Departures...

Saw a great movie just before I left Sing Sing. Okuribito (Departures) won an Oscar for best foreign film this year. Its a really beautiful film about a guy who moves back to his home town and answers a misprinted job advert and lands a job as a Nokanshi, someone who prepares the body and puts it into a coffin (in front of the family). The beauty of the film is just how elegantly and sensitively they convey the profession. I was entranced by the elaborate ritual every time it was performed. The acting is superb and the observations on how the younger generation of Japanese are moving away from the country and its traditions is well done.

The tedious case of Benjamin Button...

Against my better judgement I went to see The Curious case of Benjamin Button last night. My initial feeling was 'that's 3 hours of my life I'm not getting back'....

ok, I'm sure that technically it was very very clever... Brad looks very old, Brad looks a bit younger, Brad looks like Brad, Brad looks like a teenager etc....

I'm assuming that the fools who reviewed the movie were so amazed by what can be done with makeup and computers that they forgot that the movie was tedious and THREE HOURS LONG.

Ok, so Cate Blanchett and Tilda Swindon were both pretty good. But the whole film still felt like Forrest Gump... a 3 hour long Forrest Gump....which occasionally wanted to be Amelie. (and failed pretty badly).

It didn't help that while Brad did try acting pretty well, the writers had decided that not only did Benjamin curiosuly get younger instead of older but that he was also dumber than Forrest... leaving Brad alternating between looking at people charmingly and slowly drawling a line of romantic pseudo-philosophy.

And seriously, it was three hours long, and felt like four.... By the time BB was a teenager I just wanted him to dye. Especially as the story was intercut with his wife+daughter many years later (tragically being hit by huricane Katrina). I guess this kind of hit a nerve because the need to have flashbacks to the present was what really pissed me off about 'Saving Private Ryan' and 'Schnindlers List'. Admitidly this time it added a whole extra (if very predictably) layer to the movie (he is, unsurprisingly, her father).

Movie critics should be drowned in their own popcorn and I want my money back....

Forget me not....

Just been to see my first real Bollywood movie. It was called Ghajin, a hindi remake of a tamil remake of Memento.Ok... to get this off my chest to start with... it was pretty damn bad.

So the first 10-20 minutes of the movie were ok(ish), kind of a standard action movie, of a very impressively buff Amir Kahn kicking some guys ass, then working out who he is etc.... The movie takes the basic idea of Memento (and everything else), that the main character has no short term memory. In fact the director goes as far as to write this at the beginning of the movie just in case people can't work it out. Anyhow, the first 20 minutes is not half bad as an action remake of memento. Then the horror sets in...

Suddenly, the movie drops into a flash back of our protagonist's life before he looses his memory. In summary, he's the owner of a huge cell phone company, amazingly rich and successful. A cute girl trying to get a break in the advertising film company she works in makes up a story that the big shot guy is in love with her and they're going to get married. Her boss is amazed, gives her breaks in the hope that the big shot will raise the profile of the company. The guy, hearing that a crazy woman is claiming to be engaged to him, secretly goes to see her, pretending to be an actor (she doesn't know what the big shot looks like), he falls for her. Much hilarity in sues... He ends up going to the company christmas party (where the big shot is the guest of honour), pretending to be himself (try and keep up). Even more hilarity ensues.

Ok, so that's the flashback... except that it isn't a flashback in the sense I'm used to, it is a whole (1.5 hour) romantic comedy that is dropped into the middle of the action film. As this is Bollywood, there are several song and dance numbers, which fit in as naturally as a sumo wrestler in a nunnery.

Thankfully, half way through this there is an interval..... Then it just keeps on going, dropping back into gritty action (think John Woo with indian accents), the girl rescues a train full of abducted children, is latter hunted down and killed in front of our hero, who is lobotomised at the same time, hence the memory loss. Eventually revenge is got, with the help of a somewhat awkwardly inserted female med-student character. There are more songs, people die, people cry, eventually memory man ends up caring for small orphans (I'm actually serious).

Apart from my basic hatred of musicals, whatever language they are in, it was just a damn strange movie. Most of the dialogue was terrible, the writers took the idea of memento, simplified it lots, took out all of the confusing cut scenes and re ordering. Added lots of fights and more cute women (although being a good Indian movie no one gets kissed). My guess is that after this, a studio exec decided that there weren't enough songs, or is wasn't enough of a family movie, so dropped almost a whole other film into the middle. After all, who cares if the film is nearly 4 hours long, there's an interval....and now its a family movie, with singing and dancing, and I'm assuming a catchy soundtrack for the small children to buy (to drown out the nightmares of the scenes of the nice lady being beaten to death with a metal bar).

Damn damn strange. Not going to buy the DVD.

Spies like us...

Went to see the new Cohen brothers movie 'Burn after reading'.

