Jayclops' musings on his favorite pasttime and escape.
The horrible and the miserable.
May 21, 2007Annie Hall - (Woody Allen, 1977)
Alvy Singer (Woody Allen) and Annie Hall (Diane Keaton) are lined up in a theatre to watch a documentary about the Nazi occupation. It promises to be a full-packed theater because the line is long and the least you would want is some smart-ass media teacher talking about Fellini’s ‘self-indulgent’ filmmaking to Marshall MacLuhan’s theory of hot-medium-cool-medium. You’d swear you could smash a pile of horseshit to shut the blabbermouth up and pull out a fake MacLuhan hiding from a tarp and let the theorist say “you know nothing about me!”
That is actually what happens, which makes it really funny. Annie Hall is made up of these moments that will just make you shake your head at how brilliant Allen has written this simple and humane comedy about the relationships and individual differences. This is a kind of film about characters, which could only mean it will rely on good writing – and Mr. Allen is one talented writer. Once you see Alvy talking about life in the opening monologue, it sucks you in up to that scene where they parted in the street.
Diane Keaton, who won an Oscar for her role is a natural charmer – her emotions are raw and she is equally matched by Allen himself. I really liked that scene where they first met after a tennis match. Annie asks Alvie if he has a ride and he says no, and asks if Annie needs a ride. Annie says she has a car and Alvy says it’s weird for her to be asking that because he thought she would want a ride with Alvy.
Mr. Allen wants us to see that life sucks – how about categorizing people into the miserable and the horrible, relationships are difficult to get through but you must want more of it – more of love, more life – because that’s just the way it is. It’s a simple thesis actually but Allen wants us to see the beauty in it.
Along came Spidey.
May 18, 2007Spider-man 3 - (Sam Raimi, 2007)
Black is back. Emo is too. Suddenly it’s cool to put eyeliner for guys. Jazz is suddenly pop. The kids would be donning their black outfits soon or start listening to Buble or Cullum or Norah Jones. Lest we forget, this is Spidey’s third adventure, which explains the necessity to show puzzle pieces of the two previous films as the opening credits roll. Enter Sandman. Unlike Doc Oc this villain proves much harder for Spidey to get his hands on.
Peter disses MJ. He gets to save another damsel in the person of Gwen Stacey and gets to wallow in his iconic stature and gets a kiss — not just any other kiss but the trademark MJ-Peter upside down kiss. The French thing didn’t work out and they broke up. Peter learns the real killer of Uncle Ben is Flint Marko which happens to be Sandman himself. New guy Eddie Brock steals show from Peter and gets to kiss J.K. Simmons ass. Symbiote devours him, so did revenge.
Let's skip the usual superhero story arc because Sam Raimi surely made one hell of an undertone with this one. It is rumored that this will be the last franchise he'll be directing, even Maguire who seemed to be comfy with the role and undaunted by possible career demise, made it look as if this part was his last show. From the obvious publicity stunt — the deletion of a supposed lip-lock between Harry and Peter — there was sure something fishy going around. And then I finally saw it.
It's written everywhere. In tabloid headlines: "Spider-man shows true colors". In a seemingly innocent and evasive reply to an equally innocent question — MJ: What's up with you and Harry?" Peter: "It's complicated." To Harry's wide beaming (all-teeth) smiles and Peter's longing gazes to the buddy-buddy theatrics. Peter disses MJ alright, but not for Gwen, who looks stunning by the way with the now-meatier Bryce Dallas Howard. Okay, I'm just playing it, but I think I heard a couple of sneers from my back so it's not just me.
This is not to say I totally detested it, Spider-man 3 is actually more fun and hipper than the previous two, but I don't think it quite achieve, at least technically, what the previous one did. Topher Grace of That 70's Show fame who was a charmer in In Good Company, plays Eddie Brock who falls prey to the remnants of symbiote and becomes the Venom. Thomas Haden Church who was brilliant in Sideways, plays Sandman. But then there's little much to do with their characters.
