The Resident Bitch's Movie Log

Jôi-uchi: Hairyô tsuma shimatsu (Samurai Rebellion) (Masaki Kobayashi, 1967)
Imdb

Date Watched: 9/17/16
Cinema or Home: Home
Reason For Watching: The 11th MoFo Hall of Fame
Rewatch: No

This is a really beautiful film about love, honor, duty, and the abuse of power. While I've certainly enjoyed other classic samurai films, this one really struck a chord with me in a way that the others have not. It feels much more human and intimate to me than the similar films I've seen before.

Toshirô Mifune, as always, turns in a solid performance but I was much more impressed by Yôko Tsukasa. Her role was a much quieter one, being the lord's former mistress and a near powerless woman in a man's world, yet she really conveyed the inner strength that someone in her position must have. Even with the limited amount of development she was given, she made Ichi's love and dedication to Yogoro believable.

The cinematography and costume design were impressive, too. And despite what the title suggests, there is relatively little swordplay and bloodshed, but the fights that are shown are well choreographed and really contribute to the story being told.

All in all, this sort of film isn't something that's likely going to hold a place in my list of favorites, and it's questionable whether I'll watch it again, but it's a powerful piece of art just the same. It's a shame I didn't see this before the 60s Countdown.

+

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Kobayashi is a ridiculously good filmmaker - I've seen nine of them and at least six of them are worth or higher.

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

El abrazo de la serpiente (Embrace of the Serpent) (Ciro Guerra, 2015)
Imdb

Date Watched: 9/18/16
Cinema or Home: Home
Reason For Watching: The 11th MoFo Hall of Fame
Rewatch: No

Embrace of the Serpent is a powerful tale of two physical and spiritual journeys of a man named Karamakate - a shaman and the last of his people - and the white scientists who come to him seeking a sacred plant.

It examines spirituality, greed, madness, the horrors of colonialism, the extinction of indigenous people, and the raping of the environment and of native culture. The performances are solid throughout - especially by Nilbio Torres and Antonio Bolivar - who each play Karamkate at different stages of his life. The story is both heartbreaking and infuriating.

But about the cinematography I was admittedly torn. The images are crisp and effective, but I couldn't help but be frustrated and saddened by Guerra's decision to shoot in black and white. Where we should be treated to the glorious hues of greens and blues of the jungle, river and sky, and the rich shades of brown, red and orange of the earth, its animals and its people we get only shades of gray.

And for that I couldn't quite love this film. I think Embrace is a considerable achievement and something that needs to be seen, but the decision to mute the natural beauty of what we see on the screen was a misstep in my eyes.

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HUUUGE fan of Ratatouille and of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang; not sure I'd want to see Dead Girl and really need To Samurai Rebellion.

Excellent reviews on all accounts.

Moonrise Kingdom (Wes Anderson, 2012)
Imdb

Date Watched: 9/19/16
Cinema or Home: Home
Reason For Watching: The 11th MoFo Hall of Fame
Rewatch: No

This is my fifth Wes Anderson film and he has struck out with me every time. I don’t object to quirk. I don’t object to entertainment for the sake of entertainment. But there is just something about Anderson’s brand of filmmaking that fails to resonate with me time and time again.

His movies look good: Lots of bright colors and sharp images. The soundtracks are usually interesting. But his characters ruin it for me every single time. I don’t believe them. Flat out. No. People don’t talk this way. People don’t move this way. They are quirky for the sake of being quirky. Even within the context of Anderson’s bizarro movie worlds, I don’t believe his characters. When I don’t believe characters, I don’t care about them. When I don’t care about the characters, I get bored.

Moonrise Kingdom is no different from the other Wes Anderson films I’ve seen before. I don’t believe Sam. I don’t believe Suzy. I don’t believe the scout master. I don’t believe Suzy’s parents. I don’t believe the cop. And I don’t care about any of them so when the film attempts to strike an emotional chord, it only falls flat.

About the only praise I can give Moonrise Kingdom is that, while I didn’t care about any of its characters, I didn’t truly hate any of them either - though I did hate some of the scenes (lightning strike, anyone?) and found myself saying "F*** you, Wes Anderson" a time or two. Looking back at my rating for Rushmore, the last Anderson film I watched, I see I gave it a . I must have been feeling really generous that day. I think I disliked this one a little less than I disliked that one, but I’m not feeling particularly generous this time.


