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charlieprince
Reviews
Gokuaku bôzu: Nenbutsu sandangiri (1970)
Fun and slightly silly Yakuza flick
Wicked Priest #4 is fun. Starring our friend from the Baby cart series, the film is easy enough to follow without having seen the first three wicked priest films. Wakayama plays Shinkai, a priest who cheats, gambles, drinks and can't stay away from the women, but seems to get the broader important stuff right (in this film, he fights to improve the wages of impoverished coal workers). If you're tuning in for Bunta Sugawara, however, be forewarned that his role is pretty small, and he doesn't even show up until the last 30 minutes. I haven't seen the other Wicked Priest films, but I assume Bunta is left over from one of them, as they don't explain his relationship to Shinkai at all. Towards the end of the film, Wakayama basically turns into Zatoichi, whose character he has resembled all along. The blind fighting style he ends up developing mirrors Zatoichi's, and seeing as this film came eight years after Zatoichi showed up, it is likely this film was an attempt to cash in on the popularity of that series (after all, Wakayama starred in several of them himself). By the way, the roaming samurai elements almost completely obscure the minor Yakuza subplot. This is no Fukasaku film.
Höstsonaten (1978)
Good acting, but never drew me in.
This is the complex film of a troubled mother-daughter relationship. The earlier comments lay the plot out better than I could, but they leave out one interesting thing. The men in the film are treated as completely irrelevant, normally off to the side, aloof, smoking a pipe and reading the newspaper. When confronted with any of the hyper-drama with which the stars of the film are consumed, they respond like half-wits in a kind "Eh? ah, yes, swell" and go back to their newspapers as if they're not comprehending or interested in the story unfolding. Liv Ulman's husband has moments of interesting presence, but otherwise the general statement stands.
Most of the film is comprised of the emotional fist fight between the mother and daughter. The issues they struggle with might have been more interesting if the mother had tried to explain herself more, but it's hard to take to heart the daughter's hysterical ranting that she despises her mother for making her get a haircut when she was younger. For those who like drama in everything in their lives from buttering toast to playing a song on the piano, this film will hit the spot in the way that even a condensed season of soap operas could not.
That said, the conflict didn't touch me as it obviously has the many others who have commented on this film. The conflict seemed inflated, which, while it may be in itself realistic of real conflicts in the world, made the intricacies of the accusation free-for-all less interesting. And the obsessive determination of the daughter to find sadness and oppression in everything, which again may be in itself realistic and an interesting look at someone of that nature, felt goofy. At points the statements are so over the top with questions like "Is my suffering your delight?" the character felt more like a doomsday cartoon than an interesting person revealing fascinating existential truths to think about.
In defense of the film, the director appeared to be intentionally portraying both characters as flawed. But at the same time, I think we the audience were intended to sympathize with the daughter considerably more than I did. If the director was trying to say "when you are desperately trying to find pain and sadness in everything, you will, and here's an example of that" it might have been more interesting. Or if it felt like an unsympathetic portrayal of people leading empty lives, it might have had a more substantive effect in the vein of, say, Requiem for a Dream.
In sum, I'd say the acting is good, the story very dramatic, and without the emptyness of modern CGI films. But the drama itself felt empty to me, and didn't leave me thinking about the film after it was over, wondering about ideas the characters struggle with. Many people love it, and even the Criterion Collection released the film, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. For heartfelt family drama -- albeit not mother-daughter drama -- I'd probably urge someone to see Cassavetes' Faces instead.
Les carabiniers (1963)
Worst Movie I've Seen All Year
I had thought Tomb Raider was the worst movie I'd see all year until seeing this. The descriptions in the other comments are probably sufficient to describe whatever exists of the "plot." All of the scenes are intentionally absurd, although without the kind of effect this technique has in, say, The Idiots.
Many of the scenes are painfully long without meaning, and feel like filler, which is surprising given that the movie is allegedly short. The worst instance of this comes towards the end, with the 20 minute sequence of laying down postcards one at a time in front of the camera, with a voice-over saying "Boat, airplane, bicycle...." The humor of the situation, and the attempt to poke fun at capitalism, is effective for the first minute or so, and very obvious, but the rest is just unwatchable.
Next, the acting is awful. The main characters are consistent, if boringly one-sided, but many of the characters they interact with performed so poorly it distracts from the film. In one scene where some prisoners are being shot, there is a two to three second lapse between when the gun goes off, and when the girl being shot (about 15 feet away from the gun) jumps/jolts as if she'd just been shot, and then slumps. It's hard to believe that this sort of stuff was intentional, as Godard was clearly trying to make a political statement, not an Ace Ventura slapstick comedy, although in instances it unwittingly gets closer to the latter.
The editing is what really got me though. The pathetic use of stock footage makes Ed Wood look impressive. The attempts to merge the pictures of a small handful of people running, supposedly in battle, with stock footage shots of tanks and planes, felt like a Saturday Night Live skit spoofing the stock footage. And the overuse of stock footage reminded me of the infamous B-movie "Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster" with endless collages of stock footage, interspersed with shots of 3 or 4 people and a cardboard-looking tank. The worst example, and completely unexcusable, is a scene where the star pulls the hat off of a girl who has ambushed him, and then the film cuts to a close-up of the girl's head -- and the hat's back on her! It's like Godard wasn't even trying to make a decent film.
In the end, I don't think the film got beyond an unsophisticated grunt "War is stupid, capitalism is stupid." Whatever cheerleading pop-culture value the film may have had during it's time, today it's an utter waste of a movie, with an inexcusable plot, wooden and boring characters, awful acting, and editing that would get an F in a basic film 101 class.
Pao Da Shuang Deng (1994)
It's a simple story, and it works well.
I didn't find the other reviews helpful so thought I'd post my own.
I'd be the first one to shout "who cares if it's a foreign film, this movie sucks" but it doesn't. The characters are fascinating and the storyline is smooth and keeps you interested. It's slow in the sense that the director isn't afraid to leave in long shots, and let the plot points develop in a subtle manner. It's not slow in the sense that the longer shots are boring. This is not a case of a director falling in love with his footage and neglecting to make necessary cuts (with one exception near the end, perhaps). It's not the drama of Farewell my Concubine or Emperor and the Assassin, nor anything along the lines of Chungking Express or any kind of action fighting films. It's not a crushingly tragic film either, btw, as one might worry from the poster of the girl with the pained look. It's a simple story, and it works well.