Hey folks, Harry here... Anton has been the victim of my Email Problems of late - Love fucking AOL TIME WARNER whores! Fucking shit heads! Do you realize that AOL-TIME-WARNER Road Runner doesn't provide tech assistance for their idiot boxes for OS X and even had the fucking audacity to ask me to deinstall my operating system, and refused to check the server at their end for the problem... Which I finally was able to break into and patch. I HATE THEM! Here's Anton...
Day Four
Sorry this is so late, starkinder, but the last couple of days have been a blur. Finally arranged an interview (with some guy named Frodo Baggins, maybe you've heard of him), partied with Kymani Marley and Wyclef Jean, and just generally ran myself ragged. And no I'm not complaining!
No time for more- here's the good stuff.
* * * * *
Cuban Rafters (2002, directed by Carles Bosch and Josep M. Domenech)
I admit it, I find myself drawn to Cuba. Ever since the Cold War closed in around it like floes around an icebreaker I've been fascinated by the contrasts and contradictions it embodies. So it's really not surprising that I dug this film.
Cuban Rafters looks at the brief period in 1994, following the collapse of the Russian economy, the resulting impact on Cuba's and the social unrest that followed, when Castro opened the borders and allowed anyone who wanted to leave by boat to give it a try. The film follows seven people who took to the water to try and reach the US in home-made rafts.
While the political backdrop (Castro's total schooling of Clinton) is interesting, the meat of the story is the directions the lives of the rafters take once they get to America. The filmmakers tracked down their subjects where they'd been scattered to the four winds- Miami, New York, Hartford, Albuquerque- so you not only see what they left behind in Cuba, but what they have found in America after seven years. Not everything is peaches and cream- one couple breaks up, another man forgets about his wife and daughter back in Cuba. In fact only one story is what you'd call truly happy, and that one was bound to be, as a man was reuniting with his wife and daughter who had made it to Miami ahead of him many years before.
There's nothing really ground-breaking about Cuban Rafters, just compelling stories about real people- some strong, some fragile, some lost, some found- who as has been shown time and time again are the same no matter where they are from.
* * * * *
Bad Guy (2002, directed by Kim Ki-duk)
Bad Guy is a tale of love at first sight- the most twisted, fucked up love I hope you ever run across. Han-ki is a gangster, who sees Sun-hwa, a university art student, waiting for her boyfriend in a small city park. He walks up and kisses her (it takes the boyfriend beating him over the head with a garbage can, plus the intervention of three soldiers, to pry him off) but that doesn't seem to work, so he switches tactics- he and his henchmen run a con on Sun-hwa and force her into debt, and then prostitution, watching her get broken down john by john through a one-way mirror like some twisted guardian angel.
Sure there's a Freddy Prince Jr. vehicle in there somewhere, but Bad Guy rarely takes the easy way through the story. Han-ki, for instance, doesn't speak until nearly the end of the film, and then only once. He's a seemingly untouchable piece of iron, all impulse and violence, but he does care about Sun-hwa in his own fucked-up way. She, in turn, hates him on sight, and hates him even more when she figures out the role he played in her degradation. But in that kind of extreme circumstance, adapting to your situation isn't an option but a survival trait.
Kim wraps the whole thing up in a neat little bow, throwing in one false finish (which is shattering) before getting to the real ending of the story (which is devastating.) It's a simpler tale than Address Unknown or the Isle, and without some of the visual flourishes of those two, but no less powerful for it.
* * * * *
The Trials of Henry Kissinger (2002, directed by Eugene Jarecki)
British writer Christopher Hitchens has been making a nuisance of himself recently claiming that by the definition currently being used internationally, Henry Kissinger is a war criminal. His book on the subject made the case strongly enough that Kissinger's reputation has been stained, perhaps permanently, and that this film was made- something that would have been unthinkable even ten-fifteen years ago, at the height of America's mea culpas regarding Vietnam.
The Trials of Henry Kissinger takes Hitchens' premise and goes further with it, digging up enough documentation to pretty much nail down his complicity in the Cambodian disaster and the CIA campaign to overthrow Allende in Chile, while also casting a new light on the US's involvement and tacit approval of the Indonesian invasion of East Timor (a policy that echoed down to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait). The interviews are also priceless- a boozy Hitchens tossing off cutting remarks and obviously seeing himself as some sort of crusading Oscar Wilde (OK, I'm just guessing about the boozy part, but it's an educated guess); a bug-eyed Alexander Haig showing why he was probably the only person from the Nixon administration stupid enough to go on camera to defend their foreign policy decisions (watch him use the word 'communized' with no trace of irony or intelligent thought and then consider that a couple of well-timed heart attacks would have landed him in the White House...); and clips of Kissinger himself (who of course refused to be interviewed directly for the doc) saying one thing while the public record, former colleagues and history itself all say the exact opposite.
Where the film falls down a bit, curiously enough, is in making the very case it would seem to focus on, whether Kissinger is by definition a 'war criminal' or not. The doc demonstrates beyond a doubt that he was a Machiavellian, power-drunk little troll, but is a little weaker in establishing that while he wasn't the boss, he was the one making the decisions. Of course the "I was just following orders" defense has never been valid but the film is after something more, trying to portray Kissinger not just as a foot soldier but as the poisoned heart of an evil empire, a Iago to Nixon's Richard III.
