Quick Film Review Update
Hello all! I just wanted to give a quick update on the things I have seen. I will be able to write full reviews after this semester is over but for now I am completely swamped with work and cannot afford to give up any time to reviews or lists. But I do have a lot of planned end of the Decade lists coming up and even though they will be posted after the decade is over, hopefully people will still be in the celebrating the past decade in film mood.
I just wanted to recap a few of the films I have watched recently. The only reason I have time for them is because I am taking an art class and have perfected the art and film watching multitask perfectly.
Thirst (2009): 8.3/10 Could I love Chan Wook Park anymore? No. I definitely had problems with the film; it was about 15 minutes too long, it became lost in its own violence towards the end but regained itself for its last 10 minutes and unfortunately the CGI effects distracted me rather than impress me (I cannot really blame them for this though). But overall this is one of my favorite films of the year and it reminds me that I need to see everything he has done since I am such a big Oldboy fan and I enjoyed his Three...Extremes segment as well. The two leads are pitch perfect, especially Kim Ok-Bin who takes us on a psychotic journey with her character. Very violent and very sexual (I was shocked by how far this went for an R rating) but in Chan Wook-Park's films that is almost always a good thing because he is always doing something interesting with these things. The more I think about Thirst, the more I love it. It is a different take on the story of the vampire and it basically serves as the extreme antidote to Twilight.
My Summer of Love (2004): 8.2/10 Watched this a couple of weeks ago and loved it. Emily Blunt, Nathalie Press and Paddy Considine turn in very impressive performances all around. I love the way the film takes its time and lets the boredom of summer and the desperation these two characters feel to find something to do (but in different ways) sink in. The film also does a great job of developing their relationship and letting the cracks seep in as well. My favorite scene might be the one when they are on shrooms just because it does not do any of the cliched techniques to indicate that people are on drugs, the director manages to create a 5 minute stretch where we cannot place anything concrete that is happening. It does a remarkable job of keeping things in their perspective and it could be the most impressive drug scene I have seen depicted on film. Slightly predictable but very satisfying with "La Foule" by Edith Piaf used to great effect 2 times.
Valentino: The Last Emperor (2009): 6.5/10 Interesting but ultimately underwhelming documentary about designer Valentino and the preperation for his 3 day tribute to himself. The most interesting things about this are to see what a different life it is to lead when one is rich. Its so strange how different a world it is. It is all so self congratulatory. The relationship between Valentino and his one time partner and 50 year business partner Giancarlo Giamatti who puts up with all of his crap and stands by him with patience still after 50 years is extremely fascinating. The designer clearly does not like being filmed for this documentary and those moments when we can see how frustrated he is with his decision to allow himself to be filmed.
Good Hair (2009): 7/10 Not a perfect documentary but by all means but a fascinating (my one adjective used to describe documentaries) one about the black hair industry. The standards set for black women in the media to have weaves is ridiculous and we learn in the film how much money is made in the hair industry with African Americans a year (an astounding 9 billion dollars), we learn that the relaxer constantly being put in their hair and in children's hair is extremely dangerous, African Americans are not even making any of this money because the industry is completely controlled by the Asian market. Weaves cost at the very least 1 thousand dollars and a lot more to maintain. The hair itself is coming from India, from women who sacrifice their hair as part of a religious ritual which symbolically represents their sacrifice of vanity. Hair is worth more than gold in India (literally) and it is not entirely uncommon for women who have their hair cut off while they are sleeping which then ends up on someone's head in the States. Apparently it is not an important enough crime their to actually put any effort into stopping women's hair from being involuntarily sheared from them. We also get to see a hair cutting contest which takes place in Atlanta and are introduced to some pretty eccentric figures. Chris Rock produced this film and is the person doing the interviews and is in every scene. Normally I would hate this but Chris Rock is a performer and he clearly cares about the issue and he knows how to make a scene more entertaining without having the issue lose its credibility. He slips into Michael Moore territory a couple of times which becomes annoying but he mainly stays away from these cheap thrills and sticks to the interviews. I must admit he does have a very condescending and amused look on his face a lot of the time but I don't really blame him since our I had a lot of the same looks on my face as I watched this. The film does not make African American women look good at all (outside of one interior decorator who I wish had much more time in the film) as we see how much of a priority their hair is and how so much money needs to be spent on it which should be going towards their children. I wish the film had taken the blame more off of them (although not entirely because it is very much their fault) and more on societies expectations of what black women's hair should look like and our very narrow and very white standards of what attractive is. They definitely explore this and put the blame on society but unfortunately women come off as very superficial on this (unfortunately it is not spun out of context so it is actually a pretty accurate representation of what is going on) because they have segments of stupid men talking about how ridiculous women are, especially Ice-T who talks about tits the whole time and Al Sharpton who is a fucking moron and a hypocrite. And of course, we meet the hilarious Jason Griggers who...I can't even talk about him, he just destroyed me. Despite the sexism, occasional Moore tactics and other minor quibbles, Good Hair is one of the most interesting documentaries I have seen because of how well is explores a subject I had known nothing about.
