Film Log 7.05.2015

Secretly Greatly (2013)

Director: Jang Cheol-soo
Number of viewings: 1

Comments: Fairly typical action film.The North Korean backstory will be a familiar trope for fans of South Korean cinema. The apartment complex stand-off was an exciting action set piece.

Film Log 7.02.2015

Pacific Rim (2013)

Director: Guillermo del Toro
Number of Viewings: ~5

Comments: Saw this again with the Guillermo del Toro commentary. I don't understand why more people don't love this film more. It is both an ode to mecha and kaiju films and also an original work of genre cinema.

Film Log 6.17.2015

See You Tomorrow, Everyone (2013)

Director: Yoshihiro Nakamura
Number of viewings: 1

Comments: A touching film. Ending made me tear up a bit. Love the way the film ended, neither happy or sad. It just closes. Maybe in a few years we will return to Satoru's story. Gaku Hamada is becoming my favorite male actor in Japan, at least of the new crop of male actors.

Film Log 6.02.2015

Real (2013)

Director: Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Number of viewings: 1

Comments: This film shares the same flaw as Inception. In a universe where a person can enter another's dream one should be able to manipulate and alter the dream reality at will into any shape, size, or form. Yet, Kurosawa and Nolan present very antiseptic dream worlds. Nothing about the dream world and "reality" should be that familiar.

Film Log 5.30.2015

The Duke of Burgundy (2014)

Director: Peter Strickland
Number of viewings: 1

Comments: Gorgeous cinematography. Most of the time I didn't really know what the chronology of the story was, I still don't, but it doesn't matter. The cyclical plot structure just contributed to the film's dreamy atmosphere. The film was fascinating. The fluid back and forth movement that both the lead actresses took as they fluctuated between master and slave was great. Can this film be called a feminist sexploitation flick? When did this film take place? It feels modern, but looks to have taken place during the 1950s or 60s. Loved this film. Peter Strickland is yet another director whose work I wholeheartedly love. 

Film Log 5.24.2015

Stranger by the Lake (2013)

Director: Alain Guiraudie
Number of viewings: 1

Comments: Poisoned love. A film that could have been penned by Patricia Highsmith. Guiraudie's use of unassimilated sex and nonchalant attitude towards it points to the loneliness that all these gay men feel. The use of a singular location, the lake, illustrates just how removed these men are from the world. Are they hiding?running away? I don't think so, or at least maybe not all of them are. All these men are so mysterious. Michel, is he a self-loathing homosexual or does he murder only when he grows tired of his lovers? So many questions. 

Film Log 5.23.2015

Finding Vivian Maier (2013)

Director: John Maloof and Charlie Siskel
Number of viewings: 1

Comments:Inspiring documentary about recently unknown artist Vivian Maier. The film is just as much about Maier as it is the filmmakers journey to uncover the story of the artist. The picture revels in the myth of the artist as an outsider. Maier's pictures are beautiful though. A female Robert Frank? I think so, too. 

Film Log 5.22.2015

The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came To Eden (2013)

Director: Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldfine
Number of viewings: 1

Comments: Fascinating but overlong. Too much brooding over a mystery that the filmmakers and their talking heads seem to have the answer to; even if it is just mere speculation. The use of voice actors to read the various character's diary entries was a unique touch. It felt like I was watching a radio drama, but in a good way. Need to rewatch again.

Film Log 5.21.2015

Tim's Vermeer (2013)

Director: Teller
Number of viewings: 1

Comments: The film unpretentiously disproves the myth that art and technology are separate siblings. Tim Jenison meticulously recreates not only Vermeer's The Music Lesson, but also the world that Vermeer inhabited. Is there any other superlative art documentaries out there that take the time to delve into history, art, science, and technique? I hope so. 

