2005 Foreign, Alternative and Independent Films (1 Viewer)

[Michael Reuben]

All that, but it only rates a "C+"?

M.

 

[Edwin Pereyra]

I'm surprised no one has posted any thoughts on Melinda and Melinda. Is it worth seeing?

~Edwin

 

[Jason Seaver]

Melinda & Melinda: It's not bad, and it's got Radha Mitchell which is always a good thing, but the structure of it pretty much demands that the script does nothing out of the ordinary: One character is telling a romantic comedy story, one is telling a tragic drama, and since they're both working in archetypes, the stories themselves are standard stuff. Will Ferrell draws the "there's no way to say these lines other than to imitate Woody Allen" card this year, but at least that makes him somewhat memorable.

Is it worth seeing? Well, it's not as terrible as the movies Allen has been making for what seems like the past decade, but if you're not a fan of his, I wouldn't go out of my way to see it.

Eros: Wong Kar-Wai's contribution is really, really good. Steven Soderberg's is a few jokes strung together in a way that doesn't ever really gel as a story (kind of a waste of Robert Downey Jr. and Alan Arkin). Michaelangelo Antonioni's is... Well, if there's any idea behind it behind "I would like to see these women naked", it's well obscured.

Also, boy howdy, Wong Kar-Wai and Christopher Doyle like their mirrors. It's WKW week at my local rep theater (2046, Days of Being Wild, Ashes of Time and As Tears Go By down, Chungking Express, Fallen Angels, Happy Together, and In The Mood for Love to go), and, I swear, if there's any reason for there to be a mirror in the room, they will frame the shot so that you see the curve of the mirror's edge and most of what's going on is actually in the mirror.

 

[Haggai]

I enjoyed Soderbergh's part of Eros. More of a comedic skit than a story, so it isn't as good as WKW's excellent segment, but quite entertaining for what it is.

And Jason, have you also noticed that WKW really likes clocks? That retrospective was at the AFI theater in Maryland last month, so it's possibly some of the same prints playing at your theater. Warning on Happy Together: the print they had was pretty much crap. I've got the Kino collection on order, it has the 2-disc SE of that one, which probably looks a lot better. But the new print of Days of Being Wild sure is nice. And what an amazing movie.

 

[Jason Seaver]

Well, there aren't any clocks in Ashes of Time, and it's hard to miss the clocks in Days of Being Wild; maybe it's something I'll see more in his more recent movies.

Was the print for Happy Together as bad as the one for As Tears Go By? It had long, unsubtitled portions at the Brattle; you could still follow the story, but it did result in one jackass yelling out comments.

EDIT: And, I may wind up missing Happy Together anyway; my brother was on a team for the "48 Hour Film Project" and their short is screening on the other side of town that night.

 

[Michael Reuben]

There's an official discussion thread. I liked it better than Jason, but especially after seeing Look at Me, I'm reminded that Allen's best work is behind him. Agnès Jaoui's film has a lot of overlap with the best Allen films (urban setting, hermetic world populated by cultural sophisticates, intense family conflict), but it has an unforced quality, a lightness of tone and a contemporary feel that Allen doesn't seem to be able to achieve anymore.

Still, I found Melinda entertaining, and I haven't been able to say that about an Allen film since Small Time Crooks.

M.

 

[Haggai]

I haven't seen As Tears Go By. Lots of clocks in IMTFL, which is largely in the DOBW style overall, along with The Hand (and, as I understand it, 2046, which hasn't come here yet). Also some clocks in Happy Together. The print of HT that I saw was quite washed out, and the subtitles were in both English and another Asian language (Mandarin, maybe? WKW's original dialogue in his movies is Cantonese), so it was kind of obtrusive and not always very helpful.

I didn't see Chungking Express when they showed it, so I don't know how good that print would be. But I did rent the Miramax/Rolling Thunder DVD from Netflix, which looked fine to me.

 

[Jason Seaver]

2046, I'm told, is acually a sequel to In The Mood For Love, which I haven't seen yet. It was a film-club screening of an import-DVD, so I'm rather anxious to see what it looks like in 35mm because, hey, beautiful Christopher Doyle cinematography, and some spiffy-looking digital effects for the "2046 city" story-within-the-story.

Before this week, the only WKW I'd seen was actually something where he'd only written the script, not directed - Haunted Cop Shop 2.

