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mr-bricoleur
Reviews
Disappearing World: Ongka's Big Moka - The Kawelka of Papua New Guinea (1974)
a great documentary on gifts that crush one's opponents
This is one of the great documentaries looking at the importance of gift exchange in society. Following the film's hero Ongka, who wears a wonderful T-Shirt that proclaims "Do it in the road", we see firsthand the months of preparation that go into giving one of the biggest gifts in the history of the Kawelka people. Such a gift requires the collaborative effort of a large number of people in a society where no one has any more authority than their ability to persuade others. But Ongka is a big man, and he has great persuasive ability. We see war, witchcraft, traditional costume, wealth, and many many pigs.
Highly recommended for all interested in cultural anthropology. The movie drags a little and is a bit of an anticlimax but is well worth the time and has many a hilarious and dramatic moment.
Xanadu (1980)
its bad, but in the very best way.....a gem
I have probably watched this movie more times than any other. Terribly embarrassing, I suppose. But this movie so hilarious, including one of the most ridiculous plot lines of all time and veering frequently into the bizarre, yet containing quite wonderful musical numbers. Heavily inspired by the surreal busby berkeley but set to a disco roller skating obsessed soundtrack. Olivia Newton John is muse. There is a conversation with Zeus. Gene Kelly dancing with punks in a wacky clothing store. A random no-explication-offered animated sequence. Michael Beck, Andy Gibb look alike, plays a struggling artist who makes a living painting album covers. Not actually painting them, but rather painting giant enlargements of them to hang outside the record store. There is a whole office engaged in this task. But as I said, he is frustrated, and can't seem to get that creative streak he's been looking for. Until he meets this roller skating girl with leg warmers who convinces him to quit his job (of course this is easy for her, she's a muse!). And for some reason, instead of painting, he becomes obsessed with an abandoned art-deco building and decides to found a club with a nostalgic retired clarinet player (who is still in love with the muse that left him long ago).
ONe of the greatest moments in this film happens when Sunny (Beck) loses Kira (ONJ) and skates headlong into a mural at the end of an alley that portrays the nine muses.
I will say no more...the rest simply has to be experienced to be believed.
Love for Rent (2005)
Surprisingly kind of great for what should be a bland rom-com
Its strange because much about this movie is kind of cliché and at times it had a strange awkwardness or amateurish feeling.
And yet, Angie Cepada is so strikingly beautiful, and at the same time so natural in her acting, that the film is a continual pleasure to watch. When she smiles it has all the warmth of someone you know. you just can't help falling in love with her.
Also, the film is interspersed with scenes that are very well done and outside the usual genre of romantic comedy, incorporating an off-beat humor that is at once silly and quite smart, because it captures the awkwardness of social interaction so well.
Even though at times it has an intelligent indie quality to it, it is still ultimately a predictable sappy romantic comedy about motherhood and family. If you expect nothing more it may surprise you though...I couldn't tear myself away.
The Abyss (1989)
One of my favorite movies, but I can't actually say its good
I love this movie - Or rather, I love the Director's Cut, because it goes so overboard with subplots upon subplots, building up to B-movie shots of mile high waves suspended above the worlds shorelines, with 100s of extras running in fear. It has communist paranoia, hurricanes, underwater adventure thrills, a largely unknown and extra-size ensemble cast (though I love Ed Harris), submarines, nuclear warheads, divorcés trapped in a small space, and yes, aliens. Its like 70s disaster flick meets Armageddon meets the day the earth stood still meets the hunt for red October. Its just awesome.
The special effects are quite good, and while much of the story is implausible, it is thoroughly entertaining and there are even a few classic moments, such as when ed harris has to save the world by cutting the right wire, but can't tell which is which because he is relying on the yellow green light of glowsticks.
It all builds to a peak of hysteria that leaves me in hysterics every time. So i can't decide how to rate it and went for the low rating to judge its artistic merit rather than entertainment value, which is 10/10.
Six Feet Under (2001)
perhaps the greatest television ever made
What makes this show outshine practically everything is that it really makes use of the genre to do something you simply can't get from a movie while maintaining movie quality acting and depth of storytelling: it allows the characters to build slowly, complexly and self-contradictingly, just like real people. Because of this, the viewer comes to feel that they really know these people, that they could be real people. And that in turn, allows the stories to reach depths and peaks of emotion that are rarely captured on screen...any kind of screen. I can't say enough about how good this show is. superb.
Even the cinematography is amazing. The scriptwriting is incredible. I plan to use clips from this in an anthropology class discussing death.
