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Reviews
Lost in Translation (2003)
What a sweet, funny movie!
This is a movie written by travelers, for travelers. The core of the story, an attraction between an older man and a younger woman could happen anywhere. The backdrop (mostly late night Tokyo) made me smile, remembering 1000 similar nights jumping back and forth between cities on the other side of the Pacific. The same bars, the same karaoke, the same ugly Americans, the same silly brushes with cultures familiar and strange.
Some reviewers have complained that the movie is some sort of sniggering in-joke, with the Japanese being largely unsubtitled, and several interesting scenes (like a visit to a shrine in Kyoto) going by silently and unexplained. The point is, it's supposed to be that way. We're seeing Japan through the eyes of innocents abroad. They don't understand half of what's going on around them, and you don't have to either. If you've spent enough time in Japan or elsewhere in Asia to catch some of the background, so much the better. If not, make like the characters. Sit back, take it all in, and smile.
A Mighty Wind (2003)
This Wind Done Blown
I should have a better appreciation for Christopher Guest and his troupe of performers. They are doing some of the toughest theater in the world. Walk in with no lines, no plot, only the scantest of guidelines, and say something funny.
On the other hand, Guest allegedly had several hundred hours of footage, and this was the best two he could come up with. This should say something.
It hurts to give this movie as low a rating as I did, because they did try hard. Unfortunately, there isn't that much funny to say about folk musicians. They are earnest, wet-behind-the-ears, and look really silly in retrospect. Compare this with Heavy Metal (Spinal Tap), which looked pretty dumb from the beginning.
Note to Guest. Choose your targets more carefully in the future. Before you blow a year of your life and hundreds of thousands of dollars on expensive film stock, have the crew get together for a few hours of free association on the subject with a few interested participants looking on. If you can't get at least two p*ss-your-pants-funny jokes out of the initial session, it probably won't get better with time.
6/10.
Neko no ongaeshi (2002)
Cool story, not such great artwork
First, I feel sorry for first-time director Hiroyuki Morita. As one of Ghibli's younger talents, everything he does will be compared with Miyazaki and Takahata, both of whom are giants in animation.
Just the same, this movie is worth a view.
Unlike some of the other reviewers, I liked the storyline a lot. It was imaginative, and full of clever ideas and twists in the story. If you're expecting a sequel to the close-to-real Mimi wo Sumaseba, you'll be disappointed. This is puffy, silly, set largely in the world of cats (or in the world of cats talking to the protagonist, Haru). However, the animation was disappointing. It was quality work, but nowhere near the level of Mononoke or "Spirited Away".
In all? 7/10.
Margaret Cho: Notorious C.H.O. (2002)
Good lord!!
It's hard to give an objective review of one of Margaret Cho's shows/movies. I personally think she is a brilliant comic. Good timing, rapier-sharp wit, broadly physical in execution.
As anyone who has seen "I'm the One That I Want" can attest, she is also waaaay over the top.
So here we are with another Cho flick. As usual, it's just the audience, Margaret, and two bottles of water. As usual, the humor is grotesque. Aunt Millie not only won't get the joke, she'll leave the room in horror before you even get to the punchline. Her loss.
Did I like it better than the first? Yes, but with a caveat.
I saw "I'm the One That I Want" at home, on videotape. I saw "The Notorious C.H.O." in a movie theater, in Seattle (where the show was filmed), with 100 other Cho fans all laughing, yelling, and stomping their feet louder as the jokes got raunchier and raunchier.
Don't wait for the video. Go see it in a movie theater. The group effect is theraputic by itself. Hey, the show ain't bad either.