Chungking Express (1994)

Hong Kong
written and directed by: Kar-Wai Wong
starring: Brigitte Lin, Tony Chiu-Wai Leung, Faye Wong, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Valerie Chow
seen: 25th November, 2008

♥♥♥ "He's stopped crying. (To Estragon.) You have replaced him as it were. (Lyrically.) The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each one who begins to weep, somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh. (He laughs.) Let us not then speak ill of our generation, it is not any unhappier than its predecessors. (Pause.) Let us not speak well of it either. (Pause.) Let us not speak of it at all." -Samuel Beckett

The Idiots (1998)

Idioterne
Denmark/France/Netherlands/Italywritten and directed by: Lars von Trier
starring: Bodil Jørgensen, Jens Albinus, Anne Louise Hassing
seen: 25th November, 2008; comment: 17th September, 2018

Ok, Lars himself might have gotten mad from his inner demons (oh my god, he's already sixty two years old?!) which in turn might lead one to take a second look at his work, but I still consider "Idioterne" perfect. With one teeny tiny exception, because I could do without the framing of the "participants" being interviewed in front of the camera. Nonetheless, as of today, I would say that it is artistically the most convincing/the most articulate film of the nineties.

 -"Responsibility does them good." ♥♥♥

Dancer In The Dark (2000)

Denmark/Germany/Netherlands/USA
written and directed by: Lars von Trier
starring: Björk, Catherine Deneuve, Peter Stormare, Siobhan Fallon Hogan
seen: 24th November. 2008, additional comment: 30th July, 2017

2008: Well, I'm having a dilemma. I've been on several dates with Mr. Trier before and I've been, so far, almost always thoroughly amazed. But I am also a bit of a skeptic and I have hard time believing in the existence of such geniuses, so to get to my point, I was prepared to be as critical as humanly possible when I set out to watch Dancer in the Dark.

The film starts slow and easy, almost making the viewer (me) wondering how it can ever reach the ending it's supposed to reach. And then the viewer stops thinking about such nonsense as she's being dragged in by the power of the extraordinary point of view on such ordinary reality. The song "I've seen it all" has a devastating effect on the emotionaly disturbed girl and makes her completely identify with the heroine. The sudden story twist screams: "I am illogical. I don't seem to organically belong. I am forced to the extreme!" The viewer's brain is working double shifts to understand it and then the disarraying ending wreaks havoc in the subconsciousness.

And now back to first person writing: All in all, even though the movie disagrees with me at some points and I do not think it's perfect the way I think Dogville is perfect, for the accurate work of describing the inner world of a resigned dreamer I am forced to give it highest marks.

-"You've never been to Niagara Falls?" -"I have seen water, it's water, that's all..."

2017: As I get older, my disagreeings with this film stay the same but my love for it grows bigger and bigger. The formal principle of combining the shaky docu camera for the "normal" life and montages of many static shots for the musical numbers is able to manipulate the viewer's point of view so brilliantly it deserves the highest praise solely for that. But wait, there's more. The actors work so accurately that every scene seems to be the best acted scene ever to be best acted. In some imaginary world I have no trouble ripping my heart from my chest, splitting it in half and giving those halves to Peter Stormare and Siobhan Fallon Hogan.

-"What is there to see?" ♥♥♥

Requiem for a Dream (2000)

USA
directed by: Darren Aronofsky
written by: Darren Aronofsky, Hubert Selby Jr. (+ book)
starring: Ellen Burstyn, Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly
seen: 2nd November, 2008

Seven years ago I wrote that I don't get this film. Today I feel terribly mean, because all the characters seem just stupid to me and they don't make me feel anything. (2014)

Bowling For Columbine (2002)

USA/Canada/Germany
written and directed by: Michael Moore
starring: Michael Moore, Charlton Heston, Marilyn Manson
seen: 10th October, 2008 - comment: 21st October, 2015

Seven years ago I wrote about this documentary that I found it entertaining. Now as the only truly entertaining thing remains the statement that bowling might be as much a plausible influence on the shooters as anything else.

Moore probably has good intentions, but I'm not sure about the direction of the road he's paving with them. A lot of the situations look like they could have been handled differently... and mostly more smartly. The thing that hasn't changed during the years I had to think about this film is that I still consider the couple of sentences Marilyn says to be the intellectual (and most likely argumentational) peak of the film, and since he didn't even got to say that much, that paints a pretty accurate picture of the film's depth.

