My goal:  to see 100 movies in 2007

 

(Last year, I saw 95 films, listed here.  The 97 films I saw in 2005 are listed here.  The list of the 115 films I saw in 2004 is here.  The list of the 86 movies I saw in 2003 is here.)

 

 

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90).  Mr. Bean’s Holiday (2007; dir. Steve Bendelack).  I have a higher tolerance for Mr. Bean than most adults, and this is silly, pleasant fun.  You wish it might be more ambitious in its parodying of Hollywood commodity-cinema and that it might come closer to the level of its obvious namesake, M. Hulot’s Holiday.  The soundtrack music seems as randomly assembled as the ring tones on the cell phone that Mr. Bean plays with during one sequence.  But it’s hard enough to make good comedy, especially when you largely deny yourself the resources of the spoken language, and so rather than complain about what this is not, it’s probably more fitting to enjoy what it is.  (12/30/07 as in-flight movie). 

 

89).  Watashi o ski ni tsuretette (Take Me To The Snowland; 1987; dir. Baba Yasuo).  A perfect time capsule from late 1980s Japanese mass culture, as  beautiful twenty-somethings enjoy a life of high consumption/romance:  the cars, gadgets, leisure trips, clothes, and drinking.  The soundtrack by Yuming completes the deal.  You can’t imagine how nostalgic this is for someone who was there…. (12/30/07 as in-flight movie).   

 

88).  Circus goningumi (Five-Man Circus; 1935; dir. Naruse Mikio).  Fine example of 1930s “ero-guro-nonsense” culture, replete with cafes, chorus girls, and popular music.  Naruse seems fascinated with the “mass” in mass culture:  in several sequences of circus performances, he seems more interested in capturing crowd reactions than the performers.  The plot, such as it is, features the foibles of a traveling troupe of five male musicians:  they chase women, get drunk, have their hearts broken.  Typically, one of them dreams of becoming a serious musician, a violinist; the masses fail to appreciate him, but the tough-as-nails circus girl with a heart of gold understands.  And then, inevitably, they move on to the next town. Lots of dynamic camerawork and editing.  (12/19/07 on Nippon Eiga Senmon Channel).

 

87).  Chijin no ai (A Fool’s Love; 1949; dir. Kimura Kengo).  I couldn’t figure out what the male bodybuilder striking poses behind the opening credits was supposed to signify.  But when he returned at the final ending credit, I think I got it.  The climax of the plot is drastically altered from the novel:  unlike the book version, here Naomi (played in fine sex-kitten fashion by Kyô Machiko) surrenders completely to her husband, telling him that she wants to know the secret to real happiness as an obedient wife.  In other words, Jôji the husband wins out and becomes a real man.  I also kept trying to figure out, without much success, if the setting was the early 1920s (as in the novel) or in Occupied postwar Japan (when the film was made).  (12/16/07 at Asagaya Raputa Theater)

 

86).  Kureeji no daisakusen (Crazy Operation; 1966; dir. Furusawa Kengo).  Another glossy Crazy Cats musical-comedy from the 1960s.  Here, Ueki Hitoshi leads the gang in a heist story full of sight gags, musical numbers, and slapstick chase sequences as they try to steal a billion yen from a group of criminals.  Very reminiscent of such contemporary Hollywood films as Casino Royale, What’s New, Pussycat?, and the Dean Martin “Matt Helms” series.  My favorite moment:  in one of the musical sequences, the Crazy Cats briefly and devastatingly parody the “ereki boom” of surf-guitar bands.   (12/11/07 as in-flight movie).

 

85).  Shaberedomo Shaberedomo (Talk, Talk, Talk; 2007; dir. Hirayama Hideyuki).  Warm, nostalgic film about the aura that popular culture forms take on as they fade from view:  rakugo storytelling, baseball, neighborhood festivals, etc.  A young-but-hapless apprentice storyteller takes on three students who hope that learning to perform comic tales will help them overcome personal failings, all of which derive from an inability to speak freely.  The pupils and their teacher all find happiness, of course.  Ideological message:  the key to redemption involves living in Japanese-style homes and wearing Japanese-style clothing.  The storytelling performances are fun, though.  (12/11/07 as in-flight movie). 

 

84).   Lower City (Cidade Baixa; 2005; dir. Sergio Machado).  Filmed in semi-documentary style with lots of hand-held shots, this tells the story of a love triangle set in the slums of lower-class Brazil, with racial tensions thrown in to boot.  Two men, one black and one white, co-own a small freight boat.  They have been friends since childhood, but their homosocial bonds are put to the test when they both fall for the same woman, an exotic dancer who turns tricks on the side.  Lots of sex and violence, but the film never quite gels:  the characters in the end fail to capture our imagination, I think.  (12/10/07 via on-line streaming from www.netflix.com)

 