Ilo Ilo (2013)

It may not be politically correct to say this, but the Philippines greatest export to the world may be human chattel. Although there are plenty of highly educated Filipinos who immigrate to foreign countries and build very successful careers for themselves, sadly the consensus around the world about the Philippines and its people are that they are an impoverished country whose populace migrate to other far more economically abundant places to work as unskilled labor. Be it the US, Europe, Australia, or Asia no matter how many Filipinos you may find working in hospitals, schools, or running their own businesses there will be just as many or even more Filipinos working as maids, nannies, janitors, farmhands, etc. etc. And because of this it has become easy for many to treat these people as less than human. In places like Hong Kong, stories abound about Filipinos being treated worse than the family dog by their employers, and in proudly democratic countries like the US, Filipino maids are often forced to be on-call 24/7 to their host family in the hopes that maybe one day in the distant future they can get the most coveted thing of all, an immigration visa.

Blind Detective (2013)

Johnnie To’s Blind Detective (2013) is  by no means a perfect film. It lacks the trademark grit and noir atmosphere of To’s earlier crime pictures and reeks of bad plotting. Yet with that said, if you shift your expectations away from the procedural elements and revel in the pleasures of the film's screwball comedy, then Blind Detective can be considered as a funny enough addition to To’s romantic-comedy oeuvre.

Starring To veterans Andy Lau and Sammi Cheng as buddy cop partners, Blind Detective begins with a kinetic chase scene as Sammi Cheng’s Goldie is tasked by her commanding officer to tail Lau’s Holmesian private investigator, Johnston. Through media coverage, we find out that an anti-social citizen has been dumping sulfuric acid from the roofs of Hong Kong’s high-rises. Johnston is on the trail of the culprit but the local cops have all eyes on Johnston and within minutes a showdown between cops, criminal, and Johnston ends with the bad guy captured and Goldie and Johnston having their meet-cute.

With this initial meeting we get a good handle of exactly who these two are: Johnston, a prodigy in solving crimes but completely lost in the weeds when interacting with people, and Goldie, an against the grain female detective who’s athletic prowess is tempered by her inability to solve cases like a “real” detective. The two come together when Goldie asks Johnston to help find her friend who disappeared, without a trace, 20 years ago. Johnston agrees to the case and then begins using Goldie as his assistant; having her run after criminals, doing surveillance work, and, most importantly, reenacting the last moments of murder victims whose cases have been left unsolved.

The scenes between Johnston and Goldie as they piece together the how and why of several brutal crimes are the real reason to see this movie. The chemistry between Lau and Cheng has always been strong. After working together on so many Johnnie To romantic comedies, both actors seem to be sufficiently comfortable with one another that, even when Lau and Cheng are bashing each other’s heads in with a hammer, slashing wrists, or getting into slap fights, one can’t help smirking as both are clearly relishing their Grand Guignol reenactments.

Though Blind Detective has a threadbare main narrative, the film is also is riddled with episodic sub-plots that are either introduced and then forgotten, or just left hanging in the air. If the central concept was executed as a television series, thereby enabling Lau and Cheng to stretch their comedy muscles the while giving the viewer a new murder that Johnston and Goldie have to solve, it could work wonders. Its popularity would inevitably make Andy Lau’s Johnston character one of the top television sleuths with a disability, right up there with Gregory House and Adrian Monk. However, what we have here is a half-formed work from an established master. There are better Andy Lau-Sammi Cheng collaborations out there, many of them directed by To himself, and Blind Detective, through no fault of the two leads, falls short of being anything but a curiosity item.

(Originally published on January 13, 2014 at VCinema Show Podcast and Blog.)

Sana Dati (2013)

Romance, like any well-established genre, has several well-known tropes that must always be followed. Clichés usually involve a man and woman accidentally bumping into each other, the man pursuing the woman even if she happens to be engaged to someone else, and a third act climax where the male protagonist musters up all his strength and professes his love to the pretty female lead and drags her away to live a supposedly happy life together. Reality never lives up to fantasy, though. The unknown variables of life and the simple fact that those in relationships don’t have the luxury of a fade-out right before life gets too hard make “happy endings” a rare commodity.

