This was a pretty involving movie to me. Of course, until I saw it all I knew about the Soong sisters was that they had the same last name as me, so I don't know how accurate or entertaining it would be to people more familiar with the subject. Regardless, it does have great-looking scenes and fine performances, especially from Maggie Cheung.
Reviews
16 Reviews
Hero
(1997)
Overall pretty good, sometimes stunning
30 October 2000
There is a terrific fight between Kaneshiro and Yuen early in the picture, one of the best I've ever seen, and nothing that follows it can quite match up to it (not even that hilarious anachronistic snippet near the end); it also eventually overdoses on violence for no good reason, in my opinion, but the whole film still makes for an involving experience. The audience I saw it with just loved it.
Vampires
(1998)
Bleeds dry
30 October 2000
There is something about this film that really made me want to like it. Maybe it's James Woods, who is surprisingly compelling in a role that he's probably too old for, or the sleaziness of the whole thing. The problem is, the sleaziness feels forced, the story isn't original enough, and apart from Woods and one of the Catholics, I can't remember any interesting performances. The stunts could have been more imaginative too, but there are some good ones; my favorite is in the beginning when the vampires are hooked and reeled out into the sunshine.
Nutcracker
(1986)
Smutcracker
27 October 2000
What is this thing some ballet directors have with portraying Clara's godfather as a dirty old man? I wouldn't complain if it helped the story, but as a matter of fact it kind of screws it up. It diverts attention away from Clara's relationship with the Nutcracker, which is strange and ambiguous enough in itself, and since I can't see any interesting reason for the older man's unsavory attitude, it strikes me as gratuitous.
The ballet has its usual disproportions (what were the original adapters thinking when they placed the battle so early in the story). There is the usual awkwardness of filming events as they happen on a stage, with sets and special effects that would probably be very effective in person but are naturally trivialized on film. Most of the acting isn't very good, and though Julie Harris' narration is well-voiced, it's very intrusive.
The dancing is great, but I don't think that can save the movie.
The ballet has its usual disproportions (what were the original adapters thinking when they placed the battle so early in the story). There is the usual awkwardness of filming events as they happen on a stage, with sets and special effects that would probably be very effective in person but are naturally trivialized on film. Most of the acting isn't very good, and though Julie Harris' narration is well-voiced, it's very intrusive.
The dancing is great, but I don't think that can save the movie.
A Chinese Ghost Story II
(1990)
I wish the first film had been the only film
24 October 2000
SINNUI YAUMAN II isn't bad at all, but it's disappointing. It isn't as funny, exciting, touching or visually inventive as its predecessor. The device used to reintroduce Joey Wong into the story is just plain wrong; if they didn't want to bring back her original character ( I have to admit they probably couldn't) they should have come up with a new love interest played by a new actress. Limiting Wu Ma to such a brief appearance limits his chemistry with Leslie Cheung, which is one of the things that made the first film such fun, and there's just about no one else here, except Cheung, who has as much charisma. It is a novel way to bring back the two actors, but it's a letdown.
As for Cheung himself, he just isn't as disarming here as in the original; he doesn't fit his character as well. There's also what seems to be some kind of political allegory near the end that doesn't fit the rest of the story - maybe you have to be more familiar than I am with China to appreciate it? Oh, maybe I'm griping too much; it has its good moments (especially a scene concerning a slowly 'thawing' monster)...just not nearly as many as 1987's SINNUI YAUMAN. It waters down the impact of that jewel a bit, and frankly, I wish they'd taken all the good stuff in this film and used it on some entirely different project.
As for Cheung himself, he just isn't as disarming here as in the original; he doesn't fit his character as well. There's also what seems to be some kind of political allegory near the end that doesn't fit the rest of the story - maybe you have to be more familiar than I am with China to appreciate it? Oh, maybe I'm griping too much; it has its good moments (especially a scene concerning a slowly 'thawing' monster)...just not nearly as many as 1987's SINNUI YAUMAN. It waters down the impact of that jewel a bit, and frankly, I wish they'd taken all the good stuff in this film and used it on some entirely different project.