But for what it's worth, this one can stand on its own — it doesn't have to prove anything grand. It's a good thing I didn't bring popcorn or else I would've have spill it from the Neanderthal-like manners of the person who sat behind me (I reckon it was some kid) who kept pushing the seat. My viewing was punctuated with intermittent jerks and I could've said. "What's wrong with your fucking feet? You want me to butcher them and throw them up front?" Then I remember it was Spider-man I was watching, not 300.
Riding the bomb.
May 16, 2007Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb - (Stanley Kubrick, 1964)
What will happen if an Air Force general suddenly went berserk and order his B-52 bombers to bomb the Soviet Union with nuclear missiles, and the special code to abort the mission is lost forever because he decided to kill himself after a long lecture that the whole process of fluoridation on water is a part of a Communist plot to annihilate the right-wing idealists? A recipe for doomsday.
Much to the horror of the British attaché sent to dissuade the deranged general, he has to call Col. Turgidson in the Pentagon, the air-force top level official who seems to be having a grand time breaking bad news after bad news to the flared-up US president Muffley. While the president and all his men are practically pissing in their pants, one of his advisers Dr. Strangelove reveals that the Russians have a ‘doomsday device’ which would be happy to go off once the Soviet is bombed. The president negotiates with President Dimitri who sounds the least fazed by the ‘urgency’ of the matter. He is annoyed that the US President has disturbed him in his sleep.
When Col. Turgidson and the Russian ambassador, who was secretly taking photographs of the War Room, lost their control with each other, the President reprimands, “You can’t fight in the War Room!” Some of the funniest scenes are those of the British attaché who can’t seem to make the call because he’s held at gunpoint, he has to use his loose change on a public telephone and the operator keeps bitching that she can’t allow a collect call to the Pentagon; and Dr. Strangelove himself who can’t control his bionic hand from doing a Hitler salute. Strangelove is played by Peter Sellers who also interestingly happens to play the President and the British officer.
The whole point is clearly to make a satire out of the military adventurism and the futility of diplomacy at the behest of power. But even though scene after scene seems to be full of this satirical tone, it can actually be terrifying and dangerous, whichever way you look at it. The concluding scenes are funny and terrifying at the same time. Believe me, you have to actually see it.
Hello, stranger.
May 15, 2007Closer (Mike Nichols, 2004)
I watched Closer for the second time over the weekend. Natalie Portman seems to get better with the second viewing. But it’s not only the famous striptease, with the very lucky Clive Owen, that I liked about it. This is one movie that I appreciated because of Patrick Marber’s screenplay — one that displays the British’s wit and sardonic humor.
In the striptease scene, Alice (Portman) says, “lying is the most fun a girl can have without taking her clothes off, but it’s better if you do.” (Recently, the phrases find themselves as titles to two tracks to Panic! at the Disco’s A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out album.) When her boyfriend, the childish Dan (Jude Law) confesses to have fallen out of love with her and says sorry to have taken such a long time, Alice quips, “Irrelevant”. She asks Dan why, to which Dan quickly retorts, “Cowardice”.
Closer is a different way at looking into relationships. Marber’s script chose to focus on both ends: the sugar-coated, intoxicating, sex-filled start and the often bitter and vengeful end. Because of the limited episodes we get to see the four characters, it has the tendency to reduce them into mere caricatures, except for Ms. Portman, who is saved by her breathtaking performance. Julia Roberts’ character seems to be underdeveloped and one-dimensional, so do Clive Owen’s Larry. Jude Law is irritating in his over-the-board facial contortions.
But perhaps, in the end, this is what Mr. Marber wants us to think of these characters, which we are forced to know in the bittersweet brief chapters of their relationships — that we are all indeed strangers dying for a piece of intimacy.
The end is near.
May 14, 2007Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)
“I wish I had words, man,” says a fidgety Dennis Hopper who plays a photojournalist entranced by the maniacal thwarted brilliance of Col. Kurtz. And perhaps the whole experience of Apocalypse Now is just that — one where you are at a loss with words, and yes brilliance. Clearly, no war film has ever came this close to the face of horror. The setting is Vietnam war, or rather the US involvement to end Communism in the far east. Horror looms.
