arsoys Reviews

Supermarket Woman (1996)

Light, funny, and charming

[10/10 · 1 October 2010]

I really enjoyed this movie.

It is so bloody straight. "Honest Goro" is... an honest Goro (everyman name): bumbling and very imperfect. And it's his supermarket, too. "Bargains Galore" is the shady cut-throat business that threatens to destroy Goro.

Enter Hanako (everywoman name). Yes, like any good woman she wears the pants whether or not she wears the pants. Will she help Goro overcome the competition? Of course. Will they succeed? Well, that would be telling, but what do you really think? This movie is not only really, really straight, it is light and moral without being uptight. Perfectly charming, as charming as the logo of Goro's supermarket. Really enjoyable on a winter night for watching man-and-wife, but without any "romantic comedy" sappiness.

Sometimes we all need something uplifting.

Euphoria (2006)

Pornography

[1/10 · 27 February 2010]

The three things the creators of this horror wanted to do were:

(1) Photograph lots of beautiful scenery, treating the big screen as a monstrous canvas for near-still photography merging into visual art;

(2) Set it all to avant-garde classical music performed with electronic instruments;

(3) Show the mindless brutality and degeneration that they believe to be the Russian psyche.

(1) and (2) are self-evident at first glance. They're also quite secondary.

And (3)? Well, how else to characterize a movie the plot of which is as follows: semi-degenerate-looking man goes crazy, then tries to seduce a cheaply country-erotic woman; fully degenerate husband of country-erotic woman cuts off finger of girl bitten by dog; neighbors take girl away; woman runs off with man, has wild sex in fresh air; husband burns empty house down to the ground, takes shotgun, shoots cow, shoots man and woman.

Oh yes, and in between somewhere for no reason other than (3) otherwise apparent is a scene of a few degenerates partying away that ends with a woman stabbing someone in the chest with a fork.

And let's not forget the degenerate-looking mental subnormal that drools as he rides his motorcycle, in scene after scene.

Hell, perhaps there's more to the movie than (3).

What it is, I don't know.

But whatever it is, it is stinkily obscene.

Passazhirka (2008)

A bit frustrating if you loved the book...

[6/10 · 22 February 2010]

The movie follows fairly closely the novella by Staniukovich, the leading nineteenth-century Russian spinner of sea yarns.

These are not the adventures of Horatio Hornblower, still less Jack Aubrey. This is a navy at peace, at Empire's height.

A beautiful Russian widow in San Francisco wishes to return to Russia after her American husband loses everything in a speculation and shoots his brains out. Along with her personal maid she is given passage to Hong Kong aboard a Russian naval vessel. A woman on a naval ship? Right then... the rest follows. With very gentle and unironic humour, the officers and ratings react to the stimulation, each according to his rank and personality type.

The director admits that he made this movie as a tribute to Staniukovich. And indeed his love is obvious. The setting is recreated meticulously, the story is followed very closely. But...

There are flaws.

The first basic issue is this: should a movie follow the book story exactly, or should it adapt to cinematic art? I will say unequivocally: if you dare do a book, follow the book.

With a couple of exceptions, the director followed the book: in this sense, that he removed nothing, and changed nothing but... But... There was no sex. And now there is, a disgustingly anachronistic modification of morals. And a small quibble: the ship is a sailing ship with auxiliary steam engine. Correct for the early 1860's, the time frame of the original story, disturbingly obsolete for 1882, as the movie would have it.

The main flaw, however, is that the director added episodes from at least five other Staniukovich sea-tales into the plot. And these generally make no sense in this story. So whenever you feel something is really out of place, chances are your intuition is correct.

The acting is entirely adequate, the setting luminous. I hate that word, it's so overused: but here the ship, the sun and the sea literally shine, in and out of doors. If we ignore the presence of electrical lamps in 1882, it is utterly perfect.

All in all, this was a slightly frustrating movie to watch. I love Staniukovich, and I was prepared for and expecting the slow gentle development. I also recognized at once where all the interpolations came from. But they jarred nonetheless.

Six out of ten, for the mis en scene, acting, and original prototype.

The Whales of August (1987)

For the old and wise, and for the completists.

[5/10 · 3 January 2010]

Strongest of all as I was watching this picture was my disorientation. I confess I am not yet old enough to make sense of the situation. In thirty or forty years, probably I will be. But that is not what matters now.

I saw it on the first day of 2010, twenty-three years after it was made, 72 years after Vincent Price's first movie appearance, 79 years after Bette Davis's, 83 after Ann Sothern's, and 98 after Lillian Gish's -- in color, in a world I recognize well from my teenage years: I was 18 in 1987. I was neither bored nor amused, and in the necessary moments I let myself be manipulated into feeling touched. But something kept nagging me, underneath.

A movie can have no effective plot and no effective setting to make its point, but then it must have characters and atmosphere. Oh, there are characters here, but are they Sarah, Libby, Tisha, and Maranov, or are they Gish, Davis, Sothern, and Price? In the end we are watching the actors, entirely the actors... but what actors! -- the atmosphere is theirs entirely, their old age, all the movies and starring roles we watched and did not watch, all the lines said and all the reality faked -- forced upon the scene here, weighing over it, overwhelming it. Overwhelming it to the point that the stars no longer live in the myths, but are brought down to the world we too live in, however old, and weak, and essentially humanly poignant that may be. But unworthy of movie stars, if they still shine.

Thus the disorientation. And thus I cannot recommend this picture, except for those old enough to understand, and the archivists who would fill the files to completion before closing them.

The Hidden Fortress (1958)

great

[10/10 · 9 January 2009]

We can, of course, spout endlessly about framing and influences and later copying and art and all that.

That would miss the point.

Putting aside any cineaste conventions: this is a very great movie.

An awesome general must escort a chilly princess to safety, helped and hindered by two greedy peasants.

It's funny, full of action, character growth, beautiful scenery, and even charm.

And then there is the fire festival.

Kurosawa is one of the few "FILM-makers" great enough actually to overcome the pretensions of the misguided search for so-called art.

Repentance (1984)

more of the same

[2/10 · 27 June 2008]

I have to say that my review is based on what I saw in 1990. I was 21.

...................................

The plot is your standard totalitarian nightmare. Let's dispense with it.

Everything else is uniquely boring: the symbolism, the surrealism, the open politics and the veiled, the acting, the dialogue, the pace.

Worse, most of it, one or two cinematically breathtaking sequences aside, is unoriginal.

Some would probably require you to sit through this, for the sheer culture of it all.

But in the end, why bother.

Because the ones done away by the tyrants have little use for surreal, artistic pastiches.