83).  Hakai (Apostasy; also known as Broken Commandment; 1948; dir. Kinoshita Keisuke).  I’d been wanting to see this adaptation of Shimazaki Tôson’s 1906 novel for many years.  Very much a product of the reformist early postwar years, this version foregrounds the political, starting with an opening title sequence that situates the story in the context of freedom and equality, the new constitution, and the struggle to stamp out evil feudal remnants.  As in the 1962 version directed by Ichikawa Kon, the novel’s ending is rewritten:  instead of emigrating to Texas, the hero Segawa Ushimatsu resolves to stay on in Japan, fighting against discrimination as the heir to his mentor Inoko Rentarô.  The film features extreme camera angles—crane shots from above, shots looking up from the bottom of a cliff, etc.  Playfully, the characters here show familiarity with the literary works of Tôson:  they even recite his poetry.   #6 on the Kinema Junpô Best Ten list for 1948.  (12/4/07 on DVD)

 

82).  Amores Perros (2000; dir. . Alejandro González Iñárritu).  Powerful film about brotherly (and canine) love and hate in the mean streets of Mexico City.  Skillfully written, edited and acted, but also a tad long:  Wong Kar Wai would have brought this in an hour shorter.  (12/3/07 on DVD)

 

81).  Orange County (2002; dir. Jake Kasdan).  An entertaining teen exploitation film that obediently respects the rules of its genre.  In other words, it flirts with immorality (drugs, booze, sex) but ultimately reaches the inevitable moralistic conclusion:  there’s no place like home and even Orange County can sustain the heart.  It’s a nice parody of college admissions anxiety and of Southern California suburban lifestyle—which makes Brian Wilson the perfect choice for the soundtrack.  Just as in the Beach Party teen exploitation films of the early 1960s, this one is studded with cameo appearances by veteran stars:  John Lithgow, Kevin Kline, Lily Tomlin, Chevy Chase, Catherine O’Hara, etc.  (12/1/07 via on-line streaming from www.netflix.com)

 

80).  An Inconvenient Truth (2006; dir. Davis Guggenheim).  After hearing all the buzz about this over the past couple years, I was surprised to see how much of the film is devoted to telling the Al Gore story, as opposed to the global warming story.  I was also touched by part of that story:  the way his life was shaped by his college professor, Roger Revelle, who first presented to Gore as a student decades ago evidence of the C02 build-up in the earth’s atmosphere and of the impact it would have on climate.  Sometimes, we professors really do change lives:  it’s good to be reminded from time to time.  (11/30/07 on DVD). 

 

79).  No Country for Old Men (2007; dir. Joel and Ethan Coen).  Understated almost to the point of overstatement, this is a fine morality play set in the hardscrabble wastelands of Texas.  Not a scrap of soundtrack music is permitted to ease the viewer’s burden:  that would be the easy way out.  The ruling aesthetic is barrenness, and there is just enough moral sense left in the landscape (much of it carried by no-nonsense, sassy wives) to support a scattering of desert vegetation.  (11/23/07 at Grandview Theater, St. Paul, Minnesota).

 

78).  Grizzly Man (2005; dir. Werner Herzog).  Herzog transforms the life story and self-shot footage of grizzly-bear fanatic Timothy Treadwell into a documentary about obsessive film-making.  The moral he discovers has less to do with bruins than with the human soul.  Richard Thompson produces a rather low-key soundtrack.  And then there’s Amy, Treadwell’s girlfriend, who ended up unwillingly sharing his bloody fate:  as Herzog notes, she is the mystery in all of this.  We could probably learn more from her about what makes us do the things we do—except that she didn’t carry a videocamera with her every step of her life.  (11/22/07 on DVD).     

 

77).  The Last King of Scotland (2006; dir. Kevin Macdonald). Yet another white-folks-in-darkest-Africa saga.  Well-made and acted (especially Forest Whitaker as Idi Amin) and yet utterly stereotypical in its ideologies—even as it rather cynically has Amin and other characters denounce those ideologies, a typical strategy of disavowal that allows the audience to have their cake and eat it too.  The soundtrack is a tip-off to the film’s robotic adherence to convention:  the music grows dark on cue just seconds ahead of the visuals, manipulating audience expectations in the most Hollywood of fashions.  (11/14/07 on DVD).

 

76).  The Whistle (1921; dir. Lambert Hillyer).  William S. Hart, the great early Hollywood cowboy, gets down from his horse and lopes squarely in the direction of proletarian film, playing a New English factory hand whose son is killed due to the boss’s neglect of worker safety.  Distraught, he kidnaps the boss’s son to raise in place of his own.  This being Hollywood, though, the opening titles deny any political intent to the story, and the social conflict is resolved not through strike or revolution, but through the love of a mother (and a puppy dog) and the power of prayer.  As the narrative lurches forward, the background paintings on the intertitle cards shift wildly from socialist realism to Art Nouveau to religious kitsch.  (11/11/07 at Docfilms, University of Chicago). 

 

75).  Aguirre, Wrath of God  (Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes; 1972; dir. Werner Herzog).  Powerful performance by Klaus Kinski in the title role.  An allegorical film in which the madness of twentieth-century politics get mapped onto the sixteenth century Spanish empire in the New World (all the characters speak German in the Amazon jungle), Herzog here keeps the soundtrack and the visuals muted (half of the music is diegetically motivated) so that mise en scène tells the whole wretched story.  (11/10/07 via on-line streaming from www.netflix.com).  

