Category: Movies

It’s a good thing I saw The Interpreter before I saw Layer Cake. This story of a successful drug dealer trying to get out of the business while he’s ahead is just great. It achieves this on the back of a great script and solid character acting.

I saw this at the Embarcadero theater while killing time waiting for a friend. S is here from Japan for WWDC, and he had a gift for me–a jar of AMAOU strawberry jam. Amaou is the trade name (like Sunkist) for a particularly lush juicy strain of strawberries. They are basically perfect, and once you’ve had them you can go back. S bought this jar at a famous boutique grocery (Meijiya), so you know it had to be pricy… I’m thinking at least 20 bucks. The jar has a serial number on it–they only make so many of them. Anyway, I had these incredible strawberries when I visited S. in Ikebukuro last March. So it was a great gift.

Anyway, Layer Cake was great. I walked out of the theater and had a brief chat with an old guy as we walked to the door. We were both shaking our heads, smiling, and not quite believing what we’d seen there, at the end.

Fun way to exit a movie.

4/4

Saturday had a late afternoon haircut. My stylist JB and I had a great chat whilst she sheared away my mop. I made the comment that though most Koreans go to church, I’m not like those Koreans. Her response: “You know what they call someone like you, who doesn’t fit in, in Korea? a North Korean spy.”

We had a good laugh about that.

Afterwards, I went to the Four Star for a double feature.

It’s not clear to me what the hitchhiker fans are moaning about. I mean, what did they expect a hhgttg movie to be? I think the big crime that the fans hold against it is that the movie is not what they thought it should be. Forget the fact that they don’t know what it should be. (I can hear M. retorting right now: “Funny.”)

It is not a great movie, but I enjoyed all the same because even a dim echo of Adams’ humor makes me chuckle. I liked the song of the dolphins, I liked the animations of the guide, and I liked the stop-motion animations of Ford, Arthur and Trill as they come out of Improbability Drive mode.

If you have never read the books, or heard the radio shows, go do that first before seeing the movie. 2/4 stars.

-/-

The Interpreter was a solid thriller, that had the hollywood polish on it. I don’t think it is going to stick with me though. There is something about that level of polish and constructed realism (of African geopolitics) that automatically makes me distrust it. The voice of the movie, too, is very even, with a minimum of flashy story telling devices. Appropriate for the movie, but it automatically makes me skeptical.

Still, I enjoyed it. Even though I anticipated some of the ending, the story had enough emotional punch to make the ending showdowns satisfying.

2.5/4

Saw 6ixtynin9 last night at the Four Star’s 2005 Spring Asian Movie series.

I liked Last Life in the Universe by the same director, evidently 69 is the movie he made directly before that one.

I’m ambivalent about this movie. It wasn’t a flat out dark comedy, although some parts were very funny. It’s a fascinating character study. The main character Tum is played straight up, not at all tongue in cheek. She’s alone, quiet, moral, human, pragmatic.

The plot teeters right on the edge of believability.Each event makes sense, but after a while you start to realize that it is all a touch improbable, and make the choice to believe it anyway.

The director skillfully sketches the minor characters, but because of the complexity of internal conflict that Tum is making, they seem a bit flat by comparison. However, characters like the nosy downstairs neighbor, who initially seemed to be just there for comic relief, are cleverly woven into the story.

At first I wanted to suggest that the director connect the scenes with music to make the plot flow better. But the movie doesn’t tell us whether to laugh or cry. One moment I’d be laughing, another I’d tense up in anticipation of violence or danger. No laugh track or music to tell me how to feel. I was forced to decide how to react.

The movie kept me switching shoes, from my place as an audience member where I could laugh and analyze, to being in Tum’s position, and trying to make sense of what was going on, and how much of it she was responsible for.

In the end, we are left in the just Tum, and her choices.

I was going to give this movie 2.5 stars, but after writing about it, it gets 3 out of 4 stars.

I saw just a few films this year. [SFIAAFF 2005 festival website]

Here’s a listing of what I saw.

Friday 3/11 @ Castro:

The Green Hat: very good. loved the subject matter. There are a lot more films on adultery than there are on cuckoldry.

Swades: I had a ticket for swades but was tired and decided I couldn’t make it through a 3 hour movie.

Sat 3/12 @ Kabuki:

Monkey Dance: a very good documentary about 3 kids in suburban Mass. who participate in a Vietnamese cultural dance club.

