A Guilty Conscience (2023)

Once or twice in our lifetime, if we were lucky we got woken up from a slumber of our own making.  This force majeure  jolts us to remember what we long suppressed like why we wanted to be a lawyer in the first place.  Nobody wants to grow up working 27 hours a day kowtow to the rich and corrupted.  And yet we have grown to accept that as part of growing up and being adults.  A Guilty Conscience (2023), starring the multi-talented Wong Chi Wah with an equally impressive supporting cast, tells such a story.  Wong plays the titular character, an acerbic tongue attorney, and hence the Chinese title, who was passed over for promotions in part for his failure to manage up.  He later quit his job at the bench as a magistrate and went back to private practice with the sole intention of cozying up to the rich or in his words to lick those assholes where presumably money is dripping out.

Lam's scheme to park himself next to the rich quickly falls apart.  He was the defense attorney of a mistress who stood accused of child abuse and  endangerment of her own young daughter.  Her paramour and father of their love child is a doctor and a married man to the daughter of a prominent family.  Both families of the married couple are well respected in Hong Kong for their wealth if not for anything else.  The child endangerment case against the mistress quickly made a turn for the worst.  The child died from injury sustained and his client, the mother of a now deceased child was convicted of manslaughter and was sentenced to seventeen years in prison.  The conviction in large part was due to Lam's professional negligence--his failure to secure written affidavits from the witnesses, that is from both the father of the diseased  and the security guard and Lam's general insouciance towards the case as a whole.

His failure to defend his client left him badly shaken with a guilty conscience, and hence the English title.  The silver lining of his legal debacle, if any, is it makes him reassess his life thus far like why he wanted to be an attorney in the first place: it's about justice and helping defend those who can't defend themselves.   He vows to save his client using all he's left and can muster.  What he lacks in money and powerful connections he more than makes up in his doggedness and not to mention his acerbic tongue to outwit and out maneuver the prosecution.  By saving his client he also saves himself from straying from his original ideal of justice for all and to a larger extent righting a rigged justice system that not only favors the rich and powerful but at times also punishes the powerless and penniless.  AGC is a welcome departure from the all too common gangster genre forever popular in Hong Kong cinema since the 80s.  In present day Hong Kong, people live in extreme wealth disparity and many question law enforcement and the judicial system behind closed doors.  Hong Kong nowadays can't even just have simple evil like regular psychopath who kills and dismemebers for pleasure.  Instead Hong Kong now has an extreme brutal murder that potentially involves cross border organized crime, corruption, and filthy amount of cash: a case that embodies everything that is wrong in Hong Kong.  Lam in his courtroom closing statement utters, "In the past, all were equal in front of the law.  Now, the poor suck dick before the law," a sentiment that's widely shared and believed in Hong Kong.  AGC provides a two hour reprieve for an audience who has to live everyday brutality that's now Hong Kong.

Moonlight (2016)

There is probably a dozen reasons to see a movie.  But this is a first for me--I would like to hear your take on it.

Barry Jenkins' Moonlight tells the age-old story of growing up and finding one's place in this world.  If you are some kid living in a Manhattan high-rise that bears your family name, your struggle could be setting up a lemonade stand in that posh apartment building.  But's that's another story for another time.  If you are Chiron aka Little or Black, the protagonist of Moonlight, it could be a myriad of things like being black growing up sexually unsure in a single mother household in a drug, poverty, and violence infested environment.

Chiron's life is a series of disappointments.  His mom is a crack addict who ends up in rehab.  His only father figure Juan whose tenderness and generosity are as genuine as he is a crack supplier, his mom's crack supplier no less.  His first romantic sexual encounter is his only friend Kevin who also betrays him for the acceptance of a group of bullies.  All these people love Chiron.  But love simply is not enough.  Chiron ends up trapping in the street, with seeming success, just like his childhood father figure.

