Archive for August, 2008

Full Moon in Paris (1984)

August 30, 2008 at 12:21 am · Filed under Tedious ·Tagged

Pascale Ogier playing Louise (in the pic above) kills this film stone dead for me.

Baby-dolled, soppy-eyed, big-haired, stick-insect. “You appear very ethereal” says Octave (who wants to get more than friendship going with her, but she keeps kneeing him in the nuts) For ethereal, substitute squeakily ingratiating. God she’s irritating!

Octave likes explaining her to herself; which she laps us cus she’s self-obsessed like he is about all things moi. “You chose men who are beneath you, to be safe” he opines. “When somebody loves me too much, i love them less” she opines. Much opining is done in Rohmer films. Plenty plenty wordage. And verbiage. And meaningage

Her dancing in this film is unintentionally hilarious. Jerky head, jerky arms. Top half of body disconnected from bottom half. A head not in rhythm with arse and hips. Dancing like somebody who doesn’t like sex very much. Dancing like a wind-up dummy at a Gary Numan concert (no, make that Kraftwerk)

After about half an hour I’m hoping Remi (her actual boyfriend) will see sense and dump the skinny drip.

Which he does. She goes teary with self-pity. But she’s bonked some skinny kid too – so no need to feel too much sympathy for her – the silly girl.

And that’s one less Rohmer film to endure. Cus I certainly won’t be watching this ever again.

Dir: Eric Rohmer, France

4/10

And yet sad to say: Pascale Ogier died  – aged only 26 – of a heart attack soon after this film. Which makes me feel slightly guilty.

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Venus Beauty Institute (1999)

August 28, 2008 at 11:39 pm · Filed under Tedious

Fluffy pink sort of sums this film up.

Angele, a 40 year old Beautician has been dumped once too often; she’s becoming a disillusioned and cynical love-ist.

“Love is just another form of slavery” she says. So she goes for fucks instead. Fuck love.

Along comes Antoine with the beard. Who loves her he says. Loves her so much he shaves the beard off. A hunky spunky sculptor who slavishly wants her. But she doesn’t want to be wanted. Is mistrustful. And rejecting at first (What is her problem? you think) But then eventually capitulates. Becomes her own slave.

Should a bloke like me watch a film about a Parisian Beauty Salon? Could i profit from it?

No i can’t, I didn’t.

It doesn’t generalise across gender. It’s for fluffy pink women; trite preoccupations with the application of beauty. French chic that doesn’t get much under the superficial skin of things to anything warmer or heartier.

It doesn’t generalise across cultures either. The French: peculiarly conceited, typically vain, materialistically self-adoring. Parisian women:a cosmetic confection of powder, paint, and perfume.

If you’re an English bloke don’t bother to watch this. Go watch football instead.

Dir:Tonie Marshall, France

4/10

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Scenes from a Marriage (1973)

August 22, 2008 at 1:46 pm · Filed under Good ·Tagged ,

That’s Liv Ullmann staring disbelievingly out from inside those big glasses. Her husband Erland Josephson is just telling her he wants to fuck off out of their 10 year old marriage to go shack up with some 23 year old bird.

I don’t find Josephson that appealing as an actor anyway, and in this film he comes across as a pipe-smoking beardie bastardy twot. I don’t get Ullmann’s attraction towards him. In fact, I’m kind of rooting for her to get over him and move on.

Which she does. In a way. But. They seem to have to keep a few knots of entanglement tied tight together, even after they’re divorced.

“How complicated everything has to be today“. Which it does. Cus it’s Sweden in 1973. And love between men and women is riven in confused pathological psychological head-fuckery.

The film microscopes in on their claustrophobic relationship. Their looking at one another. Their close-up intense scrutiny. Talking their way into, and out of, and away from connect. Separating, but not totally breaking apart.

“We’re really getting quite human” he says at one point. Doing all that human suffering we do with one another. To suffer one another horribly consciously. All our unique failings and distinguishing flaws stretched out on the rack of words we have to say to communicate what hurts.  And how also our words can confound those humans we have supposedly, and uniquely, “loved”.

The film isn’t that great to look at; it’s drably drained of colour in that way you see in naff 70’s sitcoms. Only this is about as funny as the pain you get in your arse from sitting around too much doing all those “Deep and Meaningfuls” till 4 in the morning (it goes on for nearly 3 hours)

Think I’m gonna donate this vid to Relate. Marriage guidance counselors would be stroking their little beardies in glee.

