Reviews

I liked the WEST SIDE STORY/Umbrellas of Cherbourg combination

--- the characters exude understated loneliness and passion/longing in their (usually) solitary musings/hallucinations like the doomed lovers in the French film; while the superbly choreographed dances are lively, flamboyant and outrageous, as in the Robert Wise musical classic.

The picture's quality is so sleek, glossy and crisp- just like the sharply polished characters with their cool jobs and lifestyles. Although they tend to be alienating --- so "Melrose Place", they belong to a TV show rather than a movie, they're just too devastatingly gorgeous, hip and lucky--- some characters have the odd, downright pathetic (though emotionally lightweight) predicament that make us somehow care about them (and of course, envy them).

What further heightens my TV soap-opera comparison is the characters being trapped in the little world they created themselves, which, although very exciting, is also very stressful and complicated. Hence, the songs are mostly performed in small, enclosed places and in medium shots and close-ups, unlike in the grand, majestic West Side Story and Umbrellas of Cherbourg musicals.

The highstrung dramatic moments are kept in check by the funny, ironic twists and the characters' amusing weaknesses, and why is it that the men are such cads and a-holes and cute lovable hunks at the same time?

Despite the preoccupation with very personal "issues", the film manages to get some social commentary in. Though the guys in testosterone overdrive just wanna have fun, they acknowledge the warrior-like quality of women and the fact that it is they who control the sexual relationship. Likewise, the characters take "marriage" humorously and lightly- in fact, even mock it with a naughty grin.

Not a particularly illuminating and substantial film, but its bombastic, wacky dances, sexy anatomies galore and sizzling, riotous swinging-sex-partner-swapping action guarantee that you're in for an enjoyable rockin' and bed-rollin...

Best seen "on the other side of the bed" with your partner

I liked 800 Balas despite the sentimental pap; I think it proves that Iglesias has the heart and balls to make it big in Hollywood if he wants to. He has this ability to be so entertaining, accessible and deeply felt at the same time.

There were plenty of funny moments, romanticism (which tends to be simplistic and predictable at times) morality, "good and bad" characters,action, bright colors and suspense to give Steven Soderbergh a run for his money. At the same time, we get a healthy dose of ambiguous darkness, rich irony, black humor and ludicrous moments that tread the thin line between hysteria and nostalgia, morbidity and delight.

There are layers of amorphous innocence and celebration of sensuality in that scene where the kid, lying on the bed with the whore, learns a thing or two about female anatomy aided by a physical demonstration of squeezing her boobs. (For an odd, whimsical and yet strangely dark kid-confronted-with-ripe-overwhelming-sexuality scene, check out THE TIN DRUM where the protagonist buries his face on their house help's "bush".)

That scene where the kid tries to enter the abandoned film set to reach his granddad and somehow evades the notice of EVERYONE AROUND HIM, steeped in chaos, fright, awe and exhilaration as they all were - -- that is just tautly controlled and beautifully executed. The colors are so vivid and ethereal and it's great seeing around two hundred of these film extras acting their hearts out for their 3 seconds of fame, to be grazed by the camera's tracking shot.

Like the mythical, legendary granddad aiming for authenticity and grandeur, Iglesias strives for plenty of big moments.

But I guess that in the end, all the "hero" ever really wanted was to be loved; and if we can't admire this movie for its glorification of machismo-addled brotherhood and glaring, obvious contrasts and metaphors, we may just love its shameless and profound respect for history, psychological and blood ties, dreams, life, and humanity.

Quills

Geoffrey Rush is in peak form in this harrowing 2001 Philip Kaufman film about the Marquis de Sade, a man whose life is as frighteningly defiant as his writings.

Confined in the infamous Charenton asylum, he continues to grunt out his lewd writing on blankets and sheets that Kate Winslet, a laundrywoman, smuggles out to a mythic Zorro-like figure in the gate. His literary pursuits detail graphic sex, incest, debauchery, blasphemy and other aberrations, among other things.

