A Very Wong Kar-wai Valentine's Day

I originally posted these as A Filmography of Wong Kar-wai in Eighteen Images over at Metro Classics when we played Chungking Express in November of 2009, but I think it's appropriate for the holiday today.

This Week in Rankings

The movies I've watched or rewatched recently and where each places among my yearly rankings:

Fantômas (Louis Feuillade) - 1, 1913
The Man I Love (Raoul Walsh) - 9, 1947
Daddy Long Legs (Jean Negulesco) - 35, 1955

Cat's Cradle (Stan Brakhage) - 15, 1959
Window Water Baby Moving (Stan Brakhage) - 7, 1962
Mothlight (Stan Brakhage) - 12, 1963
Eye Myth (Stan Brakhage) - 17, 1967

The Wold Shadow (Stan Brakhage) - 2, 1972
The Stars are Beautiful (Stan Brakhage) - 17, 1974
The Garden of Earthly Delights (Stan Brakhage) - 5, 1981
Hello I Must Be Going (Todd Louiso) - 41, 2012

VIFF 2012: Night Across the Street

I don't know if there was something apocalyptic in the air last year (Mayans?) or what, but the Vancouver International Film Festival was rife with films about death. There was the clinical examination of the decline and fall of an elderly woman and the husband who cares for her (Amour); the passive-aggressive anecdotes of parents warning their visiting daughter that if she doesn't get married soon she could die alone (Memories Look at Me); the reenactment of a literary descent into the underworld by a modern gangster (Emperor Visits the Hell); the crushing tale of a man who kills his family but can't manage to kill himself (A Mere Life); the heroic struggle of an ordinary woman trying to forestall her son's execution (When Night Falls); a couple bizarre tales of men who don't know they're already dead, one featuring a talking fish (A Fish), one with its protagonist chained to the ground in a freezing park (Moksha: the World); two stories about reincarnation, one relaxed and contemplative (Mekong Hotel) and one hyperactively silly (East Meets West); a film about the grip the past still holds on us, even resurfacing after we die (Tabu); and finally one movie that celebrates even the ways buildings die (Reconversão). But none of those movies are as strange, as generous or as full of wonder as the last film the great Chilean filmmaker Raúl Ruiz completed before he died, Night Across the Street.

Based on a novel by Hernan de Solar, Night follows Don Celso, an office worker on the verge of retirement who recalls his fanciful childhood (when he was named "Rhododendron" and palled around with Beethoven and Long John Silver) in stories he tells us and anyone else who'll listen while awaiting his imminent assassination at the hands of the other borders in his rooming house. Ruiz moves as fluidly through imagination and "reality" as he does through past and present, creating as dense a tangle of characters as in Mysteries of Lisbon with the ghostly, dreamlike rhythm of Time Regained. He shoots most scenes in a kind of sepia tone, with soft sea greens and grays imbuing the film with a dusty, half-remembered haze. Though we're caught in Celso's cinematic dreamworlds, reality does occasionally threaten to intrude. Young Rhododendron takes Beethoven to a town soccer match that breaks out into a political argument between democrats and fascists (Ruiz himself fled Chile for Europe shortly after the dictator Augusto Pinochet seized power). Late in the film, Celso walks and talks with a friend through his village (something we've seen them do a few times before, always filmed with a weird focus effect that makes the background look like rear-projection) as the old streets transform and modernize before our eyes: the dusty lanes and small shops we've grown accustomed to turn to asphalt and streetlights as the past becomes present. But is it Celso's present, ignored for his remembered present, or is it the future that he won't be around to witness? As with everything else in the film, it's unclear exactly what is happening, but that doesn't make it any less affective. The film's illogic allows it to achieve the kind of emotional depth and complexity that mere precision and plausibility can never achieve.

In the end, Ruiz leaves us with storytelling and movie-making. Not just Celso's imagined narratives (a scheming pair of drifters, a triumphantly weird farewell speech to his coworkers, the noir mechanics of his "assassination") but also in the simple joy of words (his officemates join him in "play(ing) at saying words"), relishing the tactile pleasures of pronunciation) and images. Celso's life is filled with fantastical images and metaphors for cinema: clockwork toys, a dancing alarm clock, exquisite ships in bottles (impossible worlds), a restaurant full of mirrors, reflecting an imagined reality ("mirrors don't lie, it's the light that tricks us"). In the film's audacious climax, two characters have a conversation from inside the barrel of a gun. Rhododendron even takes Beethoven to the movies (as I recall, he's unimpressed: "we came to have fun, not to learn anything"). For Celso, as, I suspect, with Ruiz, life is storytelling: the ones we tell ourselves and the ones we share with others. The story may end in death, but the story itself lives on.

