House of Flying Daggers (2004)

This was the movie I chose to introduce people to wuxia, wire-fu, and Zhang Yimou.  I remembered it as being beautiful and sad.  I did not remember it as being borderline rapey.  There's at least two scenes of sexual assault and one of a peeping tom.  Content warning on that.  Also, as I was dragging this post back to the front page, I realized I never actually described the plot.

Jin (Takeshi Kaneshiro), a police officer, goes undercover to discover the leader of the Flying Daggers, an anti-government resistance movement that has eluded capture, by ingratiating himself to Mei (Ziyi Zhang), a blind dancer, but as the stakes get higher, Jin begins to have real feelings for Mei that complicate his mission even further.

It's very twisty, lots of shifting loyalties, lots of beautifully shot action sequences.  I stand by my choice.  Originally posted 26 May 2010.    I remember the first time I saw this movie in theaters. It was 2004 and I was living in Georgia. My (at the time) husband and I went to see this because we were both big Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon fans.

I was so pissed over the ending. I felt completely cheated and I didn't understand at all, which made me hate it. And yet... The imagery and story stayed with me. I found myself mulling over it at the oddest times during the next six years. So I bought it. It's rare for me to feel anything for longer than a moment, and I always want to reward (or at least possess) things that accomplish that.

I re-watched it for the first time since on Wednesday. Maybe I'm more cynical now, but the ending made a depressing sort of sense. Don't get me wrong, I seriously doubt I would ever do the same, but it didn't feel like a betrayal. I was able now to see it as an even more highly stylized operatic fantasy than CTHD. The vividness of the colors, the shifts in season that don't correspond to reality, and of course the spectacular stunt-work combine to tell a story that I can at least respect, even if I can't identify with it.

My last boyfriend was a Chinese linguist and we had numerous discussions about Asian films. I don't think we referenced this one by name (I think we were talking about The Curse of the Golden Flower) but I mentioned how depressing it was that **SPOILER ALERT** everyone dies **END SPOILER** at the end of every Chinese movie. He said that it was just part of the style of film-making over there. Even their comedies end like that. Call me culturally insensitive, but I prefer to have at least ONE major character live to see the end credits. Still, I can't fault them. They told a story and they told it well. It may not be how I would have written it, but I can't hold that against them.

Yojimbo (1961)

This was one of the picks for Movie Club this week.  I can't believe it's been a decade since I saw it last.  It's still great and you should still watch it.  It's currently streaming on (sigh) Max and on the Criterion Channel.  Completely worth it.  Originally posted 04 Aug 13.    I have no idea if this is the right movie poster but it looks really badass so I'm keeping it. 

This is the original Akira Kurosawa film on which For a Few Dollars More is based.  It's been copied many a time but that's the best of the derivatives. 

A masterless samurai (Toshiro Mifune) wanders into a town divided amongst two gangs.  Each side has been hiring thugs and criminals in an escalating arms race over who is in control of the lucrative silk trade and gambling halls.  Seeing an opportunity, the samurai begins playing both sides off of each other, culminating in all-out war.

I found this film to be absolutely mesmerizing, even though I was already familiar with the story.  It's a Criterion collection Blu-ray so the quality is razor-sharp and the whole experience was highly enjoyable.  If you're a Kurosawa fan, you're already familiar with it but if you're new to Japanese cinema, or foreign films in general, this is a great introductory piece. 

Amelie (2001)

I know I've watched this more recently than 2013 because I showed it to Bethany, but I don't remember when that was.  So I watched it again.  Well, had it on in the background, anyway.  It remains completely charming and sweet.  It's currently unavailable on streaming, but you should own a copy anyway.  Originally posted 4/6/13.    I love this movie.  It's such a sugar rush, a complete confection of a film.  This is one of those great bridges that you can use to get the more reluctant people in your life interested in foreign cinema.  It's so easily accessible.

Amelie (Audrey Tautou) is a young waitress living in Paris.  Having grown up with emotionally distant parents, Amelie is quiet and reserved but with an active imagination.  After a chance incident dislodges a bathroom tile and reveals a long-forgotten box of childhood memories for a former tenant, Amelie decides to return it to him.  The experience inspires her to become a regular do-gooder, interfering in the lives of her co-workers in order to improve or, in one case, punish the deserving.  It's funny, it's sweet, and it's instantly rewatchable.

