Darick's Talk

Chungking Express

beautifully shot,beautifully told. this is cinema at its best ! the story of two intertwined men (played with such calamity by Takeshi Kaneshiro and Tony Leung) that try to cope with their heartbreak situation is highly romantic,in some sort of unique way,. have many great unique dialogues,and a superb soundtrack as well(the exception is the mandarin-language cranberries song,.haha)

Il conformista (The Conformist)

since it is a bertolucci movie,it is no doubt has a beautiful cinematography.but what i like the most from THE CONFORMIST is not the beauty itself,but more of its unstructured narrative,which is a rarity on those days.this is a film that demand a second viewing.,and for good sake.,the script didn't give a simple A to B narrative.in fact,the movie rather very confused to watch,especially in the first hour.but,like trying to solve a puzzle,when the piece is done,then all its left is a feeling of satisfaction.,truly bertolucci masterpiece!

99 River Street

a terrific overlooked noir, likely the best film of director phil karlson's career. john payne plays a washed up fighter who's constantly reliving his lost shot at the title, struggling as a cabdriver with a dissatisfied wife. what is it with boxers and noir? needless to say, he gets mixed up in a dangerous game, giving him one last shot at redemption. i don't wanna give too much away. everyone is great here, especially evelyn keyes as a standup dame trying to help him out of the jam. check it out

Blonde Crazy,(Larceny Lane)

"blonde crazy" is jimmy cagney's pre-code comedy, and also in my opinion, his first and only successful attempt of being cinematic romanticist before william wellman's "public enemy" catapults him into the smashing icon of misogynistic gangster who smashes grapefruit to a dame's face . it features joan bondell in her supremacy of beauty and youthful brightness before she descends into the typecasting of wisecracking sassy moll/doll in the warner's 30s gangster genre , especially in the bathtub scene. generally it's a quaint pre-code romantic comedy on the backset of rocketeering gangsterism without too much of profanity.

cagney is a hotel waiter who's enamour of a newly arrived blonde (played by bondell) who is reluctant to appreciate his aggressive courtship. so cagney hooks bondell to be his bussiness partner of larceny to con rich fellow who's blinded by lust. then bondell gets smitten with a suave bourgeois gentleman(played by the young, fresh-faced ray milland) to leave cagney heart-broken. so in the end, how cagney's gonna to court back the dame he truly loves with his un-requited chivalry? it also reflects the anarchistic mindset of the proteriats in the great depression that rascal could be a romanticist of genuine nobility while the gent of idle rich could be rotten inside.

the ending is a surprisingly sweet romantic twist which is expressed effectively in the last 10 mins. (which won't be revelt here) director roy del ruth also makes another flick with cagney and mae clarke in "ladykiller" which steals some "grapefruit chauvinism" from "public enemy"...perhaps cagney's comic and romantic potentiality has been dwarfed by the charismatic brute image he renders so well in "public enemy" but it shows so well in "blonde crazy" with joan bondell here even he lacks every essential attribute as romantic lead, such as looks, grace and the affinity with female audience. instead, he could manage his cagney-kind of romanticism like bogart did in the 40s with lauren bacall.

Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore

again,another scorsese underrated gem.this,and that movie called after hours should be his classic,not that movie about a boxer,or some lunatic taxi driver,or a joe pesci-gone-mad-mafia-movie. maybe it's scorsese image of the maker of 'guy' movie that makes this movie gone overlooked by many.this is funny and inspiring !(at least for all the single mother out there,don't give up!).haha and i didn't realize there's Jodie Foster in this!

Antichrist

James Berardinelli,one of my favorite film critics,can't decide whether to give this movie a 0 or 4 stars.well,after watching ANTICHRIST myself,i got the point. This is one of the most brilliant,and at the same time,the most pretentious filmaking i've ever seen.

the opening 5 minutes (the prologue,in which von trier tells it)is just beautiful. i've never been as captivated (at least,not since the opening of THE FALL) by the extraordinary cinematography (once again,Anthony Dod Mantle proves,that he and von trier is a match made in heaven).

But after the opening,here comes the pretentious side (which fortunately for ME,i find it rather Genius than pretentious). with a lot of disturbing scenes comes around,the slow moving paces of the revealing truth,.and (as usual) a 'more than meets the eyes' ending (i myself still can't find the meaning of that last shot,now please someone tell me!)

as much as it is von trier egotastic project,this is also Gainsbourg and Dafoe playground. there are no one else on screen(except for a brief scene that feature their son).and i'm glad that they really deliver.it is their performance that makes me goes to a rather favorable more than disgust it (and believe me,the line is very very thin)

so overall,regardless of all the controversy,i think antichrist is a pretentiousness at its most genius

Breaking the Waves

Von trier hit the spot again !loves Emily Watson,loves Stellan Skarsgaard,loves the soundtrack,and loves the powerful and dogmatic ending !

