Continuing to watching movies and write about them.

"F" is for ...

To continue to catching up, I moved on to Lars von Trier and on this film, namely Europa (orig. Zentropa), I refer you to an earlier post.

As far as the next selection, I.O.U.S.A. goes, it's a documentary (or exposé of sorts) that follows a couple of guys — one, a former executive at the Federal Budget Office, and another who currently runs a political awareness group which focuses on governmental budget issues. In this case the rampant over-obligating the United States has done over the past 60+ years. The F.B.O. guy was appointed by Bill Clinton and was fairly successful in that office, and the other guy is apolitical in the sense that he's just some joe who is understandably concerned that the U.S. financial system is not only headed for trouble, but has been heading toward said hurt for some time — regardless of how often and how emphatically some have pointed this out. It's really a non-bias doc and generally sticks to just the numbers, skewering most every administration going back to Abe Lincoln (or there abouts). I definitely recommended it and it also should probably be required viewing in public schools.

Now I finally saw the other two Michael Haneke films I had on my To See list — those being his adaptation of Franz Kafka's The Castle, and the equally enigmatic (or somewhat so) Le Temps du Loup, or Time of the Wolf. The Castle is expertly performed as Haneke films are wont to be, but it's ever so dry; devoid of almost all real drama or distress (usually attributable to his films) until the very ending. If you've read the book, skip the next couple sentences. In The Castle, a nondescript man wanders into a bureaucratic Wonderland while trying to escape the blistering winter's cold. He discovers, through no effort on his part, that the more inflexible and demanding he is the more people seemingly strive to help him out! But all is not what it seems for our dear wanderer as he becomes a pawn in a game of his own making. Haneke film number second concerns a family of four fleeing to a vacation home amidst an unexplored disaster which forces people out of their respective cities. The family in question arrives at their cabin but finds another family has taken up residence and are unwilling to relent. A confrontation erupts which leaves the family with little choice but to flee.

A theatrical viewing from the past two weeks was Saw contributor Marcus Dunstan's The Collector, and there isn't a hell of a lot to say about it besides to note that I haven't been so bored at a movie since 30 Days of Night. Pass — on both screens.

Now onto something I patiently waited to arrive in Region 1 format; the simply incredible 5 Centimeters Per Second or, 5 Centimeters Per Second: a chain of short stories about their distance. It's actually three stories anastomose (thank you Langenscheidt Thesaurus!) revolving around childhood friends Takaki and Akari, who eventually move away from each other yet wind up going to great lengths to see each other again. The second and third acts are hinged on the continued travels of Takaki, his family moving from town to town, school to school, and how he eventually meets another girl later in life. Only he becomes introverted, wayward, and a bit despondent into adulthood over his idyllic memories. It's fairly moody from afar, for a semi-romantic drama, but it is entirely approachable as the movie moves on. The animation alone is worth a viewing.

And I'm just about caught up. The last title here is Orson Welles' F is for Fake. A genre-less doc (unless one wanted to tag it as mockumentary), Welles spins a story of an art counterfeiter named Elmyr who isn't a counterfeiter but actually is, and his immediate circle of friends and fellow confidence men (and by this I mean they hardly lack confidence) celebrate Elmyr to no end, that is, again, when he is not celebrating himself. The group waxes nostalgic over their varying triumphs; from expertly duping (or not) Howard Hughes and Pablo Picasso (or not) and countless unnamed art patrons — all the while living spectacularly simple yet indulgent lives. Welles is a righteous storyteller and most expert narrator as he travels between continents putting on his show not only for us, the audience, but for anyone who seems willing to imbibe, nosh, or contribute to Orson's grandiose tale. Highly recommended.

Watching movies and writing about them.

Uzumaki

If someone were to name a completely outlandish film that is very firmly contained in its own world, it would have to be Higuchinsky's Uzumaki. The spiral–fetish effort makes me think of cornball B-movies like Pychomania, House, and The Ice Cream Man which also play to the funny bone as much as they intend to frighten. Cue warped carnival tones. It's fantastic and ridiculous. Whatever pseudo–science which acted as a jumping off point will find no quarter in Higuchinsky's effort, although said point will no doubt be unaware it has been usurped.

As my first Ingmar Bergman film, Through A Glass Darkly was a pleasant surprise considering I had always considered Bergman as the height of pretension — to see a Bergman was to go, as it were, through the looking glass. But I made it through the film very much unscathed, so kudos to me, I guess. As I jumped right back on the horse with the aforementioned spiral-themed movie. Also very much a self-contained film, fans of other claustrophobic works like Glengarry Glen Ross, The Lifeboat (I think that's the title of the Hitchcock movie from his British days), this one may not be for you. It was alright.

Now this one I caught on television over the weekend... The Love Letter (1999). I have to preface by saying it was the only non-infomercial thing on television when I took a break from everything I was tackling around the home — but yeah, I watched it. The gist is, it revolves around a comedy of errors involving an unsigned love letter found, then read, by a woman who mistakes to be a declaration to her from a certain guy in her past. The guy in question then happens upon the letter and mistakes it to be from her! And continuing in this mold, a second woman does likewise, and in turn another guy in the small town reads into the letter, and so on, until wacky and awkward fumbling gives way to heavier issues towards film's end. A prototypical television movie. Possibly one of the titles to be featured on my upcoming, yet undefined, post on the subject of television movies. Surprisingly it's not a terrible movie. But at the same time, yes, it's terrible.  

District 9 has some pretty killer CGI and the premise is alright, if not a bit worn. The full extent of its premise was given away in the trailer so there's little mystery — the remainder is faux verite, small scale warring between humans and aliens; humans that want the aliens to be somewhere away from them, and aliens who either want to go nowhere or home. It's most definitely a big screen movie, which is unfortunate because it's not much more than rental worthy. If I were one or both of those insufferable At The Movies critics named "Ben", I say Skip It.