The fantastically mobile-faced Dominique Pinon supports, as the obsessed-with-his-ex Joseph and he is great but Tautou really anchors this movie.  She is utterly luminous as the feisty but vulnerable Amelie. Really, if you've never seen this, you've done yourself a disservice.  I got it on blu-ray and the color transfer is phenomenal.

The Host (2006)

  I kind of wish I had seen this before Parasite but now's as good as ever.

Gang-doo (Song Kang-ho) is kind of a loser, scrimping coins from his dad's convenience store truck.  His middle school daughter Se-jin (Lee Jae-eung) doesn't want to be seen with him.  But when a mutated river monster erupts from the Han River and drags her away, Gang-doo must rally his entire family to band together and get her back.

As with Parasite, this is less about the monster and more about bureaucratic incompetence, outright malice, and indifference.  No one believes Gang-doo when he claims his daughter is alive and corrupt officials abound to take advantage of the chaos.  The family is truly on their own, avoiding capture by their government while trying not to get eaten by a literal monster.

I'm not going to lie, this ends pretty bleakly.  No spoilers, just an FYI.  You need to be in a really upbeat mood to watch this so you're not coming down too low.  Otherwise, this is another Bong Joon-ho masterpiece.  Every member of the Park family is flawed but fully-realized in a way that makes beautiful sense at the climax.  As dark as it is, there is an undeniable grandeur to it as these ordinary people transcend themselves to come together as a family.

It's currently streaming on Tubi but I don't know for how much longer.  It's also on Criterion and Amazon Prime.

Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons (2013)

  Did you like Kung Fu Hustle?  You will like Journey to the West!

Xuan Zang (Zhang Wen) is an aspiring demon hunter and Buddhist priest but he's not very good at the former which is preventing him from achieving the latter.  To make matters worse, a beautiful and very accomplished demon hunter named Miss Duan (Qi Shu) has set her sights on marrying him.  To become a better hunter, he quests to find the Monkey King (Bo Huang), who has been imprisoned under a mountain for 500 years.

This is a classic Chinese tale and there are dozens, if not hundreds, of adaptations.  Stephen Chow has a Looney Tunes approach to action in his films generally, but there's real reverence and heart in each one as well.  This is no exception.  The humor is a little broad for my personal tastes but the actors are totally game for it.  It's fun and silly and pretty family-friendly.  There is some gore and if you have really little children, some of the demons may be a little much, but I'd say 10 and up.  It's currently streaming for free on Tubi.

(Side note:  if you've noticed there have been a lot of Tubi and Criterion picks lately, it's because all my other streamers are absolutely awash with TV shows that I keep skipping because I don't have time.  If you were wondering, Queen's Gambit:  good!  Transparent:  unlikeable characters!  Battlestar Galactica season 2:  too much filler in the second half!  Great British Bake Off:  worst season I've seen!  WTF was that?  Dave??  You put fucking Dave in and not Lottie?  Or Hermine?  Or Mark L.?  Fucking Dave, the embodiment of white male mediocrity???  I'm fine.  Shut up.  I'm fine.  The Mandalorian season 2:  perfect!  So that's what I'm watching on TV.)

In the Mood for Love (2000)

  You guys, I'm so bad at Mondays.  And there was a holiday in the middle of the week, even.  I still could not get this post out.  Hopefully, it will just be an extra one today.

A pair of neighbors in 1960s Hong Kong, Mrs. Chan (Maggie Cheung) and Mr. Chow (Tony Leung), discover that their respective spouses are having an affair so they decide to have one as well.  What begins as a therapeutic revenge quickly grows into actual feelings and thus, a dilemma.

This film launched Wong Kar-Wai into international acclaim and it's easy to see why.  It's a visual feast, even if I felt some of the shots to be jarring.  I also dislike jazz and that seems to be the comparison everyone makes to this film, so your mileage may vary.  It's worth it for the costumes alone but also the desperately restrained longing between Cheung and Leung is just *chef's kiss*.  I hate romantic dramas with a passion (ha!) and I liked this film.  People who enjoy that sort of thing are going to be over the moon.  It's currently streaming on Criterion, HBO Max, and Kanopy.

