2000s List Discussion and Suggestions (Lists Project Vol. 2)

[Shrew]

No love for Saddest Music in the World? My favorite of the Maddin's I've seen thus far.

Another big Chinese film no one's mentioned yet: Jiang Wen's Devils on the Doorstep. Long and a bit sloppy, but alternately hilarious, absurd, and horrifying when it needs to be. A big, complicated look at the big complicated and ongoing trauma of WWII in China.

[knives]

I'm late to the boat, but...
Under the Sand was a treat. I enjoyed it more intellectually then emotionally which will probably be some minus points. I'm glad i saw the film though. Such a strong and unique look at loss and denial. The lead performance was heavy too. One of the best actress performances I've seen in a while. Everyone else has gushed better then me so I'll leave with one more observation. The one thing that made this film feel like thirty minutes was how the characters see and experience things at least ten seconds before us. It doesn't feel like the Director is with holding though. More like the camera is trying to spot it but needs help from the woman.

[puxzkkx]

Suzhou River – I’d wanted to see this film for a long time, and now that I have I’m mystified as to how it attained its international reputation. It’s basically a very obvious Wong Kar-wai knock-off, with Shanghai subbing for Hong Kong (or Buenos Aires), but with hardly any of Wong’s virtues (or Chris Doyle’s, or William Chang’s) - as far as I know nobody goes to Wong’s films for the stories. Instead of Doyle’s neon impressionism we get handheld am-cam; instead of Chang and Wong’s sly, elliptical editing rhythms we get dull, literal choppiness (or, for variety, dull, literal slo-mo). It’s actually an interesting case of plagiarism that gets almost all of the essentials wrong without, however, stumbling into new territory in so doing.

I thought it had some real soul to it, although the Wong influences are apparent. Still, the film gets by, for me, on the strength of its particular mood and the acting (Jia and Zhou are both very good). But I haven't seen a lot of early Wong (yep, mine eyes hath not seen Chungking Express or Fallen Angels... not yet, anyway) so maybe I'll dislike this film after I see those flicks.

As for Chopper, I think it is one of the most fun, yet one of the most grounded, 'biopics' I've seen. The magnificent script, direction and Eric Bana's frankly jaw-dropping performance give us completely new insight into a man that Australia knows as a mildly amusing celebrity, a parody of the "hard man". Here we see a man completely devoid of empathy, whose own lack of a sense of pain further disconnects him from what is human and real. Chopper is a 'funny' guy, but by about twenty minutes in, when we begin to get a perspective on what really goes on in his head, we stop laughing and we can only look on in horror. The ending is great - with no one around, no one to impress, slowly stewing in his feelings of abandonment and solitude, Chopper is powerless. I wonder what the real Chopper thought of this film - I'd think he'd either hate it, or maybe he wouldn't be able to see below the surface thanks to that massive ego clouding his vision. Dominik could be Australia's Next Great Director. And the cast in this give further credence to my theory that Australia is producing the greatest actors of this generation.

I think I'll see Last Orders tonight. I'm trying to catch up on swapsies, but it is a slow process seeing as a lot of these films don't seem to have been released in NZ. But don't let that stop you watching mine. I'm eager to see what people think about A Piece of Sky, The Forest for the Trees and Live-in Maid. Just set up an account with The Auteurs so hopefully I can see a few of others' swapsies that way (I know that Who's Camus, Anyway? and Time Out are on that site, but idk whether I can watch them in my area).

[swo17]

No love for Saddest Music in the World? My favorite of the Maddin's I've seen thus far.

Another big Chinese film no one's mentioned yet: Jiang Wen's Devils on the Doorstep.

Saddest Music was my intro to Maddin and I still have fond memories of it, but in the time since, Brand and HOTW have managed to eclipse it by some measure. I plan to watch it again though and I'd say it has a sporting chance of making my list. You've just gotta love that amputation scene.

I was also quite impressed with Devils. It didn't feel at all like a 2000s movie, rather timeless actually. This film cuts deep in many directions, with individual scenes that are masterful renderings of comedy, suspense, horror, absurdity, and war as apocalypse. Given the success that Come and See had during the '80s list, I could see this doing similarly well this time around if people will give it a look.