Review Index

This is an index of the longer reviews I've written here and elsewhere, in order of date of publication:

Days of Being Wild (Wong, 90) - May 04, 2006
United 93 (Greengrass, 06) - May 10, 2006
Thank You for Smoking (Reitman, 05) - Jun 13, 2006
Marie Antoinette (Coppola, 06) - Nov 22, 2006
Lost Highway (Lynch, 97) - Feb 17, 2007
Saving Private Ryan (Spielberg, 98) - May 16, 2007
Man of the West (Mann, 58) - Jun 13, 2007
I'm Not There (Haynes, 07) - Jan 16, 2008
WALL-E (Stanton, 08) - Jul 09, 2008
Schizopolis (Soderberg, 96) - Mar 03, 2009

Reservoir Dogs (Tarantino, 92) - Mar 03, 2009
The Virgin Suicides (Coppola, 99) - Mar 17, 2009
Schinder's List (Spielberg, 93) - Mar 17, 2009
Gone with the Wind (Fleming, 39) - Dec 01, 2009
Intolerance (Griffith, 16) - Mar 06, 2010
Dirty Harry (Siegel, 71) - Jun 17, 2010
Carlos (Assayas, 10) - Oct 10, 2010
The Social Network (Fincher, 10) - Nov 22, 2010
Irma Vep (Assayas, 96) - Mar 01, 2011
Leaves from Satan's Book (Dreyer, 21) - Mar 04, 2011

Chimes at Midnight (Welles, 65) - Mar 15, 2011
The Tree of Life (Malick, 11) - Jun 26, 2011
The Spanish Earth (Ivens, 37) - Dec 15, 2011
Tea and Sympathy (Minnelli, 56) - Dec 29, 2011
Annie Oakley (Stevens, 35) - Jan 13, 2012
Annie Get Your Gun (Sidney, 50) - Jan 13, 2012
The Artist (Haznavicious, 11) - Feb 01, 2012
Thundering Fleas (McGowan, 26) - Feb 03, 2012
War Horse (Spielberg, 11) - Feb 04, 2012
A Song to Remember (Vidor, 45) - Feb 08, 2012

The Great Waltz (Duvivier, 38) - Feb 08, 2012
The Adventures of Tintin (Spielberg, 12) - Feb 21, 2012
Jewish Prudence (McCarey, 27) - Feb 29, 2012
The Poor Little Rich Girl (Tourneur, 17) - Mar 06, 2012
The Miracle Worker (Penn, 62) - Mar 13, 2012
The Man Who Would Be King (Huston, 75) - Mar 18, 2012
Love 'Em and Weep (Guiol, 27) - Mar 22, 2012
The Buster Keaton Story (Sheldon, 57) - Mar 25, 2012
Fluttering Hearts (Parrott, 27) - Apr 03, 2012
Why Girls Love Sailors (Guiol, 27) - Apr 05, 2012

With Love and Hisses (Guiol, 27) - Apr 15, 2012
Sugar Daddies (Guiol, 27) - Apr 18, 2012
The Lower Depths (Kurosawa, 57) - May 10, 2012
Stage Fright (Hitchcock, 50) - May 14, 2012
The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (Hitchcock, 27) - May 15, 2012
The Manxman (Hitchcock, 29) - May 16, 2012
Number Seventeen (Hitchcock, 32) - May 17, 2012
Champagne (Hitchcock, 28) - May 18, 2012
12 Angry Men (Lumet, 57) - Jun 8, 2012
Wild Strawberries (Bergman, 57) - Jun 25, 2012

Throne of Blood (Kurosawa, 57) - Jul 04, 2012
Good Men, Good Women (Hou, 95) - Jul 08, 2012
Sailors, Beware! (Guiol, 27) - Jul 18, 2012
Café Lumière (Hou, 03) - Sep 07, 2012
The Second Hundred Years (Guiol, 27) - Sep 13, 2012
Children of Paradise (Carne, 45) - Sep 19, 2012
Swordsman (Hu, 90) - Sep 26, 2012
Swordsman 2 (Ching, 92) - Sep 26, 2012
Thursday Till Sunday (Sotomayor, 12) - Sep 30, 2012
Romance Joe (Lee, 11) - Oct 01, 2012

10 + 10 (Various, 11) - Oct 01, 2012
A Mere Life (Park, 12) - Oct 02, 2012
Beautiful 2012 (Various, 12) - Oct 03, 2012
Reconversão (Andersen, 12) - Oct 05, 2012
A Fish (Park, 11) - Oct 05, 2012
In Another Country (Hong, 12) - Oct 05, 2012
Tabu (Gomes, 12) - Oct 13, 2012
The Last Time I Saw Macao (Rodrigues & Guerra da Mata, 12) - Oct 16, 2012
In Search of Haydn (Grabsky, 12) - Oct 16, 2012
Three Sisters (Wang, 12) - Oct 22, 2012

Neighboring Sounds (Mendonça Filho, 12) - Oct 22, 2012
Something in the Air (Assayas, 12) - Nov 11, 2012
Memories Look at Me (Song, 12) - Nov 14, 2012
Lincoln (Spielberg, 12) - Nov 19 2012
People's Park (Sniadecki & Cohn, 12) - Dec 13, 2012
East Meets West (Lau, 11) - Dec 13, 2012
The Flying Guillotine (Ho, 75) - Dec 20, 2012
Executioners from Shaolin (Lau, 77) - Dec 21, 2012
Killer Clans (Chor, 76) - Dec 26, 2012
Mad Monkey Kung Fu (Lau, 79) - Dec 27, 2012

