Summer Marathon Blogging Indefinitely Postponed

It dawned on me last night that this whole vacation blog-a-thon thing was a horrible idea. It's preventing me from relaxing because I feel like I have to carve out time to write up each movie I watch... and as a result the posts have been rushed and virtually devoid of any insight. I apologize for that. Rather than continue writing a bunch of half-assed posts just because I said I would, I am just going to stop and try to enjoy my vacation. I may try to do a roundup at the end, we'll see. Don't hold your breath.

Journey Through the Past will continue, however.

Sugar & Spice

I never said they'd all be pretentious art films. I saw this goofy comedy about cheerleaders robbing a bank way back in 2001 when it was in theaters, and considering it was 9 years ago I had a pretty clear memory of the whole thing. It's no great shakes, but a little sharper a quirkier than this kind of bullshit has any right to be, and PS I was drunk when I agreed to watch it this time. I'm on vacation, after all.

Pickpocket

Robert Bresson's Pickpocket reminds me of another film of his, A Man Escaped, in the way it simply but precisely shows a man set himself to a task and accomplish it. In this case, we see the tricks of the trade of a pickpocket (who would have guessed?), and for me the high points of the film where when the main character set about his business. Much like A Man Escaped, I suspect that there is a religious/moral layer to this film that I'm not fully grasping because of my relative ignorance of Judeo-Christian religion and its imagery. No worries, as I think the films works on its surface levels even if I'm not grasping any potential allegory.

Syndromes and a Century

Told you I planned on watching this one. I already mentioned it in my Blissfully Yours post, so I'm not sure what else to say other than to briefly mention the films structure. The film is split into two halves, one set at a hospital in the countryside, the other set at a hospital in the city. Each half involves some of the same characters involved in similar situations, almost as if the two halves are parallel universes. This leads to a lot of interesting instances of doubling; scenes or images in each half that seem to echo each other... but I can't figure out what, if anything, it's all supposed to mean. This is the 3rd time I've watched Syndromes and a Century, and I find it endlessly fascinating, enigmatic, mysterious. In a rational sense, I'm not sure that the film "means" anything (although I could throw out some theories), and I don't think it needs to. Its more of a meditation of life in the city vs life in the country (or maybe even more generally nature vs technology) and an evocation of a weird, haunting mood.

Boyfriends & Girlfriends

Another filmmaker I've been watching a lot of is Eric Rohmer, who passed away earlier this year. He was a director associated with the French New Wave, who made films from the early 60's all the way up to his death. They remind me of the kind of films I love that Richard Linklater sometimes makes: low-stakes films about ordinary people having ordinary problems, told with deep insight and a delicate touch. From what I've seen, a typical Rohmer film is about a small group of people hanging out, talking about life and other ordinary crap, usually being faced with some sort of minor moral or emotional quandary. The films never tip over into heavy-drama or self-seriousness, they are sweet and playful, and kind of perfect.

Boyfriends & Girlfriends is primarily about Blanche, who finds herself in a tricky situation when her best friend announces that she's thinking of leaving her boyfriend. Blanche and the boyfriend start to sense a real connection together, and the friend has seemingly given Blanche her blessing, but something still doesn't sit right with Blanche. Part of the joy of a Rohmer film is the quiet, unforced way the romantic entanglements become wildly complex before anyone has realized what is going on, only to resolve themselves in a warm, humanist manner rather than resorting to false drama. Boyfriends & Girlfriends builds itself to a sublime climax in which Blanche and her friend make confessions to each other expecting to hurt the other's feelings, each thinking the other is talking about a different person. It's an old comedic setup, the conversation where every sentence can be taken two ways, but its handled with such grace and subtlety by Rohmer and the actresses that the audience doesn't even realize what is going on until the conversation has become wonderfully confusing for both participants.

Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

I have been meaning to see this 1975 film, I believe considered something of a Feminist classic, by Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman for a long time. The description, believe it or not, was irresistible to me: it's a 3 hour 20 minute film about a single mother who works as a prostitute, where most of the "action" consists of her daily routines. Meaning that the film treats us to extended, often single-take sequences of Jeanne cleaning, shopping, preparing meals, bathing, and so on.

Obviously, this is not a film for all tastes, but for those adventurous filmgoers out there, I would say its worth the time commitment. The first half, or so, painstakingly details Jeanne's seemingly obsessive daily routine; the second half shows small fissures opening up under her impeccable surface, culminating in... when, something rather major, but its not the kind of thing I would dream of spoiling, given how minimalist the film is.

