film, eyeballs, brain -

Akira Kurosawa, “Stray Dog” (1949).

What does a Kurosawa film sound like? Is it the metallic whoosh of swords, or the peal of temple bells. Or is it all about the music, a martial theme, or a spare and cold Toru Takemitsu soundtrack?

Popularity: 4%

¶ Posted 18 July 2010 † Benito Vergara § notes ‡ Comments (1) ° Tagged: akira kurosawa, kurosawa, stray dog

Nimrod Antal, “Predators” (2010).

Let me get one little spoiler (though there are more below), and one hugely wasted opportunity, out of the way: Predators does not end with my hombre Danny Trejo, straggly hair flying in the wind like the dreadlocked Predators, as the last man standing. Not even with a giant machete in hand. I’m sorry. I don’t think you readers can tell how profoundly disappointed I am about this.

Popularity: 5%

¶ Posted 12 July 2010 † Benito Vergara § review ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: antal, nimrod antal, predators

Brillante Mendoza, “Kinatay” (2009).

At some point in Brillante Mendoza’s controversial film Kinatay, there’s a brief and unexpected shot of something one rarely sees in the usual squalor of a Mendoza film: a postcard-pretty image of a Manila Bay sunset, complete with palm tree and silhouetted spectators. It’s surprising, and almost out of place – but it is, after all, a movie set in the Philippines, and surely it wouldn’t be complete without that sunset?

Kinatay is, at its narrative core, about the abduction, beating, rape, murder and eventual dismemberment of a prostitute. That sort of synopsis should be enough to keep sensitive audiences away, but on the contrary, Kinatay isn’t unremittingly dark.* In fact, the film can’t be fully appreciated without taking into account the seemingly irrelevant extended prologue (weddings, a dinner, a young couple that actually seems happy); indeed, the unforced cheer of the first third is, in hindsight, almost unreal in comparison to the sickening events that follow it.

Popularity: 11%

¶ Posted 21 June 2010 † Benito Vergara § review ‡ Comments (4) ° Tagged: brillante mendoza, kinatay, mendoza

On Brian Pera and Masha Tupitsyn’s “Life As We Show It: Writing on Film” (2009).

[Crossposted on Goodreads.]

I was really looking forward to picking up this book — movies being a passionate interest of mine — but found it to be a rather uneven collection. Organized, kind of, around the provocative question “if movie-watching has become in itself a primary source of experiencing the world, what kind of movies are our lives imitating?”, Life as We Show It features pieces that use “films and the culture that comes with it, as an ingredient for narrative impetus,” as coeditor Masha Tupitsyn puts it.

Popularity: 6%

¶ Posted 09 June 2010 † Benito Vergara § notes ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: book review, brian pera, life as we show it, masha tupitsyn, pera, tupitsyn

Notes on SFIFF 53: Pen-ek Ratanaruang’s “Nymph” (2009) / Maren Ade’s “Everyone Else” (2009).

Look: if you’re a Thai director who chooses to begin your film with a static shot of jungle foliage swaying in the wind, then proceeds with a languid, dreamlike narrative — well, it seems to me like asking for a bit of trouble. Like Duncan Jones doing an homage to 2001: A Space Odyssey in his Moon, Pen-ek Ratanaruang’s Nymph (Nang Mai) is surely referencing Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Tropical Malady. And so comparisons are inevitable, to Nymph‘s disadvantage, but wow, the wonder of that long first shot, with the camera weaving behind the leaves and trunks as if we were seeing through someone’s point of view (with labored breathing on the soundtrack) until, miraculously, it levitates like an angel up and above the trees.

Popularity: 8%

¶ Posted 29 April 2010 † Benito Vergara § notes ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: ade, everyone else, maren ade, nymph, pen-ek ratanaruang, ratanaruang

Notes on SFIFF 53: Ounie Lecomte’s “A Brand New Life” (2009) / Whang Cheol-mean’s “Moscow” (2009).