No Blood Relation (Naruse, 32) - Jan 04, 2012
Call of the Cuckoo (Bruckman, 27) - Jan 28, 2013
Like Someone in Love (Kiarostami, 12) - Jan 29, 2013
Mystery (Lou, 12) - Feb 01, 2013
The Angels' Share (Loach, 12) - Feb 04, 2013
Night Across the Street (Ruiz, 12) - Feb 07, 2013
Everybody in Our Family (Jude, 12) - Mar 05, 2013
The Big Heat (To, 88) - Mar 07, 2013
Infernal Affairs (Lau & Mok, 02) - Mar 19, 2013
Oki's Movie (Hong, 2010) - May 09, 2013

Applause (Mamoulian, 29) - May 18, 2013
Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (Mamoulian, 31) - May 22, 2013
Eastern Condors (Hung, 87) - May 24, 2013
Zu Warriors (Tsui, 01) - May 29, 2013
Warriors Two (Hung, 78) - May 30, 2013
The Butterfly Murders (Tsui, 79) - May 31, 2013
Encounters of the Spooky Kind (Hung, 80) - Jun 01, 2013
Winners & Sinners (Hung, 83) - Jun 04, 2013
Pedicab Driver (Hung, 89) - Jun 06, 2013
The Iron-Fisted Monk (Hung, 77) - Jun 08, 2013

Emperor Visits the Hell (Li, 12) - Jun 10, 2013
Hapkido (Huang, 72) - Jun 20, 2013
Dirty Ho (Lau, 76) - Jun 30, 2013
Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan (Chor, 72) - Jul 07, 2013
Come Drink With Me (Hu, 66) - Jul 10, 2013
The One-Armed Swordsman (Chang, 67) - Jul 12, 2013
The Spiritual Boxer (Lau, 75) - Jul 15, 2013
Heroes Shed No Tears (Chor, 80) - Jul 16, 2013
Dragon Gate Inn (Hu, 67) - Jul 17, 2013
Heroes Two (Chang, 74) - Jul 22, 2013

The Sentimental Swordsman (Chor, 77) - Jul 23, 2013
Five Shaolin Masters (Chang 74) and Shaolin Temple (Chang 76) - Jul 24, 2013
Return of the One-Armed Swordsman (Chang, 69) - Jul 25, 2013
Fort Apache (Ford, 1948) - Jul 25, 2013
Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre Parts One & Two (Chor, 78) - Jul 25, 2013
Vengeance! (Chang, 70) - Jul 27, 2013
The Heroic Ones (Chang 70) - Jul 29, 2013
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (Ford, 62) - Jul 30, 2013
My Darling Clementine (Ford, 46) - Aug 04, 2013
Sergeant Rutledge (Ford, 60) - Aug 06, 2013

Days of Being Wild (Wong, 90) - Aug 16, 2013
Nomad (Tam, 82) - Aug 20, 2013
Ashes of Time Redux (Wong, 08) - Aug 26, 2013
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Lee, 00) - Aug 28, 2013
My Heart is that Eternal Rose (Tam, 89) - Sep 02, 2013
Boat People (Hui, 82) - Sep 03, 2013
Nobody's Daughter Haewon (Hong, 13) - Sep 23, 2013
Blind Detective (To, 13) - Sep 26, 2013
The Great Passage (Ishii, 13) - Sep 29, 2013
Good Vibrations (Barros D'Sa & Leyburn, 12) - Sep 29, 2013

Gebo and the Shadow (Oliveira, 12) - Sep 30, 2013

Bends (Lau, 13) - Oct 01, 2013

Burn, Release, Explode, the Invincible (Kim, 13) - Oct 01, 2013

Four Ways to Die in My Hometown (Chai, 12) - Oct 02, 2013

Stray Dogs (Tsai, 13) - Oct 04, 2013
Yumen (Sniadecki, Xu & Huang, 13) - Oct 23, 2013
Green Snake (Tsui, 93) - Oct 25, 2013
The Enigmatic Case (To, 80) - Nov 14, 2013
A Better Tomorrow II (Woo, 87) - Nov 21, 2013

Peking Opera Blues (Tsui, 86) - Nov 22, 2013

The Happy Ghost Series (Ko, To & Lam, 84-86) - Nov 26, 2013

Prison on Fire (Lam, 87) - Nov 27, 2013

Seven Years Itch (To, 87) - Dec 02, 2013

Working Class (Tsui, 85) - Dec 07, 2013

Drug War (To, 12) - Dec 11, 2013
Royal Warriors (Chung, 86) - Dec 19, 2013
She Shoots Straight (Yuen, 90) - Dec 22, 2013
Comrades, Almost a Love Story (Chan, 96) - Jan 01, 2014