Is the film worth seeing? Absolutely. The mask that Kissinger himself carefully built up over the years gets torn aside and trampled into the gutter, and given the shadow the man casts over the latter half of the twentieth century this can only be a good thing. And while I'm not saying he *shouldn't* be tried, convicted and hung by the neck, you may want to think for a minute before starting construction on the gibbet.
* * * * *
Winged Migration (2002, directed by Jacques Perrin)
A film from one of the producers of Microcosmos, Winged Migration doesn't have quite the magic of that bug epic, but is still an incredible film.
Over four years the filmmakers followed the migrations of birds, from the Arctic to the Antarctic and plenty of stops in between. As with Microcosmos the camerawork is unbelievable- using ultralights, remote control planes and even parachuters with fans to keep them aloft, they assembled some of the most beautiful footage of birds in flight ever. The attempts at creating storylines and the narration are sometimes a bit awkward, and the music (with vocals by, of all people, Nick Cave) is often saccharine, but that all falls by the wayside when you see this on the big screen. The images are just incredible, and speak for themselves.
This isn't a film about birds so much as one about the world that exists above our heads, and at which we've never really had much of a look. Winged Migration throws that door wide open, and even if only for a brief time makes real the age-old dreams of real flight- not just locking ourselves in a pressurized box but true flight, with the wind in our face and air like ice shards in our lungs.
An extraordinary work, and a worthy companion piece to Microcosmos.
* * * * *
Love Liza (2002, directed by Todd Louiso)
An indie film so quintessential it verges on parody, Love Liza is a movie about the decimating grief Wilson (Philip Seymour Hoffman) feels after his wife kills herself. Wilson's anguish paralyzes him to the point that he cannot function, and he eventually resorts to huffing gasoline to numb the pain, which leads him down some, um, interesting paths. All the while his mother-in-law (Kathy Bates) is demanding from within her own private hell of recrimination and loss that he read the suicide note her daughter left behind, a step Wilson is unwilling- or unable- to take.
There's nothing wrong with an actor's movie, just so long as the plot doesn't get sacrificed in the rush to get to the Next Big Moment. That's ultimately what derails Love Liza- the script (written by Hoffman's brother) jumps feet first into those Moments without laying any groundwork. Why Wilson becomes a gas huffer, what attracts him to that odd escape in particular, apparently isn't as important to the filmmakers as giving Hoffman a chance to act like one.
The movie does have its moments. Hoffman and Bates are completely transfixing at times, but for all the emotional weight the film is allowed to have it might as well have been a Master Thespian skit with Lovitz and Lithgow. Acting??? Brilliant!!!
* * * * *
Shaolin Soccer (2001, directed by Stephen Chow)
For the record, I saw this strictly for research and review purposes, having seen the HK original three times now. So it's not like I LIKE the film or anything.
Plot synopsis: um, Bad News Bears meets Five Deadly Venoms. Really, if you need that title explained to you stay home and watch Everybody Loves Raymond.
What you won't get from the synopsis though is how hysterically funny the movie is. Stephen Chow is simply a comedy god with genius chops and timing, and the supporting cast- from Yut Fei Wong as Iron Head through to utterly ridiculous cameos by HK hotties Cecilia Cheung and Karen Mok- is superb. The effects are good (or at least good enough) and the extraneous movie spoofs- from Jurassic Park to Like Water for Chocolate- kick the ass of any so-called parody film Hollywood's cranked out recently. In fact Shaolin Soccer is quite possibly a perfect comedy.
So what we all really want to know, of course, is how badly Miramax screwed it up? The answer is... they didn't. The dub is fine as dubs go, and they get bonus points for letting Chow do his own English dubbing. The edit is quite specific, basically removing anything to do with Asian notions of honor (which cuts the opening flashback down to about thirty seconds, but they replace the explanation of Fung & Hung's past in the dubbed dialogue so it's all good). If I'm not mistaken they may have also slipped in a couple of small bits from Shaolin Soccer Redux (the rerelease Chow brought out in Hong Kong to coincide with the World Cup that contained some extra footage.) I think the much-discussed phone call might be from that, as I don't remember the call lasting that long when I saw the original, but either way there are some nice little jokes hidden in here for those familiar with the subtitled version. What matters is that the film still works, and Chow's comedy still flows and rocks and all those other things great comedies do. Sure I would have rather they left in the score, but it's not something most people will notice. If I'd change anything it'd be to kill the horrifically bad hip hop version of Kung Fu Fighting over the closing credits, but at that point you'll be exhausted from laughing anyway, and too busy playing the 'and then he... and remember when they...' game with your friends to even hear it.
(Oh, but they did change 'the Evil Team' to 'Team Evil' so obviously Harvey is a philistine and should be strung up. Damn you Miramax! Damn you to Hell!)
This is the funniest movie of the last three years, anywhere, and I don't give a good goddamn about that 'comedy is subjective' nonsense. Miramax just needs to leave this thing out there for a couple of weeks to get word of mouth going and this puppy will do Something About Mary box office, which should get Chow's earlier films more exposure domestically, and bring him to Hollywood where he can star in films with Jennifer Love Hewitt. Hurrah! (I think.)