Yasmin: Great movie about Muslim woman in the U.K. Westernized, but still dealing with her traditional family, she has to decide who she is in the face of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Sun 3/12 @ Castro:

Baytong: Yasmin and Baytong would have made a great double feature. Terrorism strikes again, this time in Thailand, and a young monk leaves the monastery to care for his niece, after his sister’s death in a bombing attack. At times extremely funny, but honest and unflinching look at what it means to be Buddhist in the face of terror, and if it is possible to deal with Muslims in the same culture.

Sorceress of the New Piano: Greatshow about a brilliant woman who found a way to make a life in music outside of the traditional concert pianist. Margaret Leng Tan plays John Cage and toy pianos. Brilliant!

And, she was there at the Castro and did a performance and answered questions. So awesome.

Cutie Honey: Guilty pleasure. Live action anime. funny, over the top, as only a cartoon can be. The costumes and visual style was so Japanese. I’m definitely getting better at giving myself breaks at festivals these days.

Monday 3/14 @Kabuki:

Hana and Alice: Love Iwai Shunji’s latest. Loved it. He’s good, so good, and portraying love, young girls, and adolescence. I forgive him for ‘All About Lily ChouChou’, which I loved, but scarred me for life. Bought the DVD. See this charmer.

Music Video Asia: Not as good as in the past, but the videos from Machi, L’Arc en Ciel, and Notorious MSG made it worthwhile.

Wed 3/16 @ Kabuki:

A Fond Kiss: Ken Loach’s film. JD’s dad thought it was predictable–“How many ways does [interracial couple against parent’s will] story go?”. Still, I thought it quite good. Mostly because I identified so strongly.

Living On Tokyo Time: A pretty funny film. Okazaki is famous for his documentaries but I wanted to see more fiction. Funny film about a Japanese american guy who hooks up with a Japanese student, and gets married. It doesn’twork out of course, and watching just how foreign they are to each other is pretty hilarious. Also, footage of SF, Geary St. in the 60’s *so fun to watch*.

I snuck into another screening of Hana and Alice after to catch the ending again.

And that was it for this year!

Saw this at a matinee at the Shibuya Toei CineTower. I like the diversity of Japanese crowds. It’s not just little kids, there’s women on a break from shopping, several teenages with their boyfriends, and the just random people there by themselves, to catch the latest Miyazaki flick.

Like me.

This movie has a much different texture and feel than some of the more recent films, but it’s all Miyazaki. It feels more like Nausicaa to me, darker, more magical, less playful.

I’m looking forward to seeing this one again.

Saw this with the K-B clan at the clay theater. Dinner afterward at the Fillmore Grill. Got me excited about my trip to Peru in just a couple weeks.

MILL Valley Film Festival.
Oct 16. 615 pm. Raphael 2.

I saw this with M and C. We drove up to San Raphael early to get dinner. San Raphael is nice, touristy, and looks like a New England town.

The thing that is remarkable about Kore-eda’s movie is how real it feels. We often equate documentary style with realism, but Kore-eda has evolved his work into a pure visual experience that wires itself directly into your head. Because of his visual craft, I had surrendered my disbelief that when I finally saw an actor I recognized, I found it jarring. What is that actor doing here, in this real story?

This movie lingered with me, and a day or two later I was still sorting out the images, realised that I missed some foreshadowings, and some symbols.

Nobody Knows is told so dispassionately, so quietly, that it leaves an emotional void that you want to fill. And so you do, in a sprawling emotional journey with a young boy taking care of his 3 younger siblings, all alone.

Update: in May 2005, I bought the DVD. It includes a long essay by the director in Japanese, which now I’ll have to read sometime.

DVD

Here’s a movie I bought because it had paired the same actress and director from [@movie:My Sassy Girl].

It’s not as funny, and after fumbling around with a comedic opening, decides it is going to mostly a melodrama, maybe. It does this in a most manipulative way. But my complaint is not that I’m being manipulated–after all, that’s what I expect from a movie like this. It’s just that I resent being manipulated so clumbsily.

The director takes a lot of risks with his genre mixing, and when it works, it is a lot of fun for the audience. But the movie as a whole can suffer from it, especially when the core story hasn’t gelled yet.

You’ll be much happier turning this movie off before the very end, when she gets to the train station. The ending gimmick is awful. It is evident that the script ran out of steam a long time before the ending.

Still, the lead actor and actress are radiant, charasmatic good company, if at times a little cheesy.

Thursday night at the Castro theater. E. picked me up and we grabbed a quick slice of Marcello’s before the movie.

I’d never seen it before–oh man, so so funny.

And yes, I’ll confess that I didn’t figure out that Peter O’Toole was playing 3 roles. It great to go into a movie knowing nothing about it, and enjoy it absolutely fresh.

Great print, too.