The film illuminates the Marquis' act of writing rather than his life, which is actually one long sadistic bacchanalian adventure. The insane are highly stylized, full of verve, venom and innocence, but Mr. Kaufman's over-reaching enthusiasm deprives his work of the gorgeous sensuality that throbbed in 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being'. The voluptuous Ms. Winslet has that wild streak that redeems her from her ill-starred Titanic extravaganza, and Michael Caine as the evil villain and Marquis-torturer is the perfect husband for that mad nurse in 'One Flew Over the Cuckoos' Nest'.

Beautiful shots, admirable blocking, seamless editing and hapless Jude Law's star turn in the end balance the barefaced caricatures and dramatic provocation. This film is one compelling viewing.

It's great to see the film that propelled Matt Damon and Ben Affleck deep into the slime and bowels of Hollywood (and in Mr. Affleck's case, before banality and big budgets crept in). Here, the two are inadvertently amusing and prove that the celebrated screenplay deserves all the gloss –despite occasional lurches into intellectual pretension.

Damon simply oozes with intelligence –and you simply believe him, 'psychological issues' and all. American academia's nefarious exploitation of genius, corporate capitalist corruption, friendship, the hypocrisy of The Good Life, finding your own niche in the world- these are among the things grazed by and effortlessly woven into the dramatic flow of the story- which is ultimately "Good" Will Hunting's discovery of self and love. The terribly maudlin Robin Williams injects warmth and scruples, and the Elliott Smith music resonates with redemption.

Like all geniuses, Beethoven's life is steeped in ambiguity and mystery. This is what this 1996 Bernard Rose film captures as Anton Schindler, his faithful friend, "trawls through the composer's life to discover the identity of the mystery woman", the Immortal Beloved to whom he left all his wealth.

The complicated search is set against a background of a picturesque village in 17th century Vienna with its deliciously intrigue-laden, immoral atmosphere.

The three women in Beethoven's life all give commendable intuitive performances, but the rest of the cast seem too historically distant.

The ending, though a bit fractured and unconvincing, does not spoil the effective mingling of art, identity and love explored in this work.

This film captures Beethoven's restless, tortured spirit. In one scene, we spy on the young Beethoven, still untroubled and unselfish, dreamy and enigmatic, floating face up on a star-dappled river –like Beethoven's majestic art, truly mesmerizing.

Boisterous rough and ready assault on your senses- perfectly timed and utterly sharp and not boring. Random violence explodes as post- Nazi punks/skinheads glorifying Hitler's racial superiority fantasies rattle the bones of society's apathetic navel- not with some political and social conscience but with some "I'm bored/I'm a misfit/Hmm. Nazism? Sounds interesting" truism.

What they lack in vision (with the exception of Davey and Hando, who are bestfriends and the core leaders of the group) and reasoning they make up for in compulsive, frantic rioting and clumsily lashing out at the "gooks"- the Vietnamese people who they believe are "contaminating" the purity of their all-white community.

For a veritable walking time bomb, Rusell Crowe as Hando the gang leader is super charming and hot. He exudes raw, magnetic power- he's exactly the kind of guy that could skin a cat alive without the pussy knowing it. Add some dangerous visions in his mind- and you have a frightening body count of "dead gooks".

I guarantee that you will never find a dull moment in this movie. The plot just tightens; and you just pity these poor, insecure, hapless but blustering, armed kids. Helen, sexually harassed by her father and another misfit, is bewildered and tender- and she pulls the story together, right when there's no more sympathy left for Hando. The wide shots of the frenzied fighting capture the pulsing desperation of the moment/s; and the music video to "skinheads skinheads" is a classic- one that Quentin Tarantino probably envies.