Trevante Rhodes who plays the adult Chiron delivers the most awkward, in the best sense of the word, and the sexually palpable scene when Chiron confesses to Kevin that he is the only man that ever touches him.  The film ends with a shot pulling in from behind Little, the little Chiron, in the beach then Little looking into the camera.  Chiron is no longer the frail kid that he was, he is a bona fide trapper that can easily bench press ten times his body weight and kills a grown man with his bare hand but deep down he is still that same awkward child who yearns to connect, to love and to be loved.  Aren't we all?

Arrival (2016)

Arrival (2016).  Or how to read ink squirt from giant alien octopus.  This borefest is about time and how time doesn't have a beginning or an end, that is, provided that you know how to communicate in squirt ink.  Louise, played by Amy Adams, is a linguist enlisted by the US army to communicate with the aliens.  Together with some guy called Ian, played by Jeremy Renner, the two keep going in and out of the giant spacecraft parked or floated somewhere above Montana.  Often times a boring movie is just a boring movie.  Arrival fails to deliver any intellectual rigor in the sci-fi genre nor jolts us with any action if only to wake us up every now and then.  The cinematography is a constant drab and looks horribly underexposed.  Amy Adams' performance is not understated, just underwhelming.  With the help of a $2 freshly brewed small coffee I manage to stay awake the entire time if only in a fugue state which is not too different from what Louise experiences in the movie.

The Mermaid (2016)

I am surprised and delighted that The Mermaid is played in theaters in New York City.  I have been a Chow's fan since I discovered his brand of comedy many years ago.  Back then as there was only video tape and I wasn't especially well off or well connected so I only saw his works haphazardly.  On the occasions I saw his movies or some snippets or episodes of his TV series, I thoroughly enjoyed them.  Chow always plays this beloved underdog who despite or because of his non sensical non sequitur acts and his utter disregard to the absurd and seemingly insurmountable reality, always overcomes.

 Then one day Chow appeared on the cover of the Sunday New York Times magazine.  If I remember correctly it was a fashion issue.  He was doing a mid air split or something next to a lamp post, a silly pose, I think.  That should be around the time of Shaolin Soccer or Kung Fu Hustle, two of my favorites that kind of established him somewhat in the consciousness of Hollywood.  More importantly and reassuringly, Chow proves that he can make great dramatic comedy with Hong Kong production in his rear view mirror with much of his comedic integrity intact though I can see that Chow is shedding most of his witty nonsensical Cantonese dialogues that define and catapult his career early on, in favor of more action and better production which translate better in cinema worldwide.

The Mermaid or Mei Ren Yu (2016) is a Chow's film without Chow in front of the camera.  Things certainly won't be the same without Chow being front and center on everything.  With Mei, Chow has crossed the line of being stupendously silly to being incoherently stupid.  It used to be that the audience does the laughing, may that be something Chow or his crew says or does while he and his crew appear totally oblivious to the plight and absurdity of their situation.  Mei is just the opposite, often times, the comedy is heavy-handed and the only persons laughing are the self-aware actors themselves, it feels so forced.   I can see Chow tries to add production value so as to appear Hollywood or something (there is indeed a 3D version) but both the production and special effects just fall flat.  Nobody goes to see a Chow's movie for its special effects or production value so what if they are sub-par compared to Hollywood's?  It wouldn't matter one iota if the comedy holds up.  Alas, this isn't the case.

Perhaps the opening scene in which a group of tourists visit a museum best encapsulates the entire movie as envisioned by the director and experienced by me--the tourists, surrogate for the audience, visit a so-called museum only to discover that the exhibits are mere props and scams so the unscrupulous curator can turn a dime on the gullible and the unsuspected.  Chow's tourists laugh and jeer at the exhibits with gusto as while me in the real audience find the material hardly amusing.

I heard the movie is doing well in China and in Asia in general.  So what do I know?