3-Iron (2004)

  This poster is gorgeous.  Unfortunately, I didn't like the movie all that much.

A young man (Hee Jae) breaks into people's houses while they are away.  He doesn't steal, just uses their shelter and facilities, maybe eats some food, and repairs small things around the house.  All harmless until he breaks into Ming-yu's (Hyuk-ho Kwon) house and discovers the man's battered wife, Sun-hwa (Seung-Yun Lee).  They run away together but the law is on Ming-yu's side and the young man is imprisoned.  Can the lovers find their way back to one another?

I don't like romantic dramas and I didn't know that's what this was going in.  It's not terrible, as these things go, but it's really not something I enjoyed.  The two main characters have one line of dialogue between them the entire movie and I found many of their choices bizarre.  Also, the whole "breaking into people's houses and sitting around until they come home" thing gave me anxiety.  It's currently streaming for free on Tubi.

Saving Face (2012)

  Here's a funny story.  Way back in 2011/2012, I was trying to add all the Oscar nominees to my Netflix queue (as usual) and was having a bitch of a time finding the shorts (also as usual) so I added a film that had the same name from 2004.  Then eight years went by and I kind of forgot it was supposed to be a placeholder.  So I'm looking up the 2004 one (a POC LGBTQ rom-com) on Prime and right next to it is the Oscar short and suddenly I remember, "dang, I'm supposed to watch the one about women having acid thrown in their faces, not the one with a queer happily ever after."  And I did and that's the review you're getting today.  But here's my dilemma:  should I... a) toss the placeholder and move everything up a spot, b) keep the placeholder but drop it down to the bottom like it's a new movie, or c) leave it in place and just watch it next time I rotate through?

While you're debating, I'm going to talk about this short.

Every year, hundreds of women in Pakistan are victims of acid attacks.  Men, sometimes a husband, sometimes just a rejected prospect, throw caustic or flammable substances into the faces of girls as young as thirteen for the high crime of disappointing them.  The laws against such attacks are a joke and one woman, Zakia, is about to become a test case for enforcing a new Parliamentary edict calling for life imprisonment upon conviction.  Zakia was routinely abused by her husband and filed for divorce.  On the steps of the courthouse, her husband threw battery acid into her face causing extreme disfigurement and the loss of her left eye.  A Pakistani-born plastic surgeon with a thriving practice in London returns to Pakistan every year to provide reconstructive surgery pro bono to Zakia and the the hundreds of women like her.

Zakia is mostly the focus of the 41-minute film but several women are interviewed and their experiences are uniformly horrifying.  Fortunately, in the eight years since this film, new legislation and tougher restrictions on the sale of acid have cut down the numbers but the underlying causes of misogyny, poverty, and abuse still exist.

Currently streaming on HBO if you were feeling too good about the world and needed something to bring you back down.

Mirai (2018)

  I did not enjoy this movie and it's such a shame because the animation is stunning.  It just was not for me.

Kun (Moka Kamishiraishi) travels backwards and forwards in time to come to terms with the addition of little sister Mirai.

Mirai is gorgeously animated and really thoughtful about the meaning of family and how expectations can change.  Parents and people much closer to their families (or who wish they were) will probably be very moved by this film, which is streaming on Netflix right now.  It also has the option to watch in the original Japanese or the English dub but it defaults to the dub so check before you're disappointed.

I have an extremely low tolerance for children crying and I don't mean it fills me with empathy.  I leap straight to irrational anger.  There are children I like but I don't have any of my own for a reason.  So in that respect, I found this movie incredibly annoying.  It just ruined the experience for me.  But that is obviously a very specific take and there's no real reason to assume you won't like it, unless you have the exact same reaction.  Give it a shot.

Big Bad Wolves (2012)

  I wouldn't necessarily call this horror, more of a psychological thriller, but I guess that's close enough for government work.

Micki (Lior Ashkenazi) is an Israeli police officer on the trail of a serial killer.  He's pretty sure it's a school teacher named Dror (Rotem Keinan) but after a video of "enhanced interrogation" goes viral, Micki is forced to cut the suspect loose.  He has a plan, though.  He'll just kidnap Dror and force a confession.  Only one problem: the father of the latest victim, Gidi (Tzahi Grad), has the same idea.  Now Micki and Dror find themselves both at the mercy of a man willing to go to extreme lengths to get vengeance.

