3-Iron (2004, Kim Ki-duk, South Korea): 73
I've seen minimilistic performances before, but how does one create an hour and a half long film where the main protaganist says not a single word - and his leading lady utters but one solitary line just before the credits roll? Well, I'm not sure, but here it is. The story of a young man who breaks into peoples homes - after making sure they are away, through the ruse of phony take-out flyers on their doors - but never steals anything. He sits around, watching TV, eats some food (okay, I suppose technically, that is stealing), takes pictures of himself in front of family portraits and then cleans up after himself - even doing these people's laundrey before leaving. The story goes from there, including an abused wife, who decides to go along with this bizzare criminal, in order to escape her loveless marriage.
A melodic, pantomine of romance ensues, never once dropping into the gooey bucket of sentimental bullshit so laden in romantic movies. Maybe not up to the grand level of the master of malaise and minimalistic romantic encounters, Taiwan's Tsai Ming-liang, but still a strongly provocative little film - much moreso than Kim's last film, the steeply overrated Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring - as well as a much-needed creative boon for the seemingly stagnating, yet highly praised, New Korean Cinema.
- May 27, 2005
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10 on Ten (2004, Abbas Kiarostami, Iran): 53
Abbas Kiarostami, considered by many to be the greatest filmmaker working today (and I myself would put him in the top five), has always been an Auteur of powerful realism, but with his last few films, he has gone even further over to the side of über-realism. In his Ten, from 2002, Kiarostami put two cameras on the dashboard of a car - one pointed at the driver, one pointed at the passenger - and went about his way creating one of the most spectacularly invasive, yet powerfully moving films of his (or any) career.
What 10 on Ten is, is basically what Kiarostami's journal might look like if it had come to life and told its own story. With a camera stationed on the passenger side of his SUV, Kiarostami traverses the mountainous dirt terrain of his 1997 Masterpiece, Taste of Cherry, and, divided into ten chapters - just like his previous Ten, begins to run a monologue of what film is, what film should be and what film one day will be.
Unfortunately, this seems more diatribe than discussion a lot of the time, but Kiarostami still manages to give us an enthusiastic look into his mind - but I still hope for him to go back to films such as Ten or The Wind Will Carry Us, and leave the film lectures to his books (which I think might be much more interesting than this was).
- January 4, 2005
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Tim Burton's Corpse Bride (Tim Burton & Mike Johnson, 2005): 48
With all the charm of any other Tim Burton film - which is to say, not much at all. Sure, his films can dazzle, but rarely do they go any deeper than that (Ed Wood is the lone example). Burton doesn't make bad films, just barely adequate ones. Pretty ones - in a gloomy way - but almost never deep ones. This animated marvel (and visually it is a technical marvel) is no different. With the exception of a single scene - the scat skull underworld jazz number - there is nothing in this film to really go all that ga ga or goo goo over, like a lot of the critics seem to be doing. Pleasant and somewhat entertaining, with touches of quirk, and it probably is better than any Disney cartoon out there (but then what isn't?), but still, in the end, just barely adequate. One question though - Why doesn't the animated/puppeted Johnny Depp seem to want the dead girl? She's kind of hot. Did I just write that? I suppose I did. Oh well, she is dammit.
- September 24, 2005
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A Tout de Suite (2004, Benoit Jacquot, France): 78
When one is writing in a belletristic manner, one assumes that the other knows as much as one knows, and therefore no explanation beyond aesthetic poetry is needed. When one is speaking belletristically of another belletristric artist, one tends to drop words such as Bressonian, and one gets away with such, but here is another word dropping for you - Jacquotian. For Benoit Jacquot - with such brilliant meditative works as Disenchanted and A Single Girl packed into his oeuvre - may be just as valid a verb as Robert Bresson when describing a film such as A Tout de Suite.
Although perhaps not quite the refulgent auteur Bresson was, Jacquot weaves together his own melancholy verse in probably a more poetic manner than just about anyone out there today. A director of belles-lettres, Jacquot makes every breath seem like the very last possible breath his characters may ever take. When one speaks in a belletristic manner, one worries not of the other understanding one, one just is.
- July 11, 2005
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Travellers & Magicians (2003, Khyentse Norbu, Bhutan): 43
Such a distant film, but one steeped in archetypical storytelling - From the nation rumoured to have just a single traffic light, this film, directed by an actual Buddhist Rinpoche, weaves the modern-day story of a young man trying to escape his rural boredom for the "golden shores" of America with a fellow traveller's out-of-time tale of loss, lust, murder and Karmic revenge - Not much on originality or creativity (almost every nation has played these parts in book, music and/or cinema at one time or another), and not one full of much cinematic flourish either (plain and simple like the Buddhist lifestyle maybe?), but not a bad little film, at least when telling the "older" story of pain and passion (the "newer" tale of heading off for other lands ends up being just mere passage to the mediocrely greater of this split movie) - In the end, a blandish yet potentially eager morality tale is set into motion, and even we the audience are not let in on the outcome, but instead are only winked at with sly playfulness.
- March 9, 2005
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War of the Worlds (2005, Steven Spielberg, USA): 51
How many times can the great & powerful smile of Tom Cruise get him out of death-defying situations in a single movie? According to Steven Spielberg, that answer would be twelve - but then I suppose that is what an action-adventure movie is meant to do. All-in-all not a bad film - the action sequences are fun in that popcorn kind of way (especially a snake-like alien probe tensely searching for the hidden Cruise and company).
It is, of course, just as antiseptically average as any other Post-Raiders Spielberg film and falls flat on its own ass in the extremely unclimactic climax and Cruise is as staid and boring as always - being completely out-acted by eleven year old Dakota Fanning - but hey, at least what little we see of the actual aliens is interestingly creepy and the action is fun to watch - if not very original in its unravelling - so stop your damn complaining...oh yeah, that was me wasn't it!?
- July 2, 2005
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White Noise (2005, Geoffrey Sax, USA): 5
C'mon, you know I didn't really expect that much out of this film, but at least scare me a little bit. This is supposed to be a horror film people, c'mon. Scare me at least one time, at least once - even if it's just a little stupid moment, scare me dammit!! Sure, this isn't The Exorcist, this isn't Night of the Living Dead, this isn't Rosemary's Baby, but still, c'mon!! Even the ridiculous The Grudge made me jump once. C'mon, just once, I'm begging you - Scare Me !!! Scare Me !!!!!!!!
Okay, maybe that was more a pissed off rant than an actual intellegent critique of the film, but hey, you get what you pay for - and speaking of that, I want my money back (Regal Theatres won't give me press privileges like other smaller theatres do, so I'm already mad at them). Have I mentioned that I want my money back!? A check will do.
- January 11, 2005
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