[Michael]

No love for Saddest Music in the World? My favorite of the Maddin's I've seen thus far.
.

It's alright. Forgettable except for Isabella and her glass keg-legs of sparkling beer. It's so stretched out and flat while Band Upon the Brain! is rapid-fire and the most mind-twisting and -burning of all Maddin films. And also so bewitchingly emotional - an artist returning to his hometown to reclaim his demons, it has to be Maddin's very personal project. My Winnipeg is also another personal project - a pretty, visual montage of his hometown and his life history but it offers none of the emotional power that makes BUTB such a great film, his greatest film.

[zedz]

No love for Saddest Music in the World? My favorite of the Maddin's I've seen thus far.
.

It's alright. Forgettable except for Isabella and her glass keg-legs of sparkling beer. It's so stretched out and flat . . .

That's my feeling too. It seemed endless, and far less quirky and funny on the screen than it should have been (I mean: Isabella Rossellini with a glass leg full of beer?) I think I'd rather have seen the pitch than the film.

Ma noughtie du jour:

Boarding Gate – Assayas is such a fluid and persuasive filmmaker that I enjoy the experience of watching even a semi-misfire like this. It operates in the same international corporate intrigue realm as Demonlover, probably my favourite of his 00s films, but it’s much more bogged down by the plot (which ultimately isn’t that interesting). To add insult to injury, the long dialogue sequences that fill in most of that plot information are very perfunctorily written: slabs of exposition, backstory and self-psychoanalysis thrashing against each other like stunned mullets in a net. It’s almost all in English, so maybe it’s Assayas’ dialogue ear which is off.

Assayas’ prowling, probing camera makes these scenes at least interesting to look at, but the script stumbles at its first hurdle: the actors. The way in which the performers fail to overcome the script’s problems makes for an interesting study in screen acting. The big scenes of this type are between Asia Argento and Michael Madsen. The physical mismatch is deliberate, but there’s an absence of chemistry as well which makes their relationship hard to believe. Madsen is a limited actor, but he can be effective. In the long dialogue scenes, however, he seems to be leaping from line-reading to line-reading like Richard Barthelmess in Way Down East (but Lillian Gish goes over the edge before he gets there) – there’s no coherent through line to buoy the performance and half of the clunky lines sink like a stone.

Argento’s half of the script has the same problems (maybe more, as I strongly suspect that her character has much less coherence than Argento gives it credit for), but she’s such an idiosyncratic and intelligent actor that she can make it work and be compulsively cinematic with all her choices. She fits Assayas’ slinky, intuitive filmmaking like a glove.

Fortunately, the lumpen dialogue scenes (and Madsen) are only part of the story, and they’re interspersed with stylish action and suspense sequences which skate the fine line between subjective disorientation and dramatic incoherence. Though, again, the nightmarish Demonlover is probably world champion when it comes to ‘subjective disorientation’ and this is just its little sister. The twisty plot is most effective in the paranoid second half, when the film devolves into ‘Asia in Asia with people out to kill her’ and a Chinese-speaking Kim Gordon (friend or foe?) appears out of nowhere. Lots of Eno on the soundtrack (and not, for once, entirely from Apollo – is Assayas the first director to realise that there's great film music hidden away on On Land?)

All in all, a pretty enjoyable film, though not in contention for my 00s list. But do check out Demonlover (an acquired taste) and Summer Hours. Les Destinees sentimentales was decent, as I recall, but to be honest I don’t remember much of it other than a great dance scene – the sort of thing you’d expect Assayas to excel at, but not necessarily in 19th century Limoges. I find Clean to have similar problems as Boarding Gate, and the film as a whole doesn’t quite add up to Maggie Cheung’s performance.

[knives]

With 3-Iron I have to say you can hang a star on Korea this decade. Everything coming out of that country seems to be leagues ahead of everybody else.

[domino harvey]

But do check out Demonlover (an acquired taste)

It is a problematic film, but one that fascinates as much as it frustrates and will make my list. It all falls off the rails in the last third, but even then the film achieves a level of discomfort in its ellipses that manages to be disturbing without becoming exploitative

[GringoTex]

Three Times - I hadn't seen an HHH film since Puppetmaster, so my big question is: What the hell happened to my Hou!?!

