Outrage

There is nothing outrageous in Takeshi Kitano’s return to Yakuza territory. In fact, it’s surprisingly straight-forward and verging on boring. Several major and minor players scheme to get rid of one another, and nearly everyone dies by the end.

One thing to possibly note is an odd choice of editing. The first third of the film connects different locations through editing and sound bridges. The second third continually uses fade-outs, I’m not really sure to which end. The last third is fairly straight-forward invisible editing, except for maybe one conversation. I’d love to have the old Kitano back, but alas, this is not it.

On a different note, Tetta Sugimoto and Nuri Bilge Ceylan look eerily alike.

Ljubljana report

I have been way too busy to update the blog lately. But I promise to feature a whole new batch of notes, fresh from Rotterdam. Really, really soon!

In the meantime, here's a brief report I wrote after the FIPRESCI Jury duty. It should also appear on the FIPRESCI web site at some point.

Of Children and Parents

The Perspectives section at the 21st Ljubljana International Film Festival offered eleven films of different styles, on different themes. Initially, one would think that the only common denominator is that all of these are the first or second feature films of their directors, according to the festival guidelines. But watching all eleven, I noticed another thread that appeared to be dominant among this year’s crop: children and parents. I think what struck me the most was the neat parallel that appeared among four of the films in particular. Two were about boys, two were about girls. Boys’ films were all about father and son bonding, and the girls… Well, the less father, the better.

Vlado Škafar’s Oča (Dad) from the host country and Pedro Gonzalez-Rubio’s Alamar (To the Sea) from Mexico were little stories of divorced fathers spending time with their sons. Both films shared a strong atmosphere and a lingering camera that appeared to be simply witnessing the warm relationship these men were trying to preserve. The girls were having a much tougher time. Samantha Morton’s The Unloved from Great Britain (the winner of the FIPRESCI Prize) tells the story of Lucy, an eleven-year-old who is placed in a care home after being beaten by her father. She is unwanted (and unloved) by either parent, but finds a way to survive among all the chaos that reigns not only in the care home, but also in the British social system. Debra Granik’s Winter’s Bone from the US has a slightly older female character at its core – at seventeen, Ree Dolly takes care of her younger siblings and her mentally ill mother, who is all but absent from their lives. She is searching for her father, who has put up their house for his jail bond and promptly disappeared. It is telling that both of these films are directed by women.

Among the other films in the competition, the theme of children kept recurring. Hector Galvez’s Paraiso (Paradise) was about five teenager friends who strive for a better life in Peru. Los Viajes del Viento (The Wind Journeys) by Ciro Guerra from Colombia followed a troubadour across the country, joined by a young man who saw him as a father figure. In Rigoberto Perezcano’s Norteado (Northless) from Mexico, the children are absent – leaving them behind is the greatest sacrifice the film’s protagonist Andres has to make as he is trying to go north across the border, into the US. But the ultimate children-parent relationship among the festival films belonged to the winner of the main prize. In Yorgos Lathimos’ Kynodontas (Dogtooth) from Greece (now a -very- surprising Oscar nominee), we witness a family where the parents desperately try to “protect” their three children from external influences – even if it means potentially destroying their lives.

Hum Tum

Saif Ali Khan is no Shahrukh, that we know. We just saw Salaam Namaste last week too, but I've been very lazy about the blogging. In any case, it's very difficult to focus on a Bollywood movie when one keeps on wishing it were a different male lead.

Just like Saif Ali Khan is a poor substitute for SRK, Amsterdam is a poor substitute for New York. And Paris. This is the story of a couple that meet on the plane flying from Delhi to New York with a stop over in Amsterdam, which they spend together. Their paths keep on crossing, until (guess what) they realize they're in love with each other, blah blah blah. They spend time in Amsterdam, New York, Paris, Delhi and Mumbai, but all non-Indian locations are shot in Amsterdam. That could be less conspicuous if they avoided landmarks like the Rijksmuseum or the Concertgebouw, but hey, anything goes when they're singing and dancing with cheerleaders in the park.

Also interesting take on a kiss, a widow finding love again and marriage out of wedlock - or not so interesting if you've seen enough Bollywood films: this only seems to happen if the couple is living outside of India.

As a final note, I'd like to remark once again (or maybe for the first time on this blog) that as beautiful as Aishwarya Rai is, Rani Mukherjee has by far the coolest (or hottest) voice in Bollywood.