Die Nibelungen (Lang, 24) - Jan 15, 2014

Hellzapoppin' (Potter, 41) - Feb 12, 2014
The Castle of Cagliostro (Miyazaki, 79) - Feb 15, 2014
Blue is the Warmest Color (Kechiche, 13) - Feb 26, 2014
Young Detective Dee and the Rise of the Sea Dragon (Tsui, 13) - Feb 27, 2014
La última película (Martin & Peranson, 13) - Feb 28, 2014
Shanghai Blues (Tsui, 84) - Mar 03, 2014
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (Donen, 54) - Mar 07, 2014
Seven Swords (Tsui, 05) - Mar 11, 2014
Oklahoma! (Zinnemann, 55) - Mar 14, 2014
Grand Budapest Hotel (Anderson, 14) - Mar 17, 2014

Journey to the West (Tsai, 14) - Mar 19, 2014
The Blade (Tsui, 95) - Mar 19, 2014
Bye Bye Birdie (Sidney, 63) - Mar 26, 2014
Heroes Shed No Tears (Woo, 86) - Mar 28, 2014
Once a Thief (Woo, 91) - Mar 28, 2014
Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons (Chow & Kwok, 13) - Apr 03, 2014
Love in the Time of Twilight (Tsui, 95) - Apr 04, 2014
The Lovers (Tsui, 94) - Apr 04, 2014
Red Cliff (Woo, 08) - Apr 04, 2014
Zodiac Kilers (Hui, 91) - Apr 09, 2014

I Dood It (Minnelli, 43) - Apr 11, 2014
SPL: Sha Po Lang (Yip, 05) -  Apr 23, 2014
New Dragon Gate Inn (Lee, 92) -  Apr 24, 2014
Wuxia (Chan, 11) - Apr 25, 2014
The Legend is Born: Ip Man (Yau, 10) - Apr 27, 2014
The Duel (Chang, 71) - Apr 28, 2014
Ten Tigers of Kwangtung (Chang, 80) - Apr 29, 2014
Ip Man: The Final Fight (Yau, 13) - Apr 29, 2014
Tai Chi Zero/Tai Chi Hero (Fung, 12-13) - May 01, 2014
The Way of the Dragon (Lee, 72) - May 02, 2014

The Assassin (Chang, 67) - May 12, 2014
The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgement Day (Cameron, 84 & 91) - May 22, 2014
The Midnight After (Chan, 14) - May 25, 2014
Unforgiven (Lee, 14) - May 28, 2014
Martial Club (Lau, 81) - Jun 11, 2014
The Bride with White Hair (Yu, 93) - Jun 25, 2014
Primary Colors (Nichols, 98) - Jul 13, 2014
He Ain't Heavy, He's My Father (Chan, 93) - Jul 29, 2014
Isabella (Pang, 06) - Aug 01, 2014
Painted Faces (Law, 88) - Aug 02, 2014

Golden Chicken 2 (Chiu, 03) - Aug 03, 2014
Painted Skin (Hu, 93) - Aug 03, 2014
Oxhide (Liu, 05) - Aug 04, 2014
Legend of the Mountain (Hu, 79) - Aug 07, 2014
Shanghai Blues (Tsui, 84) - Aug 27, 2014
Ballet (Wiseman, 95) - Sep 02, 2014
Crazy Horse (Wiseman, 11) - Sep 03, 2014
Accident (Cheang, 09) - Sep 23, 2014
Journey to the West (Tsai, 14) - Sep 24, 2014
Blind Detective (To, 13) - Oct 11, 2014

A Better Tomorrow III: Love and Death in Saigon (Tsui, 89) - Oct 21, 2014
Flying Swords of Dragon Gate (Tsui, 11) - Oct 29, 2014
My Lucky Star (Gordon, 13) - Nov 07, 2014
Don't Go Breaking My Heart 2 (To, 14) - Nov 15, 2014
The Eighth Happiness (To, 88) - Nov 21, 2014
Aberdeen (Pang, 14) - Dec 04, 2014
Actress (Greene, 14) - Dec 11, 2014
The Taking of Tiger Mountain (Tsui, 14) - Jan 05, 2015
The True Story of Wong Fei-hung: Whiplash Snuffs the Candle Flame (Wu, 49) - Jan 07, 2015
The Big Heat (To, 88) - Jan 09, 2015

Troy (Petersen, 04) - Jan 22, 2015
Sleepless in Seattle (Ephron, 93) - Feb 06, 2015
Lady Snowblood (Fujita, 73) - Feb 18, 2015
Robin Hood (Scott, 10) - Feb 24, 2015
Gladiator (Scott, 00) - Feb 25, 2015
A Fuller Life (Fuller, 13) - Feb 27, 2015
Chimes at Midnight (Welles, 65) - Mar 06, 2015
Maps to the Stars (Cronenberg, 14) - Mar 06, 2015
Wild Tales (Szifron, 14) - Mar 12, 2015
Ballet 422 (Lipes, 14) - Mar 12, 2015

