Misc Films Catching Up

What do we have? another day before the world series starts so another chance to get something written. I still hope to write something non-trivial for the Double Bill-a-thon but it's competing with the Sox, and I've been lazy as a dog lately.... I also want to write up a real review of Darjeeling Limited - which might turn out to be the double feature (I saw it the same day I saw California Dreamin', as it happens - 2 films about Americans on a train stranded in a far off land, one from the POV of the Americans, one not....) But not yet. Instead, a few film capsules and comments, I suppose...

First: why do I keep spending money on Ang Lee films? They're all the same damn film - the same dull melodrama spiked with some kind of twist: Explicit Sex! Gay Cowboys! Hulk Smash! Kung Fu! Jewel's tits! I don't know why I keep going. I suppose the main reason I saw Lust, Caution was to see Tony Leung - anything of his that gets released here I suppose I have to see... otherwise - why? They keep coming out, and winning awards - I suppose he's the classic Hollywood prestige director - set design and photography, classicist editing, the impersonation of substance - that's all you need, I guess, and it marks you out as "serious" in Hollywood.

I suppose I should try to muster something to say about the film itself, but it's hard to think of a point. It's basically a remake of Notorious with Claude Rains getting away with it. Without the filmmaking skills or Cary Grant, and with the infamous long kiss replaced by acrobatic sex. Which reminds me - can't anyone make a movie with explicit fucking in it where the sex looks like fun? At least stop these films - even Last Tango in Paris or Lies, for all the downer sex, the characters at least looked like they were getting off on it. This is a mopey boring film with mopey bring sex - after this, I'd settle for Catherine Breillat....

Meanwhile, not everything I've seen has stunk: in fact, it's been a pretty good couple of months. Some fine series' - Romanian films, Pedro Costa films, Michael Haneke films - Haneke will be in town this weekend (at both the HFA and MFA), following Costa who was here back in September, and Arnaud Desplechins, who was on hand last week with Kings and Queen and Life of the Dead. Kings and Queens is one of my favorites of the decade - Life of the Dead was his first film, an hour long examination of the family of a young man who has shot himself - packing an old house full of actors (from all different styles, he said), and bouncing them off each other. It's a very accomplished first film - handing the cast and space with aplomb, telling stories subtly but fairly clearly. It establishes what seems to be a pretty characteristic style for Despleshins - a rhythm he has: calm/movement - stillness and sudden movement - empty shots and spaces/full shots and spaces - which he maintains throughout his career. This one also seems to me to have a strong Rivette flavor - the old house, the huge cast, the decentralized story telling, the fact that the "real" story (the boy dieing) is happening somewhere else - along with the fact that he brings along several of Rivette's actresses - Mariane Denincourt; Laurence Cote... It's very good.