The first segment was beautiful and felt very much like HHH. The second segment felt like bad Masterpiece Theater. And the third segment felt like it was directed by an ubertalented UTexas film student.

I take all the blame- I should have watched Millennium Mambo and Cafe Lumiere to ease myself in before diving into this.

[zedz]

But do check out Demonlover (an acquired taste)

It is a problematic film, but one that fascinates as much as it frustrates and will make my list. It all falls off the rails in the last third, but even then the film achieves a level of discomfort in its ellipses that manages to be disturbing without becoming exploitative

Just thinking about it makes me want to watch it again. It's a narrative rollercoaster ride, so the 'coming off the rails' metaphor is highly appropriate. The last time I watched it, though, it seemed as though if you took the apparent plot at face value, it actually made sense (reading several of the radical ellipses as artificially induced).

[Michael Kerpan]

Three Times - I hadn't seen an HHH film since Puppetmaster, so my big question is: What the hell happened to my Hou!?!

The first segment was beautiful and felt very much like HHH. The second segment felt like bad Masterpiece Theater. And the third segment felt like it was directed by an ubertalented UTexas film student.

I take all the blame- I should have watched Millennium Mambo and Cafe Lumiere to ease myself in before diving into this.

While I don't agree with your assessment of 3 Times, you probably should have seen some of the intervening films first. ;~}

HHH _does_ tend to make incremental changes from film to film.

That said, I like all HHH's other 2000s films more than 3 Times (which I do like -- but not enough for a top 50 list).

[Murdoch]

Looks like I may finally be able to see You, the Living when it shows at the Dryden in September. Yay.

re: Three Times

My reaction was basically the same as Gringo's, and I came to it after having seen MM and CL. The first story really does shine and is beautifully done, the second I only enjoyed aesthetically but failed to engage in the actual goings-on, and the last I struggled with in terms of the themes it presented and what it seemed to be saying about 21st century Taiwan (or perhaps more specifically modern-day youth).

It won't make my list either, although I would like to revisit it. What were people's reactions to Flight of the Red Balloon?

[puxzkkx]

zedz - I've only seen one Assayas (Clean) and am I the only one who wasn't enraptured by Maggie Cheung's performance? I find with most Cheung performances (ITMFL, notably) the mechanics of her acting are INCREDIBLY apparent, and it takes me out of the film and it takes her out of the character. Here I thought she was completely miscast, despite the role being written for her - she always seemed too composed when the character needed a more earthy, impulsive presence. Watching her trying to emote and failing I found myself longing to see what Yang Kuei-mei or Bai Ling (who is actually a good actress) could do with the role. Cheung seemed to be acting in the moment, rather than providing any backstory for a role which needed an actress intuitive enough to fill in the blanks and provide some sense of damage, loss and life.

[Michael Kerpan]

Looks like I may finally be able to see You, the Living when it shows at the Dryden in September. Yay.

re: Three Times

My reaction was basically the same as Gringo's, and I came to it after having seen MM and CL. The first story really does shine and is beautifully done, the second I only enjoyed aesthetically but failed to engage in the actual goings-on, and the last I struggled with in terms of the themes it presented and what it seemed to be saying about 21st century Taiwan (or perhaps more specifically modern-day youth).

It won't make my list either, although I would like to revisit it. What were people's reactions to Flight of the Red Balloon?

All I can sday is that 3 Times grows on one -- I always loved part 1 and liked part 2, while initially struggling wioth part 3. I now also like part 2 a lot -- and am coming to appreciate part 3.

I loved Balloon both initially (screened) and re-watched (on DVD).

[swo17]

Boarding Gate

I started watching this on Netflix Instant Viewing (I'm about 15 minutes in) and got to a scene spoken in a foreign language that was not subtitled. Does anyone know if these parts are subtitled on the R1 DVD?

[Michael Kerpan]

Boarding Gate

I started watching this on Netflix Instant Viewing (I'm about 15 minutes in) and got to a scene spoken in a foreign language that was not subtitled. Does anyone know if these parts are subtitled on the R1 DVD?

IMDB says that this uses English, French and Cantonese. Not sure about DVD subtitling.