The Boys from Fengkuei (Hou, 83) - Mar 20, 2015
The Time to Live, The Time to Die (Hou, 85) - Mar 21, 2015
Dust in the Wind (Hou, 86) - Mar 22, 2015
Flowers of Shanghai (Hou, 98) - Mar 24, 2015
Millennium Mambo (Hou, 01) - Mar 27, 2015
Welcome to New York (Ferrara, 14) - Apr 03, 2015
Ned Rifle (Hartley, 14) - Apr 09, 2015
Masked Avengers (Chang, 81) - Apr 11, 2015
Jauja (Alonso, 14) - Apr 16, 2015
The Tales of Hoffmann (Powell & Pressburger, 51) - Apr 24, 2015

Kung Fu Jungle (Chan, 14) - Apr 27, 2015
Clouds of Sils Maria (Assayas, 14) - Apr 30, 2015
The Triplets of Belleville (Chomet, 03) - May 8, 2015
Temporary Family (Cheuk, 14) - May 14, 2015
Snow on the Blades (Wakamatsu, 14) - May 14, 2015
La Sapienza (Green, 14) - Jun 4, 2015
The Fifth Element (Besson, 97) - Jun 19, 2015
A Better Tomorrow (Woo, 86) - Jun 26, 2015
Yes, Madam (Yuen, 85) - Jul 02, 2015
Christmas in July (Sturges, 40) - Jul 08, 2015

Trainwreck (Apatow, 15) - Jul 16, 2015
Wild City (Lam, 15) - Jul 30, 2015
The Heroic Trio (To, 93) - Aug 01, 2015
Project A (Chan, 83) - Aug 02, 2015
Project A 2 (Chan, 87) - Aug 02, 2015

An Index of my podcasts and essays can be found over here. And here is an index of some of the better short reviews I've written over the years, arranged chronologically by publication date. Most of this stuff I usually just leave on letterboxd nowadays.

The Shadow Whip (Lo, 71) - Jan 16, 2011
The Deadly Breaking Sword (Sun, 79) - Jan 16, 2011
Shaolin Intruders (Tang, 83) - Jan 16, 2011
Brave Archer and His Mate (Chang, 82) - Jan 16, 2011
Holy Flame of the Martial World (Lu, 82) - Jan 16, 2011
Journey of the Doomed (Cha, 85) - Jan 16, 2011
The Masseurs and a Woman (Shimizu, 38) - Feb 14, 2011
Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (Oshima, 83) - Feb 14, 2011
Humanity and Paper Balloons (Yamanaka, 37) - Feb 14, 2011
An Autumn Afternoon (Ozu, 62) - Feb 14, 2011

Louisiana Story (Flaherty, 48) - Apr 11, 2011
Run of the Arrow (Fuller, 57) - Apr 11, 2011
The War Game (Watkins, 65) - Apr 11, 2011
Culloden (Watkins, 64) - Apr 11, 2011
The Marquise of O (Rohmer, 76) - May 14, 2011
La Commune (Paris, 1871) (Watkins, 00) - May 14, 2011

My Sister Eileen (Quine, 55) - Oct 08, 2011
Regeneration (Walsh, 15) - Oct 08, 2011
HM Pulham, Esq (Vidor, 41) - Oct 08, 2011
Street Angel (Borzage, 28) - Oct 08, 2011

Samson and Delilah (DeMille, 49) - Oct 09, 2011
The Sign of the Cross (DeMille, 32) - Oct 09, 2011
The King of Kings (DeMille, 27) - Oct 09, 2011
The Indian Epic (Lang, 59) - Oct 09, 2011

Meek's Cutoff (Reichardt, 10) - Oct 19, 2011

Cave of Forgotten Dreams (Herzog, 10) - Oct 19, 2011

Wait Until Dark (Young, 67) - Oct 19, 2011

Socrates (Rossellini, 71) - Oct 20, 2011

Free and Easy (Sedgwick, 30) - Nov 22, 2011

Parlor, Bedroom and Bath (Sedgwick, 31) - Nov 22, 2011

Speak Easily (Sedgwick, 32) - Nov 22, 2011

What! No Beer? (Sedgwick, 33) - Nov 22, 2011

A Trip to the Moon (Méliès, 02) - Dec 28, 2011

These Amazing Shadows (Mariano & Norton, 11) - Dec 30, 2011

The Great Train Robbery (Porter, 03) - Feb 07, 2012

Duck Soup (McCarey, 27) - Feb 09, 2012

Slipping Wives (Guiol, 27) - Feb 11, 2012

Kanal (Wajda, 57) - Apr 10, 2012

Man's Favorite Sport? (Hawks, 64) - Jun 26, 2012

When Night Falls (Ying, 12) - Sep 30, 2012

Antiviral (Cronenberg, 12) - Sep 30, 2012

Mother (Ruetaivanichkul, 12) - Oct 02, 2012

Mekong Hotel (Weerasethakul, 12) - Oct 02, 2012

Moksha: the World or I, How Does That Work? (Koo, 12) - Nov 14, 2012
Amour (Haneke, 12) - Jun 10, 2013
In the Good Old Summertime (Leonard, 49) - Apr 11, 2014
Fist of Fury (Lo, 71) - May 02, 2014
Night Moves (Reichardt, 13) - May 27, 2014
Sophie's Revenge (Jin, 09) - Jul 29, 2014
Love in a Puff (Pang, 10) - Jul 29, 2014