In Jerrold Tarog’s Sana Dati (2013), which premiered at this year's Cinemalaya Festival, the film isn’t hampered by the need to have the “happy ending”, though the tropes of the romance genre are respected. Instead, Sana Dati is a naturalistic story about what happens after a relationship has ended, and the emotional struggle that goes with re-committing one’s heart to another person again. Unlike many forgettable and downright insulting romantic dramas and comedies, Sana Dati isn’t a tearjerker, even as Tarog imbues the entire film with a bittersweet air.

Opening on a quote by Voltaire, “Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd”, the film begins in an empty store, devoid of furniture, merchandise, or people. A man enters followed by a woman. From the dialogue, we learn that the two are a couple and that they’ve bought the place. They are happy and the young woman discovers a pleasant surprise left by her boyfriend, a rose in a vase and an engagement ring. The scene ends with the woman looking at the camera toward her boyfriend and giving us a big smile. After that opening, we get a series of short scenes of a videographer going to a hotel to film a couple getting married. Our expectations are that the couple at the start is tying the knot, but as the story unfolds, we learn that the young man, Andrew (Benjamin Alves), is dead and that Andrea (Lovi Poe), his ex-girlfriend, is now with a different man.  Tarog’s film, just as much of a detective story as it is a romance, presents the beginning and end of that opening couple's relationship through a series of unedited video clips and flashbacks. The videographer Dennis (Paulo Avelino), the audience surrogate, who has a connection to Andrew, acts like a detective investigating the films requisite femme fatale.

The crux of the story is the familiar trope of the woman, Andrea, having to choose which man she will be with. Of course, the twist is that she must either choose to be with her dead ex or tie the knot with a man that is still very much a stranger to her. The contrast between Andrew and Andrea’s relationship and Andrea’s impending marriage to her fiancé played by TJ Trinidad can’t easily be boiled down to who is the “better” man. All these people are damaged, physically and emotionally, yet Andrea can’t escape the responsibility of having to choose between her joyful past and unknown future. Whereas Hollywood love stories cling onto antiquated notions of the “one true love” Tarog eschews such juvenile notions. Lovi Poe portrays Andrea as a woman who is painfully alone yet is apprehensive about betraying Andrew for another man. The conflict going on in her heart and mind is so eloquently portrayed by her, it’s impossible to imagine what the right choice is in her situation.

Sana Dati might, from my description, appear oppressively dark or bleak, but it is nothing of the sort. Whereas typical melodramas milk the sad moments for all the tears they can, Sana Dati’s voyeuristic visual style never lingers too long on a scene. We get impressions of these characters and their pain, but Tarog never exploits the moment and the cinematographer Mackie Galvez gives the film a gauzy romantic look even as the story turns tragic.

It seems that since the start of the new millennium the romance genre, at least the not-so mainstream entries, have evolved to be more contemplative and have striven to portray situations that are more emotionally realistic. Sana Dati deserves a place in that canon alongside Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy and the talky dramas of Eric Rohmer. Foregoing big emotional scenes, a requisite villain, or even a conclusive ending it’s not so hard to imagine the story continuing on, the characters going about their lives in a constant cycle of pain and happiness.

(Originally published on September 7, 2013 at VCinema Show Podcast and Blog.)

The Grandmaster (2013)

There is a lot of critical weight attached to a Wong Kar-Wai picture. Like all auteurs, Wong has, over the last three decades, crafted a public persona that has put the man front and center whenever one of his films is released. For fans, his films are visually stunning and introspective, about two people suffering from a terminal case of unrequited love. For detractors, his films are slow, pretentious, but visually stunning pictures about pretty people with conflated problems. His latest picture, after his underwhelming American film My Blueberry Nights six years ago, continues his longstanding obsession with amour fou, but with over a decade since his last major masterpiece, In the Mood for Love (2000), the man’s visual style and penchant for non-linear storytelling has matured and been incorporated into several mainstream critical hits since then.

With his latest picture, The Grandmaster (2013), Wong delves back into the wuxia genre and tackles a very popular real life figure, the Chinese martial artist Yip Kai-man, or as he is known by many Ip Man. For those with a passing interest in Hong Kong cinema, the story of Ip Man has become rote due to the seemingly never-ending run of biopics about the man in recent years, the most famous being the eponymously titled Ip Man and Ip Man 2 released in 2008 and 2010 respectively and starring Hong Kong megastar Donnie Yen. With the man’s trials, tribulations, and achievements already well known to the public-at-large, Wong forgoes textbook historical accuracy and focuses his film on trying to illustrate exactly what it is to be a grandmaster.