 

74).  Ojôsan kanpai (Cheers to the young miss!; 1949; dir. Kinoshita Keinosuke).  Utterly charming early postwar romantic comedy.  Hara Setsuko plays the daughter of a once-elite family now down on its luck; Sano Shûji is the uncultivated but ambitious young man who falls for her.  Visually, the film is packed with neo-realist style street scenes and inventive shots and edits, and the classical-based soundtrack plays to fine effect almost nonstop throughout.  The hit 1991 television series 101st Proposal seems to have lifted its plot directly from this film:  the elite and beautiful classical pianist with a dead fiancé she can’t forget falls for a loveable ruffian.  And the film features a brief sequence of men dancing with women and women dancing with women (neither a surprise) – but also men dancing with men.  #6 on the Kinema Junpô Best Ten list for 1949. (11/9/07 on DVD) 

 

73).  Enoken no seishun suikoden (Enoken’s Water Margin of Youth; 1934; dir. Yamamoto Kajirô).  A wonderful example of 1930s ero-guro-nansensu (erotic-grotesque-nonsense) culture, this film features the always charming Enoken, first as a failing college student in a one-sided romance, and then as a spoiled company president married to another woman.  There are tons of musical numbers (including one Hawaiian song), bouquets of chorus girls everywhere you look, and a terrific barroom brawl at the climax that would make Buster Keaton proud.  The film clearly references both the Marx Brothers and Charlie Chaplin.  It’s also full of creative visuals:  odd camera angles, zooms, cross-cuttings, etc.  The chorus girl sequences pulse with energy:  the massed female bodies are in constant motion, creating wave forms and other patterns while the camera swoops and slides, all adding up to a remarkably kinetic effect.  (10/31/07 on DVD)

 

72).  The Cheat (1915; dir. Cecil B. DeMille).  The film that made Sessue Hayakawa a star (see #71 below). In a drama that revolves around the fear of miscegenation (its climax teeters on the verge of a public lynching), Hayakawa plays an evil Japanese elite in NYC.  In 1918, though, the film was edited due to Japanese protests to change the Hayakawa character’s nationality to Burmese; this is the version I saw.  (One wonders if there were any Burmese in the U.S. at the time, and what they thought about all of this.)  At any rate, in this one the villain entraps a white socialite who has fallen into debt, and takes out his payment from her body by force, a rape scene depicted through stunning symbolism.  The use of shadows and light is striking throughout, and both Hayakawa and Fanny Ward, the actress who plays the heroine, give strong performances.  (10/26/07 via on-line streaming from www.netflix.com).  

 

71).  Forbidden Paths (1917; dir. Robert Thornby).  Fascinating vehicle for Sessue Hayakawa, the Japanese superstar of early Hollywood film.  Here he plays the suave hero, who sacrifices himself to save the (white) American girl he loves.  The use of cross-cutting is remarkably sophisticated, ala D.W. Griffith, and the cut usually takes place via similar action:  two hands touch profanely in one location, and then we immediately cut to two hands touching in a sacred death bed scene in another, etc.  Hayakawa’s charisma shines through:  you can see why he rivaled Valentino in popularity. (10/26/07 at University of Chicago Film Studies Center).

 

70).  Bounce Ko Gals (1997; dir. Harada Masato).  An odd little film on enjo kôsai (compensated dating by high school girls), it manages to individualize the usually demonized teenage girls who supposedly sold their bodies in large numbers to older men in 1990s Japan.  In the face of repeated scorn, the central female characters come across as being above all resilient:  like the children in Truffaut’s Small Change they bounce when they fall.  Yakusho Kôji, on the other hand, never really settles into his character, a yakuza chieftain troubled by the newly risen amateur competition to his more traditional prostitution racket.  #6 on Kinema Junpô Best Ten List for 1997.  (10/21/07 on DVD)

 

69).  The Knack….And How To Get It (1965; dir. Richard Lester).  The film Lester made between Hard Day’s Night and Help, a Swinging London farce about a frustrated young schoolteacher who wants to learn the knack of seducing women from the more experienced Lothario who rents a room from him.  Formally more experimental than the Beatles’ films, it provides a remarkable combination of cinéma vérité and surrealism, with wild editing swoops and a soundtrack that is frequently out of synch with the visuals:  we often hear voices (a Greek chorus of disdainful older Londoners) when no speaker is present, or alternately silence when someone is saying something on screen.  (10/19/07 via on-line streaming from www.netflix.com).

 

68).  Queen of Sports (Tiyu huanhou; 1934; dir. Sun Yu).  Another great Shanghai silent-era film; Li Lili is positively luminous as the young girl from the countryside who finds meaning in the city through the disciplining of her body and mind through sports.  Lots of instructional images included for the clear purpose of inculcating hygiene and sports in the spectator.  The camera seems always to be moving throughout the film, setting a kinetic tone that matches the athleticism on display.  (10/19/07 on DVD).