Love in the Buff (Pang, 12) - Jul 29, 2014
La Sapienza (Green, 14) - Sep 30, 2014
The Golden Era (Hui, 14) - Sep 30, 2014
National Gallery (Wiseman, 14) - Sep 30, 2014
Ballet 422 (Lipes, 14) - Sep 30, 2014
Hill of Freedom (Hong, 14) - Oct 02, 2014
Uncertain Relationships Society (Mak, 14) - Oct 02, 2014
Miss and the Doctors (Ropert, 14) - Oct 02, 2014
Listen Up Philip (Perry, 14) - Oct 02, 2014
The Midnight After (Chan, 14) - Oct 07, 2014

Jauja (Alonso, 14) - Oct 07, 2014
Adieu au langage (Godard, 14) - Oct 07, 2014
Mr. Turner (Leigh, 14) - Oct 07, 2014
Two Days, One Night (Dardennes, 14) - Oct 07, 2014
Welcome to New York (Ferrara, 14) - Oct 07, 2014
Winter Sleep (Ceylan, 14) - Oct 07, 2014
Horse Money (Costa, 14) - Oct 07, 2014
Adieu au langage (Godard, 14) - Jan 22, 2015
National Gallery (Wiseman, 14) - Jan 30, 2015
Two Days, One Night (The Dardennes, 14) - Feb 06, 2015

Casablanca (Curtiz, 42) - Mar 06, 2015
Results (Bujalski, 15) - May 18, 2015
Back to the Soil (Morrison, 14) - May 18, 2015
Beyond Zero 1914-1918 (Morrison, 14) - May 18, 2015
Natural History (Benning, 14) - May 18, 2015
The Coffin in the Mountain (Xin, 14) - May 22, 2015
Haemoo (Shim, 14) - May 22, 2015
The Color of Pomegranates (Parajanov, 68) - May 22, 2015
Overheard 3 (Mak & Chong, 14) - May 29, 2015
Dreams Rewired (Luksch, Tode & Reinhart, 14) - May 29, 2015

Mistress America (Baumbach, 15) - May 29, 2015
A Matter of Interpretation (Lee, 14) - May 29, 2015
Dearest (Chan, 14) - May 29, 2015
The Lady Eve (Sturges, 41) - Jul 16, 2015
A Hard Day (Kim, 14) - Jul 23, 2015
Unexpected (Swanberg, 15) - Jul 23, 2015

VIFF 2012: The Angels' Share

I haven't seen any of director Ken Loach's early films, or even any of his middle period films. My impression is that they're hard-edged, kitchen sink-realism type movies about poor people ground up in the engines of capitalism. That's the kind of perspective that made his Palme D'Or-winner The Wind that Shakes the Barley, the first film of his I saw, so unique among war movies: it's the story of the Irish Civil War that doesn't shy away from the political strife endemic to leftist revolutionary movements, remarkably clear-eyed in its understanding and sympathy for both sides of the war (personified in the film's two main characters), but unapologetic in ultimately condemning the more reactionary, less idealistic side. So I was a little surprised when Loach followed it up with a light, supernatural comedy about poor schlub whose imaginary friend, real-life Manchester United star Eric Cantona, helps him along the path to self-actualization. Looking for Eric is a charming film, Fordian, maybe even Capra-esque, in its sense of community and is aided immensely by Cantona's awkward reading of his own hilarious aphorisms. It's a really nice film, a word that I'd never use to describe The Wind that Shakes the Barley.

The Angels' Share is another nice film. Again Loach focuses on the working class, this time a young Scottish ex-con named Robbie (played by Paul Brannigan) trying to go straight and be a responsible father with the help of a gang of misfits and a kindly probation officer. Of all things, they form a whiskey-tasting group and Robbie discovers he's a natural sommelier (but for whiskey, not wine, they're Scottish, get it?). Once Robbie learns he has a talent, he's able to put the past behind him (literally, he keeps getting sucked back into a violent intergenerational feud with another lower class lout, hints of the struggles of the petty criminal working class hang generically around the edges of the film, like ghosts of more (self-)serious movies past) and be a better man. Then, the misfits embark on a hijink-filled cross-country trip to steal a bunch of old whisky from an ancient keg and sell it to an unscrupulous dealer. The heist is suspenseful, the jokes are funny, The Proclaimers proclaim and your heart is warmed. Everything about the film is just so average, though. It doesn't have the inspired-weirdness that Cantona brings to Looking for Eric, it just kind of floats along, totally harmless. Ken Loach made movies for 40 years before I managed to see one of them, and that one happens to be one of the best movies of this century and one of the best war movies of all-time. If he wants to spend his twilight years remaking The Full Monty, I won't complain too loudly. I really should just go watch Kes. I hear that's really great.

This Week in Rankings

What movies I've watched or rewatched recently and where each currently places in my yearly rankings.

