Moulin Rouge!

I saw this for the first time on the big screen in Rome after having been told by a film friend to make sure my eyes were wide open to drink in all that craziness Baz Luhrmann had created. It is a crazy film, with its multiplicity of colors, characters and music, but it really does work. Luhrmann states that this is the last of his Red Curtain Trilogy films, each one of which focuses on problems surrounding falling in love. I admit that this is not my favorite of the three (Strictly Ballroom has a tighter story and has all that great ballroom dancing in it) but that's not saying much because I loved this film as a rental as much as I did in the theater. For most filmgoers, the big surprise was Ewan McGregor's incredible tenor voice. He downplays this in the making-of documentary on the DVD, insisting that he'd never done it before, but I find that quite hard to believe. He knows when to sing soft and when to sing loud and he simply steals the show. To be fair, Nicole Kidman's voice is a beautiful alto, she's just upstaged. There are numerous weirdly done homages, such as the dance in the elephant turning into every film Gene Kelly made and "Like a Virgin" morphing into a vampire film. Luhrmann requires audience participation in his films, and perhaps that's why there is so much cutting and such an over-the-top style. We remain in our reality and enjoy the film as the spectacular spectacle that it is.

year: 2001
length: 127 min.
rating: 4.0
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0203009/combined

Samurai III: Duel on Ganryu Island

The end of the trilogy! No, not The Lord of the Rings, although I'm anxiously awaiting this December, you bet. This is the final film in Hiroshi Inagaki's trilogy about a samurai learning to become one. Unfortunately, I liked the second film in the trilogy better than the third, which is odd because second films can be more boring. You've been introduced to the world in the first film and now just want to get to the conclusion. The second film was hopping, and in this film the pace slows down. Which parallels Miyamoto Musashi's development as a samurai, but revealed more of the inconsistencies of the film to me. I particularly liked night battles suddenly changing into daytime battles. I don't think that was meant to be stylistic. And the melodrama is overly thick at times as the two women who love the samurai vie for him in different ways. It's also much easier in this film to come to the conclusion that these two women are off their rockers. One is simply a girl gone bad who can't get Musashi out of her head. The other is a good girl, but gives Musashi conflicting ideas of how she feels. The alarm bells should be going off in his head! I realize this film is from a different time and a different culture. That doesn't make it less irritating, though. All in all, it's a decent trilogy, for the cinematography, for the change from black-and-white to crystal clear color, and last but not least for watching Toshirô Mifune enact the transformation of Miyamoto Musashi from idiot boy to controlled, skillful samurai.

original title: Miyamoto Musashi Kanketsuhen: Kettô Ganryûjima
year: 1956
length: 115 min.
rating: 3.0
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049710/combined

Happiness

If you can get past the first 15 minutes, I think you might enjoy this film. Let's put that a different way. You might appreciate this film. It is absolutely not for the squeamish, dealing as it does with pedophilia, obscene prank phone calls, and social ineptitude of every size and shape. It is so immensely sad that any opportunity that Todd Solondz gives you to feel hope for his characters swells out of all proportion to what is actually happening on screen. In the case of one character, when something nice happens to her, the next moment she pays for it, and she's the meekest, kindest, sweetest character of them all. The one who shouldn't be paying for her "sins." The music is upbeat and happy at all times, and it doesn't take long before you learn not to trust the music whatsoever. You also learn not to trust what the characters will say one minute to the next. But you still end up empathizing with them. The most creepy instance of this is during a scene in which the pedophile is luring his prey with drugged food. The poor kid politely declines all the food. And towards the end of the scene you feel yourself rooting for the pedophile, because of the way the scene is constructed. After which you want to shake yourself like a dog and wonder if you're human. Solondz is clearly a major talent if he can create this world for us. I give him high marks, but I'm not sure if I'll venture to watch one of his films anytime soon.

year: 1998
length: 134 min.
rating: 3.5
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0147612/combined

Go West / The Scarecrow / The Paleface

A lot of the classic silents are now being released by Kino Video on DVD in a nice format: one feature film and two shorts. I watched this one, since I had heard that Go West was one of Buster Keaton's best feature films. It's the story of a down-and- out man who stumbles into work as a cowboy. As you can imagine, there is much fumbling and many prat-falls and even better, in this film one of the stars is a cow. Yup, and she's good, too. However, to be honest, I admit that I preferred the shorts, especially The Scarecrow. The genius of Keaton, besides his comedic physical prowess, was the ingenious contraptions he designed. A Victrola that turns into a stove? Salt and pepper shakers that fly across the room on strings as the diners require them? A bed that turns into a piano? I have a feeling that with his feature film, it's as if he had too much time to perform his magic, and so it ended up diluted for the audience.

years: 1925 / 1920 / 1922
length: 69 min. / 17 min. / 33 min.
rating for all: 3.0
IMDB links:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0015863/combined
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0011656/combined
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0012543/combined