Fresh from the war itself, Capt. Willard hesitantly takes on a mission to exterminate with ‘extreme prejudice’ Col. Kurtz, a highly revered ex Green Berets officer played with reserved gusto by the incomparable Marlon Brando. Col. Kurtz has reportedly killed Viet intelligentsia and has sought asylum in the Cambodian jungles creating a tribe of his own.
Willard backed by a group of American soldiers — with the all-too-familiar war jitters — traverse the murky, often boring, Ng River, passing what seemed to be jungles of Vietnam and Cambodia. But the coconut palms could only smell of a familiar place — yes Apocalypse Now was shot in the Philippines. From the onset of the mission to their eventual confrontation, Willard’s sojourn is punctuated by memorable and harrowing scenes: a colonel slipping in death cards on throngs of cadavers while helicopters are bombing a Viet village, a river massacre of what turned out to be innocent people, a Playboy playmates concert swarmed by raging testosterones.
Martin Sheen plays Willard, when he still looked like Charlie. A young Lawrence Fishburne is cast among one of Willard’s crew. A young and unattractive Harrison Ford appears briefly during the opening scenes. Coppola himself turns out as a director of sorts filming the bombings perpetrated by the ballistic military leader Col. Kilgore played by Robert Duvall.
In the Redux edition, Coppola added an hour of deleted footages — more scenes during the river travel and more dialogue in the concluding scenes with Brando which supposedly shed light to an analysis of his character and the justifications of what might seemed a blurry ending.. I haven’t seen the Redux edition, but Redux or not, Apocalypse Now will not only be remembered as a meditation on war and its toll, but a landmark in filmmaking that will forever be etched in the history of cinema.
putting the X back into sexy.
May 12, 2007In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-wai, 2001) aka Hua yang nianhua
In the Mood for Love pulsates with eroticism and fervor which doesn't necessarily give you a hard-on but shames every bit of compulsion to jerk off. The effectivity lies in everything but the shedding of flesh. It's in the yearning cry of the violin, in Nat King Cole's repititive "Quizas, quizas, quizas", in the warmth of color and light, in the languid pace of the camera, in the voyeuristic angles, in the restrained yet evocative performances of the two leads — Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung.
"H ong Kong, 1962 — it's a restless moment," says the opening statement. Two married opposites moved in an apartment at the same day. Melancholy envelopes the two leads with the growing suspicion of infidelity of their respective partners. Love creeps like a vine across the walls and unfurls into a unique relationship. Mr. Chow wanted to keep his doors open to Mrs. Chan — she's his inspiration as a frustrated martial arts novelist. The setup is also an escapism to the bitter truth that their spouses are actually having an affair with each other. It's important that we don't see either of their spouse as the director wants us to focus on the two. It's a love that's genuine but inevitably short-lived.
The rehearsal scenes are brilliant. Even though it's a foretelling of parting, there's so much beauty in it that it reminds me of Shakespeare's 'parting is such a sweet sorrow'. During the last scenes, we see Chow whispering something in what seemed like a hole. Then he covers it with what seemed to be mud. We are reminded of a scene where he tells Li-zhen how to bury a secret. He disappears in the frame and we watch towards the end, a majestic view of a Cambodian temple.
"It's a restless moment," says the opening statement. A restlessness that sustains towards the end, an emotional storm that doesn't quite leave you just yet.
The Young and the Damned.
May 11, 2007Los Olvidados (Luis Buñuel, 1950) aka The Young and the Damned; The Forgotten Ones
Un Chien Andalou is perhaps one of the most important films of this era, despite it being a 16-minute short. When I was seeing piece by piece the surreal images juxtaposed on film, I can almost hear Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali having a grand time laughing at making a sick joke out of the bummed bourgeois intellectuals, which purportedly it is for. (In the early 70s, Buñuel went to make this cinematic attack on the bourgeoisie in the Oscar-winning The Secret Charm of the Bourgeoisie.) From the moment I read about it on world cinema textbook back in college, I never gotten my mind out of the eye-slicing scenes and other surreal images, that either shock or confound.