The Passion Of The Christ (2004)

USA
directed by: Mel Gibson
written by: Mel Gibson, Benedict Fitzgerald
starring: James Caviezel, Maia Morgenstern, Monica Bellucci, Rosalinda Celentano
seen: 25th March, 2008, comment:  27th August, 2017

I've been thinking for some time what to write about The Passion because I could only come up with negative and agressive opinions and for once I felt I shouldn't invest energy into such thoughts. And when it comes to this, I like to compare said films to other creators who aspire to achieve similar goals and do it better, in my opinion at least. The ultimate film about the ordeal of Jesus Christ made for modern audience (when I skip over The Life Of Brian and Jesus Christ Superstar, for obvious reasons) is Jesus from Montreal: A fool/outcast is, in the middle of emptied vanity, trying to create something real with a meaning, while fighting the feeling that he himself is just a tool/an empty vessel. It's a spiritual film about faith and inspiration. The Passion never gets to such abstract concepts, God forbid it should get to confronting ideas.

Mel Gibson described his chosen theme like this: "This is a movie about love, hope, faith and forgiveness. He [Jesus] died for all mankind, suffered for all of us. It's time to get back to that basic message. The world has gone nuts. We could all use a little more love, faith, hope and forgiveness." I don't understand why he sticks so much to depicting evil, instead of inspiring good. He is literal and superficial and resorts to ideological, visual and musical kitsch. I find Rosalinda Celentano rather spellbinding, but one of the films biggest problems for me is the decision to personify evil/temptation into the character of Satan, walking around Earth and de facto absolving sinners of responsibility for their actions because he is the absolute source of all evil. Gibson simply doesn't understand the colour gray and doesn't want to leave anything to individual thinking evaluation.

The Passion Of The Christ isn't a creation of a spiritualy awakened person, but of a dogmatical fanatic. It concentrates on all the wrong and insignificant details and doesn't realize that this process irretrievably deforms the idea that might have been a model in the beginning.

Babel (2006)

France/USA/Mexico
directed by: Alejandro González Iñárritu
written by: Guillermo Arriaga
starring: Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Adriana Barraza
seen: 3rd February, 2008 - comment: 24th July, 2017

I wasn't that impressed with this film when I first saw it as a rebellious teenager, but I was under the impression that maybe I just don't understand it right and that after some time my understanding will change. Well, it's been ten years and something unprecedented happened: I understand it even less now and it seems that more shallow to me.

I am not able to determine on my own what's this film even about and the way it's shot and presented makes me very unpleasant. One example for all is the obtrusive and tacky Mexican wedding sequence. And the film's soundtrack was very irritating with its poseur emptiness.

The only scene where I felt truly moved occured when the little boy smashed the Winchester rifle.

The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)

USA/Germany/France/Spain
directed by: Paul Greengrass
written by: Tony Gilroy, Scott Z. Burns, George Nolfi
starring: Matt Damon, Julia Stiles, Joan Allen
seen: 29th January, 2008, comment updated 24th March, 2018

With each new viewing the film becomes less and less engaging. A few more rounds and I guess I'll think it's a stupid flick. (And I feel the need to add that it's simply depressing that the storyline of "the Ultimatum" is just a mosaic of essential plot points from both previous films and doesn't bring almost anything new to the mix. The core example of this is when Bourne causes a car crash to get rid of "the terminator" chasing him, confronts him at gunpoint and then decides to spare him in order to be more human himself - that's exactly the same freaking thing that happened in "the Supremacy", except that Karl Urban is replaced by Edgar Ramirez in the part of the pretty psycho-killer. That's pure impertinence to recycle a scene like this, to use old emotions instead of evoking new ones. As far as screenwriting goes, this is unforgivable.)

But because of the hearbreaking stare of Daniel Brühl (about whom I have briefly forgotten that he even shows up in this film because I'm always admiring the plants in his film appartment, mainly the ficus by the window and the bonsai at the door) I have decided to list some positives as well and to not end my review on such an angry note. The scene with the journalist at the London train station is truly spectacular and probably my favourite sequence of the whole trilogy. And I guess it's kind of cute how he sends the entire agency out for a walk in New York. But the final act is so unsatisfying in throwing everything away and starting to target irrelevant emotions that I always end up losing interest. And even the final Moby beings to sound a bit worn out.

-"Get some rest, Pam. You look tired."