Institute in NYC kicked off a new series called "Young French Cinema 1959-1968" and I took in the first offering, a film I had never heard of from 1962 called ADIEU PHILIPPINE by a director I never heard of, Jacques Rozier. I didn't care for the film at all; it didn't really have a plot. It was a journey of two girls and a guy (a reversal of JULES & JIM, a film it was clearly influenced by) before the guy goes into the Army. I need a story, though the on-location scenes in Paris were kind of fun to look at.

Every year the Film Society at Lincoln Center Walter Reade Theatre runs a series called "Spanish Film Now," in which they screen recent films from Spain, most of which never get commercial distribution in the U.S.

Usually the opening film is pretty good and yesterday the opening film of the series was OBABA, which is Spain's Best Foreign Language Film Oscar nominee. I didn't think the film was very good. Basically, a college student brings a video camera to a rural town in Spain to make some sort of documentary and the premise is that when she talks to the townfolk the film goes into flashback mode and you follow the lives of various denizens. I just didn't find it all compelling and thought the film was flat.

The other film I saw yesterday in the series, EL CALENTITO, was also no great shakes. Kind of a shopworn story about a girl from a straight-laced family who wants to walk on the wild side and hooks up with a punk rock band. It is a period film, set in 1981, right after "democracy" came to Spain and it was a time of great artistic ferment. I thought it was hackneyed and cliched.

It doesn't look like I'll be taking in any more films in this series this year, though there were a couple of others that sounded interesting from the program descriptions.

The Brooklyn Academy of Music's rep screen is running a retro of a Brazilian Director Nelson Pereira dos Santos' oeuvre and last night I caught a film called VIDAS SECAS, which, from what I understand, was well received when it screened at Cannes in the mid 1960s. During that era the Brazilian "Cinema Novo" movement was hot.

I haven't seen many Cinema Novo films, but the few I've seen I haven't particularly cared for. This film, which was crudely shot, was actually watchable and somewhat moving, but no classic. It basically focused on a family in rural Brazil and the struggles they go through literally to get through each day because of grinding poverty.

I took in another couple of flicks in the "Young French Cinema" series at the French Institute in NYC. The feature length film was BRIGITTE ET BRIGITTE by a director I've never heard of, Luc Moullet. The film was made in '66 and I didn't think it was very good. Basically no real plot, just a film about two women named "Brigitte" and their trial and tribulations.

The other film was a 50-minute film by Jean Rouch, a filmmaker I'd heard of, but had never seen any of his films. He's most famous for directing a film called THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE, a film that has a reputation in cineaste circles, but I've never been interested enough to suffer through it. It has a reputation of being very long and very boring, so numerous high-brow critics hail it as a masterpiece. Called SANTA CLAUS HAS BLUE EYES, this film, like MOTHER, starred new wave icon Jean Pierre Leaud. Again, not much of a plot, just meandering -- French naval gazing -- of Leaud and other young Frenchie le Fries. One cute scene, though, where Leaud is seen gazing at a poster of THE 400 BLOWS.

Actually, I confused my "Jeans." It was Jean Eustiche, not Jean Rouch, who directed THE MOTHER & THE WHORE as well as BLUE EYES.

Another Japenese horror flick I saw recently was Eko Eko Azarak: Wizard of Darkness. The 1995 beginning of an occult horror series concerning good witch Misa Kuroi and her battles against the dark arts. Little to no information is given about the dark forces who want to bring Lucifer into the world or regarding Misa's already mysterious past. She may be a nice witch, but not very efficent as the body count mounts the more she tries to save her friends. I've read that this entry in the series is supposed to be the best, so I think I'll avoid the sequels.