This reminded me of M and also Hard Candy.  The film does a good job of eliciting sympathy and suspicion in equal measure even if it doesn't offer any decent resolution.  It's billed as a black comedy and I guess the idea of two people kidnapping the same guy to torture information out of him is kind of funny but I wouldn't say it's filled with dark humor.  But I could just be jaded.

Anyway, it's currently streaming on Amazon.  Totally worth watching if you're in the mood for a thriller with low gore and high suspense.

Thale (2012)

  Today's horror comes from Norway!

Two crime scene techs, Elvis (Erlend Nervold) and Leo (Jon Sigve Skard), are cleaning out the house of a dead man when they find a secret room in the basement.  Inside, they find a mute woman (Silje Reinåmo) and a bunch of cassette tapes detailing her past.  They immediately call it in and settle in to wait for backup.  The girl doesn't seem dangerous, just weird, but as they listen to the tapes, they slowly start to realize how weird.

This was refreshing on a number of levels.  No sexual assault!  Any other movie with a naked girl in a hidden basement room it would be a given, but not here.  In fact, Thale's nudity is not lingered on or male gaze-y.  She happens to be naked but it's not treated as titillating.  Wholesome!  It's low-budget with only about four speaking roles but it never feels cheap.  The CGI on the monsters is a little dodgy but the movie saves the close-up shots for when they'll do the most good so it still works.  New mythological creatures!  Well, to me at least.  Meet the Hulda, Scandinavian forest spirits like a mix between dryads and succubi.  Yay!

It's not super gory and there aren't a lot of jump scares.  It's just a nice, atmospheric, rural horror with a good story and few, if any, cheap tropes.  Currently streaming on Tubi.

The Broken Circle Breakdown (2012)

   Barely made it before midnight but managed to get three movies this weekend!  Whew.  It has been a while since I managed to stick to my schedule.  Hopefully, that means things are calming down now and getting back to normal -- for a given value of normal.

Elise (Veerle Baetens) and Didier (Johan Heldenbergh) are in love.  They met by chance, immediately hit it off, and lived six wonderful and one terrible year together.  

The movie jumps all over their relationship, interspersing present and past to show the highs and lows.  It reminded me of Blue Valentine, Once, and Country Strong, but I don't recommend doubling it up with any of those unless you are just in a cathartic kind of mood.

Content Warning:  suicide, death of a child.  Spoilery, but that's kind of the point of a content warning.  It's currently streaming for free on Vudu with ads.

A Company Man (2012)

   I know I took a week off.  It was my birthday and I had just moved.  I needed a break.  Plus, we hadn't hooked up the TV or anything yet and while I love you random Internet readers, I am not going to watch movies on my phone for you.  That's lame.

But I am back now and with hopefully less existential crisis.  Oh, Chadwick Boseman died?  Super young? After heroically struggling with colon cancer?  On Jackie Robinson Day, a legend in his own right whose biopic catapulted the actor to stardom?  It was also Jack Kirby's birthday, the artist who created Black Panther?  I see, I see.  *Incoherent screaming*

Let's talk about this movie.

JI Hyong-do (SO Ji-seob) works for a company of assassins.  He probably would have said things were going well until he was asked to kill a temp (KIM Dong-jun) who reminded him a little bit too much of himself when he was young and full of dreams.  Worse, in offering his condolences and passing on the kid's paycheck, Ji meets the kid's mom (LEE Mi-yeon), a disillusioned former pop idol, and starts falling in love with her.  His higher-ups think that Ji now has less loyalty to the company and send assassins after him and his new family.  This doesn't end well for anyone.

This was much more of a condemnation of corporate culture than the bloody action movie I was hoping for.  Even my escapism is social commentary.  The film itself was a little slow for me and spent a little too much time on side characters that did nothing to advance the plot.  The action choreography was okay, not over-edited, but lacked a little of the panache I've come to expect.  It all felt very middle of the road.  Still, if you're in the mood for Korean assassins and you've already watched Man from Nowhere eleventy billion times, give this one a shot.  It's streaming on Tubi.

