Reviews

If A GUILTY CONSCIENCE (2023) is the biggest box-office hit in HK cinema history, and likely the front-runner at next year's HKFA for Best Picture, then Time Still Turns The Pages (2023) is likely its strongest competition next spring and definitely the best HK film for the second half of 2023. The understated performance director turned actor Lo Chun-Yip brings to his role is the highlight of the film - along with Rosa Maria Velasco, one of the most under-utilized acting talents in HK cinema at the moment who is great both on stage and screen - these two manage to deliver captivating performances to the audience and be the glue that keep every scene they appear in solid, whether alone or as part of the ensemble. While singer-actor Ronald Cheng is supposed to be the main, top-bill headliner, but in every shot and every beat he acts with his fellow cast, he shows to be at least a couple of notches below them - especially in the crucial hospital scenes with Lo Chun-Yip and Rachael Leung (who was nominated for Best Supporting Actress at this year's Golden Horse Awards for her strong performance as a mentally-challenged teenager in the film IN BROAD DAYLIGHT, which is constantly being compared to TIME STILL TURNS THE PAGES due to both films' social commentary-driven stories).

There are a good number of Asian films from recent years that deal with bullying, domestic abuse, and their related dysfunctions (be it society, circumstances, or family), with Koreeda Hirokazu's KAIBATSU (2023) being one of the most notable examples of late. Director Nick Cheuk, who also wrote the screenplay, knocked it out of the park with his feature film debut, and TIME STILL TURNS THE PAGES (2023) is worthy of discussion in the topic of filmic depictions of bullying, dysfunctions in parenting and the education system, in the same class as KAIBATSU (2023). As a first-time feature-film director, he had a great ensemble cast (not forgetting the key child actors, and those who were cast to play the leads' teenage versions), and behind the camera he was flanked by a great crew, including Exec Producer Derek Yee (who is also the EP for IN BROAD DAYLIGHT, the other Indy-budget film driven by a Social Commentary premise), and Meteor Cheung as DP (Cheung also was DP to IN BROAD DAYLIGHT). This is the kind of story director Koreeda Hirokazu would have loved to be able to helm, and in spite of all the rants about HK's Film industry can no longer sustain without co-prod with north-bound cross-market appeal, these films (along with the recent indy documentary TO BE CONTINUED... (2023)) really help exemplify the fighting spirit of HK movies from past to present - Producer Derek Yee proudly exclaimed that while big budget films are getting harder to finance without co-prod and cross-market selling points integrated into the film/story, low budget films are where miracles can happen - the reason why he would produce a film with an inexperienced director is so the film can benefit from the passion and innocence of these talents who don't see the hard work as just work for next to nothing in pay, and they are willing to give everything they have to make sure their story is told well, as they may not get to do it again if it fails. Whether films made in HK for the Hong Kong audience can survive remains to be seen (yet this story will definitely resonate across markets beyond north of the border), as not every one of these passion-driven projects work, but the ones that work do give us hope, and that's the fighting spirit that helped to make the mark for HK films in the past and will continue to drive Hong Kong cinema forward.

I'm a fan of Kore-eda's feature films, namely the more Stream-of-consciousness movies from the earlier part of his career - MABOROSI, THE AFTERLIFE, & DISTANCE are among my favorites of his work from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s. In his subsequent films that seem to focus even more on social commentary via a neo-realist approach to story telling, Kore-eda managed to show just how good he is in directing children with little to no experience in acting to shine in NOBODY KNOWS and THE MIRACLE. In between, he experimented with comedy (HANA), a twist of fantasy collaborating with non-Japanese actors and cinematographer in AIR DOLL, and then back to more social-commentary and plot driven - some were Melodrama-esque, kitchen-sink films, and others he dabbled in crime whodunnit stories... all of which except for MABOROSI he took charge with writing the screenplays highlighting the fact these were personal stories and messages he wanted to share through the art of Kore-eda cinema.

While the 2 most recent Kore-eda films were overseas collaborations, they seem to show Kore-eda does his best work in Japan, and MONSTER (KAIBUTSU) shows how Kore-eda can shine even when the story isn't penned by himself.

To fans of Kore-eda's earlier films I'd mentioned above, MONSTER is much more story and character driven, and the story is much more accessible than his films prior to NOBODY KNOWS. Many film critics have highlighted the RASHOMON-like approach to story telling. While the technique is similar, the point intended is very different from Kurosawa's use of POV story reveal - Kore-eda uses POV to reveal the truths in the story, while Kurosawa uses perspective story telling to show the audience there is no objectivity with human memories - people will choose to remember and recall memories that isn't necessarily true, but serves to protect their self-interests.

To me, MONSTER has all the heart, humanity, and social commentary that I love from Kore-eda films, but it almost is too accessible for it to be a Kore-eda story - fair to say it isn't his story as he didn't write the screenplay this time. It actually feels like a Shunji Iwai film to me, and some scenes in MONSTER reminds me of Iwai's ALL ABOUT LILY CHOU CHOU. The ending of MONSTER, to me, has a tone & manner that reminds me of Studio Ghibli films like ONLY YESTERDAY (not by Hayao Miyazaki but the late director Isao Takahata) - the messages, the social commentary, the music cues and clues to the ending (if you consider lens flare and changes to the set props) are all so clearly planted - in fact, I wouldn't have expected Kore-eda to feel the audience need to get the ending, but he seems to want to make sure we do through Easter-egg-type devices in the movie (Pay attention to scenes showing the train tracks if you don't know what I mean)...

Is Kore-eda back in good form after dabbling with his French and Korean collaborations? The audience is the best to judge, but being a Kore-eda fan, I enjoyed MONSTER even though I was hoping for a film with less of the planted clues/cues, and this is from me who don't mind the Ozu-esque long takes(MABOROSI, THE AFTERLIFE), 10+ minutes of seeing feet on grass being lost in the woods (DISTANCE), or dialog so subtle you could easily miss that one line about vengeful hate that will make your heart sink (STILL WALKING)...

