borderpolice

Well-known member
I saw "Memories of Murder" by Joon-ho Bong (IMDB link) last night. It's a fairly recent movie, set in mid-1980s Korea under the military dictatorship. Don't know if it's a thriller, a comedy, a political film, but i really liked it.

the grander question i have is: why are seemingly all korean films good these days, and most good films korean? is there any specific reason for this, to me, surprising emergence of korea as a cinematic powerhouse?
 
i'd unreservedly advise everyone to revisit whatever is hailed as the greatest moments of cinema in the thirties, fourties, fifties, sixties and seventies. then add the things that you liked as a kid. up to when you were 12 years old. then reconsider. there you have it.
 

zhao

there are no accidents
The Constant Gardener.

I dare the most stringent of film snobs on this board to slam this one.

(but I'll prolly get what I ask for won't I?)
 
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arcaNa

Snakes + Ladders
viewed recently...

Nic Roeg- Walkabout
Alejandro Jodorowsky- The Holy Mountain
 
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owen

Well-known member
confucius said:
The Constant Gardener.
I dare the most stringent of film snobs on this board to slam this one.
(but I'll prolly get what I ask for won't I?)

ha! i must see it forthwith in order to win this dare.

btw, i saw the godfather for the first time last week and thought it was RUBBISH
 
confucius said:
The Constant Gardener.

I dare the most stringent of film snobs on this board to slam this one.

(but I'll prolly get what I ask for won't I?)

Of course! Obviously, as resident film-hater, I rather loathed this film - I really did, btw, not just being obtuse. Have already been in trouble with Christian sister of best friend over this - actual anger on her part as to how anyone could dislike such a moving tale of personal courage, the battle against multinational corporations, love, anti-racism, etc.

The reason why I'd slam this film, despite its potentially appealing premise (revealing the actually existing evil of pharma-cons in Africa and elsewhere - obviously 'true' with regard to the current attitude towards generic versions of Aids drugs, the practice of 'experimenting' on deliberately misinformed patients, etc.).

Basically, I detested its myriad cop-outs:

1. That the suspicion that his pretty, politically-aware wife might be shagging the black activist (exploited to the hilt in the hospital scene where she holds a black baby after, you later find out, losing her own child. Plus the fact that she dies in the car with him after sharing a hotel room - maybe they didn't just have a cause in common, hint, hint!). But he's gay! So it's ok (although not for him, obviously, he gets strung up like a hare in some primitive homophobic-political attack. D'oh!).

The implication being that she had to be as pure and innocent as her political project - and if not, no one would have 'believed' her...let alone taken up her leads and so on (and how stoooopid was her husband for not realising that she was doing all this activism stuff while he worked for the British Gvt - wot, she was sitting at home knitting....but where were all the scarves?!) ...The modern version of the white man's burden - the flirty white wife! 'Keep her in check...obviously we all fancy her, but she's dangerous, you know!'

2. The personalisation of politics - systematic corruption via the powers that be, but only rendered true-to-life through the sad tale of one man and his wifey - cos no audience could deal with the issues outside of a sorry love story.

3. The colourful/grey dichotomy - Africa all dancing colours, pathos and rituals; England all grey, rainy and full of eeeevil corrupt politicos with dubious physiognomy. Subtle!

4. The fact that the 'constant gardener' only tended his plants obsessively about twice in the whole film, thus not really making enough of his supposed inverted, autistic tendencies to make his oh-so-late political revelations convincing.

Mind you, I loathed City of God even more....
 

big satan

HA-DO-KEN!
really? i watched city of god yesterday.


recommended:

grizzly man. i'm a sucker for gawping at derranged and delusional americans.
 

zhao

there are no accidents
infinite thought said:
The reason why I'd slam this film

rolling eyes toward the sky.

unlike the well deserved critiques of Match-Point, I don't buy any one of these reasons.
 

vernoncrane

garrett dweller
I'm with Infy on this one, City of God was a hyperkinetic, souless tour through Favella misery for the Cosmo elite... Lock stock and Two Smoking Barrels with Bossanova... and the Constant Gardener was equally awful..instead of building up character it went for the usual convoluted narrative shenanagins in a variety of filmstocks in order to engage with our cine-literate po-mo sensibilities (the kids wont stand for any of that atobtoc nonsense, y'know) and ended up a confused mess with no emotional centre that did justice to neither the central love story or the political dimension...plus... wasn't Rachael Thingy's initial rant at the press conference one of the most hamfisted (the hamfistedest?) Establishment-of-character moments in recent cinema?
 