In basic linguistic terms, a grandmaster is a teacher who has honed their craft for several decades and amassed not only a technical mastery of their art but also a particular philosophical viewpoint. Thus, the title of grandmaster takes on both a religious as well educational meaning.  In Wong’s film, unlike previous adaptations of the Ip Man story, we are inundated with an ensemble cast of grandmasters, each with their own unique specialties, back stories, and personalities. They oftentimes overtake the frame and engulf Ip Man, though not in a threatening way. They operate more like a Greek Chorus, interacting with Ip Man, guiding him along on his journey, but never interfering with his fate. As is true of most Wong Kar-Wai pictures, the conflict is not centered on a protagonist having to defeat a flesh and blood character or a nefarious organization. Instead, the major conflict between Ip Man and all the other grandmasters in the picture is their own mortality.

Though The Grandmaster is set in a more fantastic universe with balletic fight choreography and pseudo-mysticism, it is still grounded in reality, specifically the early 19^th century in China at the cusp of revolution as it is invaded first by the Japanese and then by the Communists. Wong’s Ip Man, played by his muse Tony Leung, must contend with wartime rationing, protecting his family, contending with gung-ho fighters, and also his own emotions. Ironically, although the earlier Ip Man films are rooted in realism and go out of their way to follow history to the letter, Donnie Yen’s Ip Man is far more one dimensional, more of a symbol than flesh and blood character, compared to Tony Leung’s laconic interpretation of the man. Though Leung is pushed to the background for a large chunk of the film’s runtime, the scenes with Leung do allow us some idea of who this man might be, a credit which must be given to Wong’s skills penning the poetic monologues which Leung beautifully reads in voiceover.

During these readings, in-between the pregnant pauses and spoken lines, is a very real man trying to make sense of everything around him and the feelings he has for a mysterious woman played by Zhang Ziyi. Seemingly replaying their relationship from 2046 (2004), Zhang and Leung dance around their feelings for one another. Like the couples in Wong’s earlier films, Leung and Zhang are from the start fated to be apart but that does not stop either of them from playing the role of tragic lovers. While watching The Grandmaster, I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe all the couples in Wong’s films aren’t perhaps the same lovers reincarnated in different bodies and time periods but still forced to reenact their doomed romance.

The closest thing there is to a traditional wuxia conflict in the film is between Gong Er (Zhang Ziyi) and Ma San (Zhang Jin). Set up as a battle between a vengeful daughter and her father’s wayward disciple, Wong takes a page out of the Sergio Leone and John Woo playbook by presenting the fight as a series of close ups on body parts in languid slow motion. Of course, because of Wong’s interest in non-linear storytelling, we already know who wins, but the stakes are far higher than life or death. With this match, as in every match fought in this film, what is at stake are the martial arts themselves.

A grandmaster’s defeat irrevocably means his style of fighting has run its course. This “there can be only one” mentality means that there is only a finite number of true grandmasters and as the old ways are paved over to make way for the modern world of trains and bombs the martial arts themselves have become a pale shadow of themselves. Whereas the grandmasters of an earlier time smoke, drank, and conversed in posh brothels the postwar era has reduced many to drinking cheap booze and smoking filthy cigarettes in makeshift shacks. In a decade, their skills will be used to train actors and entertainers, not warriors or philosophers.

The Grandmaster continues Wong’s obsession with mythologizing and eulogizing China during the postwar era. Neither a bold new step in the man’s oeuvre or an unimaginative retread of past projects, the film will absolutely polarize action film fans looking for kinetic brawls. However, Wong has never been about pleasing his audience and for disciples of his work, The Grandmaster will be a film watched, quoted, and pored over for decades to come.

(Originally published on June 12, 2013 at VCinema Show Podcast and Blog.)