Pulse (2001)

  Okay, so when I added this movie, I was expecting ghost horror not existential horror.  Which is on me.  It's always better not to bias yourself going in with too many expectations.  And this turned into kind of the perfect quarantine movie.

A handful of teenagers become convinced that the recent spate of suicides among their peers is caused by a mysterious website.  Then doors sealed with red tape start appearing as the angry spirits are pushed out into our world.  Michi (Kumiko Aso) and Kawashima (Haruhiko Kato) try to survive as their city and then the world is affected by this phenomenon.

Oh, 2001.  Remember when we thought the Internet was going to kill us?  Like I said, this isn't really about the ghosts.  It's about the isolation people feared the Internet and then social media was going to exacerbate until everyone was stuck inside staring at screens, unable to form human attachments.  Research has tended to show that social media and too much screen time is especially detrimental to young children, but this movie plays it as hysteria, responsible for all the ills of the world.  The scenes of the two main characters navigating the empty streets of Tokyo, one of the busiest cities in the world, is astonishingly prescient, however.  It's currently streaming on Tubi.

Content Warning:  multiple suicides by various methods.

Force Majeure (2014)

  You've probably heard of this movie if you followed any of the Oscar/critical recommendations of the last few years.  It was so successful it even got an American remake as Downhill, starring Will Farrell and Julia Louis-Dreyfus.  So if you saw that movie, you basically saw this one.  I assume.

Tomas (Johannes Bah Kuhnke), Ebba (Lisa Loven Kongsli) and their two children are on holiday at a fancy French ski resort.  The resort uses controlled blasts to keep snow from building up to deadly avalanches.  One occurs very close to where our vacationing family is eating lunch.  As everyone panics, Ebba grabs the kids.  Tomas...grabs his phone.  Shaken by the encounter, Ebba desperately wants to make sense of how she's feeling, only for Tomas to deny the entire affair.  What follows are two hours of excruciatingly awkward public discussions as Ebba ropes everyone they know into weighing in on the conflict for the next three days of their vacation.

They called this a dark comedy and hoo boy.  It is a lot.  If you think toxic masculinity and gaslighting are funny, this'll be a riot.  If you think being forced to listen to a couple fighting is hilarious, you will love this, you ghoul.  It's currently streaming on Hulu.

For Sama (2019)

  Another day, another depressing ass documentary about Syria.  Jesus Christ.

Waad al-Kataeb is a journalist who documented the siege of Aleppo from inside.  Her husband, Hamza, is one of the last dozen doctors remaining in the city, and she chronicles the struggles of life every day under the constant bombardment by Russian jets on behalf of the Syrian dictatorship.  Hundreds of wounded are brought to the makeshift hospital every day, the hospital itself is bombed, and through it all, Waad and Hamza try to make things safe for their infant daughter, Sama.

Content Warning:  dead children, dead bodies, blood, war trauma

This documentary takes pains to show the cost of war in terms of human lives, especially children.  It's a hard watch.  I don't even like children but holy shit.  The majority of filming takes place in 2016 with flashbacks to the beginning of the revolution.  At this point, you could absolutely watch the entire civil war in film, between this, The White Helmets, The Cave, and Last Men in Aleppo.  I'm not saying you should, mind you, just that you can.

It's currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

Life Overtakes Me (2019)

  I didn't remember that this was nominated for an Oscar.  I didn't even remember to post it.  It was supposed to go up last week.  That's less due to it being boring or uninteresting than how much of a slog Les Misérables was to watch.  This is only about 20 minutes so it is comparably a breeze.

Did you guys know there's a condition called Resignment Syndrome?  Kids in Sweden, almost exclusively children of refugees, have been falling into comas.  Essentially, their lives are so filled with uncertainty, their little bodies just shut down.  The doc follows three different, formerly healthy children and their families to show the impact this has had.

It seems so fake but Sweden is noting hundreds of cases, way more than could be explained by people trying to game the system.  Not to mention the amount of time and effort it would take to fake it.  These kids are on feeding tubes, they have to have daily physical therapy to prevent muscle atrophy, they're missing over a year of their lives.  There are people monstrous enough to poison a child to try and garner sympathy but not hundreds in one place.  But as the refugee crisis worsens, experts and doctors fear even larger waves of Resignment Syndrome breaking out.