Junebug (2005)
about george and johnny
I just wanted to offer a little commentary about the characters of george and johnny, which many people seem to have found confusing. Why does Johnny hate george so much? Although this is never conclusively explained, we can deduct that george is the one that got to go away, to leave and get educated and has money, and now a beautiful and sophisticated wife. Johnny gave up his education and stayed because of ashley (so he tells Madeleine). So, as we see in many moments of the film, whenever Johnny feels that others pity him he reacts with rage. Furthermore, we are given hints that george and ashley have some kind of rapport that goes back a long time, that george has always been there when ashley needs him most...this emotional connection is something Johnny is unable to give despite his love for ashley (as seen in videotape scene). It is George, not Johnny, that stays to comfort Ashley (which must give us pause in terms of the marriage of George and Madeleine as well...why can't George open up to Madeleine?-- could it be another version of his brother's inferiority complex?) Another source of inadequacy. Finally, george is clearly the mothers favorite as well.
I love this film for its rich use of silence over dialog, as well as its approach to story, giving us, like a short story, just a slice of life, without a real beginning or end. We are left to imagine what caused all of these resentments, and that can be much richer than actually being told.
At the same time, I have to admit that I could not fully connect with the movie emotionally. It left me a little bit hollow. And there are some problems with stereotyped representation, even if the stereotypes poke both ways.
Lilja 4-ever (2002)
Beautiful and powerful, but not without reservation
Other than the important social message so commented on already, there were many things about this movie that amazed me, starting with the fantastically talented and beautiful Oksana, who on her own makes the movie worth seeing. Lukas Moodyson has cast this movie perfectly, with spot on performances from even the bit parts, and produces a chokingly grim atmosphere that really gives a sense of what it must be like to live where these characters do. The use of music, alternating between heartbreaking strings and pounding electronica which is at somehow at once alienating and filled with joy, really carries the viewer emotionally.
But I was very disappointed with the use of angel symbolism in a story that is otherwise so thoroughly realist...it made me question many of the other moments in the movie where one might accuse Moodyson of taking things too far. I love magical realism, but if that is what Moodyson is going for here I think it falls flat.
I am being picky, but only because this movie was so so good in so many ways, and it could have been near perfect simply by not taking that step too far.
Marie Antoinette (2006)
a misunderstood and wonderful film, notable for far more than its gorgeous imagery
I think this movie has been sadly misunderstood by many. The story here is told through understatement and silences, much like lost in translation, and those who need the action to be explained through dialog will not enjoy this. Although it is simply a gorgeous movie, this is not the only reason to watch. Another criticism is historical inaccuracy. Although the film is an adaptation of a recent biography of M-A, offering a different take on her character, the real point is the way Coppola uses contemporary pop culture to produce a certain kind of subjective feel. When she shows a dance party she plays New Order which gives a contemporary audience the wild feeling of a dance party that no amount of cinematographic cleverness could convey if the music were accurate period. She uses American style speech to keep us within the characters and focusing on their human qualities. The movie does not focus on politics, nor on the realities outside the palace, and this is not its point. It is a portrait of a foreign teenage girl thrown into the center of one of the most powerful courts in the world, and it is told from her perspective, with all of the inaccuracies and misunderstandings that would naturally produce.Towards the end the pacing does seem to drag oddly, given the mastery of the first 1.5 hours...and there were some gaps in terms of other characters that could have been more developed (especially her friends in the court)...but overall this is a wonderful film, far better than how it was received. M-A is a real, complex, and sympathetic character, trapped in a world that she does not truly fit. Even her famous extravagances make sense here as her only outlet for expression.
Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005)
Too bad Lucas didn't seem to care about telling the story
Star Wars has always been good because it is a story of mythological proportions, filled with potential for analogy and interpretation. The last two of Lucas's films have severely disappointed most audiences in this regard, pandering to children with unnecessary silliness while attempting to capture teenage and older audiences with technical mastery -- forgetting that it was the story as much as the special effects that gave the trilogy its magic. The Revenge of the Sith, while having some of the best potential of the three in terms of plot, with loads of political scheming and important characters pitted against each other and undergoing personal transformation, fails to pay attention to the story itself. Lucas neglects storytelling in order to play with on-screen digital wizardry. The effect is often dazzling, but dazzling like a psychedelic light show: fabulous moving shapes and flashes, but with no meaning. The characters are reduced to hollow husks, such that the blurring between human and machine that has always been at the heart of Star Wars symbolism matters little to us, characters are cartoon images of themselves and they dissolve like the 1 and 0s they are made up of when they are killed off. Lucas is so eager to show us the myriad worlds he has conjured up that he doesn't really give us a chance to see them, their names come and go so quickly that they fade from memory and blur into one another. While Tattouine and Endor were sources of inspiration for my childhood imagination, I have trouble believing that any but the Lava planet (whatever it was called) will stick with this generation. And the efficacy of that planet partly stemmed from its reminiscence of Mordor. Ultimately, this is why the Lord of the Rings so easily dominated what should have been an equally legendary set of films, because those films used special effects to aid the telling of a story. Lucas gave his computer toys precedence and produced something that is sadly kind of boring.