(But, hey, can you really trust a filmmaker who has never written a fart joke to be able to affect people at a basic, emotional level, really?)

EDIT: Checking the IMDB, I see I've also seen Savior of the Soul. The man certainly paid his dues Corman-style before becoming a Great Filmmaker.

 

[ThomasC]

Mandarin and Cantonese characters are written the same way, they're just pronounced differently.

 

[Jason Seaver]

Well, that's still good reason to subtitle them, if the audience isn't necessarily going to understand the spoken dialogue. Last night's prints for Ashes of Time and As Tears Go By were both subtitled that way, which seems to be the norm for Hong Kong movies; when the Weekly Wednesday Ass-Kicking was still a going concern, most of those prints were subtitled that way. I'm guessing that's how they're shown in HK.

Amusingly, when the characters speaking English, there was no subtitling, either for English or Cantonese/Mandarin.

 

[Brook K]

I'm planning on seeing Melinda this week along with possibly Eros or whatever works out timewise. I've liked all of the recent Allens except the dreadful Hollywood Ending and may be the only person alive besides the participants who genuinely enjoyed Anything Else, but even I admit he hasn't made anything really fresh since Sweet and Lowdown. Melinda certainly doesn't sound like any new territory, but I'll keep seeing Allen's films as long as he keeps making them.

 

[Elizabeth S]

Woody Allen is pretty hit-and-miss with me, but I had high hopes for "Melinda and Melinda" (though I disliked the trailer). The premise is promising, but the main problem of the film for me -- the "comedy" half just wasn't very amusing, and I had to remind myself "Oh, Will Ferrell is in the scene, so this IS the comedic version". Ferrell certainly did have the Woody Allen cadence down, and I actually started envisioning Mia Farrow in the Radha Mitchell role by the end of the film. Really disappointing to me.

 

[Edwin Pereyra]

Millions

Director Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, 28 Days Later) mixes realism with fairy tale elements to make one of this year’s charming and touching story about the effects of money on people – both its need and greed aspects.

Told mostly from a 7-year old’s point of view and playful imagination, it tells the story of two young brothers who comes into a bag full of British pounds. Damian, wittily played by Alex Etel, wants to give it to the poor, while his brother Anthony (Lewis McGibbon), with a more business like mind, wants to invest it.

The result is a humorous tale about the power of imagination and innocence.

~Edwin

 

[Edwin Pereyra]

By the way, thanks for the comments on Melinda. Woody Allen has also been hit-and-miss with me lately. I think I'll play it safe with this one.

~Edwin

 

[Dave Hackman]

I’m weaning myself slowly from this year’s crappy initial 2005 selection one letter at a time.

I don’t want anyone to get the impression that I see movies to like them.

I actually had to pry my fingers from my favorite letter F.

 

[Michael Reuben]

There's no danger of that, Dave.

M.

 

[Dave Hackman]

Loggerheads

Mark (Kip Pardue) a good looking twenty something peers through his bartered night vision binoculars searching for endangered loggerhead turtles before falling asleep on the North Carolina beach. Mark doesn’t have a job or a place to stay and his relationship with his adoptive mother and father seems to have hit an all time low. Lately Mark has been wondering what his birth mother is like or where she is and in the past had tried to find her but got nowhere with the adoption records being sealed.

Grace (Bonnie Hunt) a middle-aged airport car rental agent processes her young male clients request for a vehicle with prying eyes. She figures this guy is about the age her son she gave up for adoption would be and can’t help but ask the unusual personal question whether he had been adopted. Unfortunately for her he replies no and her inner desire to meet her son continues to burn. Recently returning home and staying with her mother the tension builds between the two on how things played out when she was a pregnant teenager and how it now causes her so much pain. With nothing else to loose Grace embarks on a journey to find the son she gave up at birth.

Robert (Chris Sarandon) a minister tells his wife Elizabeth (Tess Harper) to hold off inviting their new neighbors to their church. This is after he finds out that there family consists of two men and a boy. Elizabeth asks her husband what he says when people ask about their adopted son who they haven’t had contact with in a while. Robert replies that he can’t be of any help because he can’t remember anyone ever asking.

Each story is given some time to slowly unravel then temporarily pauses for the next story to unravel a bit. This continues like this until the final act.