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009): 5.2/10 I was so adament about not watching this. I am so against this film. But I make my boyfriend watch things from time to time and it was between this and Passion of the Christ for what he was intrigued on seeing at the moment and since I told him I refused to watch the latter, I would suffer through the former. There are a few brilliant moments of completely whacked out humor in this. I wish the whole thing decided to go batshit crazy because then we would have something here. The film has a terrible screenplay with rushed voice over narration to convey the very limited character development going on. It has a minimal set up and a paper thin plot that can be described in 3 sentences. And the rest is filled with nice effects of giant food and visual feasts galore. Its all nice and good but the film feels lazy. It half works though. And here is why. The film has a very high energy and pace that takes away the feeling of laziness that the script is giving off. The line delivery here by the voice actors is pretty fantastic and I laughed quite a few times because of the way things were being said (it reminded me a little of The Emperor's New Groove in that way). The film also does a very nice job of creating laughs out of facial expressions, which frankly is not done enough these days. While I enjoyed the film much more than I expected because of how successful it was in those areas, if the film had been strong enough in the script area to match the creativity going on in the voice acting, effects and occasional bizarre humor, this would have been a great film.
I just wanted to recap a few of the films I have watched recently. The only reason I have time for them is because I am taking an art class and have perfected the art and film watching multitask perfectly.
Thirst (2009): 8.3/10 Could I love Chan Wook Park anymore? No. I definitely had problems with the film; it was about 15 minutes too long, it became lost in its own violence towards the end but regained itself for its last 10 minutes and unfortunately the CGI effects distracted me rather than impress me (I cannot really blame them for this though). But overall this is one of my favorite films of the year and it reminds me that I need to see everything he has done since I am such a big Oldboy fan and I enjoyed his Three...Extremes segment as well. The two leads are pitch perfect, especially Kim Ok-Bin who takes us on a psychotic journey with her character. Very violent and very sexual (I was shocked by how far this went for an R rating) but in Chan Wook-Park's films that is almost always a good thing because he is always doing something interesting with these things. The more I think about Thirst, the more I love it. It is a different take on the story of the vampire and it basically serves as the extreme antidote to Twilight.
My Summer of Love (2004): 8.2/10 Watched this a couple of weeks ago and loved it. Emily Blunt, Nathalie Press and Paddy Considine turn in very impressive performances all around. I love the way the film takes its time and lets the boredom of summer and the desperation these two characters feel to find something to do (but in different ways) sink in. The film also does a great job of developing their relationship and letting the cracks seep in as well. My favorite scene might be the one when they are on shrooms just because it does not do any of the cliched techniques to indicate that people are on drugs, the director manages to create a 5 minute stretch where we cannot place anything concrete that is happening. It does a remarkable job of keeping things in their perspective and it could be the most impressive drug scene I have seen depicted on film. Slightly predictable but very satisfying with "La Foule" by Edith Piaf used to great effect 2 times.
Valentino: The Last Emperor (2009): 6.5/10 Interesting but ultimately underwhelming documentary about designer Valentino and the preperation for his 3 day tribute to himself. The most interesting things about this are to see what a different life it is to lead when one is rich. Its so strange how different a world it is. It is all so self congratulatory. The relationship between Valentino and his one time partner and 50 year business partner Giancarlo Giamatti who puts up with all of his crap and stands by him with patience still after 50 years is extremely fascinating. The designer clearly does not like being filmed for this documentary and those moments when we can see how frustrated he is with his decision to allow himself to be filmed.
