A Night to Remember

I watched this is an unusual manner.  I’d sit through a couple of chapters, then go back and watch them again with the commentary, because the Titanic story is so fascinating that I wanted to know how the film compared to the actual story.  The same guys (a pair of Titanic historians) also do commentary on James Cameron’s Titanic, so now I’m looking forward to listening to that one too.

It’s only natural to compare this movie to Cameron’s.  Cameron views the events through the eyes of his fictional couple, where Baker has no specific central characters and attempts to give the bigger picture.  It’s hard to say which approach is more effective… I suppose each is effective in its own way.  Obviously Titanic has higher production values, more spectacular effects, and the benefit of 40 additional years of information gathering and salvaging.  But I give Baker a slight edge for not having an cartoonishly nasty villain in it.  At any rate, such a comparison is somewhat meaningless in this case, as the two had different aims.  Baker’s film is quite harrowing even without modern movie magic.  Superbly told and very compelling.  Rating: 8 

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The Wild One

Not bad, not great, just good.  I thought the bikers would be demonized more, but it was pretty even-handed.  The film shows the ineffectiveness of the individual against the mob, on both sides of the conflict.  Brando is billed as “the wild one” but of course he turns out to be the gentlest and most sensible of the gang.  The totemic trophy he clings to is a great device, a use of symbolism so blatant that it’s almost bold.  A bit dated — the tough guy behavior of the bikers is laughably corny from today’s viewpoint — but quite watchable.  Rating: 7

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Monrak Transistor (Transistor Love Story)

Coming directly between the wonderful films 6ixtynin9 and Last Life in the Universe, this one is a bit of a disappointment from Pen-Ek Ratanaruang.  It’s a Bollywood-esque mix of comedy, romance, drama and musical.  At the beginning it’s a real hoot, but a couple of things happen that drag it down.  First, the protagonist makes a decision that’s not only inconsistent with his character, but so damned stupid and irresponsible that it becomes difficult for the viewer to sympathize with him from that point on.  This decision starts a chain of events that gradually drain all the fun out of the movie.  What’s left is a long section that’s all heavy drama without the humor, romance or music.  It’s not until the end when things start to lighten up again, but by that point the buzzkill is too great to overcome.  Rating: 6

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Zezowate Szczescie (Bad Luck)

A pretty good comedy with political undertones.  As is often the case with Polish films, I felt like a lot of the politics went over my head.  It didn’t help that there were no subtitles for any of the signage in the movie — lots of untranslated banners, posters, and newspapers obviously carried some kind of meaning, but it wasn’t always easy to decipher from the context.  There seemed to be some criticism of the Communist Party (Piszczyk’s colleagues are suspicious of him for being too enthusiastic), but it was made while the Communists were in power… so maybe not?  Perhaps the Party in Poland wasn’t as oppressive as elsewhere.

As a comedy, it works quite well.  Piszczyk’s “bad luck” is largely the result of his own cowardice, deception, pride and duplicity.  There’s a lot of amusing editing tricks, and Piszczyk’s childhood is told as an old-style nickelodeon one-reeler.  Kobiela is a very good comic actor, and the rest of the cast is just fine too.  Roman Polanski, who was an assistant director on the film, has a tiny role, but since you only see him from far away you’d never know it was him.  Rating: 7

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Ong-bak

The plot is as simplistic as they get.  The characters, every last one of them, are insultingly one-dimensional.  The hero is really, really good and the villains are really, really bad.  The super-steroid guy reminded me of Rocky IV, which is something you really never want to be reminded of.  More comic moments would have been nice, too (I liked “knives for sale!”).  And the music was generic techno.  Even the director’s little shout-outs are lame.  Spielberg and… Spy Game?  Why???

Of course, none of that is especially important in a martial arts flick as long as the ass-kicking is good.  Tony Jaa can certainly kick ass, but he does it without the inventiveness or charisma of Jackie Chan, or the hypnotic grace of Jet Li.  A scene early in the movie shows Jaa demonstrating a long string of Muay Thai moves with detached precision.  He maintains the same robotic demeanor for most of his fights, making it hard to root for him.  Jaa’s impressive stuntwork is more entertaining, although the director has little confidence in letting it speak for itself — almost every major stunt unreels in slo-mo, and then in an instant replay from another angle (or two, or three).  I don’t mind it once in a while, but it got annoying.  Rating: 5

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Caché

[WARNING: spoilers!]  I don’t know how to discuss this movie without spoiling it, so read no further if you intend to see it.  Okay?  Okay.

At first I really, really liked it.  I liked how it worked as an allegory of France/Algeria (a situation I don’t know a hell of a lot about, but I know enough to recognize the allegory) and how it worked on just the personal level of a man coping with guilt and conscience.  The characters make the kind of bad decisions that it hurts, physically hurts you to watch, because you want them to do the right thing.  So then the ending comes up.  I watched that scene very carefully, looking for clues or familiar characters.  I didn’t see any, drew my own conclusions (i.e., the school represents what Majid never had a chance at) and was satisfied that the mystery was left ambiguous.  I thought of it as the act of a higher power, forcing Georges (and by allegory, France) to face his past.  Then I went to iMDB to read some comments.  Oh shit.  I did miss something in that final scene.  I watched again, and… my heart sank a little.  If the implication is that the tapes were made by Majid’s son (with or without the help of Pierrot), then not only is that a little hard to swallow, but I think it robs the movie of some of its mysterious energy.  Now it’s a whodunit with a “Where’s Waldo?” solution.  And when you think about it, it also implicates Majid’s son in his own father’s suicide.  It doesn’t change the fact that the previous 110-ish minutes were powerful and gripping, but it’s kind of like going out with a whimper.  Rating: 7

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Werckmeister Harmonies

Another gorgeous and hypnotic work by Tarr, a pure film experience that defies convention.  You’re given space to reflect and draw your own conclusions.  His work is really not like anything I’ve ever seen, though you could make comparisons to Tarkovsky or Antonioni.  I’m not sure if I prefer this one or Damnation.  Werckmeister seems rather more allegorical (despite Tarr’s denial that his films contain any allegory or symbolism), and also slightly richer emotionally.  However, I think I liked the camerawork in Damnation a little more.  Either way, both are beautiful movies that I want to return to and explore deeper.  Rating: 9

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301/302

Not bad, but it didn’t do much for me.  I liked the characters and their hyper-exaggerrated living spaces, and the way food was presented as both appealling and appalling.  It seemed like the movie was building towards some kind of twist, but the ending is entirely predictable, and probably  most people figure it out in the first five minutes.  Kinda fun when it’s working the black comedy angle, not so satisfying as a thriller.  Rating: 7

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The Day After (rewatch)

I haven’t seen this since it originally aired.  I remember all the hype about it, how realistic and disturbing it would be, and don’t let your kids watch it alone, etc.  I could have sworn the film ended with a shot of a mutated baby, but now I realize I got it mixed up with the ending of the V miniseries.  The effects are pretty bad, but the hair and makeup people went hog wild.  The dialogue and acting are mostly godawful, and make it a dead giveaway as a TV movie.  I thought the scenes of the missiles being launched were unsettling, what a surreal sight that would be.  Otherwise, kind of subpar… too much sappy music, also.  Rating: 5

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Key Largo

Not a bad gangster flick.  The plot is amazingly similar to The Petrified Forest, except Humphrey Bogart is the hero instead of the villain this time.  Nothing special, but Bogie & Bacall elevate it a little.  It’s funny how the treatment of Indians in this movie is somewhat progressive, but it still comes off as mildly condescending, and they still haven’t got past dialogue like “Him good friend”.  Rating: 7

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