Ok, so upfront, I really like the Cohen brothers... so this probably won't be in any way objective...

Great film, a totally over the top spy movie... in a Sarah Palin/hockey mom kind of way (in the sense that it is totally ridiculous)

The story isn't really that important. Like Fargo, most of the fun is in the ridiculousness of the characters, who are all way too extreme to be serious. I'm impressed that Brad Pitt and George Clooney were up for playing such embarassing characters (especially Brad). All of the characters are excellent sterotypes of something... My personal favourites are the two CIA guys who appear occasionally and act as a strangely plausible deus ex machina and smoothing things over at the end...

Compulsive Dissatisfaction

Just been to see the new Woody Allen movie 'Vicky Cristina Barcelona'
Hate to admit it, but this is the first time in ages that I've sat through a movie which has pushed so many of my buttons and that I've really wanted to go straight back into and watch again.

The movie follows two women, one who is (as Penelope Cruz points out) impulsive, passionate and suffers from 'compulsive dissatisfaction'. The other who is sensible, 'grounded' and follows the established New York path to happiness....

Enter Javier Bardem, a pasionate, charming painter who flagrantly ignores their anoying americanisms and seduces both women... Also enter Penelope Cruz, who is just damn, damn crazy.... Enough synopsis, just watch the film.

The film dances between hysterical pokes at American/New York bankers/expats and disturbingly honest emotional experiences and hangups...

Cloverfield...

Just been to see Cloverfield, the new film by J.J. Abrams, (who created Lost). Here are a few thoughts (before which I should say that I quite liked the film).

Ok, the film concept is the totally cool, original idea of being a video tape, shot of a series of events (which get increasingly more mysterious) which is discovered some time after the events happen. It's hard to express just how cool and original an idea this is... in fact it is almost as cool and original as when it was used (in exactly the same way) in The Blair Witch Project.

Ok, in principle, it is still a good idea, and it is a novel way to make a suspense/action movie (think Blair Witch meets Godzilla, in Manhattan). At times it does add quite a lot to the film, especially the beginning, which is a surprise leaving party for one of the main characters. The first half hour or so covers the party, lots of closeups and personal drama of the soon to be main characters.

The problem with this, like Blair Witch, is that the camera man seems to be suffering from late stage Parkinson's disease or thinks he's on a ship. (Interestingly the cinema here actually has a warning about potential motion sickness which some viewers may experience during the film). This gets kind of annoying at times, it was cute and clever the first time the camera guy shoots a piece and focuses entirely on two women's chests, but this gets irritating pretty quickly.

Having said that, the 'normal' part does managed to work up a bit of empathy for some of the characters (except the cameraman who is just dumb dumb dumb). Then things start getting strange, earthquakes, monsters, people running and screaming. This is pretty well done except I spend the last half hour wondering why the hell the (dumb) cameraman didn't drop the damn camera, especially while he's scrambling across a roof top and fighting for his life (it's because he's dumb, really dumb).

Still, it was a pretty well made film, not a classic, but good fun.

Please, someone, give Sylvester Stalone some money

Damn... they've just made another Rambo film! Sly Stalone must be desperate for some cash. There's nothing more desperate than an old age action hero.

Daywatch [Dnevnoy dozor]

Wasn't feeling very sociable (for a change) so decided to go to the movies on my own. Went to see Daywatch, a pretty cool Russian film which is the sequel to Nightwatch. Its pretty much a fantasy action film set in Russia in the 90s (which is part of what makes it so great), at times it has the feel of The Matrix, but cos its Russia, no one is dressed nicely and everything is much more creepy. Strangely one of my favorite parts was the subtitles (it's filmed in Russian). Instead of the usual 'done by the trainee the night before the release' efforts most movies have, someone clearly spent some time on them, so they fade in/out, pulse and rattle or some words are turn blood red (like the word blood). The whole effect adds quite a bit to the illusion and actually added quite a bit to the mood of some of the scenes... Overall quite fun (if a bit geeky)

Tokyo Marigolds

Went to see a film called 'Tokyo Marigolds' last night, which was on
as part of the Japanese film festival running this week.

Its a strange story of love, with the main character, a very quite girl, meeting a guy, whose girlfriend is away for a year. She persuades him to date her for a year until she comes back. The rest of the film shows their relationship grow, settle in to a comfortable/tedious rhythm, then finally shows 'the end'.

I thought it was an excellent film, very slow paced, but beautifully shot. I thought the lead actress was excellent, and much of the mood of the film, especially her emotional state was conveyed by her facial expressions, or just by her staring out of a window. The director's main job is making TV commercials, but he has also managed to make a film a year for the last twenty years.

I'm not Spartacus...