 

67).  Zoku aoi sanmyaku (Green mountains, part two; 1949, dir. Imai Tadashi).  In the concluding half of this epic soap opera (see #66 below), the issue of sexual repression as unhealthy comes to the foreground.  The teasing and rumor-mongering that assail innocent young couples are all symptoms of pathologically suppressed desires, the good characters argue repeatedly.  My favorite moment:  when three evil young toughs taunt a fine young couple out swimming by singing “Tokyo Boogie Woogie” at them. #2 on the Kinema Junpô Best Ten list for 1949  (10/13/07 on DVD).

 

66).  Aoi Sanmyaku zenhen (Green mountains, part one; 1949, dir. Imai Tadashi).  One of the most popular films of the early postwar period in Japan, it’s a kind of reworking of Natsume Sōseki’s 1906 novel Botchan, except here it is an idealistic female teacher (played by the inimitable Hara Setsuko) sent from the city to confront the backward ways of a rural school and its town.  The film provides a wonderful snapshot of early Occupation-period reformist humanism, with all the evils of “feudalism” cited:  group conformism, suppression of women, use of violent coercion, etc.  Hattori Ryōichi composed the soundtrack, which includes the title song, one of the biggest hits of the era. #2 on the Kinema Junpô Best Ten list for 1949. (10/12/07 on DVD).

 

65). Sunrise (Tianming; 1933; dir. Sun Yu).  Startling combination of country-girl-goes-bad-in-the-big-city melodrama with revolutionary agit prop.  One of the great Chinese silent films, it features a stunning performance by Li Lili as an naïve newcomer to 1920s Shanghai; she gets tricked into prostitution but then awakens to the national revolutionary cause.  This allows the audience to enjoy its bad girl, bare legs and all, even as it celebrates her selfless devotion to the fatherland.  All you have to do is smile, the film says over and over again:  if you do that the dawn will break.  (10/12/07 on DVD). 

 

64).  Babel (2006; dir. Alejandro González Iñárritu).  Essentially a remake of D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance, with its parts scattered through the contemporary world rather than across historical time—but with the same moral fervor and strong-handed (armed?) eliciting of connections.  Emotionally powerful, even as it clearly manipulates the audience—again, Griffith comes to mind.  The manipulation of sound in the Tokyo disco sequence, on the other hand, is pure Kurosawa.  (10/10/07 on DVD). 

 

63).  Onna ga kaidan o agaru toki (When a woman ascends the stairs; 1960; dir. Naruse Mikio).  I’m quite fond of Naruse’s films, but somehow managed to avoid seeing this one until now.  It’s widely acclaimed as one of his masterpieces.  While I found it quite good, I also found it a bit monotonous in comparison to other works by the director—mostly what we get is a sullen anger, with little or no variation from that emotional keynote.  As always, Naruse draws out a fine performance from Takamine Hideko as a Ginza bar hostess, used mercilessly by all those around her and surrounded by men who ultimately refuse to rescue her.  There’s a nice, sparingly used, soundtrack of sleazy nightclub jazz.  It’s great, yes, but not really, really great. (10/6/07 on DVD).   

 

62).  Two Stars in the Milky Way (Yinhe Shuangxin; 1931; dir. Tomsei Sze).  Fascinating early Chinese film from the heyday of Shanghai culture.  Like many of Ozu’s silent works, this one labors to convey visually the experience of music (apparently, the film had a wax soundtrack record that was to be played in synch with certain scenes, though that is lost now).  The daughter of a composer who delights in both Western and Chinese music becomes a famous movie actress; she falls in love with her dashing leading man, but duty to the family overrules passion, and the two end up tragically alone.  Among the highlights here, what must be one of the earliest portraits of miniature golf in world cinema history  (9/28/07 on DVD).

 

61).  Hatsujô kateikyôshi: sensei no aijiru (The glamorous life of Hana Sachiko; 2003; dir. Meike Mitsuru).  An attempt to resuscitate the old 1970s “pink film” genre that combined soft-core pornography with avant-garde aesthetics and leftist politics, this starts out with a breezy tone and then, perhaps inevitably, runs out of ideas and energy.  The cloned finger of George W. Bush serves as a kind of mental sex toy, while the muttering the words “Noam Chomsky” functions as the foolproof aphrodisiac.  (9/28/07 via on-line streaming from www.netflix.com)

 

60).  The Constant Gardener (2005; dir. Fernando Meirelles).  A film about weeding….I remember that many of the early reviews praised this but complained that it partook of the old “good white people helping the poor black Africans” mode of imperial nostalgia.  That is certainly there, even if the villains are also largely white (it still renders the locals into passive tools of the active Brits), but I was struck more by how it reproduced yet another old melodrama ideology:  the way the beautiful female corpse cements the bonds between the male characters (cf. Tokutomi Roka’s early 20th century Japanese best-seller, Hototogisu):  can you spell “homosociality”?  (9/26/07 on DVD)

 

59).  Nippon musekinin yarō (The most irresponsible guy in Japan; 1962 dir. Furusawa Kengo).  Second in the series, and quite good.  A bit more song-and-dance than in the first one, and the social satire is more biting:  the melancholic emptiness of salaryman existence is detailed with sharp wit.  Once again, Ueki Hitoshi plays the scheming, devil-may-care salaryman who tricks his colleagues, girlfriends, and enemies—only to wind up on top at the end, the result of his many acts of sheer irresponsibility.  (9/23/07 on DVD).