The Hateful Eight 70mm, Star Wars: The Force Awakens

The big news about The Hateful Eight is of course it was shot on 65mm film stock and transferred to 70mm print for projection.  Just like The Sound of Music or the good old days.  I believe the film was shot anamorphic meaning the image is actually squeezed vertically, and later un-squeezed (on to the 70mm print or during projection?) to make it even wider at 2.76:1 instead of the usual cinematic 2:39:1.

I went to see it in a movie theater by the Lincoln Square in Manhattan, which I think is one of the best.  It also houses one of the best IMAX theaters in the nation, or so I experience, or read and led to believe.

The few things I notice is the film is really film and by that I mean it evokes my early memories of seeing film with warts and all.  One thing I notice is that it isn't as wide or big as I thought it would be.  It is supposed to be wider than what's out there but I don't feel it that way.  The movie screen doesn't seem that gigantic or wide to begin with.  The flicker is pretty obvious right in the Overture before the start of the actual movie; and when the audio is off or low I can hear the sound of the projection which I think is something buried deep in my childhood memory and suddenly resurrected.  The outdoor blizzard scenes don't seem as sharp as it should be or I want it to be perhaps it's the nature of the medium or the scenes or a combination of them.  But the indoor shots seem sharp or sharp enough just not digitally sharp.  It has a rich quality to it.  The audio is great and I never notice any out of sync with the picture even though I tried hard to look at the lips too see if the dialogues are out of sync or not, and they aren't.  The film actually comes with intermission which I don't recall I ever experienced except for double features I saw eons ago.

So what is old is new again.  Film seems to be the next frontier, to be discovered, tamed and enjoyed once again.

By the way, the film is typical Tarantino, that's just another way of saying it got plenty of dialogues and gores, actually not so much for the latter by my standard.  Do I like it?  I like it all right but off the top of my head I am still more blown away by Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill--I saw Reservoir Dog on VHS too long ago to remember anything.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Thank goodness I only paid 6.75 for the ticket.  The movie is all right, very typical J.J.Abrams, very mediocre.

The Grandmaster

All directors are self-indulgent.  But Wong Kar-wai takes it to a whole new level.  Wong spends ten years researching "The Grandmaster," ten years shooting it on and off, another ten years shooting the Matrix-like trailer and yet another ten years flip flopping between whether to make the English title plural or singular, struggling whether the story is about the only man that matters in the whole universe, the one and only Man,  Yip Man or it is really more about a number of grand masters.  After forty long years and countless broken spareribs from Leung Chiu Wai, Wong finally decides it's just "The Grandmaster," without the ass.

When the flag drops, the bullshit stops.  We hear enough of the back story.  So how is the movie?  Here is what my friend has to say.  I have nothing to say about the actual movie as I have not seen it yet or if ever.

QUOTE

I saw the Grandmasters 一代宗师 today. Kind of underwhelming. Not up to my expectations. I think Wong lost the plot somewhere. Not a great piece of story-telling. Would it be better had the movie been four hours long? I don't know. Anyway, Wong said that wouldn't happen in the next ten years. Was he trying to do to much in one movie? Possibly. The movie is educational in some ways, like introducing us to the various schools of Kung Fu, and there is romance, some fight scenes and hilarious elements as well. In the end, I was kind of lost. Zang is stunning as usual. The snow scene is very beautiful. That part should have been longer. The part of 宋乔慧 should have been longer too. No wonder she is pissed. I think Wong has taken too long to make the movie. Kind of funny because Wong only took 2 months to make the Chungking express, and yet that movie is such a classic. For all I know, this Grandmasters, with all its relative commercial success, won't become a classic despite some outstanding performances from Tony Leung and Zang ziyi.

UNQUOTE

I think I share the sentiment.