The twisted ending is ferocious and perfect. It's actually a love story set amidst a society fuelled with hate and boredom and angst; or perhaps it's just a story about three lost souls navigating their squalid community- caught up, vindictive against societal ills (broken families, having "no future", wasted lives looming ahead), eager to lay the blame on something, ready to embrace any brotherhood or credo that will give authenticity to their defiant rage.

Fanny and Alexander (1983) by Ingmar Bergman

Is a sensuous and complex masterpiece honed to a fine sharpness. Perhaps more so because the protagonists, Fanny and Alexander, are both children less than ten years old.

Bergman laces his characters- an eccentric, hedonistic, passionate and opulent family led by an elegant and radical matriarch- with clever psychological trimmings in an atmosphere combining lassitude and surreal richness. The colors make you swoon, and the house of this family- the Ekdahls- is literally and figuratively a doll house. The children's world is rampant with mischief, lies, loneliness, mortality, and love.

The people around him search for worldly salvation but seem to fail miserably, his kind, contemplative father has just died, his young, gorgeous mother marries a "spiritual" ascetic-looking string bean whom he treats like the Devil, and to top it all off, the Ekhdahl's theater company is in financial ruin.

With deft hands, Bergman trains his slow-moving camera to scenes that evoke wonder, magic, stunning beauty. and eerie apprehension. The children's, particularly Alexander's wild imagination are as fascinating as the rich ornamentations and objects that Bergman wants you to notice. but not for very long, for just when the lush imagery utterly seduces you, you are sucked back to the merciless dirge-like flow of the story.

Bergman weaves a story about family love and redemption and turns it into an almost mythical theme through Alexander's troubled hungers and dark imagination. He is, after all, haunted by ghosts- with the spiritual

This film will endure.

Dalton- by Andrzej Wajda 1982

Wajda's `Dalton' is a superb movie in the great tradition and grand manner of a sweeping, dramatic historical epic.

Danton, played with the perfect amount of bravura and zeal by Gerard Dieperdeu, is a one of the great pillars of the French revolution- he is fervently idolized, and as the leader of a huge publication, his power among the masses is immense and strong.

He and his small band of intellectual fellow propagandists start criticizing the government- a fledgling one headed by Robiespierre (of the Revolutionary Committee) The latter cries foul, and is unwilling to slacken his desperate leash on the country through terror and force. The people are starving and scared, and faced with those who "have nothing to lose but their chains" (to quote appropriately from Marx), the Committee gets downright nasty.

The film is a monumental narrative of the clash between these two mighty and principled men, culminating in the beheading of one of them. (of course you already know who the unlucky guy is if you know your world history). Underneath all the braggadocio and hedonism, Danton's indomitable will becomes awesome and meaningful. A less artistic director could have turned him into a caricature.

Like Dostoevky, the director confronts the viewer with the tragic grandeur of humanity- but in this case, the tragedy of the "historical process" and necessity for revolution.

Do we really attain true freedom, democracy and "liberty, fraternity, equality" when the people are starving and the leaders are using scare tactics? When do you justify a revolution and when do you call it mindless? Do revolutions and does great historical epochs happen by necessity or by the whims, caprices and action of A Few Good Men like Danton and Robiespierre, Bonaparte, etc. These are among the questions this urgently controlled movie bombarded me after firmly engaging my emotions and intellect.

Indeed, the director pulls no punches but takes some well-aimed, unerring swipes at our old-fashioned ideas about politics. The story is set in the 1790s, but its message still boomerangs to this very day. Wajda presents us with a subject that could degenerate into propaganda but instead is shaped into great art- one that is done with great narrative force and in the heart's blood.

Touch of Evil (1958) Orson Welles

Taut, nervously spare, full of exciting action sequences and voyeuristic camera work, this film brings to vivid light the ruthless, intimate drama of a cop and his beautiful wife in No Man's Land- a hundred miles of border between U.S and Mexico. Charlton Heston as Burgess (or is it Vargas?) is the epitome of the Good Cop and Honest Citizen, his wife the idea of the American Woman (smart, but couldn't hold her own, really.) and of course there's the Antagonist- played with remarkable intensity and to glorious perfection by the director himself.