[Mr Sheldrake]

No English subtitles on the DVD either. There are some long crucial scenes later in the Hong Kong section in unsubbed Chinese. Judging by the reviews the theatrical version did have English subtitles.

[colinr0380]

But do check out Demonlover (an acquired taste)

It is a problematic film, but one that fascinates as much as it frustrates and will make my list. It all falls off the rails in the last third, but even then the film achieves a level of discomfort in its ellipses that manages to be disturbing without becoming exploitative

Just thinking about it makes me want to watch it again. It's a narrative rollercoaster ride, so the 'coming off the rails' metaphor is highly appropriate. The last time I watched it, though, it seemed as though if you took the apparent plot at face value, it actually made sense (reading several of the radical ellipses as artificially induced).

Here's a fuller version of Hero by Neu! Poor quality YouTube video, but a toe tapping beat nevertheless!

I like that feeling of the film too and those slips in and out of consciousness (or persona) as the world suddenly twists around characters who have been 'bumped off the rails' of proscribed behaviour and they end up 'paralysed' (the most obvious example being the early drugging!) while the world remakes itself into something darker and more threatening around them - then the characters are thrown back into this new configuration. The re-orientation they continually have to do after each of these breaks and reconstitutions (recontextualisations?) is part of what I find so entertaining about the film.

And it also makes the use of the gun in a pivotal scene near the end all the more shocking as I was expecting that action to have been omitted somehow, yet this sort of becomes the exception that proves the rule, and a final sanity destroying break with the possibility of contact with a 'normal world', except through a computer screen.

[zedz]

Boarding Gate

I started watching this on Netflix Instant Viewing (I'm about 15 minutes in) and got to a scene spoken in a foreign language that was not subtitled. Does anyone know if these parts are subtitled on the R1 DVD?

They were on my R1 DVD. Don't know if everything was subbed, but the significant stretches of Chinese and French were.

[domino harvey]

It is a problematic film, but one that fascinates as much as it frustrates and will make my list. It all falls off the rails in the last third, but even then the film achieves a level of discomfort in its ellipses that manages to be disturbing without becoming exploitative

Just thinking about it makes me want to watch it again. It's a narrative rollercoaster ride, so the 'coming off the rails' metaphor is highly appropriate. The last time I watched it, though, it seemed as though if you took the apparent plot at face value, it actually made sense (reading several of the radical ellipses as artificially induced).

Here's a fuller version of Hero by Neu! Poor quality YouTube video, but a toe tapping beat nevertheless!

I like that feeling of the film too and those slips in and out of consciousness (or persona) as the world suddenly twists around characters who have been 'bumped off the rails' of proscribed behaviour and they end up 'paralysed' (the most obvious example being the early drugging!) while the world remakes itself into something darker and more threatening around them - then the characters are thrown back into this new configuration. The re-orientation they continually have to do after each of these breaks and reconstitutions (recontextualisations?) is part of what I find so entertaining about the film.

And it also makes the use of the gun in a pivotal scene near the end all the more shocking as I was expecting that action to have been omitted somehow, yet this sort of becomes the exception that proves the rule, and a final sanity destroying break with the possibility of contact with a 'normal world', except through a computer screen.

I like your reading and I wish I had that absurdly thick double disc Palm set here with me instead of in storage, because now I want to revisit it!

[zedz]

zedz - I've only seen one Assayas (Clean) and am I the only one who wasn't enraptured by Maggie Cheung's performance?

I'm not exactly enraptured. I think she's much better in Irma Vep (which is the best place to start with Assayas, in my opinion), but I still think she's the best thing about Clean, and I like the fact that her performance is somewhat counter-intuitive for the role. Nolte is a much bigger problem in the film for me.

Other catch-ups - colin's comments on Demonlover are cogent: the film is sort of structured like a video game, or a series of interlocking video games, with you and the characters dropping down into new 'levels' and having to intuit the object and rules of the game.

Three Times - Gringo's reaction is understandable, as the three parts always seemed to me to reflect three phases of Hou's own career. The first part picks up on the early, recent-past works (e.g. Dust in the Wind, A Time to Live. . .); part two aligns with Flowers of Shanghai (what I love about Hou's experiment here is that it's not a silent film - it's a vision of how sound film could have evolved out of the silent era in a different way); part three is closest to Millennium Mambo. So there's less disruption between the first section and the works Gringo knows. I liked part three least, but I was never that big a fan of MM. I definitely need to revisit both films. Red Balloon is probably my favourite Hou of the decade, but none of them are missable.