I struck gold immediately with my first viewing at the 53^rd San Francisco International Film Festival, Ounie Lecomte’s beautifully understated debut, A Brand New Life (Yeo-haeng-ja). (See preview here.) I can see audiences responding positively to this (I’m hoping for wider distribution), for its unfussy plainness is easy to like – and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Not that the subject matter isn’t challenging: the setting is a Korean girls’ orphanage in 1975, and our protagonist is a nine-year old girl named Jin-hee (played by the remarkable Kim Sae-ron) whose father has suddenly, tragically, put her up for adoption overseas. Her only response for a good part of the film is a stunned, withdrawn silence. It’s not just out of the depths of her grief; her silence mirrors her incomprehension, and it’s crucial that we in the audience don’t understand either. Watch for the scene with a doctor when we realize what Jin-hee does understand; it’ll break your heart.

Popularity: 12%

¶ Posted 26 April 2010 † Benito Vergara § notes ‡ Comments (1) ° Tagged: a brand new life, lecomte, moscow, ounie lecomte, whang, whang cheol-mean

Akira Kurosawa, “Sanjuro” (1962).

I’d forgotten – particularly amidst all the remembrances of the depth of his humanism, his experiment with narrative in Rashomon (1950), the magisterial sweep of his epics – how surprisingly… well, goofy, Akira Kurosawa’s sense of humor seemed to be. Take a scene in Sanjuro, the underrated companion to the undisputed 1961 classic Yojimbo. It’s no comedy, of course – its protagonist is a fairly cold-blooded killer, after all, and the vicious ending reminds the audience of that fact – but here’s the scene: the nine young and inexperienced samurai are hiding next to the corrupt Superintendent’s compound, waiting to attack. They discover their not-so-complex ruse has worked; the Superintendent has sent all his men to a faraway temple, leaving the place unprotected.

Upon finding out about the emptied compound, the young samurai uncharacteristically jump up and down like giddy little children, and Kurosawa cues this oddly jaunty trumpet music on the soundtrack to underscore the moment – until the samurai realize they might just be overheard next door, and they clam up amidst their own shushing. Even the music ends abruptly. But their glee is uncontainable, and they laugh and celebrate again – with smaller, more restrained leaps this time – and then Kurosawa plays the happy trumpet music again. But more quietly this time.

Popularity: 8%

¶ Posted 24 March 2010 † Benito Vergara § notes ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: akira kurosawa, kurosawa, sanjuro

Lino Brocka, “Maynila sa Mga Kuko ng Liwanag” (1975).

Some random short notes (sorry, I’m really dispensing with the synopsis this time, and yes, there are major spoilers below):

1. This marks the second time I’ve seen a Brocka film where I kind of wished the whole film was filmed like the credit sequence: Maynila begins with stark black-and-white cinematography by Mike de Leon that makes the city look like it was filmed in an earlier decade. It’s of a city slowly waking up — its streets half empty save some horse-drawn calesas and people sweeping refuse from the night before — until it bleeds into color when we see Julio Madiaga at the corner of Ongpin and Misericordia. (In 1974′s Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang (see my blog entry here) the horrifying opening scenes before the credits are shot in a beautiful speckled amber.)

Popularity: 17%

¶ Posted 21 March 2010 † Benito Vergara § notes ‡ Comments (1) ° Tagged: brocka, lino brocka, manila in the claws of neon, maynila sa mga kuko ng liwanag

Lino Brocka, “Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang” (1974) / “Insiang” (1976).

Can I get an awful confession out of the way – namely, that I’ve never been the greatest fan of Lino Brocka? That I find his films, as socially incisive and powerful as they are – and admittedly I’ve seen only a little more than a handful – to be, at times, painfully predictable and tendentious, with all the subtlety of a bullhorn? (Like Oggs Cruz, I like Ishmael Bernal more – perhaps a lot more.)

And yet. Brocka is responsible for some of the most indelible, haunting images of Philippine cinema, as well as forming the backbone for its second Golden Age. The way his political commitment informs his films has influenced most every serious Filipino filmmaker during and after him, including current favorites of the festival circuit like Lav Diaz and Brillante Mendoza. But I find that Brocka’s generosity of spirit is at times matched by an equally parsimonious trust in the viewing audience to parse things out for themselves without heavy-handed symbolism to guide the way.

Popularity: 19%

¶ Posted 20 March 2010 † Benito Vergara § review ‡ Comments (2) ° Tagged: brocka, insiang, lino brocka, tinimbang ka ngunit kulang, weighed but found wanting

Stéphane Aubier and Vincent Patar, “A Town Called Panic” (2009).

