Three films a day

#76, 11/30 – Lady Vengeance (2005) (dvd)

Sometimes I ask myself a very simple question after I’ve seen a movie: Was this trip really necessary? There’s really very few things I dislike more than feeling like I’ve wasted the time I took to watch something. (This may explain why I am so very adamant that I will only watch movies I want to like; I see no point in going to see a movie I’m completely prejudiced against. Talk about wasting time.) Anyway, as it turns out, with Park Chan-Wook’s revenge trilogy, my answer to that question is now a fairly emphatic “yes”. And that’s saying something because I had my share of doubts after seeing Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance in February.

I think Lady Vengeance is hands down the most satisfying and most interesting movie of the three. (Despite the fact that Oldboy has really grown on me since I first encountered it last September.) It covers the same themes as the first two, but I think it does so in a fuller, more human way.

It’s really this simple. Lady Vengeance brings bucketloads of pain and remorse to the revenge film. But, and this is important to me, it never felt to me like a Park Chan-wook was expressing sadistic tendencies. It really just seemed like he wanted to show, as plainly as he could, the physical and emotional costs of getting even. I think he succeeded.

There’s little more I can say, really, without giving too much away. But if you haven’t seen these three films and want to (like I said above, I think the trip is worth it), I’d suggest doing so in release order: Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance first, then Oldboy, then Lady Vengeance. Some night I’m going to watch them all again in that order. Although all that violenece and pain may be more than I can take in one sitting.

#75, 11/29 – 4 (2005) (dvd)

So, a prostitute, a piano tuner, and a meat salesman walk into a bar.

No, really.

I don’t think there’s any way I could have been prepared for what 4 served up so it’s not news, really, that it caught me off guard. It was about as close to pure voyeurism as I can remember a recent film taking me (and that’s a little disturbing), though it was also quite full of thematic ideas. I’m still trying to process the whole thing, so the best I can do at the moment will be to run down the list of recurring elements I can remember: dogs, meat, dolls, drinking, suicide, lies. Uh, there are probably others. I wasn’t keeeping a list, though I probably should have done. Oh, and since my sole touchpoint for Russian film is Andrei Tarkovsky, I had to smile when I caught the quickish homage to the driving scene in Solyaris.

I imagine I would probably be rewarded on a rewatch of 4, though I can’t imagine I will ever be willing to take the two hours necessary to do so. It’s one of those films I would never dare recommend to people (because were I do so, at least two people I know would try to have me killed), but it’s exactly the kind of film I wish people I know had seen. Because it’s worth discussing. Ha. Yes, I think I just said that the film is worth discussing more than it is worth viewing. And that’s not really what I meant to say. That is, I know most people watch films for escape and/or entertainment. And this film really doesn’t offer very much of either.

#74, 11/23 – Lucky Number Slevin (2006) (nqpdd)

If you haven’t seen this movie and want to, stop reading right this instant. Spoilers of a sort are ahead.

You’ve been warned.

Hmm. After I saw Lucky Number Slevin I said to myself “Hey, the filmmakers even referenced North By Northwest. Cute.” And then I remembered that some time ago I’d read (or heard) someone saying how stupid it would be if Thornhill was actually a spy. So I did a quick look in my archives to see if I’d ever actually quoted the thing before.

Oops. It seems I actually wrote the thing I was trying to remember. (I know, it’s hardly the most original thought, and it’s entirely possible someone else has expressed this same point, and probably much better than me. Still, my memory obviously isn’t what it used to be.)

I wish Hollywood would get over its obsession with twists. Hitchcock was a fine director, but part of his brilliance was that he knew when and how to pull of his little switches. If a director from today were to try make North By Northwest, Roger Thornhill would actually turn out to be a spy—that’s right, an ad man mistaken for a spy who actually is a spy (probably a super-wonderful spy who is under some deep hypnosis; think Hitchcock meets Ludlum), as we’d find out during the hectic South Dakota action sequence, where Thornhill kills seventeen armed guards super Hong Kong badass style. Yawn.

It wasn’t quite that bad in the case of Lucky Number Slevin. But that’s essentially what they did. They twisted the mistaken identity story with further twists on the twists.

I’ll be fair, even. I still think it’s really quite an enoyable experience because its entire cast is fun to watch. I mean, Morgan Freeman, Bruce Willis, Lucy Liu, Ben Kingsley, Stanley Tucci. In one movie!

If only all that power could have been used for good.

But hey, I’ll take what I can get. And this was fun enough. Still. Roger Thornhill is an advertising man, not a red herring.

#73, 11/23 – The Honeymoon Killers (1970) (dvd)

I had the oddest experience while watching Leonard Kastle’s little film about the Lonely Hearts Killers. See, despite knowing better, I kept expecting an early John Waters film to break out at any moment. Seriously. Maybe that’s down to the production values which were, well, on the low end. Also, to be kind, I’m not sure the acting is what one would call “top drawer”, and seemed not far removed from the work you’d find in, say, Female Trouble. Or, as is most likely, my John Waters alarm kept sounding because, heaven help me, Shirley Stoler reminds me of Divine. (Actually, it’s probably the other way around: Divine probably reminds me of Shirley Stoler.) It was uncanny, actually.

#72, 11/17 – Casino Royale (2006) (tofw)

Most people don’t know this about me, but I was a teenage Bond addict. In fact, my obsession with film started with, of all things, Bond movies. (OK, OK, and the opening sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey.) Throughout the 80s I watched each of the first 14 official films in the series at least twice. It was, I must say, quite a lot of fun.

But then I just… quit. Timothy Dalton became Bond and I didn’t watch. Then Pierce Brosnan got the job and again, I didn’t watch. I blame this mostly on fatigue. Well, fatigue and A View to a Kill. Loved the theme song, couldn’t get behind the film. And I guess it choked all the enthusiasm out of me, and it took me 21 years to get it back.

To say I consider Casino Royale a success is to understate my admiration for it. In rebooting the series, the folks at EON Productions gave us the opportunity to watch as 007 slowly started to find his way as an MI6 operative. This is tricky to do, and hard to do satisfactorily (see Batman Begins), but I think they pulled it off quite well.

It’s hardly flawless filmmaking (there are some odd flow issues, and it probably could have stood ten minutes of snipping), but after I watched it Friday night I went and watched it again Saturday afternoon. It was, yes, quite a lot of fun.

Daniel Craig is, for my money, a great Bond. I look forward to seeing what he’ll do with the role in future outings.

More importantly, as far as Casino Royale is concerned, there’s Eva Green. I first saw The Dreamers two years ago, before I started writing in this place, thus I never got a chance to write this here: In my little world, Eva Green is amazing. No, she’s not quite in the same class of amazing as Sylvie Testud or Philip Seymour Hoffman, I’ll grant, but I’ve now seen her in two movies and absolutely adored her both times.

But even if Vesper Lynd had been played by someone less amazing to me, I still would have found a lot I love about this movie. Most notably, the brilliant Parkour chase scene which reminded me directly of the wonderful opening chase in District B-13. There’s more. Lots of little things, mostly, but hey, what matters is I had fun.

For me, Casino Royale was a revelation. It almost certainly won’t replace On Her Majesty’s Secret Service as my favorite film of the series, but, for me, it’s the only film since then to get anywhere near it.

[@Village North Theatre]