Last but not least, MONSTER was awarded the Queer Palm prize at Cannes - while I have no intentions to provide a spoiler here, but by virtue of winning the Queer Palm, MONSTER is now considered to be endorsed by the LGBTQ community - the fact that one reaction from a character towards another in one scene can turn what is otherwise no more than fondness/comraderie for children into a sign of Romantic Love, that which for boys at that age when companionship doesn't need to be associated with the idea of romance, let alone sexual orientation and preferences to validate and distinguish (I'm thinking more Mark Lester & Jack Wild in MELODY (1971), the characters of Jean and Julien in Louis Malle's AU REVOIR, LES ENFANTS (1987) and not the characters of Leo & Remi in a much more B/Romance-Losses-Causes focused narrative in CLOSE(2022)) - that one reaction so deliberately planted into the one scene is to me very un-Kore-eda. In my opinion this was done to ensure the audience get the intention without any doubt - wasn't necessary and seemed too deliberate for a Kore-eda film... but then and again, he didn't write the screenplay, and this must have been written deliberately as a key plot-point so to broaden the audience appeal.

This movie had potential - adapted from Candace Chong's stage play which dares to highlight how the #metoo campaign can mean no chance for those wrongly accused to prove their innocence - Jacky Cheung manages to carry his role convincingly and Anthony Wong does a great job in a scene-stealing small role as his defense attorney albeit with less than 10 minutes of screen time... unfortunately the entire film sinks thanks to the talentless actress Karena Lam who surprisingly still gets roles in spite of being one of the worst actress in hk cinema next to Sandra Ng and Gigi Leung - watching this movie only makes me wonder whose boots or butt she continues to manage to lick in order to keep getting acting roles, when there are dozens of actual actresses who can do a decent job instead of turning a good script into a joke of a movie. The director is also the husband of the lead actress and sadly together they have made 2 quite awful films thanks to both the mishandling in direction and her terrible acting where she either overplays or is completely miscast.

Flanked by an allstar supporting cast, watching this 135' reminds me of Woody Allen films that has comedic moments but end up a bittersweet story about breakups with people whose fundamental difference is Hollywood vs Broadway - it was perhaps never meant to be.

At times, especially the scenes with the amazing Alan Alda, feels like Woody Allen comedy, and in other scenes with Ray Liotta & Laura Dern it becomes fiery courtroom sparring. While the acting is great by both Adam Driver and Johanssen, the bickering becomes overbearingly long-winded - as if a fun guest had over-stayed their welcome by making their host listen to the same joke and the only difference being how they lead into the joke... In the end, I feel the only things great are snippets of the two leads performance, and almost all the scenes with Alda, Liotta, and Dern, made me wanting more.

This could have been a great bittersweet comedy about being in love while you cannot even like each other enough to break bread without fighting over small things like how to squeeze a tube of toothpaste. I can only blame the script and the director for this oversight. While the improv singing and end scene allowed Adam Driver to shine, this would have been a better story for Woody Allen or Whit Stillman to tell... in fact, probably Rob Reiner also would have made this better than the overrated flick it is.

As to Best Actress performances for 2019, I'd say this one holds no candle at all compared to Renee zellweger in JUDY (2019), but I digress...

Have been a fan of Director Lawrence Ah Mon's earlier work, especially his neo-realist approach to story-telling exposing the underbelly of HK's lost generation, beginning with the critically acclaimed GANGS (1988, Ah Mon had the capability to create create conversation and social impact in Hong Kong in spite of GANGS (1988)not having any commercial appeal nor did it seem to aim to entertain the masses.

In the years that following the success of GANGS, Ah Mon became a director known for his ability to integrate realism (almost in a documentary approach with some of the better work) into commercial films that dealt with topics and subjects that reflected the darker sides of HK's history, and with films such as LEE ROCK (1991), SPACKED OUT(2008), and most recently BESIEGED CITY (2008), these are some of his finest work in my opinion.

Although Ah Mon's work in between may have had bigger budgets and starring some of the biggest movies stars in Hong Kong at the time, the more commercial ventures showed a lack of depth compared to his better work on films that aimed to highlight social problem in Hong Kong. Even with some of the more commercially successful films, they came across as generic and formulaic - DEALER/HEALER in parts fall into that category.

First act of the film sets up the story not unlike Sergio Leone's ONCE UPON A TIME IN America (1984), or John Woo's BULLET IN THE HEAD (1990), which the latter obviously take inspiration from the former. This is also the weaker part of the movie in that the scenes are cut overly tight, likely to reduce duration of the movie, but resulting in the first 2 acts coming across as if it's a movie trailer, instead of allowing scenes to breathe and characters to be developed.

The visuals to the movie are stunning, and much of it can be credited to the excellent CG effects to bring back 1960's Hong Kong in uncanny realism - to the point of overshadowing the actual story and characters by emphasizing on the history of Hong Kong's past, especially the subculture of the underbelly that was the Kowloon Walled City - once a part of Hong Kong even the law could not successfully interfere with all the vices that made Kowloon City the legendary district that often became the central character to movies, dramas, and fiction in the past 20 years. *since the "walls" were finally torn down in the 1990's.

The top-billing ensemble cast (led by Sean Lau, Louis Koo, Gordon Lam, and a surprisingly effective performance by Zhang Jin) delivers on-mark performances. The weakness of the editing in the first half of the movie limits the characters and the story engage or develop effectively, and most of the 1st and 2nd act audience will find see the main characters in the story become mere plot elements that serve to supporting an attempt to retell the history of Kowloon City, and HK's less-privileged during the period often referred to ad are part of the "BENEATH THE LION'S ROCK" generation.

Where the first 2 acts to the movie focus too much on HK nostalgia, which makes it hard for the characters to develop, the 3rd act makes up for it - Act 1 & 2 have viewers left to be confused whether the film is meant as a history lesson starring well-known actors, or that there is an actual original narrative/story we are to be engaged and to be entertained by.

As the story moves to the present, and comes out of the trappings of flash-backs and actors in bad wigs (someone that's become a HK cinema convention and common device to depict characters in their younger years, which rarely works except to generate unintended laughs), the story/movie takes a turn from a historical recount of HK's past, to an engaging story not unlike John Woo's earlier successful crime films that emphasized on brotherhood and the underdog struggle against establishment, rules, traditions, and impossible odds. Action star Zhang Jin completely steals the show in scenes that has nothing to do with action and fighting, but shows the vulnerability of a man who has accepted all the elements and hardship life has dished out and knocked against a simpleton whose ambition was just to hang-on and get by.

As an added twist that looks inspired by series such as CSI and COLD CASE, we see Ah Mon employing devices to story-telling that reminds us of some of Andrew Lau's work with Felix Chong and Alan Mak (INFERNAL AFFAIRS).