The Pawnshop (Charles Chaplin) - 3, 1916
London After Midnight (Reconstruction) (Tod Browning) - 16, 1927

The Quiet Man (John Ford) - 2, 1952
Wind Across the Everglades (Nicholas Ray) - 8, 1958
The Reluctant Debutante (Vincente Minnelli) - 18, 1958
Two Weeks in Another Town (Vincente Minnelli) - 14, 1962

The Story of Film: An Odyssey (Mark Cousins) - 25, 2011
In Another Country (Hong Sangsoo) - 2, 2012

VIFF 2012: Mystery

This is the first film I've seen by Chinese director Lou Ye, and it's the first film he was able to make in China following a five-year filmmaking ban he received for submitting his Tiananmen Square-set Summer Palace to Cannes without government permission back in 2006 (he made a couple films in the intervening years outside the Mainland). It's a slick,, clever neo-noir melodrama, the story of a happily married woman (played by Hao Lei) who discovers her husband is having an affair with a younger woman. The young woman will end up dead, of course. That death is actually how the film opens (a car full of rich, inebriated kids driving too fast down a rain-reluged street) before moving a bit back in time to introduce the main characters (beginning with the death and then moving backwards being a classic noir structure). The mystery (ahem) of how the girl got into the street, who will take the rap for it and who ultimately bears the responsibility for her death, is the heart of the film, and it suggests several different answers to a question more metaphysical than a simple "whodunnit?".

The style Lou uses is one of grayish colors with a lot of fast-cut, handheld shots, with occasional extreme close-ups of the main characters. Normally the overuse of the shakycam drives me up the wall, but I think Lou might be on to something with the way he uses it here. Adapting classic noir imagery to modern film style has not been especially successful, given its reliance on the chiaroscuro effects of high-key black and white lighting. A film like Blade Runner creates an overwhelmingly shadowy world, emphasizing noir's blacks, the hidden world of secrets and crime, whereas neo-noirs like Chinatown or The Long Goodbye desaturate the color, emphasizing grays of noir, the uselessness of traditional morality in a degraded world where good and evil are inseparable. Lou, more or less keeps Chinatown's shadowless, overcast color palate, but adds to that the instability of the shaky cam. Instead of a secret world engulfed in shadows, we get a world were everything is out of balance, off-focus and just a bit out of sight. The vision of crime he creates isn't one of moral darkness but one of vertigo, an inability to find focus, concentration and balance. Lou's noir world is out of whack, a rain-swept, tottering tangle of chance and disaster.

Which leads to the major knock against the film, at least in as few places as I've seen it discussed: the staggering array of coincidences that structure the plot. This is a feature (bug?) endemic to melodrama: it's important to remember that noir is, fundamentally, melodrama, and that coincidence and chance lie at the heart of many of the best noirs, from Casablanca to Touch of Evil). And not all of Mystery's coincidences are as simple as they appear (the first one, which sets the whole chain in motion, turns out to have been fully planned). The film ultimately ends up being about chance, about accidents and randomness and how we assign moral responsibility for effects with multiple causes, and so to a certain extent the plot requires some degree of artificiality and, for lack of a better word, "unbelievability". But when a major plot development requires a character to leave their wallet at the scene of a crime, and apparently not notice for several days, that might be a stupid too far, especially if you happen to be afflicted with a case of The Plausibles.

VIFF 2012: Like Someone in Love

I find writing about this film, the latest from director Abbas Kiarostami (whose Certified Copy was my favorite film at VIFF 2010), to be nearly impossible without going into spoilery detail. Normally I wouldn't mind that; whatever it is, this is not a movie-review site and most of what I write assumes the reader has either seen the film in question or doesn't care too much about knowing the ending. But one of the real pleasures for me in watching Like Someone in Love was that I never knew what was going to happen next or even what kind of story Kiarostami was trying to tell. I took more notes during this screening than at any other at the festival, largely because I had no idea what details were going to prove significant or not, which information was crucial and what, if anything, was merely decoration. I'd hate to prevent anyone else from having that same experience by giving away too much.

Generally speaking, Like Someone in Love is much like any other Kiarostami film: it's structured around a series of conversations, usually between only two people, often filmed through the windows of cars as people move from one location to another in approximately-real-time. Unlike the previous films I've seen from him, it's never entirely clear who the main character of the film is. It starts with one person, well, actually it starts with someone we don't see, an off-screen voice, talking to that one person, a young Japanese call girl. She heads off on a job entertaining an old man, a kindly, slightly doddering professor. The next day, the professor meets her boyfriend (the two are having relationship issues) and gives him some grandfatherly advice. These sequences have a bit of a The More the Merrier vibe, with the old man playing the Charles Coburn role bringing together the young couple, played Jean Arthur and Joel McRea in that George Stevens classic. Tadashi Okuno, who plays the professor, even kind of looks like Coburn, or maybe Colonel Blimp. The trio eventually split up and are brought back together, along with the professor's neighbor, another character we see only as an off-screen voice.

