Holy Motors

Saw Holy Motors (thanks, Basil!) It was very confusing. It begins in what is probably a dream sequence. The main character opens a hidden door in his bedroom to find an audience sleeping in front of old, kinetoscope-style shorts of nude men pulling ropes, running, throwing bricks, etc. After an ambiguous fade to black, he leaves his house, enters a limousine, and begins talking stocks and accounts on a cell phone. Ah, we think, he is a high-powered businessman. But then he pulls out a grey wig and is soon in disguise (?) as a bag-lady, mumbling about how she will never die. We continue to watch him don various disguises inside the limousine and preform little vignette-ish performances across Paris, the most bizarre being a wizened leprechaun-like man who abducts a fashion model. I won't ruin any surprises, but it's very strange. Also, there's an awesome intermission musical bit.

The eventual explanation for this madness is (perhaps) when a fat man appears inside the limo and they talk about cameras too small to be seen. The man we are following is an actor, rushing from shoot to shoot. We are now in deep post-modern waters. We already know we cannot trust what we see and now we know perhaps why. There is an interesting sequence where he is reunited with an actress from his past (who is riding in a similar limo.) They talk amid disassembled mannikins, which seem to suggest sex with their positioning. There is suddenly a musical sequence about a child they had together. This musical acts ends abruptly when our hero kicks a mannikin child's head like a soccer ball. They part and the actress begins her scene, as a suicidal air-hostess. Our hero comes upon her dead body on the sidewalk and screams in horror. But wasn't that just an act? Was his reminiscences with her just an act? There was a musical sequence, which would suggest so, but then when did the scene begin? Surely not in the limo. Have we been watching this man through one of the invisible cameras all along? Questions upon questions.

The ending is a barrage of increasing strangeness. I don't want to spoil anything (particularly because my powers of justification completely fail here,) so I'll talk a bit about the mood of the piece. The above may give you the impression that this film is wacky and manic, but it is deliberate and slow. The ending, though absurd, is suffused with sadness. It may be that I'm taking the film too seriously and mistaking tragicomic for plain old tragic, but I think the increasingly weary melancholy of the hero is genuinely affecting. Every little vignette is either sad or grim or both. I wish it had been a bit more upbeat, but as it is it ranks with "Synecdoche, New York" in terms of fascinating, sad, strangeness.

Owning Mahowny

Saw Owning Mahowny. It was a sort of intentionally boring noir. The plot follows Dan Mahowny, a compulsive gambler who happens to work at a bank. Of course he begins working the bank system to cover his bets. He borrows against the credit of various millionaire clients of the bank. The casino he frequents (inexplicably in Atlantic City, whereas he lives in Toronto) is happy to accept his money and courts him with limo rides and free ribs, even promoting a kitchen-worker to Mahowny's personal servant. The film plays Mahowny as a man with absolutely no interests in life at all. He refuses the courting of the casino and is usually shown walking through gray, identical hallways in gray shapeless suits, never sleeping, never eating. He seems uninterested in anything. When we get to the casino, everything is bright light and lush color (well, lush-er color. It's not obvious enough to tip the film's hand) and he adopts this tightly-controlled, profusely sweating demeanor as the loa of his addiction rides him.

The film hits the sensible plot-points of gambling movies: he tells someone to take his winnings and keep them safe from him "no matter what I say" and then demands the money back later, amid veiled threats. His girlfriend finds out about his addiction and is at first frank and hopeful and then despairing in the face of his disinterest in stopping. Soon he's gambling away tens of thousands of dollars per hand of poker and the feds are hot on his tail. None of this is played for high drama though. There's a lot of stunned, frozen silences and blank stares. The one time there is dramatic dialogue (an argument with the girlfriend) it feels canned and phoney. I feel realism is not what the film is after but rather that Lynchian deliberate feel.

There's a sub-theme contrasting his petty gambling with the infinitely more high-stakes gambling of the banks. One of the opening scenes shows the spinning wheel of a bank vault's door while the sound of a roulette wheel plays. One of the executives talks of fleecing a rich client and says "it's a bit of a gamble." There's not enough of this sort of thing to become really condemnatory or anything. It felt more free-associative / exploratory than anything to me. There's also some condemnation heaped on the slimy casino director (who bears a strong and I think purposeful resemblance to Reagan) for bending over backwards to allow Mahowny to lose even more of other people's money at his tables. (This is a thing which actually happens, btw. Gambling addicts are good customers for casinos. They're very catered-to and often given free stuff. This American Life did a bit on it.)