All in all, the pockets of solid performances and compelling story telling don't save the film from being less than what it could have been. The inconsistencies in narrative approach make the film less a Lawrence Ah Mon signature piece that made GANGS (1988), SPACKED OUT (2000), and BESIEGED CITY (2009) iconic examples of HK neo-realist Indy favorites (similar to some of the earlier work by directors FRUIT CHAN, and ANN Hui). Viewers who are not familiar with HK nostalgia will not be compelled by the realism of the scenes that brought back HK's most cherished years. Yet what is nice to see for fans of Ah Mon's past work, along with John Woo's earlier crime-films, is that old tricks still work when they are done well - this could have been a great film if the movie allowed scenes to breathe and characters to more appropriately fleshed out. It could have been a new milestone that pays homage to crime films that made HK the Hollywood EAST that it once was.

But then, that I have hopes producers will also see, and look forward to other upcoming attempts by some of the directors who helped to make HK gangster films legendary and a breed apart for other industries to be inspired by.

A few takeaway questions after watching ARRIVAL,,,

• If one of the 12 UFO's was found hovering above Washington D.C., who would the US Gov't ask to help communicate with the visitors? Would they enlist an entourage comprised of a Linguistcs expert & a physicist, or would they push Trump into the vessel as a peace offering?

• Only the United States can save the world. *note no question mark at end of sentence*

• Forrest Whitaker is taking jobs away from Laurence Fishburne?

• Could a moment of world peace and unity sustain for 3,000 years?

• If languages can give us the ability to see through time, but you cannot alter or avoid an event on your time-line... wait, doesn't the ability to foresee the future already affect your decisions in the past?

• What happens to people who learn the language-of-Circles, but they are also clinically absentminded and forgetful to begin with? Will they then never have trouble finding their keys and never lose their wallets? Can the Language-of-Circles help cure Dementia and some of the symptoms to Alzheimers disease?

• Wouldn't the ability to look into the future completely destroy the gaming industry and wipe out casinos and lotteries around the world?

• Does Linguistics icon Noam Chomsky approve of the movie ARRIVAL?

• Would Terrence Malick (director of TREE OF LIFE & THE THIN REDLINE) watch this film and say to himself, "damn, this is like one of my movies!"

• If the Extraterrestrials glide into a restaurant on Earth and see a water-ring on a table, would they spend hours trying to figure out what the table is trying to communicate?

The only things in common between OVERHEARD 2 and OVERHEARD (2009) are having 3 of the same male leads, a plot relating to phone-tapping & blackmail of the evil criminal few who have the ability to control the stock market.

Working with DP Anthony Pun to deliver a new tone & texture to the picture, some scenes integrate a gritty look similar to heist films like Ben Affleck's THE TOWN, and the editing by Curran Pang delivers an overall tighter pace to bring OVERHEARD 2 a couple of notches up in having a narrative that moves along nicely - leading up to a finale that actually works without dishing out the fantasy - as in the first film - that calls for the audience to suspend their disbelief (just so Mak & Chong could pay homage to Korean VENGEANCE films). The topic of inside trading hits timely with the audience, and the film attempts to remind yet again the facts about the ills to the stock market - numbers are fixed by the few in power, and that the sub-prime fallout owes much to the policies of the US government. What's interesting is that unlike other films about inside trading, Mak & Chong injects a sense of patriotism by highlighting the battles won by these now evil men in the early days of Hong Kong's stock market - the powers they earned by having fought off foreign investors in attacks to crash the HK stock market turned these patriots into monsters. This plot point connects much more strongly to the audience than all the convoluted trade jargon and scam tactics we see in similar films, and reinforces the trade-mark "Heroes gone bad" character development Mak & Chong have used repeatedly since INFERNAL AFFAIRS.

With OVERHEARD 2, actor Daniel Wu delivers one of his most solid and mature performances to date. It is also refreshing to see veteran actors Kenneth Tseng and Kong Ngai in their come-back with scene-stealing performances. The casting of almost-forgotten veteran actors is an on-going trend in HK films right now which began with Leung Siu Lung and Yuen Qiu in Stephen CHow's KUNG FU HUSTLE (2004), then later with Teddy Robin and Chan Kwoon-Tai in GALLANTS (2010), and more recently Jimmy Wong Yu in director Peter Chan's WUXIA (2011).

As with just about all Mak & Chong scripts, unfortunately, the female leads are again given only roles of being speaking vases. MIchelle Ye's scenes with Louis Koo could have been so much more engaging, and Huang Yi's pillow talk with Lau Ching Wan could have been much more touching. It seems the two writer/directors still have problems connecting with the female mind beyond just displaying tears and sad faces. The dialoque given to these two actresses were so disconnected and removed from the right emotions that I was left to wonder how the male leads could have even responded to what was said to carry such cryptic conversations that make these on-screen couples come across as people who barely even know each other.

All in all, OVERHEARD 2 is the best we have seen from the mainstream HK film industry in 2011 so far, and I can't help but to think that there's a good chance we will end up seeing this and the previous OVERHEARD becoming Hollywood remakes in the coming years.

With each of Kore-eda's new films, he tries new topics and/or narrative approaches. This film reminds me less of his previous work and more of Michel Gondry's short film that's a part of the TOKYO!(2008) compilation (a collection of 3 films with the topic being the city of Tokyo directed by three directors - Michel Gondry, Leos Carax, & Bong Jun-Ho).

Unlike some of his previous films that had connections with "family" and "memories" (AFTERLIFE, DISTANCE, NOBODY KNOWS, MABOROSI, & STILL WALKING), AIR Doll also connects but focuses on Losses - not about loved ones passing away, but the lost of values and feelings that make us human. In a much more surreal narrative compared to his previous realite approaches to story-telling (HANA being the exception as he was trying to dabble with comedy and period-pieces), AIR DOLL's story is dark and fairy-tale like. As usual the cinematography is perfect and appropriate for the story he is telling, and Kore-eda in this case works with Taiwanese DP Lee Ping-Bing to bring some of the most beautiful visuals and colors to each and every scene - the close-ups utilizing soft spot-focus are good enough to be used as Leica advertisements.

While the subject matter to AIR DOLL could have treaded onto "hentai" territory, Kore-eda keeps it in its surreal context and what results is a reflection on how we all are lost in a time where we also have all our material needs satisfied as substitutes to the valuable things in life we no longer have.

It's great to see the enigmatic Arata returning to a Kore-eda film (as always, his characters almost always come across as the alter-ego to the director), and Kore-eda again shows his love of the movies. I had no idea he actually liked THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY.