Picture Bride
(1994)
Picturesque
23 October 2000
The first time I saw PICTURE BRIDE, I felt a bit let down, feeling the story was a bit commonplace. Also, being from Hawaii, I felt the petty impulse to begrudge the few (very few) slightly misleading geographical and historical moments in the film. Now, five years later, I like the movie better. Its cinematography is beautiful, and if the plot is sometimes predictable, it's still handled sensitively. The film leaves you with a strong sense of a time and setting that no longer exists.
God's Army
(2000)
Minor spoilers ahead from a heathen reviewer
20 October 2000
Warning: Spoilers
I was dying to hate this movie. There are lots of Mormons where I live, and since an unpleasant political conflict occurred with me and the Church on opposite sides, I haven't exactly been smiling on the soldiers in God's Army who try to convert me. I watched this with my fellow agnostics hoping for a personal appearance from God, mass conversions of pimps and drug dealers, a lightning bolt incinerating a gay pride rally or a Starbuck's, anything that would give us some laughs.
Well...we weren't 100% disappointed. There are conversions, one of them rather unlikely. There's a 'miracle' that I'm sure is technically possible, but doesn't fit this film. And while the movie isn't homophobic, it never addresses the Church's anti-gay stance.
This is noticeable because, surprisingly, it does address other grim issues. In one scene the main character and a black partner sheepishly explain the Church's former bigotry toward blacks and present chauvinism toward women to a skeptical black couple. At one point the unbelieving male racistly disregards the white missionary, which at first struck me as the film's cheap summons for indignant sympathy ("see, blacks are racist too!") at a moment when it should have bitten the bullet and said, "That was wrong of the Church." It doesn't in so many words...but I now wonder if the remark was the film's quiet acknowledgment that the past injustice is offensive enough to make some blacks blindly angry.
The film is like that. It isn't mean to its opponents or loudly preachy. It is quite pro-Mormon, but it goes out of its way to be even-handed. In one of its most admirable scenes, a dying missionary attacks a departing colleague who's lost faith; he subsides when the doubter soberly points out that imminent death might be fuelling a desperation to believe and persuade others...and the ex-LDS is allowed to leave - permanently - with some dignity.
It also skillfully imparts the atmosphere of the young men's spartan lifestyle; sharing cramped, dingy apartments on tiny budgets, dressing in identical outfits, eating identical rations of cold breakfast cereal, and passing out tracts to identical reactions in a scene that will make the rest of us feel guilty (I was never cold enough to trash those leaflets where they could SEE it, but still...) They play jokes on each other to enliven the proceedings, and I can believe the earlier poster who said their real life pranks are even more extreme; if I had to live that way I'd end up streaking down the avenue.
All in all, GOD'S ARMY is pretty worthwhile viewing. It has flaws - some of the plot is weak, it should have addressed the gay issue, etc. - but it stirred subtle respect in me for these proselytizers, replacing an admiration that had been more akin to what you feel for Evel Knievel making a 1,000 foot motorcycle drop. Another poster described a character's religious epiphany as a moment of insanity, and he might be right. One of the film's virtues was reminding me that a somewhat irrational life based on 'moments of insanity' might be more valid than a strictly logical life without them.
Well...we weren't 100% disappointed. There are conversions, one of them rather unlikely. There's a 'miracle' that I'm sure is technically possible, but doesn't fit this film. And while the movie isn't homophobic, it never addresses the Church's anti-gay stance.
This is noticeable because, surprisingly, it does address other grim issues. In one scene the main character and a black partner sheepishly explain the Church's former bigotry toward blacks and present chauvinism toward women to a skeptical black couple. At one point the unbelieving male racistly disregards the white missionary, which at first struck me as the film's cheap summons for indignant sympathy ("see, blacks are racist too!") at a moment when it should have bitten the bullet and said, "That was wrong of the Church." It doesn't in so many words...but I now wonder if the remark was the film's quiet acknowledgment that the past injustice is offensive enough to make some blacks blindly angry.