Casino

I have no trouble recognizing the genius of Martin Scorsese. He is one of the few auteurs with a style that I can immediately sense. I'm unsure whether it's the same style I'm sensing in each film, but each time I view one of his films I see something that makes me go "oh!". For instance, in this film, instead of cutting out scenes that viewers can infer happened, which is a tried and true method for most filmmakers, he fades some of the infer-able scenes into each other, giving the illusion of movement. An example: a couple of guys are driving somewhere. We see them get in the car, which then fades into the car moving down the road, which ultimately fades into them getting out of the car at their destination. It's quite noticeable, and it always makes me grin because it shows he never stops thinking about how his technique intertwines with the story he's creating and the effect that will have on the viewer. He also does this with music. You'll notice yourself noticing the "background" music in this film (in quotes because it's a character in its own right). Why he's not widely recognized for his genius is a great question, but it may be a combination of the type of story he likes to tell and that he never shoots what are considered mainstream films (Gangs of New York may have been the closest he will ever get). Now, I really liked Goodfellas and Taxi Driver and Gangs of New York as well as this film because he knows how to bring complex characters and moral issues to life, but his films can often be hard to watch. The themes are highly disturbing, focused as they are on violence, mobs or deranged characters. In Casino (your basic Las Vegas mob film), I found myself looking away from the screen at times, which I almost never do. I mean, how does Thelma Schoonmaker edit some of these scenes without wanting to throw up? I was more disturbed by the violence in Casino than in Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction, which is saying a lot. I suppose being disturbed isn't necessarily a bad thing, because it makes the film stick with you, but I have to wonder at his obsession with these themes.

year: 1995
length: 178 min.
rating: 3.5
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112641/combined

Akele Hum Akele Tum

You have to give this film a bit of time. It's as dopey as any regular Bollywood film in the beginning. A scene early on has the lead actor (Aamir Khan once again; heck, he's the best in Bollywood, why watch any other?) jumping around onstage singing and playing guitar...and it's very obviously not plugged in but is supposed to be. Everybody's wearing dorky 80s clothes, and you think the film is going to be as silly as the rest of them. It's not. It's a re-make of Kramer vs. Kramer (believe it or not), and actually gets better as the film progresses. In fact, I thought the courtroom scene was better in this film than in the original, although it has been a long time since I've seen the original. They picked the cutest, sweetest little kid to play the son. Not at all cloying, but very natural, my favorite kind of child actor. Khan does his usual magic as the father who learns how special his relationship to his son is, and Manisha Koirala surprised me with her range as the mother. The only thing I ended up not liking about the film was its insistence on having one of the leads become a big Bollywood star. This is the third Bollywood film in a row that makes this a major theme. It seems they're having a bit of trouble thinking outside the box.

year: 1995
length: 160 min.
rating: 3.5
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112313/combined

Kiss of the Dragon

Sometimes it's a relief to watch a bad film and review it, because bad films are fun to skewer in print (for a near-perfect example of this read Stephen Hunter's review of Speed 2). Nearly everything about this film is laughable, and I well recognize that action films can in general be snickered at because they don't focus on story or characters or have thought-provoking themes. However, in this case, the filmmakers profess an understanding of the importance of those elements, which makes the film rather sad instead of laughable. OK, so, good Chinese cop (Jet Li) goes to France to assist in a police investigation helmed by a corrupt French cop (Tchéky Karyo) and gets involved with an American hooker (Bridget Fonda) whose child is held hostage by the French cop. These are not naturally bad actors. I would suggest watching them in High Risk, La Femme Nikita and Singles, respectively, since they are all painfully out of place and/or overacting in this film. Now, the action sequences are fantastic (watch for the cue ball and the guard house scenes), but how can they not be? Li is a master of kung-fu and has one of the best action directors choreographing his fight sequences. I guess I just have trouble sitting through films in which everything but the action itself makes me want to wince. Case in point, the director seems to love shooting sequences with either extraneous shots (why do we need to see Li's jacket fall to the floor in the big 40-against-one scene?) or without explanatory shots that would make the sequence run smoothly (how can we know where Li is positioned in the laundry chute?). And, the implausibility factor is notched way up as well, since Karyo and company perform shoot-em-up's all over Paris, particularly in crowded restaurants, alternately gunning down and beating up civilians. And his bosses don't seem to notice that perhaps he's not the hero cop everyone thinks he is? Gimme a break.

year: 2001
length: 98 min.
rating: 1.5
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0271027/combined

Ben-Hur

I kept thinking I'd seen this film, but it was completely fresh this time around, including the famous chariot scene. I didn't remember that it is the story of a Jew (played by Charlton Heston) and his opposition to the Roman conquerors. I didn't remember that it chronicles the life of Jesus. I didn't remember that one of the Romans is an old friend of Heston's character and the conflict that arises from that. I didn't remember all the opportunities for hypocrisy and/or making the wrong choices that pervade the film. And, in the long run, atlhough I think it's one of the best epics ever made, I don't understand why Heston got the Oscar. His character is definitely the tie that binds the entire film together, but I didn't think it was awe-inspiring (although his acting is first-class). Different standards then, perhaps. It won a gaggle of awards, including Best Sound, Best Film, Best Director, Best Costume Design, and Best Supporting Actor for Hugh Griffith. His portrayal of the Arab sheik is designed to be funny, but he doesn't play it as slapstick, which makes you grin all the more. If you rent the DVD, watch the making-of documentary, which is particularly nicely done because it talks about the book the film was based on, the many stage- play renditions of the book, and the silent 1925 film. The scale of these productions alone will make you gasp. I won't blame you, though, if you skip past the interviews with Gore Vidal (one of the screenwriters on this film) and his monstrous ego.

year: 1959
length: 222 min.
rating: 4.0
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052618/combined