My favorite of Kore-eda's work still being THE AFTERLIFE, DISTANCE, and NOBODY KNOWS, but AIR DOLL is a bold attempt for Kore-eda, showing he can break the mold and continue on his journey of bringing new ideas to the film medium. Kore-eda and Kiyoshi Kurosawa are no doubt two of Japan's most talented filmmakers today.

At nearly 4 hours of duration, LOVE EXPOSURE pretty much covers from love to hate, family dysfunction to religious perversions, and from hentai-ism to affection in its purest form. If that doesn't sound confusing enough, this is one film that fuses reality with manga-logic, yet as you journey through the story, it all strangely makes sense. By the time you're half way into the film, you find yourself accepting all the sacrilege and values you were brought up to condemn and despise. Whether this film was made on the fly and strung up together into a story in the editing room, this is an experience I could only describe as a Doctor Zhivago-esquire romance lived out in an Ichi-the-killer world.

watch at your own risk - rest your values aside, and experience the weird ride that'll keep you thinking there is no hope in this world... but in the end, you'll find it strangely rewarding to have sat through this flawed masterpiece.

This movie has a very simple yet clever premise - an unemployed man trying to steal from a convenience store, and the store clerk catches him in the act... the thief runs away with the store-clerk right after him. All the while, the store clerk is in trouble with a low-rank Yakuza chinpira (gangster). Along the chase for the thief, they catch the eye of the Yakuza who's been looking for the convenience store clerk. The story then moves into high gear in the form of a Tom & Jerry (cat & mouse), but is added with the dog chasing after the cat. The entire 2nd act of D.A.N.G.A.N. Runner (can be translate to English as "PINBALL RUNNERS") is about the chase, and the chase goes on & on to the point that by the end of the 2nd act, the bum forgets why he is running away, and the Yakuza don't remember which of the 2 guys he is chasing, nor does he remember why they're running away from him.

Similar to SABU's later film POSTMAN BLUES, the bulk of the film is simply all chase and action, with plenty of physical comedy and dark humor injected to keep the audience engaged. What falls short is the ending, to which the chase stops when the three men run out of steam, and into one of the most chaotic Mexican stand-offs you'll see on film that looks almost as if Sabu was paying homage to Tony Scott's TRUE ROMANCE (written by Quentin Tarantino).

To fans of the first ROCKY, basically anything post ROCKY II didn't need to get made, and all the subsequent sequels only turned the franchise into cheesy affairs -- think Rocky's roar and tight outfits in III & IV, and who could forget Talia Shire's teary-eyed exclamation of, "You are a champion, Rocky!" This HOPEFULLY final installment brings closure to the life of Rocky Balboa, and it could have been great - Rocky is way past his prime, and has basically settled, not happily, somewhere between his ambitions and limitations. Life in your autumn years can be lonely when those you love have basically left you behind, and Rocky needs to find a way to assert his own meaning in living. I say that this film COULD HAVE BEEN GREAT because it does contain moments that are compelling. Rocky's rebuttal to his son's lament about having lived his entire life under his father's shadow was the highlight of the film -- nearly as moving as Al Pacino's locker room speech near the end of ANY GIVEN Sunday. There were also scenes that no one would expect to actually work but did -- when Rocky talks to his new found love after Adrian's passing. He brings back all the awkward moments that made him the underdog we loved in the first ROCKY.

But that is about all that worked with ROCKY BALBOA.

The movie was shot in HD video, and graded film-like, not dissimilar to many TV shows we see today. In fact, so much so that there were moments I thought I was watching either WITHOUT A TRACE or COLD CASE -- the colors and textures, as well as the camera work ALL the same.

They could have done better.

Typically with any film of this genre, the 2nd act brings out the impossible challenges the protagonist has to overcome, and the 3rd act shows how he triumphs through the odds to victory -- there is basically no 2nd act to ROCKY BALBOA, unless you count the argument he has with his son to be the 2nd act, which doesn't have enough weight to engage the audience to where it is needed. Similarly in the 3rd act, the fight could have been handled much better -- and I kept hoping it would end similarly as THE WRESTLER did. Stallone should have realized that Rocky didn't really have any ambitions, but what came to him -- good or bad, defined him. It is his way of rolling with life's many knocks & pings that made him who he is -- not what he tried to make for himself. After his boxing career was over, the only things that mattered to him in life were his family, and sometimes his pride (which had to be coerced out of him through the likes of Mr. T, and other Rock-em--Sock-em humanoids). If anything else beyond his family had any value to Rocky the simpleton, it was boxing.

In Christopher Nolan's THE WRESTLER, Randy "the Ram" realized that the only place he belonged was in the ring, and beyond that he had no meaning to his being. As tragic as life is, it carried the film into a great ending.

2 years before that, Stallone wouldn't have had the chance to reference a film that hasn't been made yet. but he should have known better than to give us a Disneyland ending.

As good as the 1st ROCKY was, that it was so successful not only at the box office and at that following year's Oscar's (it actually took best picture over ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN!), ROCKY became an inspiration for that generation. Grey hooded sweats was all the rage, and kids all over practiced their one-arm push-ups to be like Rocky. The fact that Stallone and John Avildsen (director of ROCKY) took much inspiration from SOMEBODY UP THERE LIKES ME (1950's Oscar winning film starring Paul Newman as Rocky Graciano, and directed by Robert Wise) was never acknowledged or the original given credit to. If you've seen the Paul Newman film, you'll see how even the mannerism and attire Stallone's Rocky were cop...(cough) "inspired" by the Robert Wise film.

If Stallone had the ability to see a film like THE WRESTLER, and take the same liberties as he did with the Robert Wise film, ROCKY BALBOA may have become a great finale to the franchise.

Whether this is Tarantino's tribute to old school WWII film in the tradition of THE DIRTY DOZEN, or his way of paying homage to his trademarks using a war film setting, watching INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS makes me think the Weinsteins wanted to make sure the audience is not just the Tarantino fan base, but also older audiences who has their personal connection to stories set in WWII (whether from personal experience, or just from having grown up watching classic war films).

While Brad Pitt gets top billing, it is the European actors like Christoph Waltz, Til Schweiger, and Melanie Laurent, who really steal the show. This film, in fact, has more German and French dialogue than English. Christoph Waltz, in particular, delivers an amazing performance that is on par with Ulrich Muhe's in THE LIVES OF OTHERS. Every time the guy is on screen, the tension and suspense is so thick you could slice it with a knife.

