Archive for March, 2008

The man without a past (2003)

March 31, 2008 at 10:15 pm · Filed under Good ·Tagged

Lets get the grumbles out the way first:

Sally Army bands doing rockabilly is crap.

I don’t like kitschy retro hip jukeboxes.

Or squeeze boxes weezing out Finnish Tango.

I don’t like the candy coloured Edward Hopperesque artificiality of some of the set-ups in this film either.

And I’m getting a bit fed up of watching yet another film with more fucking “cinematic” smoking going on.

Ok.

But I’m still giving this the thumbs up.

It’s an endearing film.

It’s got a cute doggy tongue-in-cheekness about it.

Like a mongrel quietly, and carefully, biting the arse out of your stained on old jog pants. And you don’t mind.

It’s all minor-key. And downbeat. And deadpan.

Loopily sardonic.

The pathos is never allowed to become too pathetic. Or the sadness too sentimental.

Melancholy is given a gentle slap in the face with a dry fish.

And in everything it’s possible to find some consoling worth.

It’s called human warmth.

Dir: Aki Kaurismaki, Finland

7.5/10

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Last Life in the Universe (2003)

March 25, 2008 at 7:15 pm · Filed under It's ok

Gonna give this another watch.

It hadn’t appealed to me much last week. Seemed mannered. I couldn’t get into feeling much for either of the 2 main characters, or their seemingly vacuous love affair.

I liked the director Pen-ek tho; he engaged me more talking about his film than the film had itself.

Pete Bradshaw, the Guardian film critic didn’t get it the first time he watched it either (he did the second)

So maybe i missed something. Not watching slowly enough. Not tuned the reception in on my sympathetic attention or something.

So I’ll try again. Be back in a couple of hours…..

#

No – it didn’t appeal much this time either.

Yet another film with loads of smoking going on. The girl puffs away in that pensive, posey, cinematic way that makes having a fag seem desirable, look cool.

It’s a pretty cool film. Cool as in remote. And pretty as in photogenic.

“You no go home?” says Thai girl to Jap boy. They have to communicate in this broken English to get over their cultural and emotional estrangement.

And how they bridge their disconnect seemed flimsy to me.

Just one emptiness floating over to another emptiness. Drifting along in the loneliness of the other.

No sex. No passion. No eloquence of soul. Not even any kissing (ok – she does peck him on the cheek eventually)

A bloodless romance.

Dir: Pen-ek Ratanaruang, Thailand/Japan

6/10

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Abigails Party (1977)

March 23, 2008 at 12:58 am · Filed under Good ·Tagged , ,

I didn’t laugh as much as i used to.

I might laugh if i were watching this with somebody who hadn’t seen it before – like say, a foreign language student. Show them how awful we English were (and still are)

It feels a bit dated in that slightly embarrassing 1970’s kind of way.

It’s mostly watchable still cus of Alison Steadman. She dominates every scene (the actor who plays her husband “Lawrence” in comparison,  is weak)

“Lawrence, don’t leave your bag there – purleese”

“Want me to make you a little sandwich?”

“Will you try this for me Ange – and i promise you Ange, you’re gonna see the difference – ok?”… “Just say to yourself, ‘I’ve got beautiful lips’ – ok?”

“Don’t get me wrong Tone”

“Would you like a little cigarette?”

“Lawrence, we’re not here to hold conversations, we’re here to enjoy ourselves”

“So purleese – do you think we can have Demis Roussos on?”

She’s gross as Beverley. But compelling. You can’t take your eyes off her every little facial tic, mannerism, gesture.

The kind of gross that’s got stuck in the mocking part of my brain for about the last 30 years.

Through close study of “Beverley” you could learn how to inflate your condescension; by deflating other peoples pretension.

In all sorts of awful “little” ways.

Dir: Mike Leigh, England

7/10

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No End (1984)

March 17, 2008 at 6:49 pm · Filed under It's ok ·Tagged

Second time I’ve seen this film. Doubt if anybody has taken it out from the library since the last time I saw it.

A poky Polish drama. Earnestly serious. Grim-faced. Nothing light-hearted. Ends with head going in gas oven.

Five of the actors in this film turn up in the Decalog films Kiewslowski made 4 years later. And they hadn’t cheered up any then either.

At least those films had the virtue of being less than an hour long.

This one is solid – but stodgy. A bit like eating potatoes, without any salt.

The dissident politics don’t engage at all.

And then there seems to be some playing around with a notion that the dead live on around us to haunt our living.

I guess when you lived in Poland 25 years ago – you might need to believe in some kind of after or other life; as welcome relief from the grim communist life under martial law you were stuck in.

Having to drink all that horrible ersatz coffee (I’ve tried it – horrible) Suck down lungfuls of cheap fags. Get boozed up on vodka. Then go crash your Trabby into a tree.