You know, a movie doesn’t have to address the big questions in life for it to be enjoyed over here at film eyeballs brain. And like a Michael Haneke film or this impending final season of Lost, not all the questions have to be answered either: what would Cowboy and Indian do with all those bricks? Will the three friends ever get their brick walls back from the thieving sea creatures? Will Horse ever make it to the fetching Miss Longray’s piano class on time? Will Steven, the excitable farmer, be sprung from prison after being wrongly accused by the Policeman? And where did that giant mechanical penguin come from? Continue Reading »

Popularity: 11%

¶ Posted 01 February 2010 † Benito Vergara § review ‡ Comments (1) ° Tagged: a town called panic, aubier, panique au village, patar, stephane aubier, vincent patar

Apichatpong Weerasethakul, “A Letter to Uncle Boonmee” (2010).

In his lovely essay over at Lilok Pelikula, Richard Bolisay writes about the spectrality of the camera, or rather, the camera as the ghostly presence in Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s haunted film, A Letter to Uncle Boonmee. It’s a film set in a village in Northeastern Thailand and the site of the torture and massacre of farmers by the military in 1968 – as the narrator(s) reads: “Soldiers once occupied this village. They killed and tortured the villagers until everyone fled into the jungle.”

Popularity: 12%

¶ Posted 21 January 2010 † Benito Vergara § notes ‡ Comments (1) ° Tagged: a letter to uncle boonmee, apichatpong weerasethakul, weerasethakul

Norihiro Koizumi, “Midnight Sun” (2006).

While ultimately little more than a vehicle for the singer-songwriter YUI, Midnight Sun (Taiyō no Uta, or Song of the Sun) is a competently directed movie that capitalizes on the lead actress’s musical talents. But instead of the usual frothy comedy, Midnight Sun is a straight-up tearjerker.

YUI plays (no surprise) a young singer-songwriter named Kaoru, who is afflicted with a disease – in this case, Xeroderma Pigmentosa, which renders her skin lethally sensitive to ultraviolet radiation. But in a bit of a twist, Kaoru refuses to use her protective suit, and therefore lives a twilight existence by choice: sleeping by day, and busking in a deserted train station at night, with nothing but a candle balanced on her guitar case for company.

Popularity: 10%

¶ Posted 19 January 2010 † Benito Vergara § review ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: koizumi, midnight sun, norihiro koizumi, taiyo no uta, yui

James Cameron, “Avatar” (2009).

Avatar is probably the most beautiful film I’ve seen in the last 12 months. James Cameron’s fantastically detailed vision of the planet Pandora is a sumptuous visual feast: entire villages in lush trees, floating crags of rock, the way ships explode into constellations of steel and showers of dust, flowers that shrink shyly upon touch, the way tendrils of hair curl sensuously around tails – one forgets very quickly that it’s all the product of technicians hunched over computers. The real world around you, and the “real world” on screen, falls away once you enter Pandora, and I imagine that, had I seen it only in 2D, I would have still been extremely impressed. The richness of its visuals alone explains its ecstatic reception by the moviegoing public. Avatar is exceedingly beautiful, without a doubt – so why, then, did I find it also exceedingly, almost fatally dull?

Popularity: 20%

¶ Posted 18 January 2010 † Benito Vergara § review ‡ Comments (13) ° Tagged: avatar, cameron, james cameron

The Best Movies I Saw In 2009.

Is it that time of the year yet? I thought I’d post my picks early, with two disclaimers:

1. My list isn’t limited to movies made or released in 2009, but to the ones I only saw this year. (The not-always reliable IMDB seems to date movies according to production and not release (in the US at least), so it looks like Zombieland was my favorite movie of 2009, which isn’t exactly true. It’s a damn fun one though.)

2. I actually didn’t see very many movies this year — got sucked into “The Wire”, some big novels (Mieville, Vollmann and King were to blame) and lots of Xbox 360 time. Revanche, The Road, Invictus, Up in the Air, The White Ribbon, Precious, Moon, Pontypool, Sin Nombre, Anvil!, A Serious Man, Two Lovers, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Messenger — they’ll have to wait. Besides, I kind of have an aversion to watching something next week and pronouncing it “best of 2009″ a few days later.

The links below are to my reviews; one day I’ll write about the others.