Every character adopts certain roles (they all act "like someone in love" at one time or another), somewhat similar to the identity games of Certified Copy, but more elaborate and diffuse. Instead of a couple playing a game the rules of which they understand better than the audience (Kiarostami encourages us to distrust the surfaces we see, explicitly in the dialogue but also in the film's repeated use of reflections: mirrors, car windshields and works of art; visual metaphors which all recur in Like Someone In Love), the characters in this film seem less self-aware of their role-playing. It's not so much a romantic/philosophic/aesthetic exercise for them as it is simply the way they manage to get through life: identity-construction and therefore the malleability of self is essential to their natures. Characters and situations double and redouble, with variations and permutations both obvious and obscure. If I remember correctly, the film even uses multiple versions of the title song: John Coltrane and Ella Fitzgerald (alas, no Björk).

I'm going to stop here. Like Someone in Love should be getting a wider release in the next few months, and I can't wait to see it again. I suspect but want to confirm that it has a fractal design, where each scene, each character is a microcosm of the film and its themes taken as a whole. Where the plot doesn't progress but merely shifts in time and space. That is, until . . . .

The Laurel & Hardy Project #14: Call of the Cuckoo

Like a few others in this series, this is only tangentially a Laurel & Hardy film. It's actually a Max Davidson short, the second I've seen after Jewish Prudence, a very funny, well-constructed film I looked at back in February of last year. This is a much looser film, it feels more like the gang at the Hal Roach Studios just goofing around than a sophisticated comedy classic. Credited as director is Clyde Bruckman, a frequent Buster Keaton collaborator (The General, Our Hospitality, Sherlock Jr among others) making what (as far as I can tell is) his Roach debut, or at least his first film with Laurel & Hardy, shortly before Keaton made his disastrous move to MGM. The film has a lot in common with an early Buster Keaton short, One Week, which as far as I know Bruckman was not involved with in anyway.

Davidson plays an exasperated father who wants to sell his house so he, his wife, and their son can escape from the lunatics who live next door. A title card asserts that these guys, played by a Roach Murderer's Row of Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Charley Chase and James Finlayson, are training to be radio broadcasters, "the quicker they go daffy, the sooner they get a diploma". I'm unsure how literally that's supposed to be taken, but it doesn't matter, the point is the four of them are incredibly annoying, making terrible jokes with bottom-of-the-barrell slapstick, the kind you'd expect from any random morning DJ pair (do they still have those?). The four cuckoos aren't supposed to be funny and at that they succeed: their performance is as much a parody of terrible slapstick comics as it is of the radio. Seltzer bottles, a William Tell bit (Hardy gets shot in the ass), ridiculous outfits (Laurel wears his suspenders criss-crossed, Chase wears an over-sized sailor suit with a monocle), terrible intertitle puns and so on.

Anyway, someone comes along and offers to trade houses with Davidson, which he foolishly accepts, sight unseen. The second reel documents the travesty of a house ("it took two days to build and two years to sell" gossip a couple of neighbors) and its destruction. Light switches turn on lights in other rooms and occasionally showers, the kitchen faucet dispenses gas while the stove shoots out water, the parlor floor is slanted requiring the piano to be propped up with a chair lest it slide to a less desirable side of the room, the bathtub falls apart (giving us a side-nude shot of Max Davidson, which surely no one asked for). When Davidson's extended family arrives for a house-warming party, things quickly escalate to an all-out brawl or no apparent reason, but it culminates in an inspired call-back as the chair holding the piano is removed (to be used as a weapon), sending the instrument crashing through one wall, then the front door, down the walk and into Davidson's car, which promptly disintegrates. This is followed by the inevitable punchline, with the cuckoos announcing they've just bought the house next door. Not only does the respectable bourgeois family man abandon his perfectly nice house for a travesty, even then he can't escape the agents of chaos that surround him.

One Week, in which Buster Keaton assembles a house using a corrupted set of instructions creating an architectural monstrosity which devolves in hilarious fashion, is one of the most brilliant works in silent comedy, if not all of film history, so this can be forgiven for not reaching that high standard of perverse home destruction. But I do think this could have been funnier. Davidson doesn't really do much, he's mostly confined to reaction shots (either shrugging his shoulders and scratching his chin, or bringing his palm to his cheek Jack Benny-style). Laurel, Hardy, Chase and Finlayson are pretty much relegated to cameos: the film's structure isolates the funniest actors from the funniest prop (the house). Even still, it looks like everyone involved had a blast making it, which is enough.

This Week in Rankings

Wife - 18, 1953
Johnny Guitar - 4, 1954
The Sound of the Mountain - 7, 1954
Late Chrysanthemums -19, 1954
Floating Clouds - 14, 1955

Flowing - 5, 1956
When a Woman Ascends the Stairs - 3, 1960
Yearning - 5, 1964
Scattered Clouds - 8, 1967

The Fog - 10, 1980
Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol - 33, 2011

This Week in Rankings

One AM - 4, 1916
Wife! Be Like a Rose! - 3, 1935
Repast - 5, 1951
Ginza Cosmetics - 13, 1951
Mother - 13, 1952

Zero Dark Thirty - 11, 2012
Flight - 24, 2012

This Week in Rankings

No Blood Relation - 16, 1932
Apart From You - 14, 1933
Every-Night Dreams - 18, 1933
Street Without End - 13, 1934

A Cat in Paris - 53, 2010