The film is like that. It isn't mean to its opponents or loudly preachy. It is quite pro-Mormon, but it goes out of its way to be even-handed. In one of its most admirable scenes, a dying missionary attacks a departing colleague who's lost faith; he subsides when the doubter soberly points out that imminent death might be fuelling a desperation to believe and persuade others...and the ex-LDS is allowed to leave - permanently - with some dignity.
It also skillfully imparts the atmosphere of the young men's spartan lifestyle; sharing cramped, dingy apartments on tiny budgets, dressing in identical outfits, eating identical rations of cold breakfast cereal, and passing out tracts to identical reactions in a scene that will make the rest of us feel guilty (I was never cold enough to trash those leaflets where they could SEE it, but still...) They play jokes on each other to enliven the proceedings, and I can believe the earlier poster who said their real life pranks are even more extreme; if I had to live that way I'd end up streaking down the avenue.
All in all, GOD'S ARMY is pretty worthwhile viewing. It has flaws - some of the plot is weak, it should have addressed the gay issue, etc. - but it stirred subtle respect in me for these proselytizers, replacing an admiration that had been more akin to what you feel for Evel Knievel making a 1,000 foot motorcycle drop. Another poster described a character's religious epiphany as a moment of insanity, and he might be right. One of the film's virtues was reminding me that a somewhat irrational life based on 'moments of insanity' might be more valid than a strictly logical life without them.
Tableau ferraille
(1997)
Is this out on video? I want a copy
20 October 2000
I've been looking for a tape of this; I saw it so long ago and under such groggy conditions that I forget a lot of it. I do remember that the story was fast-paced and involving, and as the only Senegalese picture I've seen so far, refreshingly different. I especially want to see Ndeye Fatou Ndaw again; she's haunting in the movie as Daam's martyred first wife, Gagnesiri. What a film career she ought to have. I particularly love/hate the painful scene where she's ostracized by a group of village women.
Green Fish
(1997)
Fine flick
20 October 2000
I saw this a few years ago and remember it as sad, graceful and often funny, with a few strikingly memorable images, like the one of the glowering night club singer. Its story of a young Korean man from a loving but troubled home who ends up working for the local hoods is not wildly original, but it's well done. It is kind of unassuming and low-key, so that when the credits trekked over the final scene (which the audience rightly applauded) I was surprised at how touched I was, and I remember it overall with more clarity than most films I see.
I Think I Do
(1997)
Marching down and rolling in the aisles
19 October 2000
This is just so charming. It's funny and sprightly and very feel-good. After decades of providing anonymous musical vocals for Hollywood actors, Marni Nixon gets an engaging supporting role here as Aunt Alice. Somehow, that's just so right for this movie. I also especially liked Lauren Velez as Carol and Tuc Watkins as Sterling, but all the actors did a fine job (some of them aren't bad looking either).
What really strikes a chord with me, though, is its wish-fulfillment. This film is the ultimate revenge fantasy of anyone who's ever seen - or been - a gay man cruelly disdained by some gorgeous heterosexual object of desire. It revels in poor repentant Brendan's predicament...but it does it in the sweetest, most adoring way possible.
I saw this at our local art academy, where it was apparently brought back by popular demand. The audience was laughing and hooting throughout more than for any other movie I've seen. I was as gleeful as the rest of them.
What really strikes a chord with me, though, is its wish-fulfillment. This film is the ultimate revenge fantasy of anyone who's ever seen - or been - a gay man cruelly disdained by some gorgeous heterosexual object of desire. It revels in poor repentant Brendan's predicament...but it does it in the sweetest, most adoring way possible.
I saw this at our local art academy, where it was apparently brought back by popular demand. The audience was laughing and hooting throughout more than for any other movie I've seen. I was as gleeful as the rest of them.