The Expendables

The Expendables has a lot of fighting, killing, running around and explosions. Unfortunately, it has much less plot, character development, and dialogue that makes sense. At 103 minutes, it feels very extended.

Director (of gang and movie) Stallone leads a group of mercenaries to some Caribbean island that's ruled by a mean general (David Zayas from Dexter) and an even meaner American (Eric Roberts). General also has a hot daughter. Stallone is offered $5 mil by Bruce Willis, but eventually goes and blows up the whole place (meaning the presidential palace, and likely, the nation's entire cultural heritage hosted inside it) for "personal" reasons. Schwarzenegger shows up for no reason, other than he's friendly with Stallone. There is even a scene involving the '80s action trifecta (Stallone-Willis-Schwarzenegger), which alone would be worth the price of the ticket; unfortunately, it is pretty clear that Arnie and Willis couldn't make it to the set on the same day, so the whole scene is completely fragmented and feels like some fanboy's montage sticking the three stars together. And the dialogue is simply inane, moving haltingly rather than smart-assedly. I'm not even going to go into the whole set of ideological problems related to a bunch of muscled guys going into random countries to blow things up.

The Expendables feels like a movie you'd run into on late-night network TV, only enjoyed (but then really enjoyed) if you're drunk. Or maybe stoned. Which is what Mickey Rourke looks like in the movie.

Splice

Vincenzo Natali's film about "two young rebellious scientists" who "defy legal and ethical boundaries and forge ahead with a dangerous experiment: splicing together human and animal DNA to create a new organism" received very good reviews (75% on rottentomatoes). Why, I don't know.

First off, as the summary suggests, the film features every imaginable (and unimaginatively used) cliché about "science gone wrong." Starting of course, with the improbably attractive and young scintist couple. It is then smothered by all the possible clichés involving psychoanalysis (I won't go into detail to avoid spoilers). I do not look forward to read scores of student essays in the forthcoming years on "A Psychoanalytical Analysis of Splice."

But what really enraged me about the movie is its claims to universality. This human/animal splice named "Dren" grows up superfast so we get to see all of its developmental phases. And without a TV to look at, or humans to talk to, it adopts all the typical "Western" attitudes towards gender, clothing, behavior, etc. Because that's how "natural" people act surely.

Chloe

There was a time when Atom Egoyan made beautiful, subtle films. Exotica tops my list, followed closely by The Sweet Hereafter and Felicia's Journey. Then I somehow skipped a few and saw Adoration last year. I thought it was a fluke, he'd get back to his senses. But now with Chloe, I'm getting worried.

A middle aged couple (Julianne Moore and Liam Neeson) in Toronto is growing apart from one another (or she thinks so). The wife hires a prostitute (Amanda Seyfried) to see if the husband will go astray. There is also a teenage son (Max Thieriot). Things get complicated. That he is a music professor and the plot seems to have jumped out of Così fan tutte is probably not a coincidence, but doesn't save the film.

Everything in Chloe looks beautiful. People (Moore! Neeson! Seyfried! Thieriot not so much.), clothes, houses, hotel rooms, even the doctor's office are all gorgeous. But everyone is so devoid of any humanity (maybe precisely because they are always so well-kept) that I found it impossible to care about any of them. And maybe I watch too many movies, but the narrative twist that is (presumably) supposed to give us the 'wow' effect is clearly visible from miles away.

One thing that's been on my mind: at the very beginning of the film, Moore's character (an ob-gyn specialist) explains to a patient how an orgasm works ("it's a series of muscle contractions, nothing mysterious about it"). If Egoyan is then trying to show that desire is not that simple and is in fact mysterious, he's comparing apples and oranges. Or so I thought.

Despicable Me

Cute, and not overly sweet. The plot summary on IMDB actually makes it sound a lot more sappy than it is: "When a criminal mastermind uses a trio of orphan girls as pawns for a grand scheme, he finds himself profoundly changed by the growing love between them." Luckily, Gru (the "criminal mastermind") is a villain of the same calibre as Dr. Horrible, thanks mostly to Steve Carell. I have to admit that while I found the adoption of certain 'suspicious' accents by Gru and his mom suspect, they were funny nonetheless.

What really makes the movie, more than anything else, are Gru's yellow minions. I want them. All of them.