This is streaming on Netflix and it is a trip.

Les Misérables (2019)

  God, this movie was a hard watch.  It took me four days to get through it.  I am not in the mood for social commentary dramas at the best of times, much less when we're on lockdown in our homes and idiots are speculating how many of the vulnerable should be considered an acceptable loss so their 401ks don't take a hit.

Ruiz (Damien Bonnard) has just joined an elite inner city crime unit and is placed on a team with Chris (Alexis Manenti) and Gwada (Djebril Zonga).  He is very quickly uncomfortable with the other two's willingness to harass and terrorize the residents of Montfermeil, famous for being where Victor Hugo wrote his novel Les Misérables.  The cops' continual draconian behavior leads to intense confrontations after a kid (Issa Perica) steals a lion cub from a traveling circus, breaking the very delicate balance between the local drug lord trying to keep the peace (Steve Tientcheu) and the leader of the local Muslim Brotherhood faction (Almamy Kanouté).

Everything in this movie is just uuuuugggggghhhhhh.  The cops are all bastards, the community is divided, everyone distrusts everyone else, and the kids are all caught in the middle with no hope.  Yeah, it's a very good film and timely and filled with tension, good performances, and excellent pacing.  Would I ever watch it again?  Fuck no.  It's currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

The Edge of Democracy (2019)

  This was nominated for Best Documentary at this year's Oscars but lost to another Netflix film.  I think this one might be more important than American Factory but it is hindered by an insider-only knowledge of Brazilian politics.

Petra Costa grew up the child of pro-democracy revolutionaries.  Her parents were jailed for opposing the military dictatorship that ruled Brazil for most of her life.  She is elated at the true democratic election of President Lula Da Silva and his hand-picked successor Dilma Rousseff, only to witness their implication in a corruption scandal that paved the way for extreme right-wing conservative Jair Bolsonaro.  A scandal revealed by leaked wiretaps to be purely an invention of the oligarchy who feared losing their power.  Costa presents this with incredible proximity to these leaders, scoring personal interviews with da Silva and Rousseff, as well as personal reflections and comparisons of her family's struggle.

I could have used a more comprehensive overview of Brazil's politics, since I'm not super familiar with that country, but the documentary does a decent job of outlining why this particular moment is important in their recent history.  However, given the current situation re: pandemic and critical mismanagement of resources at the federal level, Americans might want to pass on this for a bit.  Maybe watch something happy instead.  I hear Frozen 2 is on Disney+ and Onward just got released on VOD so, you know, choose wisely.  Edge of Democracy is currently streaming on Netflix.

Pain and Glory (2019)

    This is the most brightly colored film about heroin that I've ever seen.  Honestly, if this were an American movie, it would be all blue filters and overcast skies but this is drenched in bright, vibrant color.  Outstanding.

Salvador (Antonio Banderas) is wracked with pain both physical and mental.  Invited to a retrospective for his first successful film, he reaches out to his first star, Alberto (Asier Exteandia), with whom he had been estranged for 30 years.  Alberto is a functional heroin addict and gets Salvador hooked.  In exchange for more heroin, Salvador gives Alberto the rights to one of his unproduced screenplays that Alberto turns into a successful theater production seen by Salvador's first love, Federico (Leonardo Sbaraglia).  This in turn prompts Salvador to re-evaluate what more is left for him at this stage of his life.

I was not expecting this to be as wholesome as it was.  The minute someone broke out the crack pipe I was like "Oh shit, it's Requiem for a Dream all over again."  But I underestimated the power of Almodóvar behind the camera.  This was, shockingly, the first Oscar nomination for Banderas and he is phenomenal here in a stripped down, emotional performance given mostly through his eyes.

Oh and just as a side note:  the MPAA rating comes up after all the preview and tells you this film is rated R for (among other things) graphic nudity.  This is some bullshit on their part as there is only one nude scene and it is less than 5 seconds long.  But because you can clearly see some dude's dick, it's obviously destroying the fabric of America or something equally as dumb.