Films I Watched This Week — Jan 13–19, 2025
The Color of Money (1986)
One of Scorseses weakest films, yet its still very entertaining. I found the pool game sequences edited in such a jarring and chaotic way with all the balls cracking together. I also did not like the ending last frame of the movie and thought it should have ended earlier when Fast Eddie walked out of the pool hall forfeiting the tournament. What makes the film good are the performances. Tom Cruise is surprisingly the weakest of the three leads, while Mary Mastrantonio gives a fantastic performance as his street smart girlfriend. Paul Newman is as smooth as he can be replaying his role as "Fast" Eddy Felson, and while his Oscar winning performance feels more of a Lifetime Achievement Award rather than the proper award for best actor of that year (he should have won it several times earlier in his career for Cool Hand Luke, Hud, The Sting, Verdict), it's still an electric solid performance.
Emitaï (1971)
An interesting film by the great Senegalese director Ousmane Sembene, especially since the story takes place during WWII and Ousmane was drafted into the Senegalese corps of the French army. "The film tries to point out that clinging to traditions and beliefs can be utterly useless when you face deadly subjugation."
Xala (1975)
Xala (1975), one of Ousmane Sembène's best films, the director depicts a corrupt system that replaces white dictators and profiteers with black ones in a cynical sex comedy that is both scathing and satirical. The story tells the decline and fall of a African businessmen, who sells rice on the black market to finance the addition of a third wife to his family. In the larger sense, Sembene is commenting on the corruption of African capitalism and on Senegal's sociopolitical downfall both on Euro-centricity and African self-destruction.
The Spirit of the Beehive (1973)
The film opens in the year 1940 in a small isolated Spanish village on the Castilian plateau, as a ramshackle truck arrives as the village’s children scamper around it shouting, “The movies coming! The movies coming!” A screen and projector are set up within the public hall, as children and adults gather together to see the James Whale horror classic Frankenstein. When the monster appears on the screen he has an astounding emotional effect on the children, especially the iconic scene in which the monster comes upon and accidentally drowns a farmer’s daughter. One child’s misunderstanding of this scene will shape the upcoming events in Victor Erice’s The Spirit of the Beehive (1973), which is considered by many to be one of the greatest Spanish films of all time. Similar to Guillermo Del Toro's more recent masterpiece Pans Labyrinth, The Spirit of the Beehive gorgeously blends the elements of the fantasy and horror and places them within the eyes of a innocent adolescent; exploring on how these fantastical elements can clash with the harsh truths of war and reality.
The Spirit of the Beehive (1973) is on MY TOP 300 FILMS OF ALL TIME
First Cow (2019)
Kelly Reichardt’s First Cow is a tender and meditative buddy western that explores the pioneer experience of the 19th century. Reichardt manages to create a gentle, compassionate story of the American Dream that is quite simply a masterwork of minimalist filmmaking.
Ruggles of Red Gap (1935)
Leo McCarey's The Ruggles of Red Gap is a idealistic story of a proper British butler, lost in a poker game, sold to an American, dragged into the states, learned the ways of the yankee, and evolved into a free man. One of screwball comedies hidden gems of the 1930s, Charles Laughton gives off the virtuous "everyman" vibe that one would find in Frank Capra's films of that period. One of the funniest sequences in the film is during a alcohol-fueled social gathering in which the topic of the Gettysburg Address came up; everyone agreed as to its importance, and yet no one present could recite a word of the iconic document.
Fist of Legend (1994)
A remake of Bruce Lee's martial arts masterpiece Fists of Fury and a very good one at that. I prefer the fight sequences more in this version, which might not be too surprising since they were done by choreographer Yuen Woo-ping, the man who the Wachowskis hired for the fight scenes in The Matrix. I very much love how the personal story is set against a historical epic backdrop, but unfortunately, Jet Li's performance lacks Bruce Lee's intensity and charisma that made the original such a classic. It is difficult to decide which fight scene is superior in Fists of Legend. I adore the fight between Chen Zhen and his girlfriends uncle and how they give mutual respect for each other, even offering to blindfold themselves during a dust storm so one won't have the upper hand. The other fight is the final fight with Chen Zhen and the ruthless General Fujita. Fujita has a body like a rock, as he is earlier hammering nails into boards with his bare palms! He is absolutely annihilating Jet Li for basically two-thirds of the fight, but it is the belt strap vs. the katana sword, which gives the fight its perfect grand finale.
The Story of Adèle H. (1975)
François Truffaut's The Story of Adèle H. (1975) is a tragic true story about the descent into one woman’s mad and obsessive passion. The woman is Adèle Hugo, the youngest daughter of writer Victor Hugo, and in the coded journals she kept during her long life she wrote the history of her doomed love. She was now believed to have developed schizophrenia as a young woman, which led to a romantic obsession with a British military officer who rejected her. Despite the officer's rejection, she continued pursuing him, following him to Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, where he was stationed; then to Barbados, in the Caribbean region; Adèle again followed him. Adèle's family worried for her well-being and tried to trace her whereabouts by letters, but overtime were unable to track her activities. Actress Isabelle Adjani was perfectly cast for the role of Adèle H, a dark-haired, dark-eyed, severely beautiful young woman, presenting a sad, neurotic fatalism behind the madness. In time Adèle's mind slowly goes, losing all notion of reality, and in the final scenes she is walking through the streets of Barbados in a ragged gown, blank-eyed, not even recognizing the love of her life when she sees him. When her father Victor Hugo died in 1885, he was mourned all over the world. There were over two million who flocked to Paris in a spectacular display of grief celebrating the man's achievements. After returning to Barbados Adèle was sent to live in a mental institution for the affluent outside Paris and remained there until her death in 1915. Unlike her father, Adèle H's death went unnoticed.
Mr. Know it All (2024)
Isn't it ironic how the idea of writers block can be the very thing that gives writers the most creative ideas for a story? I love your small homage to Charlie Kaufman's Eternal Sunshine, which also brings to mind Kaufmans lead character in Adaptation, a neurotic writer who is constantly tormented on creating something beautiful and meaningful within the lines of the written word. Even the dialogue of the film professor telling his students the formulaic ways on how to write a proper movie script brings to mind Brian Cox's screenwriting seminar in Kaufmans Adaptation. I found myself laughing at the clever humor sprinkled throughout your short. The characters back shouldn't face the camera shot was very funny, especially that extremely long take in which your character is trying to imitate an Abbas Kiarostami sequence, which seems to hilariously go on and on. The cinematography was very good, and I thought the composition in many of the shots was both creative and beautiful. It is remarkable how much more free and alive a movie short like this can feel, especially one made on a limited budget and by people with not a lot of experience working in the film industry. This is compared to the many million dollar blockbusters financed by those zombie-like studio heads who create movies that feel creatively dead in the water. This was a breath of fresh air. Bravo!
Past Lives (2023)
A poetic first feature by Celine Song that explores idealistic romance and cultural identity within immigrants. The film's two main characters are metaphors for inyeon, which is a Buddhist-derived concept on how a relationship between two souls in the present life is influenced by their relationships in thousands of past lives.
One Cut of the Dead (2017)
Be persistent and continue through the cringefest of the first act, and I promise you will be rewarded with comedy gold in the second. One Cut of the Dead is more than your standard zombie comedy. It is a love letter to movie making and all the hard work and commitment to everyone involved when making one. While through comedy, the film brilliantly shows us the complicated process of how everyone behind the scenes must quickly act on their feet to solve all kinds of technical problems, to make a film as good as necessarily possible.
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