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Good Bye Lenin! (Wolfgang Becker, 2003)
Imdb

Date Watched: 9/21/16
Cinema or Home: Home
Reason For Watching: The 11th MoFo Hall of Fame
Rewatch: No

Going into this film, I knew virtually nothing about this period in Germany's history. I think the only other film I've seen that addresses it all is Hedwig and the Angry Inch, which doesn't exactly focus on it. I also did exactly zero research on the film and didn't actually read Cosmic's write-up on it so I could watch it without prejudice.

Good Bye Lenin! is a very funny and heartfelt film about a young man's struggle to protect his ill mother from the drastic changes that occurred in East German culture while she had been in coma. Though the comedy is bittersweet, it feels a little wrong to laugh at the lengths the young man goes to conceal the truth and to build a fictional world for his mother, but his methods are both ingenious and absurd.

The two key performances - Daniel Brühl as Alex and Katrin Saß as his mother - are both excellent and I really enjoyed seeing Brühl in this sort of role. My previous experiences with him (Inglourious Basterds and Rush) had been with emotionally cold characters, but here there was none of that. Alex's unabashed love of his mother, his family, and his girlfriend actually warmed my cold, bitchy heart - just a little. Both actors also really seemed to capture and convey the conflicting emotions of their characters - particularly as each had to confront the other's lies - not just in their words but in their expressions and mannerisms.

Ultimately, there's nothing truly revelatory in this tale of familial love but it's effective and highly engaging just the same. This is a film I likely would never have seen if left to my own devices and I'm really glad I had this opportunity to give it a try.

I've never seen a Wes Anderson movie, but I'm skeptical that I would like them.

Well you and I have pretty different tastes so it's hard to say, but he's among my least favorite directors.

It's like if you took a Charlie Kaufman or Spike Jonze film, made the colors really pop, made the characters say bizarrely specific ***** and behave in odd ways, and took away the keen understanding of human emotion that Kaufman and Jonze possess, you have a Wes Anderson film.

I've heard people describe them as very emotional. Do you have a specific grievance you could give as an example?

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"Well, at least your intentions behind the UTTERLY DEVASTATING FAULTS IN YOUR LOGIC are good." - Captain Steel

TOO MUCH EMOTION!!!!!!!

The kid that yells "She stabbed me with lefty scissors!"

The couple who are both lawyers and can't communicate with each other except in legal terms.

The scout master who can't communicate with anyone except as it relates to scouting.

The boy who gets struck by lightning and says "I'm okay."

The scouts who describe the film's protagonist as a "disadvantaged orphan."

Which would be okay if the story wasn't meant to make you feel something. It's a love story about two kids who don't fit in finding a connection with each other and trying to escape to find a better life. The trouble is that I feel nothing between them. They act as awkwardly with each other as they do with everyone else. They're supposed to be oddballs, but they're oddballs in a movie full of oddballs and thus are both essentially normal but also incredibly abnormal and unrelatable for me.

( o_o) *vacant stare*

Exactly.

You obviously just lack the emotional quirkiness to understand their depth.

Hold on, let me write this down.

Now that's quirk I can respect.

Do you realize that "quirk" is one letter away from "quirt" which is the top left 5 letters on traditional keyboards and they were situated that way to reduce typewriter jams?

No but I know qwerty.

It's I before E, Swan.

Bringing Up Baby (Howard Hawks, 1938)
Imdb

Date Watched: 9/22/16
Cinema or Home: Home
Reason For Watching: The 11th MoFo Hall of Fame
Rewatch: Yes, though I've not seen it since childhood and remember almost nothing about it

I hated everything about this movie: Every scene, every character, every line of dialogue. How this is considered one of the film greats is beyond me. David and Susan are possibly the two most aggravating film characters I've ever seen. He's a bumbling, spineless moron who spews made-up bullsh!t phrases and I don't believe for a moment that he's any kind of scientist. But he's a paleontologist? Spare me. "Intercostal clavicle"? F*** you.

As for her, I can't decide whether this bitch is crazy, stupid, or a combination of the two. What I do know is that I wanted to punch her repeatedly in the face from the moment she appeared on screen to the film's final scene. The supporting characters are not much better, but at least I didn't feel any violent urges towards them.

There were moments when I actually wanted to cry at how painful this was to endure. I'm going to be generous and give it one popcorn box on the off-chance that there was some sort of semi-redeeming feature somewhere in this mess that I missed.



Sorry, Camo.