If you're looking for Tarantino trademarks (including the abundance of trademarks from other movies and filmmakers that inspired those Tarantino has made himself known for), this movie is filled with them, and deviced and laid out so conspicuously that it's fit for a "spot the trade mark" drinking game. Whether there is any anti-war sentiment intended, it almost seems irrelevant - it's catharsis all the way through from start to finish. Any message is more of an inference the audience would need to create out of their own imagination and sentiments.

As with almost all Tarantino films, forgotten stars are brought back to the screen (e.g. Travolta in PULP FICTION, Pam Grier & Robert Forster in JACKIE BROWN, etc.). Whatever career boosts previous Tarantino films managed to bring to has-been stars, this one was just a nice touch with the cameo of 50's screen heartthrob ROD TAYLOR (who played lead-roles in the original TIME MACHINE, and Hitchcock's THE BIRDS) in a short scene as Winston Churchhill. The use of Ennio Morricone scores worked very well with the photography to remind everyone what made movies great before the age of CGI and video cinematography.

Now if only Brad Pitt could move away from his over-the-top mash-up of Southern accents that's reminiscent of Early Grayce (KALIFORNIA), the experience would have been more to my "satisFICation." Nevertheless, this is probably Tarantino's most Oscar-friendly work to date.

I'm not a fan of Peter Chan's films... didn't like COMRADES, ALMOST A LOVE STORY (1996), thought HE'S A WOMAN, SHE'S A MAN (1994) was OK, but not spectacular. His films are often injected with a little too much calculated sentimentality to me. Yet after watching WARLORDS (2007), I must say this is the first film that made me feel the calculations worked. Peter Chan learned from the mistakes of Zhang Yimou with HERO (2002), HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS, and that lame piece of crap CURSE OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER (2006), he learned that big production and art direction doesn't mean the audience won't expect a good story and direction to go with a film, he also learned that Andrew Lau's triad-gangster-cop INFERNAL AFFAIRS formula can get old if you keep heading toward a beaten path... furthermore, any film that glorifies gangster camaraderie almost means doom with the Chinese film board.

What Peter Chan did was very clever, he actually found a story that allows Andy Lau's affected style of acting to fit the context of a story - WAR. Lau's acting never convinced me in contemporary story lines, but it worked with WARLORDS. In fact, he used all three of the male leads to their type-casted best - Jet Li reprises the hero who sees the greater good but has to accept the fact - that nothing comes without a price, while Takeshi assumes, again, the role of a passive and reluctant hero caught in a crossfire. All the special effects come from the same software you see in big budget films whether it is South Korea, Hollywood, Europe, or Japan, and production value is nothing less than any of the pretty-but-empty period-pieces Zhang Yimou or Chen Kaige tried to fool audiences with... I can see the homage/inspiration from Coppola's APOCALYPSE NOW, the original GET CARTER,... there were even moments where I thought I was watching a tribute to John Woo's A BETTER TOMORROW or THE KILLER -- WARLORDS (2007) is Peter Chan's best film to date, and while there is plenty of sentimentality in the key scenes, the context and the flow of the story actually lifted it from what could have been melodrama, to quite compelling performances.

Whatever calculations and formulas Peter Chan used on his previous films that I didn't like, the math worked for WARLORDS (2007)... and what results is some of the best performances I've seen from Jet Li that doesn't start and end with just fight scenes...

What I'm amazed with is how a Chinese period film is also one of the better anti-war movies I've seen in a long while.

With all the controversy and endless conjectures generated from Kubrick's original, I think it was both a brave attempt and a misguided move for 2010 to have been made, and for no reason other than that any questions 2001 can provoke the audience to ask are not meant to be answered in our time. That remains to me an ingenious decision and marks Kubrick as a visionary in that he managed to create a story that compels the audience to create their unique thirst to want to know more.

Prior to the time 2001 was made, there have not been many major Hollywood films that dare to take the approach of using lack-of-clarity as the intended pay-off. Kurosawa did it in 1950 with Rashomon as a break-through, but it is an entirely different topic than that of 2001--a story that, at the time it was made, the available science and technology could only provide conjectures to what belies in space travel, and the mysteries to the world outside our atmospheres... those myths still remain today.

Remember the film was conceived and made before mankind had ever set foot on the moon. With all the research Kubrick invested in with consultants and Arthur C. Clarke, he knew it was better to have more questions unanswered, than to risk giving answers history and science could soon prove wrong... this is probably his greatest achievement as a story-teller with 2001: A Space Odyseey. If you watch the film again, try to count how many items, as well as technologies shown within are completely off based on what we actually have in application today. Aside from brand logo's, and maybe the details to how computer interfaces may differ from what we have today, there is nothing shown in the movie you can argue as "outdated" or are completely wrong. If that is not the work of a visionary, I don't know what is. While I don't know if Kubrick himself deserves all the credit, as he certainly had the help from the best talents available, to accept the challenge and be able to convince a major studio such as MGM to entrust a production of that scale, and have enough sense to understand that sometimes it is better to not try to provide an answer when you may not even know what the question is, that is genius at work.

It is not difficult to come up with a story and make a film that is confusing, and there are plenty of those for us to forget. What Kubrick & co. came up with is confusion that is at the same time compelling and thought-provoking... not to mention his film in many ways influenced designs in the future. Citing Dr. Strangelove as another example, he created the concept of a "WAR ROOM" that had even Ronald Reagan asking to see when he became President of the United States, which to his disappointment, didn't really exist.

2010 is a good film, but it will always be derivative, always in the shadow of 2001, and always pale by comparison. Think of X-files the TV-series in its first 3 seasons, and how everything went downhill when it became a movie, the fault was not in the production value or lacking in writing talent, but the mere fact that the "payoff" that served to be the original and strongest hook was its ability to make us keep big bold question marks floating in our heads.

Imagine LOST having a resolve... that would be the end to the magic.

By making 2010, detractors of the narrative approach to 2001 will be satisfied, while fans of the original will object... and by virtue of its attempt to provide answers, it adds an expiration date to the story. Little did they know then that in just 6 years after the film was made, the COLD WAR would be a has-been.

I think it was both a brave attempt and a misguided move for 2010 to have been made, and for no reason other than that any questions 2001 can provoke the audience to ask are not meant to be answered in our lifetime.

Prior to the time 2001 was made, there have not been many major Hollywood films that dare to take the approach of using lack-of-clarity as the intended pay-off. Kurosawa did it in 1950 with Rashomon as a break-through, but it is an entirely different topic than that of 2001--a story that, at the time it was made, the available science and technology could only provide conjectures to what belies in space travel, and the mysteries to the world outside our atmospheres... those myths still remain today.