Become a disembodied Polish spirit. Be a Polish ghost! They have much more fun!

Dir: Krzystof Kieslowski, Poland

6/10

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Brief Encounter (1945)

March 15, 2008 at 5:39 pm · Filed under It's ok

This is all frightfully terribly darling.

I shouldn’t have been liking it really. An unerotic Toff romance between frigid Celia (Johnson) and oily Trev (or Howard). With chubby hubby Fred at home doing his crosswords, the boring old fart thing.

Yes, C…C.. Celia; every Thursday she’s borrowing her book from Boots, buying toothbrushes, lunching, matinee-ing, and a naice cuppa tea before the 5.40 back. A bleedin stuck-up snob.

Or so i thought. And then she does this narration of her innermost feelings

“This can’t last, this misery can’t last. Nothing lasts really – neither happiness nor despair. Not even life lasts very long”

and a human being showed up.

But you have to duck under to get over the mockable, even risible, starchly strangulated accents (what would Americans be thinking of this i wondered) that glass you out of engaging fully.

And then from starch it goes arch. We’ve got Noel Coward inserted into Kenneth Williams while laid under Alan Bennett:

“Be kwyit Be-Rill”….”Oo’s E when E’s at ome?”…. “Go on – Oppit! …..Oppit!”…. “Now look at me Banburys all over the floor!”

And you didn’t ought to have that Rachmaninov pumping it all up with even more flippin terribly and awfully.

There’s a moment at the end when Celia almost throws herself anguished under a train – that got me jumping back for her.

To get the maximum amount of love-feeling out of this stiff upper-lipped romance you’ll have to go all decently frightfully English repressed on yourself.

Old thing.

I agree with this review.

Dir: David Lean, England

6/10

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The American Friend (1977)

March 10, 2008 at 11:37 pm · Filed under It stinks

What a pile of pants this film is.

About half way thro (an hour in) i gave up on it and started hitting fast forward to get it over with.

It starts off obtuse. Slides into convoluted. Becomes preposterous. And eventually disintegrates into ridiculous.

This film is evidence that Wim Wenders hasn’t only been making rubbish films for the last 20 years. He was doing it in 1977 too, when supposedly, he was the darling of the German New Wave in Cinema.

Even Bruno Ganz’s soft warm face couldn’t compel my sympathy.

I’m not quite so susceptible to being conned by obscure pretension as I used to be.

Whatever was lodged up Wim Wenders backside when he made this film he can keep it there.

Cus he ain’t inserting it up mine.

I feel a bit annoyed (for some reason)

Dir: Wim Wenders, Germany

2/10

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Young Adam (2003)

March 6, 2008 at 6:47 pm · Filed under Tedious

Ewan McGregor gets to do a lot of shagging in this film. And smoke loads of fags. The shagging and the smoking seem synonymous of joyless addiction.

He’s a bit too smooth. Darker and dirtier and more dangerous would have interested me more.

Tilda Swinton does her gaunt, bony-lipped, austere, androgyny thing.

Ewan has to keep poking her. For something to do. When he’s not smoking his fags or reading books, his cock comes out.

European Art House with a twist of existential ennui – that’s what you might think you were watching.

But it would have been better with riskier casting.

Cus Ewan and Tilda are ok but…..

And the directing is ok but…

It’s all cock and no balls….

Dir: David Mackenzie, Scotland

5.5/10

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The Captive (2000)

March 2, 2008 at 5:58 pm · Filed under It stinks

“I’m dining with my cunt” I thought (or hoped) I’d read Miss Ariane say. But she hadn’t. Too vulgar. (“with my aunt” it was)

Refined is what we’ll get.

“Your vagina is so beautiful when moist” says the Young Sir.

That’s better. Don’t want any cunts here. This is Proust.

We never get to see how moist she is.

There’s heady absorption in moist beautifuls. But not enough licking of moist beautifuls. Or even vaginas.

Much thinking is going on. Even when there isn’t a lot of talking going on.

And a lot of staring. And watching. And stalking. And moist silences.

The Young Sir (or Fogey) who is doing all the neurotic worrying about Miss A, looks like John McEnroe without the tantrums (or the headband)

Very prettified and dandified and being too cerebral he is (when he should be yelling his head off and smacking the heads off daffodils with his walking stick)

Young Sirs idea of sexy fun is: Lets have a game of draughts while listening to a Schubert string quartet. He’s only 19.

And then, all excited, he’s dry humping A from behind while she’s asleep (the Schubert did her in)

Instead of being a precious and poignant meditation on love, loss, longing, this is a specious and fatuous load of….. French faggots.

To speed up the boredom (it goes on for nearly 2 hours) you’ll have to be busy on your fast forward button.

And no, I don’t ever want to read Proust either.

Enough Time got Lost already.

Dir:  Chantal Akerman, France

3/10

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