Total Eclipse
(1995)
Somebody let some light in here
19 October 2000
Regarding a previous poster's comments - I'd heard it was the people connected with TITANIC who tried to get this film's video release pulled, not DiCaprio himself. I almost wish they'd succeeded. This story never adds up to anything for me - it's interesting, but in a distant, scholarly way. Now I must admit I was forced to leave to catch a bus just before the rectal exam (rats!) but I did see most of the movie and I felt very little watching it...not even during its sex scenes, because the actors had so little chemistry. It's too bad, considering all the talented people involved.
Fight Club
(1999)
I don't know art but I know what bewilders the @#% out of me
18 October 2000
Warning: Spoilers
Frankly, the beginning of FIGHT CLUB reminded me of nothing so much as THE BREAKFAST CLUB with that whole middle-class self-absorption, smoldering-within-the-system thing. Even the 30 year old Narrator here seemed like someone that BREAKFAST's teenage narrator Anthony Michael Hall might grow into. Well, I never liked that movie and I wasn't enthused about the first part of this one, clever and self-mocking though it was.
Then the film became a cathartic, innovative mix of grime, humor, sex and bloodshed. The violence wasn't too realistically portrayed, and it did give me pause to wonder if any naive young viewers out there might get the wrong idea about what life would actually be like after getting your head smashed against the floor, but oh well. I've never condemned martial arts films for being even more carefree about that, and I'm sure Jackie Chan movies, much as I love them, have caused more kids to try dangerous stunts than FIGHT CLUB ever will. I loved this part of the story.
And then near the end it took that wacky twist that almost made me spill my drink and left me dumbfounded till the credits rolled. I kept waiting for something to clarify its purpose. Nothing. I didn't think this idea was a cheat - I just can't figure out why it's there! I mean, I still like the film, quite a bit really, but not only does the solution seem pointless, it cuts a few holes in the story. For instance...(SPOILER WARNING) ...the Narrator worked at an office with at least one other Fight Club member. Didn't that guy ever refer to his real name? Marla never addressed him as anything? And didn't her lover see any physical evidence of their relationship - she seems like the kind of woman who'd leave fingernail marks on a man's eyeballs.
Then the film became a cathartic, innovative mix of grime, humor, sex and bloodshed. The violence wasn't too realistically portrayed, and it did give me pause to wonder if any naive young viewers out there might get the wrong idea about what life would actually be like after getting your head smashed against the floor, but oh well. I've never condemned martial arts films for being even more carefree about that, and I'm sure Jackie Chan movies, much as I love them, have caused more kids to try dangerous stunts than FIGHT CLUB ever will. I loved this part of the story.
And then near the end it took that wacky twist that almost made me spill my drink and left me dumbfounded till the credits rolled. I kept waiting for something to clarify its purpose. Nothing. I didn't think this idea was a cheat - I just can't figure out why it's there! I mean, I still like the film, quite a bit really, but not only does the solution seem pointless, it cuts a few holes in the story. For instance...(SPOILER WARNING) ...the Narrator worked at an office with at least one other Fight Club member. Didn't that guy ever refer to his real name? Marla never addressed him as anything? And didn't her lover see any physical evidence of their relationship - she seems like the kind of woman who'd leave fingernail marks on a man's eyeballs.
The Iron Giant
(1999)
Precious metal
18 October 2000
7 of the comments after this one are mainly negative and the other 246 mainly positive (most of them ecstatically so). On Amazon.com, IRON GIANT has 2 negative comments and 222 positive ones (almost all ecstatic). On Epinions, 6 comments are negative and 171 positive (and mostly ecstatic).
So, if you see the film after all this you might be disappointed. I was, after reading the Rotten Tomatoes page (62 positive reviews out of 64, and most ecstatic - in a dignified professional-critic way of course). Seeing it at an empty theater with no one to share responses didn't help either. I wrote off its fans as mainly Disney-haters.