Amores Perros

Saw Amores Perros. It was a sort of grimly stoic movie about various failed romances. The first revolves around two brothers both in love with a woman who is the wife of one of them. The married brother hits his wife and is professionally a petty thief. The unmarried brother is the underdog here, but makes his money via dog-fighting, so he's not exactly a savory fellow either. Also there's this sleazy attitude to the first segment that all that this battered woman really needs is a man who truly loves her (as evinced by his sincere and passionate lust.) I don't buy that the underdog brother would be really all that good for her, but he'd probably be better, so okay.

The next segment is about a married man who leaves his wife to take up with a model who then suddenly gets into a car accident, seriously breaking one leg. When she gets back from the hospital, her dog gets stuck in a crawl-space and so she sits around the house all day, surrounded by photos of herself pre-accident, and thinks about how she's gonna model anymore with one busted leg and listening to her dog skitter and whine under her floorboards (SYMBOLISM!) Needless to say, the romance suffers for it.

The last concerns a homeless-man / gun-for-hire who has a small pack of dogs that follow him around. Much more would give away serious plot points about his story, so I'll leave it at that. Dogs appear in all three stories as a kind of short-hand for human love & decency. It's a nice touch, but man, I really wish they hadn't started off with the dog-fights. There's a lot of dog-fighting and it's always just awful. Appropriately, I feel both brothers are kind of lacking in the milk of human kindness. The film gets much kinder after that first segment though, so hang in there if you can. The film also interleaves all three stories, jumping forward and backward in time. I was more entertained than I should probably let on, merely trying to place the chronology of a scene. The return to the same images and events over and over gives the film a feeling of weight which I'm not sure it earns. A very stylish and initially extremely abrasive film. I stayed up way too late watching this.

Dekalogue

So, we arrive at the end of the Dekalogue. Reading back over my previous entries, I notice I approach the series more as a puzzle to be solved than as a work of art to be enjoyed. Again and again I say I don't understand, I can't see, don't know. I grasp at genius images and Christ-figures. I curse subtitles (hated foe!) and misinterpret commandments. As a purely emotional experience it is melancholy and fairly grim. The moments of joy are almost always alloyed with stoicism and it's not usually clear how to feel about things. As a cerebral exercise, it's rewarding but terribly, sometimes impossibly, challenging (I'm looking at you, False Witness.) Taken together, like chocolate with peanut butter, or peanut butter with chocolate, the clever and the moving parts of the series whirl around each other, sometimes pulling together, sometimes pulling apart, always intersecting and dividing and dazzling.

This dazzle however is mostly postprandial. Don't misunderstand and go in expecting fireworks. Go in expecting riddles. The cleverness of the series lies mostly in what it doesn't do. As I pointed out before, it doesn't condemn, it doesn't go for easy resolutions, and it doesn't go for easy answers (even though the 'answer' to each episode is given away in the titles, preceded by a 'thou shalt.') This series could have been so little but it was so much more instead.

As I've said before, I am essentially a weak man. I prefer visual splendor and histrionics to think-piece puzzles. I'm only human. So I'm afraid that, austere and ingenious though these films were, I won't bring it up when discussing my favorites. Like a cathedral, it's a fascinating and complex place to visit (even for 10 hours,) but a tough one to live in. Approach with caution, but approach, friends, approach.

Dekalog X

Saw Dekalog X, Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's goods. YEAH! Last one!! Woo! Okay, here we go:
This one was about two brothers who discover a gold-mine of rare stamps in their recently-deceased father's apartment. They try to find out how much the stamps are worth and quickly begin hearing amounts in the millions and hundred-thousands casually tossed around. They are soon however dourly reprimanded for even thinking of selling the life's work of their father, and find that the world of high-priced stamp collecting is a (kind of hilariously) cut-throat one. Their windfall is discovered by a deeply unsavory stamp-dealer. Unsettled by his intent interest, the brothers invest in bars on the windows and a colossal black dog. It is darkly hinted that their home-lives are deteriorating as they become more and more consumed by a sort of miserly greed. They even enter into their dead father's passion, reading his notes and seeking out rare specimens. It is of course only a matter of time until they turn on each other, Sierra Madre-style, but in characteristic Dekalog fashion, when this happens it's somehow, curiously, the brothers' most sympathetic moment. Instead of primly shaking our heads at their greed, we are left understanding their sad, sweaty, desperation.

The commandment's influence on the plot is clear: the brothers' lives are kind of destroyed when they enter into this fetishistic consumer-culture, hungrily eying their father's treasures. Their brotherly friendship is even threatened by this greed. Further trouble comes from the avarice of the stamp-dealer. So don't covet, okay? The ending (no spoiler) is uplifting however, and genuinely sweet. A rock song takes us out on a high note, but a complex, bitter-sweet kind of punk-y high note. Not totally happy, and not unhappy. A perfect book-end to the series.