h-crimm

Well-known member
infinite thought said:
she holds a black baby after, you later find out, losing her own child.
ha!
it was already so clear that she wasnt having an affair. that bit was just stupid.
i dont think it even occured to me that it could be his child, thier relationship was so carefully left open that they had to be setting up a twist. then it dragged on and onnnnnnnn

he's gay! So it's ok

for me that was a particular peak of swagness in the general morass.
how dyou know he's gay? he's hanging out with a guy in a photo! well... i'm convinced.
and his gayness is never anything more than the most obvious convenient way of asexualising him
substitute: "oh dont worry he was a born again christian!" or "he was castrated as a child!", and it becomes utterly ridiculous but gayness is still an uncrystalised meme. for most people, i guess, i mean to most people it maybe doesnt mean anything.
except a shite excuse for resolution.

the portrait of british people reminded me of renoirs 'grande illusion' europeans == boring boys own
and the locals were represented as so totally inactive, inarticulate, uninvolved and incidental to the real love story... i almost forgot who we're collectively murdering



i like the way this and city of god are kind of immune to film criticism for some leftist people since they tackle issues that more mainstream cinema should be tackling... i mean i dont /like\ it but, i think its sort of funny

still i'm sure it was better this way than if the treatment had fallen into the hands of some american superstars
 
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h-crimm

Well-known member
back on recommendations::::::::::::::::::::::::



henry hills --------------- kino da.
nice short mashup of mayakovsky. nothing too difficult. no thought. just sonically pleasureable. i'd recommend his documentary(?) film Money, but its a bit long for something that i primarily want to leave to wash over me.

fassbinder --------------- plague gods.
saw this a little while ago... its from the early silly gangster-film period, before the sirk conversion. so i dont expect owen to have any time for it.
but if you secretly want to watch a high brow version of a brit gangster flick but dont want to rent city of god for fear of looking like a hippy, watch this instead.
be prepared for the joys of monotonous-drawl-speaking sloth-gangsters.

cassavettes ------------- husbands
every scene an interminable drunken nothing. did they ever even come to london at all? it seems doubtful.
jenny runacre in drawn out uncomfortably conscentual rape scene.
cassavettes is a fucking man-hating genius! what was kathleen hanna on about?
 
S

simon silverdollar

Guest
h-crimm said:
cassavettes ------------- husbands
every scene an interminable drunken nothing. did they ever even come to london at all? it seems doubtful.
jenny runacre in drawn out uncomfortably conscentual rape scene.
cassavettes is a fucking man-hating genius! what was kathleen hanna on about?

watching that was like getting punched in the face, over and over. good tho!
 

don_quixote

Trent End
1) morvern callar? theyre showing that at a cinema round ere next week. how is it?
2) i really want to go to the cinema today, actually, but havent got a clue what to see. i have a choice between multiplex (take yr pick, they all show the same stuff) and this list: Chicken Little (U), Good Night, And Good Luck. (PG), Hidden (Cache) (15), Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang (15), Lady Vengeance (18), Me and You and Everyone We Know (15), Proof (12A), The Libertine (18)

i havent been to the cinema for SO LONG and i usually love it (even shite feels good when it's really large, i can only really think of three films which i have come out hating), so i think i need a break...?
 

borderpolice

Well-known member
don_quixote said:
Lady Vengeance (18)

Lady Vengance is awesome, like everything else i have seen by Chan-wook Park. However, this kind of filmmaking is not to everyone's taste. also, despite a similar theme, the film tastes quite different from the utterly magnificent Oldboy!
 
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don_quixote

Trent End
i went to see lady vengeance and liked it a lot. i was worried it didnt know where to finish, but the ending turned out to be great!
 

tox

Factory Girl
don_quixote said:
1) morvern callar? theyre showing that at a cinema round ere next week. how is it?

I adore Morvern Callar. There's a good thread about the director and the rest of her work in a thread here.

As far as recommendations go, today I would put forward Rize . Its a documentary by David LaChapelle about a dance style called Krumping (kidz wearing make-up dancing crazily to hip-hop in LA). A very interesting film which is definately worth a look. Given that the actual dancing is so interesting to watch on its own, I expect a DVD with extended footage could make a good rental. The stories followed in the film were actually quite thin and not heavily expanded upon, which was a bit of a shame, however the footage of the dancing was so outstanding at times that it made up for this shortfall. It was also a bit annoying that all the music was over-dubbed, so you couldn't tell exactly how the dance fitted to the music. Still made a good watch though.
(there's also a dissensus thread on krumping here. )
 
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