Well...that was dumb of me. IRON GIANT survived my hype-overload letdown, repairing my impression of it bit by bit till I realized all those gushing over it were on to something. There's no other animated film quite like it - it isn't as ambitious as, say, PRINCESS MONONOKE, but that's partly what makes it so interesting, how it turns a typical Hollywood boy-with-a-hidden-friend story into something magical. It isn't perfect, sure - I'm an animal-rights champion and even I didn't like the hunting scene - but it's still wonderful.
Seeing this movie garner such admiration after its humiliating theatrical death is like seeing a high school wallflower blossom into a gorgeous adult who has to beat off suitors with a stick. It deserves it. No wonder Ted Hughes loved its screenplay, different though it was from his book; he died right before its release, and they co-dedicated it to him onscreen. Imagine how embarrassing that would have been if it had stunk.
So, if you see the film after all this you might be disappointed. I was, after reading the Rotten Tomatoes page (62 positive reviews out of 64, and most ecstatic - in a dignified professional-critic way of course). Seeing it at an empty theater with no one to share responses didn't help either. I wrote off its fans as mainly Disney-haters.
Well...that was dumb of me. IRON GIANT survived my hype-overload letdown, repairing my impression of it bit by bit till I realized all those gushing over it were on to something. There's no other animated film quite like it - it isn't as ambitious as, say, PRINCESS MONONOKE, but that's partly what makes it so interesting, how it turns a typical Hollywood boy-with-a-hidden-friend story into something magical. It isn't perfect, sure - I'm an animal-rights champion and even I didn't like the hunting scene - but it's still wonderful.
Seeing this movie garner such admiration after its humiliating theatrical death is like seeing a high school wallflower blossom into a gorgeous adult who has to beat off suitors with a stick. It deserves it. No wonder Ted Hughes loved its screenplay, different though it was from his book; he died right before its release, and they co-dedicated it to him onscreen. Imagine how embarrassing that would have been if it had stunk.
Mystery Men
(1999)
Has some mysterious power
16 October 2000
I don't know why, but I am one of MYSTERY MEN's loyal slaves. I love every silly, gaudy, self-conscious frame of it, every dorky joke that shouldn't work but often somehow does. It isn't the type of picture that normally grabs me - I never liked BUCKAROO BANZAI, for instance - so I'm helpless to explain myself. As far as feel-good films go, it outdoes everything else I've seen; it isn't exactly my favorite movie, but it makes me happier to watch it than any other. I saw it in the theater multiple times, and there were people walking out disgustedly halfway through at the same time others were laughing their heads off, so watch it at your own risk. All I can say is that it was one of the deciding factors in my buying a DVD player.
I loved it but
16 October 2000
This was the first movie I ever walked out of in my life because about three-fourths of the way through I couldn't stand the suspense. The movie was just so sweet and funny and touching that I was too gutless to watch what would probably be the disastrous result of De'Ath's naive obsession. I wanted to just remember him plotting and improvising and enjoying his newfound happiness.
Gui lin rong ji
(1998)
Glad I saw it
13 October 2000
MY RICE NOODLE SHOP is the story of Mainland China refugees surviving none too happily in Taiwan after their country's revolution. One of them runs a rice noodle shop, where three of her fellow emigrants feed like desert animals drinking from the last puddle of the rainy season. Epic flashbacks of their dignified pasts are contrasted with the cramped 'messy hell' of their present.
It's been some two years since I saw this movie; to my memory it has an enchanting performance by Carol Cheng as the embittered shop owner, some lovely, stately photography, and an episodic but compelling plot, told with such sympathy that some of its sad scenes are queerly uplifting.
It's been some two years since I saw this movie; to my memory it has an enchanting performance by Carol Cheng as the embittered shop owner, some lovely, stately photography, and an episodic but compelling plot, told with such sympathy that some of its sad scenes are queerly uplifting.
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