Remember the film was conceived and made before mankind had ever set foot on the moon. With all the research Kubrick invested in with consultants and Arthur C. Clarke, he knew it was better to have more questions unanswered, than to risk giving answers history and science could soon prove wrong... this is probably his greatest achievement as a story-teller with 2001: A Space Odyseey. If you watch the film again, try to count how many items, as well as technologies shown within are completely off based on what we actually have in application today. Aside from brand logo's, and maybe the details to how computer interfaces may differ from what we have today, there is nothing shown in the movie you can argue as "outdated" or are completely wrong. If that is not the work of a visionary, I don't know what is. While I don't know if Kubrick himself deserves all the credit, as he certainly had the help from the best talents available, to accept the challenge and be able to convince a major studio such as MGM to entrust a production of that scale, and have enough sense to understand that sometimes it is better to not try to provide an answer when you may not even know what the question is, that is genius at work.

It is not difficult to come up with a story and make a film that is confusing, and there are plenty of those for us to forget. What Kubrick & co. came up with is confusion that is at the same time compelling and thought-provoking... not to mention his film in many ways influenced designs in the future. Citing Dr. Strangelove as another example, he created the concept of a "WAR ROOM" that had even Ronald Reagan asking to see when he became President of the United States, which to his disappointment, didn't really exist.

2010 is a good film, but it will always be derivative, always in the shadow of 2001, and always pale by comparison. Think of X-files the TV-series in its first 3 seasons, and how everything went downhill when it became a movie, the fault was not in the production value or lacking in writing talent, but the mere fact that the "payoff" that served to be the original and strongest hook was its ability to make us keep big bold question marks floating in our heads.

Imagine LOST having a resolve... that would be the end to the magic.

By making 2010, detractors of the narrative approach to 2001 will be satisfied, while fans of the original will object... and by virtue of its attempt to provide answers, it adds an expiration date to the story. Little did they know then that in just 6 years after the film was made, the COLD WAR would be a has-been.

Having endured this film as a favor, I only wish a Time Machine existed so I could be refunded the wasted duration to this awful picture.

If the screenplay was written with good intentions from heart-felt inspirations, whatever good ideas and "heart" on the script were completely lost in the production and the film's final print.

To start, none of the main characters played by Stephen Fung, Teresa Lee, and Ayako Morino were seasoned actors during the time the film was made, so a little extra "understanding" was already extended in judging their performances.

While Lee was the better of the lot, and seemed to have tried her best to make sense out of the narrative(which seemed to not be able to decide whether this story is supposed to be a biography, or a Bunuel-like take on a biography), Stephen Fung played the lead as a cross between a Stepford wife and a lunatic that reminded me of John Cassavettes' madman character in Robert Aldrich's DIRTY DOZEN... or was he supposed to be a SYBIL like schizophrenic? I can't tell, and more than 5 minutes of it I stopped caring. What caught more attention to most of the audience who wasn't related to the cast and crew, was how soon the film would end! There would be traces in the scattered narrative that tries to mimic moments in Vincente Minnelli's Van Gogh biography LUST FOR LIFE (as the story is about an artist-poet in this case, who lived his life in search of artistic beauty while neglecting everything and everyone around him), but that went only as far as the grassy plains of the exterior visuals in New Zealand.

Stephen Fung has never been thought of as a talented actor. In fact, prior to his acting career, he was even less as a member of a 2-man band that kept much of the pop scene wondering if its existence was a parody to the music scene in itself. Mark Lui, a successful pop music producer and composer in Hong Kong, has not a gifted voice, so you would expect the band would at least consist of one quality voice to accompany the music potential. In any case, the band's career was fortunately short-lived... but for the gift we got with Stephen Fung leaving the music scene, the damage was then extended to the HK film industry, where Stephen Fung would be promoted as an idol of sorts, and of late, even as a film-making talent.

All this reminds me of the classic John Landis role-reversal comedy TRADING PLACES, where Eddie Murphy played a transient given the chance to live the life of a Wall-street bigwig set-up as a wager between the heads of a commodities firm... but as that story successfully shows, a transient can be a star banker only if he knew how to apply common sense at the right time.

Stephen Fung, on the other hand, showed us his lack of talent at the beginning of his career, and after nearly a decade in the business, continues to remind us that things have stayed exactly the same for him.

take the ingredients of the Hollywood Western, displace it onto Asian shores, and focus it on a misfit who embodies the stereotype attributes: 1) faithless, 2) lacking in morals, & 3) reluctantly gets himself into a situation that calls for the wakening of conscience & the resurrection of his heroic ideals, now add the mythical attractions of the East from the P.O.V. of the West, and continue to enforce the believe that "we're American, and even though there are lots of us--good and bad, we eventually will make your world a better place"...

what do you get in result? a typical Hollywood treatment that caters not just to entertain the audience with a long stretch of some facts with fiction, but an indirect statement that can be inferred as glorification of values that once stood tall as pillars and foundations of the American spirit.

Zwick probably did his research, and probably does have a lot of respect for the history, culture, and honors of the Japanese... but the film doesn't show it beyond the "been there and done that" plot-points we've seen in so many other films dealing with Americans in Asia (think BLACK RAIN)--"we love your sense of honor and loyalty, and your artwork and etiquette... but we have a better way--better yet, we can adopt your ways and do it better than you, and your women will end up liking us too!" Tom Cruise hold no candle to the likes of Watanabe and Hiroyuki Sanada, but they are the support cast? wow, who came up with that formula? The Marketing guys thought hard about appeasing the Japanese audience with their revered thespians... but as a sidecast to Tom Cruise who basically plays the same character in every movie? movies don't have to be history books on film--all facts and no fiction, but I would expect this type of menudo to have been made in the 40's as WWII propaganda... we're in the 21st century now. If not for the innovation, audience do expect more than poorly written scripts that try to do a wool-pull over our eyes with budget and promotion.

and on the battle-scenes, even Wong Kar'Wai's ASHES OF TIME (1994), made on a shoe-string budget compared to THE LAST SAMURAI, presented a more compelling and heroic depiction of the warrior's fight.

a score of 3/10, with 2 points given to Yuen Wo Ping and the set-designers.

This movie goes to show that in an industry so in need of hits--not only for the export market as Stephen Chow has decided to design his films by, but something that can satisfy local HK audience's growing appetite for better quality films, that relationships within a small clique of producers with money connections can make small miracles happen for aspiring filmmakers without any apparent skills other than the talent their imaginations seems to tell them they have.