 

58).  Nippon musekinin jidai (The era of irresponsibility:  Japan; 1962; dir. Furusawa Kengo).  The first of the “Nippon musekinin” series that made film stars of Ueki Hitoshi and the Crazy Cats, all shot in glorious TōhōScope widescreen.  Ueki plays the role that would become his signature piece:  the lazy, scheming salaryman who nonetheless, by exploiting the human weaknesses of everyone around him, winds up on top.  It’s a key exhibit in the genre of “salaryman” culture that developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and quite enjoyable.  (9/16/07 on DVD).  

 

57).  Brokeback Mountain (2005; dir. Ang Lee).  Terrific, of course, with classic performances by Heath Ledger and many others.  I kept flashing back to John Ford’s Westerns as I watched.  It also struck me that this is today’s version of Death of a Salesman (okay, I just happened across a copy of Arthur Miller’s script at a neighborhood bookstore yesterday):  the film probes emotional depth and tragedy in the socioeconomic class where the mainstream liberal audience least expects to find it.  I liked the soundtrack as music, but found it distracting:  as Emmy Lou Harris, Willie Nelson, Steve Earle and others played in the background, I kept saying to myself, this isn’t the music that Red State ranch hands love, this is the music that Blue State hipsters listen to when they imagine they’ve gone cowboy.  (9/12/07 on DVD)

 

56).  Janken musume (Rock-scissors-paper girls; 1955; dir. Sugie Toshio).  The first, and by many accounts the best, of the “Sannin Musume” (The three girls) series starring Misora Hibari, Yukimura Izumi, and Chiemi Eri.  All three were in their mid-teens when they filmed this glossy musical-comedy-melodrama.  The song-and-dance numbers are quite strong.  Hibari performs “La Vie en Rose” in English (in fact, all three sing in English in the film) and also performs a kabuki-style dance sequence – a polyglot hybrid of both contemporary American and “traditional” Japanese culture characterized the first decade of her career.  The final roller coaster sequence sums up the film aptly:   like the amusement park ride, the film is a well-crafted product of the leisure-and-entertainment industry aimed at newly affluent Japanese consumers, and its storyline provides a mostly satisfying mix of ups and downs.  It’s also interesting how central the sex industry is to the narrative:  Hibari plays the illegitimate daughter of a former geisha, and Izumi plays a maiko about to be married off to an old man against her will.  (9/8/09 on DVD)

 

55).  The Illusionist (2006; dir. Neil Burger).  Not quite as flashy as The Prestige, but still a strong work that fantasizes about the loves and passions of conjurors from a century ago, one that (quite in synch with its historical setting) alludes to silent film techniques.  Strong performances all around, but the production design steals the show:  you really feel as though you’ve sunk into the world of turn-of-the-century Vienna.  The film also features a compelling soundtrack by Philip Glass, one that all comes together very nicely in the closing credits theme.  (9/6/07 on DVD)

 

54).  Finding Neverland (2004; dir. Marc Forster).  Predictable in a way that a movie celebrating the creative imagination shouldn’t be, this is still emotionally effective – in part, probably, because of its very predictability.  Johnny Depp gives his usual stunning performance (here, in an appropriately low key) as playwright J.M. Barrie struggling to create Peter Pan.  It’s great to see Julie Christie in anything.  The film features some flashy camerawork that calls too much attention to itself, but makes up for it with a lovely old-fashioned soundtrack (9/3/07 on DVD).L

 

53).  Letters from Iwo Jima (2006; dir Clint Eastwood).  I finally managed to see this one, which was a big hit in Japan last year .  It’s terrific, as everyone has said, and as others have probably already noted, it contains many references to the films of Kurosawa:  the two low-ranking bumblers from Hidden Fortress, the cavernous settings from The Lower Depths, etc.  Which all reminds me that Kurosawa never really made a WWII epic picture – an odd omission from his canon.  There is the wartime sequence in Dreams, and of course the references to the war in Quiet Duel, No Regrets for My Youth, and Rhapsody in August, among others, and then there’s the wartime propaganda film, The Most Beautiful.  But why didn’t Kurosawa produce a version of, say, Seven Samurai or Rashomon set in 1944 or 45? Then again, the war and its aftermath provide the subtext to many of his films, especially in the first half of his career.  The one thing Kurosawa would have done differently from Eastwood:  the music.  Eastwood’s soundtrack is a bit too self-consciously restrained and elegant; I suspect Kurosawa would have chosen something more overtly expressive.  (8/24/07 on DVD). 

