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.