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| Friday, April 15, 2005 11:39 AM |
| That's Unpossible |
 by Fëanor |
First, an analysis of the way I talk:
Your Linguistic Profile: | | 50% General American English | | 40% Yankee | | 5% Dixie | | 5% Upper Midwestern | | 0% Midwestern |
Now, the semi-regular movie run down:- One Missed Call - Takashi Miike's other film in the festival, this is the polar opposite of Izo: his most mainstream and straightforward film to date, which--he has said publicly--he made deliberately for the money. And it worked--the film was a big commercial success in Japan. That's because Miike has made a carbon copy of the Ring-style horror film that's all the rage there right now. One Missed Call is loaded with all the basic cliches. It's ridiculous, but not quite ridiculous enough, it seems to me; it dances on the edge of becoming a satire and a parody for its entire length, but never seems to quite settle on whether it wants to be a horror film or a parody of one. I had the sense the whole time that Miike had nothing but contempt for the material, and the very end of the film is a purely Miike-style twist--a conclusion that completely blindsides you and makes almost no sense. I wonder if Miike is trying to do some kind of deliberate homage to the incongruous endings that the studios forced Hitchcock to tack onto his movies...
Near the end, the film also subverts the rules of its own horror system, basically throwing away everything it had established earlier. I hate it when horror movies do that. And yes, maybe Miike was making a bad movie on purpose, but that doesn't make it any less bad.
- The Voyage Home - An Italian historical drama about a man journeying back to his home in Rome with the hope of reviving the failing Empire, and saving it from the Goths and Christians that are overrunning it. It's a "meditative" film, which means it's rather slowly paced and the characters are fond of making speeches about religion and politics and life and death. Nevertheless, there is still a good story here which moves along at a decent pace, and the ideas the characters are spouting are interesting ones, and well-stated. Overall, I found the film quite lovely and moving--a sad and thoughtful meditation (there's that word again) on humanity in the face of defeat and loss, with wonderful, warm photography of the Italian countryside as a backdrop. And it was easy to appreciate and sympathize with a story about a nation being overrun by Christians...
- Throw Down - A goofy judo movie with strange pacing, editing, structure, and tone. A lot of it is quite funny, but then all of the sudden it gets dramatic and serious. It is a Hong Kong film, though, so I should have been prepared for wackiness and sudden shifts in mood. Anyway, it was pretty fun at times, with some amusing characters and some exciting fights (although there wasn't as much fighting as I really wanted, and a lot of it was rather repetetive), but the overly romantic and dramatic pop music on the soundtrack was hard to take, as was the occasionally overly romantic and dramatic storyline.
I've only got one movie today, for which I'm grateful. I need the rest, because I've got a full weekend of movies ahead of me. |
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