IMDb ??? Review: In the Mood for Love (2000)

Source: Wikipedia

We plunge into another exotic locale, this time to Hong Kong.

Now imagine your tour bus slid off a bridge. It also ran over your guide, who somehow embezzled your life savings and donated it the to “Vaccinate the Three-Toed Sloths Foundation.” And it rained. At this point, there’s little to do but sit around indoors, chow down on local food, and grudgingly get to know the people in your immediate vicinity.

This probably hypothetical example summarizes this movie. Sitting around, doing nothing, eating, talking, doing more nothing.

Two married couples move in to adjacent apartments. One’s husband leaves on a business trip, one’s wife works late. You see where this is going. Despite the porno-riffic title, the odd couple acts polite, reserved, probably to save face. This is 1960’s Hong Kong, not France.

He takes her out to eat, she helps him start the martial arts serial he’s wanted to write. (Well, movie, I want to WATCH one, but here we are.) Then the gossip catches up to them.

So yes, Hong Kong. Slinky qipaos, swanky suits, mahjong parties, and horrendous work/life balance. Balancing freedom of individual choice versus joint decisions as a couple.

There’s slow motion for no reason. A minimalistic soundtrack, meaning silence or the same plucking strings number used half-a-dozen times. Years fly by, and nobody ages except the viewer.

Why is this snoozefest so critically acclaimed? You're asking the wrong critic.

Recommended for bored Asian house spouses, stifled writers who need a dose of nuptial doldrums to get going, and unhappily married businessmen who need an excuse to get back to the office (“She’s watching it again?!”).

98 minutes.

IMDb #227 Review: Gangs of Wasseypur (2012)

Source: Wikipedia

Bollywood's spin on The Godfather? Took you demented geniuses long enough.

From the 1940s to the present day, three generations of three warring families struggle to control the titular shithole cities of Wasseypur, Dhanbad, etc.

Metaphorical dominoes knock each other down until they go nuclear and vaporize the game room. The blood feud begins as rebellion of mistreated coal miners, then vengeance for a murdered father. This simple revenge plot proliferates into a sprawling web of lies and hate and power struggles.

Atrocities beget atrocities. Betrayals beget betrayals. Movie-making laws beget explosions and spectacular gun battles and multilingual anti-smoking PSAs.

A family servant, the meekest man in the land, narrates the decades of bloody stupidity. His wisdom goes unheeded, because every Indian story must remind us that (a) the caste system is horrible, and (b) it's not going away anytime soon.

As the war drags on, people marry, spouses cheat, mistresses bear bastard children. Those cute kids grow up into raging assholes. Actually, the children suffer most, not just from ridiculous names like Definite and Perpendicular. No, the children cannot escape the quagmire of crime life, nor the obligation to avenge dead family. Attempts at revenge or restitution fail. A Romeo and Juliet union yields unsurprising results.

Source: Wikipedia

The legions of characters might overwhelm you. Good thing they die off so quickly you can keep pace with the survivors.

Because it's Bollywood, there are melodramatic musical numbers, but sung in the background, because this is serious cinema. Fortunately, the lyrics are lurid, violent, and profanely hilarious to degrees that'd leave American censor boards gibbering similarly insane obscenities. ("Dark skin, darker heart" -- "My bullets will rape every pore of your body, my friend" -- "All hail my assholiness." Seriously, who thinks up this shit? Is this the feeling you creatures call love?)

Strangely enough, in an unexpected metafictional commentary, the principal antagonist/deuteragonist attributes his success to not watching Bollywood movies. Because cinephiles believe themselves the heroes of their own stories, thus untouchable by death. The main story supports this hypothesis. A raid occurs when the extended family has gathered to watch a soap opera. Characters attend movies as a distraction from significant plot events. And having a shrill-voiced Bollywood ringtone practically indicates a death sentence.

After fifty years of gang wars and five hours in real time, the cumulative catharsis from the climactic shootout might physically reduce you to a puddle of goo. But an immensely satisfied puddle, because the payoff is glorious.

Part 1: 160 minutes.

Part 2: 159 minutes.

IMDb #230 Review: Barry Lyndon (1975)

Source: Wikipedia

When the opening credits play George Frederick Handel’s Sarabande in D minor and display “Part I: By What Means Redmond Barry Acquired the Style And Title Of Barry Lyndon” in big loopy letters, you know you’re in for a fun ride.

Fate kicks around a wee Irish sprat. Decades whiz by, kids grow up into new actors, while the star stays the same. Friends appear and disappear, money pours in and evaporates. In short, we see the random events that direct one kid’s bizarre life bouncing through Europe.

Sadly, hardship transmutes this naif into a knave.

How much do you enjoy anti-heroes? Because I spent half the runtime cursing the frigging idiot, the rest wondering why we’re supposed to pull for this dick-basket.

Fortunately, it’s a period piece. You know what that means. Costumes! Wigs! Sets! Historically accurate props! Accents! (I wasn’t alive then, but it sure looks convincing enough.)

Also, people back then seemed much cooler…about dying horribly. Duels at ten paces — not even turning around, just taking turns, standing there and waiting to get plugged. And battle tactics — marching in straight lines, firing right at the big fat targets. Not to mention lead-based face powder, which the movie doesn’t address, but features prominently.

And characters act surprised when major players snuff it.

I can see why critics complain Kubrick is cold. Barry Lyndon is an ice bath: upsetting, then refreshing, but it feels the best when you stop and towel off.

Recommended for readers nostalgic for eighteenth-century novels (in which case, GET OFF MY INTERNET), classical music snobs, and voluntary human targets.

182 minutes.

IMDb #249 Review: La Dolce Vita (1960)

Source: Wikipedia

A sleazebag journalist schmoozes and smooches through the rich, famous, beautiful women of 1960s Rome, and I think we’re supposed to feel sorry for the bastard.

He dreams of writing literature, **high art**, but feels trapped in the gossip columns. It doesn't help that he chases every pretty tail in the immediate vicinity. His poor girlfriend—first time we see her, she's flopped out on the floor, gasping for breath, having poisoned herself. Sadly, she survives to endure this despicable prick with the rest of us.

But there’s hope. A vivacious American film star visits Rome. A giggling floozy, statuesque dumb blonde. She revitalizes his life for a while, then trickles off-screen. Or something.

This movie was difficult to follow.

Scads of colorful one-note characters flit onscreen to do their duties and subsequently skitter off. Plot points pop up, pop back down. Conversations meander, or segue into tastefully unobtrusive philandering.

And methinks Fellini loves his show-within-a-show sequences, whether nightclub, cabaret, circus, or spontaneous rock-and-roll cover by a jazz band.

Somewhere there’s a satire about celebrity worship that remains scarily relevant today. Somewhere there’s a warning against unbridled hedonism, as demonstrated by the dysfunctional upper-upper class. Somewhere, so I hear, there’s even a comedy. I had to dig for it, but only unearthed the fossilized skeleton of an enjoyable film.

Philosophical musing? Social commentary? Revolutionary artistry? Bounced off my drooping eyelids.

In the end, I identify with the journalist protagonist, trapped in the “sweet life” of watching lovely, wealthy, detestable cretins make themselves miserable in pursuit of fun.

180 minutes.