December 2006 Round-Up

I get the sneaking feeling that no one really gives a shit about these posts except me. Oh well. This is my blog, after all. I finally get to December, which, thankfully, didn't have as movies as November did.

Open Season
Ugly-ass character designs, Ashton Kutcher, a weak plot, Ashton Kutcher, lame jokes, Ashton Kutcher, horrible translation to Imax and Ashton Kutcher all work together to make this one of the worst CGI animations in the history of, well, CGI animation.






Flags of Our Fathers
Some heavy-handed narration and an at-times clunky script threaten to derail the whole thing, but luckily Eastwood manages to rein most of it back. In the hands of a lesser director this could've been an awful disaster, but in his hands it's a rather decent film. Now, having seen both films, Letters from Iwo Jima is by far the better one.




Déjà Vu
Holy plot holes, Batman! Reason and logic are thrown out the window completely, as is narrative cause and effect, as Denzel storms through time and space to save the life of a girl that he spies on using some newfangled time-travel technology. Yep, that's the movies for ya, a high-tech voyeur is actually the hero of the movie. There's a really nifty chase through time in a huge hummer (this description actually makes much more sense when you actually see it) though, so it's not all bad. Just mostly.

Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny
A movie best watched when you're either completely stoned out of your fucking mind, or ridiculously drunk. Otherwise, there are a few chuckles to be had if you're sober, but unfortunately none of the gut-busting variety. Great cameos though, especially by Tim Robbins as a mysterious one-legged man. Still, it's all rather fun.




父子 (After This Our Exile)
Omigawd, Aaron Kwok can act! It's true, and all the awards he's gotten for this film are well-deserved. For celebrities, it's hard to deliver a performance that makes audiences forget who you really are, but I was pleasantly surprised that in most of his scenes he actually does make me forget that I'm watching Aaron the Superstar. The relationship between this deadbeat father and his young son is drawn out tenderly and often, painfully, making this quiet little film one of the most emotionally resonant Hong Kong productions in quite a while.

墨攻 (A Battle of Wits)
Rah rah rah, Andy Lau is good-looking and smart, and here he comes to save the day, rah rah rah. That's about it, because there's no real surprises in this period flick, apart from finding out that ex-teenybopper idol Nicky Wu is still alive and actually working. The battle schemes aren't really smart enough to be actually witty, and the contradictions between the philosophy that Lau's character pitches and his actions are far too large to ignore, yet routinely ignored.

Sketches of Frank Gehry
This rambling documentary could've been cut to half an hour and still have as much information in it. There's no real in-depth look at Gehry the artist or visionary, because Sydney Pollack is far too friendly with the guy to do any real digging, and as such it's all rather tame and celebratory of his genius. As a result, it's all rather pointless.



Eragon
Any movie that begins with John Malkovich saying, "I suffer without my stone. Do not prolong my suffering." has to be awful. I can't say this enough, this movie is truly awful, and to inflict further sequels on the world is an evil, evil thing. It's trite and juvenile, with everything lifted wholesale from other books and movies, and it's really obvious that a kid wrote the damn thing. Then again, perhaps some other factors might've saved it. Unfortunately, the cast is horrendous, especially the lead, the CGI looks like shit, the pacing is completely off and the climactic battle is almost non-existent.

La Tourneuse de pages (Turning Pages a.k.a. The Page Turner)
Intense and unflinchingly tight psychological thriller that's all the more powerful for a bloodless climax that's no less devastating. Deborah Francois is breathtaking in the title role as a young woman seeking revenge by worming her way into a concert pianist's household and slowly but surely ripping her life apart strand by strand. Delicious.


滿城盡帶黃金甲 (Curse of the Golden Flower)
While The Banquet was an adaptation of The Bard's Hamlet, this here is an adaptation of a classic Chinese play, 雷雨 (Thunderstorm). While watching a performance of the original play last year, I couldn't stop giggling, since this was the play that kick-started decades of Chinese melodrama, and the clichés were out in full force (although granted, it's unfair to snigger since it is the granddaddy of melodramas, after all). Thankfully, this was relatively cliché-free and rather well-adapted. Gong Li steals the whole show, and Jay Chou shows surprising improvement from his acting (or rather, non-acting) turn in Initial D. Oh, and there was great cleavage on display too, from every female cast member and extra.

The Holiday
In trying to put not one, but two romances onto the screen, this romcom suffers from slack pacing and repetition. While the leads are appealing enough, nothing serves to elevate this from pure, mindless fluff, and not very entertaining fluff, at that.






傷城 (Confession of Pain)
Oh, what an ironic title! I must confess, I felt great pain and disappointment while watching this movie, because there is simply no point to it, and because this came from the team that created Infernal Affairs. Tony Leung and Takeshi Kaneshiro mope around for the duration of the movie, there's no suspense whatsoever due to a too-early revelation, and the plot is simply too recycled to have any impact. And I hear Hollywood is doing a remake. Well, it shouldn't be too hard to improve on the original.

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
This movie caused me pain too, but in a different way - I laughed so hard it physically hurt. I think enough has been written about it that I don't need to waste my effort. Suffice to say that it's the funniest movie all year, and that Sacha Baron Cohen is a fuckin' genius. Oh, and it has one of the best titles, like, ever.