 

52).  Little Miss Sunshine (2006; dir. Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris).  As many others have noted, this vicious little comedy actually provides a serious, heartfelt commentary on the state of the family in present-day America – with the accent on that last proper noun, given the strategic use of the “United We Stand” billboard and the song “America the Beautiful” in key scenes.  It’s lovely to see Alan Arkin once again exercise his comedic timing.  (8/16/07 on rental DVD). 

 

51).  Ratatouille (2007; dir. Brad Bird).  Sweet without pushing it too far.  Other than in the technical details of animation, the film shows little ambition, yet it achieves its modest aims in a satisfying way that recalls Hollywood studio movies from the 1930s and 40s.  (7/19/07 at Landmark Regent Theater in Westwood, Los Angeles). 

 

50).  Sicko (2007; dir. Michael Moore).  As others have pointed out, Moore’s persona in this documentary is a bit more disingenuous than in earlier films:  he already knows the answers to the questions he asks here, and his moments of apparent surprise upon learning some allegedly new fact are basically unbelievable.  Still, he remains a gifted filmmaker with an inimitable, engaging style, and he drives home with sledge-hammer blows points about America’s health care system that deserve the sledge hammer.  Moore’s films will continue to be watched long after we have national health, workable gun control, and peace in Iraq.  (7/16/07 at the Mann National Theater in Westwood, Los Angeles).

 

49).  The Last Mimzy (2007; dir. Robert Shaye).  An incomprehensible mash-up of Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Rainn Wilson does his best Richard Dreyfuss imitation), Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Lewis Carroll and Tibetan Buddhism.  And it’s all topped off with a faux Pink Floyd number from Roger Waters.  Really creepy, both intentionally and unintentionally.  (7/14/07 as in-flight movie). 

 

48).  Firehouse Dog (2007; dir. Todd Holland).  A kids’ movie about loss, death, mourning, and survivor guilt—and not half bad.  George Orwell wrote an essay many decades ago about how all the great children’s stories of his age were politically reprehensible, but I think the situation, at least in contemporary Hollywood family films, has changed:  the issues of race, class, and exploitation are all front-and-center here, and the heroes are government employees.  (7/14/07 as in-flight movie)

 

47). Tears of the Sun (2003; dir. Antoine Fuqua).  A bit more thoughtful than the usual Bruce Willis flick, but just barely.  As always when Hollywood goes to Africa, it is the heroic white men who rescue not only the white woman, but also the ‘natives’ – and often, as here, rescue them from their own alleged backwardness.  (7/8/07 broadcast on TV Asahi network).

 

46). Ôatari sanshoku musume (Big hit for the tri-color girls; 1957; dir. Sugie Toshio).  This week would have been Misora Hibari’s 70th birthday, and NHK is marking the occasion by airing a number of her films and tv specials.  This was the third title in the “Sannin Musume” (Three Girls) series starring Hibari, Chiemi Eri and Yukimura Izumi.  A musical comedy with remarkably high production values (it was the first widescreen production released by the Tôhô studios, for starters), this is a terrific example of late 1950s goraku (mass entertainment) movie-making.  The plot revolves around a complicated web of mutual deceptions, with true love finally emerging in accordance with the Japanese proverb “uso kara deta makoto.”  Each of the three girls is assigned a dominant color in the production design—blue for Hibari, yellow for Eri, and red for Izumi—hence, the title.  The influence of American teen culture is everywhere:  cute boys are compared to James Dean and Elvis Presley, and Izumi performs her version of the Gene Vincent hit “Be-Bop-A-Lula.”  The final sequence is a water-skiing spectacular, though the use of stunt doubles is blatantly obvious.  (6/23/07 on VHS taped from NHK BS-2).

 

45).  Ongaku no chikara (The power of music; 2007; no director listed).  A new DVD of a benefit concert held for the legendary Japanese recording engineer, Yoshino Kinji, who suffered a stroke last year.  Among the participants, all of whom had worked in the studio with Yoshino, are Yano Akiko, Hosono Haruomi, Yuzu, Sano Motoharu, and Tomobe Masato.  The performances are quite lovely and heartfelt, and there’s a shared sense of impending morality among these 50- and 60-something musicians (setting aside for the moment Yuzu, who had a big hit last year with the lovely “Mo sorosoro 30-sai,” or “I’m almost thirty!”):  several performers comment from the stage that the next benefit concert might be held on their own behalf.  (6/18/07 on DVD).

 

44).  Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007; dir. Gore Verbinski).  There are, I’ll grant you, some nice visual moments here—the little crab-thingies, for example, are cool.  Watching the Japanese-dubbed version, it was hard to read the quality of Johnny Depp’s performance.  On the other hand, it was clear that the use (or rather, underuse) of Keith Richards as Jack Sparrow’s father provided a perfect example of the leaden thinking that passes for creativity in Hollywood:  the kind of creativity one can expect from people who declare their intention to “think outside the box.”  And then they went and misspelled my sister’s name in the closing credits – twice!  (6/10/07 at the Baus Theater in Kichijoji, Tokyo). 