Punch-Drunk Love

unconventional and beautifully shot romance movie.very refreshing ! PTA rocks(as always)!!

The Player

wow.,a masterpiece that i didn't see coming! first of all,i really not into robert altman.his previous movies that i watched (SHORTCUTS, GOSFORD PARK) is just an OK for me.secondly,.when talking about altman,it looks like that everybody has in mind is M.A.S.H,or nashville,or Mccabe and mrs miller.i don't recall hearing THE PLAYER that much.,well,i haven't yet to seen those three movies,but at least,this one is supposedly on par,.movie couldn't get better than this.this is a perfect thriller,and also a perfect satire about the hollywood system.,add in the great performance of tim robbins,playing as the most jerkest protagonist i've ever seen,this is truly a gem.and having a great tracking opening shot didn't hurt either.oh and it got Jeremy Piven pre-Ari Gold (in a movie about hollywood??haha,what a coincidence!)

The Heiress

"the heiress" is william wyler's adaption from henry james' novella "washington square", featuring montgomery clift in his utmost of gracious beauty and a mature olivia dehavilland who still preserves a girlish coyness despite she's reached into matron-hood. it's one of those marvellous examples of dialogue-driven movies based upon the stage plays like "long day's journey into night" or wyler's another work "little fox" starring bette davis. now wyler's on his way to catapult another major warner-studio actress, olivia dehavilland, into further award-winning niche of accomplished actress like he did with bette davis in earlier years.

dehavilland is a rich spinster whose lack of glamour has dwarfed her from being the charming socialite her father wishes her to be, just like her absolutely gracious late mother who has been immortalized by her worshipping dad. the silhouette of her mighty gorgeous mother has intimidated her from blossoming into a genuine womanhood since father always makes woeful comparison between the fabulous mom and the plain-jane daughter. so she's never in love until a handsome playboy who secretly covets her fortune sets his eyes on her..then her timid virginal heart is stirred with rejoice until she discovers the cruel truth of life about her father and her lover's mercenary motive.

clift's social climber has an overlayered parallel with his another role in "the place in the sun", but he just has a sort of boyish naivete and some beguiling refinement to make you hesitate whether you should hate him or accept his warming embrace. there's a very blurred and grey dubiety in his performances as if you could detect some gentleness in him even when he's conniving some bad schemes in his mind. when he's making love to de havilland, you're aware he's mainly after the money but his gestures are so sincere that you tend to fall into his trap. you cannot see any apparent vileness in a character who's supposed to be vile by purpose. that's the so called "elegant rotten-ness".. somehow you almost want to pity him in the end when he knocks the door desperately like a panic child even he just gets what he deserves.

in a nutshell, olivia de havilland sheds off her swashbuckler sweetheart halo and proves to you that she could also be hardened, cruel and callous and she's not just a bundle of sugary water. ralch richardson could pull off any heavy task of stage-play kind of movie like his another success in katherine hepburn's "long day's journey into night" and the imaginative glamour of the protagonist's late mother totally relies upon richardson's nifty expressions, needless to say, it requires subtlety and culture in his blood to channel a fluent suaveness to deliver those lines of classic plays in a stagy movie like this.

They Made Me a Fugitive (I Became a Criminal)

a grimy brit noir with trevor howard as an ex-raf pilot and black marketeer who falls in with drug smugglers. when he tries to get out, he's framed for murder and goes on the lam looking for the man who can clear his name, with criminals and cops on his trail. some really dark stuff and alot of tough talk, which is fun coming from howard; griffith jones is suitably nasty as crime boss narcy (short for narcissus!) and the very lovely sally gray plays howard's love interest. directed by brazilian-born alberto cavalcanti, most famous for the much imitated ventriloquist's dummy segment in dead of night

Red Rock West

Taut, twisting thriller/mystery is like a lost 1990s Coen Brothers movie. 'Blood Simple' seems to be a definite inspiration, from the stark, beautifully photographed smalltown atmosphere to the setup of one man hiring another to kill his wife. And much like that film, nothing goes as planned in 'Red Rock West' either, as Nicolas Cage finds himself sucked into deeper and deeper consequences. Couldn't predict what would happen next except that Dennis Hopper would eventually come unhinged - who does it any better? Looking at director John Dahl's resume, no surprise that he was behind the camera for another great indie thriller 'The Last Seduction.' In fact, femme fatale Lara Flynn-Boyle is very Linda Fiorentino-like; Dahl certainly has a type. If you enjoyed that movie, you'll like this one too and vice-versa.

Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari. (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari)

i rarely love silent movies.it's not that i hate them. i respect them.,its just,.for me,watching silent movies today,with the growth of technology and all, is just an irrelevant thing to do.i barely can sit through till the end.i can't get pass the first 20 minutes of chaplin movie.hell,i can't even get pass the first 5 minutes of metropolis.
but this,this is diferrent,.Dr. caligari is a horror movie that the silence and style just enhance the experience.the musics are haunting,the atmosphere is chilling,and the story,full of mystery!

Lady in the Lake

"lady in the lake" is an amateurish noir by robert montgomery's gimmicky experiment of filmmaking with raymond chandler's novel by the same name. it utilizes the entire first-person perspective which is also applied in humprey bogart's "dark passage" which was also released around the same time in 1947. but montgomery's trial is thorough becuz montgomery's philip marlowe is basically just a narrator, a void awaiting to be filled by the audience.

first of all, it takes a great deal of imagination as well as some enduring composure as a constant reader to visualize oneself in the position of philip marlowe as you're reading chandler's detective novels with his die-hard ace marlowe. as an enthusiastic reader of chandler's novels, i've found montgomery's primitive direction borders on my perception of the plots as i leaf one page after another. obviously, i cannot help but wonder whether montgomery's choice of such kind of directing is due to his limited craftmanship as a director since he cannot think any other way to present a movie?

second of all, the process of film-viewing is a highly passive involvement with the original texts since the filmakers have filled in the pages with their own envisioning of the story. as a viewer, you're detached in a position to judge whether the fimmaker's presentation is marvellously creative or not with a smugly ignorant condescendence even you've not got in touch with the texts beforehand. but on the contrary, reading is an active experience or commitment to devote your absolute attention into the story, and you're more left alone with your own imaginations on the characters, backset and the stream of consciousness kind of soliloquy as the character's self-revelation...you concede into the author's viewpoint at the moment you open the book or you wouldn't dedicate your time and efforts on consuming all the materials..when you're reading, you're fabricating a movie made on your own with your mind in absolute privacy....

so "lady in the lake" is merely a passable movie-piece since the director cannot offer you anything more than a whirling camera with some bizarre hand gestures. but somehow it simulates your inward state as you read the original books while imagining yourself as marlowe and see things in his angle...meanwhile it also lacks a sort of deepening refinement of characters' dimensions which the book usually renders by monologues..in the case, it proves that audrey totter is indeed a good actress who could pull off an acting job by playing opposite to an abscent leading man, shedding tears to a lifeless machine without the helpful eye-contact in the love scenes.

Chugyeogja (The Chaser)

The Chaser kick ass!! after i'm enduring myself for so long with cheesy thriller from hollywood,the koreans save the day again! (at least for me). this is just,well,i;m not saying it is unpredictable,but when i watch this,there are times when i think "shit,this is just so not thriller-for-dummies by the book cliche hollywood often offers".i enjoy a movie where i had no idea what's gonna happen next,and this is one of it.if there's one letdown,it is the finale confrontation of the goodie and the baddie,which is the only cliche part in this movie,but fortunatelyl,the director take the step again with the final shot,which is sort of sad and leaves many intrepetation.surely the best thriller i've ever seen in years!

The Room

OH MY GOD! This is the worst movie ever made! Tommy Wiseau writes, directs and stars in this horrible film that is lots of fun to watch! While he is horrbile at writing and directing, his ACTING is unbelievable! The worst acting I've ever seen on screen that is at first painful to watch and later a fun ride when you get past the pain.

The plot is simple, a couple is about to get married and the girl cheats the guy with his best friend. But the dialogs are to die for. The things they say is eighter a cliche or something really stupid. It's very hard not to crack up when the guy screams "Lisa, you are tearing me apart!" or "Everbody betrays me!"

Ok this is an independant movie but it has the production values of a bad porn movie. Take a porn movie (one with a script), leave out the hardcore scenes, make the acting even worse, and you get something close to The Room.

I read that there are special screenings all over the world where fans get together and have a really good time. If it comes somewhere near you, you have to see this instant cult classic.

My Best Friend's Birthday

Surviving fragments of this movie has some funny parts, good dialog and the best acting from QT so far. Check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0cQF8dBK7k

Chinjeolhan geumjassi (Lady Vengeance) (Sympathy for Lady Vengeance)

if there's one word to summarize this movie,well,maybe it is : BEAUTIFUL.this movie use all elements of beauty all over the screen.from the titular main character,which is a beautiful woman, a beautiful cinematography, a beautiful opera-like score, and a beautiful story (for a standard of revenge movie,of course)