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol

Tom Cruise runs, swims, drives, jumps and kicks ass.  The end.  In between, the glue that binds those actions together that makes it a movie isn't all that interesting.  Personally, the much hyped Cruise doing his own stunt jumping off the tallest building seems more exciting on YouTube than it is in the movie.  Perhaps, I don't know, maybe the storytelling doesn't make it all that exciting.  Director Bird seems to be very fond of the first MI (1996), he even brings back the long hair dude who leads Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) to see Max.  For a second, I thought I am going to see Max (Vanessa Redgrave) again.  Alas, that didn't happen.  Then of course, we have the party scene in India which is much inferior than a similar scene in the first MI embassy scene.  The tribute doesn't stop there, Bird has Jeremy Renner jumps down some chute and floats by magnetic force a la Tom Cruise in the vault stealing the NOC list.  And finally when Bird doesn't know what to do he brings back Ving Rhames to close out the movie, what's missing of course, is the ridiculously catchy and out of nowhere Dreams by The Cranberries.  I always find it odd to have Dreams played in the end of MI.  But then so is the way Cruise runs, upright, chest protruding, looking all serious, urgent and oddly amusing.

Fincher's The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

The Karen O trailer gives the edge the book deserves but sorely missing in the American movie.  Fincher slogs through the material with a James Bond like opening sequence which is going to challenge the deep black in all LCD television sets across the nation when the blu-Ray, DVD and VOD come out some time later.  After the James Bondish, part MTV, part WTF opening sequence, things kind of go downhill.  There is really nothing to write home about, the intense coffee drinking scenes are missing and how I miss them.  The movie is by and large a faithful adaptation of the original novel so much so that I think if I haven't read the book I sure won't be able to follow the plot.  The movie is kind of sexist, something the book criticizes and despises.  Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara) is seen giving it all for the movie here while Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) stingily flashes only his butt crack in his man-whore like speedo underwear.  Where is the equality in on-screen nudity?  In terms of brutality, I am not impressed.  And Fincher certainly doesn't give the audience something new or good:  the same old tired obligatory shower scene after the rape.  Oh my goodness.  Spare me already.  Rooney Mara gives a credible performance and she looks the part.  But that's about it, her character is just as interesting as her changing hair styles along the movie, which is somewhat interesting but not interesting enough to propel the plot forward and save the movie from being mundane and tedious.

SPOILER ALERT:
Despite the fact that it's a SONY movie, Apple is still featured faithfully* and prominently in the movie.  VAIO and NEX play minor supporting roles only.  EPSON,surprisingly, has a minor supporting role as well.  *Blomkvist is supposed to use an iBook in the book, cheap journalist ...

Are You Lonesome Tonight

The eldest sister and older brother (or the second in the brood (老二), which in Mandarin, at least in Taiwan, can mean the penis) are flummoxed when trying to transcribe the lyrics of Elvis' "Are You Lonesome Tonight." Is it "Does your memory stray to a bright summer day" or " ... brighter summer day." To the sister and perhaps many others, Elvis sure sounds like singing the latter. The brother asks if it's even grammatically correct. The official lyrics is the former and so is Norah Jones' recent rendition. Yang's film title "A Brighter Summer Day" not only reflects the director's wry sense of humor on words misunderstood but also epitomizes the yearning of the Changs family, and by extension the Chinese diaspora in Taiwan, for not only a bright but a "brighter" future.

Things with a hole in the middle bring headaches

Wisdom: (Those) without scrotums are all very troublesome.

When Dad needs to say something mildly subversive, inappropriate or simply bad, he says it in Cantonese.  This is the first heart-to-heart conversation between father and son.  He switches to Cantonese when he utters the above.  His son Chang Chen on screen (and in real life) has no idea what's saying.  When asked what it means, the Dad's response is so typical (of Chinese?): you'll know when you grew up.  The film is mostly in Mandarin, with some Taiwanese and little Shanghainese thrown in.  There are three instances, which I really don't know why, the dialogues are in Cantonese, the above being the first one, then one appears off-screen between the parents, and one when Dad goes ballistic on his wife in bed, not sexually though.