What separates this work from the hundreds of Good Cop-Triumphs-Over- the-Corruption-in-the-Police-System films is Welles' fascinating character. Though overweight, physically disgusting and limping, his power is such that he needs to make very little effort to accomplish what he wants. The glint of his very eyes evokes grisly details and sordid worldliness. Despite all this, Welles does not make him out to be the Evil Enemy right on- he is respected by everyone, an over-the- hill prostitute holds fond memories of him, and he SEEMS to be wanting to REALLY solve crimes.

A dynamite explodes in one of the cars passing by the land, so Welles' character- working for the Mexican government- teams up with Burgess to uncover the perpetrators. Burgess is convinced that Welles is planting the evidences- and the exposure of this work of "evil" drives the story forward.

Don't you just long for the good ole days when the explosions seem to be so real and alive, when the actors get into their characters, when the action sequences are integral to the story, and when Charlton Heston was still lovable? (Gosh, did you see him in Michael Moore's `Bowling for Columbine').

And most importantly- don't you just love it when an action film's every single frame is beautifully conceived?

I suppose most, if not all, Nazi movies tackled the human condition- the inexorable disregard for life, the corruption of human integrity in one way or another. They are usually tear-jerking because they can't help it. The stories seem to be destined to be touching; the movies have 'profundity' written all over them.

Sean Mathias' 'Bent' is not an exception. It is both potent and provocative, all accomplished without much aplomb and brouhaha.

Unlike Schindler's List, this probably did not beckon to the viewers in droves.

The tall, spruce, and handsome Max, for reasons unclear to me (partly because I'm a bit late in the movie, and mainly because I'm not good in deciphering the British accent), is in a country striking a deal with an equally snappily-dressed old man. Then he is lurking about and hiding in the forest with his geeky, glasses-wearing and increasingly edgy lover, a guy named Dunce.

They got caught sleeping in the forest, and the next thing, they are on a train bound to a concentration camp. With them are other prisoners, one of them a gay who tipped Max off on how to survive. Max was told never to let on that he is gay, nor that he cares for his friend, or that he is even Dunce's friend. "For the Nazi, the gays are the lowest form of beings". Interspersed with the scenes are shots of the train moving, evoking the steely, inhuman terror and tension happening inside.

Dunce was beat up. "He wore glasses, he didn't have a chance" was the gay friend's verdict. "It's not happening, it's not happening", Max chanted while he heard Dunce' s pitiful cries. When the Nazi police asked Max if he was a friend of Dunce, he vehemently denied. When they ordered him to beat his friend, he did so with riveting gusto.

It seems that the requisite Nazi corruption-of-human-dignity has started.

It's survival of the fittest from here on.

After being reinforced in his conviction that he MUST follow the rules no matter what, Max bribed the guard to have the gay friend be stationed with him. Their work is classic absurdist-theatre fodder: they walk bringing rocks from one end to the other. It's a completely pointless job, and it works well for the story (which, by the way, is based on an award-winning theatre play.)

The pristine piano playing is hypnotically smooth, and fits just about perfectly. The acting is remarkable. Twice, the two "lovers"- who do not touch each other- reach mental telepathic- orgasm simultaneously. It is mildly amusing and erotic. When Max, equally world-weary but wiser between the two, initiates the "mental sex", the gay friend croons amidst tears,"You're not gentle... You've become hard... like them..."

It may well be an indictment against a society in the grip of hatred; a society that makes it hard for people to connect with one another, be they heterosexual or gays, in a set-up that compels one to be a 'robot' in order to survive. It may well be an attempt to show that the bond between two gay people, unacceptable as it is for going against the "norm"- will fail due to the macabre efforts of the powers-that- be. It could be a harrowing cry against insanity that a pointless life seems to lead us. It may well show that hypocrisy is name of the game when you're in power; Max performed 'blow job' on a guard to get medicines for his gay friend. ( The gay friend got jealous, and they had a "lovers' quarrel").

