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Shimakaneda
Reviews
The Cook (1918)
Oldtime Mayhem
The Cook had been presumed lost for decades, until fragments of it turned up in both the Netherlands and Norway. I for one am very happy that most of this silent film was found and restored!
It's a typical Arbuckle/Keaton production, which is to say *wonderful.* Being a fan of both, it was very interesting for me to see the first filmed instance of the Cleopatra routine, which was later attributed only to Keaton; this film inclines me to believe it was originally Arbuckle's shtick. Whatever the case is of who dreamed up the gag first, it's very well done by both of them and the rest of the usual cast in Arbuckle/Keaton collaborations.
Parts of this film reminded me very much of their Coney Island to the point where I suspect footage from Coney Island was used to supplement whatever was missing from The Cook. I don't have both films available to compare, and I'm probably wrong. I'm just saying there are amusement park scenes which look very familiar.
One thing that both films do have in common, however, is a few frames of Buster Keaton smiling, contrary to the legend that he never smiled on film. Keaton did indeed smile in these early films (The Cook and Coney Island), in the years before his stoic persona completely gelled. And he has a gorgeous smile!
Oh, another comedic gag in this film that appears in very early Keaton films is the "pie fight,"although in this particular case it isn't pie but vanilla ice cream being thrown. I'd read somewhere that Keaton did not do pie throwing, but he did engage in food fighting in his early films to great effect, including this one and The Butcher (flour). Buster and Keaton are both master acrobats. One doesn't view this level of physical artistry in contemporary films.
The Cook was a lovely little romp. I'd recommend it to just about anyone.
The Brave One (2007)
Film Critics Failed to See This One Competently
I hesitated to see this film initially because of what I'd heard about it, including the characterization of it as a "revenge movie," which, now that I've seen it, I consider to be an unfortunate, superficial and sanctimoniously reductive characterization. The Brave One is *not* a simple revenge movie. Before seeing the film, I logged onto RottenTomatoes and read a handful of reviews of it. Now that I've seen the thing for myself, I'm chagrined to note that I'd throw all of those reviews out the window, including one professional film critic's review that betrayed the viewer as having walked out on the film before seeing the ending (yet still presuming to comment upon and judge it). Somebody's said that the director "is an artist," and I would not choose those words myself; however, there are several clues in the picture that will indicate to a careful and engaged viewer that The Brave One is not a simple revenge tale and it is not to be taken at face value.
Those who have seen Ms. Foster in Taxi Driver and The Silence of the Lambs might have the contradictory response that I did to this one. Foster's acting is very good if you ignore the oversimplified criticism that her character is merely offensively self-pitying -- but the acting is also evidence of a strange and perhaps chilling evolution from those two earlier roles of Foster's in those other violent films.
Foster herself gave some good information about The Brave One in an interview she gave for CBS, (1) her fiancée acted as her character's *body*, and without that connection her character becomes something of a ghost, and also (2) Foster herself improved upon the script by making her character the kind of artsy radio show host she is in The Brave One, when the original script called for a more generic journalist type of character.
It was a little painful for me to see but very rewarding.
Kurutta kajitsu (1956)
A Refreshing and Very Satisfying Tale of Revenge
Having seen and enjoyed The Departed, and having seen No Country for Old Men and found it overrated, and who knows how many other recent films on similar themes, I was utterly delighted to have seen a screening of Crazed Fruit at a museum a few weeks ago. In terms of movies about revenge, Crazed Fruit is much more eloquent than any number of contemporary blockbusters. It probably doesn't say much in favor of my character to admit it (! nope !), but Crazed Fruit is the only film I can think of to have evoked a desire to stand up and cheer.
Throughout the body of the film, I kept asking myself, "Okay, this is a little bit like a Japanese Rebel Without a Cause, which is great in itself, but where's the real craziness here (besides the fact that America had already influenced Japan by 1956 in ways that most American's were not aware of)?" The main characters might have had moral issues, but they were so darned *elegant* about it! Even though this (being spared from the usual stream of sanctimonious and in-immediate inner and narrative wrestling bouts of the conscience) was enough of a refreshing change from what I'd usually seen in the cinema, I still wanted to see something hardcore to justify the film's title, and I can say that the end of the film certainly did deliver on that score. No outrageous depictions of violence here, just a relentless and rather memorably nutty ending.
I don't usually dare to write my own reviews on IMDb.com, but I couldn't contain myself this time. I really enjoyed Crazed Fruit. It was aesthetically appealing, it portrayed its characters as being dissatisfied in completely understandable ways (i.e., as being sympathetic), and I'm just really impressed with the way the film ended.
Extra points for the weird musical score, which was a wild yet still somehow understated fusion of "La Dolce Vita"-type music and Hawiian-influenced ukulele and slide-guitar. A nice touch that added to rather than detracted from the story.
Of course, times have changed drastically since this film was made. Part of what I enjoyed was temporarily returning to an era when problems were at least traceable to something gone wrong. It's a romantic film for sure.