I'm endeavouring to get through one 00s kevyip refugee per day at the moment, so here's last night's:

Birth – I avoided this on release because I thought Sexy Beast was mediocre and obnoxiously self-satisfied, and I didn’t even particularly like Glazer’s overpraised music videos, which seemed to treat the medium with “but I’m really a filmmaker – these are just for my showreel” disdain. However, several people on here whose opinions I respect really liked the film, so I picked it up some time back when I was foraging in the bargain bins and tossed it into the kevyip at the back of my cave. It has now tumbled out.

The film has a stifling preciousness that would normally drive me up the walls, but I have to admit it worked rather well, at least for the first hour. Every shot is meticulously composed and the score is ridiculously lush (or ridiculously subliminal – but again, it works surprisingly well). The film’s flaw, in my opinion, is that it never solves the problem – through writing, acting or direction - of making its outlandish situation plausible. Glazer’s high style is persuasive enough to paper over the cracks while the film is still in mystery mode, and he even gets to indulge in some stylistic gimmicks that work, like a pointedly long close-up, but in the final stretch the wheels come off.

The denouement is particularly flimsy, but rather than plonking it down and getting out of there before the audience has the chance to think too hard about it, Glazer stretches it out, clinging to the same ponderous, finessed style. He seems to believe he’s making a film of timeless profundity and rich emotional resonance rather than a twisty little thriller, but once he’s unpacked all the hidden compartments of his exquisite Louis Vuitton case, there’s actually not much in there. Still, lovely luggage.

If you’re interested in seeing very similar material handled differently (-cough – better), see Raul Ruiz’s Comedy of Innocence, also written by Carriere, also eligible for this leg of the list. The cast alone makes it worth it (Huppert, Balibar, Scob), and the kid is much better than Glazer’s constipated brat.

[domino harvey]

This forum's affection for Birth is up there with its equally inexplicable Michael Mann fetish. Birth is admittedly a beautifully shot and scored film. And as apartment porn, it's second only to Woody Allen.

Spoiler

But the most interesting aspect of the film isn't the question of reincarnation (which is disproved for the audience in the first five minutes by the Heche-following scene but not answered in the film until the last 15 minutes or so) but Kidman's willing self-destruction for an unobtainable ideal: the past. Had the film been more honest and spent less time pandering the story into a paranormal structure to make it "acceptable," the subtext might have become text and this would have been a film worthy of all the accolades lobbed at it by this forum.

As it is, the film never had the bravery to explore the disturbing story of an adult woman using a child as a surrogate and had to coat it in paranormal hooey. The problem isn't that the characters acknowledge the question of reincarnation, it's that the film assumes the audience buys it also-- a leap I wasn't apt to make anyways and certainly not after having it ruined in the first five minutes. So the whole film becomes waiting for the inevitable revelation that he's not the husband. Reading the posts in the dedicated thread, I was shocked to see questions as to the boy's credibility as the dead husband. He's patently not, as the letters triggered some sort of psychological snap with the child upon being read. And the film ends with Kidman nevertheless still in love with the child regardless. Perhaps in love with the idea of regaining what was lost at all cost, perhaps actually in love with the ten-year-old. Young Sean is either a individual human being to her or he's a concept, but she's simply unable to tell the difference by the film's end and this deserved to be explored deeper.

That her fiance so willingly gives a virtually unrepentant Kidman another chance was outrageous-- that's a tremendously large gesture and needed more justification than the viewer was given. The story of the man whose fiancee fell in love with a child is more interesting than how that seduction took place. How these two deal with her actions and lingering emotional attachments separately and together in the aftermath of her willingness to believe-- these are mature, troubling, unique issues that I hadn't seen raised before and should have been considered more deeply than to be relegated to an afterthought. The last fifteen minutes were the first fifteen minutes of the film this should have been.