Bill Cunningham New York

Cunningham, an octogenarian, must be flattered that people are still interested in his sex life or at least want to know if he is gay or not.  As it turns out he is married to his work and is never romantically involved with anybody.  So I guess the answer is even he himself can't be sure if he is or isn't homosexual.  Sometimes I wonder why someone's sexual orientation weighs so much on one's life.  But it sort of always does especially if one is not heterosexual, it's like your whole life is defined by your sexual orientation, well I digressed.  There are a couple of things that surprise me.  The number one being, not the homosexual question, but about his religion.  Cunningham is Catholic and goes to church every Sunday and when asked about his religion he seems badly shaken and on the verge of a meltdown and for a few seconds he just keeps his head down and can't utter a word, which is unusual given his usual cheerful predisposition, at least on the documentary though the few times I saw him in real life he seemed seriously detached, not unfriendly but not warm or anything probably he needed to stay focused when he's at work which I am sure he was as he is at work twenty four by seven.  The second surprise is how jocular Anna Wintour is when talking about Bill Cunningham.  She is chatty and warm and doesn't hide behind her sunglasses.  I think Cunningham certainly suffers for his art though he says he enjoys it, his work ethics is next to none: he won't even allow himself to eat or drink a glass of water in those high society parties he covers as that would be inappropriate.  When nowadays people, like the Sartorialist, causally brag about pageviews, CPM and quarter million dollars ad revenue, Bill is decidedly humble and frugal and vows to never sell out.  As he says if you don't get paid they can't make you do things. Or something.

PS:  I think Cunningham shoots with some FE or FE2.  But the latest is, judging from a post/picture I saw from the Sartorialist, he might be shooting a Nikon D7000 with a manual lens attached.  Good luck with the focusing, CHILD.

Awesome Movie Title

The sheer bluntness of a seemingly bland title makes it the more poignant and powerful.  Via nytimes.com.

I used to joke with my friends using this movie title, a way to defuse the dread of growing up, taking up more responsibilities, dying one day at a time, and ultimately realizing a life is lived unfulfilled and everything is already too late.  And all you can do is to make peace with yourself.

Hanna

The wild child grew up in the wilderness can be seen impossibly a double pierced ear lobe in a 5-second cheesy head shot.   As much as I want to like the Kool-Aid director Joe Wright dishes out, once I saw that, the suspension of belief crumbles down like a sack of potatoes.  The movie stars two of the fairest female actresses you can find on earth, if they get any whiter, I probably need to wear sun glasses to sit through the movie.  I always like Eric Bana, he's a manly man.  Alas his character is kind of I don't know maybe lame.  Erik, that's right, Eric Bana's character, first potentially significant fight happens off-screen and I am left forever wondering how he disposes of the two (border) policemen.  The look of Hanna (not the character, but the movie), feels oddly like The Bourne movies but just not as good and lacks the obvious kinetic momentum that propels the movie forward or the more subtle but well crafted moral dimensions of the Bourne series (Bourne Supremacy in particular).  The finale is also lame.  So all in all, it's a let down.

As far as young female freaky protagonist movies go, Hanna ranks the last, after, Let Me In/Let The Right One In and Kick-Ass.  It's not entirely bad so long if you can admire and don't look beyond the thoroughly, flawlessly translucent skin of Miss Ronan's.

The American and The Expendables

Every now and then George Clooney likes to remind us movie goers, in addition to making blockbuster crappy movies like his bread and butter the Ocean movies, he is amply capable of making pretentious artsy movies that are seemingly deep but are actually just interminably drab and weary.  The American is one of those.  The only saving grace is the movie has quite a few nude scenes, a stark contrast to your regular nude-less American movies, I think that's the only good European touch The American has to offer, which nevertheless could not possibly salvage the movie from its utter slow paced bore.  Since I am a fan of anal retentiveness, so I sort of enjoy Clooney's character Mr. Butterfly's (what a pretentious name) demonstrably encyclopedic knowledge of fire arms and hands-on experience--believe it or not, his character is able to fabricate a rifle silencer out of parts from a tiny chop shop in a god forsaken little Italian town.  Is he a genius or what?