Class of Nuke 'Em High

Saw Class of Nuke 'Em High. I didn't really like it. Unfortunately I think not liking this movie is kind of the intended response for people like me. I can't think of an example of what I didn't like that doesn't sound like some kind of endorsement. It's ugly, weird, and messy, too outrageous and yet somehow not outrageous enough, too much reliance on gross-out gags, tits, and costuming, low-to-no-budget special effects and has a resoundingly stupid plot. So yeah, ok, this film is crazy. Unfortunately, this time 'crazy' does not mean 'exciting' or 'fresh.' Watching this film is kind of like watching a group of little kids play dress-up and make a godawful mess out of a well-furnished room. Yeah sure, wild and crazy and kind of subversive I guess (in a way,) but to what end? I'm not entertained by mere destruction. Even pretend destruction makes me vaguely uncomfortable. So clearly the film is working on me in some way, against my will. I wasn't bored at least. I want to see more Troma films someday. I can't decide if their house style is gloriously, intelligently stupid (and I'm just resisting/not seeing it,) or if it's just plain old regular stupid. Bad films are so complicated.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990)

Saw Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990)(Thanks, Kim!) I liked it okay. The TMNT thing passed me by when I was young, so I'm not coming at this with much loving nostalgia. I found the rubber suits have not aged so well (there's a scene where one turtle sadly says "it's Splinter" that's downright hilarious) and the creepy ninja-sploitation is still creepy. The turtles were surprisingly limber for being encased in rubber though so good show, stuntmen. The turtles are also sufficiently winning, only slightly cringey in their high-fives and tubulars (self-congratulation is one of those things that always looks terrible in movies.) They were never quite action-hero-competent enough for me to ever really hate them. I was kind of annoyed by the humans in the film however. April was too 80s-sassy. I kept feeling ambushed by the worryingly stuffed groin of Casey Jones' sweatpants (look at it!) The less said about the for-some-reason-hanging-around-Arpil son and dad the better. Also, apparently April is completely rich. She can afford rent on a huge apartment and an antique shop (which she never opens, but keeps out of sentiment) and a place in the country (albeit a run down place. What? You think she's made of money?)

So, okay, the film is ridiculous. It's a kid's movie. It's meant to be enjoyed with teddy grahams and too much hi-C, not sneeringly dissected over tea by a bitter grad student. And frankly I enjoyed even its stupidity. My eye-rolls were usually accompanied by groaning laughs, there were weird birth-of-the-turtles interludes (fueled by a radioactive goo marked 'Radioactive',) and delicious 80s excesses. I even got caught up in the characters of the turtles (will Raphael ever conquer his inner demons?) Not a great movie, but a pretty fun one. A lot like the movie Flash Gordon, it invites affectionate mockery. I recommend watching it with a group of only slightly jaded friends.

Edit: just realized, I keep writing 80s when this film was clearly made in 1990. The '80s's stay. I regret nothing.

The 40 Year Old Virgin

Saw The 40 Year Old Virgin. It hit me hard in the awkward. I kept feeling bad for Steve Carell's poor character. Why this fascination with his disappointing sex life? Why this plying with hookers and booze? I feel like I've just watched some asshole hilariously eviscerate some nerd. Oh yeah and he's got porn so he must be a serial killer, and he's got action figures so no woman in the world would want him, and his neighbors comment on how he should get laid (which as near as I can tell is like musing that a starving man should really get himself a sandwich.) Ick ick ugh ugh.

Coming into it I was dreading this film for these reasons and I think I let my preconceptions and hangups get in the way of my enjoying what is in the end really just a goofy sex-comedy. I couldn't get myself to give this one a fair chance. I should really re-watch this film drunk and calmer, but I just don't want to. I found it too painfully awkward.

Edit: according to imdb trivia, for general release of this film, Apatow cut scenes that got no reactions from preview audiences, but reinserted the cut material for the uncut version which I saw, so maybe there's a punchier version out there I've not seen. Let's hope.

Rudo Y Cursi

Saw Rudo Y Cursi. It was a super melodramatic soccer film. Imagine: two brothers. On opposite sides of the pitch!! It's comic at moments and mostly tragic. Two brothers from a poor village are drafted by a sleazy talent scout. They're kept in a one-room apartment with four other guys, fed on the finest ramen (shrimp flavor, not bad) make it big and immediately fritter their money away on a gold-digging model and cocaine-fueled gambling. I didn't get the impression that they were to blame for their money-wasting, rather that they were merely naive and being exploited by professional fleecers. Anyway, all of this comes to a head when they must throw a match to solve both of their problems. Something dramatic happens and everyone is not exactly happy, but alive and well.