Pretty good. I think the story could use a little more development in certain areas where it felt thin. The overall mood wasn’t emotionally challenging enough to really make me love it. I like it but wished for a little more.

C+

 

[Brook K]

Trying to do a better job this year of placing reviews here instead of just sticking everything in the 2005 thread.

I meant to see 2 movies last night but I didn't have time to eat before I left and got too hungry to sit through another movie and I refuse to pay $4 for lukewarm popcorn or $3 for one cookie.

Eros: Like almost any film featuring multiple stories, some are better than others and Eros is no exception. Unlike most of the critics, I wasn't very impressed by Wong Kar-Wai's The Hand. The story of a young tailor who falls in love with an expensive prostitute, it features perhaps the only moments of eroticism within Eros, and is made in Kar-Wai's signature style. However, I found the lead actor, Chang Chen, was not as successful as past Kar-Wai leading men at creating a reserved, yet wounded lover. Gong Li is still a luminous presence, but apart from the scene in which this story derives its name, she doesn't get to do much work. B-

The best story is the middle one, Equilibrium, a funny if too-slight bit of business involving adman Robert Downey, Jr. and Alan Arkin as a psychologist with better things to do than listen to another patient's problems. Now for a voyeuristic mind like mine, Soderbergh's point that one of the most boring things we can listen to is what arouses someone else, is not really one I agree with, Soderbergh at least has fun with the concept and provides some light entertainment. B

The third story, Michelangelo Antonioni's The Dangerous Thread Of Things was standard European movie fare 20-30 years ago - a couple arguing about their relationship in some gorgeous locations, followed by a little bit of fun adultery, and an enigmatic ending. One could posit that Antonioni plays with this concept by having his two actresses display nudity in the film far more often than they are clothed (and as a red-blooded male I salute thee!), but I'm not sure if there is any greater point to this or not. Is there a "dangerous thread" in this movie? I have no idea. C+

Overall rating: B-

 

[David Lawson]

I bought into the Oldboy hype, as it's been a favorite topic of discussion on International DVD forums for months. I own one of the director's previous efforts, Joint Security Area, which is enjoyable, but by no means incredible.

Unlike Adam (#42), I found the content of the exposition at the end was more frustrating than the duration of it. Any discussion of it is impossible without significant spoilers, but I will say that the impact of everything that has taken place is considerably dampened once you discover the reason why everything has taken place, to say nothing of how everything was accomplished.

The film is captivating up to that point, however, and the final scene is deliciously ambiguous. Still, I can't conceal my disappointments with it, and I currently don't have much of a desire to revisit it.

 

[Dave Hackman]

Nobody Knows

Initially I didn’t know what to make of this film. It wasn’t until after discussion that I realized how much I remembered about the story and how good it really was. This movie was inspired by a true 1988 event that occurred in Tokyo, Japan.

Akira (Yuya Yagira) the oldest boy who is 12, his oldest sister Kyoko (Ayu Kitaura), his younger brother Shigeru (Hiei Kimura) and his baby sister Yuki (Momoko Shimizu) all arrive in one fashion or another at their new home an apartment on the second floor with their unwed mother Keiko (YOU). Everyone seems pretty happy with this place and all seem compliant when it comes to their mother’s rule. Don’t go out of the apartment ever. This rule doesn’t apply to Akira who is the only kid introduced to the landlord and to their neighbors. As weird a rule as this is the children do a great job of upholding this mandate by adapting their daily routine to their unusual circumstance.

Keiko puts Akira in charge of his siblings while she’s away at work, and since none of them go to school this is a lot of responsibility for him to handle. Keiko returns one night and tells Akira that she will be gone for a while and hands him some cash to pay for the bills and food. A month later she returns and tells of her relationship with a new love interest that will hopefully lead to their dream of being together in a house as a real family. Another handful of money for the bills and she’s gone, time passes and the reality sets in that their mother may never return. Money runs thin, the household begins to look like a waste management dump, basic living amenities start to fade and the worse has yet to happen.

Subtitles are only difficult to read a couple of times during outdoor scenes when the light became too strong to see the words. This movie is in no hurry to get to the end and Hirokazu Kore-eda, the director has a knack for letting you just sit and stew in the moment. It is long but this story needs it and is better for it.

I couldn’t imagine writing this type of movie and the time given to each filmed scene is impressive and well thought out.

A