[colinr0380]

A very interesting post domino. I still really like Birth, though I understand that it might be one of those films where you have to 'go with the concept', yet at the same time treating the film as an 'is he or isn't he?' thriller is the least interesting aspect of the enterprise. The main theme would seem to be misguided belief, not just of getting Anna to the point where she will plan to run off with a kid but by the child actually believing in what he is saying - how someone can be sincere yet still completely misguided. And when you come to a realisation that you are misguided do you face up to this even if you have to face the consequences for your mistake (as Sean does in the second bathtub scene) or do you still chase after ghosts of 'perfect' partners (as Anna is still doing at the end of the film)? They are both the main characters of the story, counterpointing each other.

Everyone else is also just looking for confirmation of their own point of view as being the correct one - see Bacall's brief "I never liked him anyway" confession to the boy.

I have to say though that I wasn't particularly interested in the fiancee's side of the situation beyond being the cuckold who continues a sham relationship, and seemingly fine with that situation as long as it doesn't present itself in any socially awkward situations. In a way he is the counterpoint to the dead Sean - Sean was faithless and philandering but Anna never recognised it; Joseph is overly faithful in a situation where he should have left Anna long ago, even before her preference for past relationships get so bluntly literalised. And do both men do what they do to her because they don't see Anna as a real woman but as a status symbol - that as long as they have her they can get their kicks elsewhere or can overlook the lack of 'true love' in the relationship?

While I'd defend Birth as interesting, it was great to hear zedz recommending the Ruiz film. Sadly he is a filmmaker I have not yet even begun to explore so maybe I would feel the same way and find his a superior take on a similar subject. I'll try and track it down before the list is due in!

[zedz]

Nice obscured post, domino, and I pretty much agree.

Spoiler

That opening giveaway scene is emblematic of the problems I have with the film's plausibility at all levels. You bring an inappropriate gift to an engagement party and have second thoughts, so your first instinct is to - bury the gift in Central Park in the middle of the night? Huh?

Generally, the characters' motivations are way too artily fudged, and that's the easiest thing to fudge. The revelation of how the boy impersonated the dead husband is treated as if it solves the narrative problem, but the question of why he does so is left hanging. Kidman's behaviour is similarly vague. As domino notes, the disturbing aspects of her obsession are glossed over and it feels like they're there simply to make the film 'edgy' and the performance 'brave'. All the film does is substitute the 'paranormal hooey' of the first half with psychological hooey, which is much harder to camouflage with opulent tracking shots.

[puxzkkx]

I pretty much agree with zedz regarding Birth. I was a member on another board that pretty much canonized the film, so I watched it with high expectations and was really disappointed. Glazer does seem convinced that he's making something of utmost profundity and depth, but it really is all style, no substance. There are interesting ideas at play that Glazer seems unprepared, or unwilling, to explore - possibly because doing so would disturb the film's facade of baroque austerity... the front that Glazer is trying so hard to put up and cater to the "sophisticated" crowd.

But the other major reason it didn't work for me was Kidman. For me, Kidman is an actress desperate to break free of her own mediocrity. It is like she's aware of her limited talent, her brittle screen presence, her lack of skill with accents and her inability to convincingly emote, so she tries in vain to better herself by picking the most esoteric and interesting roles that most mainstream actresses attempt. Too bad she simply isn't good enough to pull them off. Even when she's good, it is because a role ties in with her own rigidity as a performer - "The Others", "Dogville" and to some extent "Australia" (where she's seemed the most comfortable on screen in ages). Other times, her brittleness lends itself to an execution that is mannered and shallow ("To Die For", among others) or to a performance that misses the point entirely ("Birth"). Her performance here failed to capture the reasons why her character might even take this child's assertions seriously (sure, she longs for her husband, but no widow would fall into this pattern of behaviour without something else in their past playing a part), the chemistry with Huston (also miscast) was ice-cold, she seemed too preoccupied with wielding the accent to actually attempt coloring between the lines with her character, and stylistic tricks like the 3-minute close-up were ruined by the fact that she simply isn't very good at telegraphing emotion. I found Anne Heche's bizarre intensity near the end of the film far more compelling, and I would have liked to have seen her arc beefed up a little - seeing things from her point of view was far more interesting than the flimsy Kidman-Bright thing.

In almost every Kidman performance I end up zoning out thinking "What would the Toni Collette version of this character be?"