Lilya, left behind.

The last film for today is Lilya 4-Ever, the grim tale of degeneration and sadness. Set in Russia and closely based on the actual events of a girl named Lilya (characterized here by Oksana Akinshina). Lilya is pumped up to be moving to America with her mother and her mother's boyfriend and she shouts it to everyone who will listen; The few friends she has are rightly sad she is leaving, but happy all the same because she will be leave the quasi-wasteland they call a town behind. But it wasn't meant to be, it seems. In a shocking move, her mother abruptly tells Lilya that she and her boyfriend will be going on ahead without her, yet will send for her after they are settled — Lilya knows better, and this is the first hit her physiognomy (a favorite term of Dostoevsky btw). The first of many successive blows. In between drunken binges and bags of glue, she holds out hope that her mother's call will come. Alas, a letter does soon arrive but it doesn't contain the words Lilya had hoped to read. It's not a great film, but it is a powerful one that I'd put in the same arena as Irreversible, I Can't Sleep, and anything by Catherine Breillat.

Europa (1991)

"Two. Your hands and your fingers are getting warmer and heavier."

I finally get around to seeing the third and final installment in Lars von Trier's Europa Trilogy and I can't help but wish I had left it a duology. Sorry Lars. Brilliant through two. It's not that Europa is a terrible film or badly made, on the contrary, it's as well conceived as the first two and purposefully shot, if not a touch funny in places, and the opening (and sporadic) narration courtesy Max von Sydow's dulcet tone is pure von Trier, yet the plot is uninspired compared to Epidemic and Element of Crime, maybe that's the reason why it fell a little flat. That, and I've been extremely weary of WWII-related films for some time now. You hear that, Inglorious Basterds?

Simpan (Judgement, 1999)

After seeing Park Chan-wook’s third film Simpan, I asked myself “What am I to take from this?” I didn’t have an answer that satisfied me. Or more to the point: one that satisfied what I had just seen. So what can I point to or parse that will do the explaining for me? Well, the film is as dynamic a film as I’ve ever seen; what does a family do in the face of being let down by a communal promise, and to what lengths would or should they go to find security? What would one’s responsibility and/or duty be when confronted with an opportunity for security? When does one stand up regardless of consequence? Chan-wook asks all these questions and more during his 26-minute human drama in which a family is summoned to a morgue under the most horrible of circumstances. A couple is called upon to view and identify someone who has been determined to be a long since runaway child killed during a general state of societal unrest. As it happens, there isn’t foul play involved as far as one can tell, yet a media representative and his cameraman, who are presumably documenting the unrest, join the aforementioned couple and the mortician (played by veteran actor and R-Point player Gi Ju-bong) for the determination.

The general unrest outside the confines of the morgue soon finds its way inside as the nameless mortician becomes distressed that the dead woman may in fact be his own missing daughter; an official soon arrives to our new world in an attempt to clear the matter up, but sides are taken and tempers flare. I’ll refrain from detailing the remainder of the story, but suffice it to say, Chan-wook resolves the issue in stunning fashion; with a bizarre blow then a profound portrait of humanism.

Simpan's title screen and promotional poster.

In the end, Simpan (loosely, “Judgement” – quite possibly closer to “arbiter”) impressed upon me that this may have been born as a Chan-wook original play, made for stage, then adapted (obviously) because the movements are so precise, economy of motion so observed that most of the dialogue dissipated afterward. I recall thinking the same thing after seeing Park Chan-wook’s Three…Extremes segment “Cut”. An unusual thing to say, I know, then again I was one of the few who actually liked Cut.

Simpan / Judgement

Speaking of Park Chan-wook films, New York Magazine has made his 1999 short film Simpan (Judgement) available to watch for free. A giant Thank You to the fine folks at NYM —— and to 1–Minute Film Review [website] for directing me to it! Enjoy.

Letter from "Thirst" Director Park Chan-wook

Park Chan-wook's letter to Landmark Film Club members who will soon be seeing Thirst on the big screen in one of the following cities soon: Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Denver, Indianapolis, Minneapolis, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, Washington DC. I suspect it's not so exclusive of a letter, a bit form letter-ish, but an interesting piece nonetheless. I also had the opportunity to win a Blu-ray player concurrent to the film's theatrical release! In any case, here's the letter:

I didn’t set out to make a vampire film. Having grown up in a Catholic family, I had a feeling that there would come a day when I would make a film with a priest as the main character. But what kind of priest would he be? What kind of things would happen to him?
One day, while watching old vampire films, a thought came to my mind. What would happen if vampire’s blood enters into the body of someone whose vocation has him living close to the cross? The thought developed like this: Why are priests only portrayed as the vampire hunters? What’s to say priests can’t be vampires?

Then I read the novel Thérèse Raquin by Émile Zola. It is a story in which a man falls in love with a friend’s wife, and together, they murder the friend. How hard-boiled it was! So much so that it made me think, if I ever became a novelist it would be exactly the novel that I would want to write. But that novel had already been written by Zola, so what should I do? Turn it into a film…

That’s how the story of Thirst came into being. A priest most noble and pious, because of his very faith, volunteers for a human experiment to develop a new medicine. As might be expected, he contracts a dangerous disease. He needs a blood transfusion. But the blood that gets transfused must have been vampire’s blood. Because he so loved mankind, he unwittingly ended up turning into an entity that cannot but take and drink the blood of others. Then he gets invited to a friend’s house. Of course, it’s a dinner invitation, since the priest can no longer traipse around during the daytime. Of course, at that house awaits a beautiful woman. And again of course, she is the friend’s wife…

                   - Park Chan-wook