In alphabetical order, by title, the best movies I saw in 2009:

- Nagisa Oshima, Boy (1969)
- Nagisa Oshima, Death by Hanging (1968)
- Kazuo Hara, The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On (1987)
- Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker (2008)
- Fernando Eimbcke, Lake Tahoe (2008)
- Hirokazu Kore-eda, Still Walking (2008)
- Olivier Assayas, Summer Hours (2008)
- Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Tokyo Sonata (2008)

And some runners-up:

- Denisa Reyes and Mark Gary, Hubad (2008)
- Lee Isaac Chung, Munyurangabo (2007)
- Hayao Miyazaki, Ponyo (2008)
- Koji Wakamatsu, United Red Army (2007)
- Ruben Fleischer, Zombieland (2009)

And some other random tidbits:

Biggest disappointment: Park Chan-Wook’s Thirst

Best short film on YouTube: Bang-yao Liu’s Deadline (YouTube link)

Best exit music: a tie between the Yayhoos’ “Baby I Love You” at the end of James Gunn’s Slither, and Los Parientes de Playa Vicente Veracruz’s “La Lloroncita” at the end of Lake Tahoe

Best movie experience: a three-way tie between the entirety of Masaki Kobayashi’s The Human Condition at the PFA; Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather 1 and 2 at the Castro; and Ken Jacobs’ Nervous Magic Lantern performance, Towards the Depths of the Even Greater Depression, also at the PFA

A movie I kind of conked out to and really wished I hadn’t: Lucrecia Martel’s The Headless Woman

The most overhyped “intelligent” summer film that gets dumb really fast, but I still have very high hopes for the sequel: Neill Blomkamp’s District 9

The absolute worst movie I saw all year, even more terrible than anything with mega-sharks or sword-wielding Immortals that used to be from another planet but are now from a “very long time ago” instead in it: Ron Howard’s Angels and Demons

The movie that gave me a headache: a tie between Jean-Luc Godard’s 2 Or 3 Things I Know About Her (a good headache) and McG’s Terminator: Salvation (a bad one, but that was because of the decibels; see below)

A startling and perhaps indefensible confession: I liked Terminator: Salvation more than I liked J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek

Popularity: 16%

¶ Posted 04 December 2009 † Benito Vergara § notes ‡ Comments (5) ° Tagged: assayas, best of 2009, bigelow, chung, eimbcke, fleischer, gary, kore-eda, kurosawa, miyazaki, oshima, reyes, wakamatsu

Russell Mulcahy, “Highlander 2: Renegade Version” (1991).

highlander1

When the DVD booklet warns you that the film you’re about to watch shouldn’t be thought of a sequel (despite the “2” in the title), but as “a totally new and different cinematic adventure starring the same exciting characters and a great new villain”, it should be fair warning, yes? And when you and two friends who should know better actually take time to watch Russell Mulcahy’s Highlander 2: Renegade Version — not to be confused, mind you, with Highlander 2: The Quickening, which Roger Ebert called “a movie almost awesome in its badness” — well. I’m glad I have good friends.

Popularity: 12%

¶ Posted 03 December 2009 † Benito Vergara § review ‡ Comments (5) ° Tagged: highlander, highlander 2, mulcahy, russell mulcahy

film, eyeballs, brain

Akira Kurosawa, “Stray Dog” (1949).

Nimrod Antal, “Predators” (2010).

Brillante Mendoza, “Kinatay” (2009).

On Brian Pera and Masha Tupitsyn’s “Life As We Show It: Writing on Film” (2009).

Notes on SFIFF 53: Pen-ek Ratanaruang’s “Nymph” (2009) / Maren Ade’s “Everyone Else” (2009).

Notes on SFIFF 53: Ounie Lecomte’s “A Brand New Life” (2009) / Whang Cheol-mean’s “Moscow” (2009).

Akira Kurosawa, “Sanjuro” (1962).

Lino Brocka, “Maynila sa Mga Kuko ng Liwanag” (1975).

Lino Brocka, “Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang” (1974) / “Insiang” (1976).

Stéphane Aubier and Vincent Patar, “A Town Called Panic” (2009).

Apichatpong Weerasethakul, “A Letter to Uncle Boonmee” (2010).

Norihiro Koizumi, “Midnight Sun” (2006).

James Cameron, “Avatar” (2009).

The Best Movies I Saw In 2009.

Russell Mulcahy, “Highlander 2: Renegade Version” (1991).

Where the Title Comes From.

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