However, Los Olvidados marks a thinly slow departure to his early surrealist beginnings, with a close resemblance to Neo-realism. It is a Mexico that has forgotten its people. It centers on the lives of the children whose innocence robbed off by the squalor surrounding them. We see Ojitos ('little eyes') waiting for his father who would never return. He would then encounter a group of young thugs led by El Jaibo, who mug the blind and helpless. The blind man crippled by the young thugs would later adopt Ojitos. Jaibo would commit a heinous crime. The children will be caught up in an inevitable web of events emphasizing Buñuel's exploration of 'the disenfranchised fight for whatever scraps of power left to them'.
In one of my favorite scenes, the child wakes up to a dream (connoting Freudian humanism), and finds his mother (who has completely disregarded him and deprived him of food) giving him a raw meat — shows a touch of Buñuel's surrealism. (Also, an alternate ending was shot by Buñuel but was shelved for obvious political reasons. The 2-minute sequence is available on YouTube.) However, it is the reality of the streets and the shocking exposition of poverty that would make this film unforgettable.
back off, n*ggah.
May 9, 2007American History X (Tony Kaye, 1998)
The tranquil shots of LA beach, some awash in gray, as the opening credits roll, won't prepare you for the oh-shit moments to come. American History X offers the audience with a penchant for violence a full platter. Kaye doesn't tread on Tarantino territory here, but violence come not in the form style, but a sense of moral critique to the more salient subject matter of racism. We're not talking about Crash melodrama here, we're talking old-fashioned -Mr. KKK-white power kind of racism. A hostile war kept alive by its embers.
Sporting a buff physique and a glaring swastika, Edward Norton, whom I regard one of the finest actors around, delivers his best performance to date as Derek Vinyard, a neo-Nazi who lives and breathes White Power. He is the brainchild of a local neo-Nazi Cameron convinced on organizing massive fronts of Hitler disciples across the state and country. Derek is regarded a demi-god, not just to his skinhead minions, but more so by his brother Danny (Edward Furlong) who is becoming a younger version of him. Norton carries the film from start to finish. He completely blows you away with his inscrutability and savagery.
His speedy transformation is chronicled through Danny's history paper titled American History X to the behest of his black teacher (who was once a teacher of Derek), after Danny wrote a paperr on Mein Kamf. Through this narration, we learned that Derek got a three-year sentence after killing two black men who attempted to steal his car, the other one got a broken skull. It was in prison that Danny got what he need to realize in the end concluding in a savage rape scene. It could have shed more minutes though to stress Derek's espousal of far-right ideals, the only motivational force comes in a father-son table conversation and the ignition with his father's murder by two black men.
This is one heavy film because of its big message, one that has to rely with the power of its individual scenes to drive home the point — that violence begets violence and hate waste your energies, your time, your life. It's difficult to sit through it not because it's brutal, but it's also kind of horrific — because it's actually real.
Red Carpet 2.0
May 8, 2007I am starting a new blog, like as if there's no other thing left to do in this world. Like as if it's a necessity, an unfounded thirst that I suddenly find the need to quench. As if I'm not fucking pressurized by the rigors of work. Dammit. I'm making this feel like a guilty pleasure. It's the C in the OC burning like a 7-year itch.
So this is a film blog, or rather I should be calling it a blog about my movie experiences. I might sound like Ebert, A.O. Scott, or David Denby so I'm not gonna sound like any of those highly-revered critics. I'm just gonna write about films I saw that's it. Oh now I know, this is like fixation back in college because I wrote stupid film analyses about mediocre films in a mediocre film class.
This is a red carpet entry so it should be without-further-ado shit. Besides, my neurons are firing like baby rockets I feel my head is going to explode. But before I head to my limo, I'm gonna pose for the press first.
P.S. I had numerous entries on films on my other blog, linked here.
