狂った!

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On DVD at Sach’s apartment, with Lucía and Sach, on 30 March, 2007, at around 23:30.

This film definitely lost a little something on the small screen. Among other things, I found Willie’s drawings significantly less ominous and chilling than when I saw this at the Castro. Nevertheless, the film was as mysterious and unsettling as ever. How would I classify this film? It certainly carries conventions from certain genres (horror, in particular), but it also very much defies classification. Anyways, probably the most frightening thing in the film is Millie’s notion of good eating. That her cooking potatoes at the end of the film provides such stark contrast and is such an improvement over everything else she made or talked about over the course of the film says everything. And yet I have to wonder: are there people that have watched this film and thought nothing of it?

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Shiri (Kang Je-gyu, 1999)

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On DVD at Sach’s apartment with Lucía and Sach on 27 March, 2007, at around 22:30.

I guess you have to know the context in which this film was made to really understand what all the fuss is. I certainly don’t—I haven’t really seen any Korean films from then, and in the mid-90s I had no clue what was going in Korean politics at the time. That said, it was an enjoyable action film, despite its more ridiculous elements (an explosive as powerful as a nuclear weapon that is indistinguishable from water and is set off by a combination of heat and a certain color temperature of light). It’s kind of nice how the marketing of the film so contrasted the actual content, particularly in regard to the female lead (she’s never dressed anything like the way she is on the posters and packaging I’ve seen).

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My Sassy Girl (Kwak Jae-yong, 2001)

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At home on DVD with Lucía, on 1 March, 2007.

This was an entertaining film. The plot was all over the place and the story as a whole was a little weak, but many of the scenes were so nicely done that it was a thoroughly enjoyable experience overall. Of particular note is Jun Ji-hyun’s ability to contort her face. Every time she says “wanna die?” (or whatever it is that the translator chose to subtitle as “wanna die?”), she contorts her face in the most profound fashion.

Most of the film feels like an American high school film, particularly in the way that the characters relate to each other and the world around them in their still-formless lives (in the film, they are in college, in their twenties).

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At home on DVD with Lucía on 19 February, 2007, at around 22:30.

I’m not quite sure what I was supposed to get out of this film. The dialogue was very artificial in a self-conscious sort of way, almost poetic (I dislike poetry), like some kind of experimental theater. It did lend the film an interesting rhythm, but I found myself struggling with the film and laughing at it at the same time. One thing that can be definitely said is that the film is a good length—the world needs more 60-minute films.

Perhaps if I come back to it after watching a few more of Hal Hartley’s films (previously I’d only seen Henry Fool), I’ll find it more interesting.

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On DVD at home with Lucía, on 18 January, 2007, at around 20:00.

For some reason Netflix thought I wouldn’t like this film.

I’m not sure whether this qualifies as a remake of Some Like It Hot. It came close enough that I expected it to end with the same line.

I guess Netflix was right.

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On DVD at home with Lucía, on 23 December, 2006, at around 22:30.

This isn’t Billy Wilder at his best by any stretch of the imagination, but I found myself sucked into the story pretty handily. Charles Laughton is in top form, and Marlene Dietrich is as magnetic as ever. The rest of the performances fell a little flat, however, and I didn’t enjoy the comical asides nearly as much as I felt I was supposed to, which is a shame, as the film probably would have felt a lot less sloppy had I appreciated them or had they not been there.

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On DVD at home with Lucía, on 9 December, 2006, around 23:59.

I’m glad to finally see this one. Criterion #3! It’s been on my list of films to watch for ages, and I even gave it a go way back when, but fell asleep about 10 minutes into it. In any case, it’s as good as I’d hoped, and certainly the best British Hitchcock I’ve seen so far. It’s a comedy thriller that seems very much ahead of its time in terms of technique (how many times has this premise been used since? It seems there’s a new Jodie Foster film with a similar idea), while very dated in its dialogue, setting, humor, etc.

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On DVD at home with Lucía, on 2 December, 2006, at around 21:00.

I get the impression that Andrew Niccol wants us to believe that people born from embryos prescreened for idealized genetic makeup are inclined to behave like Nazi androids. I feel that there’s an implicit idea in the film that genetic imperfections are a large part of what make us interesting as humans.

Less implicit is the notion that we are more than our genetic makeup, and that our genetic makeup is not a pure determination of our potential. In the future that Niccol paints for us, people are broken into two categories: an elite class of people born with optimal genetic makeup and an underclass of people born naturally. On the one hand, the film is very well directed and it plays out with a remarkable narrative economy that matches the cleanliness of the future that Niccol shows us (and the performances, I thought, were excellent). On the other hand, it seems like an adaptation of some unpublished Ayn Rand novel crossed with right-wing propaganda about messing with natural birth processes and giving ourselves over to science.

I can see why this film is mentioned as often as it is—Niccol seems to be big on thought-provoking high-concept stories (The Truman Show being another notable one), and Gattaca is a very pure and carefully laid out example of that. As much as I might dislike the politics of the film, or the propagandistic overtones, or the messages I infer from it, I wish there were more films that so clearly laid out their arguments as Gattaca and The Truman Show.

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On DVD at home with Lucía, on 27 November, 2006, at around 20:00.

It’s nice to see this film again after so long. I can’t really sympathize with Henry Hill in any way, but he does appeal to some of my worst sensibilities, which really contributes to the sense of excitement I feel as his character develops. Once it hits the midpoint, the film fills me with dread as I see everything collapse. What I missed the first time around is the motivation behind Henry Hill’s betraying his friends. When I first saw the film, it felt like he was just trying to protect his own interests, but the second time around I got a stronger sense of his own sense of betrayal, as well as the sense that he had realized that the game is only interesting and friends only matter when you’re on your way up, and on the way down it all becomes nothing.

More than anything, however, I wish that the scenes from the 50s wouldn’t come to an end. It is my favorite part of the film, and it’s over so quickly.

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on DVD at home with Lucía on 11 November, 2006, at around 22:30

An enjoyable film set in very appealing French Riviera with some very unappealing main characters involved in some very intriguing intrigue. This film was very clearly intended to capture a nostalgia for the free time of childhood, and in that it mostly succeeded. It also seemed clear that the father was looking for a lover as much like his own daughter as possible, giving the film some kind of reverse Oedipal complex that I couldn’t quite fathom.

I love technicolor.

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