Have just been to see The Last Legion. Can't say I was wonderfully impressed, but as I'm sure it was amazingly well researched, here's what I've learned about the Roman Empire....
1. The Romans were the good guys (naturally) and were all actually English
(This fact is corroborated by the great TV series 'Rome')
2. They were defeated by the Goths, who were actually Scottish
3. Gandhi was Merlin (Ben Kingsley) and Merlin was Welsh and hung out with the Romans
4. Mr Darcy was actually a Roman centrion (Collin Firth)
5. Excalibur was actually Julius Caeser's Sword
6. Seriously, Merlin was Welsh...

Not a great film, but it passed the time and I wasn't bored. Was made a good deal better by Aishwarya Rai, a huge Bollywood actress, playing an Indian assassin. OK, so she is very very cute, but the tense flirtatious relationship she has with Collin Firth is great, at times has the same sulky, unspoken passion of Pride and Prejudice...

Cashback / Bourne Ultimatum

So it was Singapore's National Day here on Thursday, so I celebrated it with about half the nation (the half that wasn't watching the fireworks) by going shopping

Went to see the Bourne Ultimatum which was a pretty pleasing piece of action spy drama. Kept me amused for a couple of hours, had some nice clever bits. Worth a watch (if you've seen the others).




Also went to see Cashback. I'll spend a bit more time going over this film...
Cashback is a British film, that for once, doesn't contain Hugh Grant and isn't about cockney gangsters. It is part comedy, part romance (don't want to call it a romantic comedy, which feels a bit cheep for this film).
The film is about an art student who gets dumped and stops sleeping. To pass the time he gets a job working the night shift at the local supermarket. While working there he meets another girl etc etc. I can't really summarize it in a way that doesn't sound really crap and I don't want to give away some of the wierd twists that made me really like it (but I'm talking wierd like Donnie Darko). They change the pace of the film really well between comedy and romance and use some great visual effects to make it special (you'll know what I mean when you get to the end). Also the soundtrack works really well, not just the music but the way some of the parts are filled with near silence really creates a good atmosphere.

I'm not sure if it was just the mood I was in at the time, but I came out of the cinema feeling pretty floaty and good. I'd like to know what anyone else thinks if they see it. (Turns out it was made in 2006, so might be out on DVD somewhere). Random trivia, the lead actor (Sean Biggerstaff) is the guy who played Oliver Wood in the Harry Potter films. He pulls out a pretty good performance though.

Really. Go and see it, rent the DVD or something, its worth it.

Lost Potter...

Watched the end of Season 3 of Lost last night. I'm impressed at how they managed to
end the series and still somehow manage to leave it open for another one...

Also saw the Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix last night. Wasn't as disappointed as I was expecting, although it didn't really build tension very well and had the general feeling that they had made a much longer version which they will release on DVD (a la Lord of the Rings).
Still I quite liked the wizard fight at the end, and the Dark arts training scences were quite reminiscent of the 'Room full of ninjas training' scene in You Only Live Twice (which is a good thing)
.
Am about to start reading the new Harry Potter book, am guessing it will be more disappointing than the film but less than the end of Lost

Little Miss Sunshine

Watched Little Miss Sunshine last night. Its pretty off-beat comedy about an ugly kid and her family driving across America to enter a beauty pageant. I thought it was fantastic, it has a lot of 'laugh out loud' moments, and is really sweet and moving at the same time. It also paints a scary picture of beauty pageants and how they sexualize small kids without really admitting it...
(I can't really explain more without spoiling the film)

Probably one of the best films I've seen all year.

Blood Diamond

Went to see Blood diamond last week. I was actually quite impressed. It gives a pretty scary glimpse of the Sierra Leon civil war. It does a pretty good job at shocking you and generally convincing you that African civil wars are pretty nasty (lots of chopping off arms with machetes). It also goes into child soldiers and how kids are brainwashed/made to fight.

There's also a nice bit of ambiguity about the role of westerners (or whites in general). First there are the mercenaries who are 'employed' to clear fight/clear things up, and also smuggle diamonds out of the country. Second there are the diamond cartels who help indirectly fund the whole thing and lastly the role of journalists who report on the wars. I especially like the journalists, who are portrayed as a mix of do-gooder/adrenalin junkies, who don't really believe that what they do makes a difference, and are mainly looking for 'something new' (rather than the usual pictures of hungry/dead people). There's a very nice scene where a press bus arrives at the site of an ambush and all of the journalists pile out and start filming.... its only after a minute that the hero (not a journalist) actually goes to help the injured people.

The kind of depressing take home message, especially from the journalist parts, is that, in the end its hard to move people for more than a short time, sometimes you can shock people enough to get them to donate money, but mostly they will have forgotten about the shocking things they saw on the news by the next day.

On a lighter note, I have to admit that I was also impressed that Leonardo DiCaprio can actually act, and does a very good South African/Zimbabwean accent.

So worth watching, as long as you are not prone to nightmares.