 

43).  Nianchan (My second brother; 1959; dir. Imamura Shôhei).  Early film by Imamura, a neo-realist take on the life of a family of four orphaned children in a hardscrabble coal-mining town in 1953, when the Korean War boom ends and the company is cutting back.  Quite moving, with terrific performances by the child actors, elegantly constructed shots, and a subdued mandolin-based soundtrack.  More conventional than Imamura’s later work, but even here the hard political edge (many of the characters are zai-Nichi – ethnic Korean) and stylistic ambition that characterize his best films are present.  #3 on the Kinema Junpô Best Ten list for 1959.  (6/9/07 broadcast on Channel Neco).

 

42).  Pirates of the Caribbean:  Dead Man’s Chest (2006; dir. Gore Verbinski).  As so often happens with Hollywood sequels, the original’s dependence on quirky characters and offbeat performances gives way to mega-budget special effects, and all the charm that made the original loveable is tossed out the window.  Johnny Depp is almost an afterthought here, as the story centers on monsters and squid people.  In other words, this one really is based more on the Disneyland attraction than on any sense of story or chemistry.  On the other hand, the incoherent ideologemes from the first film here cohere into a recognizable, albeit cynical, critique of globalization:  the villain who shows up in the opening sequences reminds me of no one so much as NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman.  (6/8/07 on DVD).

 

41). Toki wo kakeru shôjo (The girl who conquered time; 1983: dir. Ôbayashi Nobuhiko).  A big hit in 1983, mainly because of the presence of teen idol Harada Tomoyo in the title role.  We sometimes describe someone who looks emotionally dead as having a vacant face; like so many Kadokawa studio films from this period, this movie has a vacant face.  The characters all seem to be taking heavy doses of anti-depressants in this story of high school romance that involves time travel.  Ôbayashi tries to liven things up with his usual stylistic tricks:  messing around with the color exposure, using wipes and keyhole shots, throwing in the odd montage sequence, etc.  The soundtrack, too, is by the very talented Masatoya Masataka.  But the thing just sits there, inert and dead.  (6/6/07 on VHS).

 

40). The Producers (2005; dir. Susan Stroman).  I was very much in the mood for a comedy and this delivered:  had tears of laughter rolling down my cheeks.  I hardly missed Zero Mostel at all.  What I liked best was how this functioned as a fine example of the very genre that it parodied:  the Broadway musical, with Damon Runyonesque characters, etc.  As a result, it does a feel a bit stagey at times, but that’s a small price to pay—and after all, it is a filmed play, a Broadway musical, in fact.  Who needs cinematic realism when you can get old stage pros hamming it up?  (6/04/07 on DVD). 

 

39).  The Shaggy Dog (2006: dir. Brian Robbins).  Reasonable children’s fare, at times funny, but at other times a bit mean-spirited:  how funny, really, is it to knock over an old woman using a walker? The usual Dad’s-ignoring-the-family-in-pursuit-of-success storyline.  But guess what?  There’s a happy ending.  (5/31/07 on DVD)

 

38).  Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl (2003; dir. Gore Verbinski).  This was broadcast on here as part of the publicity build-up for the third film in the series, just released here last week.  As entertaining as I remembered it to be, but what struck me this time is how the film is studded with fragments of ideology critique (e.g., the way that infinite desire for acquisition is a form of hell, or the way that the curse traces back to Cortez’ conquest), but how strenuously it labors to ensure that those fragments never align into a meaningful constellation.  (5/27/07 on TV Asahi network)

 

37).  Memoirs of a Geisha (2005; dir. Rob Marshall).  I’d put off watching this for as long as I could, and it turned out to be just as bad as I feared it would—not just in ideological terms, but also aesthetic.  In other words, it’s boring as all hell.  Gong Li and Yakusho Kōji make game efforts to generate some energy within their cardboard-cutout characters.  But when they go absent from the screen, the film just falls limp and plays possum.  Honorable reader, I most regretfully fear I must pronounce this movie unworthy of your most noble aspirations.  (5/24/07 on DVD).

 

36).  Cuba no koibito (Lover in Cuba; 1969; dir. Kuroda Kazuo).  An unusual transnational co-production, celebrating the tenth anniversary of the Cuban Revolution (Uncle Fidel himself makes a couple of cameo appearances).  A skirt-chasing Japanese sailor arrives in Havana and falls for the beautiful Marcia, who wants only to devote her life to the cause of revolution.  He achieves both a political and a sexual awakening, a typical New Left Japanese film narrative.  Shot in semi-documentary style with a kinetic camerawork style that verges on the dizzying, this manages to hold your interest more fully than many similar films from the period, in part because of the strong performances by the two leads.  But Kuroda has a weird fascination with shots of large-breasted women carrying rifles—straight out of Russ Meyers.  Also includes much historical documentary footage, especially of the Bay of Pigs invasion.  (5/23/07 at the National Film Center). 