Dir: Ingmar Bergman, Sweden

7/10

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Zatiochi: The Blind Swordsman (2003)

August 18, 2008 at 9:52 pm · Filed under Tedious

Slicing, slashing, slaying.

Samurai for sale.

Slaughter of 6 in first 5 minutes. One swift stroke. One clean strike.  Bloody spurting of spurting blood.

Another 2 hours of this to go.

Blind Swordsman masters and massacres them all. Slaughters the whole gang of baddies (about 571 cut clean thro at the last count) Boringly unbeatable.

Pretty pointless.

A silly ending: theatrical tap-dancing routine involving the whole village like out of Stomp the musical.

If you like Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns you’ll be ok with this.

Slish, slash, slosh  – your dead sonny jim.

Dir: Takeshi Kitano, Japan

5/10

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Ali Zaoua (2000)

August 16, 2008 at 12:37 am · Filed under Tedious

On the streets of Casablanca. With urchins. Pickpockets. Orphans.

Ali is killed. Hit on head with a stone.

Scarred faces. Dirty hands.The Great Unwashed.

“What do you do all day?“. Begging. Hawking. Glue-sniffing.

This is 21st century Morrocco.

“Life is a pile of shit” is gangs rallying call. “Watch out – he’ll fuck you in the arse“.

Not a lot happens, or is going to happen. “Burying Ali like a Prince“. At sea. His dream was to be a sailor. That’s about it.

A weak narrative. Dirty boys acting according to the illogical whimsicality of the Director. Improbable and without much point or purpose. It lacks any authentic motivation to drive it as a drama. The street-level social realism gets diluted and sterilised inside a fanciful adult fairy tale.

The result? A pair of washed and neatly pressed bollocks.

Dir: Nabil Ayouch, Morrocco

4.5/10

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101 Reykjavik (2000)

August 15, 2008 at 4:58 pm · Filed under Tedious

Meet Hlynur: bespectacled geek-a-like in a parka. Unemployed porn surfer slacker. “The fucking son of a dyke“. Watching him slouching about, listening to his jaded voice-over, makes for a disengaging experience.

“I don’t like people, at least, not alive“.

The tone of the film is casually sardonic, cynical. It’s cool in a cold kind of way.

“He’s a bit lonely. He hasn’t slithered over a female lately“

Difficult to warm to the guy cus he has no warmth. Difficult to like the guy cus he’s not sympathetic.

It’s a desultory disaffected existence. You fuck cus it’s cold and you’re bored; Sex isn’t about love, it’s about getting your “bollocks pickled in pussy juice“.

So i can’t be bothered with can’t be bothered Hlynur. He’s got about as much charm as a gnome inserted – pointy hat first – up your rectum.

And i didn’t buy the lesbians in love story either. Ok, lets make it all abit pervily non-Icelandic. Lets turn mother into a lessie and have her having it off with her Spanish Flamenco dance instructor. Flamenco in Iceland – yeah, that’ll get you off those cliches about geysers and elfs; make you think again about the chess-playing sobriety of the normatively adjusted Icelandic person.

Icy Iceland, full of empty; barren and banal. Cynically disaffected. Typically unappealing. That’s the anti-romantic message this film seems to be sending.

I got it. Like a cold in the head.

Dir: Baltasar Kormákur, Iceland

4.5/10

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On a Clear Day (2005)

August 14, 2008 at 10:50 am · Filed under Tedious ·Tagged , ,

Slurpy swishy soundtrack over opening credits: we’re in for a nice dollop of sentimental heart-warmery.

It’s BBC 1 on a Thursday night just after the News. Fodder for sleepy heads in need of mildly diverting sugaryness to drop into pre-bedtime cups of milky cocoa.

Brenda Blethyn: Mrs Reliable. Peter Mullan: Mr Bloody Believable (that’s him in the pic above)

A voice to die for or possibly die in has Mr Mullan. In fact i feel in need of a florid sentence or 2 to describe it’s thick Scottish gorgeousness. So here we go:

It’s like a tuba being blown into the trunk of a deeply rooted ancient oak tree. A richly resonant timbre, like maturely resined timber. Or something.

Like sap re-descending back into the grainyness of the darkest deepest woodiest wood. Or something.

A tiresome buddy movie ala The Full Monty or Brassed Off. All that mawkish middle-aged male bonding pathos and capering about being blokey blokes together fer Frank and his mediocre little gang of Glasge guyz.