A curiously sad movie, it has the pace and histrionics of a decent comedy but the cramped panic of a tragedy. Also, in the background there is a drug lord's son marrying their sister. The drug lord acts as a kind of surrogate benefactor to their family, fulfilling all of their wild promises (a house for everyone, cars, etc) which I think is a confusing way of acknowledging that in this wicked world, drug lords often do come out on top, above so-called meritocracies like sport. Tellingly, the greatest moment of tragedy in the film is when the brothers cost their handlers huge amounts of money. The brothers are clearly pawns and suffer the confused panic of people being controlled by a machine they do not understand. As I say though, the film is so manic and over-the-top it should come off as comic and does in parts, but overall the tone is too messy and uneven to register as anything in specific (besides a dower all that glitters is not gold kind of morality play.) This film has the stink of a meddlesome producer fitting a script into an uncomfortable mold.

Also, I once again had to fight my subtitles. Whoever had translated it had done so in text-speak (u for you, r for are, etc) and had just left some stuff untranslated (a tense poker-game, for example.) Perhaps with better subs it would have been a better film. Oh well.

Dekalog IX

Saw Dekalog IX, Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife. I see now that I mistook the adultery episode for this one (that is, I understood adultery to refer exclusively to coveting wives.) Oops. Anyway, this episode is about a doctor who discovers that he is impotent. Not only sterile but unable, for some reason, to preform the physical act. He is devastated and tells his wife that he would understand if she wants a divorce Edit: no, I'd forgotten: he tells her to take a lover! When she refuses, he proposes they adopt instead. Later, he suspects his wife of having actually taken a lover and carefully bugs their phone and secretly copies her key to her mother's apartment. He spies on them, watches them have sex, and generally behaves horribly (this gives us an awesome scene where he's rooting through her mail and finds a postcard from her lover. On the back, as he reads it, we see the pope looking at us through binocular-hands. Brilliant.) Now yes, granted, cheating on your spouse is shitty, so the wife isn't blameless here but the doctor is painted in a bad light throughout. He even kind-of hits on a female patient whose heart he's going to be operating on (I know) before he has any evidence of any cheating going on, which makes him kind-of a hypocrite.

Anyway, she intuits that he knows something and breaks it off with the lover. She immediately afterwards find her husband crouched in a nearby closet (it only sounds funny in isolation. This is not a very humorous scene.) and though she is angry and embarrassed, she is mainly relieved. Now it's over. But the lover will not take 'no' for an answer and follows her around, forcing meetings and confrontations. The doctor sees only that they are still meeting and unsuccessfully attempts suicide. As he is recovering, she says 'Thank god, you're alright' and he responds 'Yes, I am.' But clearly he is not alright. Bugging phones and attempting suicide are not the actions of an alright man. We are to believe that they're going to stay together and adopt because otherwise he'll kill himself. This is the moral ambiguity this series enjoys so much. We know that they are morally compelled to stay together, but doubt that they will really work together.

Note though that this crisis is precipitated by the actions of the lover. After she breaks it off, the doctor is still despondent, but is beginning to relax a bit. (His suspicions are symbolized by a faulty glove box in his car. When he first suspects his wife, the glove box keeps frustratingly falling open. After the rejection of the lover, he's still a bit suspicious, but must now pound on the glove box to get it to open. When he spots his lover en route to his wife, the glove box immediately falls open on its own.) Only after the lover persists do we come to the point where the wife is rushing to get into contact with the doctor for fear of his life and safety. Therefor the moral of the story and the damaging nature of the coveting of the wife.

There was some stuff I couldn't understand with a physics work-book (I think it represents his wife, or his affection for his wife.) and there's one of those oddly significant men again, this time on a bike, but I think I understood most of this one. I have fewer question-marks floating above my head this time anyway (although.) I'm looking forward to the grand finale!

Last House on the Left (1972)

Saw Last House on the Left (1972 version.) It was one of those endurance films that are just unpleasant for the sake of unpleasantness. Well, not quite. There is some interesting discussion on revenge vs justice to be had here, some thoughts on reaping and sowing. But in my begrudging post-film attitude, I attribute these solely to The Virgin Spring, the movie which was the basis of this one. This one is a prototypical exploitation film. Nasty, brutish and short, the scenes of rape and carnage have this lurid, leering, are you not entertained quality. I find Wes Craven's style to be as sleazy and gross as the worst of Tarantino's excesses but without any of the redeeming wit or cool.