 

35).  Yureru (Sway; 2006; dir. Nishikawa Miwa).  Fine film about how brotherly love and rivalry bleed into one another.  Odagiri Joe plays a nihilistic young photographer who reluctantly returns to his rural hometown for his mother’s funeralThere, he seduces his shy older brother’s girlfriend, setting in motion a disastrous string of events that ends up shaking (or swaying) the lives of all the characters to the very core.  Nishikawa never takes the easy route, choosing to leave the audience in suspense rather than provide simplistic answers:  why should we enjoy clear lines of causality when the characters themselves aren’t sure why they do the things they do?  A funky jazz soundtrack at the beginning gives way, appropriately, to elegiac piano as the narrative unfolds.  The script begins to lose its way in the last half hour or so, but still a strong work.  #2 on the Kinema Junpô Best Ten list for 2006. (5/20/07 on DVD).

 

34).  Little Women (1949; dir. Mervyn LeRoy).  Nice, glossy MGM film (though the painted backdrops are quite realistic, in that they look exactly like painted backdrops) with terrific performances by June Allyson as Jo and Elizabeth Taylor as Amy.  The male characters all come off as dull and weak, but that is just as it should be.  (5/5/07 on DVD). 

 

33).  Dreamgirls (2006; dir. Bill Condon).  Good fun, and Eddie Murphy is terrific.  But while the performers deliver the songs with authority, the tunes themselves are more Broadway than Motown.  Then again, there are worse ways to spend two hours than watching a competent musical.  (4/30/07 as in-flight movie).

 

32).  Notes on a Scandal (2006; dir. Richard Eyre).  Excellent film, in which the always amazing Judi Dentch gets a chance to stretch her considerable talents to the limit, playing a repressed lesbian school-teacher trying to manipulate a pretty young colleague (Cate Blanchett) into a relationship.  Astonishing performances all around.  (4/30/07 as in-flight movie).

 

31).  Bushi no ichibu (Love and honor; 2006; dir. Yamada Yôji).  Kimura Takuya plays a low-ranking samurai loses first his sight and then, increasingly, his place in the world.  He manages to restore his honor by defeating the villain in a swordfight (complete with Kurosawa-like gusts of wind), but as a blind swordsman Kimu-taku poses no threat to the memory of Katsu Shintarô.  As in any Yamada film, there are many striking moments, but overall this isn’t one of the director’s best.  Not enough sentimentality, I think—probably because Kimu-taku can only play the cool, ironic postmodern hero. #5 on the Kinema Junpô Best Ten list for 2006 (4/26/07 as in-flight movie).

 

30).  Eragon (2006; dir. Stefen Fangmeier).  Why do all fantasy films these days look and feel the same?  The fantastic is, I fear, becoming routine and ordinary.  (4/26/07 as in-flight movie).

 

29). Hula Girls (2006; dir. Lee Sang-il).  A big hit here last year, this is a very commercial movie about deindustrialization and the rise of a service-based economy in a rural Tôhoku town.  It’s 1965 and the local coal mine is dying; the company decides to save the town by building a Hawaii-themed resort, complete with hula girl dancers recruited from among the daughters and wives of the miners about to lose their way of life.  In a sense, it’s Flashdance with grass skirts and leis, but Lee (who explored similar territory a few years back in 69, a much stronger film) the gritty feel of life in the hardscrabble mining town is conveyed effectively.  Amazingly enough, it’s based on a true story.  #1 on the Kinema Junpô Best Ten list for 2006. (4/21/07 on rental DVD).

 

28).  Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006; dir. Larry Charles).  It’s just as funny as everyone says, and just as discomfiting.  Given the unscripted nature of much of the movie, the filmmakers were limited in how much they could shape its message, but the parallels between Borat’s parodic Kazakhstani bigotry and its real-life American counterpart could have been brought out more fully.  Otherwise, the film tries to have it both ways:  laughing at “us” while allowing us the comfort of laughing at “them.”  But great comedy makes us laugh at what usually makes us squeamish, and this one goes straight for the jugular vein of squeamishness.  (4/15/07 downloaded from Movielink.com) 

 

27).  Sakuran (2007; dir. Ninagawa Mika).  Now I suppose I really have to see Memoirs of a Geisha, just to see how badly it fares by comparison to this spectacular tale of life in the Edo pleasure quarters.  I’d heard such great things about this ahead of time that the film was almost inevitably a little disappointing, but it is still a striking piece of work.  I’ve been building up a huge crush on Tsuchiya Anna over the past few years, and her performance here only intensifies my infatuation:  she stars as a hard-bitten courtesan sold into the brothels as a child and raised quite literally in the school of hard knocks.  The set and costume design are appropriately garish and overloaded:  the Japanese word iroppoi applies in both senses of the word (sexy and colorful).  The film also brings out the violence and harshness of life in the quarters:  it is precisely the environment in which a hard-as-nails figure like Tsuchiya’s character would thrive.  The film also boasts the best soundtrack on a Japanese movie in years, by the inimitable Sheena Ringo—whose husky voice, my wife points out, matches that of Tsuchiya quite well.  (4/7/07 at Kichijôji Baus Theater).

 

26).  Hong Kong Nocturne (Xiang jiang hua yue ye