Other than the choreography of fight-scenes, which mostly unoriginal, but is packed enough into timely pockets so as an attempt to fool audiences into not thinking about the lame depth-less back-story to the film, it's mostly unpopped kernels. Producers were wise to cast pretty faces and bankable local stars so the eye-candy factor would sugarcoat this crap-pill of a movie, and they do extrapolate some attributes from characters of successful films to try to give a sense of depth to the film's various roles... this, if done correctly, saves the director and writers a lot of character-building work BC audiences would simply refer to those roles they've seen in other movies and they'll feel they know the stereotype the roles are to stand for.

sadly, Micheal Wong in a Dr. Evil and James Bond villain get-up just doesn't cut it.

to cut a long rant short, this film does have its appeal to those who like brain-dead films. Ng-Ma makes a comeback to the silver screen, Anthony Wong's brief shine, and Daniel Wu as the usual Daniel Wu character... not forgetting Charlene and Gillian--whom audience most likely would forgive for their part-taking in this film BC, if nothing else, they are eye-candy of sorts.

The big question is, why doesn't someone tell Stephen Fung to get some schooling on film-making, and better yet, acting. He is clearly and objectively the least skillful actor amongst all speaking parts (oh, not forgetting the 2 morons with the strange hairdo, who are two of HK's worst radio non-personalities... the 3 could be called Moe, Larry, and Cheese--but it would be an insult to the 3 Stooges).

Why someone would finance a film and allow Stephen Fung to direct beckons many questions. Among HK's successful list of directors who began as actors boasts the likes of Derek Yee, John Woo, etc... These guys worked hard at honing their craft. While Stephen Fung practices his amateur magic tricks and smoke cannabis with his pals.

"whoa dude, you're a cesspool of great ideas Stevie! I'll get daddy to finance your film. Now tell me, who's your Daddy?"

That's what friends are for?

Get a real job, Stephen.

Part of what makes a Stephen Chow comedy special is his ability to deliver a combination of non-sequitur humor while reminding us the harsh-realities in life. There's the betrayal by his apprentice chef in GOD OF COOKERY, the hardship of an aspiring actor in KING OF COMEDY, and the lost-cause martial artists in SHAOLIN SOCCER. What is missing with KUNG-FU HUSTLE is exactly that ingredient that made his past films so successful, and what would turn Stephen Chow into a local hero both in China and Hong Kong.

To be fair, Chow had all the ingredients ready on the table, but somehow they just weren't fully utilized as they should have been. What results is a very CG-heavy film that's a cross between MATRIX, VOLCANO HIGH (2001, a Korean film directed by Kim Tae-gyun), and KILL BILL.

There is greatness to homages when they are done in the right way, and KUNG FU HUSTLE seems to be full of tributes... whether it is the Tarantino tribute with the Axe-gang scenes, King-Hu with the DRAGON'S INN set-design, VOLCANO HIGH's CG-texture and feel, or even scenes reminding us of Keanu Reeve's fight-sequence with over a hundred black-suited villains in Matrix Reloaded... the list goes on, and he even throws in a Stanley Kubrick shot from THE SHINING... at one point, it's almost as if we're asked to name the movies certain scenes or shots were inspired by.

Innovations? Chow broke-away from the typical Director/Actor/screenwriter formula of having the lead (i.e. chow) take up all major scenes in the story (e.g. ask yourself if you've ever watched a Jacky Chan film where he's not in almost every scene). Instead he gives ample time to the support cast of long-time-no-see martial arts experts who were at the top of their game during the 70's and early 80's. The Villain (Leung Siu-Lung) in KUNG FU HUSTLE was one of the top 'B' film stars known for his Bruce Lee-type roles 20 years ago. We haven't seen him since then, and Chow gave him a big home-coming in this film... The same also applies to the Land Lady (Yuen Chao). She was one of the few stuntwomen in Hong Kong's film industry during the 70's. If you've watched THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN(yes, a bond film), you would remember her as the butt-kicking school girl who saved Roger Moore's behind. We all know of Sammo Hung & Jacky Chan, but few of us know that she was actually trained under the same martial arts teacher as these guys since childhood.

Chow had the opportunity to follow his sentimental-lead early on in the film. In the scenes when we find out who the real kung-fu masters were at PIG-STY, and how they explain they've moved to the village to get away from all the fighting and reminisce over their faded past... those were some of the best scenes in KUNG FU HUSTLE, but sadly all the potential gave way to special effects soon after. What follows is a combination of 3D-cartoon with contrived humor.

As a Chow fan, like most of the audience whom I shared the theatre with, we all went to be entertained - to laugh, to feel the melancholy... but quoting a middle-aged housewife as she leaves with her husband at the end of the movie, "It's no Shaolin Soccer." Was this film made this way to make a better export? The minimal dialogue after the 1st act, all CG-action... basically you could turn the volume off after 30 minutes and still get what's going on... I wonder if this is a marketing decision so the film will be more easily digested overseas....

Oh well, what began as the most feared competitor in HK theatres during the Xmas holidays (no other HK film wanted to be released at the same time), is at best a could-have-been-better Chow film. Hopefully his next films will once again have more weight on story and clever dialogue...

that's the stuff dreams are made of, and we expect nothing less.

In 1999, when Wong Kar Wai began shooting SUMMER IN BEIJING, word was already going around that he was at the same time starting work on a film with the working title 2046. Through the grapevine, it was rumored that 2046's plot revolved around Hong Kong 50 years after the 1997 handover. When China announced to the world she was going to reclaim the former British Colony (owing credit to the infamous Opium war and assorted atrocities in the 1800's), it also declared that Hong Kong was to remain sovereign for the first 50 years after the handover. This made for a world of opportunities for Wong Kar Wai and the 6.5 million population in the city who are constantly being bombarded by discussions and debates on television and assorted media.

5 years down the road, SUMMER IN BEIJING never went anywhere, IN THE MOOD OF LOVE (2001) became Wong's trophy picture that shined above all his previous work... that is, until CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON (2001) came along and upstaged Wong both at the Academy Awards, as well as that year's Hong Kong film awards.

What happened to 2046 then? What happened to the cast that supposedly had Bjork starring alongside Maggie Cheung, Tony Leung, Fei Wong, and Japanese pop idol (yet a well qualified actor) Takuya Kimura? What happened to the plot about Hong Kong 50 years after the Turnover back to China?