I'm not sure if the film's style of leaving in all the mundane details of everyday life was an attempt at realism, but the effect is almost the opposite. Because of its extreme "banality" I was kind of hyper-aware of the fact that I was watching a film, and watching an actress perform all sorts of ordinary, boring tasks at great length. I don't mean that as a criticism, per se, but Jeanne never felt like a character to me, despite Akerman's detailed portrait of her life, so much as a film subject.

Blissfully Yours

One filmmaker I've been familiarizing myself with lately is Apichatpong Weerasethakul (but you can call him "Joe"), a true one-of-a-kind original from Thailand. I think the best description I've heard of his films was by the AV Club, who said something to the effect that they "redefine inaccessible." On the one hand, they are clear and direct, based usually in everyday human interaction, sometimes even a little funny and charming. On the other hand, they are completely unpredictable and strange, and mysterious. You can follow them moment by moment with little trouble, but its never clear how everything connects or what any of it means. In a completely serene, deadpan, down-to-Earth way, his films are almost works of surrealism.

I've become obsessed with his Syndromes and a Century (which I will likely be watching again on my vacation), and though none of his other films I've seen have matched that one in obscure fascination, they've all been worthwhile. Blissfully Yours seems to have no greater aim than to capture the feeling of laying out in the woods on a Spring afternoon with a loved one. And literally shows that, at length, with minimal interruptions of "plot" or any such nonsense. It's slowly paced and deliberately uneventful to such a degree that I can't see the majority of folks appreciating a film like this. But it's done with such a sense of time and place, and such an offbeat sensibility, that cinephiles owe it to themselves to try him out.

As boring as I'm making his film's sound, there's a weird playfulness about them. One detail about Blissfully Yours that threw me for a loop and made me laugh out loud is that the opening credits don't begin until about 45 minutes into the film, abruptly, in the middle of a lengthy scene of two characters driving out to the middle of nowhere.

Code Unknown

So, great job, me. My first official vacation, and for reasons I will not get into, I only managed to watch one movie for my marathon. Which, you know, is about the same number of movies I have time to watch on a work night. Again, I won't spell out the whole obnoxious story as to why I only watched one, but suffice t to say that I did also see about half of Alain Resnais's Mon Oncle D'Amerique and will probably never get to see the rest of it.

Code Unknown is classic Michael Haneke: precise, provocative, elliptical. Each sequence of the film begins and ends abruptly, each one filmed in one take. (One clever sequence appears to have a bunch of cuts, but then the camera pulls back and reveals that it's a movie that some of the characters are watching). It tells several intersecting stories of different people in Paris, touching on issues of miscommunication, immigration, racism and homelessness. It sounds a bit like Crash, but really it is sort of the anti-Crash in the way it refuses to generate any false drama, or to explicate the connection between all the different scenarios. If I was left scratching my head a little bit as to some of the details of the story, I think that was Haneke's intent; his long take, sometimes deep-focus style uses the margins of the frame to sneak in important details, and I'm not sure I caught all of them. I'm sure that's alienating to some viewings, but I like the way that Haneke tries to force the audience to be as active in its participation as possible. It's not as mysterious as Haneke's Cache, but I think does warrant another viewing some day to grasp the full picture.

Oasis

Given my admittedly limited knowledge of Korean cinema, it seems to me that, in general, their filmmakers aren't afraid to go boldly melodramatic, and aren't often restrained by good taste. Oasis is about, get this, a romantic affair between a retarded man and a woman with cerebral palsy. It is... exactly as uncomfortable and button-pushing as it sounds, as manipulative of a tear-jerker as any Patch Adams type crap. On that level, I kind of hated it. On the other hand, I had to admire its unflinching, sometimes graphic take on the material. It doesn't pull any punches, unlike Patch Adams type crap. So let's call it a draw.

Side note: this has to be the 4th or 5th apparently major Korean film by an apparently major Korean filmmaker I've seen that deals, at least in passing, with a grown-up retarded man who wanders around on his own and can't keep himself out of trouble, and is mistreated by authorities. Is this some sort of prominent social issue in Korea? Or an overused cliche in their fiction? Or have I just coincidentally seen the only 4 or 5 Korean films about this subject?

Notre Musique

Last year I made a concerted effort to familiarize myself with the early works of Jean-Luc Godard. I didn't see everything, but I saw enough to get a sense of how I felt about him. More often than not, I could appreciate some of what he was trying to do, and admire his skill, but did not enjoy his sometimes scolding, didactic tone. I also felt like I didn't grasp all of his political allusions, not having lived in France in the 60's (considering I wasn't even born then).

