Comments about some movies I've seen recently:
Burning - Probably my favorite film of the year so far, overtaking Paul Schrader's First Reformed. The film was directed by Lee Chang-dong, who you may know as the director of Poetry and Secret Sunshine, and is his first film in eight years. I like how the movie can be viewed like Sluizer's The Vanishing (a protagonist who becomes obsessed about finding out the fate of his girlfriend who disappears without a trace) or like Antonioni's Blow-Up (a paranoid mystery as to whether the protagonist witnessed a murder or is seeing things that aren't really there). Very topical given the recent mass shootings in Kentucky, Pittsburgh and Tallahassee -- which I think is deliberate as Lee does depict the protagonist's growing isolation and make references to Donald Trump. How many of those shooters saw themselves as Nick Carraway-type figures pushing back against the Gatsbys of this world? Very impressive debut performance by Jeon Jong-seo as the eccentric and alluring woman the protagonist becomes obsessed about.
Mid 90s - Exactly the same storyline as This Is England (a film I adore) but replace the neo-Nazis from that film with the cast from Paranoid Park and you will have Mid 90s. I really appreciated how the movie was shot like Slacker because it made the movie feel like it was some lost artifact from the mid 90s. I have a feeling that 10 to 15 years from now, this film will be grouped amongst the best gen-x/slacker films (Slacker, SubUrbia, Kicking and Screaming, Before Sunrise, Clerks, etc.) even though it was made some 20+ years after those other movies.
A Quiet Passion - Finally caught up with this Terence Davies film. Your personal mileage will vary depending on your appreciation of Emily Dickinson's poetry as there is lots of it, usually delivered via voiceovers. Davies' films are usually naturalistic but this felt to me affected and stagy. Also, I had difficulty following the various stages of Dickinson's life as Cynthia Nixon portrayed roughly 35 years of Dickinson's life without any significant change in appearance, which I think gives viewers the feeling of stasis (although I realize that may have been Davies' intention). Still worth watching as Davies offers some of his own speculative theories as to why Dickinson became so reclusive. It's a mystery why Nixon's performance did not get an Oscar nom when you consider last year's nominees.
A Star is Born - Very enjoyable first half, especially the meet-cute and the blossoming of the relationship. The second half not so enjoyable as it plods along following the well-worn rock-star cliche of fame, compromise and addiction. I never saw any of the previous versions but my wife, who loves the Streisand/Kristofferson version, wasn't too impressed either.
Tokyo Idols - A documentary following a teenage singing idol named Rio over about a two-year period as her career is starting to ascend. I knew about creepy Japanese idol culture primarily through AKB48 and how a segment of their fanbase were middle-aged men. But I wasn't aware that there are many hopeful wannabe idols, who seem to exist in some kind of minor leagues or developmental league for future idols, whose fanbase appears to be solely middle-aged men. Some of these wannabe idols depicted in the documentary start as young as 11, and watching them perform in front of a bunch of middle-aged males made me queasy. What makes the documentary so confounding though is that these lonely middle-aged men -- though talking head interviews -- seem to have genuine platonic affection for these girls, and these girls are dependent on these men to support their dreams and nascent careers. I kept waiting for the documentary to show something that clearly crossed a line but I'm assuming the documentarians witnessed nothing untoward or else it would have been included in the film. A fascinating and weird phenomenon.
|