Pushing all the above aside, I step back into 2046, which I'd just watched last night. The film opens with Takuya Kimura's voice over detailing his visit to 2046, and being the only one who has ever decided to leave. He is the lone passenger on the train back to a time which he does not specify. We know there are androids on the train who are either servants to the lone passenger, or perhaps they are en route to their own time as well... we don't know, and it doesn't matter.

The 60 minutes that follow are, to my delight, just as good as any other of Wong's best work in drawing the audience into a world of mystique romantic melancholy. We find out Takuya Kimura the passenger is a ficticious character penned by Tony Leung's character Chow Mo-Wan - a reprise and continuation to the storyline so well built-up in IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE (2001). To make a long story short, his rendezvous with Maggie Cheung in IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE (2001) pushed him into a state of longing for something that "could have been" but never went further than a few intimate moments in the room 2046. Leung's character goes through a series of women in an attempt perhaps to free himself of the pain of having lost Maggie Cheung, which as I would deduce, was at best unrequited love, and if nothing else, the first of the series of affairs he would have after he finds out his wife has left with another man.

In the first act, Tony runs into LuLu (Carina Lau), they have another one of these platonic moments at her room discussing how she's been searching for her true love - a bird with no legs. I must say as a fan of Wong's DAYS OF BEING WILD (1990), I was delighted to see an attempt to actually link these scenes and characters back to a movie he made more than 14 years ago. He even uses the same music made so famous by DAYS OF BEING WILD (1990). Leung's voice-over explains how he first met Lulu back in Singapore. She was a dance-hall girl working there after failing to find her boyfriend - a Chinese man of Filipino descent.

If you've watched DAYS OF BEING WILD (1990), you'll know what I'm getting at. But I'll stop that point here... In any case, I loved this part.

Moving on, we find out Fei Wong is the hotel owner's daughter who's staying at 2046. Tony Leung returns to Hong Kong after another failed fling with gambler BLACK WIDOW (Gong Li)... which by the way is one of the weakest plot-points/links in the film. Leung goes back to the hotel hoping to live in the same room (2046), hoping to relive his memories with Maggie Cheung. The room is now inhabited by Fei Wong, and Leung moves into 2047. It is here at the hotel where he befriends Fei Wong and learns of her father's condemnation of her relationship with Japanese businessman Takuya Kimura. Kimura hopes Fei would leave with him back to Japan... I must say these scenes show us some of the Takuya Kimura finest moments on the silver screen. Members of the audience, and probably fans of Kimura, were actually ooohing and oowing all over the house. Contrary to previous reports of how his screen time is negligible, I must argue that it's not the "duration," but the quality of his scenes and performance that makes his part shine.

Back to the story... Leung meets Zhang Ziyi - another tenant at the hotel who also goes through men like Wong Kar Wai with film stock. They meet, and she ends up falling for him... but only to be rejected.

The rest of the story revels around Leung's flashbacks of Zhang, Gong Li, Fei Wong, and his continuation of the novel 2046, which upon collaboration with Fei Wong (also an aspiring writer in the movie), is later named 2047.

The first half of the movie is fantastic, and serves as a great example of cinema in its most romantic yet subtle form. Visually breath-taking shots, good dialogue, and great music... But what happens toward the last 1/3 of the movie becomes a contrived patchwork of montages, soundbite vignettes that leads us nowhere. I for one, never would argue that a film or story could not close with an open-ending. But this one is just NOT IT. As an fan of Wong's previous work (not including FALLEN ANGEL (1995), that is), what happens in the last 1/3 of the movie is as convoluted and incomplete as a screening of Wong's daily rushes (if he practices this, that is).

At one point of the story, Leung sends his completed draft of 2047 - the novel, to Fei Wong. Fei Wong writes back with the comment, "the ending is too sad. Can you try to change it to a happier ending?"

We see Leung trying to start with the revision.

This is where I, if ever I had the chance of working with Wong Kar Wai, would suggest:

Keep the scene with Tony Leung trying to write, cut the Intertitles showing passage of time, use all the shots of the women and people Tony Leung have come across and created in the time and moments that affected him, keep the Zhang Ziyi scene at the end, cut the Gongli scene at the end, and close with the movie showing Leung start to write with a smile.

Voice-over: "I guess some things just cannot be changed... even in fiction... because I no longer know what it is I have lost."

side-shot of Tony Leung smiling as he writes... fade to black.

something like that... or anything but what's there now.

I haven't read Susan Orleans' book, and my history with the work of Charlie Kaufman is limited to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), and Being John Malkovich (1999). So far, I haven't been let down by any of his work.

with all that's been written in previous comments on this site, I don't think I can say much more... except that it is obviously that the ending sequence of the movie is either a tribute or made to remind us of Wong Kar Wai's HAPPY TOGETHER (1996). The use of the Turtle's song, as well as the time-lapse photography showing moving traffic is almost a direct shot-for-shot copy... only differences here being the addition of flowers in the foreground, and the shot being more eye-level than in Happy Together.

so much for my trivial drivel....

is the screenplay a cop-out, or genius? Having seen Kaufman's previous work, the idea of stories/screenplays/memory/the writing process taking on a life of its own has become somewhat of a trademark to me. What amazes me is how each of the 3 films I've mentioned managed to convey the "life" of these intangibles so thought-provokingly, yet not making his audience feel like they need a MA in Critical Studies just to "get it."

The Coen Brothers did a great job bringing to life the nightmares that writers suffer when they hit the wall with Barton Fink (1990). That was a film that warranted many viewings for me to appreciate all the intricate layers that touched on, 1) the old Hollywood studio system, 2) the notion about what is "high handed" writing versus what some writers would consider "selling out" by not wanting to write to "the common man" (i.e. remember what John Goodman's character keeps shouting before he torched the hotel?), and also 3) the fear of a writer for not-being-able-to write, which most screen-writers would probably feel is the loneliest and scariest moment to endure....

am I losing you?

Charlie Kaufman managed to turn a novel/story that most writers would probably consider impossible to turn into a decent screenplay, into a journey about the roller-coaster ride of the writing process. When McKEE the script guru tells him to change the ending to make a crappy script work, the story takes that route and we get the swamp scenes and the car crash... He shows us how the screenwriter can get lost in the writing process (as we do before the ending), and how copping-out does sometime make it work, and the audience wouldn't know the difference. In other words, all the characters in the story are no different than the John Malkovich and Jim Carrey's in his other screenplays - they are all his creations, and Kaufman boldly and proudly reminds us the almighty power of the pen.

It is almost as if he took on The Orchid Thief as a bet...

cop-out or genius... Kaufman wins handsdown.