Then again, was I not entertained? I confess I was and in my vile bestiality (which this film caters to (which is what makes me so uncomfortable)) I wanted the bad guys to suffer more. Home Alone-style hokey traps were not enough. I wanted protracted days of suffering. It really inspires juvenile feelings of 'what would I do?' The film is fascinating and awful, like a train wreck. It does grab the attention and if you're into raw, hard-to-watch stuff this is for you.

Don't get too scared about it though. Much of the film is spent getting you to hate the bad guys and the comic bumbling of the cops is meant to function as simultaneous tension-building and comic relief but winds up being kind of neither. Not the top of the heap, difficulty-to-watch-wise, but a valiant attempt and a real chore to sit through for a normal human being.

PS - keep an eye out for when the character Sadie says 'I can get you out of here.' We never find out if she was lying or not. I love that.

Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey

Saw Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey (Thanks Chris!) It was practically perfect in every way. It starts out alright, gets good, and then better. There's all these awesome little things to notice, like Death being aghast at the girlfriends almost dying (in fact, almost everything involving Death is hilarious and adorable. The fact that he's the Death from The Seventh Seal and has (I assume) a Swedish accent is just icing on the cake (a cake which is already like 90% frosting anyway,)) the evil granny in the awesome German-expressionist hell capering (capering!) towards our heroes, the flat, bored, Midwestern accents of the seance-goers (and that their magic actually works!), the bit where Bill and Ted ask their girlfriends to "marry us," etc etc. The whole thing is just great. There was never a scene where I was bored or even slightly grumpy. I was a bit annoyed at the lame clowning of Evil Robot Bill and Ted, but this only made them all the more delightfully hate-able. The overall effect should have been overwhelming and addling, but it somehow never gets as exhausting as, say, Time Bandits (which I only bring up because it's another adventure-type movie (which I have great affection for.)) I don't know why. Pacing I guess. It keeps managing to top itself. It has absolutely none of the oh-so-clever Swiss watch about it (I naively imagine the story could have been made up via a game of drunken telephone at a party, but then it wouldn't be so cleverly paced, now would it?) instead it bumbles amiably along like two awesome fools who just want to party on and maybe save the world. Highly recommend (but see Excellent Adventure first, of course.) Awesome.

Sous le Sable

Saw Sous le Sable. It was about a woman on vacation with her husband. We have a few shots of him waiting for his wife. He seems preoccupied, or perhaps he's just waiting. At any rate, they go to the beach, he rubs suntan lotion on her back, he goes for a swim, and he disappears. She calls the coast guard but they can find nothing. Unable to accept his death/suicide/abandonment she refuses to acknowledge his disappearance, pretending he's still alive. We are shown him speaking to her and lying next to her in bed. She undergoes fantastic psychic contortions to deal with her simultaneous loneliness and inability to admit that her husband is gone. She has a doomed 'affair' with another man. The film is very slow and deliberate but not chilly or boring as some think-pieces are. I think even the slowest scenes are given an emotional tension by just trying to understand what this very hurt woman is thinking. Tangential themes of age and calcification are brought up. Near the end there is a scene with her husband's mother where she suggests maybe he committed suicide. Somehow the thought that his death was deliberate comforts her. His mother counters that if he killed himself perhaps it was her fault and then follows up with her own, far crueler, theory. The ending is perfectly ambiguous and unresolved. We cannot trust our eyes (we have seen her dead husband talk to her) and cannot trust her beliefs (she responds.) We think we know the truth of this situation, but do we in the end? A fascinating movie.

El Crimen del Padre Amaro

Saw El Crimen del Padre Amaro. It was the tale of a young priest who arrives in a semi-remote village which is coincidentally a hotbed of barely concealed vice and corruption. He makes eyes at a hot girl (her hotness is firmly established in a scene where she stolidly ignores the wolf-whistles of every man on a construction site and then blushes with pleasure when this is pointed out. This doesn't mesh well with my understanding of women, but whatever. I guess.) Anyway, she later confesses (in his confessional) to the sin of teenage horniness. But, oh no! She wants to be a nun. You can imagine where this is going. It plays out pretty much exactly as you'd imagine. There are some surprises, but nothing major.

Meanwhile, the older priest he's supposed to be shadowing is in semi-cahoots with the local drug-lords. They donate money to his hospice projects and he turns a blind eye to their source of income (this is apparently how cartels launder money, btw. I didn't know this.) Another priest in a yet more remote village seems to be the most moral person in the film and he's harboring vigilantes and guerrillas who are fighting back against the cartels, so not even he is completely antiseptic, ethics-wise.

