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.