Good Hair (2009): 7/10 Not a perfect documentary but by all means but a fascinating (my one adjective used to describe documentaries) one about the black hair industry. The standards set for black women in the media to have weaves is ridiculous and we learn in the film how much money is made in the hair industry with African Americans a year (an astounding 9 billion dollars), we learn that the relaxer constantly being put in their hair and in children's hair is extremely dangerous, African Americans are not even making any of this money because the industry is completely controlled by the Asian market. Weaves cost at the very least 1 thousand dollars and a lot more to maintain. The hair itself is coming from India, from women who sacrifice their hair as part of a religious ritual which symbolically represents their sacrifice of vanity. Hair is worth more than gold in India (literally) and it is not entirely uncommon for women who have their hair cut off while they are sleeping which then ends up on someone's head in the States. Apparently it is not an important enough crime their to actually put any effort into stopping women's hair from being involuntarily sheared from them. We also get to see a hair cutting contest which takes place in Atlanta and are introduced to some pretty eccentric figures. Chris Rock produced this film and is the person doing the interviews and is in every scene. Normally I would hate this but Chris Rock is a performer and he clearly cares about the issue and he knows how to make a scene more entertaining without having the issue lose its credibility. He slips into Michael Moore territory a couple of times which becomes annoying but he mainly stays away from these cheap thrills and sticks to the interviews. I must admit he does have a very condescending and amused look on his face a lot of the time but I don't really blame him since our I had a lot of the same looks on my face as I watched this. The film does not make African American women look good at all (outside of one interior decorator who I wish had much more time in the film) as we see how much of a priority their hair is and how so much money needs to be spent on it which should be going towards their children. I wish the film had taken the blame more off of them (although not entirely because it is very much their fault) and more on societies expectations of what black women's hair should look like and our very narrow and very white standards of what attractive is. They definitely explore this and put the blame on society but unfortunately women come off as very superficial on this (unfortunately it is not spun out of context so it is actually a pretty accurate representation of what is going on) because they have segments of stupid men talking about how ridiculous women are, especially Ice-T who talks about tits the whole time and Al Sharpton who is a fucking moron and a hypocrite. And of course, we meet the hilarious Jason Griggers who...I can't even talk about him, he just destroyed me. Despite the sexism, occasional Moore tactics and other minor quibbles, Good Hair is one of the most interesting documentaries I have seen because of how well is explores a subject I had known nothing about.
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009): 5.2/10 I was so adament about not watching this. I am so against this film. But I make my boyfriend watch things from time to time and it was between this and Passion of the Christ for what he was intrigued on seeing at the moment and since I told him I refused to watch the latter, I would suffer through the former. There are a few brilliant moments of completely whacked out humor in this. I wish the whole thing decided to go batshit crazy because then we would have something here. The film has a terrible screenplay with rushed voice over narration to convey the very limited character development going on. It has a minimal set up and a paper thin plot that can be described in 3 sentences. And the rest is filled with nice effects of giant food and visual feasts galore. Its all nice and good but the film feels lazy. It half works though. And here is why. The film has a very high energy and pace that takes away the feeling of laziness that the script is giving off. The line delivery here by the voice actors is pretty fantastic and I laughed quite a few times because of the way things were being said (it reminded me a little of The Emperor's New Groove in that way). The film also does a very nice job of creating laughs out of facial expressions, which frankly is not done enough these days. While I enjoyed the film much more than I expected because of how successful it was in those areas, if the film had been strong enough in the script area to match the creativity going on in the voice acting, effects and occasional bizarre humor, this would have been a great film.
Film & TV on DVD
I am patiently waiting for "Thirst" to go off the 'short wait" list on netflix. I too am a massive fan of Park's and Old Boy juts gets better with each screening.
Good luck with the intensive study!
Cinema Enthusiast
Thoughts from a Cinephile
Thoughts from a TV Watcher