Change Your Image
kozure-okami
Reviews
Lost in Austen (2008)
Mustache or toilet?
My eight-year-old daughter (an Austen fan) and I (another Austen fan) watched the first episode of this...thing. I commented, "This is kind of like drawing a mustache on a great painting." She said, "No--it's like drawing a toilet on a great painting. Sometimes a mustache can look good on someone." I'm as happy as the next fellow with fish-out-of water stories, but this did nothing with a great idea. In order for this to work there needs to be a script and director with profound understanding of, and sympathy for, Pride and Prejudice. But the portrayals of the Austen characters here were very weak, the character of the space traveler was grossly unappealing (as was the actress who played her). There were so many opportunities missed. We just couldn't watch it. I haven't read others' comments, so perhaps we are in a small minority. I rarely comment on IMDb, but felt forced to do so to alert others who might love the book to leave this alone.
Commune (2005)
The first accurate film portrayal of the 1960s counter-culture
This is the first, and as far as I can tell, the only documentary portrayal of the 1960s counter-culture as it actually existed. It is a sympathetic portrayal, completely devoid of the usual condescension, contempt, and hindsight revisionism.
This is not a film about clothes or rock music. It is a film about people of serious intent who were willing to go the distance and who devoted their lives to one another in a large family of their own making. "Commune" is an important American historical document and must be seen by anyone wishing to understand what on earth was going on in this country during the late 1960s to mid-1970s.
Bom yeoreum gaeul gyeoul geurigo bom (2003)
a template for how to make a superb film
Apart from my very powerful emotional response to this film--something I can't imagine would have happened to me quite the same way as a younger person, before I'd had the time to make all the typical human mistakes I've managed to make over the years--I was struck by the clarity of this film. It is like a template for how to make a narrative film properly, leaving in everything that needs to be there with nothing at all extraneous (well, maybe the one freeze-frame of Kim's double-jump kick, which seemed to be there primarily to show off).
I think that all films, even those with baroque structures or elaborate plots, could use this film as an example of pure cinema story-telling.
This film is also about something. Not since Ray's Pather Panchali have I felt that film was being used for a truly important purpose in story-telling, equivalent to fine literature. It goes to the heart of human experience, beyond culture, social problems, and all the usual "important" topics treated in film.