Capsules

I have been remiss - for 2-3 weeks almost. Where are the reviews? My public* hangs, breathlessly, on reviews!** Um - okay then...

The President's Last Bang ***1/2 - Korean film about the assassination of President Park Chun-hee in 1979 by the head of the Korean CIA, told in a strange, dark comic style. A parade of nincompoops - the president, his oafish bodyguard, the KCIA man with a bad liver and worse breath, various underlings, some competent, most not, whores and singers and actresses looking for a break, unflappable waiters, drivers pressed into emergency service as assassins, cowardly generals, dim-witted politicians, and more, enact the sordid tale. It builds to dinner at a KCIA safehouse with the president, an actress and a Japanese singer, the bodyguard (who isn't armed), an obsequious secretary, and the KCIA man - who somewhere in the middle decides, apparently on the spot, to stage a coup. Mayhem and screwups of all sorts follow. For a fuller review, I defer to Filmbrain, who wrote about it last year - it is a very good film.

Music From the Inside Out - **1/2 - documentary about the Philadelphia orchestra, about the musicians, their interests, etc. It is very good at geting across the beauty of the music and the feelings it evokes in the musicians. First rate sound design, blending the music into the noises of the world around it. It's rather slight, for all its merits - enjoyable and respectable, but not terribly deep. But it is enjoyable and intelligent, and worth seeing.

Clay Pigeons - why? well - someone loaned me the DVD... Vince Vaughan, I must say, is wonderful - very funny, compelling and all - just - who wants him to be a villain? Makes me want to see the Wedding Crashers again. Not this though.

The Libertine - **1/2 - somewhere down the line I may have to run up more of a review of this. Not for the film, which while it has merits, has more than its share of problems as well - but for Johnny Depp, who is really on top of his game here. The beginning - he faces the camera, in a dimly lit room, and tells the audience we will not like him - then proceeds, in the film, to play a character that we should hate, but we can't, because it is Johnny Depp, and he is on top of his game. And he plays a character who is a bastard, but has the same beauty and charisma and brilliance Johnny Depp has, and so, whether we should like him or not, we have to love him. The character is John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, a poet and playwright and libertine, who drank and fucked himself to death at the auspicious age of 33, and has apparently come down through history primarily for his deathbed confession. That and some fine, and nasty, poetry... Depp plays him, though, both better than anyone around him, and miserable - disappointed in life - always the life of the party, but with a harsh edge of bile... yet...

Battle in Heaven - *** - in which we move from the cheery, generous spirit of The Libertine to something really nasty... Well - maybe not... This is the new film from Carlos Reygadas - it's about a man named Marcos who is a driver for a general (played by a man named Marcos, who is a driver, apparently, for a government agency where Reygadas' father worked.) We don't see any generals - we see Marcos driving the general's daughter around. We see him riding trains, talking to his wife, visiting the country as well. And - oh yeah - we see him fucking the girl, and his wife. Indeed, the film is notorious mostly for the sex - quite graphic, quite unfeigned, and notable as well for the fact that Marcos and his wife are both quite fat and middle aged.... The actors are all amateurs - and the sex and the strange, robotic acting gives it an odd offensiveness, but there's no doubt that Marcos, especially, has a definite sweetness, as does the spoiled girl, and at times even his wife. There is a plot, involving a kidnapping gone wrong - which leads to other crimes, and then to rather extreme attempts at expatiation of those crimes, that gives it a truly tragic grandeur.... Meanwhile - the film's politics are quite biting: emohasizing the vast gap between classes, between races, the condescenscion and cruelty the rich and powerful show toward the poor. It's a very odd, moving film - much of it shot guerrilla style on the streets (and in the subways and so on) of Mexico City, giving it a powerful look... It is reminiscent (with its graphic sex, amateur actors, and mythic crime & punishment plot) of Bruno Dumont, and almost as good.

Winter Passing - ** - meanwhile, back in the states - a vehicle for Zooey Deschanel, who should be the star of every film... she plays the rather fucked up daughter of a reclusive, very fucked up writer played by Ed Harris. Her mom is dead and she is miserable, so she goes home to look for some letters she has a chance to sell - at home, she finds Will Farrell, in the person of an odd duck, and Amelia Warner as a young,pretty, ex-student who has Suffered... etc. Unfortunately, it sinks into a mix of twee weirdness (the indoor golfing) and sentimental revelations and reconciliations - but it's better than it probably has a right to be, because the actors are so very very good. Deschanel is about as good as it gets - and Will Farrell is superb - watching them is worth the price of admission alone. (Harris can be - but he's also rather overdoing it here - still, he's got enough screen presence he can afford to ham it up a bit.)

* I have a public?
** Good lord, I hope not.