The film ends in inevitable tragedy, but it is fun in parts getting there. The film has a bad habit of laying things on a bit thick: there is a woman who I guess is a witch. She's seen stealing from the donation plate, feeding a consecrated host to a black cat, and living in a sort of cave made of Creepy Dolls. Also, while establishing this village as a place where morals go to die, the film has the young priest meet a retarded woman who at first kisses his hand and then places it on her breast. A bit sordid, but novel and strange. I'm mostly a hedonist when it comes to film, so these scenes stick out for me. The rest of the film is a sort of pedestrian sad drama. Not bad at all, mind you, just not remarkable.

Dekalogue VIII

Saw Dekalogue VIII, thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. It was about an old woman, an ethics professor, who is visited from her past. In WW2-era Poland, she had once tried to help hide a Jewish girl, only to refuse to help at the last second. The girl survived anyway and now, all grown up, contacts her to try to figure out her reasoning. It is assumed at first that the woman did not want to bear false witness (it was necessary to claim that the girl was a Christian) with cowardice being offered as the only other possible explanation. It turns out though, that the old woman had indeed behaved morally, and not for any reason so chilly as a refusal to lie. I won't spoil the justification though.

There is a lot going on in this episode (aside from the plot) which I found confusing. For example, there is a painting in the old woman's house which is always getting crooked. Both she and the girl repeatedly try to right this painting, only for it to fall back askew in the next scene. Perhaps this is a subtle indication that the old woman's house is not quite in order? Or is this a metaphor for some other vain task? Similarly, her lights and car are both shown to be slightly broken, though functional. Near the end of the film she meets a contortionist as she's jogging. He explains that anyone can do what he does with a bit of practice, but that she is too old by now. Is this contrasting her moral uprightness with his physical flexibility? There's a scene where some student arrives late and possibly drunk to her class and is shouted at by the other students. Meanwhile, another student moves their seat and we get these two pans across a row of students. One pan across an empty chair and one pan across the new occupant whom we never see again. I have no explanation for this scene whatsoever. This interrupts the Jewish girl telling her story, so perhaps we are meant to feel uneasy and confused? I have no idea.

As for bearing false witness, it seems only that the girl does this. She claims that the woman had refused to help due to a philosophical quibble and had thus placed the machinery of ethics before a human life. I kept looking for indications that the old woman was lying in her explanation, but I was frustrated in my search. Perhaps it could be argued that the painting and car and so on is meant to be a clue in this direction, but I prefer (now in retrospect) to interpret this episode as a plea for charity and flexibility, even for crooked paintings and flickering lights.

Infernal Affairs

Saw Infernal Affairs, the movie 'pon which was based The Departed. It's the story of dueling moles: one in the police force working for a triad and the other in that very triad, working for the cops. If you've seen The Departed, it has a virtually identical plot. The plot twists and turns and is full of surprises, so much kudos goes to the original screenwriter. This may be the first crime film that incorporated cellphones and computers without them being ridiculous or superfluous. However, this film has the common Asian cinema weakness of extreme melodrama. When one major character dies, we get a full blown black-and-white-toned montage of moments from earlier in the movie where the character is smiling, or giving advice, or just walking. All of this set to weepy violins. This kind of nonsense does not occur in The Departed. The evil mobster is not as crazy as Jack Nicholson's take on him. This is necessary for thematic reasons. This film is more interested in betrayal than Scorsese's film. This interest in betrayal is clever and rich: the two cops have each betrayed their supposed superiors, their comrades, even each other at one point. It is a rich vein to mine.

The ending of this film is more annoying than in The Departed (so, highlight for spoilers:) In The Departed, Matt Damon's evil police-mole is shot. He's not taken to jail and publicly humiliated, which is what I wanted to see, but there is a sort of justice here. In this film, the only justice that that character meets is in the form of his conscience which is not at all satisfying. Title-cards with quotes from the Buddha about the 'eternal hell' which is the hell that must be lived with set up this ending and I like the troubling ambiguity of it a lot more than an easy bullet to the head. Still, the animal in me wants vengeance if not justice and though I am intellectually satisfied, I am emotionally robbed. Apparently this ending was sufficiently annoying even to the Chinese film-board to demand an alternate ending, where arrests are made. This was for political reasons (the original ending would seem to imply a less-than-perfect police force and that wouldn't do.) but I imagine audiences were grateful for the change.

Spoilers over, but nothing more to say. Scorsese's version is a touch better due to a bit more restraint, but this film got here first so it deserves as much praise for an ingenious plot and concept.