But that voice. Peter Mullan can say any sentence in the English Sottish language and make it sound like it’s been hewn out of the beautifuliest Mountain Ash. He rumbles words out like dum dum notes from the bottom of a Double Bass. (Ok, I’ll shut up about his voice now)

Anyway. It’s all gonna end up Good. A film about Not Giving Up – Ever.

Brenda is gonna pass her test to be a bus driver at the 3rd and final attempt.

Pete will swim or (“swum” or “swam”) the English Channel.

The Indominability of the Human Spirit is Wonderful. Och aye.

Dir: Gaby Dellal, Scotland

4/10

10/10 for Peter Mullans tonsils

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The Wicker Man (1973)

August 11, 2008 at 12:13 pm · Filed under It's ok ·Tagged , ,

Young gels doing a spot of nymphetting. Edward Woodward was watching from Christopher Lee’s window getting his virgin knickers in a right old twist.

Some people think this film is very scary. I don’t.

This film is exceedingly silly.

A heathen island of Pagan Penis Worshipers. Hocus pocus pokery. Jiggy jig jiggery. The ejaculation of serpents. Popping frogs down for sore throats. Rolling about in the noddy.

“You’re all raving mad” says Ewar Woowar.

What he doesn’t know is they’ve set him up. The game is: let’s make a mockery out of the Christian Copper.

Shove him over the cliff Briit! (Ekland) The uptight arsewad.

“It’s time to keep your appointment with the Wicker Man” says Lord Barmpot (Christopher Lee)

Burn him burn him. Go on!

All the islanders stand around in a circle singing “Maytime is a comin, cuckoo!” with mad grins on.

A jolly jape. This human sacrifising.

I can understand why Christians would get upset.

Dir: Robin Hardy, Scotland

6/10

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Kasaba (1997)

August 9, 2008 at 11:21 am · Filed under Good ·Tagged

I was loving this film for the first 30 or 40 minutes.

Wintery small Turkish town. Mongrel dogs skulking a solitary road into nowhere. Wood pigeons cooing off behind. Kids sliding on the ice and laughing as local loony falls over. His lonely sad smile.

Snow falling against classroom window. The kids under a feather as it descends and lightly, delightfully, blowing it back up into above them. The sound of one wet sock drip dripping onto hot coal stove.

Picking of, sucking of, plums in the cemetery. The imploring look of eyes from dolorous donkey to cheeky young boy – back and forth, close-up, soul to soul. The kid’s casual cruelty in flipping tortoise upside down and running off – leaving it helplessly flailing it’s little head and legs. Long grasses swaying moodily in winds.

And so on. Sensual. Very present moment. I was there, taking it all in, hearing every last drop of sound. Immersed into the ordinary ambient peace of an existing natural world. Melancholic but evocative of sweetness. Delight in the delicate, the fragile evanescent presence of life momentarily occurring.

Not much talk or dialogue. Because much watching and listening to be done.

In the 2nd half the film is a campfire scene that goes on too long. Adults sat around breaking into peace with talking and thinking. I suppose this change of emphasis from child to adult is deliberate on Ceylan’s part. But it kind of dispells that childlike spell. The simple sensual world gets lost in darkness, lost in heady thoughts.

Better if this shadowy adult world had been cut right down.

A shorter film – poetic, evocative, lovely – was there within.

Dir: Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Turkey

7.5/10

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Exterminating Angel (1962)

August 7, 2008 at 8:37 pm · Filed under It stinks ·Tagged

Ten minutes into this film i knew it was gonna be a stupefying bore.

What did i expect? A posh dinner party for stiff bourgeois toffs.

“Odd things are happening“. They can’t leave the room. Watching them you have to suffer in apathy with them. And try to make sense from the nonsense it’s all trying to mean.

They’re joined by a flock of sheep, a little brown bear, a hand that scuttles across the floor minus it’s body. You get fragmented bits off subconscious poking in irrational dreams. “This is all so absurd”

The toffs get on one another’s nerves. They get on my nerves. I’ve soon become chronically disengaged.

I’m fast forwarding thro the last 40 minutes to get it quickly over with. Got to stop the boil on my irritation itching.

This is the worst film I’ve seen since i started this blog.

I bet Bunuel had a fat arse.

Dir: Luis Bunuel, Spain

1/10

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