Zui yao yuan de ju li (The Most Distant Course)

I have no idea how this ended up in my Netflix queue.  Neither the writer/director nor any of the actors are familiar to me (in fact, most of them only have one or two credits).  I guess someone must have recommended it at some point.  It’s about this sound recordist guy who keeps sending audio recordings of various locations to his ex-girlfriend.  Unbeknownst to him, she’s moved out, and the girl who currently lives there becomes intrigued by the tapes and starts to form a connection with the unknown sender.  As a kind of subplot, there’s also a psychiatrist character who becomes disillusioned and sets out on a journey of self-discovery.  It sounds like an interesting idea in theory, but it doesn’t really add up to much.  The premise feels very manufactured (and not entirely original… something similar happens in Double Life of Veronique) and the movie is loaded with not terribly insightful observations.  I could easily picture this as one of those trite, quirky indie movies with… oh, let’s say Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Natalie Portman and Paul Giamatti.  The film has likable characters and pulls off a few cool moments, but ultimately doesn’t seem to have a particular point of view.  Rating: 6

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Potomok Chingis-Khana (Storm Over Asia)

Action!  Drama!  Propaganda!  Ethnography!  Pudovkin’s film is respectful towards the Mongolians, and he keeps things exciting with a lot of iconic imagery and radical, dynamic editing.  Like a lot of Soviet cinema, it has an epic, important heft to it.  The story is a little hard to follow sometimes, and there are some sluggish parts, but at its finest moments this is a pretty kickass movie.  Rating: 8

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True Heart Susie

Simplistic storytelling and outmoded sexual politics.  I’m not doubting Griffith’s talent as a filmmaker.  But even if he was ahead of his time cinematically, his puritanical attitudes seem dated even by 1919 standards.  His soapbox approach to cinema really bugs me, using his movies to shove his values down your throat.  Few hands are heavier.  I kept rooting for bad girl Bettina, because William was such a crashing bore and Susie was such a doormat idiot.  Nonetheless, it is at least mildly entertaining fare, well-paced, well-shot and well-acted.  Rating: 6

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Muri shinju: Nihon no natsu (Japanese Summer: Double Suicide)

A girl interested only in getting laid (they could have used her in Sing a Song of Sex) and a man interested only in getting killed fall in with a strange assortment of “gangsters” interested only in violence.  This movie is certainly radical and unusual, but I feel like Oshima – again reminiscent of Godard — wants to say something about the culture of violence more than he actually has something to say.  What might be seen as an “outlaw” sensibility could also be seen as floundering for a point.  However, it provides some interesting food for thought and if nothing else, its wildness is mostly entertaining.  Rating: 7

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Inception

Well, this was okay.  Nolan certainly knows how to put together a slick-looking movie and construct an intricate plot.  The problem is that the plot is intricate in a way that seems designed for nerds to argue about on the internet.  The multiple layers of reality don’t really add any depth to the themes, and the story is only interesting in the sense that you have to work a little harder to put together the details of What Is Happening.  Whenever the film tries to get philosophical it mostly comes off as silly.  Still, I was entertained (except for the last half hour, which just drags on and on and on) and the gee-whiz special effects are impressive.  Rating: 7

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7 Women

John Ford’s last film is one of his most thematically compelling, touching on issues of Christian hypocrisy, atheism, feminism and even a little bit of lesbianism.  I was pretty stunned to find myself getting very involved, as Ford keeps things interesting and always moving along smoothly.  Anne Bancroft is very good, and for the most part the rest of the cast holds their own (there are a handful of particularly lousy performances, though).  The most off-putting element was the blatantly stage-bound set, I couldn’t help but be distracted by its phoniness.  Other than that, however, not bad at all… and quite a surprise to see such unusually progressive attitudes from Ford.  Rating: 7

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The Japanese Wife

A young Bengali man and a young Japanese woman carry on a pen pal relationship that becomes a “marriage” of several years, even though the two never meet.  It’s a concept that sounds a little bit sweet and a little bit creepy, but in execution is mostly just creepy.  Aparna Sen’s career as a director has been spotty, and this is her worst yet.  She holds up this marriage as a kind of quirky romantic fantasy, without ever really addressing the disturbing social retardation behind it.  That might be forgivable, if it wasn’t for the awful performances.  Rahul Bose plays his character with an embarrassing nebbishness, and Chigusa Takaku lays on the “meek Japanese girl” shtick way too thick.  Most of the movie is played out in broken English narration, and both parties sound as if they’re overdoing the “broken” part.  Tack on some really blunt symbolism and cheap plot contrivances.  The cinematography is beautiful, though, and I did think the ending was rather sweet.  But otherwise, a huge disappointment.  Rating: 4

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Plan 9 from Outer Space

This is not “the worst movie ever made” (a stupid appellation invented by The Biggest Dipshit Ever Born, Michael Medved).  Yes, its amateurish inadequacies are well-documented: the cheap sets, the laughable dialogue, the outrageous disregard for the most basic continuity, the absurd science, the hilarious attempt to conceal Lugosi’s posthumous double, the subpar performances and baffling characterizations.  But fuck it, it’s a minor miracle to get any movie made, especially with just a few friends and a miniscule budget.  I’ll reserve my “worst movie ever made” title for something that has some big studio money behind it and still manages to be awful.  Something like Empire Records.  And this movie is also not “so bad it’s good”.  Well… it is, but that’s not all it is.  It’s rather entertaining in its own right, and maybe this is just me projecting based on Burton’s biopic, but you can feel that there is a certain passion for the material.  It’s mostly a lot of fun, both because of and despite all its ineptitudes.  And besides… Wood actually pulls off a few interesting shots, some of the performances aren’t that bad, and the score is really quite good.  It doesn’t merit the “worst ever” title, nor does it merit a fanatical cult following.  I’d watch it again… and to me that’s the most important indicator of quality.  Rating: 7

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Ossos

I had never heard of Pedro Costa before Criterion announced they were releasing three of his films, but he sounded like someone I would like, so I’ve been looking forward to digging into this set.  Based on this first one, the jury is still out.  Costa’s style relies on the same kind of understated performances and minimalist dialogue as Tsai, Kaurismaki and especially Bresson.  And obviously that’s a style I enjoy, but I had a hard time getting into this movie.  The problem is that I couldn’t relate to the characters very well… in fact, I often couldn’t understand them or their motivations.  Costa seems to go out of his way to withhold information, which is sometimes an interesting way to subvert expectations… but sometimes just a frustration.  I really wanted to like this film, and in a lot of ways I was intrigued, but ultimately I felt unsatisfied.  I still have hope about the other two, though.  Rating: 6

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Cutter’s Way

This movie takes a noir story and drenches it in character study, much like Robert Altman did in The Long Goodbye and Thieves Like Us (or with the western in McCabe & Mrs. Miller).  In fact, this is a thing that seems to have happened a lot in 70′s, this sort of genre deconstruction, shifting the focus from the plot to this type of character… kind of spiritually wandering, vaguely philosophical drifters.  I’m sure it was an exciting movement at the time, breaking away from Hollywood conventions.  But these films — your Five Easy Pieces, your Midnight Cowboy, your Last Detail — just don’t thrill me in any way.  I don’t mind watching them, but afterwards I always feel like “so what?”.  I also gotta say that Jeff Bridges has never done anything for me, and John Heard’s performance is alternately compelling and embarrassing.  Having said that, I did enjoy the movie, to a mild degree.  I did find the characters interesting.  Overall, it’s just not my cup of tea.  Rating: 6

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