Bon Cop, Bad Cop

Saw Bon Cop, Bad Cop (Thanks, Kim!) It was a silly movie. It pairs a wild and crazy Montreal cop with a prudish, button-down Torontonian cop. In an early scene the wild Quebecker drives his car on the sidewalk. You can either interpret this as demonstrating that he believes himself above the law, or as demonstrating that this movie is supposed to be a mindless romp. I made the choice to turn off my brain and, with this adjustment, it fares pretty well. It's not as conventional as many action films (the bad guy is never given much of an identity beyond being a kind of shlubby dude) and the fight scenes are mostly quick-cut (as opposed to shakey-cam-ed.) One fight scene was intercut with a sex scene which I thought was pulled off with admirable style. The buddy dynamics of Toronto et Montreal are not particularly important and apart from a few lines of dialogue are ignored (so take note, those of you expecting any sort of commentary about French/English-Canadian relations.)

Ah, but my spoil-sport brain could not keep wholly quiet. As with many mindless action films, there is much snide commentary which could be made. I will restrain myself but for this one point: most of the troubles they encounter are of their own creation. eg: they have captured a suspect and stuff him into the trunk of their car (this happens a lot, trunk stuffing.) They don't have time to park the car because they must attend the Montrealer's child's ballet performance. Highlight for spoilers... their car is towed and then blows up ...and they lose the suspect in the trunk. This could have been avoided if they'd only transported the suspect directly to a cell (in an actual cop car.) The Torontonian could have dropped him off en rout. Oh well.

A ripping yarn which I was not always completely comfortable with, but it's an action movie, so what else is new?

A Prairie Home Companion

Saw A Prairie Home Companion. A Robert Altman movie with Rob's big fingerprints everywhere, from the kind of listless improvised script to the lunge at the jugular of cheap sentiment. It works here because one of the appeals of the lovely radio show is its kind of out-of-time soppy feel. It's silly old self-consciously granddad-tier jokes about "giving shy persons the courage to stand up and do what needs to be done" and so on. The action revolves around the 'one last' show that the gang puts on before the hated Suits shut them down for good. The pace is slow and ambling, which is welcome until nearly the end, when you feel things should kind of get to the point. Kevin Kline provides needed comic relief as Guy Noir which is a sort of extended theft/homage to Inspector Clouseau. I felt Streep's improvisation tended more toward the cruel self-parody of A Mighty Wind. A trap that the other, more practiced comedians (Lilly Tomlin, John C Reilly) correctly avoided.

The film is choppy but relaxed. It crams in a lot of little subplots but wisely stays a bit aloof and stays not too interested in any one of those subplots, drifting instead from hubbub to hubbub. It also made me hunger hard for my old days preforming.

Black Ice (2007)

Saw Black Ice (2007). It was a very taut drama about a woman, her husband, and his lover who she (the wife) learns about on her birthday. The film starts off merely compelling and ends with an iron grip on your attention. A masterful manipulation not seen this side of Haneke. The morbid threat of death is kind of constantly palpably hanging in the air. It begins with the wife obsessively stalking the mistress and, when it seems murder is out of the question for now, she befriends her. She adopts a fake name but otherwise talks freely about her husband cheating on her with another woman. The mistress, under these false pretenses, comforts her. This leads to an excellent scene where the wife talks about what she'd like to do to her husband's mistress. As she talks, the camera shifts uneasily back and forth, sloshily focusing in and out like it was in a Japanese horror, while the wife talks violence and the mistress reacts sympathetically.

Ultimately, the wife is punished for her initial blood-lust by getting more revenge than she could have ever hoped for. The husband and mistress are both masterfully and pathetically manipulated. Sometimes the wife's manipulations seem a bit too effortless. There's a scene that ends in a lesbian make-out that strained even my fairly generous suspension of disbelief. The film is not without lyricism however: at one point the two women walk and dance on an empty ice rink. The otherwise whimsical scene is darkened by groaning cellos on the soundtrack. Soon, a police car with its siren on goes by and the sense of oppression moves into the film universe. The soundtrack dies and, no longer smiling, the wife starts springing her traps.

Very dramatic (which, you know, reader beware. I love me some melodrama.), well plotted and strongly acted. It reminded me a lot of Closer, only with less alliance-tangling. A strong end to my brief adventure through Finnish cinema. Next up: a three-movie jaunt through Spain.

