TBD | A man and a woman in 1960's Hong Kong realize that their respective spouses are sleeping with each other. Directed by Wong Kar-wai Starring Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung Review by Jon Kissel |
Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood For Love is regarded as one of the best films of all time, at least as far as the Sight and Sound list of lists is concerned. Ranked #24 on the 2012 list, In the Mood For Love is the scored the highest of any 21st century film, setting huge expectations for any first-time watchers, or at least those familiar with esoteric film rankings. This is my fourth time with In the Mood For Love, and the one that hasn’t changed what I previously thought of it. The first time, I thought it was perfectly fine, maybe a little slow. The second time, I grew more convinced of its significance but wasn’t quite converted. The third time, for whatever reason, it clicked, leaving me enraptured throughout and a sobbing mess by the credits. This most recent viewing solidifies that final opinion, as I was on guard for a letdown but ended in the exact same place as before. In the Mood For Love’s subtlety and elegance wraps the viewer up in its silken tentacles, slowly but surely endearing itself as one of the great romantic pairings and deserving of its place in film history. If it’s not quite the best film of the 21st century, it has to be close.
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Chris Rock’s famous joke about his neighbors, wherein he lived next door to Shaq, Mary J. Blige, and a white dentist, has that crystal-clear quality one wants in an observation. It illuminates so much about minority achievement and how far a group has to go, such that real equality is achieved when members of the group don’t have to be the greatest artist or athlete of their generation to live in a wealthy neighborhood. The allowance of mediocrity providing wealth and comfort while not reflecting badly on the larger group is a good sign, which brings us to Night in Paradise. While its existence is good for South Korean cinema, this white dentist equivalent of a movie does no one any favors in a vacuum. Park Hoon-jung’s empty time waster of a gangster film proves that there’s room in this cinematic corner of the world for unimaginative garbage, and said garbage isn’t going to drag down the great South Korean directors. Equality unlocked!
Half Captain Planet episode, half monster movie, Into the Grizzly Maze is a baffling exercise in discarded production budgets or an instruction manual for money laundering. What it isn’t is a credible story or a movie fit for release, despite the considerable amount of talent put onscreen. Billy Bob Thornton has both an Oscar and a credit for playing a bear psychologist. There’s so much great cultural output in the world. I don’t understand why anyone would waste their time on this.
Every head shot and limb removal in modern video games owes its existence to Mortal Kombat, the bloody arcade fighting game that my young self was always too intimidated to try. It was transgressive to peek over an older kid’s shoulder and hope that he knew the special combination at the end of a victorious match, resulting in a dramatic fatality involving this or that body part being removed. In the many iterations of the game ever since, the violence and gore has only gotten more visceral and cartoonish, and, surprisingly, the story has gotten pretty decent, too. The franchise has decades of lore to lean on, and the recent games have fun relitigating these nonsensical events. For a movie adaptation, however, the lore is unestablished and the franchise has to return to the basic, very stupid plot surrounding a tournament between various worlds. Simon McQuiod’s film keeps the exaggerated violence that has made the modern games most notable, but the built-in weaknesses of this endeavor are present in every scene, to say nothing of the naked attempt at franchise construction that is this whole movie. Though it’s a foolhardy thing to bring expectations to Mortal Kombat, one can’t help but imagine a version that keeps the brutality and sheds the idiocy.
As will sound familiar to the readers who’ve been taking in my reviews for a long time (and I thank the many thousands of you), I can’t help but put any movie I watch from Scandanavia into one of two boxes. Either it confirms the stereotype of cold and humorless or it rejects it by showing them as the hearty, back-slapping descendants of Vikings. I have to assume this is Simpsons residue, because I’ve seen far more of the latter kind of Dane or Swede on film than the other kind, and therefore the hard-drinking Baltic beauties might be closer to something like the truth. Thomas Vinterberg’s Another Round would certainly subscribe to this, as the true nature of his four middle-aged protagonists needs some high-proof rocket fuel to break free from their deadened carapaces. This story of men who are by turns boring and reckless transcends any narrow preconceptions this viewer might have and locates both halves of an ill-considered dichotomy within individuals, and then attributes both to some kind of chemical imbalance. It does this while also being compelling and affecting, both in its emotional weight and catharsis and in how badly it made me want a drink after watching. |
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