But when we have exhausted all the possible depth, significance and meaning of the movie, it is, in the end, just a poignant, powerful story about a guy who decided that "life, without love, is not worth living after all."

In the end, too, I think Max was redeemed, and the movie kept triteness at bay by NOT patronizing him.

It's worthy of my praise and, I think, your time also.

I can not for the life of me imagine how and why some Christian fanatics would be appalled at the movie "The Last Temptation of Jesus Christ", the 1987 movie of Martin Scorsese. (I mean, really, what could be their problem? That little bit of Jesus' "sex scene" with Mary Magdalene, a mere glimpse of two clothed bodies kissing passionately? ) Religious rantings aside, this much-hyped and controversial movie seems to be both an artistic and moral(istic) triumph.

Scorsese proved why he is one of the important directors and artists of his time. Combining elegance, cleverness and sensitivity in his direction, he was able to evoke the humanity of Jesus Christ without much melodramatic self-righteousness. A less adept director could have easily made Jesus look like a pathetic wimp- the aim, as the introduction declared, was to depict a very-human Jesus Christ. I was bored and antsy during the first hour or so, notwithstanding Scorsese's beautiful cinematography and expert camera work.

Basically, the movie chronicles the crucial times in Jesus' life, from the time the angel came to him to reveal his messiastic mission up to the time he was executed and resurrected. Every Christian is supposed to know that already. (from the point of view of someone in a predominantly Judeo-Christian country) The big bonuses come in the priceless little insights we get- how Jesus was so afraid and weak about this task, how doubtful he was, how fear gnawed at his holy heart. Who would have thought the Messiah had a huge inferiority complex? My favorite scenes were the part where a religious leader (who, I was told, is the musical genius David Bowie!) explains to Jesus why the people needed the illusion of Jesus' resurrection to give them hope; and that orgiastic scene in Jordan River with a creepy and funny St. John the Baptist delivering some spooky over-the-top loud brash `repent! Repent!' lecture. I always knew St. John the Baptist was a punk!

The fascinating part of the movie comes in the last 40 minutes or so, showing an alternate reality for Jesus Christ. What if Jesus actually reneged on his promise to follow God's plan and actually chose to live like an ordinary human being?

On the opening scene, Jesus cunningly thought that the angel visiting him- giving him fainting spells and spiritual revelations- was the devil. On the last part of the story, another angel reveals something twisted and surprising. It seems to me that angels mess around with Jesus Christ too much.

Willem Dafoe as Jesus Christ was a fine actor though I thought he was a bit too `serious'. Well, if he's supposed to be very human, shouldn't he be laughing and goofing around, too? The one playing Judas annoyed me.

Peter Gabriel provided an Eastern-inspired musical score, like the sounds in India. The wailing voices simulate Jesus' lament, and the repetitive drums, the sustained tension as well as the urgent forces to botch up Jesus' mission.

If I didn't know that the budget for this flick was severely cut, I'd lament their leaving out key events in Jesus' life, like the Pontius Pilate scene where the Jews' agree that he get killed.

All in all, the movie succeeded in showing Jesus to be a human being who CHOSE to let himself be sacrificed for our sins, and the spiritually inclined may well ponder on this and its implications to their faith and doctrine. For the non-Christians like me, Jesus may still be admired and idolized- he is, after all, a cool guy who, like everyone else, got tempted, hurt, disillusioned, and bummed out. (cool because he hangs out with the dregs of society- lepers, prostitutes, etc.)

I don't think the movie showed Jesus Christ as a very-human or `fully- human' if you will, light at all- but that couldn't be the movie's fault, since they were just working on the book's premise.

I am tempted to say that this movie is not one of Scorsese's best works, but then why would I contradict my earlier statement?

But then it just might be that the devil made me say that.