Dekalog VII

Saw Dekalog VII, Thou shalt not steal. This one was about a young woman, Majka, who was pregnant at 16 and whose mother agreed to take her infant daughter. They still live together, but the daughter legally belongs to Majka's mother. In one of the early scenes in the episode, Majka is ineptly trying to comfort her daughter who suffers from night terrors. Her mother's hand is then seen on Majka 's shoulder in what seems like a tender gesture of comfort until she roughly pushes Majka aside, so that she may administer her own expert comforting. This single motion reveals the entire thrust of the story. By denying Majka the opportunity to work out some way of comforting her own daughter, she is widening the rift between all three of them and further ensuring that Majka will remain unable to provide motherly comfort. Majka hatches a plan to steal her daughter back from her mother and to run away to Canada. Ah ha, we think, here's the theft. But as the scene with her mother illustrates, another theft has been taking place since before this episode starts, with Majka's mother slowly stealing her child away. It is unclear which of the thefts (if either or perhaps both) is morally wrong. Is stealing back what is yours theft?

Majka is characterized from the start as lost, directionless, and kind of desperate. She has apparently just been expelled from college for some reason. This is a clever conceit because although we do want Majka to repossess her daughter, we can't believe the daughter will actually have a better life with her, leaving the story a bit more fraught and interesting than it might have been otherwise. There's an awesome scene where Majka is trying to get her daughter to call her 'mommy' instead of 'Majka.' The daughter won't and Majka is reduced to shouting 'Mommy! Mommy!' and it suddenly becomes ambiguous whether she is shouting instructions, or plaintively crying for her own mother. Brilliant.

The ending is a similarly ambiguous fade-out on the daughter. She has just run some distance and it's unclear if she is panting for breath or starting to crying. Shortly before, there is a random man on crutches who I think is just there to provide some ambient pathos. I am completely at a loss for her father though, who is constantly tinkering with a broken church organ. Why a broken organ? I don't know. Similarly, Majka's baby-daddy makes teddy bears in a similarly confusing turn. Is there supposed to be an irony in the mass production of artificial affection? I think I'm over analyzing a bit, but this series rewards analysis.

The Man from Hong Kong

Saw The Man from Hong Kong. It was an Australian kung-fu exploitation movie that hit every cliche: a fight in a resteraunt, blithe ignorance of all that messy 'due process,' every car explodes at the slightest bump, endless endless fight sequences, every woman is conventionally attractive and in a tight shirt, endless henchmen of a drug-running (always with the drugs!) bad guy, yes, this one has it all. It was both genuinely and extremely shlocky. At one point the main character, a Chinese inspector, is running away from bad guys. He jumps into a passing car which is filled with busty women. They drive him back to their house and nurse him back to health. Later: "Are you well enough yet for me to make love to you?" Cue 10 minute montage.

If that sort of thing appeals to you, then check this film out because it's the shlockiest I've seen in a while. Unfortunately, as you are probably aware, this sort of thing does not excite me. I enjoy excess now and then, but I found this one too grim and not aware enough (as far as I could tell) of its own stupidity. Like a drunk at a party, it has no idea how obnoxious, unfunny, and kind of racist/sexist it's being.

Edit: I had a suspicion that this was loosely based on James Bond, but couldn't really recall why I thought this. At any rate, the imdb trivia backs me up. Also, this is apparently "Ozploitation."

Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure

Saw Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure (Thanks, Chris!) It was awesome. It had a weird feeling of being almost educational, breathlessly running through dates and names. Any one of the figures they encounter would be interesting to see entirely on their own. As is, they don't have time to ever really become more than just names and faces. How would Napoleon react to a bowling alley? I think he'd be overwhelmed and terrified. Instead of this approach however, the film has him slyly cheating on the score-sheet. This is perhaps not as true to my understanding of human psychology, but it is way way funnier and much more entertaining. There's a lot of (most) excellent gags just juxtaposing historical figures with absurd little mundane things, like having Abraham Lincoln grimly chew gum, or Sigmund Freud vacuum. I think Freud was actually my favorite. I loved his police interview ("Why do you claim you are Sigmund Freud?" "Why do you claim I am not?") and when he walks up holding a corn dog (because of course.)

Delightful and anarchic, it even covers its own plot holes with its near-magical time-travel mechanics. I sort of sourly thought "Who's manning the light-board?" during their final performance, but then I remembered "Oh, yeah. Probably they are." Its final conclusion, that 80s rock will save the world is hilarious, fitting, and adorable. I kind of wish they'd visited Joan of Arc when she was still a peasant girl, implying perhaps that they were the saints which inspired her but this would be a bit too pat (also, she'd be twelve according to wiki.) I also wish that there'd been a reference to The Passion of Joan of Arc by Carl Dreyer, but it would have been jarring and would have made no sense whatsoever (I just want to be congratulated for having seen that film.) I was dryly amused at the lack of raping Genghis did.

A delightful film. A little light on actual insight into anything, but not every movie has to be a lesson. This film is indeed a most excellent film.