The Expendables is the polar opposite of The American.  The Expendables is either a wet dream come true or a nightmare of a movie--aging action heroes join force to fight bad guys.  Maybe I have outgrown action movies, I find the story incredibly tired and the action scenes pretty forgettable.  Mickey Rourke probably has it the easiest.  He doesn't even need to fight, all he does is mumbling and he calls that acting.

Exit Through The Gift Shop

A documentary that is at once entertaining and enthralling.  It's not like you see how graffiti artists work every day, let alone the great Banksy.  Exit Through The Gift Shop delivers both and more.  It tells the story of the greatest documentary on graffiti artists that was never made and captures the utter absurdity of a feverish obsessive compulsive videographer, Thierry Guetta, who takes a keen interest in graffiti and becomes an artist himself.  The movie asks the perennial question that eludes everybody, what is art anyway?  Just like any other meaningful questions in life, it really doesn't have an answer.

The Hangover

Every man lives out his failed bachelor party through The Hangover.

Inglourious Basterds

**Spoiler Alert**
Tarantino's long-winded re-imagination of World War II events that lead up to the successful assassination of Hitler and the end of the War.  If only things were that easy.  Stylistically it's the same as every other movie he's done in the past so the movie is peppered with dialogues some witty some not and the movie is structured in chapters.  Nothing new.  Pitt and Waltz play interesting and psychotic adversaries.  Though, in the end Pitt's character Aldo Raine wins, it's Waltz's character Han Landa that wins the heart of the audience.  Pitt's supposedly southern accent at times sound more Sling Blade than just southern.  Good but mildly retarded just like the rest of the movie.

Gomorrah

**Spoiler Alert**
Gomorrah is a gritty drama that resembles a documentary.  If you like documentary then it's fine.  But if you prefer glam up over stylized movie then perhaps it's not really for you.  The characters are ordinary ugly looking boys and guys just like you and me, maybe just me.  There aren't any Hollywood stars, so no lookers to look at.  Its anti-Hollywood aesthetic is its only aesthetic.  It's like since we don't have Brad Pitt or George Clooney we might as well just use the ugliest looking guys around.  I especially like the touch of playing a Teresa Tang's Xiao chen gu shi.  It just proves the fact that whenever there's Chinese there's Teresa Tang's songs, even in someing some god forsaken slum in the middle of nowhere in Naples or somewhere in southern Italy.  I will go on to suggest mandating every movie depicting Chinese should have a Teresa Tang's song in it.  It just makes the movie better.  In the end a couple of gangsters wanna be kids died a horrendous death, their bodies got chucked away by a bulldozer, just like some illegal toxic waste disposal also depicted in the movie.  It was done as a matter of fact without glamor without mercy just like the way life is.

My Blueberry Nights

If you like a director you can always find some reason or excuse to like him. But I think Wong Kar-wai is really pushing it.

My Blueberry Nights is another endless tribute of Wong Kar-wai to himself both thematically and aesthetically. Except this time the language is in English and the setting is in America. I feel like the movie is a total mashup of what he has already done tirelessly since the 80s. The movie is contrived and stale. Worse, Jude Law doesn't really make it any better. So I got tired of it. When you make a successful movie and you have said something already, do you still keep up the same theme, telling the same story ad nauseam? I guess you can at least that's what Wong has been doing for a long long time, perhaps too long and hopefully the eagerly anticipated The Grandmasters can inject some freshness to Wong's repertoire.

Let the Right One In

I saw Let me In before I saw this original, because you know I am just a typical American movie goer. I don't think the Swedish original is any better or worse than the American remake for the simple fact that the remake is an exact carbon copy of the original except it's in English saving the average American from the chore of reading English subtitle. Granted it's the original so kudos to its originality. This movie belongs to one of those peculiar categories, a fantastic fantasy movie about childhood alienation with fair amount of horror, violence, love, friendship and blood sucking vampire thrown in just to kick things up a few notches. A very well made movie that goes above and beyond the pure gore.