I've slowed down my progress, but I'm still working my way through some of his better known films, and figured it was high time I saw something of his that was relatively recent. Notre Musique doesn't feel a whole lot different from the 60's movies I saw, except maybe more serene. That means some of the same problems: characters speaking in slogans instead of having conversations, holier-than-thou political condemnation, a dense layer of references and allusions that's hard to sort out. But his deft skill is still apparent as ever, and he still knows how to wow with his technique, and provoke with some of his philosophical inquiries. I think I've made peace with the fact that I'm never going to love JLG the way many cinephiles do, but there's no denying that he's a unique talent whose work is worth exploring.

Get Him to the Greek

I wasn't crazy about Forgetting Sarah Marshall, which this is a semi-sequel to, although it's funny enough. If I like Get Him to the Greek at least marginally more, its because of the chemistry between Jonah Hill and Russell Brand, and because it irons out some of the flaws from the first film. Sarah Marshall's biggest flaw was that it gave its female leads approximately none of the funny material, and probably 90% of the obnoxious romcom idiot-plot bullshit. You ended up hating them both by the end, and I for one could not give a shit if the boy and girl got together. Greek solves this problem by shuffling the female characters far, far off to the sidelines to focus on the boys. Yeah, the Apatow family still hasn't figured out how to write funny, interesting female characters, but at least they seem aware of that flaw this time.

(Sidenote: Carla Gallo, a pretty, funny actress that I'll always fondly remember from TV's Undeclared, is again trotted out for another humiliating cameo, after appearing as the toe-sucking girl in 40 Year Old Virgin, the period blood girl in Superbad, and the gag-me girl in Sarah Marshall. I won't say what happens here, but as opposed to the Virgin and Superbad scenes, it's not very funny, and makes me wonder why they keep bringing her in to these movies just to debase her. I'll give her credit for her balls, but they need to give her a real role.)

Nicholas Stoller really isn't much of a director yet; there's too much awkwardness and too many scenes with potentially funny ideas that can't seem to find the right pace or punchline. The film starts with a poorly constructed montage that's supposed to explain to the audience the career of Aldous Snow, but mostly mistimes a bunch of jokes in the service of clumsy exposition. A better film would have skipped this and figured a way to work it into the story.

But. BUT! Stoller is showing serious signs of improvement. The comedic centerpiece of this film, involving Hill unknowingly smoking a bizarre drug cocktail known as a "Jeffrey," builds wonderfully in comic intensity until it has the whole audience rolling in the aisles. And, surprisingly, the whole sequence is stolen from Hill and Brand by none other than Sean "Diddy" Combs.

Ran

I hadn't seen this film, Kurosawa's final samurai epic, in a good 5 years, so I jumped chance to see it on the big screen when I found out that E-Street Cinema was doing a revival this weekend. I had enjoyed it back when I had originally seen it, but that was before I had really explored Kurosawa, and I wondered how it would play now with a better knowledge of his filmography.

I don't consider it one of his best, but it's definitely a must-see. My main problems have to do with story and structure. It's loosely based on Shakespeare's King Lear, which I must admit, I've never read or seen performed. The plot is a little dense and hard to follow at times, regarding an aging warlord who leaves his kingdom to his eldest son and inadvertently sets off a power-struggle. Part of the problem is that Kurosawa does little to distinguish the warlord's sons, except to color code them so that the viewers can tell their armies apart. Otherwise, it's hard to tell who's conspiring against who and for what reasons. The focus is on the warlord for much of the film, but in the middle numerous subplots emerge and distract from the main narrative, and then in the finale the warlord seems to drift into the background. So it's a little hard to get too invested. Many scenes are interesting in and of themselves, but the characters and relationships never seem as well developed as they should be because of the shifting focus.

The reason this is a must see is because Kurosawa brings the spectacle. Besides the constant presence of bright primary colors and lots of precise, eye-drawing framing and camera movement, Kurosawa stages some epic battle scenes that will make your eyes bug out. An attack on the warlord's castle about an hour into the film is especially powerful. Kurosawa drops out the dialogue and sound effects and fills the soundtrack with haunting, mournful music, as a seemingly infinite number of men are cut down by swords and filled with arrows, and the entire stronghold drowns in blood.

From Beyond the Grave

A British anthology horror movie, not dissimilar from Tales From the Crypt and Vault of Horror. This one has Peter Cushing running an antique shop, where strange, supernatural fates befall the customers who try to screw him over or rob him or whatever. The best story is a more comedic one where a dude is followed around by an "elemental," a nasty little invisible creature that becomes very territorial. Some decent atmosphere, nice production design, and excellent cast (also including David Warner and Donald Pleasance) make From Beyond the Grave a decent one of these movies, but far from the best.